THE SPURIOUS MYSTIC WRITINGS OF HERMES, ORPHEUS, AND ZOROASTER
Mystic works of revelation—The Hermetic books—_Poimandres_ and the
Hermetic _Corpus_—Astrological treatises ascribed to Hermes—Hermetic
works of alchemy—Nechepso and Petosiris—Manetho—The _Lithica_ of
Orpheus—Argument of the poem—Magic powers of stones—Magic rites to
gain powers of divination—Power of gems compared with herbs—Magic
herbs and demons in Orphic rites—Books ascribed to Zoroaster—_The
Chaldean Oracles_.
[Sidenote: Mystic works of revelation.]
There were in circulation in the Roman Empire many writings which
purported to be of divine origin and authorship, or at least the work
of ancient culture-heroes and founders of religions who were of divine
descent and divinely inspired. These oracular and mystic compositions
usually pretend to great antiquity and often claim as their home such
hoary lands as Egypt and Chaldea, although in the Hellenic past Apollo
and in the Roman past the Sibylline books[1287] also afford convenient
centers about which forgeries cluster. Assuming as these writings do
to disclose the secrets of ancient priesthoods and to publish what
should not be revealed to the vulgar crowd, they may be confidently
expected to embody a great deal of superstition and magic along with
their expositions of mystic theologies. Also the authors, editors, or
publishers of astrological, alchemistic, and other pseudo-scientific
treatises could not be expected to resist the temptation of claiming a
venerable and cryptic origin for some of their books. Moreover, such
pseudo-literature was not entirely unjustified in its affirmation of
high antiquity. Few things in intellectual history antedate magic,
and these spurious compositions are not especially distinguished by
new ideas, although they to some extent reflect the progress made in
learning, occult as well as scientific, in the Hellenistic age. It must
be added that much of their contents depends for its effect entirely
upon its claim to eminent authorship and great antiquity and upon
the impressionability of its public. To-day most of it seems trivial
commonplace or marked by the empty vagueness characteristic of oracular
utterances. I shall attempt no complete exposition or exhaustive
treatment of such writings[1288] but touch upon a few examples which
bear upon the relations of science and magic.
[Sidenote: The Hermetic books.]
Chief among these are the Hermetic books or writings attributed
to Hermes the Egyptian or Trismegistus. “Under this name,” wrote
Steinschneider in 1906, “there exists in many languages a literature,
for the most part superstitious, which seems to have not yet been
treated in its totality.”[1289] The Egyptian god Thoth or Tehuti,
known in Greek as Θωύθ, Θώθ, and Τάτ, was identified with Hermes,
and the epithet “thrice-great” is also derived from the Egyptian _aā
aā_, “the great Great.” Citations of works ascribed to this Hermes
Trismegistus can be traced back as early as the first century of our
era.[1290] He is also mentioned or quoted by various church fathers
from Athenagoras to Augustine and often figures in the magical papyri.
The historian Ammianus Marcellinus[1291] in the fourth century ranks
him with the great sages of the past such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and
Apollonius of Tyana. Our two chief descriptions of the Hermetic books
from the period of the Roman Empire are found in the _Stromata_[1292]
of the Christian Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 220 A. D.) and in the
_De mysteriis_[1293] ascribed to the Neo-Platonist Iamblichus (died
about 330 A. D.). Clement speaks of forty-two books by Hermes which
are regarded as “indispensable.” Of these ten are called “Hieratic”
and deal with the laws, the gods, and the training of the priests. Ten
others detail the sacrifices, prayers, processions, festivals, and
other rites of Egyptian worship. Two contain hymns to the gods and
rules for the king. Six are medical, “treating of the structure of
the body and of diseases and instruments and medicines and about the
eyes and the last about women.” Four are astronomical or astrological,
and the remaining ten deal with cosmography and geography or with the
equipment of the priests and the paraphernalia of the sacred rites.
