Sirr Al-khalīqa

The ''Hermetica'' are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" ''Hermetica''.

The category of "technical" ''Hermetica'' encompasses a broad variety of treatises dealing with astrology, medicine and pharmacology, alchemy, and magic, the oldest of which were written in Greek and may go back as far as the second or third century BCE. Many of the texts belonging in this category were later translated into Arabic and Latin, often being extensively revised and expanded throughout the centuries. Some of them were also originally written in Arabic, though in many cases their status as an original work or translation remains unclear. These Arabic and Latin Hermetic texts were widely copied throughout the Middle Ages (the most famous example being the ''Emerald Tablet'').

The "religio-philosophical" ''Hermetica'' are a relatively coherent set of religio-philosophical treatises which were mostly written in the second and third centuries CE, though the very earliest one of them, the ''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius'', may go back to the first century CE. They are chiefly focused on the relationship between human beings, the cosmos, and God (thus combining philosophical anthropology, cosmology, and theology). Many of them are also moral exhortations calling for a way of life (the "way of Hermes") leading to spiritual rebirth, and eventually to divinization in the form of a heavenly ascent. The treatises in this category were probably all originally written in Greek, even though some of them only survive in Coptic, Armenian, or Latin translations. During the Middle Ages, most of them were only accessible to Byzantine scholars (an important exception being the ''Asclepius'', which mainly survives in an early Latin translation), until a compilation of Greek Hermetic treatises known as the ''Corpus Hermeticum'' was translated into Latin by the Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500).

Though strongly influenced by Greek and Hellenistic philosophy (especially Platonism and Stoicism), and to a lesser extent also by Jewish ideas, many of the early Greek Hermetic treatises also contain distinctly Egyptian elements, most notably in their affinity with the traditional Egyptian wisdom literature. This used to be the subject of much doubt, but it is now generally admitted that the ''Hermetica'' as such did in fact originate in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, even if most of the later Hermetic writings (which continued to be composed at least until the twelfth century CE) did not. It may even be the case that the great bulk of the early Greek ''Hermetica'' were written by Hellenizing members of the Egyptian priestly class, whose intellectual activity was centred in the environment of the Egyptian temples.

Technical ''Hermetica''

Greek

Greek astrological ''Hermetica''

The oldest known texts associated with Hermes Trismegistus are a number of astrological works which may go back as far as the second or third century BCE:

* The ''Salmeschoiniaka'' (the "Wandering of the Influences"), perhaps composed in Alexandria in the second or third century BCE, deals with the configurations of the stars.
* The Nechepsos-Petosiris texts are a number of anonymous works dating to the second century BCE which were falsely attributed to the Egyptian king Necho II (610–595 BCE, referred to in the texts as Nechepsos) and his legendary priest Petese (referred to in the texts as Petosiris). These texts, only fragments of which survive, ascribe the astrological knowledge they convey to the authority of Hermes.
* The ''Art of Eudoxus'' is a treatise on astronomy which was preserved in a second-century BCE papyrus and which mentions Hermes as an authority.
* The ''Liber Hermetis'' ("The Book of Hermes") is an important work on astrology laying out the names of the decans (a distinctly Egyptian system that divided the zodiac into 36 parts). It survives only in an early (fourth- or fifth-century CE) Latin translation, but contains elements that may be traced to the second or third century BCE.

Other early Greek Hermetic works on astrology include:

* The ''Brontologion'': a treatise on the various effects of thunder in different months.
* The ''Peri seismōn'' ("On earthquakes"): a treatise on the relation between earthquakes and astrological signs.
* The ''Book of Asclepius Called Myriogenesis'': a treatise on astrological medicine.
* The ''Holy Book of Hermes to Asclepius'': a treatise on astrological botany describing the relationships between various plants and the decans.
* The ''Fifteen Stars, Stones, Plants and Images'': a treatise on astrological mineralogy and botany dealing with the effect of the stars on the pharmaceutical powers of minerals and plants.

Greek alchemical ''Hermetica''

Starting in the first century BCE, a number of Greek works on alchemy were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. These are now all lost, except for a number of fragments (one of the larger of which is called ''Isis the Prophetess to Her Son Horus'') preserved in later alchemical works dating to the second and third centuries CE. Especially important is the use made of them by the Egyptian alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis (fl. c. 300 CE), who also seems to have been familiar with the religio-philosophical ''Hermetica''. Hermes' name would become more firmly associated with alchemy in the medieval Arabic sources (see below), of which it is not yet clear to what extent they drew on the earlier Greek literature.

