Hermeticism (philosophy)
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with Hermes generally means a set of mystical-religious and philosophical doctrines which flowed in during the Hellenistic astrological theories of Semitic origin, elements Platonic philosophy of inspiration and Pythagorean Gnostic beliefs and procedures Egyptian magic. The term stems from Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the thrice great and psychopomp), born from the union of the syncretic greek god Hermes, the god of Egyptian mythology, Thoth, god of both writing and magic in their respective cultures.
Since the first century BC until the third century and formed a corpus of Hermetic writings, composed of fragmentary material collected in the Ptolemaic age and complemented by pagan philosophers, who attributed the authorship to God. These texts are usually distinguished into two categories: "Philosophical" and "technical": the first group contained mainly treaties philosophy and theology, while the latter are written astrological, alchemical and generally relating to the occult sciences.
Among the many writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus the most interesting group consists of 17 philosophical works that form the so-called Corpus Hermeticum. Considered authentic by the Apostolic Fathers, these writings, translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino in the late fifteenth century, had a great credit to the Renaissance and were popular among alchemists. The importance he held the Hermetic literature in Renaissance thought is due to the fact that these writings were seen as a legacy of the ancient Egyptian wisdom delivered to the Greek philosophical systems. From the seventeenth century, when the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon in De Rebus sacris et ecclesiaticis exercitiones XVI (1614) showed that the texts that the tradition attributed the dawn of time actually dates back to the third century, their influence on European philosophy began to decline.
Hermeticism is not presented as a unified doctrinal system, but overall it is considered a soteriological philosophy. One of the cardinal principles of the Hermetic doctrine is the process of initiation that every person must make to free from the earthly to the divine part (intellect) inherent in him. The means to achieve salvation would be given from knowledge or gnosis, which alone can allow the inner purification, and then the reunification with the divine intellect. Connected to the anthropological view is the metaphysical theory of cosmological hermetic thought, which had considerable bearing on Renaissance philosophy. The conception of the universe is based on the tight interconnection between its parts, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The interdependence between man and the stars is based on astrological-magical laws of sympathy and antipathy, that only revelation can help you discover sealed in order to achieve the intellectual catharsis.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermetismo_ (philosophy)
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