Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetic Books of Scripture, and the Restored Gospel

In gathering my notes on the ascension literatures, and bringing it out front that the Tarot card symbolisms are “Hermetic,” and in fact one of the “Hermetic Books” brought back to us in the Medieval ages, and that alchemical themes are prominent (the colors, for instance, in the Waite-Rider deck), and that Kabbalah, alchemy, Gnosticism, Early Christianity and Judaism, etc., are all intertwined in some remarkable ways, I decided to do a quick check into some of Hugh Nibley’s writings about the Hermetic literatures, and who this Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus character was. Hermes Trismegistus was considered the author of the Emerald Tablet, the ultimate sacred text and foundation of the alchemical enterprise of finding the gold in human souls, i.e., realizing we are Divine.

I found, as usual, that Nibley was the most useful LDS scholar on this theme, (among dozens and dozens of others!) but other LDS scholars have mentioned a little bit about it all. So this is basically very interesting and engaging background information, usually elucidating the Egyptian religion, but also some other high points of interest, that is worth browsing. It will startle you how wide and extensive the connections are with various types of important prophets, wisemen, and rulers with Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus.

And I side with Nibley that the doctrines, ideas, and ideologies of Hermeticism are not strange, but rather extend way back as a primordial revelation to mankind, about the possibility

of finding out we are, after all, members of God’s family. I will intersperse my comments about some of the ideas within brackets like this […]. Some of the Nibley materials need contexting and explaining, and the paragraphs are rather long, but I do indicate the sources, just not after ever single quote. I think Nibley was onto many very important things that we should not ignore, (for one thing, they actually do help make the scriptures interesting and a joy to read) and without bringing it all out together under a singular subject, we don’t have a chance of getting the full impact of the range and depth of the subject.

“The aim of the archaic cultic activities not only in Egypt but also everywhere else was, according to Karl Albert, "to restore the primal community of Gods and men," or, as we would say, to achieve atonement; and the ordinances were inseparable from the doctrines that went with them.

Everywhere we find myths and legends about how the primal bond that existed between heaven and earth in the Golden Age was broken by the wickedness of men; the great common assemblies ceased and the gods departed. But, as Aristotle notes, some bits of the old knowledge always survived to the next age. A study by Fabio Mora on "The Silence of Herodotus" notes that the three things in the mysteries that Herodotus would never talk about were:

(1) the grand mystery of the true nature and character of God, which could be known only by revelation.

(2) the ordinances by which the mysteries were taught and implemented.

(3) the doctrine or rationale of the whole, including that which explained the rites.

Plato makes Thoth the inventor of writing and tells us that all wisdom was contained in thirty-six of the Hermetic books, and Plutarch reports that in his day the authentic forty-two books of Hermes were still to be found in temple libraries.

The name Trismegistus means "thrice-greatest" and has naturally led to all sorts of explanations. One of the most learned of ancient astronomers, the renowned Abu Macshar al-Balkhi, like al-Thaclabi, explored ancient legends and traditions all over the Middle East and found that there were indeed three Hermes, all related and united in glory — Thrice-Great indeed!

The Persians believed him to be Gayomart, the grandson of Adam. The Hebrews also made him third in descent from Adam and so confused him with Enoch, the son of Cain. "Adam," they say, "taught him the hours of the day and the night," and he first studied the structure of the cosmos and built the first temple. "He wrote many books . . . on the knowledge of things of heaven and earth." This earliest Hermes lived in Upper Egypt, where he enriched the world with scientific schemes and diagrams of all sorts and invented characters for writing the scriptures for "those who would come after him."

The second Hermes, according to al-Balkhi, lived in the land of the Chaldeans and taught the world medicine, philosophy, and the nature of numbers, reviving those studies after their loss in the Flood. The third, like the first, lived in Egypt. He wrote a great book on alchemy and its related crafts, and was the teacher of Aesculapius.

