What if the cosmos was not merely a collection of dead, inanimate objects, but rather a conscious entity? What if you possessed the ability to alter your experience through the process of transforming your thoughts? These concepts reflect core beliefs of an ancient esoteric tradition that has been flowing through European history, like an underground stream.
This week, we revisit Egypt's sacred, mystical wilderness, not the desert caves where early Christian mystics meditated, but instead the birthplace of the philosophy and magic systems that inspired those mystics. We are looking for a mythical figure; an adept who mastered both the material and spiritual realms, Hermes Trismegistus, the “Triple-Great”, who wrote the Hermetic writings. Those writings have been read and studied by alchemists, magicians and philosophers throughout time because they contain a revolutionary idea: that the cosmos is thought and by controlling your thought, you will have control over the cosmos.
The Thrice-Greatest: A Fusion of Gods and Wisdom
Hermes Trismegistus is a compilation of many different cultures that have come together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. In Greek mythology, Hermes was the god of communication; in Egyptian mythology, Thoth was the god of wisdom, writing, and magic. The Ptolemaic period saw a blending of these two gods into one being who represented the ultimate union of divine communication and great wisdom. Hermes Trismegistus was known as 'Trismegistus' (Thrice-Greatest), a title taken from an epithet for Thoth, to represent that he is the master of all three worlds: the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. Renaissance philosophers considered Hermes Trismegistus to be the original philosopher, a contemporary of Moses, and the source of all philosophy. Although present-day scholarship indicates that the Hermetic texts were written much later than previously thought (in the early centuries CE), they were undoubtedly extremely influential. These texts are a combination of Greek philosophy (both Platonism and Stoicism) and Egyptian mysticism, and they have greatly influenced Western esotericism and inspired many great thinkers from Leonardo Da Vinci to Isaac Newton.
"Wisdom has no voice except for those who will understand." - The Kybalion
According to this well-known axiom from Hermeticism, such knowledge can only be given to those who are ready to go beyond the worldly things of this life and to understand the true mental nature of the universe.
