The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author) "The philosophy that Hermes teaches is not just a clever intellectual exercise..." (more)
Key Phrases: pure philosophy, Mind of God, Primal Goodness, Primal Mind (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Credited to Hermes, an ancient Egyptian sage who lived around 3000 BC, "The Hermetica" is the foundation of the western mystery tradition. This text contains historical background information and a selection of Hermes' writings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Greek, Latin

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher (March 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874779502
• ISBN-13: 978-0874779509
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #686,140 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the Wisdom of the Pharaohs!, June 19, 2000

By A Customer

Unfortunately this is a terribly pointless book that splices questionable "translations" of arbitrary excerpts from the corpus hermeticum together to make up a whole new series of poems. The relationship between these poems to the original ideas is left unclear, and you must basically rely on the understanding and synthesis of the ideas by the authors. Given any book and one can splice random segments together to say just about anything, and the qualifications of the authors seem unclear at best. What is unfortunately clear is that they mostly want to sell the book to silly new agers, not to anyone who may have a serious interest in the original ideas and their sources, which are an interesting multi-cultural mishmash of late pagan neoplatonism, Christianity and yes, local but very degenerated Egyptian folk ideas. The arguments about the relationship to very ancient Egyptian ideas is totally feeble, and has no basis is fact. What is clear is there are no sources in the actual (and extensive) ancient Egyptian texts that have survived that give any credence to the hypothesis that real corpus hermeticum is some kind of faithful transmission of ancient Egyptian ideas (especially not from the time of the old kingdom) much less this hopelessly re-edited mishmash. If you want to learn about real ancient Egyptian religious ideas about the cosmos there are plenty of translations of the real thing. If you are interested in the origin of hermetic ideas you would be better off buying another book, either a real translation, or any honest book on the subject.

The shallowness of this book is for me summarized by the silly meaningless hieroglyphics that are included along side of the text, presumably to convince somebody that the poems are a kind of translation of the ancient Egyptian (for example, they stop just where the text of the poems stop). Of course the hieroglyphics are just a decoration, with the same meaningless series of signs repeated over and over again. They haven't even tried to reproduce the actual appearance of real hieroglyphics. The whole book smacks of a deliberate manipulation in favor of something that might sell well to shallow new agers. This books should be called not "The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs" but "The Wisdom of Freke and Gandy", something which clearly has questionable value. They get no points from me for their poem since they so deliberately obscure the actual sources of their composition (not translation!).

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Thought Made Accessible, August 18, 2000

By	F. P. Kovacs (Ohio USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was wary of this book when I first purchased it, but to my delight it turned out to be the best introduction to the Hermes/Thoth literature available. Beyond the value of its clear and readable presentation of some of the oldest wisdom tracts in the Western World, the authors also briefly touch on the provinence of the works. Because the Hermes Corpus was declared a fraud in the 17th century, the heavy lifting required to point out that they are not is simply beyond the scope of this volume. But any reader who is intrigued by the material can go on and discover for themselves the story of Hermes and make their own judgement. I place the rediscovery of the Hermes Corpus on the same level as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts, so this fine introductory volume should be considered by anyone interested in ancient literature and spirituality.

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well sumaarized, December 31, 1999

By	O. B. Makhubela (South Africa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book is very easy to read and follow: which is the intention of the authors. The chapters are excellently introduced and short. I liked also the authors arguments that the Hermetica is an ancient Egyptian wisdom, and NOT Greek. Hermes is a Greek god equated to Tehuti: Tehuti (Egyptian) is the author of the "Hermetica", who is also called Thoth, or Hermes. The focus of the book is on the origin of existence and its intricacies. A good summarized book on Hermetic wisdom.