Everything
The Archive
TL;DR
The archive is an index of seven sections of The Hermeticum (texts, figures, ideas, the Path, the Guide, modern systems and About) and of its tools and long forms, grouped and linked.
The site in one place, counted each time it is built: 36 pages on the texts, 23 on the figures, 20 on the ideas, 4 open steps of the Path, 3 in the Guide, 37 on modern systems and 1 about the site itself, then the book, the deck and the tools that hold them together. This index builds itself from the site, so it cannot fall out of date.
Texts
The corpus itself: what survives, in which language.
- AsclepiusThe longest Hermetic treatise, also called the Perfect Discourse: a dialogue in which Hermes Tri…
- Chaldean OraclesFragments of a lost Greek poem, probably of the late 2nd century CE, linked to two men called Ju…
- Chymical WeddingAn allegorical romance in seven days, printed anonymously at Strasbourg in 1616; its author, Joh…
- Corpus HermeticumA collection of seventeen Greek treatises written in Egypt around 100-300 CE, compiled into one…
- ConcordanceJohn Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) is the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum i…
- II. To AsclepiusCorpus Hermeticum II is a short Greek dialogue in which Hermes teaches Asclepius that whatever m…
- III. The Sacred SermonCorpus Hermeticum III, the Sacred Sermon (Greek logos hieros), is a four-section account of crea…
- IV. The Mixing BowlCorpus Hermeticum IV is a short dialogue in which Hermes tells his son Tat that God gave reason…
- IX. On Thought and SenseCorpus Hermeticum IX, “On Thought and Sense”, is a short lesson from Hermes to Asclepius, given…
- PoimandresThe first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum: a visionary dialogue in which a cosmic Mind shows t…
- Treatise by treatiseThe Corpus Hermeticum has seventeen Greek treatises, numbered I-XIV and XVI-XVIII; there is no X…
- V. Unmanifest and Most ManifestCorpus Hermeticum V is a short lesson from Hermes to his son Tat: God never comes into being, so…
- VI. The Good in God AloneCorpus Hermeticum VI is a short lesson from Hermes to Asclepius: the Good lacks nothing and suff…
- VII. The Greatest EvilCorpus Hermeticum VII is a three-section sermon whose title states that the greatest evil among…
- VIII. Nothing PerishesCorpus Hermeticum VIII is a short lesson from Hermes to his son Tat: nothing in the cosmos is de…
- X. The KeyCorpus Hermeticum X, The Key, is a Greek dialogue in which Hermes gives his son Tat what it call…
- XI. Mind to HermesMind to Hermes is the eleventh treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum, a Greek dialogue in which Mind…
- XII. On the Mind SharedCorpus Hermeticum XII is a dialogue in which Hermes teaches his son Tat that mind (nous) is of G…
- XIII. On RebirthCorpus Hermeticum XIII is a Greek dialogue in which Hermes Trismegistus leads his son Tat throug…
- XIV. Health of MindCorpus Hermeticum XIV is a short letter from Hermes to Asclepius summing up lessons given to Tat…
- XVI. Definitions of AsclepiusCorpus Hermeticum XVI is a short Greek discourse in which Asclepius, the pupil of Hermes, sends…
- XVII. On ImagesCorpus Hermeticum XVII is the surviving end of a lost dialogue: a teacher, Tat in the Greek as e…
- XVIII. The Soul Hindered by the BodyCorpus Hermeticum XVIII is not a Hermes dialogue but a fragment of a speech in praise of kings,…
- Definitions of HermesThe Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius are Hermetic sayings known complete only in…
- The Emerald TabletA dozen cryptic lines on how “the one thing” is made, credited to Hermes Trismegistus and first…
- Clause by clauseThe Emerald Tablet circulates as a block of thirteen or fourteen sentences, and its division int…
- Free legal scansThe free, lawful Corpus Hermeticum PDF to open first is volume II of G.R.S. Mead’s Thrice-Greate…
- Kore KosmouThe Kore Kosmou (“Virgin of the World”, or “Pupil of the World’s Eye”) is a Hermetic text in whi…
