498 HERMETIC LITERATURE
actual Philo or Plotinos behind the anonymous speeches, or even of a shad-
owy Pseudo-Dionysios (incorrectly connected with Dionysios the Areopagite),
all of whose works bespeak the presence of a single author. On the contrary,
these hermetic writings have the character of sacred scripture of unknown
authorship typically ascribed falsely to a patriarchal figure or god—Thoth
and Hermes—all of which confirms that the great name was chosen to help
the work find entry into a sacred canon. These nominal uncertainties, how-
ever, in no way diminish the texts. The Greek epics—the Bible of classical re-
ligion—are not dulled because the twentieth century has questioned their
traditional authorship. In the end, the author of major religious works has
historically blurred into a tradition, not a named person. Such has been the
fate of the sayings of Lao-tzu, Buddha, and probably Jesus in, for instance,
the Gospel of Thomas. Such anonymity has been the interesting fate of the
thrice-greatest Hermes.
THE HERMETIC MIX
Into the hermetic mix goes the rich influx of eastern religious elements, mys-
tery religions, and the neopythagorean and neoplatonic philosophies of late
hellenistic times. Much of the work is gnostic in character. The Corpus Her-
meticum coincides with classical Christian gnostic texts not in Yahweh and
Jesus, the central characters of the Bible; not in their transcendental tales or in
the myths or even in the diction. These schools meet in the common central-
ity of gnosis, which is knowledge of the soul. Through gnosis, revealed in the
self, one finds the divine. Through gnosis the spirit or soul ascends united to
the divine. The Alexandrian platonists—Philo, a Jew, and Plotinos, an Egypt-
ian pagan, both writing in Greek—contributed hugely to the gnostic pot, even
when, in the instance of Plotinos, he wrote against the gnostics. The similari-
ties of Plotinian mystical union with the soul's sun and the gnostic knowledge
of the divine spark inside, ascending to the sky of inner light, easily belie the
Egyptian philosopher's refutation of the gnostics. Even the metaphors "soul
sun" and "divine spark inside" are almost identical in rhetorical phrase and
philosophical meaning.
The jewel of the hermetic tradition is Poimandres. Poimandres means
"shepherd of man" in Greek, or possibly "knowledge of the sun god Ra" in
Coptic. Although the author (or authors) of Poimandres, probably composed
and compiled at the end of the second century CE, is aware of Judaism and