Ask for
the date

CLAIMED AGE: ancient Egypt
FIRST ATTESTED: Chicago, 1908
TRADITION: Only one paraphrase, 'as above, so below', comes
  from the Emerald Tablet (Arabic, 8th-9th c.), and the book
  misattributes it.
MODERN LAYER: Chicago, 1908, attributed to W. W. Atkinson
  (Deslippe, critical edition 2011). The list of seven
  principles has its closest antecedent in Kingsford and
  Maitland, mid-1880s.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. The claimed oral original
  Kybalion has no shelf-mark and cannot be tested.
VERDICT: A 1908 New Thought synthesis in a Hermetic coat.
  Important as modern esotericism, invented as antiquity.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/#kybalion

CLAIMED AGE: a canonical saying of the Buddha
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] first print of the modern
  wording not identified
TRADITION: The wording appears in no canonical collection.
  Canonical texts carry related ideas about anger, such as
  similes in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, but not this sentence.
MODERN LAYER: This wording circulates from late-20th-century
  self-help literature [unverified which print is first].
UNSETTLED: The exact first source of the modern wording. No
  shelf-mark exists for this sentence.
VERDICT: A modern aphorism in a borrowed robe. The point has
  real canonical cousins: cite those, and it survives
  honestly.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/#buddha

CLAIMED AGE: a saying of Marcus Aurelius
FIRST ATTESTED: Meditations, c. 170s CE
TRADITION: Meditations 5.20 is checkable in any critical
  edition: the impediment to action advances action; what
  stands in the way becomes the way. The Meditations (c.
  170s CE) are attested continuously.
MODERN LAYER: The five-word slogan is the title of a 2014
  book: a compression, not a quotation.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. Meditations 5.20 is the
  shelf-mark.
VERDICT: The idea is genuinely his; the slogan is 2014. Cite
  5.20 and the claim survives at full strength.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/#aurelius

CLAIMED AGE: ancient, each name with a specific use
FIRST ATTESTED: Angel-forms printed by Agrippa, 1533
TRADITION: The 72 three-letter names can be derived from
  Exodus 14:19-21, three verses of exactly 72 Hebrew
  letters. Medieval Kabbalistic literature carries them;
  Agrippa (1533) and Kircher (1652) printed the angel-forms.
MODERN LAYER: The assignments of what each name is for come
  from the Kabbalah Centre, above all Berg's book of 2003.
UNSETTLED: Whether the medieval derivation was ever a
  practice rather than an exegesis.
VERDICT: The core is more checkable than the marketing
  admits, and the 'uses' layer is the youngest by seven
  centuries.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/#names

CLAIMED AGE: Renaissance Florence
FIRST ATTESTED: Florence, 1463 (printed 1471)
TRADITION: Ficino's own preface reports that Cosimo ordered
  Hermes first (1463). The translation exists, and the Latin
  first edition is 1471.
MODERN LAYER: None material.
UNSETTLED: How literally to take the preface's dramatic
  framing.
VERDICT: Checks out, with one footnote: the famous anecdote
  rests on Ficino's own preface. The fact stands; the drama
  is self-reported.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/#ficino

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Egyptian initiatory system
FIRST ATTESTED: Northern Italy, mid-15th c. (trionfi decks)
TRADITION: Tarot is attested in 15th-century Italy (trionfi
  decks, Milan and Ferrara) as a card game. No Egyptian
  source depicts or names it.
MODERN LAYER: The Egyptian reading begins with Court de
  Gébelin, Le Monde primitif (Paris, 1781), asserted without
  evidence, decades before hieroglyphs could be read.
UNSETTLED: Why the occult reading proved so durable.
VERDICT: A Renaissance card game with an 18th-century
  Egyptian costume.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/tarot/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient universal system
FIRST ATTESTED: Woodroffe, The Serpent Power, 1919 (the
  fixed seven)
TRADITION: Chakra schemes appear in medieval tantric texts
  with five, six, nine or more centres, depending on
  lineage. The manuscripts exist and disagree.
MODERN LAYER: The fixed Western seven, with colours, glands
  and psychology, descends from Woodroffe's The Serpent
  Power (1919) and Leadbeater's The Chakras (1927).
UNSETTLED: How much of the modern system any single tantric
  lineage would recognise.
VERDICT: An ancient family of practices with a modern
  standardisation. The number seven is the newest layer, not
  the oldest.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/cards/#chakras

CLAIMED AGE: a secret taught by Nikola Tesla
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] no Tesla source exists; first
  print not identified
TRADITION: None. The sentence appears in no Tesla writing,
  lecture, patent or interview known to scholarship.
MODERN LAYER: The quote circulates unattributed online and
  surges in the 2010s numerology revival [unverified where
  it first appears in print].
UNSETTLED: Nothing: the absence of a source is the finding.
VERDICT: An internet aphorism in a laboratory coat. Tesla's
  real eccentricities are documented; this sentence is not
  among them.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/cards/#tesla

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Hermetic teaching
FIRST ATTESTED: A. J. Davis, The Great Harmonia IV, Boston,
  1855 (the phrase)
TRADITION: The Hermetica teach correspondence between levels
  of reality, not that thought magnetises events. The two
  ideas are distinct.
MODERN LAYER: The phrase is in print by 1855 (A. J. Davis,
  The Great Harmonia IV); Prentice Mulford made it a rule
  for thought in 1886-1888. The doctrine as sold today is
  New Thought: Atkinson's Thought Vibration (1906), through
  The Secret (2006).
UNSETTLED: Nothing material.
VERDICT: A 19th-century phrase and a 1906 doctrine,
  retro-dated seventeen centuries. Correspondence is
  Hermetic; attraction marketing is not.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/cards/#attraction

