Gary Lachman – Who Was Hermes Trismegistus?

For centuries, the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus – “thrice greatest Hermes” – was believed to be a real individual who, at the dawn of time, laid the foundations of magic, science, philosophy, and religion, bequeathing to mankind a primal revelation of the nature of the cosmos and our place in it. Hermes was believed to have taught Moses, Plato, Jesus and other sages of history, and his teachings form the essence of what we know as the ‘perennial philosophy’ or ‘ prisca theologia,’ the primordial vision at the heart of all religion. Yet in the early 17th century, this figure of commanding wisdom and knowledge, was revealed to have been an invention of a group of spiritual seekers, a product of the religious syncretism of ancient Alexandria, a union of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, and the writings attributed to him, the Corpus Hermeticum, a kind of ‘pious fraud’.
But the wisdom of the thrice great one did not disappear. It continued and informed much of the modern consciousness that followed and is still alive today. The Hermetic tradition thrived and carried on as a kind of secret source of knowledge, a tradition of the gnosis and ‘cosmic consciousness’ the ancient Hermetists pursued. My talk, based on my book The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus, will look at the history of this influential figure and what his teaching can mean for us today.

Gary Lachman is the author of several books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including Dreaming Ahead of Time, The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson, and, most recently, Maurice Nicoll: Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way. He has written biographies of C G Jung, Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Emanuel Swedenborg, P D Ouspensky, and Aleister Crowley. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at https://www.gary-lachman.com/, www.facebook.com/GVLachman/ and twitter.com/GaryLachman