Vol 3, No 9               

Understanding the Hermetic Tradition?

The words "hermetic tradition," familiar to so many Russians, are understood in the West mainly by scholars.

What do these words mean?

The root of this phrase itself gives us our answer, for it comes from the name Hermes Trismegistus, also known as Thoth. The hermetic tradition is, in effect, the tradition of all the mystery schools founded by Thoth in the misty dawn of history, explaining the laws of creation spirituality.

The central, inescapable Truth of the hermetic tradition is: "You create your own reality." And the central theme of the laws that govern this act of creation is Thoth's famous dictum: "As above, so below."

So the hermeticists are all those who belong to the Western esoteric tradition represented by Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, Alchemy, Theosophy, and the Ancient Egyptian mystery schools (to name just a few). Masons belong to the hermetic tradition, as do astrologers, numerologists, Tarot students, and practitioners of the Mer-Ka-Ba meditation.

In all of these traditions, there are certain sacred numbers that rule the energies of physical beings and the objects to which they are attached. One of these, the number 33 — as Sidorov explains in the article on The Tarot Arcana: Humanity's Horoscope — is related to the Russian language itself, making it, like Hebrew and Sanskrit, a literal embodiment of spiritual energies.

Christian hermeticists thrived in the 15th century, often as Fathers of the Church. And despite the mystical and magical connotations of their work, these hermeticists of the High Middle Ages were the founders of modern science, developing many of the tools and laboratory techniques that are still in use today.

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