- The Kybalion (1908)The internet’s favourite “ancient Hermetic text”: published in Chicago in 1908 by “Three Initiat…
- Musaeum HermeticumA Latin anthology of alchemical treatises published in Frankfurt in 1625 and greatly expanded in…
- Nag Hammadi HermeticaThe three Hermetic works of Codex VI, found in Egypt in 1945: the Discourse on the Eighth and Ni…
- PicatrixThe Latin name of the Ghayat al-Hakim ("The Goal of the Sage"), an Arabic handbook of astral mag…
- Rosicrucian manifestosThe Fama Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1614), the Confessio Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1615) and the Chymic…
- Secretum SecretorumThe Secretum secretorum (“Secret of Secrets”) is a pseudo-Aristotelian letter to Alexander the G…
- The 72 NamesThe 72 names of God, or Shem ha-Mephorash, are 72 three-letter Hebrew names read out of Exodus 1…
- Stobaean Fragments29 Hermetic excerpts (SH 1-29), most of them preserved only because a 5th-century compiler, Joha…
Figures
The people: gods, translators, magi, forgers, scholars.
- Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English occultist who spent 1898-1900 in the Golden Dawn and…
- Arnau de VilanovaArnau de Vilanova (Arnald of Villanova, c. 1240-1311) was a Montpellier-trained physician who se…
- Balinas (pseudo-Apollonius)The Arabic name for Apollonius of Tyana — and the pen-name under which an unknown Arabic author…
- Cornelius AgrippaCornelius Agrippa (Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim; Cologne, 1486 - Grenoble, 1535 or…
- Count of Saint-GermainA real eighteenth-century adventurer of unknown name and birth: a musician, dye chemist and self…
- Éliphas LéviThe pen name of Alphonse-Louis Constant (Paris, 1810-1875), a former seminarian and socialist wr…
- Frances YatesDame Frances Yates (1899-1981), historian at London's Warburg Institute, is best known for two b…
- Giordano BrunoGiordano Bruno (1548-1600), an Italian philosopher and former Dominican friar, was burned in Rom…
- G.R.S. MeadGeorge Robert Stow Mead (1863-1933), historian, Theosophist and private secretary to H.P. Blavat…
- Helena BlavatskyHelena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. Her Isis Unve…
- Hermes Trismegistus“thrice-greatest Hermes”: a legendary sage born from the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god T…
- Isaac CasaubonIsaac Casaubon (1559-1614), a Geneva-born Greek scholar working in London under James I, showed…
- Israel RegardieFrancis Israel Regudy (1907-1985) served as Aleister Crowley's secretary, then joined the Stella…
- John DeeJohn Dee (1527-1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astrologer and adviser to Elizabeth I…
- Lodovico LazzarelliLodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500) was an Italian humanist poet who made the first Latin translatio…
- Marsilio FicinoMarsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was a Florentine philosopher and priest who, at Cosimo de’ Medici’s…
- Nicolas FlamelReal: a public scribe in Paris (born around 1330-1340, died on 22 March 1418) who grew rich from…
- Paracelsus and pseudo-ParacelsusParacelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim; near Einsiedeln, 1493/94 - Salzburg, 1541) was a German-…
- Pico della MirandolaThe 900 Theses (Conclusiones, printed in Rome in December 1486) are 900 short propositions that…
- Ramon Llull and pseudo-LlullRamon Llull (Raymond Lull; Majorca, 1232 or 1233 - 1316) was a Majorcan philosopher and missiona…
- ThothThoth (Egyptian Djehuty) was ancient Egypt’s god of writing and wisdom; Greeks equated him with…
- William Walker AtkinsonWilliam Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) was a Baltimore-born lawyer who became one of the most proli…
- Zosimos of PanopolisA Greek-writing alchemist from Upper Egypt, active around 300 CE, and the first alchemist for wh…
Ideas
The concepts, each with its pedigree and its limits.
