Hermes Trismegistus
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Hermes Trismegistus
"As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…"
Hermes
Hermes Trismegistus, known as the ‘master of masters’, was a man who walked the earth in Ancient Egypt well before the time of Moses.
So great was the power and magnificence of the all-encompassing wisdom he earthed for humanity, the legacy of his work has remained ever stalwart, providing an indelible illuminating imprint over thousands of years that has inspired and seeded philosophical, alchemic, scientific, esoteric and religious movements including the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophies, modern Western philosophies and theosophical doctrines. Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Roger Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Dee are among the many who studied the truths of Hermes. Hermeticism, as it came to be known, was also acknowledged by Paracelsus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli, writers Percy and Mary Shelly… the references are endless.
Hermes was deified by the ancient Egyptians as Thoth – the divine scribe of God, Lord of divine words, known to the Greeks as the god of wisdom and erroneously reduced as the winged trickster Mercury by the Romans, applying a veil of mystique and mythology to the fact of the very real existence of Hermes the man.
Hermes Trismegistus inaugurated the future, grounding enormous light and wisdom at a time when there was very little available on earth. He offered humanity a re-awakening to the All that we innately are, based on the truth that humankind has access to an inner wisdom far greater than the travesty played out on this earthly plane of life, and that we are first and foremost from and of God. Hermes reflected the universal connection that is deeply innate in every human being, a religiosity and heavenly way that can be lived through daily life, the glory and essence of God, bringing wisdom and the Universal way of Heaven to earth. True intelligence...
"If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God;
Hermes
for like is known by like."
It is not grasped exactly when Hermes lived but he is ancient, known as the ‘First,’ originating in Egypt before the time of the pyramids. Hermes’ dedication to his task to earth the truth that we are Soul before human and multidimensional beings with access to multidimensional intelligence, was an incredible feat in his time and in complete obedience to what was needed for humanity to arise from the denseness and compression of creation.
Oral in presentation, over the centuries Hermes’ discourses were scribed into various ancient texts of which now very few remain, namely the Emerald Tablets, and the occult, alchemic and philosophical writings of the Corpus Hermeticum that depict ‘the fall’, the descent of the divine-being into the human world of flesh and creation. Many texts were reportedly lost in 48BCE at the port of Alexandria with the burning of the Great Alexandrian library, the famous depository for ancient philosophical treasures founded around 280BCE, and further in the final destruction of the Alexandrian School and remaining daughter library in the temple of Serapis in 392CE. However, some works survived within the collections of the Eastern Byzantine libraries. A resurgence of Hermeticisim began in the 15th century during The Italian Renaissance, when newly found Hermetic texts were translated into Latin by order of the ruler of Florence and great patron of philosophy, Cosimo de’ Medici. The revival of Hermeticism was instrumental in the development of western occultism and also scientific method. Hermeticism covered a vast array of subjects including medicine, chemistry, law, the arts, music, alchemy, philosophy and mathematics.
Hermes Trismegistus’ sole purpose was to accelerate the re-awakening of humanity to the truth of their divinity; that they are Heavenly in origin. The first chapter of the Corpus Hermeticum describes a vison of the creation of the universe, nature and the fate of humanity, presented as a dialogue between Hermes and Poemandres, the Shepherd of Men – also known as the Divine Pymander, Divine Mind of the Sovereignty.
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It chanced once on a time my mind was meditation on the things that are, my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back – just as men who are weighed down with sleep after a fill of food, or from fatigue for the body. Methought a Being more than vast, in size beyond all bounds, called out my name and saith: What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast thou in mind to learn and know?
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And I do say: Who art thou?
He saith I am Man-Shepherd (Poemandres), Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I’m with thee everywhere. -
[And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God, This is, I said, what I desire to hear.
He answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou would knowest and I will teach thee. -
Even with these words His aspect changed, and straight away, in the twinkling of an eye, all things opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into light – sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.[1]
This passage goes on to describe ‘The Fall’ and how the divine-being separated from Soul to become flesh and eventually into human form. In one movement the divine-being, enamoured with the power of the manipulating force of ‘self’, succumbed to their desires to enter divine creation’s world, then used it as a playground where it has lingered and languished ever since creating deceit and devastation, justifying its own lies to sustain its existence.