CLAIMED AGE: the original angelic tongue from before Babel
FIRST ATTESTED: Dee and Kelley, scrying sessions, 1582-1589
TRADITION: Received by John Dee and Edward Kelley in scrying
  sessions, 1582-1589, and recorded in Dee's diaries as it
  happened. The material is fully documented.
MODERN LAYER: The name Enochian and the ceremonial systems
  built on it are later constructions (Golden Dawn onward,
  1880s+).
UNSETTLED: What Kelley was doing: the honest range runs from
  fraud to genuine visionary experience.
VERDICT: A rare case with a birth certificate: the
  primordial language has session notes from the 1580s.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/john-dee/

CLAIMED AGE: exactly 42 books containing all knowledge
FIRST ATTESTED: Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis VI, c. 200
  CE
TRADITION: The number comes from Clement of Alexandria
  (Stromateis VI, c. 200 CE), describing 42 indispensable
  books carried in Egyptian temple processions. Other
  ancient authors give 20,000 or 36,525.
MODERN LAYER: The lost 42 books of Hermes as a recoverable
  secret library: esoteric publishing, 19th-21st c.
UNSETTLED: What the procession books actually contained. No
  such canon survives.
VERDICT: A real ancient sentence about books, not a real
  ancient bookshelf.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/hermes-trismegistus/

CLAIMED AGE: a line of the Emerald Tablet
FIRST ATTESTED: Arabic, 8th-9th c.
TRADITION: The Tablet speaks of above and below (quod est
  inferius est sicut quod est superius), first attested in
  Arabic, 8th-9th c. No within and without clause exists in
  any early version.
MODERN LAYER: The inward, psychological expansion is New
  Thought and later self-help, 20th century, popularised
  alongside the Kybalion's reading.
UNSETTLED: Nothing: the list of clauses is finite and
  checkable.
VERDICT: A modern rhyme grafted onto an old trunk.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/emerald-tablet/clauses/

CLAIMED AGE: knowledge older than its author
FIRST ATTESTED: Russia, 2003
TRADITION: None. No line of transmission is named or
  citable. The system credits unnamed guardians.
MODERN LAYER: The whole system. It began circulating in
  Russia in 2003 and became an international bestseller in
  2005-2006. 'Vadim Zeland' is a pen name and the biography
  is self-reported.
UNSETTLED: Who, if anyone, the credited guardians are.
  Unnamed guardians who decline to appear leave nothing to
  verify.
VERDICT: A 2003 system, dated and undisputed as such. The
  antiquity is claimed only for the contents, by the same
  architecture the Kybalion used in 1908.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/cards/#transurfing

CLAIMED AGE: King Solomon's own work
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] oldest manuscripts are
  late-medieval and Renaissance; no year given
TRADITION: Solomon's reputation as a spirit-commanding king
  is ancient (Josephus, 1st c. CE). The Key's oldest known
  manuscripts are late-medieval and Renaissance; the Greek
  Hygromanteia precedes the Latin and Italian versions.
MODERN LAYER: Printed editions and Mathers's 1889
  translation fixed the modern text.
UNSETTLED: The grimoire's exact date and place of
  composition. The manuscripts are catalogued; none is
  remotely ancient Israel.
VERDICT: Pseudepigraphy working as designed: an old royal
  name lending authority to a much later book.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/provenance/cards/#solomon

CLAIMED AGE: ancient Egypt
FIRST ATTESTED: Arabic, Emerald Tablet tradition, c. 750-833
  CE
TRADITION: The idea of correspondence between levels of
  reality is genuinely Hermetic. The line descends from the
  Emerald Tablet, first attested in Arabic in the 8th-9th
  century; the Latin vulgate is a longer simile with a
  purpose clause.
MODERN LAYER: The crisp English epigram was popularised in
  the age of Blavatsky, a 19th-century condensation of the
  Latin sentence.
UNSETTLED: The manuscript tradition varies on the exact
  Latin wording.
VERDICT: The idea is old, the slogan is not. The four-word
  version is a 19th-century condensation of an Arabic-era
  text.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/as-above-so-below/

CLAIMED AGE: thousands of years old, around 3000 BC
FIRST ATTESTED: Kitab sirr al-khaliqa, Arabic, c. 750-833 CE
TRADITION: The Tablet has no emerald, no Egypt and no Greek
  original. Its oldest known appearance is inside the Arabic
  Kitab sirr al-khaliqa, which scholarly datings place in
  the 8th to early 9th century.
MODERN LAYER: The famous epigram is a 19th-century
  paraphrase. The Latin text entered Europe by at least
  three routes in the 12th-13th centuries.
UNSETTLED: Whether lost Greek or Syriac sources stand behind
  parts of the Arabic book. None has surfaced.
VERDICT: No known text of it is older than the 8th century.
  Thousands of years is a legend, not a date.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/emerald-tablet/

