Gary Lachman – Who Was Hermes Trismegistus?

                   a zoom talk by Gary Lachman

For centuries, the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus – “thrice greatest Hermes” – was believed to be a real individual who, at the dawn of time, laid the foundations of magic, science, philosophy, and religion, bequeathing to mankind a primal revelation of the nature of the cosmos and our place in it. Hermes was believed to have taught Moses, Plato, Jesus and other sages of history, and his teachings form the essence of what we know as the ‘perennial philosophy’ or ‘ prisca theologia,’ the primordial vision at the heart of all religion. Yet in the early 17^th century, this figure of commanding wisdom and knowledge, was revealed to have been an invention of a group of spiritual seekers, a product of the religious syncretism of ancient Alexandria, a union of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, and the writings attributed to him, the Corpus Hermeticum, a kind of ‘pious fraud’.

But the wisdom of the thrice great one did not disappear. It continued and informed much of the modern consciousness that followed and is still alive today. The Hermetic tradition thrived and carried on as a kind of secret source of knowledge, a tradition of the gnosis and ‘cosmic consciousness’ the ancient Hermetists pursued. My talk, based on my book The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus,  will look at the history of this influential figure and what his teaching can mean for us today.

Gary Lachman was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, but has lived in London, England since 1996. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, he is now a full time writer with more than twenty books to his name, on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness and the western esoteric tradition, to literature and suicide, and the history of popular culture. Lachman writes frequently for many journals in the US and UK, and lectures on his work in the US, UK, and Europe.His work has been translated into several languages. His website is gary-lachman.com

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