Hermeticism, the magic of the rare initiates

Hermeticism refers to a philosophical and esoteric school of thought that emerged in Greco-Egyptian Antiquity, whose writings are attributed to a legendary figure, Hermes Trismegistus. Associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus was revered as a sage who had received a primordial revelation and was capable of bringing spiritual salvation to his disciples. The Hermetic tradition has since had a considerable influence on the magical arts. An overview.

The Origins of Hermeticism in Greco-Egyptian Antiquity

Hermes Trismegistus, whose name means “Hermes three times greatest,” appears in the context of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt as the syncretism of the Greek god Hermes - divine messenger and guide of souls - and the Egyptian god Thoth - master of knowledge and writing. Ancient authors viewed Hermes Trismegistus not as a historically attested individual, but as the legendary embodiment of ancient wisdom. From the 3rd century BC onward, mystical and technical writings circulated in his name in Alexandria. These early texts - known as popular Hermeticism - dealt mainly with astrology, alchemy, magic and occult disciplines, bearing witness to the meeting of Egyptian knowledge and Greek philosophy.

Alongside the occult writings, a philosophical scholarly Hermeticism developed from the 1st century AD onward. It consists of a collection of religious and cosmological dialogues written in Greek, in which Hermes instructs his disciples about God, the cosmos and the soul. The principal collection of these treatises is known as the Corpus Hermeticum, composed of around ten short dialogues probably written between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. Added to this are the famous Asclepius - a Latin-language Hermetic text - as well as fragments quoted by later authors, such as the Anthology of Stobaeus around 490, and several writings discovered in Coptic at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Taken together, these works present a theology and cosmology marked by syncretism: they contain Platonic influences, particularly Plato’s Timaeus, Stoic influences, and even Judaic or Persian echoes. The Hermetic treatises describe the world as a creation ordered by one supreme God, the source of all things, and humanity as an intellect derived from divine intelligence. In certain Hermetic dialogues, such as the Poimandres or the Perfect Discourse, Hermes teaches the existence of a transcendent God who created the world through his thought, and urges the human soul to purify itself in order to return to the divine. These ideas bear striking similarities to the emerging Neoplatonic philosophy. Indeed, the Neoplatonic philosophers of Late Antiquity were familiar with the Hermetic writings: Iamblichus in the 4th century and Proclus in the 5th century refer to them in their works, showing that Hermetic thought was part of the intellectual landscape of the period.

Beyond pagan philosophical circles, Christian authors of the early centuries also took an interest in Hermes Trismegistus. Some saw him as a monotheistic pagan sage whose writings could foreshadow Christian truths. Around 300, the apologist Lactantius called the “Egyptian Hermes” a very ancient scholar “filled with all wisdom” and asserted that Hermes had proclaimed in his books the majesty of the one supreme God, whom he called “God the Father.” In his Divine Institutes, Lactantius even quoted a passage from the Asclepius in which Hermes refers to a “Son of God” who created the world, a reading he interpreted as a veiled prophecy of Christ. Although Saint Augustine criticized these texts, seeing them as demonic deceptions in The City of God, the idea of Hermes Trismegistus as the possessor of a premise of Christian revelation encouraged the transmission of certain Hermetic writings in Latin culture. In particular, the Perfect Discourse or Asclepius - a theological Hermetic dialogue - was translated into Latin at an early date, perhaps as early as Late Antiquity, and widely copied during the Middle Ages. For centuries, this Asclepius would remain the main source of knowledge of philosophical Hermeticism in the West, even as most of the Greek texts of the Corpus Hermeticum sank into oblivion.

Hermeticism in Late Antiquity and Its Transmission to the Middle Ages

During Late Antiquity, Hermeticism suffered from the decline of paganism but found unexpected channels of transmission. As Christianity became established in the Roman Empire, pagan Hermetic circles disappeared, but their writings were partially preserved by learned Christian readers. We have seen that Lactantius and Augustine quoted excerpts from them. Others, such as Bishop Thierry of Chartres in the 12th century, would still comment on the Asclepius, attesting to the survival of this tradition in medieval monasteries and schools. Moreover, Hermeticism enjoyed a remarkable afterlife outside the Christian Empire, in the emerging Islamic world.

