INTRODUCTION
WILLIS BARNSTONEhe Greco-Roman way of gnosis is found in the hermetic tractates attrib-
uted to Hermes Trismegistos. These extraordinary writings, from the middle
of the first through the end of the third centuries, make up a collection known
as the Corpus Hermeticum or the Hermetica. They often deal with the occult
sciences—alchemy, astrology, magic, and spiritual information—and reflect a
hellenistic breakdown blurring science and religion.
These writings are known as "hermetic" because of their patron and au-
thor, Hermes Trismegistos, Hermes the thrice-greatest, the Greek incarnation
of his Egyptian counterpart, the god Thoth. The images of Thoth and Hermes
merge. Thoth was creator and orderer of the universe; god of magic, wisdom,
and knowledge; inventor of writing; scribe of the gods and author of all scrip-
tures; lord of the moon; and also giver of the first word, the logos. Both he and
Hermes were believed to be master magicians of great sophistication. Thoth
gave Isis knowledge how to realize the resurrection of her son Osiris, which
served as a model for the later myth of Jesus' resurrection. Hermes was the in-
tellectual, the patron of the arts, and the speaker in platonic dialogues that
voice his philosophy and spiritual flight.
The extant texts of Hermes Trismegistos are seventeen Greek treatises
of the Corpus Hermeticum, diverse fragments in the anthology of Ioannes
Stobaios, a Latin translation of Asklepios found in the works of Apuleius,
and texts from Codex VI of the Nag Hammadi library. They may point to a
single person as editor, collector, or author of some of the major works, in-
cluding Poimandres. More likely, however, these sacred works are pseudepi-
graphic, with no possible identifiable author. In the Hermetica, the dialogue
is lively, profound, even ordinary in its speech. But there is no scent of an
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