What is Hermeticism?

## A Wisdom Older Than Most of the Names It Goes By Hermeticism is the name we give to a stream of thought running quietly through Western civilization for at least two thousand years, a stream attributed in legend to Hermes Trismegistus, the "thrice-great" teacher whom the Greeks identified with the Egyptian Thoth.

Whether or not such a person ever lived as a single historical figure, the writings that bear his name (the *Corpus Hermeticum*, the *Asclepius*, and most famously the brief *Tablet of Emerald*) have shaped Christian mystics, Renaissance philosophers, Sufi sages, alchemists, and modern esotericists alike. ## The Heart of the Tradition The Hermetic worldview can be summed up in seven words from the Tablet of Emerald: **as above, so below; as within, so without**.

The patterns of Heaven and the patterns of earth mirror one another.

The structure of the cosmos and the structure of the human soul mirror one another.

To know one is to begin to know the other.

The body is a small map of the universe; the universe is a great map of the body.

This is not a poetic flourish.

It is a working principle.

The Hermeticist studies the stars to understand the body, studies the herbs to understand the elements, studies the elements to understand the soul.

Every domain becomes a doorway into every other domain. ## Hermeticism and Christianity The Hermetic and Christian traditions have been in quiet conversation since the earliest centuries.

The Renaissance Florentine Marsilio Ficino translated the Hermetic writings for Cosimo de' Medici alongside his translations of Plato; he did not see them as competitors.

The mystic Jakob Böhme, the cleric Robert Fludd, the alchemist Heinrich Khunrath, all read scripture and Hermes side by side and saw the same Light shining through both.

The Church of New Enchantment stands in that long, quiet conversation.

We do not collapse Hermeticism into Christianity, nor Christianity into Hermeticism.

We let each speak in its own voice and listen for what they say together.