The Church Fathers · c. AD 100–300
The Corpus Hermeticum
Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus
What it is
Seventeen Greek treatises from Roman Egypt on God, mind, and the ascent of the soul. The first, the Poimandres, describes a Word coming out of light, a Man made in the image of God who falls in love with his own reflection in nature, and a rebirth into mind.
Why it lasted
Read by Lactantius and Augustine as pagan prophecy of Christ, rediscovered in 1460 and translated by Ficino ahead of Plato, and taken as older than Moses until Casaubon dated it in 1614 — an error that shaped the Renaissance.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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