THE WAY OF HERMES: The Corpus Hermeticum Translated by Clement Salaman, Dorine van Oyen & William D. Wharton. Duckbacks (Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.), London, 2001. Paperback,128 pages, £6.99. ISBN: 0-7156-3093-8

We have, in Freemasonry Today, often referred to Hermes Trismegistus or to the texts attributed to him, collected as the Corpus Hermeticum. These are important both for their wisdom and the influence they have had on the origins of modern civilisation. Until now they have been unavailable to the general reader. But no longer. Duckworth have produced a new translation of the texts. This book deserves to enjoy a wide circulation.
    The Corpus Hermeticum deals with fundamental questions of human existence: the first text in the collection, the Poimandres (which title derives from P-eime nte-re, ancient Egyptian for "The Knowledge of Re", thus betraying its Egyptian source) concerns a student who wishes to know the Truth. He is asked, "What do you wish to hear and behold…what do you wish to learn and know?" The student replies, "I wish to learn…the things that are and understand their nature and to know God." The student then has a profound visionary experience involving a “gentle and joyous light"; he is told to "perceive the light and know it." One cannot be more direct than that.
    The Corpus Hermeticum, it is suggested, reveals the beliefs and initiatory rituals of a secret movement, based in Alexandria, which eschewed leaders and hierarchical structure and whose teaching was passed from teacher to pupil through the ages. It was, according to Gilles Quispel’s preface, "akin to a Masonic lodge".
    This new translation uses the full text of the Hermetic books, only available since 1946, and adds a recently discovered text, The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, translated by Jean-Pierre Mahé. There is one odd omission in its otherwise comprehensive notes: Peter Kingsley’s important essay "Poimandres: the etymology of the name and the origins of the Hermetica" published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56, 1993, which definitively demonstrated that the Hermetic texts emerged out of the practices and teachings of the ancient Egyptian Temples.
    Michael Baigent