The Corpus Hermeticum

and Hermetic Tradition

from TheGnosisSociety Website

Archive Notes

The Hermetic tradition represents a non-Christian lineage of Hellenistic Gnosticism. The central texts of the tradition, the Corpus Hermeticum were lost to the West in classical times. Their rediscovery and translation during the  late-fifteenth century by the Renaissance court of Cosimo de Medici, provided a seminal force in the development of Renaissance thought and culture. The fifteen tracts of the Corpus Hermeticum, along with the Perfect Sermon or Asclepius, are the foundation documents of the Hermetic tradition.  The texts presented here are taken  from the translation of G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Great Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, 3 Volumes (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906).  

Contents

• Introduction to the Corpus Hermeticum (G.R.S. Mead Translation)

I.	Poemandres, the Shepherd of Men
II.	To Asclepius
III.	The Sacred Sermon
IV.	The Cup or Monad
V.	Though Unmanifest God Is Most Manifest
VI.	In God Alone Is Good And Elsewhere Nowhere
VII.	The Greatest Ill Among Men is Ignorance of God
VIII.	That No One of Existing Things doth Perish, but Men in Error Speak of Their Changes as Destructions and as Deaths
IX.	On Thought and Sense
X.	The Key
XI.	Mind Unto Hermes
XII.	About the Common Mind
XIII.	The Secret Sermon on the Mountain

Note: The historical important 1650 translation of the Corpus Hermeticum by John Everard can be read in above. London 1650. (Translated by Everard from the Ficino Latin translation, it is not now considered a satisfactory rendition of the original textual material.)

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