Western Esotericism: A Concise History

1 Ancient and Medieval Sources of the Modern Western Esoteric Currents

1 Ancient and Medieval Sources of the Modern Western Esoteric Currents I. The First Eleven Centuries 1. Alexandrian Hermetism Scattered works, partly lost, written in Greek in the region of Alexandria , constitute a heterogeneous mass known as the Hermetica. Composed over several centuries at the dawn of our era, these treatises deal with astrology, alchemy, the philosophy of Nature, cosmology, and theurgy. A collection dating from the second and third centuries stands out within this body of works, the Corpus Hermeticum (CH). It brings together seventeen short treatises. Also part of that body are the Asclepius and the “Fragments” attributed to Stobaeus. Their author or legendary inspirer is Hermes Trismegistus, the “thrice great,” whom many mythical and contradictory genealogies associate with the name Thoth and the Greek Hermes. He would have lived in the time of Moses, and the Egyptians would have been indebted to him for their laws and their knowledge. The Middle Ages did not know the CH, rediscovered at the Renaissance, but only the Asclepius (in its Latin translation). Despite the speculative aspect of the CH, we should not seek a unified doctrine in it. As we move from one treatise to the next, we find contradictions and discrepancies, because they are the work 25 26 ❖ W E S T E R N E S O T E R I C I S M of different authors. The most famous treatise is the Poimandres, or Pimander, always published as the first in the series of those comprising the CH. It develops a cosmogony and an anthropology on a mode of illumination and revelation. Among the prominent themes are those of the fall and the reintegration, and of memory in its relationships with a form of “magical” imagination. The CH itself does not treat alchemy strictly speaking. It seems that, unknown to Pharaonic Egypt, it developed as an extension of Hermeticist astrology, in particular starting from the notion of sympathy linking each planet to its corresponding metal (until about the second century b.c., alchemy remained a technique associated with the practice of goldsmithing). With Bolos of Mendes, in the second century b.c., it took a philosophical turn and sometimes presented itself in a light of revelation—as a “revealed” science. Zozimus of Panapolis (third or early fourth century), of whom twenty-eight treatises have been preserved, developed a visionary alchemy, followed in this by Synesius (fourth century), Olympiodorus (sixth century), and Stephanos of Alexandria (seventh century) in whom alchemy is also considered a spiritual exercise. 2. Other Non-Christian Currents To Alexandrian Hermetism, four other non-Christian currents are added, important in the genesis of modern esotericism. These currents are, to begin with, the neo-Pythagoreanism of the two first centuries of our era; it would never cease to reappear subsequently under different forms of arithmosophy. Then we have Stoicism, which extended over nearly two centuries, one aspect of which bears on the universe understood as an organic totality guaranteeing harmony between terrestrial and celestial matters. Third, we have Neoplatonism that, from Plotinus (205–270) to the fifth century, taught methods that permit gaining access to a supersensible reality, constructing or describing this reality in its structure. Porphyry (273–305), Iamblichus (On the Egyptian Mysteries, toward 300), and Proclus (412–486) appear among the most visible Neoplatonists in later esoteric literature. In the fifth or the sixth century, a cosmological text of a few pages was drawn up, Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Creation), a prefiguration of what would A N C I E N T A N D M E D I E VA L S O U R C E S ❖ 27 be the medieval Kabbalah proper (it contains notably the first-known introduction of the famous so-called Tree of the Sephiroth). Added to this was an intense intellectual activity in the Arab world, connected with the rapid expansion of Islam. The Arabic Epistles of the “Sincere Brethern” (ninth century) contain many speculations of a cosmological nature. Starting in this same century, Neoplatonic texts and the Hermetica were translated into Arabic. They gave rise to the appearance of original works (Theology of Aristotle, ninth century; Picatrix [tenth century], an encyclopedia of magical knowledge partly of Greek origin; Turba Philosophorum [Assembly of the Philosophers], a compilation of discourses on alchemy; “Book of the Secrets of Creation,” ca. 825, which contains the first version of the famous text of the Emerald Tablet). 3. In...