Royal Road: Hermetic Overview
Presented on: Tuesday, March 4, 1986
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 9 of 52
Royal Road: Hermetic Overview
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, March 4, 1986
Transcript:
The date is March 4th 1986. This is the, this is part 9 of the Hermetic Tradition, Osiris to Franklin. Tonight's lecture is entitled the royal road overview of the Hermetic tradition.
We need from time to time to have an overview. And so tonight we'll try and give an overview. The Hermetic tradition is the major Western tradition. We have difficulty understanding this because we think that Christianity is the major Western tradition. And Christianity is an offshoot, not so much of Judaism but of Hermeticism. The Hermetic tradition is a major tradition. Judaism is an offshoot of the Hermetic tradition. So we have our priorities crossed. And we think that talking about the Hermetic tradition is somehow talking about something occult. But we're talking about the main backbone of Western civilization for the last five thousand years. It's different when you see it that way. It's called the royal road. Now the royal road in Alexandria was the high road, the aqueduct, above the crowds, above the people. That linked the **inaudible word** with the museum. Which linked the Royal Palace of the Ptolemies with the library. Because the winding tandem in civilization has always been the palace and the library linked together by a railroad. A high road. That the ordinary people, common people, everyday people don't take. They can't take that. They can't walk on that royal road. Because it's a direct link from the places where power manifests itself to control and rule. And where knowledge and wisdom manifests itself in terms of expression. What you can know. What you can study. What you can find out. That can be said of something. And only as long as that tandem is held can there be anything like a civilization. It's only when the palace of power is linked to the palace of learning by a royal road that a civilization can survive and grow. I don't think that there's a path from the White House to the Library of Congress. But there should be.
So we're talking about the main tradition in Western civilization. And we've seen that in its genesis it was Egyptian. But that in its culmination some 2,000 years ago it was Greek. And we have problems understanding how did the Egyptian Hermetic tradition, the Egyptian funerary text come to be in a Greek dress. And of course the overwhelming link between them is Alexandria. And so we have to take a look at Alexandria. And Alexander has to be set in the Ptolemaic Egyptian times. and the most startling graphic presentation of what happened there. In the Cambridge ancient history they have a map of Hellenistic Egypt. And it shows in blue all of the classical Egyptian roads that have been there since time immemorial linking the Egyptian towns. Then they show on the same map in red the Greek roads linking the Greek cities and the Greek centres of power. And there are only a few where they overlap. There just a few. They were different. So that Egypt got a Greek mask put upon itself by, starting with Alexander the Great. But the roots of that Greek mask go back in time. Back more than a thousand years when there was an Egyptian mask on the Greek mind. And almost nobody talks about that. So we have to reminisce about that a little bit. Before we can understand the tremendous shift of consciousness that happened in Alexandria.
When we go to the Greek tradition classically the earliest writings and documents that we have are Homer. Literate Greek civilization begins with Homer. And everybody knows he wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. And a few people know that he also wrote hymns. And the Homeric hymns are in fact extraordinary presentations of the Gods. And the third Homeric hymn is the hymn to Hermes. So if we turn to the Homeric hymn of Hermes. In characteristic Homeric fashion he writes, "Single muse of Hermes. The son of Zeus and Maya. Lord of Celine and pastoral Arcadia. Herald child of heaven and bringer of luck."
Lord of Celine. Where's Celine? Almost nobody knows Celine. It's called Kyllini today. It's a peninsula. When you visualize in your mind the Peloponnesian lower section of Greece linked to the upper section of Greece that little thin Corinthian isthmus. On the lower section of Greece way off to the left, where the little fingernail would be there's a peninsula of land. It's the westernmost corner of the Peloponnese. And on that Peninsula is the modern city of Kyllini. Which was ancient Celine. Which was the home base of the group conception of Hermes. In fact that pull middle swath of the Peloponnese Arcadia is about the only place in ancient Greece that Hermes is revered at all. And Celine and it's mountainous inland environment are the only places where there's an indigenous Hermes cult anywhere in Greece. Most of the rest in Greece, until classical times, had no reference to Hermes. Had no recognition of Hermes.
