Gary Lachman - The Quest For Hermes Trismegistus

As the historian Frances Yates, who tells this story, remarked, the situation is extraordinary. There is Plato, to whom, as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, all subsequent western philosophy is merely a footnote, all ready to be translated, and at the last minute he is put aside, to make room for who ? Hermes Trismegistus?

Although his cachet today is not quite what it once was, if asked to name a philosopher, most people would come up with at least one, Plato, or Socrates, who they would know of through Plato. But ask someone if they know who Hermes Trismegistus is, and unless you happen to pick a student of western esotericism, youll more than likely get that who? and a shaking head. Yet half a millennium ago, this was not the case. In late antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, and up to the beginning of our modern times, Hermes Trismegistus was a name to conjure with, literally, ranking, not only with Plato, but with Moses and, in some cases, Jesus Christ. Today most people might have some sense of the Greek god Hermes, and have a vague idea of a character with winged sandals and a funny helmet, who could run very fast an attribute of his Roman equivalent, Mercury and who was a messenger for the gods. If they are American, and of a certain age, they might remember the Mercury dime, a ten cent piece taken out of circulation in 1945. Some may think of the logo for FTD florists, who have a winged Mercury swiftly delivering a bouquet. And an observant few might note that Hermes/Mercury often stands guard over banks; as the god of merchants (and also of thieves, which for some may seem ironically apt) this makes sense. But these few crumbs of iconographic significance are a paltry legacy for a figure who once commanded enormous respect from philosophers, theologians, and even scientists. And the epithet Trismegistus or thrice-great, which characterized the author of the Corpus Hermeticum , would undoubtedly baffle most people today. Great, great, great, you say? Isnt that a bit over the top?

Cosimo didnt think so, nor did Ficino, nor did the many who read his translations of these strange, mystical texts. First printed in 1471, they ran to sixteen editions by the end of the next century, and appeared in many translations and in many other collections. Although its commonly understood that the Renaissance was fuelled by the rediscovery of the knowledge and literature of the ancients, of Plato and his school, whats less known is how influential the Corpus Hermeticum was on one of the pivotal moments of western consciousness. The man responsible for this, it seems, was the Byzantine Neoplatonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon. Plethon had studied Zoroaster, the Chaldean Oracles, and astrology, and while in Florence during the Council of Ferrara-Florence (14381445) the failed attempt to heal the rift between the Catholic and Orthodox churches he lectured Cosimo and his circle on what he called the primal theology, the revelation given to mankind at the dawn of time, and the essence of the worlds great religions. Plethons discourses on Plato, and his Alexandrian followers Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and Iamblichus, so impressed Cosimo and his friends that they dubbed him the second Plato. A perhaps greater tribute to Plethons inspiration was Cosimos desire to found a new Platonic Academy, which he did in 1462, with Ficino at its head. The original Academy had started in Athens in 387 BC, but by the first century AD it had petered out, and a revived Academy in 410 became a centre for Neoplatonic study, until it was closed down in 524 by Justinian I. Now, nearly a millennium later, Cosimos passion for Plato was responsible for a philosophical discussion group whose members would include Renaissance figures such as Pico della Mirandola and Michelangelo Buonarroti, and whose ideas would inform the great cultural movement behind the birth of Humanism and the modern world.