The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. Piatkus Books. 160pp. Hardback. £12.99.

I’m not sure that the delightful writings attributed to the fictional Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistos (Thrice Greatest Hermes) do in fact constitute the Pharaohs’ Lost Wisdom (the philosophical Hermetica were composed in the Platonist intellectual milieu of Alexandria c.100-300AD). If Pharaoh had read and practised these wonderful works, Moses would never have had to cross the Reed Sea, and much of our current headlines - and anxieties - would be concentrated on some other threat to the always threatened status quo. In many ways, the world is not good enough for the Hermetica. Hermes would disagree - he would say we were rarely good enough for the world! But Hermes is like that : happy to contradict the weak, baseless, visionless thought. Hermes’ territory? The Cosmos, Man, the Mind.
    Need I say that the Hermetic Philosophy lies not only at the root of masonic philosophy, but also at the heart of the greatest minds the west has ever known? You don’t believe me? Read the lucid introduction to this non-stuffy, non-academic collection of sayings attributed to the Thrice Greatest.
    I only have one quibble. The editors presume to replace the Greek word for ‘God’ with the Egyptian ‘Atum’ which they tell us was “one of the Egyptian names for the Supreme One-God.”, thinking this will prevent people from being enslaved to “any association they may have with the word ‘God’.” Hermes would have no truck with this. The fault is not in the word but in the mind. By using the local ‘Atum’, you lose universality. When I first read the Hermetica, I enjoyed seeing the word ‘God’ used by someone who seemed to know Who he was talking about.
    Tobias Churton