It's with Homer that the Olympian Pantheon comes into consciousness. Literally comes into existence. Homer makes the Olympian Gods. And with that comes the idea of Hermes as messenger of the Gods. But before that it's very peculiar. The only other places that mention Hermes at all. There are a couple of references in ancient Thebes. And that perks our interest because of the Thebes in Egypt. And the Thebes in Greece is related to the Thebes in Egypt via Crete. Because the hero of Thebes, of course, back at the time when Theseus went to slay the Minotaur. And of course the whole Orestian, Orestes and the sphinx' riddle. And having to kill his father and marry his mother and everything. All of that is Thebian.
But this takes us way, way back before Homer. These events that were talking about now, Theseus and Orestes happened about 1600 B.C. So when our mind goes back to that 1600 B.C. we realize that this is the time of the New Kingdom. This is about a hundred fifty years before Agnaten. And this is the time when Egypt was in its heyday of a very powerful revival of the funerary text. In fact the Egyptian Book of the Dead that we have comes from that recension at that time. In fact that whole tandem of civilization, Egypt and ancient Phoenicia and Crete and Mycenaean Greek terrain, were all in a interrelated civilization. One that was sophisticated in fact. Egypt by that time was at least fourteen hundred years into its civilization. It had been extant as long as their, let's say the time from off to the back to the time of King Arthur. So Egypt was ancient.
but when we look at that Homer's Hermes and when we look at the Greek cult of Hermes from Celine, we find that he is a thief. More than a messenger of Gods. He's a bringer of luck. He's a thief. He's associated with Aphrodite and Eros. See that the statues that were called herms are phallic statues for fertility. And that in most of Greek homes in classical Greece the place of Hermes in the home was in the bedroom. And the bed face then one of these herms. And these statues of Hermes, usually it was just a pillar with a little knob on it to indicate an erect phallus.
How does a God of fertility, how does someone who is characterized as a, a thief...the first thing that Hermes does after he is born. He was born in a cave at dawn. He was born at midday he was planning on the loot. And then the evening he stole the oxen of far-darting Apollo. First thing he does is he goes and steals the oxen of Apollo. Whose oxen where they? Apollo. Before they were Apollo's they belonged to the God Helios of the Sun. The oxen.
In fact in the Odyssey wasn't one of the crimes that the men of Odysseus perpetrated to kill one of the oxen of Helios? And they were punished for that. In fact the dizziest was shipped was sunk not for any of the sass that he had given any of the Gods. But because his men had killed an ox that had belonged to Helios, the Sun. For that the Gods will smash your ship. Then kill all the men except Odysseus.
Helios. Isn't there a city in Egypt called Heliopolis. Oh yes. In fact Heliopolis in Egypt is the place where there's the home of the recension of the Tibetan or the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And in Heliopolis was the cult of the Apis bull. And the Apis bull was the oxen of the Sun. The Sun God Ra. Apollo. Helios. The sacred consecration.
So Hermes stole the secret consecration animal. The basis upon which the Sun God, whether it is Ra or Re or Apollo or Helios. The whole placation by sacrifice to allow life to go on is taken by theft by Hermes. And he thereby has the power to confer fertility. Not because he's the Sun God. But because he has to be able to take the sacrificial ceremonial center which allows for man to have an interchange with the Sun God. What is that sacrificial center? Is it an ox? It may be externally. But what's the real core of it? The real core is the conscious expression of that ceremony. It isn't stealing the animals so much but it's being in control, in power of understanding that language the words that make that ceremony efficacious. The real oxen of the Sun is the characteristic language and hymns that are sung and used. This is the real sacrifice. This is the efficacious sacrifice. And Hermes or Thoth, the scribe who invents the sacred language. Who's able to do this. Now we're able to see that the Greek Hermes has an ancient tie to Egypt.
