Son of Zeus and Maia;
represented as messenger of the gods,
god of science, commerce,
eloquence, etc., identified by the Romans with
Mercury, and represented as a youth with winged rod
(caduceus), brimmed hat (petasus), and winged shoes
(talaria).
2.
~ Trismegistus
('thrice-greatest'), name given by Neo-Platonists
etc. to Egyptian god Thoth, regarded as author of
all mysterious doctrines and esp. of secret of
alchemy.
So as far as
the dictionaries are concerned we have Hermes
Trismegistus to thank for Hermetics.
It even sounds
like it came from him Hermes, Hermetics.
But what of the
word/name Trismegistus?
Well its a
Greek word meaning
Tris = Three or
triple
megistus or
megistos = Great or master or great master or
Magician
Like there
where three titles to this man or god?
What does the
encyclopaedia Britannica have to say about Hermes
Trismegistus?
Well only
one entry came up when
searching just the name Trismegistus in Dec 1996.
from
mysticism
Nature and significance
The goal of mysticism is union
with the divine or sacred. The path to that union is
usually developed by following four stages:
purgation (of bodily desires), purification (of the
will), illumination (of the mind), and unification
(of one's will or being with the divine). If "the
object of man's existence is to be a Man, that is,
to re-establish the harmony which originally
belonged between him and the divinized state before
the separation took place which disturbed the
equilibrium" (The Life and Doctrine of Paracelsus),
mysticism will always be a part of the way of return
to the source of being, a way of counteracting the
experience of alienation. Mysticism has always
held--and parapsychology also seems to suggest--that
the discovery of a nonphysical element in man's
personality is of utmost significance in his quest
for equilibrium in a world of apparent chaos.
Mysticism's apparent denial,
or self-negating, is part of a psychological process
or strategy that does not really deny the person. In
spite of its lunatic fringe, the maturer forms of
mysticism satisfy the claims of rationality,
ecstasy, and righteousness.
There is obviously something
nonmental, alogical, paradoxical, and unpredictable
about the mystical phenomenon, but it is not,
therefore, irrational or antirational or "religion
without thought." Rather, as Zen (Buddhist intuitive
sect) masters say, it is knowledge of the most
adequate kind, only it cannot be expressed in words.
If there is a mystery about mystical experience, it
is something it shares with life and consciousness.
Mysticism, a form of living in depth, indicates that
man, a meeting ground of various levels of reality,
is more than one-dimensional. Despite the
interaction and correspondence between levels--"What
is below is like what is above; what is above is
like what is below" (Tabula Smaragdina,
"Emerald Tablet," a work on alchemy attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus)--they are not to be
equated or confused. At once a praxis (technique)
and a gnosis (esoteric knowledge), mysticism
consists of a way or discipline.
The relationship of the
religion of faith to mysticism ("personal religion
raised to the highest power") is ambiguous, a
mixture of respect and misgivings. Though mysticism
may be associated with religion, it need not be. The
mystic often represents a type that the religious
institution (e.g., church) does not and
cannot produce and does not know what to do with if
and when one appears. As William Ralph Inge, an
English theologian, commented, "institutionalism and
mysticism have been uneasy bedfellows." Although
mysticism has been the core of Hinduism and
Buddhism, it has been little more than a minor
strand--and, frequently, a disturbing element--in
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As the 15th- to
16th-century Italian political philosopher Niccolò
Machiavelli had noted of the 13th-century Christian
monastic leaders St. Francis and St. Dominic, they
had saved religion but destroyed the church.
The founders of religion may
have been incipient or advanced mystics, but the
inner compulsions of their experience have proved
less amenable to dogmas, creeds, and institutional
restrictions, which are bound to be outward and
majority oriented. There are religions of authority
and the religion of the spirit. Thus, there is a
paradox: if the mystic minority is distrusted or
maltreated, religious life loses its sap; on the
other hand, these "peculiar people" do not easily
fit into society, with the requirements of a
prescriptive community composed of less sensitive
seekers of safety and religious routine. Though no
deeply religious person can be without a touch of
mysticism, and no mystic can be, in the deepest
sense, other than religious, the dialogue between
mystics and conventional religionists has been far
from happy. From both sides there is a constant need
for restatement and revaluation, a greater
tolerance, a union of free men's worship. Though it
validates religion, mysticism also tends to escape
the fetters of organized religion.
Copyright © 1994-2000
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
So we see the
more we dig the more we find.
And now I will
leave you to get a fuller picture for yourselves.
Welcome to the
links to Hermetics portal.
In addition for
me Rawn Clark explains further
please see
links to his site below
http://www.abardoncompanion.com/Hermeticism.html
http://www.abardoncompanion.com/Corresp-Misc.html
My Best wishes
in your spiritual evolution
serge@hermetics.com
