Thoth-Hermes

Biographies

Hermes Trismegistus (Gr.). The “thrice great Hermes”, the Egyptian. The mythical personage after whom the Hermetic philosophy was named. In Egypt the God Thoth or Thot. A generic name of many ancient Greek writers on philosophy and Alchemy. Hermes Trismegistus is the name of Hermes or Thoth in his human aspect, as a god he is far more than this. As Hermes-Thoth-Aah, he is Thoth, the moon, i.e., his symbol is the bright side of the moon, supposed to contain the essence of creative Wisdom, “the elixir of Hermes”. As such he is associated with the Cynocephalus, the dog-headed monkey, for the same reason as was Anubis, one of the aspects of Thoth. (See “Hermanubis”.) The same idea underlies the form of the Hindu God of Wisdom, the elephant-headed Ganesa, or Ganpat, the son of Parvati and Siva. (See “Ganesa”.) When he has the head of an ibis, he is the sacred scribe of the gods; but even then he wears the crown atef and the lunar disk. He is the most mysterious of gods. As a serpent, Hermes Thoth is the divine creative ‘Wisdom. The Church Fathers speak at length of Thoth-Hermes. (See “Hermetic”.)

Hermetic. Any doctrine or writing connected with the esoteric teachings of Hermes, who, whether as the Egyptian Thoth or the Greek Hermes, was the God of Wisdom with the Ancients, and, according to Plato, “discovered numbers, geometry, astronomy and letters”. Though mostly considered as spurious, nevertheless the Hermetic writings were highly prized by St. Augustine, Lactantius, Cyril and others. In the words of Mr. J. Bonwick, “They are more or less touched up by the Platonic philosophers among the early Christians (such as Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus) who sought to substantiate their Christian arguments by appeals to these heathen and revered writings, though they could not resist the temptation of making them say a little too much”. Though represented by some clever and interested writers as teaching pure monotheism, the Hermetic or Trismegistic books are, nevertheless, purely pantheistic. The Deity referred to in them is defined by Paul as that in which “we live, and move and have our being”—notwithstanding the “in Him” of the translators.

Thoth (Eg.). The most mysterious and the least understood of gods, whose personal character is entirely distinct from all other ancient deities. While the permutations of Osiris, Isis, Horus, and the rest, are so numberless that their individuality is all but lost, Thoth remains changeless from the first to the last Dynasty. He is the god of wisdom and of authority over all other gods. He is the recorder and the judge. His ibis-head, the pen and tablet of the celestial scribe, who records the thoughts, words and deeds of men and weighs them in the balance, liken him to the type of the esoteric Lipikas. His name is one of the first that appears on the oldest monuments. He is the lunar god of the first dynasties, the master of Cynocephalus—the dog-headed ape who stood in Egypt as a living symbol and remembrance of the Third Root-Race. (Secret Doctrine, II. pp. 184 and 185). He is the “Lord of Hermopolis”—Janus, Hermes and Mercury combined. He is crowned with an atef and the lunar disk, and bears the “Eye of Horus”, the third eye, in his hand. He is the Greek Hermes, the god of learning, and Hermes Trismegistus, the “Thrice-great Hermes”, the patron of physical sciences and the patron and very soul of the occult esoteric knowledge. As Mr. J. Bonwick, F.R.G.S., beautifully expresses it: “Thoth . . . has a powerful effect on the imagination . . . in this intricate yet beautiful phantasmagoria of thought and moral sentiment of that shadowy past. It is in vain we ask ourselves however man, in the infancy of this world of humanity, in the rudeness of supposed incipient civilization, could have dreamed of such a heavenly being as Thoth. The lines are so delicately drawn, so intimately and tastefully interwoven, that we seem to regard a picture designed by the genius of a Milton, and executed with the skill of a Raphael.” Verily, there was some truth in that old saying, “The wisdom of the Egyptians”. . . . “When it is shown that the wife of Cephren, builder of the second Pyramid, was a priestess of Thoth, one sees that the ideas comprehended in him were fixed 6,000 years ago”. According to Plato, “Thoth-Hermes was the discoverer and inventor of numbers, geometry, astronomy and letters”. Proclus, the disciple of Plotinus, speaking of this mysterious deity, says: “He presides over every species of condition, leading us to an intelligible essence from this mortal abode, governing the different herds of souls”. In other words Thoth, as the Registrar and Recorder of Osiris in Amenti, the Judgment Hall of the Dead was a psychopompic deity; while Iamblichus hints that “the cross with a handle (the thau or tau) which Tot holds in his hand, was none other than the monogram of his name”. Besides the Tau, as the prototype of Mercury, Thoth carries the serpent-rod, emblem of Wisdom, the rod that became the Caduceus. Says Mr. Bonwick, “Hermes was the serpent itself in a mystical sense. He glides like that creature, noiselessly, without apparent exertion, along the course of ages. He is . . . a representative of the spangled heavens. But he is the foe of the bad serpent, for the ibis devoured the snakes of Egypt.”

