# Hermeticism ## Intro Hermeticism is a family of religious and philosophical teachings credited to **Hermes Trismegistus**, "Thrice-Great Hermes," a legendary sage who blends the Greek god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth. The core texts were written in Greek in Roman Egypt, roughly in the second and third centuries after Christ. They teach that God is Mind, that the human soul came down from the divine world, and that a person is saved by **knowledge** (gnosis) that lets the soul rise back to God. Today most people meet Hermeticism through a much newer book, ***The Kybalion*** (1908), with its "seven Hermetic principles" such as "The All is Mind" and "As above, so below." That book is a product of the American New Thought movement, not of ancient Egypt. Christianity and Hermeticism share some vocabulary: God, Word, Mind, rebirth, the image of God. But they give opposite answers to the questions that matter most. Is the world God, or made by God? Are you divine, or made in God's image? Is your problem ignorance, or sin? Are you saved by what you know, or by what Christ did? ![Marble floor mosaic of a bearded Hermes Trismegistus in robes and a tall hat, handing a book to two men and resting his hand on a tablet carried by sphinxes](/codex/assets/hermes-trismegistus-siena-mosaic.jpg) *Hermes Trismegistus in the floor of Siena Cathedral, attributed to Giovanni di Stefano, 1488. The label calls him "contemporary of Moses," and the tablet carries a Latin line on God making a Son called the holy Word, taken from the Christian writer Lactantius. Public domain ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_Trismegistus_Sienna_Cathedral_Mosaic.jpg)).* **The 30-second version:** Hermeticism says God is a cosmic Mind, the soul is a spark of the divine that fell into a body, and salvation is waking up to who you really are. Christianity says God freely created a good world out of nothing, you are a creature made in His image, your deepest problem is guilt before a holy God, and the fix is forgiveness through a crucified and risen Christ. One is a path of self-discovery upward. The other is a rescue from above. ## In full "Hermeticism" covers three bodies of material that should not be blurred: - **The philosophical Hermetica.** The seventeen Greek treatises of the *Corpus Hermeticum*, the Latin *Asclepius*, excerpts preserved by the anthologist Stobaeus (fifth century), and three Coptic Hermetic texts found at Nag Hammadi in Codex VI (*The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth*, a *Prayer of Thanksgiving*, and part of the *Asclepius*). Scholars such as Brian Copenhaver and Garth Fowden date the Greek treatises to roughly AD 100 to 300. They are not one system; individual treatises disagree on whether the cosmos is good or evil and on how God relates to it. - **The technical Hermetica.** Astrological, alchemical and magical writings that circulated under Hermes's name, including the *Emerald Tablet*, whose earliest surviving versions are Arabic, from the early Islamic centuries. "As above, so below" is a paraphrase of this tablet, not a line from the *Corpus Hermeticum*. - **Modern Hermeticism.** Renaissance and later esotericism built on the rediscovered texts, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (London, 1888; see [Chaos Magic](/codex/chaos-magic/)), and *The Kybalion* (Chicago, 1908, by "Three Initiates," usually attributed to the New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson). Its seven principles (Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, Gender) do not appear as a set in any ancient text. The Christian assessment differs for each layer, so the first question in any conversation is which one the other person follows. ## History in brief | Date | Event | |---|---| | c. AD 100-300 | Greek philosophical treatises composed in Roman Egypt | | c. 300-310 | Lactantius (*Divine Institutes* 1.6, 4.6) treats Hermes as an ancient pagan witness to one God and to a divine Son | | c. 413-426 | Augustine (*City of God* 8.23-26) answers the *Asclepius*, rejecting its teaching that people can make gods by ensouling statues | | 4th century | Coptic Hermetic texts buried with the Nag Hammadi library | | 1463 | Marsilio Ficino translates fourteen treatises into Latin for Cosimo de' Medici, who has him do it before finishing Plato; printed 1471 as *Pimander* | | 1488 | The Siena Cathedral pavement shows Hermes as "contemporary of Moses" | | 1614 | Isaac Casaubon shows from the Greek vocabulary and style that the texts are late antique, not older than Moses | | 1888 | Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded in London | | 1908 | *The Kybalion* published in Chicago | | 1964 | Frances Yates, *Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition*, revives scholarly interest in Renaissance Hermeticism | Casaubon's redating matters for apologetics. Renaissance readers thought Hermes was a pagan prophet older than Moses who had foreseen the Trinity. Once the texts were dated after the New Testament, the echoes of Genesis and John in them (C. H. Dodd argued in 1935 that the first treatise, *Poimandres*, draws on the Greek Old Testament) read as Jewish and Christian influence on Hermeticism, not the other way round. ## What the ancient texts teach - **God is Mind (Nous).