But three is merely a beginning. Hermes Trismegistus has been identified with almost every superwiseman who ever lived, beginning with Noah and the first pharaoh; the list includes Zoroaster, Mithra, Elijah, Pythagoras, Aesculapius, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, and Zosimus. Originally, Hermetic books copied in the temples were written on tablets, some of which various wise men of old claimed to have discovered at various times and places. When we are told that Geb, the founder of patriarchal rule on earth, had the history of the settling of Egypt by Re and Shu read to him from the Annals which were written down at the time of Atum, we can surmise that the tradition of record keeping was as old as the civilization itself.

That impression is confirmed when we discover in the Pyramid Texts extensive reuse and reapplication of much earlier texts. Many have shown that the Pyramid Texts, "the oldest book in the world," the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead, each succeeding the other, have, as Lacau puts it, absolutely the same object, and that the fundamental teachings, the language, and the script remain virtually unchanged from beginning to end, one simply continuing the tradition of the others.

What was that tradition? Eric Hornung, a very fine Egyptologist, has recently shown that it is always the same: what the Book of the Dead contains, faithfully carrying on the tradition, is nothing less than the complete manual or handbook of all knowledge — the epitome of the Hermetic library.

Alexander Moret, who made a special study of the Egyptian mysteries, concluded that all arts and sciences are mysteries and secrets, which men could learn only by revelation. The secret books of rituals were miraculous things written by the very hand of Thoth. Eduard Naville, who first edited the complete Book of the Dead, stated frankly that the Book of the Dead must belong to the books which Clement of Alexandria called Hermetic, being written by Thoth. To indicate how old the records are, we have Otto's recent discovery that the implements of the funerary cults have no recognizably Egyptian names — all are prehistoric, mystic code-names, Decknamen. Moreover, he notes that the rituals are almost never depicted, though they were the main activity, and that no ritual is ever presented in its completeness; also, that from what we know we can find no significant variation between the rites of the very earliest and the very latest times. Hornung shows us how in Egypt alone we can see a central perennial tradition handed down for thousands of years.”[1]

As the representative of the cosmic order who conducts one through the ordinances of the eternities, Thoth is the unfailing guide of the Book of the Dead. (Barguet, LM, p. 98, Ch. 94-97). S. Mayassis has brought together numerous references to Thoth as the "initiateur original et primordial" (Mystès, pp. 162-63); as being in charge of the temple personnel, and temple vestments; as author of the "Initiatory Books" (the hidden Books of Thoth being in the Temple Library at Hermopolis. The glory of Thoth is Intelligence, and his work is to assist the initiate in his aspirations to divinity.

The sacred books of initiation are the fabulous Hermetic literature, which Hermes Trismegistus (it is interesting that Thoth in this connection is called, in our Breathing-text, "Twice-Great," since Trismegistus means "Thrice-Great") says were handed down from Thoth to Kamaphes (the Sun-bull), hence to Horus and Isis and hence to Osiris, Osiris being the first mortal to go through the temple and learn the "Great Secret," his family then following his example.”[2]

But at the creation these three made the main council: Ptah, Horus and Djehuty-Thoth. As you know, he is Hermes, the secretary of the gods, the spirit, the revealer, the one who keeps all the records, the one who has all knowledge. He is the god of knowledge, the god of wisdom, the god of counsel. He is always rendered in the Greek by Hermes, so that's where you get hermetism, the source of all wisdom, etc. So these three.[3]

Hermes got this staff originally from Apollo, who brought it with him as an arrow from the land of the Hyperboreans, somewhere in the northern steppe. Hermes' specialty is rushing through the air by means of his messenger-staff, the caduceus, which is winged at one end like an arrow and pointed at the other; holding to this the god is able to fly through space, to the upper and lower worlds if need be, exactly as Abaris, the Hyperborean shaman, flies over all the earth as Apollo's emissary when he grasps the arrow that the god has given him as a sign of his authority.

It is not necessary to multiply parallels to show that in the earliest stratum of Greek legend we have a typical summons-arrow, wending its way from the far north to impose law and civilization on the world in the name of Zeus. The first message of Rome to Carthage was a symbolic caduceus and javelin (hastae simulacrum) inviting the Carthaginians to submit or be subdued by force.

