The Divine Pymander of Hermes

The Hermetica are Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE,[1] which are mostly presented as dialogues in which a teacher, generally identified as Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest Hermes"), enlightens a disciple. The texts form the basis of Hermeticism. They discuss the divine, the cosmos, mind, and nature. Some touch upon alchemy, astrology, and related concepts.

The term particularly applies to the Corpus Hermeticum, Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation in fourteen tracts, of which eight early printed editions appeared before 1500 and a further twenty-two by 1641. This collection, which includes the Pœmandres and some addresses of Hermes to disciples Tat, Ammon and Asclepius, was said to have originated in the school of Ammonius Saccas and to have passed through the keeping of Michael Psellus: it is preserved in fourteenth century manuscripts. The last three tracts in modern editions were translated independently from another manuscript by Ficino's contemporary Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447 - 1500) and first printed in 1507. Extensive quotes of similar material are found in classical authors such as Joannes Stobaeus.

Parts of the Hermetica appeared in the 4th-century Gnostic library found in Nag Hammadi. Other works in Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic and other languages may also be termed Hermetica - another famous tract is the Emerald Tablet, which teaches the doctrine "as above, so below".

All these are themselves remnants of a more extensive literature, part of the syncretic, intellectualized paganism of their era, a cultural movement that also included the Neoplatonic philosophy of the Greco-Roman mysteries and late Orphic and Pythagorean literature and influenced Gnostic forms of the Abrahamic religions. There are significant differences: the Hermetica contain no explicit allusions to Biblical texts and are little concerned with Greek mythology or the technical minutiae of metaphysical Neoplatonism. However most of these schools do agree in attributing the creation of the world to a Demiurge rather than the supreme being and in accepting reincarnation. Although Neoplatonic philosophers, who quote apocryphal works of Orpheus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and other figures, almost never cite Hermes Trismegistus, the tracts were still popular enough in the 5th century to be argued against by Augustine of Hippo in the City of God.

The following are the titles:

The First Book
The Second Book. Called Poemander
The Third Book. Called The Holy Sermon
The Fourth Book. Called The Key
The Fifth Book
The Sixth Book. Called That in God alone is Good
The Seventh Book. His Secret Sermon in the Mount Of Regeneration, and
The Profession of Silence. To His Son Tat
The Eighth Book. That The Greatest Evil In Man, Is The Not Knowing God
The Ninth Book. A Universal Sermon To Asclepius
The Tenth Book. The Mind to Hermes
The Eleventh Book. Of the Common Mind to Tat
The Twelfth Book. His Crater or Monas
The Thirteenth Book. Of Sense and Understanding
The Fourteenth Book. Of Operation and Sense
The Fifteenth Book. Of Truth to His Son Tat
The Sixteenth Book. That None of the Things that are, can Perish
The Seventeenth Book. To Asclepius, to be Truly Wise