Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus) is the purported author of the Hermetic Corpus, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism.

Origin and identity
Hermes Trismegistus may be a representation of the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. In Hellenistic Egypt, the Greeks recognized the congruence of their god Hermes with Thoth. Subsequently, the two gods were worshiped as one, in what had been the Temple of Thoth in Khemnu, which the Greeks called Hermopolis.

Both Thoth and Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures.[citation needed] Thus, the Greek god of interpretive communication was combined with the Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of astrology and alchemy. In addition, both gods were psychopomps, guiding souls to the afterlife. The Egyptian priest and polymath, Imhotep, had been deified long after his death and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic period. The renowned scribe, Amenhotep, and a wise man named Teôs, were equally deified as gods of wisdom, science and medicine and, thus, placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth-Hermes during the Ptolemaic period.

A Mycenaean Greek reference was found on two Linear B clay tablets at Pylos to a deity or semi-deity called ti-ri-se-ro-e (Linear B: Tris Hḗrōs, "thrice or triple hero") and could be connected to the later epithet "thrice great", Trismegistos, applied to Hermes/Thoth. On the aforementioned PY Tn 316 tablet, as well as other Linear B tablets found in Pylos, Knossos and Thebes, there appears the name of the deity "Hermes" as e-ma-ha , but not in any apparent connection with the "Trisheros". This interpretation can not be disputed. Homer refers to Hermes as the god that led the souls of the dead to the underworld and in many cases he was present in the court of the underworld where Hades reigned. All these customs were transferred to Egypt by the Minoans and the Myceneans later on in the 14th c. B.C.

The majority of Greeks, and later Romans, did not accept Hermes Trismegistus in the place of Hermes. The two gods remained distinct from one another. Cicero noted several individuals referred to as "Hermes": "the fifth, who is worshiped by the people of Pheneus [in Arcadia], is said to have killed Argus, and for this reason to have fled to Egypt, and to have given the Egyptians their laws and alphabet: he it is whom the Egyptians call Theyt." In the same place, Cicero mentions a "fourth Mercury (Hermes) was the son of the Nile, whose name may not be spoken by the Egyptians." The most likely interpretation of this passage is as two variants on the same syncretism of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth (or sometimes other gods); the one viewed from the Greek-Arcadian perspective (the fifth, who went from Greece to Egypt), the other viewed from the Egyptian perspective (the fourth, where Hermes turns out "actually" to have been a "son of the Nile," i.e. a native god). Both these very good early references in Cicero (most ancient Trismegistus material is from early centuries AD) corroborate the view that Thrice-Great Hermes originated in Hellenistic Egypt through syncretism with Egyptian gods (the Hermetica refer most often to Thoth and Amun).


Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Siena
The Hermetic literature among the Egyptians is concerned with conjuring spirits and animating statues that inform the oldest texts, Hellenistic writings of Greco-Babylonian astrology and the newly developed practice of alchemy (Fowden 1993: pp65–68). In a parallel tradition, Hermetic philosophy rationalized and systematized religious cult practices and offered the adept a method of personal ascension from the constraints of physical being, which has led to confusion of Hermeticism with Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously.

Hermes Trismegistos - The Divine Pymander

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Hermes Trismegistos - The Divine Pymander

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