TRADITION - Hermes Trismegistus
Since the theme of the Rosicrucians has mostly to do with the history of Hermeticism, the source should be investigated. The term Hermeticism is related to the name of Hermes Trismegistus, whose legend blossomed in the second century AD in the declining phase of Hellenism.
schools of thought in the Mediterranean had been able to incorporate the heritage of ancient Greek philosophy significant eastern influences, coming from the periphery of the empire and speculation on religion, astrology and magic. The crisis calls for exploration of the ancient world with the esoteric cultures that have not reached the crystallinity concept of Greek philosophy, but which, nevertheless (and perhaps more), underscore the limits of an abstract and too little thought to the problems of man atento .. . _ Mysticism, magic and astrology are the fertile ground, at all levels of society, for an expansion within the borders of the empire that is placed in direct competition with the early Christianity. The rush to release all the more satisfied as we are addressing the messages are full of authority and holiness. Now, these qualities appear in time proportional to the distance of their cultural media: the Persian magic, astrology, Chaldean, the Egyptian religion was a source of revelations that have arisen in illo tempore [in an unspecified ancient time] and, as such, a tradition inauguranti complicated by multiple faces, which, in the belief of many, could not have influenced the philosophy of the Greeks. The hermetic-alchemical gnosis states with the aspiration to involve man in his totality as esoteric knowledge, the revelation of the arcane, fulfillment of intuition, return to the roots: the future is reflected in the past and the circle is closed "(C. Prandi, under" Nature, "Encyclopedia, Einaudi, Torino, 1981).
The legend of Hermes Trismegistus is complex. For some it is identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, the Greeks assimilated to Hermes (Mercury to the Romans): the greek god, he had received from his brother Apollo magic wand sometimes depicted as a caduceus (two serpents twisted the stick with which are about to kiss, often used in images of books on alchemy), was the patron of all human activities, including arts and sciences, and as a messenger of the gods was also the father of the word, was the Egyptian god 's inventor of writing and arithmetic, also protector sciences and the arts, while the term "Trismegistus" (meaning "thrice great" or "thrice born" or even, as the author of The Emerald Table, "who has in itself the three parts of wisdom the whole world ") was used by ancient Egyptians as a name for their gods.
For others, the figure of Hermes Trismegistus might be connected to three legendary characters, united by the prerogative to hold and transmit wisdom and knowledge of initiation.
The first, the grandson of Adam, he would have lived before the flood, he wrote numerous works and designed the pyramids. The second, of Babylonian origin, was a part of the secrets related to mathematics and geometry sacred and have them sent to Pythagoras. The third, who lived in Egypt was not only an outstanding mathematician, philosopher and physician, and also would have been the source of knowledge alchemy (alchemy is actually also known as' Hermetic Art ").
The Emerald Table" is true without deceit , reliable and true.
What is below is like what is above and what is above is like what is below to do the miracles of one thing. And since all things are and come from one, for the mediation of one, so all things were born from this one thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father, the moon is her mother, the wind carried it in her womb, the Earth is his nurse. The father of all, the end of the world is here. Its force or power is entire if it is converted into earth. Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry. It ascends from earth to heaven and descends again to earth and receives the force of things above and below. By this means you will have the glory of the whole world and half of what the darkness will flee from you. The force stronger than any force, because win every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing. Thus was created the world. From this will arise and wonderful adaptations, whose method is here. That is why it is called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of philosophy around the world.
What I have said the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended. "
Hermeticism still not waned with the civilization of which he was seen, but survived," Mask "(the expression and J. Evola, a of the most controversial characters in modern esotericism), throughout the Middle Ages, having to cope with the stated objective and universality of the Church of Rome itself as the sole repository of divine revelation and fought every line of thought contrary to its own doctrine for example, Pope John XXII in 1317 that share the practice of 'alchemy with the corresponding pariter decretal, and in 1323, with the bull Cum inter nonnullus, ruled on a challenge by the friars and other heterodox groups allied with the Franciscans (refused to order the right to own property) and sentenced them to the persecution of the Inquisition.
Yet it was during the Middle Ages who came to the West, and were translated, the first Eastern esoteric texts, including the famous Emerald Table attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and that, according to legend, was found by his wife of Abraham, Sarah, in the hands of her dead husband:
was laid in the place where the patriarch was buried them was found by soldiers of Alexander the Great (it seems that the place was a cavity of the Great Pyramid of Giza). The importance of the arrival of these texts in the West is emphasized by some (including P Cortesi who oversaw the translation of the Treaty or the philosopher's stone alchemy attributed to Thomas Aquinas) that equate the birth of medieval alchemy (considered a Hermetic philosophy) just when the scholar Robert of Chester eventually translate into Latin an Arab (The book of the composition of alchemy), on 11 February 1144.
It is significant that a coin with a strongly negative connotation the term Middle Ages, or "middle age", helping them to be just the products of the Renaissance that when shooting a powerful force the hermetic tradition.
the prospect of a global renewal of the world, after centuries of so-called darkness, it was necessary to recover the key to understanding the universe and to test the possibilities of the human spirit.
In the Renaissance it was believed that Hermes Trismegistus was really lived in ancient times and was the author of works written secretly preserved and handed down. As a mythical figure
-charismatic, acted as an intermediary between the search paths not only the new alchemists, but also of philosophers, writers, artists and religious and esoteric knowledge of the age of late antiquity. He went so also renewed symbolic communication with the recovery and revitalization of images "archetypal" old, from astrology.
In the opinion of many scholars, the cultural origins the movement of the Rose-Cross to be placed in exactly the scenario Renaissance Esotericism. The Corpus Hermeticum
in fervent and passionate atmosphere of "rediscovery" of the past that characterized the early Renaissance in Florence, who was the driving force, were presented to them by the Byzantine manuscripts of Plato and Neo-Platonic philosophers of the Hellenistic age and were translated from greek to latin. Along with these texts, in 1460, also added a collection of treaties, the Corpus Hermeticum, so called because it was designated the author in person only Trismegisto.Identificandolo of Hermes with an important and wise in the wisdom of the ancient Egyptian priest who had drawn from Plato himself, Cosimo de 'Medici invited PumanÃsta Marsilio Ficino immediately to put the translation.
"So a philosophy that was a sort of religious worship of nature, involving magical practices, was widespread within the core of Neoplatonism in vogue. It had revolutionary results because the hermetic philosophy gave man a position in the universe other than what was prevailed in the Middle Ages. He placed the man in a position of dominance as being able to work on the nature and force his will [...] But the magic was sealed stragoneria vernacular, the Hermetic tradition was a philosophical and intellectual tradition with some magical elements, which encouraged a return to the world to investigate the secrets, as duty religious "(FAYates The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, trad.it. Torino, 1976).
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