Hermeticism in the Medieval Arab-Muslim World

With the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the figure of Hermes Trismegistus was reinterpreted within a monotheistic framework. Muslim scholars, seeking to incorporate the philosophical heritage of Antiquity, identified Hermes with a prophet from pre-Islamic Antiquity. According to the tradition reported by the Persian astronomer Abu Ma`shar (Albumasar) in the 9th century, there were in fact three successive Hermes figures. The first Hermes, identified with the biblical prophet Enoch, called Idrîs in the Quran, supposedly lived before the Flood and built the monuments of ancient Egypt, including, according to legend, the pyramids, in order to preserve his knowledge before the catastrophe. The second Hermes supposedly lived after the Flood in Babylon and transmitted knowledge of medicine, astronomy and philosophy; the third Hermes supposedly returned to Egypt and invented alchemy. Of these three, it was Hermes-Idrîs - the antediluvian Hermes - whom Muslim authors regarded as a true prophet inspired by God. Although no sacred scripture was attributed to him, it was believed that this Hermes had transmitted the primordial arts and sciences to humanity. This Islamic appropriation of the figure of Hermes formed part of a broader movement of medieval Egyptomania among Arab-Muslim authors, who viewed ancient Egypt as a venerable source of wisdom.

In the early centuries of Islam, a particular group - the Sabians of Harran in Mesopotamia - explicitly claimed Hermes Trismegistus as their authority. Hellenized pagans threatened by Islamic expansion, the Harranians sought to have their religion recognized as “monotheistic” by presenting Hermes not as a polytheistic god but as an ancestral prophet. They produced writings claiming to have been revealed by Hermes himself, including a Letter on the Soul attributed to Hermes, and the scholar-astrologer Thābit ibn Qurra, who died in 901 and came from this community, wrote the Institutes of Hermes in Syriac, now lost, which he translated into Arabic. These Muslim Hermetic works, although tinged with pagan esotericism, circulated in Islamic intellectual circles, particularly among certain Shiite Neoplatonist philosophers. As the Islamologist Henry Corbin noted, Shiism was more receptive to Hermeticism because its theology admitted the existence of wise, non-legislating prophets such as Hermes, and its gnosis valued inner revelations accessible to initiates, the awliyâ’, beyond canonical prophecy. Orthodox Sunni Islam, by contrast, viewed Hermeticism with suspicion. Hermetic doctrines such as animating idols through the “divine essence” by means of prayers, or the idea that the soul could ascend to God without prophetic revelation, contradicted Sunni theology, preventing Hermeticism from being officially integrated into the Muslim religion.

Despite these reservations, Hermetic thought deeply permeated the occult sciences in the Muslim world. Numerous treatises attributed to Hermes were translated into Arabic, covering astrology, the art of talismans and, above all, alchemy. The bibliographer Ibn al-Nadîm, in his Fihrist around 987, listed 22 Hermetic works in Arabic, including 5 on astrology, 4 on talismanic magic and 13 on alchemy. Some of these writings have survived in full or in fragments, such as the Kitâb al-Isṭamākhīs and the Kitâb al-Malâṭîs, alchemical treatises attributed to Hermes. Medieval Muslim scholar-alchemists, such as the legendary Jâbir ibn Hayyân, Geber, or the pseudo-Majrîtî, frequently referred to Hermes in their works. A highly popular astrological and magical grimoire, the Ghâyat al-Hakîm, “The Aim of the Sage,” compiled in the 10th century and later attributed to Majrîtî, incorporates many Hermetic elements; translated into Latin in the 13th century under the title Picatrix, this text had a major influence on the medieval West. Likewise, the famous Emerald Tablet, Tabula Smaragdina, a short Arabic Hermetic text proclaiming the principle “What is above is like what is below,” first appears in a 9th-century treatise, the Kitâb sirr al-khalîqa, “Book of the Secret of Creation.” Translated into Latin as early as the 12th century, this alchemical text by Hermes became a cornerstone of Western alchemy. Finally, it is worth noting that several prestigious Muslim philosophers spoke of Hermes with respect: the philosopher al-Kindî in the 9th century admired the way Hermes had expressed the ineffable transcendence of God, admitting that “a Muslim like [him] could not have expressed it better.” Later, theosophists such as Suhrawardî in the 12th century and the Andalusian mystic Ibn Sab‘în explicitly claimed Hermes’s legacy in their quest for wisdom. Throughout medieval Islamic civilization, Hermeticism therefore served as a bridge between science, magic and philosophy, preserving the memory of Hermes Trismegistus as the mythical founder of occult knowledge.