Greek magical ''Hermetica''

* The ''Cyranides'' is a work on healing magic which treats of the magical powers and healing properties of minerals, plants and animals, for which it regularly cites Hermes as a source. It was independently translated both into Arabic and Latin.
* The ''Greek Magical Papyri'' are a modern collection of papyri dating from various periods between the second century BCE and the fifth century CE. They mainly contain practical instructions for spells and incantations, some of which cite Hermes as a source.

Arabic

Many Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus still exist today, although the great majority of them have not yet been published and studied by modern scholars. For this reason too, it is often not clear to what extent they drew on earlier Greek sources. The following is a very incomplete list of known works:

Arabic astrological ''Hermetica''

Some of the earliest attested Arabic Hermetic texts deal with astrology:

* The ''Qaḍīb al-dhahab'' ("The Rod of Gold"), or the ''Kitāb Hirmis fī taḥwīl sinī l-mawālīd'' ("The Book of Hermes on the Revolutions of the Years of the Nativities") is an Arabic astrological work translated from Middle Persian by ʿUmar ibn al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī (. 816 CE), who was the court astrologer of the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur ().
* The ''Carmen astrologicum'' is an astrological work originally written by the first-century CE astrologer Dorotheus of Sidon. It is lost in Greek, but survives in an Arabic translation, which was in turn based upon a Middle Persian intermediary. It was also translated by ʿUmar ibn al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī. The extant Arabic text refers to two Hermeses, and cites a book of Hermes on the positions of the planets.
* The ''Kitāb Asrār an-nujūm'' ("The Book of the Secrets of the Stars", later translated into Latin as the ''Liber de stellis beibeniis'') is a treatise describing the influences of the brightest fixed stars on personal characteristics. The Arabic work was translated from a Middle Persian version which can be shown to date from before c. 500 CE, and which shared a source with the Byzantine astrologer Rhetorius (fl. c. 600 CE).
* The ''Kitāb ʿArḍ Miftāḥ al-Nujūm'' ("The Book of the Exposition of the Key to the Stars") is an Arabic astrological treatise attributed to Hermes which claims to have been translated in 743 CE, but which in reality was probably translated in the circles of Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (787–886 CE).

Arabic alchemical ''Hermetica''

* The ''Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa'' ("The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature"), also known as the ''Kitāb al-ʿilal'' ("The Book of Causes") is an encyclopedic work on natural philosophy falsely attributed to Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15–100, Arabic: Balīnūs or Balīnās). It was compiled in Arabic in the late eighth or early ninth century, but was most likely based on (much) older Greek and/or Syriac sources. It contains the earliest known version of the sulfur-mercury theory of metals (according to which metals are composed of various proportions of sulfur and mercury), which lay at the foundation of all theories of metallic composition until the eighteenth century. In the frame story of the ''Sirr al-khalīqa'', Balīnūs tells his readers that he discovered the text in a vault below a statue of Hermes in Tyana, and that, inside the vault, an old corpse on a golden throne held the ''Emerald Tablet''. It was translated into Latin by Hugo of Santalla in the twelfth century.
* The ''Emerald Tablet'': a compact and cryptic text first attested in the ''Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa'' (late eighth or early ninth century). There are several other, slightly different Arabic versions (among them one quoted in a text attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, and one found in the longer version of the pseudo-Aristotelian '' Sirr al-asrār'' or "Secret of Secrets"), but these are all likely to date from a later period. It was translated several times into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and was widely regarded by medieval and early modern alchemists as the foundation of their art. Isaac Newton (1642–1726) still used it as a source of inspiration.
* The ''Risālat al-Sirr'' ("The Epistle of the Secret") is an Arabic alchemical treatise probably composed in tenth-century Fatimid Egypt.
* The ''Risālat al-Falakiyya al-kubrā'' ("The Great Treatise of the Spheres") is an Arabic alchemical treatise composed in the tenth or eleventh century. Perhaps inspired by the ''Emerald Tablet'', it describes the author's (Hermes') attainment of secret knowledge through his ascension of the seven heavenly spheres.
* The ''Kitāb dhakhīrat al-Iskandar'' ("The Treasure of Alexander"): a work dealing with alchemy, talismans, and specific properties, which cites Hermes as its ultimate source.
* The ''Liber Hermetis de alchemia'' ("The Book of Hermes on Alchemy"), also known as the ''Liber dabessi'' or the ''Liber rebis'', is a collection of commentaries on the ''Emerald Tablet''. Translated from the Arabic, it is only extant in Latin. It is this Latin translation of the ''Emerald Tablet'' on which all later versions are based.

