The Hermetica

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The forty-two sacred books of wisdom allegedly written by Hermes Trismegistus or "thrice great Hermes." The books combine the mythological wisdom and attributes attributed to the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes.

The dating of the books is somewhere between the third century BC and the first century AD. Their influence has been tremendous on the development of Western occultism and magic. Neo-pagan witchcraft contains many rituals and much esoteric symbolism based upon Hermetic writings.

The authorship of the Hermetica is legendary. According to one legend Hermes Trismegistus, who was a grandson of Adam and a builder of the Egyptian pyramids, authored the books. But, more probably the books were written by several succeeding persons . Also, according to legend, the books were initially witten on papyrus.

A chronicler of pagan lore, Clement of Alexandria, stated thirty-six of the Hermetic books contained the entire Egyptian philosophy; four books on astrology; ten books called the Hieratic on law, ten books on sacred rites and observances, two on music, and the rest on writing, cosmography, geography, mathematics and measures and training of priests. Six remaining books concerned medicine and the body discussing diseases, instruments, the eyes and women.

Most of the Hermetic books along with others were lost during the burning of the royal libraries in Alexandria. The surviving books were secretly buried in the desert where they are presently located. A few initiates of the mystery schools, ancient secret cults, supposedly know their location.

What remains of the surviving Hermetic lore has been passed down through generation and published in many languages. Most important of all are three works: the most important and oldest is The Divine Pynander. It consists on 17 fragments all in one work. Within these fragments are many of the Hermetic concepts, including the was divine wisdom and the secrets of the universe were revealed to Hermes and the way in which Hermes established his ministry to spread this wisdom throughout the world. The Divine Pynander apparently was revised during the first centuries AD but lost none of its meaning due to incorrect translations.

Poimmandres or The Vision is the second book of The Divine Pynander and perhaps the most famous. It relates Hermes' mystical vision, cosmogony, and the secret sciences of the Egyptians as to culture and the spiritual development of the soul.

A third work is known as The Emerald Tablet, or the Emerald Table

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THE HERMETIC ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

There were several precursors to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn that combined Alchemy and Kabbalah in their work. Two of these groups from the early 1800's were particularly significant. The first was the 'Loge sur aufgehenden Morgenrothe,' founded in Frankfurt in 1807, which surfaced in France as the 'Aurore naissante' (both titles mean 'Rising Dawn'). The Duke of Sussex brought this society to England in 1817. The second was the 'Chabrath Zerek Aour Bokher,' (Society of the Shining Light), brought to England in 1810 from Hamburg, Germany by Johannes Friedrich Falk. The most influential of these groups was the early Rosicrucian Order, the 'Order of the Gold and Rose Cross.' British occultist Kenneth MacKenzie (born October 31, 1833) was initiated into a branch of the Order in France and brought to England a manuscript outlining the Order's nine grades of attainment. MacKenzie was an accomplished occult scholar, author of the Masonic Encyclopedia, knowledgeable in several ancient languages and in contact with many contemporary occultists -- including the French occultist Eliphas Levi, who gave MacKenzie notes on the magical use of the Tarot.

In 1866, Robert Little used MacKenzie's grade system to create the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRA) as an occult study group for Master Masons. Many of its members went on to direct involvement in practical magick in the Golden Dawn. A major influence for the creation of both of these societies was Frederick Hockley (1809-1885), the occult mentor of MacKenzie. Hockley inherited a large library of rare alchemical works from Sigismund Bacstrom, a Scot who founded a branch of the Societas Rosae Crucis in Scotland after being initiated into the group on the French Island of Mauritius. Originally founded as an ersatz Rosicrucian group by Philip Ziegler shortly after the appearance of the Fama, the Societas Rosae Crucis spawned many branches that eventually became genuine alchemical societies. Little had used MacKenzie's grade names, but he preferred using rituals from Masonic sources. His successor as Supreme Magus of the SRA, Dr. Robert Woodman, inherited MacKenzie's notes and passed them on to his friend, Dr. Wynn Wescott.

Wescott, who had inherited Hockley's alchemical library and obtained MacKenzie's cypher manuscript from his widow, collaborated with Woodman and ardent occultist Samuel Mathers in 1887 to use the notes as a basis for a new group dedicated to practical magick, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Mathers used his knowledge of the Kaballah and access to magickal manuscripts in the British Museum to flesh out MacKenzie's notes into full rituals. McKenzie had liked Mathers, and had given him notes he received from Levi on the magickal use of the Tarot, which Mathers included in the Golden Dawn rituals. MacKenzie founded his own private alchemical organization, The Society of Eight, to which he only admitted master occultists. The stated purpose of the Golden Dawn was to aid its members to test, purify and exalt the individual's spiritual nature so as to unify it with his or her Holy Guardian Angel.