CLAIMED AGE: an emerald slab found in Hermes' own hands
FIRST ATTESTED: Kitab sirr al-khaliqa, before 833 CE
TRADITION: The Arabic Book of the Secret of Creation, signed
  Balinas (Apollonius of Tyana), tells of a vault under a
  statue of Hermes: an old man on a golden throne held the
  emerald slab.
MODERN LAYER: The 1930s 'Atlantean tablets' of channeled
  literature are a separate work and unrelated to the
  historical Tablet.
UNSETTLED: Whether lost Greek or Syriac sources stand behind
  parts of the book.
VERDICT: A literary discovery narrative, a standard device
  for giving a new text old authority. It is not a
  historical report.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/balinas/

CLAIMED AGE: Newton's own English translation
FIRST ATTESTED: Newton's papers, 1680s-90s (Keynes MS 28)
TRADITION: Newton's own English translation with commentary
  survives in his alchemical papers: Keynes MS 28, King's
  College, Cambridge, dated 1680s-90s per Dobbs. It is
  digitised and readable online.
MODERN LAYER: Often retold as Newton the mystic. For him the
  'one thing' was philosophical mercury: laboratory
  language, not mysticism.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material.
VERDICT: A claim that checks out. Newton did translate it,
  and he read it as a chemist.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/emerald-tablet/

CLAIMED AGE: a real Egyptian sage, around the time of Moses
FIRST ATTESTED: Hermetica written under his name, c. 100-300
  CE
TRADITION: Hermes Trismegistus is a Greek-Egyptian persona,
  born from the meeting of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth
  in Ptolemaic Egypt. Late-antique authors wrote the
  Hermetica under his name.
MODERN LAYER: Islam took him for the prophet Idris and
  Renaissance Florence for a contemporary of Moses, until
  Casaubon's 1614 redating showed the Greek was late
  antique.
UNSETTLED: Which Egyptian priestly milieus, if any, stand
  behind the authors: Fowden and Bull argue for them.
VERDICT: Not a man but a mask. The name is a persona; the
  books under it date from about 100-300 CE.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/hermes-trismegistus/

CLAIMED AGE: the same god under two names
FIRST ATTESTED: Demotic ibis-cult documents, by 172 BCE
TRADITION: Greek settlers in Egypt identified Thoth with
  Hermes. His priestly epithet 'great, great, great' became
  the Greek trismegistos; Demotic documents call him 'the
  three times great' by 172 BCE.
MODERN LAYER: The 'Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean'
  were invented around 1939 by 'Maurice Doreal', drawing on
  Theosophy and pulp fiction. No Egyptologist, papyrus or
  artifact supports them.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. The two figures are linked by a
  documented identification, not identical.
VERDICT: Thoth is the source. Hermes Trismegistus is the
  fused Greek-Egyptian figure that grew from him.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/thoth/

CLAIMED AGE: older than Moses and Plato
FIRST ATTESTED: Greek, Roman Egypt, c. 100-300 CE
TRADITION: Seventeen Greek treatises by different anonymous
  authors, written in Roman Egypt c. 100-300 CE. They are
  first attested as a collection in the 11th century, with
  Michael Psellos in Byzantium.
MODERN LAYER: Ficino translated it in 1463 and Casaubon
  redated it in 1614. Sites calling it 5,000 years old
  repeat a Renaissance error.
UNSETTLED: How much genuinely Egyptian religious material
  the late Greek texts preserve. The 1945 Nag Hammadi finds
  show some.
VERDICT: A Roman-era anthology, not primeval wisdom. Younger
  than Plato, not older.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/corpus-hermeticum/

CLAIMED AGE: one true theology given to remote antiquity
FIRST ATTESTED: Florence, Ficino and Cosimo de' Medici, 1463
TRADITION: Prisca theologia, 'ancient theology', is the
  Renaissance idea that God gave one true theology to remote
  antiquity. In Ficino's Platonic Theology (XVII.1) the
  chain runs Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus,
  Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Plato; his preface to the
  Pimander starts with Hermes and leaves Zoroaster out.
MODERN LAYER: In 1614 Isaac Casaubon showed on philological
  grounds that the Corpus is Roman-era, not primeval Egypt.
  The related philosophia perennis, truth available always
  and everywhere, is a different idea often conflated with
  it.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. Hermetic currents flourished
  after 1614, and Kircher simply ignored the redating.
VERDICT: A Renaissance theory built on a wrong chronology,
  refuted in 1614. It explains why Hermes mattered so much,
  not what he wrote.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/prisca-theologia/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient oral teaching of Hermes
FIRST ATTESTED: Yogi Publication Society, Chicago, 1908
TRADITION: The book says it rests on an ancient compilation
  handed down orally and never written. No manuscript,
  shelf-mark or quotation in any earlier author survives.
MODERN LAYER: Published in 1908 as by 'Three Initiates' and
  attributed in Deslippe's 2011 critical edition to William
  Walker Atkinson, a New Thought author. Builders of the
  Adytum claim a role for Paul Foster Case.
UNSETTLED: Whether anyone besides Atkinson took part. The
  order's claim for Case is its own and unverified.
VERDICT: A 1908 Chicago book by a New Thought author writing
  as Three Initiates. Date it 1908, not Egypt.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/kybalion/

