The Forbidden Universe (4 page)

One therefore ascends through knowledge, which comes through both greater intellectual and philosophical
understanding
of the cosmos and the more spiritual form of enlightenment called
gnosis
. But the relationship between creator and humanity is an endless cycle, as Magee notes:

So, not only did the Hermetic vision provide a more satisfactory explanation of why the universe exists, it also gave human beings
potentially
the most exalted role – though one that has to be earned. As
Asclepius
declares, ‘a human being is a great wonder, a living thing to be worshipped and honoured’.
¹⁹
The Hermetica encourages people to use all their faculties, powers and talents in the pursuit of both self knowledge and knowledge of the universe. A major part of the kinship with creation involves
observing the world around us and delving deeply to discover its hidden workings. In Hermeticism, this is not mere lofty sentiment, but one of the major paths to salvation. The Hermetic motto ‘Follow nature’
²⁰
– which would come to have a profound effect on the beginnings of science – bears witness to this cornerstone of the philosophy.

Wherever and whenever Hermeticism originated, it was being discussed by both Christian and non-Christian writers in the Roman Empire from the second century onwards. But it disappeared soon after Christianity became the dominant Roman religion and persecutor of pagans in the fourth century. Apart from a fragmentary presence, the Hermetica basically vanished from Europe until the Renaissance. But its wisdom survived outside the Christian world, focusing on the city of Harran, some fifty miles south of Edessa in south-eastern Turkey. How it came to be established there is unknown, but presumably Hermeticists fleeing from Christian persecution would provide an answer.

By the time Harran fell into Arab hands in the
mid-seventh
century it was a renowned centre of learning. Two centuries later, according to tradition – which may or may not be apocryphal – the inhabitants were given a stark choice by the caliph al-Mamun: convert to Islam, be massacred, or identify themselves as one of the ‘peoples of the book’. The Qur’an requires tolerance and protection for the latter – such as Jews and Christians – provided they venerate a prophet recognized by Islam.

Unsurprisingly rejecting the option to be massacred, the residents of Harran identified themselves as Sabians, one of the ‘peoples of the book’ mentioned in the Qur’an.
²¹
But the Sabian prophet was found in neither the Old nor the New
Testament. Instead they proudly declared him to be Hermes and their holy book the
Corpus Hermeticum
. Fortunately the Qur’an identifies Hermes with the prophet Idris, the Muslim rendering of the Old Testament Enoch. The Sabians of Harran also venerated Asclepius as a prophet and Agathodaimon (‘Good Spirit’), a character in the Hermetic dialogues, as a great teacher and an intermediary with God.
²²
They went on pilgrimages to the two great pyramids at Giza, revering them as the tombs of Hermes and Agathodaimon.
²³

Soon after the al-Mamun episode was supposed to have happened, the great library of Baghdad, the House of Wisdom (
Bayt al-Hikma
) – which was also a centre for research, translations of foreign works and an observatory – was re-established. Many Sabians moved there, the most eminent of which was the renowned polymath Thabit ibn Qurrah (835–901). It was here, in Baghdad, that the Hermetic books were translated into Arabic. The foundation of Arab science in the Middle Ages was therefore laid by the Sabians, and inspired by the Hermetica.
²⁴

The Sabians disappeared from Baghdad and Harran during a clampdown on non-Muslims in the middle of the eleventh century. It is possible they became devotees of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which aims at individual communion with the divine. Although Sufism had been around for centuries, it underwent a formalization during the eleventh century that was, some think, due to a Sabian influx.
²⁵

Many specialists have noted that the revival of interest in the Hermetica in Byzantium coincided with the end of Sabian Hermeticism.
²⁶
But was this purely coincidence? Psellus, the Byzantine Platonic philosopher, became the first westerner to write about the Hermetica in half a millennium and many have speculated that Sabians, fleeing persecution, had carried their precious literature with them to Constantinople.

One of the great patrons of the early Renaissance was Cosimo de’ Medici, scion of the banking dynasty that pretty much owned the republic of Florence. Cosimo was also hugely ambitious in his vision of what he and his court could accomplish, sending agents out in search of key books, and employing one of the great scholars of the age, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), on massive learned projects and as tutor to his grandson Lorenzo. Cosimo’s aim was nothing less than to re-establish Plato’s Academy, this time in Florence, with Ficino as its head. The lynchpin of this somewhat ambitious task was the first ever translation of Plato’s complete works from Greek into Latin, then the
lingua franca
of scholarly Europe.

Just as Ficino was about to dip his quill into the ink and get started on Plato, an even more exciting prospect presented itself. One of Cosimo’s agents, a monk named Leonardo de Pistoia, returned from Macedonia with a Greek manuscript of the first fourteen treatises of the
Corpus Hermeticum
. Ficino records that in 1463 Cosimo ordered him to drop his translation of Plato forthwith in order to concentrate exclusively on the
Corpus Hermeticum
– an urgency that was probably the result of Cosimo becoming gravely ill, and desperately wanting to read the Hermetic books before he died. He got his wish, with a year to spare.