Arabic magical ''Hermetica''

* The ''Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs'', ''Kitāb al-Isṭamāṭīs'', ''Kitāb al-Usṭuwwaṭās'', ''Kitāb al-Madīṭīs'', and ''Kitāb al-Hādīṭūs'', also known as the ''Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica'', are a number of closely related and partially overlapping texts. Purporting to be written by Aristotle in order to teach his pupil Alexander the Great the secrets of Hermes, they deal with the names and powers of the planetary spirits, the making of talismans, and the concept of a personal "perfect nature". Perhaps composed in the ninth century, extracts from them appear in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's ''Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa'' ("The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature", c. 750–850, see above), in the '' Epistles of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ'' ("The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity", c. 900–1000), in Maslama al-Qurṭubī's '' Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm'' ("The Aim of the Sage", 960, better known under its Latin title as ''Picatrix''), and in the works of the Persian philosopher Suhrawardī (1154–1191). One of them was translated into Latin in the twelfth or thirteenth century under the title ''Liber Antimaquis''.
* The ''Cyranides'' is a Greek work on healing magic which treats of the magical powers and healing properties of minerals, plants and animals, for which it regularly cites Hermes as a source. It was translated into Arabic in the ninth century, but in this translation all references to Hermes seem to have disappeared.
* The ''Sharḥ Kitāb Hirmis al-Ḥakīm fī Maʿrifat Ṣifat al-Ḥayyāt wa-l-ʿAqārib'' ("The Commentary on the Book of the Wise Hermes on the Properties of Snakes and Scorpions"): a treatise on the venom of snakes an other poisonous animals.
* The ''Dāʾirat al-aḥruf al-abjadiyya'' (The Circle of Letters of the Alphabet"): a practical treatise on letter magic attributed to Hermes.

Religio-philosophical ''Hermetica''

Contrary to the "technical" ''Hermetica'', whose writing began in the early Hellenistic period and continued deep into the Middle Ages, the extant religio-philosophical ''Hermetica'' were for the most part produced in a relatively short period of time, i.e., between c. 100 and c. 300 CE. They regularly take the form of dialogues between Hermes Trismegistus and his disciples Tat, Asclepius, and Ammon, and mostly deal with philosophical anthropology, cosmology, and theology. The following is a list of all known works in this category:

''Corpus Hermeticum''

Undoubtedly the most famous among the religio-philosophical ''Hermetica'' is the ''Corpus Hermeticum'', a selection of seventeen Greek treatises that was first compiled by Byzantine editors, and translated into Latin in the fifteenth century by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500). Ficino translated the first fourteen treatises (I–XIV), while Lazzarelli translated the remaining three (XVI–XVIII). The name of this collection is somewhat misleading, since it contains only a very small selection of extant Hermetic texts, whereas the word corpus is usually reserved for the entire body of extant writings related to some author or subject. Its individual treatises were quoted by many early authors from the second and third centuries on, but the compilation as such is first attested only in the writings of the Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellus (c. 1017–1078).

The most well known among the treatises contained in this compilation is its opening treatise, which is called the ''Poimandres''. However, at least until the nineteenth century, this name (under various forms, such as ''Pimander'' or ''Pymander'') was also commonly used to designate the compilation as a whole.

In 1462 Ficino was working on a Latin translation of the collected works of Plato for his patron Cosimo de' Medici, but when a manuscript of the ''Corpus Hermeticum'' became available, he immediately interrupted his work on Plato in order to start translating the works of Hermes, which were thought to be much more ancient, and therefore much more authoritative, than those of Plato. This translation provided a seminal impetus in the development of Renaissance thought and culture, having a profound impact on the flourishing of alchemy and magic in early modern Europe, as well as influencing philosophers such as Ficino's student Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), Robert Fludd (1574–1637), and many others.

