Hermes Tradition among the Arab Spiritual Masters

 

 Hermes Tradition among the Arab Spiritual Masters 

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes🌹

'Alchemy developed extensively during its Arabic period, roughly 750 to 1400, augmented in every respect by new theories, concepts, practical techniques, and substances'. (1)

(Lawrence M. Principe)

The Primordial Tradition of Hermes (lat. Mercurius) is that of the Winged Messenger and faithful connoisseur of the Art of Healing of the Ibis Thoth or Three Times Great. 

Hermes is three times great for the Power of Wisdom in the Three mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. It is thanks to Arabic literature that we can intern Wisdom in numerous works of alchemy, medicine, astrology and high talismanic theurgy.

Ex One Omnia=Of the ONE ALL. 

'I read Venerable Fathers, in The Writings of the Arabs, that questioned Abdala the Saracen about what was presented to him in this scene of the world as maximally worthy of Admiration, answered that nothing was presented to him more admirable than Man. With whose Sentence he remembers that of Mercury -Magnum Miraculum Homo est-; Great Miracle Oh! Asclepius, is the Man.' (2)

A legendary Tradition integrated into the sacred ternary =Cosmology-Alchemy-Medicine.

 "Everything that exists in the Universe is under the Dominion of the Planets and from Them receives its particular quality."(3)

We can say that the term and concept, 'Hermetics' is used to expose a body or doctrinal line = GOLD Chain. Varied and millenary tradition. 

The Hermetic Treatises are known as the Corpus Hermeticum, compiled roughly between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. 

Some of them were preserved among the Greek Codices and in the scattered Coptic Fragments of the important discovery of Nag Hammadi (1945). 

It is recognized that only the Latin Asclepius (lost the original Greek text), was known by closed circles of Convents and scholars. 

They are Treatises that when we study them, we find influence and Jewish, Gnostic and Greek elements. But, apart from the solid influences mentioned, the enormous fusion and assimilation of Egyptian elements -Hermaic chain-, surpasses him. 

It is an Egyptian Tradition Chain that describes cultural interactions with Egyptian antiquity. 

'An ignoras, O Asclepi, quo Aegyptus imago sit caeli aut, quod est verius, translatio aut descensio omnium...'. 

(Asclepius, 24) 

The Primordial Tradition of the Egyptian Thoth descends from the scribes through Egyptian Rome and its spiritual continuation into the powerful -later- tradition of the Arabs.

(Festugiere, The Revelation of Hermes Trismegistus)

The Golden Chain of hermetic transmission has other valuable sources of doctrinal approximation. Apart from the Corpus we have the fragments of Vienna and those of Stobeo=Stobaeus (early fifth century), the Papyrus of Nag Hammadi or the Kore Kormou and the rich Armenian sources. 

As can be seen the Egyptian Tradition is assimilated with the Greeks and Romans of old Egypt. 

'And the Greek settlers identified Thoth with their god Hermes. Like Thoth, the classical Greek Hermes was associated with the moon, medicine and the realm of the dead'. (4)

The idea of Prisca Theologia originated in the Renaissance is a traditional spiritual line of Ancestry Wisdom.

It runs from the Thoth-Hermes-Mercury via Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato with the Arabic tradition and its set of books and manuscripts. 

Similarly, the Arab tradition crystallizes in the 8th century the hermetic myth assimilated through the Hermes Three Times Wise astrologer, physician and founder of the sacred cult before the flood. 

Master Thoth-Hermes for the Arabs embodies the wisdom transmitted to Tat, Ammon and Asclepius.

For Arabs it is an ideological reception through dialogue between teacher and disciple aimed at unique personal transformation on the path of spiritual ascension through physical and intellectual purification. 

Moreover, much of Hermes' literature passes through the rigorous knowledge of the Arab and early Christian traditions. 

'The Arabic reception of Hermes, as an idea and an author, began in the eighth century, in a world very different from that in which the Hermetica had first circulated'. (5) 

There is no doubt that this tradition is developed by the intellectual elite of the Iranian court and the powerful astrologer sages the "Abbasids". 