Magick was in the air in England at the time; Edward Maitland and the noted occultist Anna Kingsford had founded the Hermetic Society a few years previous, in 1884, and in 1887, Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, had settled in London. When the Golden Dawn began taking away her members, Blavatsky started the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society to try to compete with the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn started with an Outer Order of five degrees: Neophyte 0=0, Zelator 1=10, Theoricus 2=9, Practicus 3=8 and Philosophus 4=7. Later, they added an Inner Order called the Order Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (Order of the Red Rose and Gold Cross), and this was the Order's repository of Rosicrucian knowledge. This circle had three degrees of initiation: Adeptus Minor 5=6, Adeptus Major 6=5 and Adeptus Exemptus 7=4. This inner circle focused on experimental ritual magick, while the outer circle focused on practical magick. In 1891, Wescott founded the Wescott Hermetic Library as an alchemical resource for Golden Dawn members. The Golden Dawn grew to five temples in the UK, and had initiated over 300 members after eight years of operation. The Golden Dawn established the Isis-Irania temple in London, with several temples in other countries, such as Dublin and Paris, where the members would meet to carry out their Work. Unlike other magickal orders of the time, the Golden Dawn admitted both men and women as members. The women quickly showed their abilities as several of them rose to the Inner Order and became involved in running some of the experimental Inner Order groups; the most prominent of these was the Sphere, which focused on astral projection. At one point, Florence Farr became the Chief of the Golden Dawn.

The membership of the Golden Dawn included a large number of professional people, especially physicians, chemists, ministers and writers, many of whom were Rosicrucians and/or Masons. Notable members included the poet W. B. Yeats, occult historian Arthur E. Waite, heiress Annie Horniman (who financed the building of theaters in England and Ireland), actress Florence Farr (Bernard Shaw's mistress; she later was head of a woman's college), Irish revolutionary and renowned beauty Maud Gonne (W.B. Yeat's companion, with whom he founded the Irish Mystery School, the Castle of Heroes), author Arthur Machen, Allan Bennett, Fiona Macleod, Moina Bergson (sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson; she married Mathers), author G.W. Russell and magician Aleister Crowley.

After the death of Dr. Woodman, things began to fall apart. Annie Horniman, who had financed much of the Golden Dawn activity, left after a falling out with Mathers. When Westcott resigned to protect his job as the London coroner, Mathers was left in control of the Golden Dawn. Crowley joined the group in 1898 and rose quickly to the position of Philosophus, the highest degree of the Order. Eventually, after Mathers went to Paris to open a temple, Crowley joined up with him and the two began to collaborate on adding a Third Order to the Golden Dawn. However, the myth originally coined about the founding of the Order was discovered to be fraudulent by the members of the London temple, and after many letters of accusations and recriminations between them and Mathers, they voted to expel him from the Order. Crowley and Mathers also had a falling out, and after Crowley broke into the London temple, he was also expelled from the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn continued in fragmented form, with various members claiming the leadership. The Paris Ahathoor Temple continued as a separate branch of the GD, while other branches were run in Ireland and New Zealand. After Mathers' death in 1918, his widow returned to London and opened another temple there (the Alpha and Omega), which she ran for nine years.

In 1903, Crowley took the material he had been working on with Mathers to create a Third Order of the Golden Dawn, and created his own magickal order, the Argentenum Astrum, or Order of the Silver Star. This included three degrees: Magister Templi 8=3, Magus 9=2 and Ipsissimus 10=1. Crowley considered himself the legitimate heir to the Golden Dawn, and Chief of its Third Order. In 1912, Crowley was initiated into the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a sex magick order, and in 1921 he succeeded Theodor Reuss as its Chief. Crowley crowned the line of major books published on magick, from Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy, 1531, to Francis Barrett's The Magus, 1801, to Eliphas Levi's Dogma and Ritual of Magic, 1855, with his own greatest work, Magick in Theory and Practice, 1929. This brilliant and monumental work stands without equal in the history of magick. In this work, Crowley synthesized magic and Yoga into a system designed to attain the Great Work of Alchemy. He used the spelling of magick with a 'k' to indicate that one can only work magick after one has conquered the dark forces (demons and negative karma) that one encounters on the Path of spiritual transformation. For Crowley, the 'k,' being the eleventh letter of the alphabet, represented the eleventh sphere of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the entrance to the world of the unbalanced forces of Chaos. Crowley greatly admired the French Occultist Eliphas Levi, and thought himself to be the re-incarnation of Levi. Like Levi, he made the Will the focus of his magick, and he combined all that he had learned to create his own system of attainment, called the Cult of the True Will. This was without a doubt the ultimate expression of the Alchemy and Magick of the Golden Dawn, although the continuing development of ideas and practices in the Typhonian OTO make it a contender. Unfortunately, the new revised Golden Dawn lacks the inspiration and initiatory knowledge of the original, and is more of an aborted stepchild than a legitimate successor.