''Asclepius''

The ''Asclepius'' (also known as the ''Perfect Discourse'', from Greek ''Logos teleios'') mainly survives in a Latin translation, though some Greek and Coptic fragments are also extant. It is the only Hermetic treatise belonging to the religio-philosophical category that remained available to Latin readers throughout the Middle Ages.

''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius''

The ''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius'' is a collection of aphorisms that has mainly been preserved in a sixth-century CE Armenian translation, but which likely goes back to the first century CE. The main argument for this early dating is the fact that some of its aphorisms are cited in multiple independent Greek Hermetic works. According to Jean-Pierre Mahé, these aphorisms contain the core of the teachings which are found in the later Greek religio-philosophical ''Hermetica''.

Stobaean excerpts

In fifth-century Macedonia, Joannes Stobaeus or "John of Stobi" compiled a huge ''Anthology'' of Greek poetical, rhetorical, historical, and philosophical literature in order to educate his son Septimius. Though epitomized by later Byzantine copyists, it still remains a treasure trove of information about ancient philosophy and literature which would otherwise be entirely lost. Among the excerpts of ancient philosophical literature preserved by Stobaeus are also a significant number of discourses and dialogues attributed to Hermes. While mostly related to the religio-philosophical treatises as found in the ''Corpus Hermeticum'', they also contain some material that is of a rather more "technical" nature. Perhaps the most famous of the Stobaean excerpts, and also the longest, is the ''Korē kosmou'' ("The Daughter of the Cosmos" or "The Pupil f the eyeof the Cosmos").

The Hermetic excerpts appear in the following chapters of Stobaeus's ''Anthology'' (which is organized by subject matter, and contains in the same chapters many excerpts and doctrines attributed to others):

* In the chapter "God is Craftsman of Existing Things and Pervades the Universe with his Design of Providence": 1.1.29a
* In the chapter "On Justice, Punisher of Errors, Arrayed alongside God to Oversee Human Deeds on Earth": 1.3.52
* In the chapter "On (Divine) Necessity, by which things Planned by God Inevitably Occur": 1.4.7b, 1.4.8
* In the chapter "On Fate and the Good Ordering of Events": 1.5.14, 1.5.16, 1.5.20
* In the chapter "On the Nature and Divisions of Time, and the Extent of its Causation": 1.8.41
* In the chapter "On Matter": 1.11.2
* In the chapter "On the Cosmos: Whether it Has a Soul, is Administered by Providence, the Location of its Ruling Faculty, and its Source of Nourishment": 1.21.9
* In the chapter "On Nature and its Derived Causes": 1.41.1, 1.41.4, 1.41.6, 1.41.7, 1.41.8, 1.41.11
* In the chapter "How Resemblances from Parents and Ancestors Are Transmitted": 1.42.7
* In the chapter "On the Soul": 1.49.3, 1.49.4, 1.49.5, 1.49.6, 1.49.44 (= the excerpt), 1.49.45, 1.49.46, 1.49.47
* In the chapter "On the Interpreters of Divine Matters and How the Truth concerning the Essence of Intelligible Realities is Incomprehensible to Human Beings": 2.1.26
* In the chapter "On What is in Our Power" ("Free Will"): 2.8.31
* In the chapter "On Truth": 3.11.31
* In the chapter "On Bold Speech": 3.13.65

Hermes among the Nag Hammadi findings

Among the Coptic treatises which were found in 1945 in the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, there are also three treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Like all documents found in Nag Hammadi, these were translated from the Greek. They consist of some fragments from the ''Asclepius'' (VI,8; mainly preserved in Latin, see above), '' The Prayer of Thanksgiving'' (VI,7) with an accompanying scribal note (VI,7a), and an important new text called ''The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth'' (VI,6). They all share a bipartite rather than a tripartite anthropology.

Oxford and Vienna fragments

The ''Oxford Hermetica'' consists of a number of short fragments from some otherwise unknown Hermetic works. The fragments are preserved in pages 79–82 of ''Codex Clarkianus gr. II'', a 13th- or 14th-century manuscript held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The texts, anthologized from much earlier materials, deal with the soul, the senses, law, psychology, and embryology.

