HERMETIC LITERATURE 501
the subject. With this transposition of a mythological scheme
into the inwardness of the person, with the translation of its ob-
jective stages into subjective phases of self-performable experi-
ence whose culmination has the form of ecstasis, gnostic myth
has passed into mysticism (Neoplatonic and monastic), and in
this new medium it lives on long after the disappearance of the
original mythological beliefs.^2The writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos, and of Plotinos and
Pseudo-Dionysios, have been a prime source for the occult as well as for or-
thodox religious mysticism in the Western world. Plotinos was a historical
Greek from Egypt; Dionysius a Christian, probably a fifth-century Syrian monk;
while Hermes Trismegistos has the aura of a mysterious visionary, a lunatic
in the eyes of skeptics, a demigod to the faithful. All these human and divine
attributes are intriguing and peculiar, since, in all probability, he was nobody
at all; that is, he was a resonant name to replace a major hellenistic religious
tradition.
The lessons in that tradition are universal. We are lone figures alienated on
the earth from others, from sectarian and secular groups, even from our souls.
Through gnosis, however, one's solitude becomes the springboard to a greater
companionship, for a vision of and union with a spirit, which, depending on
system and translation of terms, is god, or the one, or nothing or all.
- Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 165-66.