CLAIMED AGE: ancient Egypt
FIRST ATTESTED: The Kybalion, Chicago, 1908
TRADITION: Two of the seven have older roots: divine Mind in
  the Corpus Hermeticum, and 'as above, so below' in the
  Emerald Tablet. One loosely echoes Poimandres (CH I.9).
  Four have no Hermetic source.
MODERN LAYER: The list of seven is the Kybalion's. Vibration
  and rhythm are the vocabulary of 1900s New Thought; the
  nearest earlier list is Kingsford and Maitland, mid-1880s.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. No classical Hermetic text
  numbers its teachings as seven.
VERDICT: A 1908 list with two real older roots, not an
  ancient system.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/seven-hermetic-principles/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Hermetic law
FIRST ATTESTED: The Kybalion, Chicago, 1908
TRADITION: Nous, divine Mind, is central to the Corpus
  Hermeticum (CH I, XI), but there it is a mind you come to
  know. The texts even disagree whether God is Mind or the
  source of Mind (CH I against CH II).
MODERN LAYER: The Kybalion turns it into a law you can use:
  mental transmutation and vibration, vocabulary of 1900s
  New Thought.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. The Hermetica themselves
  disagree on God and Mind.
VERDICT: Mind matters in the Hermetica. 'The universe is
  mental, adjust your frequency' is New Thought from 1908.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/seven-hermetic-principles/

CLAIMED AGE: one ancient movement
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] our pages give no date for when
  scholars began filing the Hermetica under Gnosticism
TRADITION: The two share a late-antique milieu: visionary
  revelation, saving gnosis, ascent through hostile spheres.
  They were buried together at Nag Hammadi. The Hermetica
  have no evil demiurge, and the cosmos is called a second
  god.
MODERN LAYER: Older scholarship filed the Hermetica under
  Gnosticism. Most specialists now keep them apart;
  Hanegraaff prefers 'Hermetic spirituality' to avoid the
  frame.
UNSETTLED: Why the two travelled together in one jar at Nag
  Hammadi is itself an unresolved question.
VERDICT: Close cousins, not one movement. The Hermetica are
  friendlier to the cosmos than classic Gnostic systems.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/hermeticism-and-its-neighbours/

CLAIMED AGE: found in a jar of Gnostic gospels
FIRST ATTESTED: Coptic copies, 4th c. CE; found December
  1945
TRADITION: Codex VI holds three Hermetic works: the
  Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth, the Prayer of
  Thanksgiving, and a Coptic excerpt of Asclepius 21-29. The
  copies are 4th century CE; the Greek originals c. 2nd-3rd
  century.
MODERN LAYER: Found near Nag Hammadi in December 1945.
  Popular accounts call these Gnostic gospels or an
  initiation certificate; the Hermetica are a distinct
  tradition and the certificate reading overstates the text.
UNSETTLED: Whether the Discourse is a script for a performed
  initiation or a literary representation of one.
VERDICT: Checks out: three Hermetic works, copied in Coptic
  in the 4th century. Not Gnostic gospels.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/nag-hammadi-hermetica/

CLAIMED AGE: the first and oldest Hermetic treatise
FIRST ATTESTED: Definitions of Hermes, most likely 1st c. CE
  (Mahé, debated)
TRADITION: Poimandres opens the Corpus Hermeticum, written
  in Roman Egypt c. 100-300 CE. The Definitions of Hermes to
  Asclepius, most likely 1st century CE, may be older
  (Mahé).
MODERN LAYER: The Definitions survive mainly in a
  6th-century Armenian translation and reached English only
  in 1999, which is why popular sources skip them.
UNSETTLED: Whether the Definitions are the seed of the later
  dialogues, as Mahé argued, or common stock. Some scholars
  date the collection later.
VERDICT: Probably not: the oldest is likely the Definitions.
  Poimandres is the famous opening, not the oldest.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/definitions-of-hermes/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Egyptian original
FIRST ATTESTED: Coptic excerpt, Nag Hammadi, 4th c. CE;
  Greek original lost
TRADITION: The Greek original, the Logos teleios or Perfect
  Discourse, is lost. The text survives complete only in a
  free Latin adaptation, with a Coptic excerpt (Asclepius
  21-29) and Greek fragments.
MODERN LAYER: Pico della Mirandola's 1486 Oration opens with
  Abdala the Saracen and then quotes its line 'a great
  miracle is man'.
UNSETTLED: How far the Latin translator took liberties. The
  Coptic excerpt lets scholars check it against something
  closer to the Greek.
VERDICT: A real ancient text, known mainly through a free
  Latin adaptation. Read the Latin as an adaptation.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/asclepius/

CLAIMED AGE: the complete Hermetic scripture
FIRST ATTESTED: Stobaeus, Anthology, early 5th c. CE
TRADITION: The Corpus is one anthology among several bodies
  of Hermetic writing. In the early 5th century CE Johannes
  Stobaeus copied nearly thirty Hermetic excerpts into an
  anthology; for most, he is the sole surviving source.
MODERN LAYER: The excerpts reached complete scholarly
  English only in 2018 (Litwa, Hermetica II). The free Scott
  (1924) and Mead (1906) versions predate the critical text.
UNSETTLED: Whether the Kore Kosmou excerpts (SH 23-27) come
  from one large lost work or several.
VERDICT: No: the Corpus is one anthology. A third of the
  philosophical Hermetica survives only because Stobaeus
  copied it for his son.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/stobaean-fragments/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Hermetic grimoire
FIRST ATTESTED: Arabic Ghayat al-Hakim, c. 959 CE (348 AH)
TRADITION: The Arabic original, the Ghayat al-Hakim, was
  written in al-Andalus; its author says he finished it
  around 348 AH (c. 959 CE). Alfonso X had it put into
  Castilian (the prologue of the Latin version dates that
  work to 1256), and a Latin version followed in the 13th
  century.
MODERN LAYER: Modern occult publishing sells it as a
  plug-and-play grimoire. Historically it is a learned
  compendium. The author is identified as Maslama al-Qurtubi
  (Fierro, 1996); standard English is Attrell and Porreca
  (2019).
UNSETTLED: Why it is called Picatrix: a corruption of
  Buqratis (Hippocrates) or a nickname of the author.
VERDICT: A 10th-century compendium of astral magic from
  al-Andalus, not an ancient text. It cites Hermes but is
  not a Hermetic treatise.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/picatrix/