** The first treatise opens with Poimandres, "the Mind of sovereignty," appearing to the narrator. God is light and life, the source of a second Mind who orders the cosmos. - **The primal Man.** The Father brings forth an archetypal Man in His own image. This Man looks down into nature, falls in love with his own reflection in it, and sinks into matter. That is why each human is double: a mortal body and an immortal inner man (*Corpus Hermeticum* I). - **Salvation by knowledge.** After death the soul rises through the seven planetary spheres, surrendering a vice at each, and enters God. The first treatise calls this becoming god the good end of those who have knowledge (*CH* I.26). - **Not everyone has mind.** God gave reason to all people but not mind; mind was offered in a mixing bowl that only some chose to be immersed in (*CH* IV). - **Rebirth.** The thirteenth treatise describes a spiritual rebirth in which the disciple Tat is freed from the "tormentors" of the body and sees himself in God. - **The cosmos.** Some treatises call the cosmos a second god and beautiful (*CH* VIII); another says the cosmos is full of evil as God is full of good (*CH* VI). ## Core comparison | Question | Hermeticism (ancient texts) | Christianity | |---|---|---| | Who is God? | Supreme Mind, Father, the Good; sometimes the All | One personal God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit | | How does the world relate to God? | Ordered by Mind; in places an emanation, a "second god," or God's body | Freely created from nothing; distinct from God and good (Genesis 1:31) | | What is a human? | A fallen divine man inside a mortal body | A unified body-soul creature made in God's image (Genesis 1:27) | | What went wrong? | Ignorance and attachment to matter | Sin: rebellion against a holy, personal God, bringing guilt | | How are we saved? | Gnosis, rebirth, ascent of the soul | Grace through faith in Christ crucified and risen (Ephesians 2:8-9) | | Who is saved? | Those who receive mind and knowledge | Anyone who repents and believes, learned or not | | Final hope | Leaving the body and becoming god | Bodily resurrection in a renewed creation | | Authority | Revelation given to Hermes in visions | Public history: prophets, apostles, an empty tomb | ## Five decisive disagreements ### 1. Creator and creation Christianity holds that God made "the world and all things therein" and is "Lord of heaven and earth" ([Acts 17:24](/codex/acts-17-24/), ASV), not a part of it. Where Hermetic texts make the cosmos God's body or a necessary outflow of God, three problems follow: 1. **Change.** The cosmos changes; a God identical to it changes too, so it cannot be the unchanging Good the same texts praise. Scripture: "I, Jehovah, change not" ([Malachi 3:6](/codex/malachi-3-6/), ASV). 2. **Contingency.** Each part of the world could have failed to exist. A whole made of contingent parts needs an explanation outside itself ([Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/)). 3. **Evil.** If the world is God's body, its evils are God's. *CH* VI escapes this only by making the cosmos evil, which then makes the "second god" of *CH* VIII hard to keep. Hermetic writers who keep God above the cosmos avoid the first problem; the question then becomes whether the world proceeds from God by necessity or by free choice. See [Pantheism](/codex/pantheism/), [Panentheism](/codex/panentheism/) and [Creatio ex Nihilo](/codex/creatio-ex-nihilo/). ### 2. Divine by nature, or divine by grace? The Hermetic inner man is a piece of God that forgot itself. Christianity says humans bear God's image but are not God's substance. Peter does promise that believers "become partakers of the divine nature" ([2 Peter 1:4](/codex/2-peter-1-4/), ASV), but the same verse says this comes through God's promises and after escaping corruption. The Church has read it as sharing in God's life by grace ([Theosis](/codex/theosis/)), never as recovering a divinity that was always ours. The test question: if you are God by nature, how did God become ignorant, and who taught Him? ### 3. Ignorance or guilt? If the human problem is only ignorance, a teacher is enough. Christianity says the problem is also guilt: real wrongs done against a real person. Knowledge does not cancel a debt. That is why the Christian answer is a cross and not only a lesson: "by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory" ([Ephesians 2:8-9](/codex/ephesians-2-8-9/), ASV). ### 4. Is the body a prison? Much