It can be said that in this Arabic literature Hermes is already an antediluvian being who as a prophet reveals the principle of Wisdom. 

The rich literature of Persia and Sassanid Iran included the texts and works of Hermes Trismegistus. 

Hermes is God of the Word and for the tradition of the Arabs the Word=Logos is also an astrological foundation.

It is the astrological-hermetic science that for the Arabs came from Mesopotamia and represented the knowledge of the ancient tradition of Iran. 

(Van Bladel, p.32-33) 

The powerful Hermetic tradition has close spiritual relationship with Egyptian mystery, Greek philosophy, Platonism, Stoicism, Persian and Armenian influences. 

There is an essential purpose of the masters in transmitting correctly and rigorously the principles of the wisdom of Hermes, so that Man is his personal microcosm embodies esoteric knowledge as the faithful attempt that his refined Spirit can access the luminous world of the flowery heart and the cross of heaven. 

Thoth-Hermes-Mercury is the Master of The Way of Knowledge and Wisdom to achieve light and operate the complete metamorphosis of Man thanks to science and the arts to improve the quality of inner life with art, music, mathematics and sacred writing. Hermes is Patron of the Scribes. 

'Hermetic Science recognizes Hermes as its propagator and some consider him to be the first to excel in it. The Great Art, the Great Work, the work of the philosopher's stone, the Mystery of the Wise, are all synonymous expressions of Hermetic Science.'(6)

The idea of Arab Hermetics is the attainment of wisdom to achieve the transformation and recovery of the glorious state before the fall. 

(Romans 8:19-22) 

Now, since the third century A.D., the Arabic Hermetics and texts spread widely assimilating other tendencies and influences of the time.

 (Khitab-al-Fihrist, Encyclopedia 1871) 

Among Greeks of the time the alchemical, astrological and cosmological speculation was considerable.

Let us remember that the Great Alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis flourished in the third century. 'It has been reported that Hermes ascended to heaven, and many wise maxims are related to his Name.' 

(Ibn Kammuna-XIII century) 

The monumental tradition of the Arab Hermes knew the great quantity of ''secretes'' that already from the beginning of the third century are gathered according to their particular line of the Primordial Tradition. 

Clement of Alexandria, in describing the procession of Egyptian priests, was of the opinion that they carried the Books of Hermes, sacred music and hymns and manuscripts of astrology and horoscopes, (according to him, 42 were the books of Hermes and 36 contained all the Egyptian Wisdom and philosophy and six the Treatises of Medicine of Thoth-Ibis=Hermes). 

For Cicero there were five Mercury's and the fifth assassinates Argus and goes into exile in Egypt giving the Egyptians "..."their laws and letters" and takes the name of Thoth-Theuth. 

(Cicero, De Nat. deor., III, 22) 

The Tradition of the Arab Masters is respectable and polite.

The Arab Tradition-Emerald Table-, and in particular the astrological wisdom and its correspondences and analogies come from the Arabic Idris Hermes Thoth. 

Well, they are ideas to reflect more deeply on another occasion.

'We only advise you to observe this Precept, that the Vulgar Things you transmit to the Vulgar People; The Elevated and The Secrets, only to the most exalted and Discreet Friends'. 

(Master Florid Abbot Trithemius of Sponhein) 

Hermes Tradition among the Arab Spiritual Masters 

'Our Greatest Blessings como to us by Way of Madness, provided Madness is Given Us by Way of Divine Gift' 

(Socrates, Phaedrus) 

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes.🌹 

Bibliography: 

1. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy.

2. Count Florido de la Concordia, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola. Most Elegant Prayer About The Dignity of Man. 

3. Enrique Cornelio Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Natural Magic, Chapter XXX, p.129. 

4. Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, Princeton, p. 23. 

5. Kevin Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes, p.13. 

6.  A. J. Pernety, Mito-Hermetic Dictionary.