CLAIMED AGE: an anthology of ancient Hermetic writings
FIRST ATTESTED: Frankfurt, 1625; enlarged 1678
TRADITION: A Latin anthology of alchemical treatises, first
  published in Frankfurt in 1625 by Lucas Jennis and
  enlarged to twenty-one tracts in 1678. It contains no
  ancient Hermetica; by then 'hermetic' meant alchemy.
MODERN LAYER: Most English readers know it through A. E.
  Waite's The Hermetic Museum (London, 1893), based on an
  anonymous translation, condensed, and read as veiled
  spiritual mysticism.
UNSETTLED: No complete modern scholarly English translation
  exists. Historians find much of it encodes laboratory
  practice, though several tracts are devotional.
VERDICT: A 17th-century alchemy anthology wearing the
  Hermetic name, with no ancient Hermetica in it.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/musaeum-hermeticum/

CLAIMED AGE: the manifesto of the Renaissance
FIRST ATTESTED: Rome, the 900 Theses, 1486
TRADITION: In 1486 Pico published nearly 900 theses and
  invited Europe to debate them in Rome. The pope indicted
  thirteen and condemned seven as heretical (1487). The
  debate never happened.
MODERN LAYER: The Oration was never delivered or published
  by Pico. It was first printed in 1496 as Oratio quaedam
  elegantissima, and titled On the Dignity of Man only in
  the Basel collection of 1557. It opens with Abdala the
  Saracen, then the Asclepius.
UNSETTLED: How Hermetic he was: he preferred Orphic,
  Chaldean and Kabbalistic sources and downplayed the
  Hermetica relative to Ficino.
VERDICT: The speech was never given. The 900 Theses were
  real; 'manifesto of the Renaissance' is a later label.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/pico-della-mirandola/

CLAIMED AGE: a Hermetic magus and martyr of science
FIRST ATTESTED: Rome, Campo de' Fiori, 17 February 1600
TRADITION: Bruno was burned in Rome on 17 February 1600. The
  charges were theological: Trinity, Christ's divinity,
  transubstantiation. Heliocentrism was not formally
  condemned until 1616. The full trial record is lost.
MODERN LAYER: The martyr-of-science story dates to the 1889
  monument. Frances Yates (1964) cast him as a Hermetic
  magus; later scholars say she over-unified him.
UNSETTLED: How Hermetic he was: the lost trial file keeps
  the edges of the question open.
VERDICT: Executed for theology, not astronomy and not
  Hermeticism as such. The Hermetic elements are real but
  were over-unified.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/giordano-bruno/

CLAIMED AGE: the full Latin Corpus, by Ficino alone
FIRST ATTESTED: Ficino 1463 (14 treatises); Lazzarelli c.
  1482 (the last three)
TRADITION: Ficino's 1463 translation covered the fourteen
  treatises in Cosimo's manuscript, printed in 1471 as the
  Pimander. Around 1482 Lazzarelli translated the last three
  (CH XVI-XVIII) from a manuscript Ficino never saw.
MODERN LAYER: Hanegraaff and Bouthoorn edited Lazzarelli's
  Hermetic writings in 2005. Hanegraaff calls him 'the real
  Hermetic tradition' of the Renaissance, because he
  practised Hermetic rebirth.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. His Crater Hermetis (c. 1493)
  is among the earliest testimonies of Christian Kabbalah.
VERDICT: Ficino did fourteen of seventeen treatises.
  Lazzarelli completed the Latin Corpus around 1482, and
  almost nobody has heard of him.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/lodovico-lazzarelli/

CLAIMED AGE: the founder of alchemy
FIRST ATTESTED: Panopolis, Upper Egypt, c. 300 CE
TRADITION: Zosimos is the first alchemist known by name as a
  real, datable author, c. 300 CE. Alchemy already existed:
  Pseudo-Democritus and Maria the Jewess precede him and
  survive mainly through his quotations.
MODERN LAYER: Jung read the Visions from 1937 as archetypal
  dream material, a 20th-century reception and not an
  account of what a Greco-Egyptian alchemist meant.
UNSETTLED: Whether his addressee Theosebeia was a student, a
  patron or a literary device.
VERDICT: First named alchemist, not the inventor. He tells
  his addressee Theosebeia to seek baptism in the krater of
  Corpus Hermeticum IV, early evidence that the Corpus was
  lived, not just copied.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/zosimos-of-panopolis/