The Reception of Hermeticism among Medieval Jewish Thinkers

The Jewish communities of the Middle Ages, particularly in Islamic lands and southern Europe, were also exposed to Hermetic ideas through Arabic transmission. Scientific and astrological works originating in the Hermetic tradition were translated from Arabic into Hebrew between the 12th and 14th centuries. One of the most prominent medieval Jewish intellectuals, Abraham Ibn Ezra, 1089-1164, a Spanish-born astronomer and biblical exegete, incorporated elements of Hermetic astrology into his writings. Ibn Ezra, who wrote extensive commentaries on the Pentateuch, also composed astrological treatises in Hebrew in which he repeatedly cited the teachings of “Hermes,” demonstrating the prestige of this name as a source of ancient wisdom in the science of the stars. He believed that certain doctrines attributed to Hermes could illuminate the interpretation of the Bible while remaining consistent with monotheism. However, this attempt to combine Hermetic knowledge with Jewish thought drew criticism from other Jewish authorities. The most famous Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides, 1138-1204, a staunch advocate of Aristotle and rationality, strongly denounced astrology and the superstitions that he believed had been introduced by authors such as Ibn Ezra. Maimonides rejected the idea that the stars or talismans could exert a mystical influence on human destinies, and he advised Jews against studying occult writings attributed to Hermes or other pagans. This debate illustrates the ambivalence of the reception of Hermeticism in Jewish thought: on the one hand, a fascination with a philosophia perennis predating the Bible, of which Hermes would be a pagan witness; on the other, the distrust of rationalist currents toward these esoteric contributions. In any case, by the end of the Middle Ages, the Hermetic legacy had entered esoteric Jewish literature - echoes of it can be found in certain works of the emerging Kabbalah - while remaining on the margins of rabbinical orthodoxy.

Hermeticism in the Medieval Christian West

In medieval Latin Europe, philosophical Hermeticism was less well known than in Islamic lands because of the loss of the original Greek texts. The Corpus Hermeticum proper remained unknown in the West until the Renaissance. However, medieval scholars had access to two major sources connected with Hermes Trismegistus: on the one hand, the Asclepius in Latin, and on the other, a series of occult and alchemical treatises claiming his authority. The Asclepius, which was believed to have been translated from Greek by Apuleius of Madaura, was read by certain scholastic theologians. Saint Augustine had quoted excerpts from it, and passages from it were commented on by 12th-century thinkers such as Thierry of Chartres and Alain of Lille. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the direct influence of Hermeticism on medieval philosophy was limited - it was often discussed secondhand through the Church Fathers.

By contrast, the esoteric impact of the figure of Hermes in the medieval Western world was considerable. Numerous Latin grimoires and treatises on alchemy circulated under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, perpetuating his aura as master of the secrets of nature. Texts such as the Liber de secretis naturae or the Tractatus aureus, Golden Treatise on the Secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, were attributed to him and highly prized by alchemists. A collection of astrological magic recipes, the Liber imaginum, Book of Images, also attributed to Hermes, was known to scholars such as Albert the Great in the 13th century. This manual taught how to make talismans by engraving figures during the various phases of the Moon in order to produce occult effects, such as destroying crops or inspiring love. The prestige of the name Hermes thus served as an endorsement for an entire body of medieval magical literature. Among the pseudo-Hermetic works of this period, one stands out: the Liber XXIV philosophorum, Book of the 24 Philosophers. Written in Latin in the 12th or 13th century by an anonymous author, this short treatise offers 24 cryptic definitions of God, including the famous formula: “God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” These metaphysical aphorisms profoundly influenced mystical theology - they were quoted by thinkers such as Alain of Lille and Thomas Aquinas, and later by Renaissance authors such as Nicholas of Cusa and writers such as Pascal. Although the Liber XXIV philosophorum does not explicitly mention Hermes, tradition has associated it with Hermeticism because of its esoteric character and oracular style of expression. All these elements show that during the Middle Ages, Hermeticism survived in the West chiefly as an occult tradition, in alchemy, astrology and magic, rather than as an open philosophy. Hermes Trismegistus appeared there as a mythical sage, patron of alchemists and symbol of esoteric knowledge transmitted only to initiates - indeed, this is where the common French meaning of the word “hermetic” comes from, describing an impenetrable secret or an obscure text reserved for the “very rare initiates.”