The ''Vienna Hermetica'' consists of four short fragments from what once was a collection of ten Hermetic treatises, one of which was called ''On Energies''. The fragments are preserved on the back sides of two papyri, ''P. Graec. Vindob.'' 29546 recto and 29828 recto, now housed in Vienna. The front sides of the papyri contain fragments of ''Jannes and Jambres'', a Jewish romance.

''Book of the Rebuke of the Soul''

Written in Arabic and probably dating from the twelfth century, the ''Kitāb fi zajr al-nafs'' ("The Book of the Rebuke of the Soul") is one of the few later Hermetic treatises belonging to the category of religio-philosophical writings.

Fragments and testimonies

Fragments of otherwise lost Hermetic works have survived through their quotation by various historical authors. The following is a list of authors in whose works such literal fragments have been preserved:

*Tertullian, in ''On the Soul'' and '' Against the Valentinians''
*Cyprian (or pseudo-Cyprian), in ''Quod idola dii non sint'' (''Idols are Not Gods'')
*Lactantius, in '' Divine Institutes'' and ''Epitome of the Divine Institutes''
*Iamblichus, in ''On the Mysteries'' and ''Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus''
*Zosimus of Panopolis, in ''On the Letter Omega''
*Ephrem the Syrian, in ''Prose Refutations''
*Cyril of Alexandria, in ''Against Julian''
*Marcellus of Ancyra, in ''On the Holy Church''
*John Lydus, in ''On Months''
*Gregory of Nazianzus, in ''Oration''
*Didymus of Alexandria, in ''Commentary on Ecclesiastes'' and ''Psalms Commentary''
* Gaius Iulius Romanus, quoted by Charisius in ''The Art of Grammar''
*Augustine of Hippo, in ''The City of God'' 8.23–26
*Quodvultdeus, in ''Against Five Heresies''
*Ibn Umayl, in ''The Silvery Water and the Starry Earth''
*Michael Psellus, in ''Opusculum''
*Albert the Great, in ''Book of Minerals'', ''On Intellect and the Intelligible'', and ''Commentary on John''
*Nicholas of Cusa, in '' On Learned Ignorance''

Apart from literal fragments from Hermetic works, testimonies concerning the ideas of Hermes (likely deriving from Hermetic works but not quoted literally) have also been preserved in the works of various historical authors:

History of scholarship on the ''Hermetica''

During the Renaissance, all texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were still generally believed to be of ancient Egyptian origin (i.e., to date from before the time of Moses, or even from before the biblical flood). In the early seventeenth century, the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) demonstrated that some of the Greek texts betrayed too recent a vocabulary and must rather date from the early Christian period. Other authors made similar criticisms of the ''Hermetica'', largely as a means of undermining various religious and esoteric movements of the time that drew inspiration from them, so that by the end of the century most scholars had ceased to regard them as sources of primeval wisdom.

Studies in the early twentieth century sought to discern who had written the ''Hermetica''. Richard Reitzenstein first argued that the ''Hermetica'' were a product of a coherent religious community whose ideas derived from Egyptian religion, although in later years he believed that Hermetic beliefs were largely Iranian in origin, a position that received little support. Scholars in the middle of the century, such as Arthur Darby Nock, C. H. Dodd, and most influentially André-Jean Festugière, argued that the intellectual background of the ''Hermetica'' was overwhelmingly Greek, with possible influences from Iranian religions and Judaism, but little connection with authentic Egyptian beliefs. Festugière believed the philosophical ''Hermetica'' had only slight connections to the technical ''Hermetica'', and that the former originated with a small philosophical school rather than a religious community.

More recent research suggests a greater continuity with the culture of ancient Egypt than had previously been believed. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jean-Pierre Mahé analyzed the ''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius'' together with the recently published ''Hermetica'' from Nag Hammadi. Mahé pointed out that the earliest Greek Hermetic treatises contain many parallels with Egyptian prophecies and hymns to the gods, and that close comparisons can be found with Egyptian wisdom literature, which (like many of the early Greek ''Hermetica'') was characteristically couched in words of advice from a "father" to a "son". Soon afterward, Garth Fowden argued that the philosophical and technical ''Hermetica'' were distinct but interdependent, and that both were products of complex interactions between Greek and Egyptian culture. Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich have identified fragments of a Demotic (late Egyptian) text that contains substantial sections of a dialogue between Thoth and a disciple, written in a format similar to the ''Hermetica''. This text probably originated among the scribes of a "House of Life", an institution closely connected with major Egyptian temples. Christian Bull argued in 2018 that the ''Hermetica'' were in fact written by Egyptian priests in late Ptolemaic and Roman times who presented their traditions to Greek-speaking audiences in Greek philosophical terms.

