About
Corrections
A public list of the errors of fact corrected on this site, newest first: the date, the page, what it said, what it says now, and the source for the change. Nineteen entries so far, found by searching the site’s change history since 14 August 2026.
This page lists the errors of fact we have corrected on The Hermeticum, newest first. Each entry gives the date of the correction, the page, what it said, what it says now, and the source we corrected it against. Where we know how long the error stood, we say so; that date refers to the first language version that carried the error, and the Spanish pages were added only from 10 October 2026 on.
What goes on this list
A correction fixes a statement that was wrong or that its source does not support: a wrong date or number, a misquotation, a quotation that is not in the text, a view attributed to the wrong scholar, a conjecture stated as fact. A clarification rewords a sentence that could be read as a false claim; we list those too and mark them. Not listed: changes to spelling, style, links, page titles and layout; corrections of what the site said about its own sections and products (how many entries a section had, how many cards the deck had, whether the book was out); and rewordings that only made a correct statement more precise. A correction is made in every language version that carried the error, and each entry says which versions those were.
How this list was compiled
The site’s full change history is kept, though it is not public. When this page opened, we searched the change history from 14 August to 29 October 2026 for corrections of fact and listed those we found, comparing the old wording with the new. From now on every error of fact we confirm on a live page is corrected there as soon as the page can be changed, and added here. How the pages are written in the first place, and why errors like these get through, is described on the method page.
Report an error
Use the form on the method page. Name the page and the sentence and, if you can, the source. An entry goes on this list once we have checked the error against a source.
The corrections
| Date | Page | What it said | What it says now | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Oct 2026 since 29 Oct 2026 (XII since 30 Oct) | Corpus Hermeticum XIII, XII, IV EN, ES | John Everard’s English version of 1650 was made from Ficino’s Latin (on IV, given as Mead’s view). | Everard follows Patrizi’s text and his order of the treatises; Mead (1906) thought he used Ficino’s Latin. Everard’s seventeen books are CH I-XIV and three Stobaeus excerpts, which Ficino’s Latin does not contain. | Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 43 n. 3; G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. I (London, 1906), p. 12 n. 1. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong for about 90 minutes that day | Picatrix EN, PL, ES | A misleading summary of the translators’ count: “the aims that top its English translators’ tally are a superior’s favour, love, and healing or harm”. | The translators sort the aims of the rituals into fourteen categories. The largest is relations with other people, in which a superior’s favour comes before love; the second is healing or harming health. | D. Attrell and D. Porreca (trans.), Picatrix (Penn State University Press, 2019), introduction, pp. 17, 22-23. |
| 28 Oct 2026 since 14 Aug 2026 (date label since 20 Aug) | 98 pages, and the “Cite this” box on every page EN, PL, ES | Source lists named internal research files (“Research dossier: ….md”) that no reader could open. The date in the “Cite this” box was labelled “last checked”, although it was the date of the page’s last change, not of a check of its sources. | Only publications remain in the source lists. The date is labelled “last updated”. | Our own review: a listed source must be public, and a date label must say what the date is. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 25 Oct 2026 | Corpus Hermeticum EN, PL, ES | “Free and complete” also covered John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650), which lacks treatises XVI-XVIII. | Mead’s 1906 translation is described as complete, Everard’s as lacking CH XVI-XVIII, and a table of 14 translations was added. | G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906), vol. I, p. 12 n. 1; A. Tylak (2021), n. 73; the Wellcome Library copy of Everard. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 17 Aug 2026 | The Emerald Tablet, clause by clause EN, ES (the Polish page never had the sentence) | “Telesma is a Greek word left standing in the Latin”. | Telesma transliterates the Arabic tilasm, “talisman” (itself from the Greek telesma); the translator did not recognise the word. | J.-M. Mandosio, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 63 (2005), p. 140. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Theurgy /ideas/theurgy/EN, PL, ES | A quotation from Iamblichus with no reference: “it is not thought that links the theurgists to the gods”. | “it is not pure thought that unites theurgists to the gods”, with its place in the text: De mysteriis II.11 (p. 96 Parthey). | Iamblichus, De mysteriis, trans. E.C. Clarke, J.M. Dillon and J.P. Hershbell (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), II.11. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Theurgy /ideas/theurgy/EN, PL, ES | The page said De mysteriis “opens by invoking Hermes and claims to answer from ‘the books of Hermes’”, and the FAQ said Iamblichus “cited ‘the books of Hermes’ as authority”. That quotation is not in the text. | Three passages as they stand: Hermes as “the god who presides over rational discourse” (I.1), an answer given “by recourse to the ancient stelae of Hermes” (I.2), and writings “which circulate under the name of Hermes” (VIII.4). The FAQ was corrected the same way. | The same translation, I.1, I.2, VIII.4; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Iamblichus” (Chiaradonna and Lecerf, revised 2023), section 2.3. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Theurgy /ideas/theurgy/EN, PL, ES | “Bull argues Hermetic ritual and Iamblichus’ defence both grew from Egyptian priestly milieus”: a view Bull does not put forward. | Bull (2018) cautiously revives Reitzenstein’s 1904 hypothesis of a small community led by Egyptian priests. The comparison with De mysteriis is marked as ours, with Dosoo’s review and Festugière’s objection. | C.H. Bull, The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus (Brill, 2018); K. Dosoo, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.02.23. