1. made airtight by fusion or sealing. 2. not affected by outward influence or power; isolated. 3. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of occult science, especially alchemy.
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Most of the texts are presented in the form of a dialogue, a favorite form of didactic material in classical antiquity, in which a teacher enlightens a disciple. The subject-matter of Hermetic books is wide-ranging. Some deal with alchemy, magic, and related concepts.
Others contain philosophical ideas that are often compared to Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, although their differences are greater than their similarities.
Though there are many parallels with Egyptian prophecies, with hymns to the gods or other mythological texts, and with direct allusions, the closest comparisons can be found in Egyptian wisdom literature, characteristically couched in words of advice from a "father" to a "son".
Dating the texts
While they are difficult to date with precision, the texts of the Corpus were likely redacted between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. During the Renaissance, these texts were believed to be of ancient Egyptian origin, and even today some readers believe them to date from Pharaonic Egypt.
However, the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) argued that some of the texts, mainly those dealing with philosophy, betrayed a vocabulary too recent to be so old. More recent research, while affirming the late dating in a period of syncretic cultural ferment in Roman Egypt, suggests more continuity with the culture of Pharaonic Egypt than had previously been believed, There are Demotic (late Egyptian) papyri containing substantial sections of a dialogue of completely Hermetic type between Thoth and a disciple.
Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, states that some texts in the Hermetic corpus date back to the 6th century BC. during the Persian period. There is a real possibility that some of the similarities between the Demotic texts and Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy could be the result of Plato and his followers' having drawn on Egyptian sources. Thus, it would be fair to assess the Corpus Hermeticum as intellectually eclectic.
Influences and style
The books now known as the Corpus Hermeticum were part of a renaissance of syncretistic and intellectualized pagan thought that took place around the 2nd century. Other examples of this cultural movement would include Neoplatonist philosophy, the Chaldaean Oracles, late Orphic and Pythagorean literature, as well as much of Gnosticism.
Unlike some Gnostic writings, the Hermetica contain no explicit allusions to Jewish or Christian texts — and this choice seems deliberate. They do, however, contain some unconscious echoes of Biblical themes, underscoring the close if uneasy intermingling of Jewish, Greek and Egyptian currents in Hellenistic Alexandria. Unlike Orphic literature, the works of the Hermetica are unconcerned with the genealogical tedia of Greek mythology. And compared with Chaldaean Oracles and Neoplatonist philosophy, the Hermetic texts dwell far less on the technical minutiae of metaphysical philosophy: their concerns are practical in nature, their ends a spiritual rebirth through the enlightenment of the mind:
Seeing within myself an immaterial vision that came from the mercy of God, I went out of myself into an immortal body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in mind!
The extant Greek texts dwell upon the oneness and goodness of God, urge purification of the soul, and defend pagan religious practices, such as the veneration of images. Many lost Greek texts, and many of the surviving vulgate books, contained discussions of alchemy clothed in philosophical metaphor. And one text, the Asclepius, lost in Greek but partially preserved in Latin, contained a bloody prophecy of the end of Roman rule in Egypt and the resurgence of pagan Egyptian power.
The predominant literary form is the dialogue: Hermes Trismegistus instructs a perplexed disciple on some point of hidden wisdom. The dialogue itself is played out upon a spectral canvas of hoary temples marked with hieratic inscriptions, most of which the authors of these works would have been unable to read.
Authorship and audience
Although they often claim to be copies of Egyptian priestly texts or reports of conversations in Egyptian, Hellenisms in the language itself point to the Hermetica 's Greek origin. Nevertheless, it is likely that the pseudonymous authors considered themselves Egyptians rather than Alexandrian Greeks, since there are many affirmations of the superiority of the Egyptian language, and the Asclepius contains a bloody prophecy about the expulsion of "foreigners" from Egypt.
Renaissance enthusiasts often pointed to Hermetic documents as the apex of occult philosophy. Several factors, however, suggest that the tracts had a more popular character. For example, Neoplatonic philosophers, who happily and prolifically quote apocryphal works of Orpheus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and other figures, almost never cite Hermes. The anti-Greek and anti-Roman attitudes present in the texts reinforce their subaltern character. The Corpus Hermeticum therefore offers us an almost unparalleled view into the religious thinking of non-elite and politically marginal pagans under the Roman Empire.
Another question persists: did the "Hermetists" who produced and read these books constitute a kind of "sect", comparable to Gnostic groups? Certainly, Hermetic writings were of interest to members of alternative religious communities: parts of the Hermetica appeared in the 4th-century Gnostic library found in Nag Hammadi. On the other hand, the diffuseness in style and subject matter, the widespread distribution of the texts, and also the ease with which anonymous tracts can be produced, would suggest that a great many of the texts were produced by lone individuals or small groups without formal organization.
Hermetica outside the corpus
Although the most famous exemplars of Hermetic literature were products of Greek-speakers under Roman rule, the genre did not suddenly stop with the fall of the Empire, nor was it confined to the Greek language. Rather, Hermetic literature continued to be produced, in Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian and Byzantine Greek. The most famous example of this later Hermetica is the Emerald Tablet, known from medieval Latin and Arabic manuscripts, with a possible Syriac source. Little else of this rich literature is easily accessible to non-specialists. The mostly gnostic Nag Hammadi Library discovered in 1945 also contained one hermetic text previously not known to scholars. This treatise, called The Ogdoad and the Ennead, contains a very lively description of a hermetic initiation into gnosis, and has led to new perspectives on the nature of Hermetism as a whole, particularly due to the research of Jean-Pierre Mahé.