In fact the Greek Dark Ages schmeared the whole function of Hermes so that it was not recognized. The only reason that Hermes was remembered in the central part of the Peloponnese, is that those individuals who survived the breaking up of the Mycenaean power centers, Tyrons, Mycenia, Argos. All of them were in the central part of the Peloponnese. And when they were, when they fell into ruin by warfare. You must understand that the generation after the Trojan War centered a catastrophic downfall. Almost every hero that came home was killed as soon as he came home. The Greeks who won the Trojan War were killed when they came back home. Why were they killed? Because men that have that much power and bloodlust and have won are dangerous. They're never going to stay at home. They've become killers. They've become lords of the earth. They're too large to take back into homes. This is the whole point of the Odyssey. Penelope wants to know are you the man I married 20 years ago? You look like a killer to me she says.
So we have a generation after the Trojan War, almost all of the Greek kingdoms that were power centres have fallen into ruin. And with that came a tremendous Dark Age. And in that Dark Age the only the folk memories. Only the schmeared remains. Only the blurred outlines were kept.
And so Hermes became the thief. He became associated with fertility. and all connection all sense of what the reality was was lost. Until, until the haunting intelligence of the Greeks reached again that point of consciousness which had been obtained long before. After the Dark Ages the consciousness came slowly back up again. And by the time of Alexander, under the personal true tutelage of Aristotle. He was able to understand that there was some archaic and arcane connection between the Greek personality and the Egyptian mind. And vice-versa the Greek mind and the Egyptian personality. And that's why, as soon as he could before he went off on his conquest of the Persian Empire he went into Egypt. And he went to the ancient shrine of Ahkmenrah in the middle of the Libyan desert. He didn't go to Olympia where Zeus has his shrine. He didn't go to Mount Olympus. He didn't go to Delfi. He went to Egypt. He went to the middle of the Sahara Desert. Several hundred miles, dangerous miles inland. Almost nobody ever got there. And you know the classical story don't you? The classical story given by a man who was there with Alexander, Orian. Orian says that the army was lost. They had nowhere to go. They were lost in a sandstorm. Several hundred miles from the coast. They didn't know where they were. And two serpents came out from the sand and together in the parallel they lived their way towards the Oasis. And Alexander said that way. The God is calling me. The desert holds nothing against me.
The desert oasis was called Siwa. And Siwa was the most arcane place in the world. Siwa ran hot at night and cold during the day. The same Oasis. the same water. And Siwa was such a powerful place. I think it's 500 miles before you get to any other Oasis. I think the next oasis is Kufra. Way down on the border of the Sudan and Libya and Chad. But Siwa was placed on the edge of a Qattara depression. And long, long ago when the Qattara depression was filled with fresh water it was a huge lake. Ten thousand years ago. Twelve thousand years ago. And when the Qattara depression was a huge lake. Larger than Lake Superior. That headland area where Siwa was in control of, was able to see by reflection, by Mirage inversion, from the Nile Valley images that were bounced off the Qattara depression lake. And where able to be seen deep into the desert. The ancient tradition was never lost. And when the pyramids were new. When Cheops, and Kepler and Mycerinus built them and they were covered with polished marble that shone almost like metallic obelisks. They would have been able to be seen by mirage and reflection deep into the Sahara Desert.
Siwa was the last place in that whole sequence of imagery and was sacred. It was sacred to Ahkmenrah. And after that Alexander had himself portrayed with the ram horns of Ahkmenrah over his head. That is to say it was like his halo. But instead of having a medieval Christian halo he had the, the horns of the ram of Ahkmenrah. He was reclaiming this ancient connection between the Greek mind and the Egyptian personality. And the Greek personality and the Egyptian mind.
Now the Ptolemy's, especially his right-hand man. The first Ptolemy, Ptolemy Soter. The Prince of Logos. A hefty man. A large beak of a nose. Huge massive shoulders. A toughy. When it came time for the generals of Alexander to take control of various areas, he took Egypt. and to make sure that he was going to hold it in the sacred way, he took the body. He stole the body of Alexander and took it with him. And had it embalmed. And had a coffin built that had a translucent case over it. And this body of Alexander was the central jewel in the city of Alexandria. And it lasted for hundreds of years.