The Renaissance: Rediscovery and the Apogee of the Hermetic Tradition

Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and the Revival of Hermeticism

It was during the Renaissance, in the 15th century, that Hermeticism made a triumphant return to European thought. In 1460, a monk from Macedonia brought to Florence a Greek manuscript containing fourteen Hermetic treatises previously unknown in the West. The patron Cosimo de’ Medici, fascinated by the texts of Late Antiquity, immediately entrusted the translation of this treasure to his young protégé, Marsilio Ficino - even before Ficino had finished translating Plato. In less than three years, Ficino completed the Latin translation of the entire collection, which he entitled Pimander, or Poimandres, after the first treatise. Published in 1471, this translation of the Corpus Hermeticum enjoyed tremendous success and sparked enthusiasm for the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus throughout educated Europe.

Ficino himself, in the preface to his translation, expressed the intellectual euphoria caused by this rediscovery. Relying on the authority of Saint Augustine, he proclaimed Hermes Trismegistus the “first theologian” of humanity - the oldest sage to have contemplated divine truths. According to Ficino, Hermes had lived during the time of Moses or shortly afterward, and had transmitted his sacred doctrine to the Greeks: he thus imagined a chain of wisdom extending from Hermes to Orpheus, then to Pythagoras, and finally to Plato. This idea formed part of the humanist concept of the prisca theologia, the “primordial theology” revealed by God to the first humans, of which all subsequent philosophies were merely reflections. For Ficino, Hermeticism offered proof that the ancient Egyptians had known a form of pre-Christian divine truth. He was all the more exalted because he read in the Hermetic writings prophecies of Christianity: Hermes supposedly announced the end of the old idolatrous religion, the coming of a new monotheistic faith and even the incarnation of the divine Word. Indeed, a passage in the Asclepius symbolically refers to a savior son of God, already quoted by Lactantius. Ficino emphasized that Hermes had “predicted the birth of Christ, the Last Judgment and the resurrection.” These providential correspondences reinforced the idea of harmony between ancient wisdom and Christian truth, making Hermeticism even more attractive to Renaissance thinkers.

Other humanists soon became enthusiastic about Hermes Trismegistus. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, philosopher and Kabbalist, regarded the Hermetic revelations as complementary to the Hebrew Kabbalah in accessing universal truth. In 1486, in his famous 900 Theses, Pico proposed ten theses “according to the ancient doctrine of Mercury Trismegistus the Egyptian,” which he intended to defend publicly. His famous Oration on the Dignity of Man, a manifesto of Platonic humanism, opens with a quotation from the Asclepius. In Pico’s eyes, Hermes and Moses, the Kabbalah and Hermeticism, converged toward the same perennial wisdom willed by God - an idea at the heart of his project to reconcile all traditions. The enthusiasm was such that representations of Hermes Trismegistus began to appear in Renaissance Christian art. A striking example can be found in Tuscany: in 1488, a large mosaic depicting Hermes Trismegistus teaching was set into the pavement of Siena Cathedral, with an inscription presenting him as a “contemporary of Moses.” This work, attributed to Giovanni di Stefano, symbolically welcomed the faithful at the cathedral entrance, signifying that the wisdom of the Ancients - embodied by Hermes - led, in a sense, to the threshold of Christian revelation.

Other Florentine and Italian scholars continued Ficino’s work. Lodovico Lazzarelli, a Hermetic poet and philosopher, adopted Hermes’s doctrine to the point of considering himself his direct disciple. In 1494, Lazzarelli composed the Crater Hermetis, “The Cup of Hermes,” an allegorical account of an initiation in which a master transmits an experience of Hermetic spiritual regeneration to his disciple. Lazzarelli also translated an additional Greek Hermetic treatise into Latin - the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon - published in 1507. Meanwhile, in France, the scholar Lefèvre d’Étaples published a commented edition of Ficino’s Pimander, accompanied by the Asclepius, in 1505. Lefèvre saw Hermes as an asset to Christian apologetics, also emphasizing the Hermetic prophecies of Christ, but took care to condemn the corpus’s elements of pagan magic in order to remain within orthodoxy. Throughout the 16th century, Hermetic texts were edited and disseminated across Europe. A printed Greek edition of the Corpus Hermeticum was produced in Paris in 1554 by Adrien Turnèbe, followed by a new French translation in 1574 by François de Foix, Lord of Candale. In his preface, the latter emphasized Hermeticism’s affinity with Pythagoreanism and asserted that Hermes had lived before Moses, possessing knowledge of divine realities superior to that of the Hebrew prophets. Even leading Christian thinkers incorporated Hermes into their philosophical debates: Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in the 15th century and the philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the 16th invoked the authority of the Trismegistus to support a Platonic vision against Aristotelianism. In 1591, in his work Nova de universis philosophia, Patrizi went so far as to compile all known Hermetic fragments in order to build a universal philosophy that departed from Aristotle.