of the Hermetica wants the soul out of the body. Christianity says the body was made "very good" and will be raised: "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption" ([1 Corinthians 15:42](/codex/1-corinthians-15-42/), ASV). The resurrection of Jesus is the first instance, which is why Christian hope is not escape from creation but its renewal. ### 5. Revelation in history Hermetic revelation comes in private visions to a figure who never lived as described. Christianity rests its case on public events open to historical checking, above all the [Resurrection of Jesus](/codex/resurrection-of-jesus/). Jesus claims a role no Hermetic teacher claims: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" ([John 14:6](/codex/john-14-6/), ASV). ## What the Christian God explains that Hermeticism cannot 1. **Why there is a world at all.** A God who creates freely explains why this world exists rather than none, and why it is contingent. A cosmos that flows from Mind by necessity has no answer to why it is this way and not another. 2. **Why the material world is good and orderly.** Creation by a good and rational God explains both its goodness and its intelligibility ([John 1:3](/codex/john-1-3/)). A tradition divided on whether matter is evil cannot ground the reliable study of matter. 3. **Love as ultimate.** On the [Trinity](/codex/trinity/), love between persons is eternal, before any creation. A solitary Mind has nothing to love until it produces something. 4. **The equal worth of every person.** In Christianity every human bears God's image, learned or not. The Hermetic mixing bowl gives mind to some and not to others. 5. **Forgiveness.** Christianity explains how a guilty person can be made right with a holy God without the guilt being ignored. Hermeticism offers knowledge, not pardon. 6. **Evidence open to everyone.** Christian claims can be checked against history; Hermetic claims rest on undated private revelation. ## Answering common modern claims - **"Christianity copied Hermeticism."** The Greek treatises were written after the New Testament, and their Genesis echoes point the other way. Shared words like "Word" or "rebirth" do not show copying; see [Copycat-Christ Hypothesis](/codex/copycat-christ-hypothesis/) and [Mystery Religions](/codex/mystery-religions/). - **"The Kybalion is ancient Egyptian wisdom."** It was published in Chicago in 1908 and reflects New Thought. Its principles do not appear together in the ancient Hermetica. - **"All is Mind, so reality is mental."** If everything is the mind of the All, then every error and every cruelty is a thought of the All. That either makes the All the author of evil or makes evil unreal, which no one lives by. Christianity holds that God is Mind and that the world is real, made by Him and distinct from Him. - **"As above, so below means I am a little god."** The phrase comes from the *Emerald Tablet*, an alchemical text. Even read as a principle of correspondence, likeness is not identity: a portrait resembles its subject without being the subject. - **"Hermes foresaw the Trinity."** Lactantius and the Siena mosaic thought so, but the texts postdate Christ. At most they show how widely the Christian message had spread. ## Two arguments to use **Argument 1, contingency and transcendence** 1. Whatever is contingent depends on something else for its existence. 2. The cosmos and everything in it is contingent. 3. So the cosmos depends on something that is not contingent. 4. What is not contingent cannot be identical to what is contingent. 5. So the ultimate source of the cosmos is distinct from the cosmos. Further argument is needed to show the source is personal and the God of the Bible; see [Necessary Being is an Intelligent Mind](/codex/necessary-being-is-an-intelligent-mind/). **Argument 2, dependence and identity** 1. Whatever depends on another for its existence is not identical to what it depends on. 2. Humans depend on God for their existence. 3. So humans are not identical to God. A Hermeticist can answer that humans share in the divine without being identical to the supreme God. Then the disagreement narrows to whether that sharing is by nature or by grace, which is point 2 above. ## Questions to ask a Hermeticist 1. "Do you follow the ancient *Corpus Hermeticum* or *The Kybalion*?" 2. "Is the universe identical to God, an outflow of God, or a creation of God?" 3. "If the universe flows from God by necessity, could God have refrained from making it?" 4. "If you are divine by nature, how did God come to be ignorant of Himself?" 5. "Is your problem only that you don't know enough, or also that you have done wrong?" 