Clement does not say so, but from his brief summary one can imagine
how full these volumes probably were of occult virtues of natural
substances, of magical procedure, and of intimate relations and
interactions between nature, stars, and spirits. Iamblichus repeats
the statement of Seleucus that Hermes wrote twenty thousand volumes
and the assertion of Manetho that there were 36,525 books, a number
doubtless connected with the supposed length of the year, three hundred
and sixty-five and one-quarter days.[1294] Iamblichus adds that Hermes
wrote one hundred treatises on the ethereal gods and one thousand
concerning the celestial gods.[1295] He is aware, however, that most
books attributed to Hermes were not really composed by him, since in
other passages he speaks of “the books which are circulated under the
name of Hermes,”[1296] and explains that “our ancestors ... inscribed
all their own writings with the name of Hermes,”[1297] thus dedicating
them to him as the patron deity of language and theology. By the time
of Iamblichus these books had been translated from the Egyptian tongue
into Greek.
[Sidenote: _Poimandres_ and the Hermetic _Corpus_.]
There has come down to us under the name of Hermes a collection of
seventeen or eighteen fragments which is generally known as the
Hermetic _Corpus_. Of the fragments the first and chief is entitled
_Poimandres_ (Ποιμάνδρης), a name which is sometimes applied to the
entire _Corpus_. Another fragment entitled _Asclepius_, since it is
in the form of a dialogue between him and “Mercurius Trismegistus,”
exists in a Latin form which has been ascribed probably incorrectly to
Apuleius of Madaura as translator (_Asclepius ... Mercurii trismegisti
dialogus Lucio Apuleio Madaurensi philosopho Platonico interprete_).
None of the Greek manuscripts of the _Corpus_ seems older than the
fourteenth century, although Reitzenstein thinks that they may all be
derived from the version which Michael Psellus had before him in the
eleventh century.[1298] But the concluding prayer of the _Poimandres_
exists in a third century papyrus, and the alchemist Zosimus in the
fourth century seems acquainted with the entire collection. The
treatises in this _Corpus_ are concerned primarily with religious
philosophy or theosophy, with doctrines similar to those of Plato
concerning the soul and to the teachings of the Gnostics. The moral
and religious instruction is associated, however, with a physics and
cosmology very favorable to astrology and magic. Of magic in the
narrow sense there is little in the _Corpus_, but a Hermetic fragment
preserved by Stobaeus affirms that “philosophy and magic nourish the
soul.” Astrology plays a much more prominent part, and the stars are
ranked as visible gods, of whom the sun is by far the greatest. All
seven planets nevertheless control the changes in the world of nature;
there are seven human types corresponding to them; and the twelve
signs of the zodiac also govern the human body. Only the chosen few
who possess _gnosis_ or are capable of receiving _nous_ can escape the
decrees of fate as administered by the stars and ultimately return to
the spiritual world, passing through “choruses of demons” and “courses
of stars” and reaching the Ogdoad or eighth heaven above and beyond
the spheres of the seven planets.[1299] Such Gnostic cosmology and
demonology, especially the location of demons amid the planetary
spheres, provides favorable ground for the development of astrological
necromancy.
[Sidenote: Astrological treatises ascribed to Hermes.]
Not only is a belief in astrology implied throughout the _Poimandres_,
but a number of separate astrological treatises are extant in whole or
part under the name of Hermes Trismegistus,[1300] and he is frequently
cited as an authority in other Greek astrological manuscripts.[1301]
The treatises attributed to him comprise one upon general method,[1302]
one on the names and powers of the twelve signs, one on astrological
medicine addressed to Ammon the Egyptian,[1303] one on thunder and
lightning, and some hexameters on the relation of earthquakes to the
signs of the zodiac. This last is also ascribed to Orpheus.[1304]
There are various allusions to and versions of tracts concerning the
relation of herbs to the planets or signs of the zodiac or thirty-six
decans.[1305] These treatises attribute magic virtues to plants,
include a prayer to be repeated when plucking each herb, and tell how
to use the astrological figures of the decans, engraved on stones, as
healing amulets.
[Sidenote: Hermetic works of alchemy.]
Works under the name of Hermes Trismegistus are cited by Greek
alchemists of the closing Roman Empire, such as Zosimus, Stephanus, and
Olympiodorus, but those Hermetic treatises of alchemy which are extant
are of late date and much altered.[1306] Some treatises are preserved
only in Arabic; others are medieval Latin fabrications. The Greek
alchemists, however, seem to have recited the mystic hymn of Hermes
from the _Poimandres_.[1307]
[Sidenote: Nechepso and Petosiris.]
