Christmas with the Presidents
Jerry Newcombe
The general consensus among contemporary historians is that our modern world has become a disenchanted place.[1] Earlier ages believed that the world existed as the interplay of heavenly and earthly realms, perhaps even astrological, elemental, angelic or demonic forces. But the modern age has shaken off such pre-scientific shackles, leaving us with a world in which nothing is regarded in terms of its spiritual qualities. Historical developments, particularly the Reformation and later Enlightenment, has resulted in a world that has instead adopted a rational, scientific, and materialistic perspective. But this secular vision, devoid of all spiritual consideration, doesn’t comport with reality. In the first case, it is false to assume that the real world is a disenchanted place to begin with. But it is also incorrect to assume that the modern world ever really left behind the spiritual in the first place. In fact, magical and occult thinking has persisted in the modern age and represents a much more substantial influence in history than most historians recognize.
We've been taught that the modern world is a disenchanted place. In fact, magical and occult thinking has persisted in the modern age and represents a much more substantial influence in history than most historians recognize.
Historians don’t tend to recognize these influences precisely because they have been so convinced by this disenchantment narrative. The modern age regards the spiritual, magical, and occult as useless and not worth considering. Why would anyone pay attention to the teachings of gnostic mystical cults or the works of Renaissance era magicians now that we know those things are nothing but superstitious nonsense? But our secularist way of thinking has actually blinded us to the historical reality. The magical persists and the occult has flourished right under our noses.
The Renaissance was a time of great development, including much energy spent on recovering lost knowledge. Following the Crusades and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, many treasures of western literature became available in the West by way of translation from texts that had been preserved in the Greek and Arab speaking world. What may be surprising to modern readers is that the works of Plato were not the priority for this translation work, despite discovering dozens of texts. Instead, the texts that were regarded as most important were those associated with the occult.
Marsilio Ficino, an Italian priest and scholar, is responsible for a considerable portion of the pertinent translation work. Ficino undertook his translation work under the patronage of the Medici family and had a close relationship with Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo instructed Ficino to commit to translating the texts of Hermes Trismegistus before turning to Plato or any other text.[2]
While the name Hermes Trismegistus is unfamiliar to most of us (although, we see his serpentine staff on nearly every medical facility; echoes of his influence), he was a figure of great mystery and interest during the Renaissance. Scant references to the “Thrice Great” Hermes existed in the West. There was the Latin translation of the Asclepius, a creation myth of purported Egyptian origin that was attributed to Hermes, as well as a number of references to him in Augustine and a few other church fathers. However, the references that existed suggested that Hermes was an ancient Egyptian priest, possibly the contemporary of Moses, and one who inspired the later works of Plato and other ancient sages.
Many, such as Ficino, believed that Hermes was a teacher of the prisca theologia—the first theology, the pristine theology of antiquity, which possessed a full expression of the truth. Seekers of the prisca theologia often believed that all religions possessed kernels of the original truth hidden beneath the words of the literal text, which could only be understood by those who had esoteric, occult understanding.
From the translation of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, often referred to as the Corpus Hermeticum, which spurred new engagement with Greek thinkers like Plotinus, Iamblichus, Pythagorus, and others, there emerged a renaissance of Hermetic and Neo-Platonic thinking during the Renaissance period that we do know about, and continued right alongside the Protestant Reformation.
3. Humanity is the Magus of Creation. The Hermetic tradition believes that material existence is the most base, the lowest form of existence; the furthest from the One God. As such, there is a priority on the mind. God, according to the Hermetic tradition, is originally One Mind, and creation was believed to have emanated from God as a result of God reflecting upon his own nature and being. Unlike the biblical account which presents the creation as an act of love from a perfectly self-sufficient God, the Hermetic tradition teaches that God created the world in order to come to a full understanding of his own being and nature. That is, God couldn’t understand himself on his own, but needed to create other creatures and beings in order to understand himself by contrast. By comparing his own nature to the things that have been created, God comes to understand himself more fully—and this is the ultimate purpose of creation in the Hermetic view.
Because the material world is solid and physical, it is the most dense; the furthest from One Mind that is God. But humanity, being a rational creature, exists as the meeting place of all higher powers within the material realm, like a microcosm of existence (the macrocosm). As I said before, the Hermetic view is that humanity is the bridge between the spiritual material, the priest and magus of the world. Humans are divine beings living out a conscious, incarnate existence. As such, humanity has the capacity to consciously participate in the development of the world and the unfolding of God’s own being.
Contrary to the gnostics, although there is a substantial relationship and distinct parallels between the two streams of thought, the Hermetic understanding is largely optimistic (see our recent series on gnosticism and modern thinking, here and here). The world is not merely a prison as the gnostics said, but is the glorious expression of God’s own being in all its possible forms. And humanity, because we possess the greatest rational faculties and, therefore, can apprehend higher realities, has the ability to participate in the divine act of shaping the world.
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