CLAIMED AGE: a work of the first-century sage Apollonius
FIRST ATTESTED: Arabic, late 8th-early 9th c., certainly
  before 833 CE
TRADITION: Balinas is the Arabic rendering of Apollonius of
  Tyana, a first-century sage. The actual author was an
  unknown Arabic writer seven centuries later. Datings:
  Ruska (1926), Kraus (1943), Weisser (1980, c. 750-800).
MODERN LAYER: The shorter Jabirian version and the one
  framed as Aristotle's letter to Alexander descend from
  this book. The Great Pyramid find and the 'Atlantean
  tablets' are reception without evidence.
UNSETTLED: Whether lost Greek or Syriac sources stand behind
  parts of it.
VERDICT: A borrowed name on an Arabic book of the late 8th
  or early 9th century, the earliest documented home of the
  Emerald Tablet.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/balinas/

CLAIMED AGE: the definitive edition
FIRST ATTESTED: Theosophical Publishing Society, London,
  1906
TRADITION: Mead's three volumes (1906) hold a full
  translation of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin
  Asclepius, plus the Stobaean excerpts. Recent assessments
  find the renderings hold up surprisingly well.
MODERN LAYER: He worked forty years before the
  Nock-Festugière critical Greek edition (1945-1954) and
  framed Hermetism through Theosophy. Copenhaver (1992) is
  the scholarly standard.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material.
VERDICT: The best free full translation, which is why it
  dominates the internet. Read it knowing it is pre-critical
  and Theosophically framed.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/grs-mead/

CLAIMED AGE: an unbroken ancient lineage
FIRST ATTESTED: Founded 1888 by Westcott, Mathers and
  Woodman
TRADITION: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded
  in 1888 by three Freemasons, on the authority of ciphered
  manuscripts whose provenance remains disputed. It
  fractured after 1900.
MODERN LAYER: Regardie, who joined the Stella Matutina in
  1933 or 1934, published the rituals in four volumes (Aries
  Press, Chicago, 1937-1940). Most English ceremonial magic
  descends from those books.
UNSETTLED: The provenance of the ciphered manuscripts.
  Regardie's account of destroyed papers has no independent
  confirmation.
VERDICT: An order founded in 1888 on disputed papers, not an
  ancient lineage.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/figures/israel-regardie/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Hermetic teaching
FIRST ATTESTED: Agrippa prints the angel names, 1533
TRADITION: The 72 three-letter names are derived from Exodus
  14:19-21, three verses of exactly 72 Hebrew letters, set
  out in medieval Kabbalistic literature. The Hebrew is
  checkable; the angel names are a later layer.
MODERN LAYER: They entered the Hermetic current in the
  Renaissance through Pico, Agrippa and Kircher. The Golden
  Dawn passed them on in the 1880s as one body of knowledge.
  The 'used for' column is Kabbalah Centre, Berg (2003).
UNSETTLED: Latin spellings and the correspondences with
  hours, degrees and psalms vary widely between sources.
VERDICT: Jewish Kabbalah, not Hermetica. The Hebrew core is
  checkable; the Hermetic label and the uses are later
  layers.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/shem-hamephorash/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient path of inner transformation
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] the inner-work reading is 19th
  c. (Atwood, Hitchcock; no year on our page); the color
  scheme is traditional by c. 300 CE
TRADITION: In period sources the magnum opus is laboratory
  work on matter: making the philosophers' stone, tracked by
  color stages (black, white, yellow, red), a scheme already
  traditional by Zosimos (c. 300 CE). There was never one
  fixed procedure.
MODERN LAYER: The inner transformation reading is a
  19th-century construction (Atwood, Hitchcock),
  psychologised by Jung. After the 15th century most writers
  dropped citrinitas.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. Historians (Principe, Newman)
  re-ran period recipes and found repeatable chemistry.
VERDICT: A laboratory procedure in the sources. The
  soul-work reading is a 19th-20th century layer.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/the-great-work/

CLAIMED AGE: ancient Hermetic white magic
FIRST ATTESTED: Iamblichus, De mysteriis, c. 300 CE
TRADITION: Theurgy, 'god-working', is late-antique ritual
  practice aimed at uniting the soul with the divine,
  defended by Iamblichus (c. 300 CE) and systematised by
  Proclus. It belongs to Neoplatonism; the philosophical
  Hermetica are not theurgic manuals.
MODERN LAYER: Occultist reception from the Golden Dawn
  onward uses 'theurgy' for ceremonial magic in general. The
  scheme theurgy equals white magic, goetia equals black
  magic is a later simplification.
UNSETTLED: Whether the Hermetica came from a small community
  led by Egyptian priests, an idea Bull (2018) cautiously
  revives after Reitzenstein; linking it to Iamblichus's
  defence of ritual is a comparison, not Bull's claim.
VERDICT: A Neoplatonic ritual practice, a cousin of
  Hermetism and not its core. The white-magic label is
  later.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/theurgy/

CLAIMED AGE: Egyptian gods or higher dimensions
FIRST ATTESTED: Poimandres, CH I.24-26, c. 100-300 CE
TRADITION: In Poimandres the soul rises through seven
  planetary spheres, then the eighth (ogdoad, the fixed
  stars) and the ninth (ennead, the divine realm beyond the
  cosmos). An Egyptian Ogdoad of eight gods was the theology
  of Hermopolis.
MODERN LAYER: Modern channeled literature borrows 'the
  Ennead' and '8th-dimensional beings' while dropping the
  cosmology. The ancient scheme is a graded ascent in a
  geocentric cosmos, not dimensions.
UNSETTLED: Whether the Nag Hammadi Discourse on the Eighth
  and Ninth records a performed initiation or a literary
  mystagogy.
VERDICT: A stage of ascent in a Hermetic map. The Egyptian
  Ennead of Heliopolis shares only a word with it.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/the-ogdoad-and-ennead/