In contradistinction to the early Greek religio-philosophical ''Hermetica'', which have long been studied from a scholarly perspective, the "technical" ''Hermetica'' (both the early Greek treatises and the later Arabic and Latin works) remain largely unexplored by modern scholarship..

See also

References

Bibliography

English translations of Hermetic texts

Some pieces of ''Hermetica'' have been translated into English multiple times by modern Hermeticists. However, the following list is strictly limited to scholarly translations:

*
*
*
*
*
*
* (older edition and translation of the ''Corpus Hermeticum'', the ''Asclepius'', the Stobaean excerpts, and various testimonia; vol. IV p. 277–352also contains an English translation of Bardenhewer's Latin translation of the Arabic ''Kitāb fi zajr al-nafs'' or "Book of the Rebuke of the Soul")
* (contains Hermetic fragments with, a.o., a commentary on the ''Emerald Tablet'')
*

Secondary literature

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (vol. II, pp. 270–303 about pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's ''Sirr al-khalīqa'' or "The Secret of Creation")
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Editions of Hermetic texts

Greek

* (Greek text of the ''Cyranides'')
* (Vienna fragments)
* (Greek text of the ''Corpus Hermeticum'' and of the Stobaean excerpts, various fragments and testimonies)
* (Oxford fragments)

Armenian

* (contains Armenian text of the ''Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius'')

Arabic

* (pp. 179–183 contain a small fragment from the ''Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs'')
* (pp. 53–116 contain an edition of the ''Kitāb fi zajr al-nafs'')
* (Arabic text of the ''Kitāb fi zajr al-nafs'' with a Latin translation by Bardenhewer)
* (Arabic text and French translation)
* (Arabic and Latin text of the ''Liber de stellis beibeniis'')
* (contains Hermetic fragments with, a.o., a commentary on the ''Emerald Tablet''; translated in )
* (Arabic translation of the first book of the ''Cyranides'')
* (Arabic text of the ''Book of the Wise Hermes on the Properties of Snakes and Scorpions'')
* (Arabic translation of fragments from books 2–4 of the ''Cyranides'')
* (Arabic text of the ''Sirr al-khalīqa'', including a version of the ''Emerald Tablet'')

Latin

* (Latin text of the ''Liber Antimaquis'', a translation from the Arabic ''Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs'')
* (Latin translation of the ''Cyranides'')
* (Latin translation of the ''Sirr al-khalīqa'', including a version of the ''Emerald Tablet'')
* (Arabic and Latin text of the ''Liber de stellis beibeniis'')
* (Latin text of the ''Asclepius'')
* (Latin translation of the ''Sirr al-asrār''; pp. 115–117 contain a version of the ''Emerald Tablet'')
* (contains Latin translation of the ''Emerald Tablet'' as it occurs in the ''Liber dabessi'')

External links

* The Gnostic Society Library hosts translations of th
''Corpus Hermeticum''
th

an

(all taken from Mead, George R. S. 1906. ''Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis''. Vols. 2-3. London: Theosophical Publishing Society; note that these translations are outdated and were written by a member of the Theosophical Society; modern scholarly translations are found above), as well as translations of th
three Hermetic treatises in the Nag Hammadi findings
(reproduced with permission from the translations prepared by James Brashler, Peter A. Dirkse and Douglas M. Parrott as originally published in: Robinson, James M. 1978. ''The Nag Hammadi Library in English''. Leiden: Brill).

{{Authority control

Alchemical documents
Alchemy
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian texts
Astrological texts
Astrology
Grimoires
Hellenistic philosophy
Hellenistic religion
Hermeticism
Magic (supernatural)
Medieval philosophy
Medieval philosophical literature
Wisdom literature
Nag Hammadi library