In Israel the Lord, calling upon a city to declare its allegiance to him, sends his rod to it, and a herald (a man of tushiah), seeing the name on the rod, calls out to the people: "Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it" ("Micah 6:9). This rod was an arrow. The earliest gods of writing, Nebo, Cadmus, Hermes, etc., were arrow gods. Apollo gave the staff to Hermes as a symbolon (Homer, Hymn to Hermes, 527-30) exactly as he gave an arrow-symbolon to his friend Abaris, the Hyperborean, who used it as Hermes did his staff, to carry him through the air as a messenger of the god.[4]

The Mystery Religions, pagan rivals of Christianity, taught emphatically the doctrine that "men may become Gods." Hermeticism, which had its rise in Egypt in the second or third centuries B.C., was a prominent religion in the Mediterranean world during the period of the rise of Christianity. Its literature, the Corpus Hermeticum, professes to be revelations to Hermes from his divine father and teacher.

Hermes declared: "We must not shrink from saying that a man on earth is a mortal god, and that God in heaven is an immortal man."[5] Hermes declared: "And this alone, even the knowledge (gnosis) of God, is man's salvation. This is the ascent to Olympus, and by this alone can a soul become good." This religion taught, as did the Prophet Alma, that man must experience a rebirth. The Hermetic rebirth involved nothing less than deification. "This is the good; this is the consummation for those who have got gnosis—they enter into God"; so declared the Hermetic teacher.[6]

When Pharaoh asked Moses and Aaron, "Who will believe you when you say that you are ambassadors of God, as you pretend to be?" the credentials they produced were the rod and its miracles. This aspect of the rod as a sign to the world that God has given his authority to the holder is very significant, since it represents the power of priesthood: Indeed, the early Christian Fathers insist that the rod is simply a symbolic representation of the power of priesthood: "The rod of Aaron," says Justin Martyr, "bearing blossoms showed him to be the High Priest. A rod from the root of Jesse became the Christ. ... By the wood God showed himself to Abraham. ..."

It is exceedingly convenient to have such a message-stick to confirm one's claim to have been sent by some king or by God himself. There are many instances of the usage in the ancient world, and they all seem to go back to the divine pattern. Thus, "the Herald of Zeus goes forth to summon his subjects armed with a golden wand that subdues all creatures with its touch." This is the civilizing and governing rod of Hermes that makes its holder ruler of the world, the golden wand of the two entwined serpents, the caduseus, the arrow of Zeus in whose name all things are compelled to do obeisance. It was this same caduseus with which Aesculapius presumed to raise the dead—an office reserved to God alone, and to this day the life-giving staff of Aesculapius with its two serpents is the symbol of the medical profession.[7]

Isis and Thoth are often found together performing identical functions, in which association Isis often appears as Seshat, the lady of writing (Bergman. Ich bin Isis, p. 235), bearing the epithet "she who was in the beginning," while both she and Thoth are both called without visible rivalry the inventors of writing (ibid., 236). The "aretology" of Isis begins, "I am Isis, the ruler of all lands; I have been taught by Hermes, and with Hermes I invented letters" (S. Muller, in OLZ, 67:121).[8] It was Thoth who wrote the divine words for Osiris (S. Schott, ZA, 99:20), he being the author of all the sacred writing and sole patron of the priests (Iamblichus, de Myst., I, 1). All the holy books are "Hermetic" books, coming from Thoth (Hermes) in the "Library of the House of Books" and the "House of Life."[9]

An earlier statement appears in Book of the Dead, Ch. 182. "Twice- [or very-] great" is a common epithet of Thoth. Thoth's headquarters is Khmnw, the "City of Eight" (Coptic Shmun, today El-Ashmun), the number eight being the expression of Creation (Thausing, Gr. Tb., p. 17); it was also called Hermopolis because Thoth was the Egyptian Hermes. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead Chapter 182, Thoth comes bringing to the dead breath and protection, of everything done on earth.

This makes him the equivalent of the lady Maat, and indeed at this point of our Breathing text his name is written with nothing but a single Maat-feather. No higher authority could be claimed for any book than is here claimed for the Book of Breathings, brought personally by Thoth [who is identified as Hermes] from headquarters and written "with his own fingers" (for which expression see S. Schott, ZAS 99:23f).