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug and 25 Oct 2026 | Theurgy /ideas/theurgy/EN, PL, ES | Two interpretations stated as fact: that the word was coined against theologia, and that “a century later Proclus ranked theurgy above philosophy”. | The etymology is given as Dodds’s conjecture, following Bidez (“so far as we know”, “probably”). Proclus is quoted instead: in the fifth century he called theurgy “a power higher than all human wisdom”. | E.R. Dodds, Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947), reprinted 1951, pp. 283-284; Proclus, Théologie platonicienne, ed. Saffrey and Westerink, I.25, 113.6-10. |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 (one phrase since 25 Oct) | Prisca theologia /ideas/prisca-theologia/EN, PL, ES | “Ficino’s chain: Zoroaster, Hermes…” presented as a single sequence of Ficino’s, and “Ficino gave the chain in slightly different orders”. | The chain is tied to the text that gives it, Platonic Theology XVII.1, with a note that the preface to the Pimander does not name Zoroaster at all, and a table of the sequence text by text. Not yet corrected: the page’s FAQ still gives the sequence as “Ficino’s chain” without naming the text; that answer will be corrected at the page’s next update. | Ficino, Platonic Theology XVII.1 (ed. Allen and Hankins, 2006); the Argumentum to the Pimander (Venice, 1481); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Marsilio Ficino” (2024). |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | G.R.S. Mead /figures/grs-mead/EN, PL, ES | The Nock and Festugière critical edition dated “1946-54”. | “1945-1954”. | H.J. Rose’s reviews in The Classical Review 61 (1947), of volumes I-II (1945), and n.s. 5 (1955), of volumes III-IV (1954). |
| 28 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Balinas /figures/balinas/EN, PL, ES | In the vault beneath the statue of Hermes, “a corpse seated on a golden throne” (also in the FAQ). | “an old man seated on a golden throne”. | P. Kraus, Jâbir et la science grecque (1942), p. 303; M. Karimi Zanjani Asl, Al-Qantara 37 (2016), p. 444. |
| 27 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Pico della Mirandola /figures/pico-della-mirandola/EN, PL, ES | The Oration “opens by quoting the Hermetic Asclepius”; “Pico’s first authority is the Asclepius”. | Pico cites Abdala the Saracen first, then the Asclepius. Not yet corrected: the link at the foot of the page still introduces the Asclepius as “the text he quoted first”; it will be corrected at the page’s next update. | The opening words of the Oratio, “Legi, Patres colendissimi, in Arabum monumentis, interrogatum Abdalam Sarracenum”, with the Asclepius quoted after Abdala; the edition listed on the page is Borghesi, Papio and Riva (2012). |
| 27 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Pico della Mirandola /figures/pico-della-mirandola/EN, PL, ES | Two overstatements: a “specialist consensus” resting on one monograph, and Pico as “the first Christian thinker to take Jewish Kabbalah seriously as evidence for Christian doctrine”. | The reading is credited to Brian Copenhaver’s Magic and the Dignity of Man (2019); the Kabbalah claim follows the SEP (“the first Christian who described Kabbalah in detail or treated it as worthwhile”). | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola” (Copenhaver, revised 2024); S.A. Farmer (1998). |
| 19 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | Path, step 4: Reading the Poimandres EN, PL | “~27 short sections” and, in the summary, “fifteen minutes”, against “20-30 minutes to read” in the facts. | “32 short sections (CH I.1-32); 20-30 minutes to read”. | The division of CH I into 32 sections in Nock and Festugière (1945), Copenhaver (1992), Mead (1906) and Reitzenstein (1904). |
| 19 Oct 2026 since 14 Aug 2026 | Hermes Trismegistus /figures/hermes-trismegistus/EN, PL | Clarification. “Later he became a prophet in Islam and the oldest sage of the Renaissance” read as if he were a sage of the Renaissance. | “Islam later took him for the prophet Idris and the Renaissance for a sage as old as Moses, until 1614.” | The body of the same page. |
| 17 Oct 2026 wrong since 14 Aug 2026 | The Texts EN, PL | “Nine bodies of text, three languages, seventeen centuries”, on a page that lists texts in nine languages. | “nine bodies of writing across seventeen centuries”, with no count of languages. | The page’s own list. |
| 16 Oct 2026 wrong since 15 Oct 2026 | Hermetic meditation EN (the Polish and Spanish pages were written after the fix) | A prayer “in the open air facing the light (south at sunset, east at sunrise)”. Facing south at sunset is not facing the light. The same in the FAQ. | “a prayer said in the open air (facing south at sunset, east at sunrise)”; the FAQ cites CH XIII.16 directly. | Corpus Hermeticum XIII.16 (Copenhaver, Hermetica, 1992). |
| 10 Oct 2026 wrong since 5 Sep 2026; in structured data until 16 Oct | Pico della Mirandola (search description) /figures/pico-della-mirandola/EN, PL | “Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): the first printed book banned by the Church”. The page itself did not say this and gave no source for it. | “Innocent VIII condemned seven, then the whole collection.” | The page’s own account (13 theses challenged, 7 condemned, then the whole collection), following Farmer (1998) and the SEP. |
Fair questions
Are the Polish and Spanish pages corrected too?
Yes. A correction is made in every language version that carried the error, and each entry says which versions those were.
Why does the list start in October?
The earliest correction of a fact about the tradition that we can document is dated 10 October 2026: the search description of the Pico della Mirandola page. The earlier fixes we found, from 14 August on, either corrected what the site said about its own sections and products, such as how many entries a section had or how many cards the deck had, or made correct statements more precise; neither kind is listed. Several errors corrected since October had stood since August; each entry says since when.
Sources & further reading
- The site’s change history, 14 August to 29 October 2026, compared entry by entry; each entry names the source of its correction.