—Theosophical Glossary, H. P. Blavatsky

H. P. Blavatsky Thoth-Hermes:

“Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and Phoenicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter not to be taken in the sense applied to it by Moslems and Christians), and in Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam Kadmon, the first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were two Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or “permutation” of himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and Osiris. Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.” (Isis Unveiled I:xxxiii)

“Isis and Osiris are said, in the Egyptian sacred books, to have appeared (i.e., been worshipped), on earth, later than Thot, the first Hermes, called Trismegistus, who wrote all their sacred books according to the command of God or by “divine revelation.” The companion and instructor of Isis and Osiris was Thot, or Hermes II., who was an incarnation of the celestial Hermes.” (Isis Unveiled II:49)

“Seth, Adam’s third son, and the forefather of all Israel, the ancestor of Noah, and the progenitor of the “chosen people,” is but Hermes, the god of wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Sat-an; and that he was, furthermore, when viewed under his bad aspect, Typhon, the Egyptian Satan, who was also Set.” (Isis Unveiled I:554)

“Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Teda shows in “Historia Anti-Islamitica” five Hermes, and the names of Hermes, Nebo, Thot were given respectively in various countries to great Initiates. … It is not the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many adepts.” (Secret Doctrine II:210fn & 211)

“And here we may as well mention the works of Hermes Trismegistus. Who, or how many have had the opportunity to read them as they were in the Egyptian sanctuaries? In his Egyptian Mysteries, Iamblichus attributes to Hermes 1,100 books, and Seleucus reckons no less than 20,000 of his works before the period of Menes. Eusebius saw but forty-two of these “in his time,” he says, and the last of the six books on medicine treated on that art as practiced in the darkest ages; and Diodorus says that it was the oldest of the legislators Mnevis, the third successor of Menes, who received them from Hermes.
“Of such manuscripts as have descended to us, most are but Latin retranslations of Greek translations, made principally by the Neo-platonists from the original books preserved by some adepts. Marcilius Ficinus, who was the first to publish them in Venice, in 1488, has given us mere extracts, and the most important portions seemed to have been either overlooked, or purposely omitted as too dangerous to publish in those days of Auto da fe.” (Isis Unveiled I:406-07)

“There are then forty-two books of Hermes indispensably necessary; of which the six-and-thirty containing the whole philosophy of the Egyptians are learned by the forementioned personages; and the other six, which are medical, by the Pastophoroi (image- bearers),—treating of the structure of the body, and of diseases, and instruments, and medicines, and about the eyes, and the last about women.” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book VI, Chapter IV)

“The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000.” (Isis Unveiled I:33)

“It was Ammonius who first taught that every religion was based on one and the same truth; which is the wisdom found in the Books of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), from which books Pythagoras and Plato had learned all their philosophy. And the doctrines of the former he affirmed to have been identical with the earliest teachings of the Brahmans—now embodied in the oldest Vedas.” (Isis Unveiled I:444)

Thrice-Greatest Hermes, by G.R.S. Mead, III: Thoth the Master of Wisdom

Thoth: The Hermes of Egypt, by Patrick Boylan

Thoth and Hermes the Egyptian, by Wim van den Dungen

On the Trail of the Winged God: Hermes and Hermeticism Throughout the Ages, by Stephan A. Hoeller

Works

The Corpus Hermeticum, translated by G. R. S. Mead

Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius, translated by Brian P. Copenhaver

The Divine Pymander, translated by Dr. John Everard

Commentary on the Pymander, by G.R.S. Mead

“How truly esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is “Pymander the Thought Divine” of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive translations in Latin and Greek only. On the other hand how disfigured it has been later on by Christians in Europe, is seen from the remarks and unconscious confessions made by de St. Marc, in his Preface and letter to the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the whole cycle of transformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a mystic Roman Catholic treatise is given, and we see how Pymander has become what it is now. Still, even in St. Marc’s translation, traces are found of the real Pymander — the “Universal Thought” or “Mind.”” (Secret Doctrine II:491)

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