The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism

614 Book Reviews / Numen 55 (2008) 608–624

Th e Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times. By Florian Ebeling, (transl. David Lorton; Foreword by Jan Ass- mann), Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii + 158 pp. ISBN 9780801445460.

German original: Das Geheimnis des Hermes Trismegistos: Geschichte des Herme- tismus von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, München: C.H. Beck, 2005. 214 pp. ISBN 3406528163.

Th e various textual corpora referred to as “hermetic” have not only generated a vast scholarly literature but continue to evoke much interest among the general public as well. Nevertheless, a short yet comprehensive overview of “hermeticism” from antiquity to the present was still lacking, and this small book therefore fi lls an important niche in the market. Given the high quality of current academic research particularly with respect to the ancient, medieval and early modern period, and the considerable theoretical problems of defi n- ing what “hermeti(ci)sm” is all about (see below), any scholar who dares to cover the fi eld as a whole deserves credit and respect for his courage, but should also expect to be judged by strict criteria of excellence. Th e author of Th e Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus seems aware of this, and tries to temper too high expectations right at the outset: he admits that many aspects of the history of hermetic literature have been merely intimated or omitted entirely, and that he has therefore written ‘not the history of Hermeticism but rather only one’ (2). Th is modest rejoinder is off set, however, by his ambitious claim of having been the fi rst to correct major weaknesses and hiatuses in existing research. Firstly, his book claims to refute the ‘common thesis’ (vii) that hermeticism practically vanished during the middle ages (chapters II and III both open with that statement: 37, 59); and secondly, the author takes and is given credit (by Jan Assmann in the Foreword) for having “discovered” a complete, inde- pendent northern Hermetic tradition and thereby having ‘fundamentally altered and expanded our understanding of Hermetic traditions’ (vii–viii). Unfortunately, both of these claims are without foundation. Far from having single-handedly put medieval hermeticism back on the map, the author has chosen to ignore almost all the research that has been done in this area during the last decades, including the “Hermes Latinus” series edited by Paolo Lucen- tini and Vittoria Perrone Compagni since 1994, but almost never quoted by him, and many other fundamental contributions by these two major special- ists (for a sample, see their almost 800-page volume Hermetism from Late Antiquity to Humanism, published by Brepols in 2003) and by others, such as

Claudio Moreschini, whose Storia dell’Ermetismo Cristiano (published in 2000) covers the ancient, medieval and early modern period in much greater detail than the book under review here. Likewise, the German tradition of “alchemo- paracelsism” was in no need of being “discovered”, for its existence was quite well known (among the most important contemporary scholars, Joachim Telle and Carlos Gilly are mentioned occasionally). Th erefore all that the author can legitimately take credit for is his decision to restrict the survey not only to texts dependent on or referring to the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius but to also include alchemical discussions and their references to the Tabula Smaragdina. Overblown pretensions apart, how good and reliable is this book as an introduction to the history of Hermeticism? First of all, we should look at what the author understands by that term. In the Introduction he makes clear that the overview is based on a ‘pragmatic decision’ of focusing only on works ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus or implicitly referring to his authority (1, 7). By doing so, he wisely avoids approaches based upon the idea that certain themes or worldviews are somehow intrinsically “hermetic” even if no refer- ence is made to Hermes at all. But of course the decision comes at a heavy price, for while it avoids any non-historical essentialism, it begs the question of whether “hermeticism” can ever be anything more than an artiﬁ cial con- struct by means of which a heterogeneous collection of texts is arbitrarily pre- sented as a “tradition” for no other reason than that they happen to mention Hermes somewhere (while texts that do not do so are excluded, even if one cannot tell them apart on the basis of their contents). Th is dilemma has bedeviled research in this domain, and while some highly competent scholars have defended the notion of an actual uniﬁ ed “Hermetic tradition”, others with no less expertise have rejected any such idea (see e.g. my review of Lucentini et al. in Aries 7:2 [2007], 227–229). Th erefore it would be quite unfair to blame the author for not having found a satisfactory solu- tion; but it is regrettable that he does not take the opportunity of at least entering into this debate, discussing the problem in some depth, and clearly taking position. After all, his “pragmatic choice”, while understandable enough, would seem to undermine the very possibility of presenting “Hermeticism” as a historical tradition at all. Since this same “pragmatic choice” would also seem to preclude any idea of Hermeticism as being based on a universal “essence”, it is all the more surpris- ing that the author nevertheless keeps repeating the question of whether some such essence might exist. Th us on page 10–11 he lists the main categories of “philosophical” and “technical” Hermetica, and asks himself ‘Can a common core be detected behind all these writings and doctrinal accounts?’ (11), or