As we have seen, the opening line of the Book of Breathings proclaims that Isis "made" this book in behalf of her brother Osiris, but its contents are supplied her by Thoth. He in turn is only the purveyor, however, not the initiator. His office is always that of secretary, scribe, recorder, adviser, confidential assistant, whose calling it is to record, preserve, and transmit everything of importance, not to produce it or create it. He is identified with the Moon, which does not produce but merely transmits the light of Re. The Book of Breathings thus no more originates with Isis and Thoth than it does with the local scribe who records that he wrote it "with his own fingers."[10]

The Egyptian priests were organized, and the knowledge was secret. They had ordinances into which you would enter. It was not all secret. They preached the gospel, but there was certain knowledge they kept to themselves. They didn't shout from the housetops.

On this one I would certainly [include] "Evangelium Quadraginta Dierum," a study in the Revue de Qumran on the Qumran society, which was just such a society. Then we have other cases like the forty-day ministry of Christ. During the forty days after the resurrection of Christ, we are told he taught the apostles in secret, and he taught them in secret before. They said, why do you speak to us openly? You speak to all the rest of them in parables. Why do you speak to them in parables and speak to us openly in the clear? "He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." (Matt. 13:11) It was a closed society with these instructions.

They were the brethren and called each other "brother and sister." They were the humble followers of Christ. These same societies existed throughout the ancient world. The Egyptians are a classic example. They are Hermetic societies. Just how old are they? That's much debated about. We say something is hermetically sealed. Hermes was the Egyptian Thoth, and in the beginning he taught the books of wisdom. Secret societies of holy men were formed around him. Hermetic literature appeared very suddenly in the fifteenth century and got the Europeans all excited. They thought, this is Hermes; this is the old knowledge that goes back to the beginning. Then in 1613 Casaubon showed that it was probably a production of the Christian period, first or second century, and wasn't ancient at all. But now we know it was ancient because it just picked up an ancient thread and elaborated on that. You find Hermetic societies all doing about the same sort of things. It means going back to Hermes, the original wise man who taught in the beginning. I have the whole book of the Hermetic writings. They teach things that are very familiar in the gospel. There's nothing strange about them.[11]

It was always claimed by those who accepted the Hermetic message as true that it was knowledge revealed in the beginning to one Hermes Trismegistus. He was a man who became deified only after his death. He was always identified with Thoth, the Egyptian god who presided over all branches of knowledge and the dispensing of such. He was also identified by the learned Egyptians with the famous Imhotep, the great vizier of Djoser, the founder of the Third Dynasty, and one of the great creative geniuses of all time. Imhotep was beyond dispute a real person, and whether he was the thrice-greatest Hermes or not is beside the point, which is that there actually were men living in far distant times of the caliber of the fabulous Trismegistus and the equal of any who have lived since.[12]

The idea is preserving its [the Hermetic tradition and literatures] contents through changing forms. As Iamblichus puts it, the Egyptians ask all the basic questions about God and creation and never cease insisting upon the one universal God and king upon whom all things depend. He assures us that their approach to the interface (Nahtstelle or "seam") between the worlds is the one we must follow if we would ever hope to get "a peek through a chink in the wall."

The Egyptians were not the only ones; other mysteries and cults claimed to be every bit as old. The resemblance of these early cults to each other produced a rich mix down through the centuries, and Herodotus reports that the Orphics, Bacchics, Egyptians, and Pythagoreans were all one with the Delphian Apollo. The Hermeticism of Hermes Trismegistus was confused with Egyptomania, Orphism, and Pythagoreanism," according to Derchain.

The claims of Orpheus are as venerable as Trismegistus himself. The ancients believed, according to Jacob Burckhardt, that "Orpheus 'was the father of all rites and of all mysticism in general.'" He left the world a body of hymns and rites going back to the prehistoric mysteries of Eleusis, the "very ancient Demeter cult . . . [in which the basic ideas were] purification, fertility, rebirth; [and] . . . striv[ing] toward a luminous 'other world.'" The "Orphic Phanes . . . combined in himself all the gods and cosmic forces" Orpheus, like Trismegistus, began as a mortal, the prototype of "a long series of 'divine men'" such as Epimenides of Crete, Abaris the Hyperborean, and Zalmoxis of Thrace, who can be "placed at the side of the sages or shamans such as the Seven Sages, who met at Delphi" in periodic sacred conferences.[13]

Hermeticism was the doctrine that all the wisdom in the world was originally put into the thirty-six books of Thoth or Hermes. The rites were based on these books, and the priest who conducted the Egyptian endowment had to know at least six books of Thoth by heart, those explaining the seals and the sacrifices. Clement of Alexandria, in the most instructive work on the mysteries, calls the well-known Egyptian Book of the Dead "hermetic," and attributes it to Thoth.