When Augustus took power the last place that he took, the key stone to the Roman Empire. Not the Roman Republic but the Roman Empire which Augustus made. The key stone was the city of Alexandria. And he paid homage to the body of Alexander the Great. The day that he came into Alexandria. And recognized his likeness in the face of the man. And it was well known in the inner circles at that time that that's what he felt. That he was he was back. And it was simply his due.
This whole mentality. This entire reality of the Greek and Egyptian complex was several thousand years in the making. So that when we come to understand the Hermetic material that's written in Alexandria in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., we are completely naive if we think that it is just Christian oriented material. Or Jewish off split material. The origins of it, the roots of it, are there long before Moses was born. Long before Abraham was running caravans. The origins of that go back to the beginnings of Western civilization. So that at a time of crisis. At the beginning of 0 A.D. 0 B.C. when the consciousness of Western civilization was in crisis this material came back up in the most powerful archetypal form possible. And of course the synchronistic context at that time in Alexandria was a kind of a Roman Egyptian Jewish Hellenistic pastiche. That's the best that you can say about it. It was not a civilization but a pastiche. But this material that came up, the Hermetic material that came up, came up with such force and such integrity. And because of the inter tender between the Greek and Egyptian interplay over several thousand years, when it came up it formed itself in the Hermetic text that we have. In this classic presentation. It's the Hermetic material that Christianity assumes for its own.
One is very, very hard-pressed. One can trace Judaism and the escreen material up to about 50 A.D. and then that whole train runs out. The conversion of Judaism into Christianity. The arguments, the cultural overlay runs to about 50 maybe 70 A.D. at the latest and then it runs out. One can no longer trace. One does not see Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, continuing to become Christianity. It just doesn't happen. It's an optical illusion.
What happens instead is that Hellenistic Judaism comes to a crisis of consciousness with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Abject crisis of consciousness. And the Jewish religion curls back from the whole holistic experience. Rejects completely all of the Hellenistic Judaism and goes back to what was established at that time increasingly, the letter of the law. The Torah. The books as delivered. And one may not add anything to them. One may write commentaries or mishnah upon them. But the commentaries and mishnah's must be to establish not only every sentence but every word in every sentence. Every letter. Every iota. Every punctuation mark. And what we know as Judaism today, classical Judaism, is a frozen fossil of that time period. Almost no mention is made at Hellenistic Judaism. One goes back to the Old Testament. And one goes from there to the Mishnahs and Talmud that's it. There's a tremendous jump. For cultural reasons one they talk about Philo and Josephus because they are famous. And it's good to have famous people who are associated with the ones faith. But the fact is is that this is an anathema. That whole interconnection.
We will see that at the middle of the 2nd century A.D., about the time that the Hermetic material is really coming out very strongly. Around 140 A.D. in Rome, Marcion. Who is the most powerful Christian teacher of that era rejects completely the idea that there's any contact between the Old Testament and the New Testament so-called. Because he's the one who makes the New Testament. It is Marcion who for the first time takes the four basic Gospels and puts them together and says this is a New Testament. That our God has nothing to do with the Old Testament God. And at the formation in the middle of the 2nd century A.D. of the New Testament, of Christianity, there is the consciousness because of the power of the Hermetic tradition. That what is being manifested here is new now to us that is eternal. It is not just old. It is not just ancient but is eternal. Has always been so since the foundations of the universe.
The Old Testament's cosmology begins really with Adam. Adam. The Christian cosmology begins with Jesus as laying the foundations of the universe before anything was made. In this the Hermetic tradition coming with such pulse of archetypal force, late in the 1st century and early in the 2nd century A.D., made this tremendous change. One notices the difference between the letters of Paul, which are written roughly around 50 to 60 A.D. If you take the letters of Paul and you compare to the Gospel of John, written around 90 A.D., you see that there is a complete change in perspective. Paul is writing to synagogue communities to tell them that this is the new link in the Jewish tradition. And John is talking about cosmic light coming into manifestation as life. And he's writing for human beings for all time everywhere. There's only 30 years between the two of them. What accounts for that difference? What accounts for that tremendous asymptotic jump in consciousness? The emergence of the Hermetic archetype in the Greek mind. Paul whenever he was challenged claims he's a Roman citizen. He says you can't, you can't do this to me I'm not really loved Jew I'm a Roman citizen. John writing as in the Greek language says I am a spiritual presence. I have nothing to do with the Roman Empire. I have nothing to do with with any of these cultural or institutional traditions. I have everything to do with the eternal truth which always has been. And now is manifest in such a way that to deny it one has to leap into unreality to even begin to deny it. this is how John talks.