- Hermetic alchemyAlchemy carried on under the name of Hermes Trismegistus: Zosimos of Panopolis cited him around…
- As above, so below“As above, so below” is a 19th-century condensation of a line in the Emerald Tablet, a text firs…
- CaduceusThe herald’s staff of Hermes, the Roman Mercury: a rod with two snakes twined round it, often wi…
- CorrespondencesCorrespondence is the claim that levels of reality (stars, earth, body, soul) answer one another…
- GnosisThe Greek word for knowledge; in the Hermetica, Greek texts written in Egypt about 100-300 CE, i…
- Golden DawnThe Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an occult society founded in London in 1888 by three F…
- Hermetic meditationA modern name for a practice that the Greek Hermetic texts (about 100-300 CE) give only in outli…
- Hermetic QabalahThe Western occult reading of Jewish Kabbalah, a living tradition with its own texts. Christian…
- Hermeticism & its neighboursHermeticism and Gnosticism are close relatives from the same centuries, sharing revelation, savi…
- The alchemical homunculusIn alchemy, a homunculus is a tiny artificial human, made without a mother from semen sealed in…
- The myth of TheuthA short story in Plato’s Phaedrus (274c-275b), written around 370-355 BCE, in which the Egyptian…
- NousNous (Greek for “mind”) is, in Hermeticism, the divine Mind: the revealer who calls himself Poim…
- The ouroborosThe ouroboros (from the Greek οὐροβόρος, “tail-eating”) is a serpent biting its own tail to form…
- PalingenesiaThe Hermetic rebirth staged in Corpus Hermeticum XIII: ten divine powers enter the initiate and…
- Prisca theologiaPrisca theologia ("ancient theology") is the Renaissance idea that God gave one true theology to…
- The seven Hermetic principlesA list from the Kybalion (Chicago, 1908): mentalism, correspondence, vibration, polarity, rhythm…
- TarotTarot began as a card game in Italy by 1440, not in Egypt; its Hermetic meaning was added in Par…
- The Great WorkThe Great Work (magnum opus) is the alchemists' name for the process of making the philosophers'…
- The Ogdoad and EnneadThe Eighth and the Ninth of Hermetic cosmology: the sphere of the fixed stars and the divine rea…
- TheurgyTheurgy (Greek theourgia, "god-working") is late-antique ritual practice aimed at uniting the so…
The Path
The steps, in order, from zero to reading the sources.
- 01 · What is Hermeticism?Hermeticism is the tradition built on texts written in Greek in Roman Egypt around 100-300 CE in…
- 02 · Who was Hermes Trismegistus?Hermes Trismegistus was no one, and that is the point. “Thrice-greatest Hermes” is a literary pe…
- 03 · AlexandriaThe Hermetica were written in Greek in Roman Egypt between about 100 and 300 CE by authors who w…
- 04 · Reading PoimandresStep four of the Path is a guided reading of Poimandres in four passages, with no Greek required…
Guide
The Modern Hermet and the method, in plain terms.
- The MapThe contents page of The Hermeticum’s school, with the fifteen practices of the Instruction and…
- The InstructionThe Instruction for the Modern Hermet is fifteen practices, stated plainly. It is not a belief s…
- Operational AlchemyThe working counterpart to the Instruction: twelve operating principles that turn recurring chao…
Modern systems
Recent systems that borrow Hermetic language, read with the same method and dated.
