Hermeticism

What is Hermeticism?

Hermeticism is the Western esoteric tradition rooted in the Corpus Hermeticum, a body of texts from Alexandria in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. They are attributed to Hermes Trismegistus§, a syncretic figure blending Greek philosophy, Egyptian mystery religion, and early Gnostic thought. The tradition's central claim is that the universe is fundamentally mental. The All is mind, and the human being is a microcosm that mirrors the macrocosm.

Hermeticism vs Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and New Thought

Hermeticism is closely related to Gnosticism§ but distinct. Both arose in Alexandrian late antiquity and share the conviction that the material world is not ultimate. Gnosticism treats matter as a fall, a prison. Hermeticism does not condemn the material world; it sees it as a reflection of the mental. Neoplatonism§ shares Hermeticism's hierarchical cosmos and its conviction that the One is primary, but Neoplatonism is Greek philosophy in a strict sense, concerned with reason and contemplation. Hermeticism is a theurgic tradition. It emphasises practice, initiation, and working with correspondences, not purely rational ascent. New Thought§ is a 19th-century American descendant that borrowed Hermeticism's mentalism principle but stripped away its ritual and cosmological framework. The three are related by descent, not by identity.

The seven principles

Most modern exposure to Hermeticism comes through the *Kybalion*§, the 1908 Three Initiates condensation of the tradition. It distils the system into seven principles: mentalism (the All is mind), correspondence (as above, so below), vibration, polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender. The principles do not exhaust the tradition. They are, however, the cleanest entry point in English.

What Hermeticism actually claims

Hermeticism is not, in its serious form, a system of magic spells. It is a metaphysical position about the structure of reality. Mind is primary, matter derivative. Disciplined attention to the correspondences between the small and the large is the practical method of philosophical and ethical work. The Renaissance mages — Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, John Dee — read it that way. So did Isaac Newton, who wrote more on alchemy and Hermetic philosophy than on the physics for which he became famous.

Why it matters here

Hermeticism is the bridge between Gnosticism§, Kabbalah§, alchemy, and the modern New Thought§ movement. That movement produced Wallace Wattles, Neville Goddard, and Joseph Murphy. The mentalism principle is the philosophical seed from which the entire Law of Attraction§ literature grew.