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Storytime: Reading the Corpus Hermeticum, Part III
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C.H. XI is a mind-blowing cosmology and anthropology which introduces us to the Hermetic Aiôn and changes everything we thought we knew about the Hermetic world. C.H. XVIII is a weird rhetorical piece praising kings that seems to have wandered into the collection by mistake. There’s a whole lot of other Hermetic goodness between these two extremes, if that is what they are.
We finish our read-through of one of the most important antique documents for the western esoteric traditions.
Works Cited in this Episode:
- Festugière on the Aiôn: Révélation IV, pp. 152-99.
- Fowden believes that the Nous who addresses Hermes in CH XI is actually Poimandres: Garth Fowden. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 33.
Recommended Reading:
- Dylan Burns. Did God Care?: Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy. Brill, Leiden, 2020.
- Richard Sorabji. Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Duckworth, London, 1983.
On the Aiôn:
- Wilhelm Bousset. ‘Der Gott Aion’, pp. 192–230 in Religionsgeschichtliche Studien: Aufsätze zur Religionsgeschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 50. Leiden, Brill, 1979.
- Christian H. Bull. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: the Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Brill, Leiden, 2018 [On becoming Aiôn see 5.4, pp. 282-284 and n. 270 on p. 283 for further references].
- Festugière (cited above).
- C. Lackeit. Aion: Zeit und Ewigkeit in Sprache und Religion der Griechen, I Teil: Sprache. PhD thesis, Königsberg, 1916.
- Martin West. The Orphic Poems. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983 [pp. 219-20, 230-1 for Aiôn in the Orphic literature].
Mystieke School
November 9, 2020
Hi Earl,
Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy your reading of the Corpus, your enthusiasm about these powerful texts, the insights and information you share and your beautiful voice. Can’t wait to listen to part III!
Donato
Kenneth Selens
November 13, 2020
Quite explicit techniques for ASC‘s here and the last episode. This kind of low hanging fruit makes me somewhat discontented with the turnips that I try to bleed out. On the other hand it makes me want to double down on my inquisition of these stinkin’ turnips.
Kito Ryan
November 19, 2020
Can’t wait for the obscure audiobook podcast Earl starts with all his free time! Loving the show, keep up the great work.
Kell Drinkwater
March 9, 2026
I have to say I find CH 14 very relatable in its frustration at the proliferating layers of ever higher, ever more transcendent, ever less comprehensible Ones. It’s sometimes felt like people were in some kind of Platonizing arms race. (… Were they?? I can just about see it. My god is less effable than your god, neener neener.)
I’m enjoying these storytime episodes immensely. Please don’t overwork yourself and your vocal cords putting them out! We get that well rested Earl means more SHWEP later.
Earl Fontainelle
March 9, 2026
I think there definitely was a late-antique transcendence arms-race, both conceptually and in terms of seeking innovative new ways of expressing the inexpressibility in question. The question which I find fascinating, but for which I have absolutely no real answer, is why? What prompted such an impulse? I mean, other than the fact that the One is utterly imparticipable and transcendent.
Kell Drinkwater
March 9, 2026
To me it seems to emerge naturally out of two things: The very idea of a god that’s perfect or infinite, and the nature of apophatic writing. You can always look at someone else’s description of god and reply “no, even higher and less comprehensible than that” and feel justified because you’re driving in the right direction and you’re participating in the “not even X, not even Y” game. And if you think the act of creating the world makes god’s hands dirty (instead of evidencing its power), you can always posit another intermediary layer.
… But that’s just the intuitive guess of the wrongest possible person to answer this question. I’m like the mathematicians who say singularities are pathological and indicate something wrong with your model. I like my divinities limited, personalist, and hard immanent. We really need a modern transcendent theologian to consider this question from an inside perspective.
(Also sorry for the flood of comments! This is what happens when I’m unemployed and in the middle of a new hyperfixation. It’ll slacken with time, and I hope you can feel flattered rather than creeped out by it 😅)