Hermeticism

Hermeticism is the tradition of writings and teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, composed in Greek in Roman Egypt between roughly the first and third centuries CE. Its texts fall into two streams: the 'philosophical' Hermetica — above all the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet — which teach the soul's salvation through gnosis and its ascent to God; and the 'technical' Hermetica of astrology, alchemy, and magic.

Doctrinally it is a religious Platonism fused with Egyptian and astral lore: a transcendent God, the divine Mind, a living ensouled cosmos bound by correspondence, and the human intellect kindred to the divine.

Believed in the Renaissance to be wisdom older than Moses, the Hermetica were translated by Ficino in 1463 and revered as the fountainhead of the ancient theology — until Isaac Casaubon showed in 1614 that they were products of late antiquity. They remain the taproot of Western esotericism.