The Quest For Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World

This is the sixth book I have read written by Gary Lachman and I believe it is his best. It is well researched with a good balance between a thorough background on the history of Hermetic teaching and explaining the key concepts behind Hermetic thought. This book is, of course, an account of the teachings of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. Whether the "three times great" Hermes/Thoth was an actual person or not, we do not know, but we do know that the name is associated with the Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts called the "Hermitica." Central to the teachings of the Hermetic texts is the notion that humankind is both mortal and immortal, one is both wo/man and God at the same time. Many of the people associated with Hermetic teachings and other so-called "Occult" ideas are discussed by Lachman, including Plato, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Paracelsus and Robert Fludd. Anyone who knows the history of the Occult, will know these names only too well. Although the history of Hermetic teaching has been covered by many books that give a historical account of the Occult, Lachman's book is probably one of the best in that it gives just the right amount of detail with regards to the people, places and ideas associated with Hermetic teaching without overdoing it in detail. Lachman also intersperses the account with more contemporary Hermetic formulations developed by thinkers he has discussed in some of his previous books, such as Jean Gebser, Andreas Mavromatis and Colin Wilson. Perhaps the most central idea associated with Hermes Trismegistus is the famous saying "as above so below." This saying, can be translated as suggesting that the universe (macrocosm) around us is also reflected within us (microcosm): each and every individual is also the universe. Amazingly, such an idea is reflected in some contemporary views of science that see both the universe and the human brain as being like a kind of hologram where the whole is stored in the constituent parts and the parts stored in the whole. Did the ancient Egyptian/Greek scholars who created the Hermetic texts know via some kind of intuition or maybe even direct mystical experience (gnosis) that the universe and the Mind are of one holographic order? Interestingly, Lachman notes that although science and mathematics has its roots in Hermetic scholarship and teaching, in the last three centuries, science quickly came to see Hermetic teachings as magical non-sense and distanced itself from Hermetics. Yet the striving of science to understand the stars and planets, art and music and how the Mind and Nature work, all have their roots in Hermetic teaching. Lachman tells us in this book, that not only science, but also humanist post-modernism and christian religion have disowned Hermeticism and thus created a disconnect between the material or physical world and the human spirit. However, he also suggests, siting the work of Jean Gebser, that human-kind may reconnect its ego with the material universe so that Mind, Nature and Universe are, as the Hermes Trismegistus suggests, once again known as All One.

During the Renaissance, there was a sage whose work was so legendary that an elderly Cosimo de Medici, eager to read the works of Plato before he died, took his loyal and legendary translator Marsilio Ficino off the job in order to translate the greater man's work. A sage who would cause a stir so great it would trigger a philosophical revolution, change the Vatican's own doctrines, and set off bursts of secretive intellectual and mystical activity to this day. Yet you hardly find this sage mentioned in the syllibi of philosophy or theology classes, or even popular histories. Outside of esotericists and New Agers, his work and impact is virtually forgotten.Who was Hermes Trismegistus? WAS there a Hermes Trismegistus?Gary Lachman- author of many esoteric histories and biographies (the best of which is his  The Secret Teachers of the Western World  - his most comprehensive history to date)- tries to unravel the strange case of the forgotten ur-philosopher. After a great revival of Hermetic thinking in the 16th century, ultimately culminating in Giordano Bruno's quixotic attempt at reviving the Greco-Egyptian mystery tradition, Hermes suffered a literary blow in popularity when Isaac Casaubon's textual analysis declared the supposedly ancient works of the Corpus Hermeticum to be a pious fraud cooked up in late antiquity by Christian Neoplatonists trying to convert pagans. Given the textual style was that of biblical greek, Casaubon didn't believe it was possible that the Hermetic works could date from before the 1st century BC- and were more likely conceived in Alexandria around 200-300 AD. The Hermetica fell into centuries of disrepute, until 20th century scholars, like Garth Fowden, whose  The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind  took a new textual analysis to the works and determined that they more than likely were a product of an indigenous Egyptian tradition encountering the classical Hellenic mind. Further work by contrarian Egyptologists inspired by esotericist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz further corroborated Fowden's thesis- indicating that the doctrines found inscribed in ancient Egyptian texts bore a close enough family resemblance to indicate a continuity of tradition between the flourishing of the Kingdom of Egypt and the philosophies that emerged from Alexandria post-hellenization.Lachman is an able guide through not only the history of the Hermetica and the hermetic idea, from ancient Egypt to today, but to the core philosophical ideas themselves. While most of Lachman's work focuses more on the personalities around certain ideas than upon the ideas themselves, The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus shows us more of his speculative side, as he weaves a narrative of how altered consciousness and psychedelic experience has to inform any proper understanding of the Hermetic works (probably informed by the work of Jeremy Naydler, such as  Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt ). The Gnostics, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Isaac Newton, Freemasonry, Theosophy, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Schwaller de Lubicz, Carl Jung, Julius Evola, Jean Gebser, and even Valentin Tomberg all come into the narrative as Lachman takes one on a tour of the whole range of what Hermetic thinking entails- a comprehensively cosmopolitan, mystical worldview, not unlike the Integral Philosophy of Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo, only from a decidedly and uniquely Western point of view.Is the Hermetic quest for you? If you'd like to answer that for yourself, this book is as good an introduction to the full sweep of Hermeticism and what it means for the western mind as you'll find, and it ranks among one of the best places to start with Lachman as well, if you're not quite ready to delve into as substantial a tome as The Secret Teachers. Highly recommended.

Surely the quest of man is to seek his reason for existence. What kind of cruel joke would it be for us to be simple animals and die. To be gifted consciousness and then simply lose it to rot in the ground like a dead tomato.Hermes is a possible way to explain our dreams our consciousness and our possible immortal being connected with the nous or all are in one.

Combining good history, this book is also an enjoyable read. Being familiar with the text and it's history did not detract one jot from enjoying and learning from this text.

Am thoroughly enjoying Lachman's work & evolutionary development of consciousness. Interesting, informative, & all together, a major culminated writings. All the books I've read so far seem to have followed on, & been a development of the last piece of work, & that has kept me gripping the edge of my seat, curious as to what will come next.This book has given me a thorough understanding of hermeticism & its journey through the ages.Again, thank you for the brilliant work you are producing, & all the research you must be doing to be able to compile so much detailed information. Brilliant stuff!

This is a must read for any seeker. It is a painstaking read at times ... but as with all Lachman books ive read do far - the persistence pays off. At times I was completely in touch with the realms of wonder and mystery a place where one encounters the one/Hermes.

having read the Corpus a number times, it has been a joy to read this perspective from Gary Lachman on the same and realise how influential it has been on so many enlightened people for centuries, and continues to do so today.