And in the lectures on the Gospel of John. Last year in their series of archetypal Alexandria. I showed how when the Gospel of John was taken to Alexandria around 90 to 95 A.D. It was taken there in the spirit that this is a workbook. This is a template. This is an educational spiritual tool by which we may learn to be real. And the Gospel of John is every bit that. It's a workbook about spiritual reality. And when the Gospel of John went into Alexandria and about the time that The Poimandres was being written about the same time. That interpenetration of the Hermetic archetype coming back into consciousness. With Saint John's Christian vision of the eternal truth that had been revealed. It was that interplay that produced Gnosticism. It was st. John's personal experience. And it was the Hermetic archetype coming back from the eternal truths of the ancient tradition of Western civilization. Reading those two together produced Gnosticism. Because there's no Gnosticism before that.
And after that in Alexandria almost immediately one begins to find a new kind of consciousness. A new kind of mentality. A new kind of spirituality. Where there are individuals now who say, not only is the light eternal but in this universal amphitheater of reality we now see and understand that there are levels. And in The Pista Sophia there will be 14 levels designated. 14 aeons. There's no talk about that whatsoever before that happens. So somewhere around 100 A.D. to about 120 the inner penetration of Johannaian Christian mystical personal experience with the Hermetic archetype produces the Gnostic vision that what man has to understand is not how to get along with Roman masters. Or with Hellenistic traditions whether they're Jewish or Persian or otherwise. But man has to understand the spiritual dimensions of the universe which he never understood before. That is to say consciously. That they had been understood before by arcane esoteric elite priests. Who put the learning of those esoteric aeons, the spiritual dimensions, the architecture of reality. Put the learning of what they were in sacred language that nobody could read except the priests. And the priests put the language inside the tombs. When they build...buried the Pharaohs of the royal people.
So that nobody except a handful of priests, writing them in an arcane circuit language for the dead Pharaohs and their families. Nobody else knew. nobody else was supposed to know. But what Saint John was saying is that everyone now will know. Everyone will know. And they will know in a language which everyone will learn to read. And that it's not for the dead it's for the living. To have a triple revolution. It's not for the elite. It's for everybody. It's not for the dead it's for the living. and it's not to be in a language which cannot be understood but in the language which everyone may understand. And it's not just that the Greek language then, which was the coina. That is the language of of the world of the educated world at that time. It's not that it went from the Egyptian hieroglyphics into Greek language. That would be a revolution enough. But what John is saying in the gospel. What the Hermetic documents are saying is that one cannot understand the divine by a mind language. That it has to be in terms of spiritual experience. And if you think that it's written in hieroglyphics and is arcane. And is going to be public because it's written in Greek you're still not understanding. That the move is not from hieroglyphics to Greek. But from hieroglyphics in tombs but personal experience in living human beings.
So that the function of the Hermetic tradition went from arcane after death information for the Pharaohs to living experiences for anyone who wanted it. Anyone who cared to come. Men and women alike. Old and young alike. Any nationality. Any religion. Any race. It made no difference whatsoever because this was a universal message of light and life for all.
So now we can understand a little bit of the powerfulness of this material. And why when I said at the beginning of the lecture tonight we're not dealing with some kind of occult offshoot. People that used to talk that way we're doing a disservice to everyone. We're talking about the main road of Western civilization. We're talking about what when you open up the spiritual psyche of Western human beings is there as the spinal cord, organizing and synthesizing all of the experience, all of the mentality which we have and brings the whole civilization into focus. And without this nothing is going to make sense. Nothing. Because it's the only linking that there is through all the time periods that holds. Through all the cultures that holds. Right up to today. And the acid test of course is that when one opens oneself up one finds it there.
