Ebeling, Florian.

The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern

Times. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Time by Florian
Ebeling was a very helpful source for learning the history of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus. I
included Ebeling's background information on Thoth as well as on the traditional homeric Greek
Hermes, and some of the traits that bound these two figures together. While I was only able to utilize a
small part of this much larger history, anyone interested in how the Hermetic tradition developed over a
long period of time would find this book useful. It covers not only ancient history of the subject, but all
they way through the middle ages, the Renaissance, and modernity.
Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind by Garth Fowden was useful in
the history it provided of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus. He step by step describes Thoth, Hermes,
and their merger into the new figure, as well as the development of the Hermetic tradition. He does
have sections that analyze hermetic thought that might also be useful. A few issues with this book are
that it is a very advanced treatment of the subject matter (not to be used as an introduction), as well as it
focuses more on the Egyptian Hermetic tradition rather than that of the Greeks, which is the central
focus of this research.
Mah, Jean-Pierre. A Reading of the Discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead. In Gnosis and
Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J.
Hanegraaf. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
A Reading of The Discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead by Jean-Pierre Mah is a short summary
description of The Discourse on Ogdoad and the Ennead. The Ogdoad and the Ennead are greek words
for the Eighth and Ninth cosmic spheres. This short section is helpful in aiding the understanding of the
original text. It can be a dense and difficult to parse reading otherwise and this summary helped to give
me a framework to draw specifics from the text around. The author did some small amount of analysis
in this chapter that I also found helpful, but for the most part this was a clarifying text.
Mah, Jean-Pierre. Gnostic and Hermetic Ethics. In Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to
Modern Times, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaf. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998.
Gnostic and Hermetic Ethics by Jean-Pierre Mah is an essay that attempts to derive both the source
and the nature of ethics and morality in both the hermetic and Gnostic traditions. While he does
investigate each on their own, there is some cross over and comparison that I found very useful. This is
a very specific and advanced treatment of the topic, but it is very in depth about not only the nature of
ethics in each, but the how those ethics are derived.
Martin, Luther H. Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction by Luther H. Martin was a very valuable resource in contracting
this paper. This book contains a wide overview of Hellenistic faiths, and within that there is a short
section on Hermeticism as well as a section on Christian Gnosticism. The section on Gnosticism gave
excellent context for the section comparing Gnosticism and Hermeticism, while the piece he did on

Hermeticism served as a base of knowledge from which I expanded outward. It was very helpful in
giving me some idea of how to structure my research, and what directions to take it.
Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Third, Completely Revised ed. New
York, NY: Harper & Row, 1988.
The Nag Hammadi Library in English edited by James M. Robinson is a collection of the documents
found at Nag Hammadi translated in to English. The one that I found useful in this collection is
entitled, Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. This document is a dialogue between the god Hermes and
a disciple where in he takes the disciples mind from earth into the Eighth and Ninth spheres of the
cosmos. This is a crucial text because it shows what salvation looked like to the ancient Hermetic. Not
only is the method to achieve salvation discussed, but a description of that spiritual plane is also
included, making this text invaluable.
Salaman, Clement. The Way of Hermes: Translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Definitions of
Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius. First ed. Rochester, VT: Inner Tradtitions, 2000.
The Way of Hermes: Translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Definitions of Hermes
Trismegistus to Asclepius by Clement Salaman includes a translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, one of
the most central texts to the Hermetic tradition. In this book the hermetic cosmology is established, the
nature duality of the body and the soul is established, and the path to salvation is defined, among other
things. This is a useful source because included in this one text is an incredibly broad introduction to
the hermetic faith that covers almost all of the essential topics. I quoted and sourced this heavily in my
discussion of hermetic beliefs.
van den Broek, Roelof. Gnosticism and Hermeticism in Antiquity In Gnosis and Hermeticism from
Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaf. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998.
Gnosticism and Hermeticism in Antiquity by Roelof van den Broek is an essay that offers up a set of
contrasts between Hermeticism and the Gnostic traditions. He breaks his analysis down into the
component parts of god, man, the world, and mythology. Within each section he highlights ways in
which the two faiths agree and disagree. This was very useful to me, one of the sections of my paper
was a discussion of Gnosticism's relationship with and relation to Hermeticism, so having such a well
defined set of comparisons was crucial.
Yates, Frances Amelia. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1964.
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates is certainly not the most useful source in
the context of this paper. Her book is about the influence of Hermetic thought on the Renaissance and
specifically on Giordano Bruno, which is well beyond the scope of my research. She does, however,
have a short chapter that contains information about the Hermetic tradition in general. From this I
learned some things about the Greek origin of hermetic texts and she has some small discussion on
syncretism in Hermeticism which was also useful. Someone doing research on Renaissance thought
and Greek influences on it would find this book more useful.