6. "Why should I trust a revelation to a figure we cannot place in history?" ## Connection to Scripture - [Acts 17:24](/codex/acts-17-24/) and [Acts 17:28](/codex/acts-17-28/): Paul at Athens quotes Greek poets ("in him we live, and move, and have our being") while insisting on a Creator distinct from creation. It is the model for engaging a philosophical spirituality. - [Colossians 2:8](/codex/colossians-2-8/): "Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit" (ASV). Paul warns against teaching "not after Christ," not against thinking. - [Romans 1:25](/codex/romans-1-25/): worshipping "the creature rather than the Creator" (ASV), the exact line pantheism blurs. - [Isaiah 46:9](/codex/isaiah-46-9/): "I am God, and there is none like me" (ASV). ## Patristic note The Fathers did not agree on Hermes. Lactantius quoted him as a pagan witness to one God and even to the Son, which is the line set in stone at Siena. Augustine was more cautious: he granted that Hermes said some true things about God but rejected the *Asclepius* for teaching that people can draw spirits into statues and make gods, and he read its lament for Egypt's dying religion as an unwilling witness to the coming of Christ (*City of God* 8.23-26). ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Isaac Casaubon, *De rebus sacris \[et\] ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI* (1615). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7140561W) - C. H. Dodd, *The Bible and the Greeks* (Hodder and Stoughton, 1935). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6323184W) - Frances Amelia Yates, *Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition* (University of Chicago Press, 1964). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14861579W) ## See also - [New Age Spiritualism](/codex/new-age-spiritualism/), the modern movement that carries most Kybalion-style Hermeticism - [Chaos Magic](/codex/chaos-magic/), which traces its lineage through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - [Pantheism](/codex/pantheism/) and [Panentheism](/codex/panentheism/), the views of God and world that some Hermetic texts approach - [Mystery Religions](/codex/mystery-religions/) and [Copycat-Christ Hypothesis](/codex/copycat-christ-hypothesis/), on claims that Christianity borrowed from pagan sources - [Theosis](/codex/theosis/), the Christian teaching on sharing God's life by grace - [Creatio ex Nihilo](/codex/creatio-ex-nihilo/), creation from nothing as against emanation - [Freemasonry](/codex/freemasonry/), another tradition that draws on esoteric symbolism - [World Religions](/codex/world-religions/), the full comparison set ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is Hermeticism?** Hermeticism is a set of religious and philosophical teachings credited to Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary sage combining the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. Its core Greek texts, the *Corpus Hermeticum*, were written in Roman Egypt around the second and third centuries AD and teach that God is Mind and that the soul is saved by knowledge that lets it rise back to God. **Q: Is Hermeticism compatible with Christianity?** Not at its core. Hermeticism generally treats the human soul as divine by nature and salvation as knowledge and ascent, while Christianity teaches that humans are creatures made in God's image and are saved by grace through faith in Christ's death and resurrection. They also disagree on whether the body and the material world are good. **Q: Is The Kybalion an ancient text?** No. *The Kybalion* was published in Chicago in 1908 by anonymous "Three Initiates," usually identified with the New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson. Its seven principles do not appear as a set in the ancient Hermetic writings. **Q: Did Christianity copy Hermeticism?** The evidence runs the other way. The Greek Hermetic treatises were written after the New Testament, Isaac Casaubon showed in 1614 that they are late antique, and C. H. Dodd argued that the first treatise draws on the Greek Old Testament. Shared terms such as "Word" and "rebirth" do not show borrowing. **Q: Where does "as above, so below" come from?** It is a paraphrase of the *Emerald Tablet*, an alchemical text whose earliest surviving versions are Arabic. It is not a line from the *Corpus Hermeticum*, though it is now the best-known Hermetic slogan. **Q: What can Christianity explain that Hermeticism cannot?** Christianity explains why a contingent world exists at all (God created it freely), why matter is good and orderly, why love is ultimate (the eternal love within the Trinity), why every person has equal worth, and how a guilty person can be forgiven rather than merely enlightened. It also rests on public history rather than private revelation. **Q: What did the early Church Fathers think of Hermes Trismegistus?** Lactantius quoted Hermes as an ancient pagan witness to one God and to a divine Son. Augustine granted that Hermes said some true things about God but rejected the *Asclepius* for teaching that people could make gods by drawing spirits into statues.