The influence of Hermeticism during the Renaissance was not limited to theology and academic philosophy - it also permeated the learned occultism of the period. Figures such as Cornelius Agrippa, author of De occulta philosophia, and Paracelsus, 1493-1541, a reformer of medicine, claimed the Hermetic tradition as their own. Agrippa cited Hermes Trismegistus as an authoritative source in his exposition of the occult sciences, while Paracelsus described his own approach to medicine as “Hermetic philosophy,” referring to alchemy and the hidden correspondences between humanity, the microcosm, and the universe, the macrocosm. Hermeticism also nourished literary creation: the English writer Philip Sidney alluded to Hermetic ideas, and the Italian poet Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600, best known for his infinite cosmology, was deeply influenced by Hermeticism. In his dialogues in Italian, Bruno exalted Hermes Trismegistus and Egyptian magic, combining them with his own pantheistic vision of the universe and developing the idea of an animated world spirit - a concept partly inherited from the Hermetic texts. Bruno had avidly read Ficino and the Asclepius. The modern historian Frances Yates went so far as to call Bruno a “champion of the Hermetic tradition” and to view Hermeticism as one of the cornerstones of the revolution in Renaissance thought.

Thus, for a little over a century, roughly from 1460 to 1600, Hermeticism enjoyed extraordinary prestige in Europe. It was seen as the oldest theology, the Egyptian source of the wisdom of Pythagoras and Plato, and a missing link between pagan wisdom and Christianity. Its influence was felt in the most varied circles: esoteric and astrological groups, Neoplatonic philosophical academies, Christian theologians, both Catholic figures such as Lefèvre d’Étaples and some Reformed thinkers, artists and poets. One may speak of a genuine Hermetic Renaissance: Egyptian symbols filled art and architecture, including obelisks and apocryphal hieroglyphs, and Hermes appeared alongside Moses or Orpheus in frescoes celebrating the concord of the sages of all ages.

From the Classical Age to the 19th Century: Survival and Occult Revival

After the Renaissance, Hermeticism continued to influence European thought, but in a more subterranean manner. The 17th century saw the development of alchemy and what would later be called the Hermetic sciences. It is no coincidence that the alchemy of this period was described as “Hermetic”: the alchemists of the Grand Siècle, such as Michael Maier, Robert Fludd and Thomas Vaughan, claimed an intellectual lineage from Hermes Trismegistus in opposition to the official science inherited from Aristotle and Galen. Hermes became almost synonymous with alchemist. The Corpus Hermeticum itself, now recognized as more recent, was no longer emphasized, but the Hermetic spirit - the search for hidden correspondences and the spiritual transformation of humanity - permeated alchemical treatises. Seventeenth-century alchemical theories called themselves Hermetic precisely to mark their attachment to a mythical tradition of which Hermes was supposedly the founder, independently of scholastic science. It should be noted that for these authors, claiming Hermes as an authority was as much symbolic as it was a matter of real lineage: they saw Hermes as the patron of occult knowledge, which they intended to defend as an integral part of understanding the world. Although emerging modern science eventually eclipsed alchemy, it is striking that several great scholars of the period remained fascinated by Hermeticism: Isaac Newton himself practiced alchemy extensively and annotated Hermetic-alchemical texts throughout his life, seeking in matter and ancient doctrines the secret of the unity of nature - testimony to the enduring appeal of the Hermetic ideal of a sacred science of nature.

