Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition - a summary
I've been told, and I've found out for myself, that the best way to remember and learn things is to explain them to other people. So trying to remember the story told in this book by Frances A. Yates ... ...should fix it better in my mind. It is an interesting story. This is what happened. The (European) intellectuals of the 1500s had an idea that Hermes Trismegistus... ... (that's the one on the left) was a great Egyptian magician who lived after the Biblical Abraham but before the Greek philosophers. Since in the 1500s everything that "ancient" was considered purer/better than the current age (whatever the current age was) Trismegistus was much admired. He lived in a Golden Age. By the way Trismegistus means "Thrice Great". Here is the wrong timeline: Here is the correct timeline. " This huge historical error was to have amazing results, " writes Yates. The Corpus Hermeticum is an "ancient" text where Trismegistus is suppos...