Wing II
The Figures
TL;DR
The figures of Hermeticism are gods, translators, magi, forgers and professors: the tradition is a relay of people. Start with the runner who never existed.
- Hermes TrismegistusThrice-great, never born: how a god became an author.
- ThothThe Egyptian root: scribe of the gods, weigher of hearts.
- Zosimos of PanopolisThe earliest alchemist we can name and date.
- Ramon Llull and pseudo-LlullThe Majorcan philosopher, and the alchemy others signed with his name.
- Arnau de VilanovaThe physician of kings and popes to whom alchemists credited their books.
- Nicolas FlamelA real Paris scribe who died in 1418; the alchemist came later.
- Marsilio FicinoThe translator who lit the Renaissance fuse.
- Pico della MirandolaThe undelivered manifesto.
- Lodovico LazzarelliThe purest Hermeticist you’ve never heard of.
- Cornelius AgrippaThe Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and where Hermes stands in them.
- Paracelsus and pseudo-ParacelsusAlchemy put to work for medicine, and the books written in his name.
- Giordano BrunoBurned, but not for what you think.
- John DeeThe queen’s magus.
- Isaac CasaubonThe Greek scholar who, in 1614, dated the Hermetica to the Roman empire.
- Count of Saint-GermainA flesh-and-blood adventurer, buried in 1784; the immortal is a legend.
- Éliphas LéviThe 19th-century magus behind occult tarot and the Baphomet.
- G.R.S. MeadThe Victorian who translated Hermes for the occult age.
- Balinas (pseudo-Apollonius)The name on the Emerald Tablet’s birth certificate.
- Frances YatesThe historian who took magic seriously, and overreached.
- Israel RegardieBroke the oath, printed the rituals, saved the system.
- William Walker AtkinsonThe New Thought author behind Yogi Ramacharaka, credited with The Kybalion.