Hellenistic and Roman astrology sought to extend its roots far back
into Egyptian antiquity by putting forth spurious treatises under
the names, not only of Hermes Trismegistus, but also of Nechepso
and Petosiris,[1308] who were regarded respectively as an Egyptian
king and an Egyptian priest who had lived at least seven centuries
before Christ. Indeed, they were held to be the recipients of divine
revelation from Hermes and Asclepius. A lengthy astrological treatise,
which Pliny[1309] is the first to cite and from a fourteenth book of
which Galen[1310] mentions a magic ring of jasper engraved with a
dragon and rays, seems to have appeared in their names probably at
Alexandria in the Hellenistic period. Only fragments and citations
ascribed to Nechepso and Petosiris are now extant.[1311]
[Sidenote: Manetho.]
Yet another astrological work which claims to be drawn from the secret
sacred books and cryptic monuments of ancient Egypt is ascribed to
Manetho. It is a compilation in verse of prognostications from the
various constellations and is regarded as the work of several writers,
of whom the oldest is placed in the reign of Alexander Severus in the
third century.[1312]
[Sidenote: The _Lithica_ of Orpheus.]
Orpheus is another author more cited than preserved by classical
antiquity. Pliny called him the first writer on herbs and suspected
him of magic. Ernest Riess affirms that Rohde (_Psyche_, p. 398)
“has abundantly proved that Orpheus’ followers were among the chief
promulgators of purifications and charms against evil spirits.”[1313]
Among poems of some length extant under Orpheus’ name the one of most
interest to us is the _Lithica_, where in 770 lines the virtues of some
thirty gems are set forth with considerable allusion to magic.[1314]
The authorship is uncertain, but the verse is supposed to follow the
prose treatise by Damigeron who lived in the second century B. C. The
date of the poem is now generally fixed in the fourth century of our
era, although King[1315] argued for an earlier date. I agree with him
that the allusion in lines 71-74 to decapitation on the charge of
magic is, taken alone, too vague and blind to be associated with any
particular event or time; editors since Tyrwhitt have connected it with
the law of Constantius against magic and the persecution of magicians
in 371 A. D. But King’s contention that the _Lithica_ is by the same
author as the _Argonautica_, also ascribed to Orpheus, and is therefore
of early date, falls to the ground since the _Argonautica_, too, is now
dated in the fourth century.
[Sidenote: Argument of the poem.]
The _Lithica_ opens by representing Hermes as bestowing upon mankind
the precious lore of the marvelous virtues of gems. In his cave are
stored stones which banish ghosts, robbers, and snakes, which bring
health, happiness, victory in war and games, honor at courts and
success in love, and which insure safety on journeys, the favor of
the gods, and enable one to read the hidden thoughts of others and to
understand the language of the birds as they predict the future. Few
persons, however, avail themselves of this mystic lore, and those who
do so are liable to be executed on the charge of magic. After this
introduction, which may be regarded as a piquant appetizer to whet the
reader’s taste for further details, the virtues of individual stones
are described, first in the words of Theodamas, a wise and divine
man[1316] whom the author meets on his way to perform annual sacrifice
at an altar of the Sun, where as a child he narrowly escaped from a
deadly snake, and then in a speech of the seer Helenus to Philoctetes
which Theodamas quotes. Greek gods are often mentioned; as the poem
proceeds the virtues of a number of gems are attributed to Apollo
rather than Hermes; and there are allusions to Greek mythology and the
Trojan war. Some gems are found in animals, for instance, in the viper
or the brain of the stag.
[Sidenote: Magic powers of stones.]
Let us turn to some examples of the marvelous virtues of particular
stones. The crystal wins favorable answers from the gods to prayers;
kindles fire, if held over sticks, yet itself remains cold; as a
ligature benefits kidney trouble. Sacrifices in which the adamant is
employed win the favor of the gods; it is also called Lethaean because
it makes one forget worries, or the milk-stone (_galactis_) because it
renews the milk of sheep or goats when powdered in brine and sprinkled
over them. Worn as an amulet it counteracts the evil eye and gains
royal favor for its bearer. The agate is an agricultural amulet and
should be attached to the plowman’s arm and the horns of the oxen.
