Meditation Expert
You may have noticed that there is a strong platonic element to the hermetic writings? There are sections in some Hermetic texts that almost match passages within Plato’s classic works.
This influence, however, is not as simple as you might think!
We know that most early Greek philosophers trained in Egypt (Plato was there for 13 years under the tuition of a priest of Horus called Sechnuphi), so much of their teachings might have come from the land of the Nile.
In classical Hermetic texts you often see meditations designed to help the practitioner overcome perceived limitations and reach beyond his or herself. Often these techniques would involve training the imagination.
Sometimes these imagination exercises would take the formal systematic format we tend to favour nowadays, whereby the student would slowly build up their abilities in a scientific way. However more often the exercises had the feel of someone dynamically reaching forth, exploring the limits of their mental abilities using their imagination. Think of it as someone learning to pearl dive by playing in the water with skilled divers rather than through formal lessons.
IMany of the early Hermeticists were Christian. For them the teachings of Hermes were part of (or a prediction of) Christianity.
This may seem strange from a modern viewpoint, but at the time there were several reflections in Christianity that seemed to match the Hermetic path.
To them it seemed that for years mankind had been trying to gain direct contact with the divine, to see the spiritual truth and to return to heaven. That all our spirituality, all the religions of the world, were our attempts to overcome our limitations and to be worthy to reach up to our creator.
God had heard the prayers and seen humanity’s efforts – and it return divinity had been sending messages in various forms via dreams, visions and prophets. This team effort was working and through our purification and divine progress, bit by bit, mankind and the divine were getting closer.
For them Hermes Trismagistus had obviously been a messenger (Hermes being the Greek messenger god) of the trinity (Trismagistus = thrice great). The logos, or word, he talked of was a reference to the coming of the greatest messenger (Hermes) of all, Jesus Christ.
If we were to step back in time to first century Egypt and go to a Hermetic gathering we would find ourselves amongst a very special group of people. If we look at contemporary historic accounts and the influences within the texts, it’s possible to start to piece together a image of who the practitioners actually were.
Central to the Hermetic tradition is the idea of enlightenment. The text known as the Corpus Hermeticum starts with a beautiful description of Hermes himself, achieving a higher state of consciousnesses through meditation. The Hermeticists were great meditation masters, for them, Meditation was a form of sacred sleep called incubation. A practice that could lead us to a rebirth and to full expression of our higher nature.
Many traditions are named after a founder real or imaginary and Hermeticum is no exception. The texts that make up the Hermetic tradition are said to be written by an enlightened teacher called Hermes Trismegistus, but who was this mysterious author.
The texts themselves never explain and there are multiple theories put forwards as part of the tradition since those days.
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