Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: Prolegomena

THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, who was an immense reader and made a most valuable collection of extracts from Greek authors, though studiously avoiding every Christian writer. Some of these Excerpts are of great length, especially those from the Sermon entitled “The Virgin of the World”; these twenty-seven Excerpts are exclusive of extracts from Sermons still preserved in our Corpus.

D. From the Church Fathers we obtain many references and twenty-five short Fragments, otherwise unknown to us, and considerably widening our acquaintance with the scope of the literature.

E. From Zosimus and Fulgentius we obtain three Fragments, and from the former and Iamblichus, and Julian the Emperor-Philosopher, we obtain a number of valuable references.

Such are what at first sight may appear to be the comparatively scanty remains of what was once an exceedingly abundant literature. But when we remember that this literature was largely reserved and kept secret, we cannot but congratulate ourselves that so much has been preserved; indeed, as we shall see later on, but for the lucky chance of a Hermetic apologist selecting some of the sermons to exemplify the loyal nature of the Trismegistic teaching with respect to kings and rulers, we should be without any Hermetic Corpus at all, and dependent solely on our extracts and fragments.

But even with our Hermetic Corpus before us we should never forget that we have only a fraction of the Trismegistic literature—the flotsam and jetsam, so to say, of a once most noble vessel that sailed the seas of human endeavor, and was an ark of refuge to many a pious and cultured soul.