Because of the mysterious aura surrounding Trismegistus and his lost books, this was by far Ficino’s most popular work, as evidenced by the many copies of the manuscript and several editions of the first printing of 1471. The discoveries that Ficino’s translation made possible sent seismic shockwaves throughout the academic community in Florence and beyond, being widely and feverishly discussed and debated. The books enticed Pico della Mirandola to Florence, where he studied under Ficino between 1484 and 1486, when he departed for Rome with
his nine hundred theses. As Tuveson writes in
The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes
(1982), ‘with the translation by Ficino of the
Hermetica
in the fifteenth century, a kind of “new force” had entered the Western world.’
²⁷

One reason for the excitement generated by the rediscovery of the Hermetica was precisely because it was so radically different from Christianity’s stifling view of creation and humanity’s place within it. Another was the idea that an ancient original religion, now lost, lay behind all other religions. This was variously known as the
prisca theologia
(‘ancient theology’),
prisca philosophia
(‘ancient philosophy’) or
philosophia perennis
(‘perennial philosophy’). Many believed that this ancient, lost religion could be found in Egypt, as even the Bible acknowledged that its
civilisation
and religion pre-dated that of the Israelites. Indeed, there was even a suggestion that Moses himself learned great secrets from the Egyptians. Given that Hermes Trismegistus was thought to be the renowned sage of ancient Egypt, it was logical that the Hermetica could contain the ancient theology.

Ficino was hugely influential in his own right. His close relationship with these books lured him ever deeper into the Hermetic world, and he began to discern strangely recurring themes. A modern writer on Italian history, Tim Parks, describes Ficino’s momentous declaration:

Thus, according to Ficino, a secret line of priests linked the ancient pagan and Christian beliefs. Ficino threw himself into trying to recover and reconstruct this ‘single faith’, concluding that it was a magical current flowing under and
linking many otherwise apparently irreconcilable belief systems. From this he developed the idea of ‘natural magic’, one that worked with the forces of nature rather than by the conjuration of demons or spirits.

The robust joy in life that marked the Hermetic path extended well beyond that of academic study. As American researcher Peter Tompkins writes:

Ficino’s masterwork was
Three Books on Life
(
De vita libri tres
), published in 1489, which was extremely influential on arcane philosophers such as Agrippa. But once again, despite being a synthesis of several magical and
philosophical
systems, Hermeticism stood firmly as the heart and soul of Ficino’s work.

The next step would be from Florence to Rome. Astounding though it may seem to us today, many in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church were sympathetic to the message of Hermeticism, and considered it to be compatible with Christianity.

The Hermetica proclaimed that the material universe was created by a lesser god, or Demiurge, who had been assigned the task by the God of all. In
Asclepius
, God is said to love this second god as ‘His own Son’,
³⁰
which has obvious parallels with Jesus. In
Pimander
, the first treatise of the
Corpus Hermeticum
, God’s creative Word is also described as the ‘Son of God’
³¹
– to some a clear echo of the majestic opening of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’.

Such references led some early Christian proselytes, such as the late-third/early fourth-century author Lactantius, to accept Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christ. This view was by no means unanimous: others such as St Augustine ascribed Hermes’ foreknowledge to warnings from worried demons. But when the Hermetica was rediscovered in the fifteenth century, at least enthusiasts could argue their case by invoking early Church authorities.

Some thinkers tried hard to find a compromise, accepting the philosophy and cosmology but rejecting the magic, while others, such as Pico della Mirandola, pointed out that the two sides of the Hermetica were inseparable and argued this demonstrated that magic – provided there was no occult nastiness such as conjuring spirits – was a legitimate Christian activity. After all, Moses had engaged in magical contests with the pharaoh’s magi and had probably learned magic in Egypt. Some even suggested that Jesus had performed his miracles by means of natural magic.

Others went further, seeing Egypt as the origin of the wisdom inherited first by the Jews and then by the Christians. This, they argued, elevated Hermes to at least an equal footing with Moses, who despite not being a Christian, was still deserving of respect for his contribution to the religious tradition into which God had chosen to send his son.

The extent to which men in high places accepted this reasoning – even, astonishingly, including the Pope himself – can be demonstrated by resuming the story of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who we left earlier languishing in a Parisian prison after his arrest on the orders of Pope Innocent VIII. He didn’t languish for long. As Pico was from a well-connected family, his powerful supporters interceded with the Pope on his behalf. One such supporter was Charles VIII of France, and another Lorenzo de’
Medici – ‘the Magnificent’ – who was now one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Florence. Eventually the Pope allowed Pico to return to Florence, under Lorenzo’s guarantee that he would behave himself, although his works remained on the banned list.

In 1492 Innocent VIII died and was succeeded by the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia, who wore the papal crown as Alexander VI. His reign certainly began with a bang. He not only absolved Pico and his works from all taint of heresy but wrote him a fan letter, and the fact he did so early in his reign demonstrates how strongly he felt about it.
Tantamount
to a papal endorsement, the letter was included in subsequent editions of Pico’s books. In the event, Pico’s repatriation was short lived, as he died in 1494, at the age of just thirty-one.

But why did Alexander support this heretical upstart? As his fan letter suggests, Pico and the Pope shared a passion for all things Hermetic. The Borgia Pope even
commissioned
tell-tale decorations for his personal rooms in the Vatican – the Appartamento Borgia – which survive to this day. In the series of frescoes on mythological themes by Pinturicchio, Hermes Trismegistus is depicted twice,
possibly
three times if an image of Mercury slaying the giant Argus is intended as a veiled reference to him.