Hermetica
Sign in to saveThe Hermetica are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but by modern convention are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" Hermetica.
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- wisdom literature
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Encyclopedic overview
35 sectionsContents
- Technical ''Hermetica''
- Greek
- Greek astrological ''Hermetica'' <!-- This section is linked from [[Liber Hermetis (astrological)]] -->
- Greek alchemical ''Hermetica'' <!-- This section is linked from [[Isis the Prophetess to Her Son Horus]] -->
- Greek magical ''Hermetica''
- Arabic
- Arabic astrological ''Hermetica'' <!-- This section is linked from [[Liber de stellis beibeniis]] -->
- Arabic alchemical ''Hermetica''<!-- This section is linked from [[Sirr al-khaliqa]] and from [[Liber Hermetis de alchemia]] -->
- Arabic magical ''Hermetica'' <!-- This section is linked from [[Kitab al-Istamakhis]] and [[Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica]]-->
- Latin
- Latin astrological ''Hermetica''
- Religio-philosophical ''Hermetica''
- ''Corpus Hermeticum''
- ''Asclepius''
- ''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius''
- Stobaean excerpts<!-- This section is linked from [[Kore Kosmou]] and from [[Kore kosmou]] -->
- Hermes among the Nag Hammadi findings
- Oxford and Vienna fragments
- ''Book of the Rebuke of the Soul''
- Fragments and testimonies
- History of scholarship on the ''Hermetica''
- See also
- References
- Bibliography
- Translations of Hermetic texts
- English
- Russian
- Secondary literature
- Editions of Hermetic texts
- Greek
- Armenian
- Arabic
- Coptic
- Latin
- External links
The Hermetica are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but by modern convention are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" Hermetica.
The category of "technical" Hermetica encompasses a broad variety of treatises dealing with astrology, medicine and pharmacology, alchemy, and magic, the oldest of which were written in Greek and may go back as far as the second or third century BCE. Many of the texts belonging to this category were later translated into Arabic and Latin, often being extensively revised and expanded throughout the centuries. Some of them were also originally written in Arabic, though in many cases their status as original works or translations remains unclear. These Arabic and Latin Hermetic texts were widely copied throughout the Middle Ages (the most famous example being the Emerald Tablet).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hermetica” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.