by Nuvoadam

The Hermetics may have been the first community to call themselves Gnostic. Their cosmology — centered on a logos-philosophy, a compassionate Demiurge, and the transmigration of souls — predates the more familiar Sethian and Valentinian systems and draws on Egyptian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Hellenistic sources fused together in the crucible of Alexandria. This post by Nuvoadam, written in September 2003 on alt.religion.gnostic, offers a practitioner's introduction to Hermetic Gnosticism: the Alexandrian origins of the Logos philosophy, the Abel and Hare summary of the Hermetic creation myth, and the place of Osiris and Isis in the unfolding of human history. It is one of the earliest and most synthetic treatments of Hermeticism on the newsgroup, by the community's most prolific theological contributor.

As an introduction to Hermetic Gnosticism, it should be noted that Alexandria seems to be the birthplace of the Logos Philosophy which later found its way into the Gospel of John and certain Gnostic sects (for good or bad). The Hermetics might have been the first to call themselves Gnostic. They spoke of Transmigration, advanced in their Demiurge and Logos two characters who were more protagonist than antagonistic, and also had many stories which accord very well with the Cosmology found within Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hellenism and other cultures.

The Greek historians equated Hermes aka Mercury/Mercurios with the Egyptian Thoth. To my knowledge Thoth was first called the "Word of God" when Ra left the earth following a grand cataclysm and war amongst humans and deity. I believe that it was only later that the very Greek Logos philosophy finds its way to Egypt, born by Alexander the Great around the 3rd century BC. Alexander built Alexandria to hold all of the mystic texts he had gathered from around the world. Hellenism had arrived and with it is found the birth of Western Gnosticism: an amalgamation of various Philosophy, Cosmogony, Cosmology from around the world.

The Jew Philo is seen to be one of the very first Gnostics, and he lived at Alexandria. Valentinus absorbed the Logos Philosophy in Alexandria. John wrote his proto-Gospel in Alexandria, with both Marcion and Leucius accused of later adding a decidedly anti-Jewish and racist slant to it. The point here is that the Gospel of John is a very solid source of Christian Logos Philosophy, and thus it could be said that John was tailoring it towards his Alexandrian Bishopry. Leucius would have brought the Logos Philosophy to Italy from Alexandria.

There are many sources for Hermeticism with no common author, and with the oldest being a set of codices recognized by some historians as written by Thoth himself many centuries BCE. But these are lost to us for they were destroyed along with the Alexandrian Library. What we do have is a story where Alexander the Great recorded having found the tomb of Hermes at Hebron, and here he found the Smaragdine Tablet (the Emerald Tablet), codified in 13 Dicta which Alexander had transcribed into Latin. From the Emerald Tablet:

"What is below is like that which is above: and what is above is like that which is below: to accomplish the miracle of one thing."

I use Walter Scott's work simply titled Hermetica, which for me has always been the best interface with the Corpus. For a quick summation however, I prefer R. Christofer Abel and William O. Hare's booklet titled Hermes Trismegistus: An Investigation of the Origin of the Hermetic Writings.

From the Hermetica (Vol. I, p. 457):

"Inasmuch as heaven with its many circles is placed above all the world of things below, it must be that all the world which lies below has been set in order and filled with contents by the things which are placed above; for the things below have not the power to set in order the world above. The weaker things then must yield to the stronger; and the system of things on high is stronger than the things below; and is wholly steadfast and cannot be apprehended by the thoughts of mortal men."

The Hermetic Creation Myth

From Abel and Hare's summary:

The sole Ruler summoned a council of the gods and called upon them to create a cosmos out of chaos. He himself began by separating the homogeneous mass into heaven and earth and filling the former with stars. "God spake and it was so." ... "God smiled and bade Nature (physis) be." Nature brought forth seed which was flung upon the earth.

Next, out of a mass of substance called "soul-stuff" compounded of fire and air, God made many myriads of souls, differing from one another in sixty grades. He located them in the intermediate region of the universe. Animal souls were likewise made out of a mixture of earth and water. The souls were endowed with a lower power of creation. They made birds, fishes, quadrupeds and reptiles. Next, God arranged the zodiac.

Then the souls became presumptuous and audacious, and disobeyed God's commands — attempting, I think, to invade heaven and make themselves equal to the gods. In short, they were punished by being imprisoned in bodies made of the mixture earth and water, and were expelled from heaven. The work was done by Hermes, who thus was a demiurge. They prayed that they might be made to forget the bliss they had lost, and thereby be released from sorrow. They were placed under the dominion of Desire and Necessity; were promised a return to the higher world; but if they added to their sins, at death they would be "transformed into the bodies of beasts." As the text puts it:

"The destruction of your bodies then will be the starting point for a rebirth, and their dissolution a renewal of your former happiness. But your minds will be blinded, so that you will think the contrary, and will regard the punishment (i.e. embodiment) as a boon and the change to a better state (i.e. death) as a degradation and an outrage. But the more right-thinking among you will be those who look forward to the change. And having thus spoken, God vanished from their sight."

The inevitable declension of man followed their imprisonment in the body and their subjection to Desire and Necessity. They quarreled, oppressed, and fought one another, making slaves of the vanquished.

When the four elements rose in protest against the evil introduced by man — Fire, Air, Water and Earth were polluted by their audacity — it was then that God promised to restore the earth to harmony by sending down Osiris, "the efflux of God," with Isis, his wife. They taught religion and thereby put a stop to mutual slaughter. They consecrated temples, gave sanctity to the oath or pledge of good faith, rounded law and justice, invented mummification. They established the order of prophet-priests to nurture men's souls with philosophy, and their bodies with medical art.

The Alexandrian Thread

Please note that among the important themes here: a spiritual humanity who for some reason rebelled against their Creator, and were thereafter punished by Transmigration into material bodies. The ensuing amnesia and ensnaring into further Karmic debt is also touched upon. What I am mainly interested in here is pointing out that by mentioning the descent of Osiris and Isis from Heaven, this story can be correlated with the several Egyptian timelines provided by a handful of historians, including Manetho, whose Chronology has held up very well to repeated attempts to punch holes in it.

Plato states in Critias that Poseidonious with its main city of Atlantis was submerged around 9,000 years before the debate recorded in Critias between Socrates, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates. The connections between Hermetic cosmology, the descent of divine teachers, and the restoration of human religious knowledge form a continuous thread through Alexandrian thought — from the Emerald Tablet through Philo, through the Corpus Hermeticum, and into the Gnostic communities that would eventually produce the Nag Hammadi texts.

"What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him, should be a matter of no importance." — Oscar Wilde

Colophon

Written by Nuvoadam, posted to alt.religion.gnostic, September 2003. Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Nuvoadam was the most prolific theological contributor to alt.religion.gnostic from 2003 onward, with over 1,500 posts spanning Hermetic and Gnostic cosmology, Merkabah mysticism, and Alexandrian religious history. This post is one of his earliest systematic introductions to the Hermetic tradition within a Gnostic framework.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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