The Corpus Hermeticum

Someone in Roman Egypt, writing in Greek, put philosophy into the mouth of an Egyptian god. The result is eighteen short dialogues and sermons in which Hermes Trismegistus instructs his son Tat and his pupil Asclepius on mind, matter, rebirth and the ascent of the soul. Cosimo de' Medici had Ficino stop work on Plato to translate these first. Renaissance Europe took them for Egyptian scripture older than Moses, and built a good deal on that mistake.

The pieces vary. Poemandres opens with a vision of a being of light and becomes a creation account. The Key is a compact statement of the whole system. The Secret Sermon on the Mountain is an initiation, and the Perfect Sermon, which survives only in Latin, contains the lament for Egypt that so unsettled Augustine. The prose is plain, argumentative and often abrupt.

This Reclaimed Press edition gives G. R. S. Mead's 1906 translation of the sermons, with working chapter navigation. It contains the translations only; Mead's commentary and footnotes are left out.

Format: EPUB, DRM-free.