It's like Uncle Carl says modern man gets shocked when he realizes that he's not blank inside. And that he doesn't just record the lessons that the corporations, or the governments, or the teachers, or the family, or the parents wants you to understand. That when you open yourself up you have tremendous universes of meaning. You have symbolic understandings. Which so transcend these little school book messages that people have been trying to paste upon us that they fall off in droves. But the central quality of not being afraid of opening up to that is a tone of spiritual courage that can only be had, can only be had if one is willing to be free. Because the willingness to learn is coextensive for the ability to be free.
So that the Hermetic tradition in its essence in the great crisis of zero A.D., zero B.C. delivered the message that only liberated human beings will ever know. And so the only task at hand, the only task at hand is salvation. Salvation. Not the, not the ability to be a Roman citizen. Not the ability to vote. Not the ability to announce fortunes. Not the ability to adjust the society but salvation. It is the only problem that man has. Because that's the threshold. That's the focus. Wherein he can realize the eternal in himself. And that's the only issue there is. The bringing back of that capacity of spiritual presence that manifests itself as Liberty. Spiritual liberty. This is the essence of the Hermetic tradition. And it was been slurred and degradation and lost long enough.
At the time, at the O B.C., 0 A.D., we pointed out how two of the most powerful epic writers in Roman civilization, Ovid and Virgil, both pointed out...
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...in Roman civilization Ovid and Virgil both pointed out the tremendous character of Ages. Of, In Ovid in The Metamorphosis, the very name of the book changes. Metamorphosis. In the very first book he talks about the different ages. And how the ages begin with gold. the golden age where no spirituality is needed to be expressed because everyone has it. And then comes the silver age when there are just a few individuals who understand it but are able to share it with all the others. Then comes an age of bronze where it's held tightly by just a few elite. And no one else can have it. And that devolves into an age of iron, where the elite have forgotten the truth of what they thought they held and no one has it. No one understands. And so that age of iron finally comes to it's gripping close. And the Greek term which Heraclitus used and Carl Jung picked it up from Heraclitus, what happens then is that the greedy angry insane end of an age suddenly changes in an enantiodromia. An enantiodromia. And completely turns inside out. Delivering again like a like a tightly bound fist that has the tension. Delivering again all of the treasures of the psyche that have been suppressed. All of the treasures of eternity that have been forgotten. And they're suddenly, instantly flung out whole into the world again. And in this enantiodromia the age of iron changes suddenly into an age of gold again.
How does Virgil in The Fourth Eclogue describe this? It was because of this Fourth Eclogue that Augustus Caesar, who recognized Alexander in himself, commissioned Virgil to write the great epic poem to establish Roman civilization for all time. This is how The Fourth Eclogue begins. In translation. This is the penguin classic translation.
"Sicilian muses grant me a slightly grander song. Not all delight and trees and lowly tamarisks. let woods if words we sing be worthy of a general. Now the last age of Kumi's prophecy has come. The great succession of centuries is born afresh. Now too returns the Virgin. Saturn's rule returns. A new beginning now descends from Heaven's height. Oh chaste Athena look with blessing on the boy. Whose birth will end the iron race at last. And raise a golden through the world. now Apollo rules. And polio this glory enters time with you. your generalship begins the march of the great months. With you to guide if traces of our sin remain, they nullified will free the lands from lasting fear. He will receive the life divine. And see the Gods mingling with heroes. And himself be seen of them rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtues."
And of course in later times when Christianity came in it was called Virgil's Messianic Eclogue. And it was because of Virgil's Messianic Eclogue that in the high middle ages when Dante wrote the new epic poem to establish the high Christian mature civilization reborn in Florence in the 13th century. Who was Dante's guide but Virgil.