The idea of an "archaic wisdom," prisca arcana, or "primeval revelation," a knowledge of the ancients far in advance of later times, has always intrigued philosophers and theologians. But today it is the scientists who are taking it seriously. Joseph Smith was well acquainted with the idea: "From time to time these glad tidings were sounded in the ears of men in different ages; . . . certainly God spoke to [Abel], . . . and if He did, would He not . . . deliver to him the whole plan of the Gospel? . . . And . . . was he not taught also of His ordinances? . . . For our own part we cannot believe that the ancients in all ages were so ignorant of the system of heaven as many suppose." It is interesting that, at the very time Joseph Smith was preparing the things of the endowment, he was most deeply interested in his Egyptian studies. The field of hermetic writings is immense, and the instructions to which it has given rise are almost without number.[14]

An influential movement in twentieth-century philosophy has been hermeneutics. The name of this movement comes from the older discipline of hermeneutics, which was the art or science of interpretation, especially of scripture. The term derives from Hermes, who was the mythical Greek messenger of the gods. Hermeneutic philosophers believe that questions of how to interpret a text are central to philosophy; and, because of the influence of those philosophers, a central question of contemporary philosophy and literary criticism has come to be the hermeneutical question: How can we understand a text, particularly a text that is removed from our contemporary culture but that still has some authoritative claim on us?[15]

So these are some of the notes on Hermeticism and how it relates to the Gospel, and about Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus, as this superhero relates to other ancient prophets and wisemen in antiquity.

Endnotes

1. Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present, edited by Don E. Norton [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992]: 402.

2. Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975], 187.

3. (Hugh Nibley, Ancient Documents and the Pearl of Great Price, edited by Robert Smith and Robert Smythe [n.p., n.d.], 5.

4. Hugh Nibley, The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991], 4 - 5.

5. Milton R. Hunter, The Gospel through the Ages [Salt Lake City: Stevens & Wallis, Inc., 1945], 110.

6. Milton R. Hunter, The Gospel through the Ages [Salt Lake City: Stevens & Wallis, Inc., 1945], 117.

7. The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph by Hugh Nibley, Ph. D., Improvement Era, 1953, Vol. Lvi. February, 1953. No. 2. “Remember, in the wilderness the people were bitten by serpents and were dying. They were stinging serpents. So Moses raised a bronze serpent on a staff, and all who looked upon the serpent lived. Well, the serpent healed [the bite of] the serpent. Have you noticed on the staff of a physician, on the caduceus, the medical staff has two serpents intertwined. The Greeks tell us that Hermes was the founder of the medical profession. That was of Egypt, the Egyptian Hermes Thoth. The two serpents are both copulating serpents because they beget, but they are also opposing each other. The one kills, the other heals. The two must be intertwined because it must be the coincidence coincidentia oppositorum that brings things to a balance. So you have the two serpents.” Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon--Semester 1: Transcripts of Lectures Presented to an Honors Book of Mormon Class at Brigham Young University, 1988--1990.

8. Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975], 77.

9. Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975], 77 - 78.

10. Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975], 188.

11. Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon--Semester 1: Transcripts of Lectures Presented to an Honors Book of Mormon Class at Brigham Young University, 1988--1990.

12. Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present, edited by Don E. Norton [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992]: 389.

13. Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present, edited by Don E. Norton [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992], 403.

14. Donald W. Parry, ed., Temples of the Ancient World: Ritual and Symbolism [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1994], 604.

15. Dawn Hall Anderson, Susette Fletcher Green, and Marie Cornwall, eds., Women and Christ: Living the Abundant Life [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1993]: 67.