Wing I
The Texts
Nine bodies of text, three languages, seventeen centuries. Start with the Corpus Hermeticum — or with the one “hermetic” bestseller that isn’t ancient at all.
Nine bodies of text, three continents and seventeen centuries — and only some of it is what it says it is. This page is the map: what survives, in which language, from when, and what was invented later. Each card is a door to the full page.
Ancient
Written in Greek Egypt, first to fourth century
Corpus Hermeticum
c. 100–300 CE · Greek, complete
17 treatises; reached Europe via Byzantium, 1460
Asclepius
c. 2nd–3rd c. · Greek lost, survives in Latin
Fragments also in Coptic
Definitions of Hermes
Probably 1st c. · Greek mostly lost, survives in Armenian
Six manuscripts, 13th–16th c. · English only since 1999
Stobaean Fragments
2nd–3rd c., preserved 5th c. · Greek
~30 excerpts surviving nowhere else, incl. Korē Kosmou
Nag Hammadi Hermetica
Greek c. 2nd–3rd c., copies Coptic 4th c.
Buried until December 1945 · Codex VI
Transmitted
Written or carried later — the tradition receiving itself
The Emerald Tablet
First attested Arabic, 8th–9th c. · no Greek original
Latin Europe from the 12th c.
Picatrix
al-Andalus, c. 959 · Arabic → Castilian 1256 → Latin
Upstream of Ficino and Agrippa
Musaeum Hermeticum
Frankfurt 1625, canonical 1678 · Latin
Alchemy, not ancient Hermetica
Modern
Written recently, sold as ancient
The 72 Names
Jewish, medieval · Hebrew, derived from Exodus 14:19–21
Absorbed into Hermetic reading in the Renaissance — not a Hermetic text
Reality Transurfing
Russia, 2003 · Russian, in print
Not Hermetic and does not claim to be — the newest layer on the same shelf
The Kybalion
Chicago, 1908 · English
New Thought in Hermetic dress · the most read of them all
Ancient — composed in antiquity, whatever language it now survives in. Transmitted — genuinely old tradition, later text. Modern — recent work presented as ancient.
Where to start
With the Poimandres, the vision that opens the Corpus — or, if you have met the tradition through a bookshop, with the Kybalion and the question of why the most popular hermetic book is the youngest one on this page.