- Akashic recordsSanskrit ākāśa means open space or ether; theosophists turned it into a record of everything (Ol…
- Alan WattsAlan Watts (1915-1973) explained Zen, Taoism and Hindu thought to Western readers and radio list…
- Chaos magicChaos magic began in England in 1976-1978 with Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin; it treats belie…
- EnneagramThe enneagram figure is first known from G. I. Gurdjieff’s 1916 talks, printed by Ouspensky in 1…
- G. I. GurdjieffG. I. Gurdjieff (born between 1866 and 1877; died 1949) taught in Russia and, from 1922, in Fran…
- Human DesignA chart system Ra Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower, 1948-2011) dated to a voice on Ibiza in 1987. It…
- Joseph MurphyJoseph Murphy (1898-1981), an Irish emigrant of 1922, led a Divine Science church in Los Angeles…
- Jung and alchemyCarl Jung (1875-1961) read alchemy as the psyche projected onto matter, from his 1929 commentary…
- Law of attractionThe law of attraction says thoughts draw matching events. The phrase is in print by 1855 (A. J.…
- Napoleon HillNapoleon Hill (1883-1970) wrote The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich (1937), which…
- Neville GoddardNeville Goddard (1905-1972), a Barbados-born dancer turned lecturer, published about ten books a…
- Law of assumptionNeville Goddard’s teaching that a state assumed as already real hardens into fact. He named it i…
- Reality Transurfing (2003)Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland’s system, began circulating in Russia in 2003 and became a bes…
- ComparedTransurfing is filed beside the law of attraction and is close to its opposite: where one says w…
- The conceptsTen ideas carry the whole of Reality Transurfing: the space of variants, the current, pendulums,…
- The current of variantsThe claim that within the space of variants events follow lines of least resistance; the counsel…
- Excess potentialThe tension created when you attach too much importance to something; the books say it calls up…
- FreilingZeland’s rule for dealing with other people: stop trying to obtain something from them, shift at…
- ImportanceVadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for excess s…
- Inner and outer intentionOuter intention is Vadim Zeland’s term, from Step II of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, Engli…
- PendulumsVadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for energy-i…
- SlidesA deliberately held mental image of the desired situation, rehearsed until it stops feeling fore…
- Soul and mindAn intuitive faculty (soul) and a calculating one (mind), and the books hold that goals chosen b…
- The space of variantsThe space of variants (space of variations) is Vadim Zeland’s claim, in Step I of Reality Transu…
- The wave of fortuneVadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for a lucky…
- Cult or danger?Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland’s self-help series (from 2004), has no documented membership,…
- Is it Hermetic?Reality Transurfing is not Hermetic: it is New Thought, not ancient Hermeticism. But both are ph…
- Transurfing and the KybalionTransurfing and the Kybalion both descend from New Thought, the American mind-power literature o…
- Transurfing and Neville GoddardReality Transurfing and Neville Goddard both ask you to live a wished-for scene from inside, wit…
- In practiceTransurfing in practice comes down to five concrete things to try this week, drawn from the part…
- Quantum physics?No: Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing (2003) takes words such as energy, field and potential fr…
- Tufti the PriestessThe narrator of Vadim Zeland’s Tufti the Priestess (2018), presented by the author as an Isis pr…
- Volume by volumeReality Transurfing has five core books, Steps I-V by Vadim Zeland, published in Russian in 2004…
- Where to startStart Reality Transurfing with Step I, The Space of Variants. The core is five steps published i…
- Vadim ZelandThe name under which the Russian series Reality Transurfing has been published since 2004, first…
- Shadow workSelf-reflection, usually in writing, about traits you deny in yourself and notice in others, aft…
- SynchronicityC. G. Jung’s (1875-1961) word for a meaningful coincidence with no causal link; he coined it in…
About
How this site works, what it will not do, and why.
Tools and long forms
- Modern HermetOperational Hermeticism: a modern school of attention, energy and agency. Twelve chapters, four interludes.
- PrinciplesShort principles and one-week practices from the book, each with what it does not promise.
- The DeckThirty-eight cards so far, in one house style, with their real dates.
- The AtlasSixteen places, from Hermopolis to Chicago.
- QuestionsThe same answers the assistant gives, in one readable place.
- LettersThe letter, archived as it is written.
- SubscribeJoin the letter and take the five questions.