CLAIMED AGE: reincarnation taught by Hermes
FIRST ATTESTED: Corpus Hermeticum XIII, c. 100-300 CE
TRADITION: Corpus Hermeticum XIII stages a rebirth in this
  life: ten divine powers drive out twelve zodiacal
  torments, and Tat sees 'not with the eyes of the body'.
  The text says it cannot be taught, only experienced.
MODERN LAYER: Modern esoteric readers sometimes equate
  palingenesia with reincarnation. Metempsychosis appears
  elsewhere in the Hermetica as a separate doctrine, for
  example CH X.
UNSETTLED: Whether CH XIII records a real initiation:
  Festugière read literary mysticism, Van den Kerchove and
  Bull real practice, Hanegraaff induced ecstasy.
VERDICT: A transformation in this life, not rebirth into
  another body. Whether it was ritual or literature is still
  debated.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/palingenesia/

CLAIMED AGE: a universal mind or vibration
FIRST ATTESTED: Poimandres, Corpus Hermeticum I, c. 100-300
  CE
TRADITION: In Poimandres the revealer names itself 'the Nous
  of the sovereign power'. Treatise IV has a mixing-bowl of
  Nous sent down so that souls who choose may immerse
  themselves in it. Reason is universal; Nous must be
  received.
MODERN LAYER: New Age paraphrases such as 'universal mind'
  as mental Wi-Fi, or Nous as vibration, flatten the term's
  religious weight.
UNSETTLED: Whether Nous is God's essence or God's first
  emanation: the corpus is an anthology, and the texts vary.
VERDICT: In the sources Nous is divine Mind, received like
  grace. It is not 'intellect', not a brain and not a
  frequency.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/nous/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Egyptian system of correspondences
FIRST ATTESTED: Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, 1533
TRADITION: The intuition of correspondence is ancient: Stoic
  sympatheia plus the Hermetic microcosm (CH VIII).
  Technical Hermetica assign plants and stones to decans and
  planets.
MODERN LAYER: Systematic tables descend from Agrippa's De
  occulta philosophia (1533), the Golden Dawn and Crowley's
  777. 'Correspondences' as a named category is Antoine
  Faivre's, 1994.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material. Claiming a specific table as
  ancient Egyptian Hermeticism is almost always false in
  detail.
VERDICT: The idea is old and the neat tables are Renaissance
  to modern. None of it is a law of attraction.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/correspondences/

CLAIMED AGE: a former quantum physicist
FIRST ATTESTED: [unverified] the claim comes from his
  publisher and himself; no institute or publication
  supports it
TRADITION: None. The claim comes from the author's own note,
  his publisher's page and a 2010 weekly profile. No
  institute, degree or dissertation is named, and open
  bibliographic databases return no physics.
MODERN LAYER: Copied into thousands of descriptions. In 2007
  Kommersant-Ural reported psychologists who suspected the
  author did not exist. The three-million sales figure comes
  from a 2010 promotional notice.
UNSETTLED: His real name, whether one person or several
  wrote the books, and whether the man in dark glasses is
  the author. Scopus and eLIBRARY.ru were not checked.
VERDICT: A self-description with no independent source.
  Treat it as unverified, not as fact.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/modern/reality-transurfing/zeland/

CLAIMED AGE: grounded in quantum physics
FIRST ATTESTED: Russia, 2003
TRADITION: Physics is named, not used. The books contain no
  equation, measurement or testable prediction. The space of
  variants resembles Everett's many-worlds reading (1957),
  but in Everett nobody chooses a branch.
MODERN LAYER: Energy and potential are figures of speech,
  not quantities, and energy-information structures have not
  been detected. The vocabulary moves the advice from the
  self-help shelf to things that sound established.
UNSETTLED: Whether the practical advice works: a separate
  question. Several moves hold up for ordinary psychological
  reasons.
VERDICT: Physics is named but not used. The resemblance to
  many-worlds is rhetorical.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/modern/reality-transurfing/quantum/

CLAIMED AGE: a priestess of Isis, 970 to 911 BCE
FIRST ATTESTED: IG Ves, 2018
TRADITION: None found. The book credits its content to a
  priestess of Isis said to have lived 970-911 BCE, with no
  source for the name, dates or temple. We found no
  independent historical source for her.
MODERN LAYER: Published by IG Ves in 2018, the same year as
  the novel Priestess Itfat. It is the second time the
  system names an outside source, after a keeper met in a
  dream in 2004; the author presents both as channels and
  does not say they are the same figure.
UNSETTLED: Whether Tufti existed: Egyptological literature
  was not searched exhaustively, so this is open.
VERDICT: A 2018 book with a 970-911 BCE pedigree and no
  source. The same structure the Kybalion used in 1908.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/modern/reality-transurfing/tufti/

