Hermetic writings

The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents (Tempe Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005). 

Abel, C.R. and W.O. Hare. Hermes Trismegistus an investigation of the origin of the Hermetic writings. Edmonds (WA) Holmes Publishing Group, 1997. 

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Islamic studies. Beirut Libraire du Liban, [1967], 155p. Chapter 6 Hermes and Hermetic writings in the Islamic world... 

The magical mason Forgotten Hermetic Writings of W. W. Westcott Edited by R. A. Gilbert... 

True Alchemy, in reality, is a quabbalistic Art which requires a patient examination of the genuine hermetic writings and a deep-founded study of Nature. It also requires a revelation, either through an initiated Adept, or through an inner divine illumination. 

The principle matter however is this to make the stone into water, that means, into aqua physica pulverulenta or prima materia. This is such an extraordinary important preparatory work, not much is being said about this in hermetic writings. 

The Hermetic writings had an impact on Alexandrian alchemy and on later European alchemy and science. Among the ideas they contained were that certain combinations of numbers possessed mystical properties, and that the stars could exert an influence on human endeavours. The secrets of the magical world portrayed in the Hermetic writings were only open to the chosen few. It is because of the influence of the Hermetic writings that alchemy was often referred to as the hermetic art, and this is also the origin of the term hermetically sealed. 

The Hermetic writings formed the basis of the magical tradition in European science. The revival of these mystical and magical ideas received some sympathy from Christian theologians, as miracles were much easier to explain than under the Aristotelian system. The renewed interest in neo-Platonism exerted an influence on many of the later European alchemists and iatrochemists. 

The fifth chapter begins with the appearance of the term heimarmene in one of the Nag Hammadi library s three Hermetic writings, the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. The nature of the concept of astral fatalism in the Hermetica has been just as badly presented and misunderstood as astral fatahsm in Christian Gnosticism, thus this chapter presents a more nuanced presentation of the enslavement to fate trope in Hermetism. I demonstrate that the Hermetica and Christian hterature grappled with an identical set of issues the precise relationship between heimarmene and pronoia, and the degree to which humans are at the mercy of either. 

One would think that the accessibility of the Hermetica—as well as their unusually Longue duree—would have prompted further study. But Hermetic writings have rarely been taken as seriously as they should. Their marginalization in scholarship can be attributed directly to the assumptions and prejudices that I outlined in the first chapter of this volume. The Hermetica were always seen as examples of the dechne of Greek philosophy in the Roman period, the bastard mongrel children of proper philosophy. This characterization is, of course, quite imfair and awaiting rehabihtation. The problem, in fact, is threefold ... 

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