At the same time, Hermeticism nourished the esoteric myths of secret societies. At the very beginning of the 17th century, the Rosicrucian manifestos emerged in Germany, 1614-1616, recounting the discovery of the tomb of the mystic Christian Rosenkreutz and the revelation of his teachings. These manifestos, although originally parodic, drew on Hermetic themes: the renewal of human knowledge through an occult wisdom from the East and the call to the “unknown philosophers” who carried a hidden light. Hermes Trismegistus was implicitly present as the archetype of the sage who possessed pre-Christian secrets. Authors such as Michael Maier, 1568-1622, an alchemist and propagator of Rosicrucian ideas, published treatises blending Hermetic allegories with Rosicrucian references. Likewise, the nascent speculative Freemasonry of the 18th century adopted founding legends incorporating Hermes: in his Discourse of 1736 to the Masonic lodges of Paris, Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay traced Freemasonry back to the ancient mysteries, citing the wisdom of Hermes and Pythagoras. An allegorical novel he wrote even depicted Hermes Trismegistus guiding a hero along the path of knowledge. This reference attests to the continued prestige of Hermes as a symbol of hidden initiation, even at the dawn of the Enlightenment.

In the 18th century, Enlightenment Europe oscillated between attraction to and rejection of Hermeticism. On the one hand, the rationalist and critical spirit distrusted these occult legacies: Enlightenment philosophers classified alchemy and astrology as superstitions from a bygone age. Voltaire and Diderot gently mocked the Hermetic mysteries. On the other hand, a current of historical and philosophical scholarship sought to understand these traditions. Scholars began writing histories of alchemy and Hermeticism: in 1742, Lenglet Du Fresnoy published History of Hermetic Philosophy, one of the first attempts at a synthesis of the subject. The great German historian Johann Jakob Brucker, in his Historia Critica Philosophiae, 1742-1744, devoted a substantial chapter to Hermes Trismegistus and “Hermetic philosophy,” placing it within the history of thought. At the same time, the taste for the emerging field of Egyptology and for occultism continued in certain enlightened circles: the current known as Illuminism, Saint-Martin and others, and mystical Freemasons kept interest in Hermetic-Kabbalistic symbolism alive. Around 1770, the French occultist Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed to decipher the Egyptian origins of the Tarot in his work Le Monde primitif, and his disciple Etteilla, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, published an “Egyptian” Tarot, claiming that it was the restored Book of Thoth-Hermes. Thus, on the eve of the 19th century, Hermeticism remained an active esoteric vein, present on the margins of official culture and ready to resurface.

It was precisely in the 19th century that a major occult revival took place, and Hermes Trismegistus once again became an emblematic figure. While positivist sciences triumphed, an esoteric reaction took shape, claiming the heritage of ancient traditions. The leading occultists of the period turned decisively to Hermeticism for legitimacy and inspiration. In France, Éliphas Lévi, whose real name was Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810-1875, a central figure in modern occultism, titled one of his works The Key to the Great Mysteries according to Enoch, Abraham, Hermes Trismegistus and Solomon, 1859, bringing Hermes together with biblical figures as a keeper of the secrets of the “Higher Science.” In the United States, the esotericist Paschal Beverly Randolph published an adapted translation of Hermes’s Divine Pymander in 1851, Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus: His Divine Pymander, helping to spread Hermetic spirituality within American spiritualist and Rosicrucian circles. In England, Hermetic influence reached its peak with the foundation of initiatory societies explicitly described as Hermetic. The mysterious Hermetic Order of Luxor, active around 1884, claimed to transmit occult teachings derived from ancient Hermetic Egypt. Above all, the famous Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, integrated Hermeticism into the heart of its symbolic and ritual system. The Golden Dawn rituals invoked Hermes and Thoth, and the study of the Corpus Hermeticum, as well as Kabbalah, astrology and the Tarot, known as the “Thoth Tarot,” held an important place within it. This flourishing context shows that by the end of the 19th century, Hermeticism had once again become synonymous with Western esoteric Tradition par excellence - the term “Hermeticism” itself came to designate the entire Western esoteric corpus, to the point of being used as an almost exact synonym for “occultism” or “esotericism.”

It is significant that scientific study of these subjects also emerged at the same time, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: scholars such as Louis Ménard and Gustave Parthey edited the Hermetic texts in Greek and Latin, while the historian A.-J. Festugière later published, between 1944 and 1954, a monumental four-volume study, The Revelation of Hermes Trismegistus, which remains authoritative. Hermeticism thus evolved from a living esoteric tradition into an object of historical and philosophical study.

The myth of Hermes has had a performative power throughout the history of thought: it inspired the creation of entire libraries of texts, stimulated intellectual movements and gave rise to an esoteric imagination that still endures. In this sense, Hermeticism, born from the meeting of Egypt and Greece, has become a constitutive element of Western culture. But has it really revealed its secrets?