So you can understand that we're not dealing with grade school literature. That's a stupid way to think about reality. We're dealing with the very viscera and bones. The mind. The spine. The actuality of the way in which reality makes itself manifest. We're dealing with the powers of the world. This is how it happens. It actually happened this way. Is happening this way. It's not a sideshow. It's not some occult story which one can hear and say oh that's very nice and walk away from it. You can't walk away from the reality. It's there. it's in us. It's in the age. It's in the air. And it will have its way again.
So the Hermetic tradition is the royal road.
And next week when we take a look, we'll look at the Hermetic documents all dealing with Hermes dialogues to his son Tat. And there are four or five of them. And I've picked them out already. And I will present all of the Hermetic dialogues concerned with instructions to his son Tat. And in these what the Hermetic tradition will be concerned with is how education really works. It's one thing for you to come into understanding of spiritual presence. Of having the courage to open oneself up to the reality. But how do you teach this to someone else? How do you teach it for instance to your son? Or to your daughter? How do you pass it on? It's a very big problem. Think how difficult it was for you yourself to come by this. Must it always happened that way? By happenstance. By trial and error. Or is there a way in which it can be taught? And all of the Hermetic dialogues from Hermes to Tat concern themselves with this.
And then in two weeks I'll take all the Hermetic dialogues that concern themselves with Hermes to Asclepius. Because the other side of that issue is health. Because medicine in the largest sense is health. So education and medicine go together.
So I have next week on education, Hermes to Tat. And in the following week Hermes to Asclepius. And then the third week we'll take the great Hermetic dialogue The Asclepius, which is the largest traumatic dialogue that we have. And we'll see how this inner penetration of education and medicine are brought together in the great Asclepius. And The Asclepius is the only Hermetic dialogue that we have that's not written in Greek but is written in Latin. Because it was meant to get out and transform the Christianized Latin world that was coming into being. Because by the time The Asclepius was written it was understood by those who are watching things that we're not going to have a Roman Empire, we're going to have a Christian Roman Empire.
So for the next few weeks we'll go back to The Corpus Hermeticum. And we'll see how all of this patiently over about a 200-year period was kept intact and presented again and again facing the major issues of the time. The major issues of the great transformation from the classical to the Christian world. And by the time we have The Asclepius we'll be ready to have a lecture on Plotinus again. Because with Plotinus is too close to the Classical Age. It's the last mind that will understand how all of that happened from ancient Egypt up to his time. And after that no one again for more than a thousand years will understand the Egyptian origins. And the Greek interpenetration of Egyptian mind and character like Plotinus. He will be the last consciousness who will understand.
Until a very promising young man in Florence be taken aside by very powerful banker named Cosmo de Medici. And he will say to the young man, I am going to build you a school and you are going to translate for me these arcane books that I just purchased. And the books that he purchased at great sum with A Collective Dialogues of Plato and The Corpus Hermeticum. And he will give these to the young man Ficino, Marsilio Ficino. And he would build a villa for him, the Villa Careggi up in the hills above Florence. And he will set him aside. And for the rest of his life Ficino will devote himself to translating and bringing all these back. And the people that will go there will make the Renaissance. Everyone who made the Renaissance will have studied under Ficino. And he will train them all. All of them. And all of it will come back. And at the end of his life Ficino will find a manuscript of Plotinus. And for the first time, around the time that America was discovered, around 1492. In fact it was the same year. In fact as you would know in hermetic circles the same month that America was discovered, Ficino would finish translating Plotinus. And for the first time in almost 1,200 years educated people will be able to read him and understand. Oh my goodness somebody understands everything.
That translation of Plotinus will produce the Reformation. Just like the translation of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Platonic Dialogues produced the Renaissance. The same man at the end of his life will produced the Reformation. Because as soon as its understood the origins in the truth but this was an eternal personal revelation to every man. That the church structure has nothing to do with God's Word. Except as caretakers to make sure that people are going to receive the truth. That the truth belongs to individual human beings anytime they establish a contact with divinity. That was what the Reformation was about.
So the material we're doing with this is the lifeblood. This is the nerve tissue of the civilization that we're in. We don't need any more **inaudible word**. And we don't need to be told that its esoteric and is just for the few.
Sorry to be so strong but **inaudible few words**.
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