Life on earth without the Light of the Soul is a greatly diminished state and everything that the eternal Light of the Soul is not – indeed it is a living death, a vastly reduced way of being where the ongoing desires and cravings of the senses create an insatiable thirst, unquenchable in and by its own design, until such a time that humanity re-awakens out of the posturing illusion by connecting to the truth of our own inner light, the Godly essence, and so returns to the divine essence and expression of who we truly are.
Hermes spoke about the fact that in truth we are ‘beyond gender’, that in our true expression we are both female (repose) and male (motion) equally, as God is. ‘For the Mind being God, Male and Female, Life and Light, brought forth by his Word’ (13). And that human being is twofold: the mortal ‘human’ body, and the eternal multidimensional divine ‘being’ that is ever ‘awake’.
- And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold; mortal because of body, but because of the essential Man immortal. Though deathless and possessed of sway o’er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.
Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female, as from a Father male-female, and though he’s sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].[2]
The descent into existence continued and spawned debauchery of every kind and humankind became enslaved to that which by their own will, they undertook to create. With reduced vision of the five senses, the truth of energetic realty and multidimensional insight is lost and humanity is wrapped in the illusion of the self that lives for self, without the light of the Soul.
‘the senses of such men are like irrational creatures: and as their [whole] make-up is in their feelings and their impulses they fail in appreciation of (lit. they do not wonder) at those things which are really worth contemplation. These centre all their thought upon the pleasures of the body and its appetites, in the belief that for its sake man hath come into being.’[3]
Splintering into the individualised self – separating from Soul – was a movement far away from the grand multidimensionality of humankind’s true origins, the Light of the Soul and at-one-ment with God. But Hermes, the great messenger of God, resolutely earthed that there is a way of return.
He grounded the greatest reflection of the ‘What Is’ – All that God is – on earth, to make it possible for humanity to return to Universal Wisdom and walk Heaven on earth. Hermes’ sacred sermons as presented to his disciples Tat and Asclepius in the Corpus Hermeticum laid before humanity the key to know themselves as God knows them. ‘In mind hast thou become a Knower of thyself and our (common) Sire.’ (p.94)
Hermes must have sustained extraordinary purity of body and clarity of mind to reflect and present this as the most normal and natural state of the human being. What Hermes earthed at the time was not for the personal development of a few but was for all. He presented the Truth free of the compression of creation, offering humanity the freedom to re-align and return to union with God under the volition of their own true will.
"I am not here to advance you but the planet so that you can be born into the advance and thus be it from your own movements."
Hermes Trismegistus[4]
According to the force of cultural and religious convenience, history, in its propensity to reinterpret and sanitise, has consequently and consistently attempted to reduce the purity and magnificence of Hermes’ teachings. However, foundational to the lineage of Ageless Wisdom, the Thrice Great Hermes, master philosopher, priest and king, complete in love, wisdom and intelligence, is known as the Father of the greatest ancient and modern philosophies and religions. One would have to ponder on why such a figure in history was often relegated to the ethereal realms (apart from the fact that he knew himself to be of God, and so was revered as such) and why his teachings, in the hands of translators, critics and publishers have been so widely altered.
It is an ‘uncomfortable excuse’ on our part and indicates our willingness to ignore the beautiful simplicity at the heart of Hermes’ teachings, ‘as is above so is below’, and our refusal to remove our self-applied blindfolds in view of the fact that the glory of the legacy he left humankind so many lifetimes ago still remains a wish, a hope, a myth, a much studied but not yet lived truth by most.
The return to our true divine origins and at-one-ment with God is an inevitable return to glory that we have ignored for far too long.
"Hermes is very clear that human life can neither be nor sustain any consistent ubiquitous quality without a multidimensional form of co-existence. As such, His teaching, ‘as is above, so too below’, is not just a famous stamp that births the fact that there is multidimensional access to a wiser state of being but a clear indication that our standards are to be a replica of a place that is many times wiser than our current lodging."
Serge Benhayon The Way of The Livingness, Sermon 67.1
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