CLAIMED AGE: ancient Hermetic magic
FIRST ATTESTED: Mulford, Your Forces, and How to Use Them,
  New York, 1886-1888
TRADITION: The Hermetica treat mind as something a person
  chooses to take up, and call the human a great miracle.
  They offer no technique for getting things; their aim is
  knowing God.
MODERN LAYER: The vocabulary is New Thought: the phrase law
  of attraction is in print by 1855, Prentice Mulford made
  it a rule for thought in 1886-1888, and Atkinson's Thought
  Vibration (Chicago, 1906) set the doctrine. The Kybalion
  (1908) dressed the same current in Hermetic costume, and
  The Secret (2006), inspired by Wattles (1910), popularised
  it.
UNSETTLED: Whether thought moves events you have no contact
  with. Nothing in the texts or the research cited
  establishes it.
VERDICT: The question is old, the method is not. Picturing
  the outcome alone predicts less effort (Oettingen and
  Mayer 2002).
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/manifest/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient step-by-step Hermetic technique
FIRST ATTESTED: Corpus Hermeticum XIII, c. 2nd-3rd c. CE
  (outline only)
TRADITION: Corpus Hermeticum XIII gives three things:
  silence, a prayer in the open air (south at sunset, east
  at sunrise), and a hymn. No classical text numbers steps,
  sets a duration or promises unity from a sequence.
MODERN LAYER: The numbered six-step protocol online is
  modern packaging. 'Mental transmutation' comes from the
  Kybalion (Chicago, 1908). No Hermetic text supports claims
  that Hermetists anticipated neuroscience.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material beyond that the texts give only
  an outline.
VERDICT: Half is in the sources: silence, open-air prayer, a
  hymn. The step-by-step protocol is modern.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/hermetic-meditation/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient religion
FIRST ATTESTED: Greek texts, Roman Egypt, c. 100-300 CE
TRADITION: The ancient texts imply a lived spiritual
  practice, and there is evidence of real ritual
  communities. There was no church, no canon and no
  priesthood of Hermeticism.
MODERN LAYER: The word now names at least four things: the
  ancient texts (c. 100-300 CE), their Renaissance revival,
  19th-20th century occult systems, and the 1908 Kybalion.
UNSETTLED: Whether the texts are Egyptian or Greek in
  origin: a live debate, with Fowden and Bull arguing for
  Egyptian priestly milieus.
VERDICT: Not one religion but a braid of four things,
  studied today as history of ideas and practised in
  reinvented forms.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/path/01-what-is-hermeticism/

CLAIMED AGE: a lost gospel of Isis
FIRST ATTESTED: Greek, usually dated 2nd-3rd c. CE; copied
  by Stobaeus, early 5th c.
TRADITION: The Kore Kosmou (SH 23) is a Greek Hermetic text,
  usually dated to the 2nd-3rd century CE, in which Isis
  teaches Horus. It survives only as excerpts copied by
  Stobaeus.
MODERN LAYER: Popular editions use 'The Virgin of the
  World', after Kingsford and Maitland's Theosophical
  translation of 1885, and market it as Isis' lost gospel,
  usually without mentioning the double meaning of kore.
UNSETTLED: Virgin or Pupil (of the eye) of the World: both
  readings are defended. Whether SH 23-27 come from one lost
  work or several.
VERDICT: A real 2nd-3rd century text known only in excerpts.
  'Lost gospel' is marketing.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/texts/stobaean-fragments/

CLAIMED AGE: an ancient Hermetic system
FIRST ATTESTED: Éliphas Lévi, 1850s; Golden Dawn from 1888
TRADITION: Nothing in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius
  or the Emerald Tablet knows cards: playing cards reached
  Europe around the 1370s. The ancient link is only the idea
  of correspondence.
MODERN LAYER: Éliphas Lévi mapped the twenty-two trumps onto
  the Hebrew alphabet in the 19th century, and the Golden
  Dawn systematised it from 1888. Waite-Smith (1909) and
  Crowley-Harris Thoth (1944) came from that workshop.
UNSETTLED: Nothing material.
VERDICT: Hermetic in the modern occult sense, not in the
  ancient one: the Hermetica predate European playing cards
  by over a thousand years.
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/tarot/

CLAIMED AGE: a saying of Socrates, or of Plato
FIRST ATTESTED: Plato, Phaedrus 274c-275b, c. 370-355 BCE
TRADITION: Socrates tells a story he says he heard: the god
  Theuth offers writing to King Thamus as a remedy for
  memory and wisdom, and Thamus answers that it 'will
  produce forgetfulness' and gives 'the appearance of
  wisdom, not true wisdom' (275a, tr. Fowler). Phaedrus at
  once suggests the story is made up (275b).
MODERN LAYER: Retellings quote the verdict as Socrates' own
  and put 'destroys' in place of 'will produce
  forgetfulness' [unverified which print is first]. Reading
  pharmakon as 'remedy and poison at once' comes from later
  interpretation, notably Jacques Derrida, 1968. Neil
  Postman opened Technopoly (1992) with 'The Judgment of
  Thamus' as a frame for criticism of technology.
UNSETTLED: Whether any Egyptian tale lies behind the story,
  and whether Thamus was right about writing. His verdict
  reaches us only because Plato wrote it down.
VERDICT: Not in those words and not in his own voice. Plato
  wrote it, Socrates tells it as a story he heard, and King
  Thamus says writing will produce forgetfulness: a remedy
  for reminding, not for memory. Socrates still lets writing
  serve as a reminder (276d).
FULL STORY: thehermeticum.com/ideas/myth-of-theuth/