Start here
You’ve heard the name.
Here’s the real story.
Hermeticism is a family of ancient Greek-Egyptian texts and the two thousand years of thinking they set in motion. Most of what the internet says about it is wrong in interesting ways. This site walks you from zero to the sources — one short step at a time.
Somewhere between a TikTok about “manifestation” and a PhD seminar in Amsterdam sits one of the strangest bodies of writing in Western history: dialogues composed in Roman Egypt under the name of Hermes Trismegistus — a figure who never existed, and whose books changed the world anyway.
They helped ignite the Renaissance. They shaped how early scientists imagined nature. They gave modern occultism most of its furniture, and pop culture its favourite phrase: as above, so below — which, we should warn you now, doesn’t come from where you think.
How this site works
One rule: serious history, real sources, no fortune-telling. Every claim carries a citation. Where scholars disagree, we name both sides. Where a beloved story is a myth, we say so — and tell you the true story, which is usually better.
The spine of the site is The Path: twelve short steps, each readable in about fifteen minutes, from “what even is this?” to reading the ancient texts yourself in good translations. Around it grow three wings: the Texts, the Figures and the Ideas.
Where to begin
Begin at step one. It answers the question everyone asks and almost no one answers honestly.
Fair questions
Do I need any background?
None. The Path assumes zero prior knowledge — only curiosity.
Is this a belief system I'm joining?
No. This is the history of ideas, read the way a good university seminar would read it — no initiations, no memberships.
How long does the path take?
Twelve steps, about fifteen minutes each. New steps are released with every issue of our letter, As Above.
Begin the path → Step 01: What is Hermeticism?