Other stones help vineyards, bring rain or avert hail and pests from
the crops. _Lychnis_ prevents a pot from boiling on a fire and makes
it boil when the fire is dead. The magnet was used by the witches Circe
and Medea in their spells; an unchaste wife is unable to remain in the
bed where this stone has been placed with an incantation. Other stones
cure snake-bite and various diseases, serve as love-charms or aids in
child-birth, or counteract incantations and enchantments.
[Sidenote: Magic rites to gain powers of divination.]
To make the gem _sideritis_ or _oreites_ utter vocal oracles the
operator must abstain for three weeks from animal food, the public
baths, and the marriage bed; he is then to wash and clothe the gem
like an infant and employ various sacrifices, incantations, and
illuminations. The gem _Liparaios_, known to the learned Magi of
Assyria, when burnt on a bloodless altar with hymns to the Sun and
Earth attracts snakes from their holes to the flame. Three youths
robed in white and carrying two-edged swords should cut up the snake
who comes nearest the fire into nine pieces, three for the Sun, three
for the earth, three for the wise and prophetic maiden. These pieces
are then to be cooked with wine, salt, and spices and eaten by those
who wish to learn the language of birds and beasts. But further the
gods must be invoked by their secret names and libations poured of
milk, wine, oil, and honey. What is not eaten must be buried, and the
participants in the feast are then to return home wearing chaplets but
otherwise naked and speaking to no one whom they may meet. On their
arrival home they are to sacrifice mixed spices. It will be recalled
that Apollonius of Tyana and the Arabs also learned the language of the
birds by eating snake-flesh.
[Sidenote: Powers of gems compared with herbs.]
Thus gems are potent in religion and divination, love-charms and
child-birth, medicine and agriculture. The poem fails, however, to
touch upon their uses in alchemy or relations to the stars, nor does
it contain much of anything that can be called necromancy. But the
author ranks the virtues of stones above those of herbs, whose powers
disappear with age. Moreover, some plants are injurious, whereas the
marvelous virtues of stones are almost all beneficial as well as
permanent. “There is great force in herbs,” he says, “but far greater
in stones,”[1317] an observation often repeated in the middle ages.
[Sidenote: Magic herbs and demons in Orphic rites.]
More stress is laid upon the power of demons and herbs in a description
which has been left us by Saint Cyprian,[1318] bishop of Antioch in
the third century, of some pagan mysteries upon Mount Olympus into
which he was initiated when a boy of fifteen and which have been
explained as Orphic rites. His initiation was under the charge of seven
hierophants, lasted for forty days, and included instruction in the
virtues of magic herbs and visions of the operations of demons. He was
also taught the meaning of musical notes and harmonies, and saw how
times and seasons were governed by good and evil spirits. In short,
magic, pseudo-science, occult virtue, and perhaps astrology formed an
important part of Orphic lore.
[Sidenote: Books ascribed to Zoroaster.]
Cumont states in his _Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism_ that
“towards the end of the Alexandrine period the books ascribed to the
half-mythical masters of the Persian science, Zoroaster, Hosthanes and
Hystaspes, were translated into Greek, and until the end of paganism
those names enjoyed a prodigious authority.”[1319] Pliny regarded
Zoroaster as the founder of magic and we have met other examples of his
reputation as a magician. Later we shall find him cited several times
in the Byzantine _Geoponica_ which seems to use a book ascribed to him
on the sympathy and antipathy existing between natural objects.[1320]
Naturally a number of pseudo-Zoroastrian books were in circulation,
some of which Porphyry, the Neo-Platonist, is said to have suppressed.
At least he tells us in his _Life of Plotinus_[1321] that certain
Christians and other men claimed to possess certain revelations of
Zoroaster, but that he advanced many arguments to show that their book
was not written by Zoroaster but was a recent composition.
[Sidenote: _The Chaldean Oracles._]
There has been preserved, however, in the writings of the
Neo-Platonists a collection of passages known as the Zoroastrian Logia
or Chaldean Oracles[1322] and which “present ... a heterogeneous mass,
now obscure and again bombastic, of commingled Platonic, Pythagorean,
Stoic, Gnostic, and Persian tenets.”[1323] Not only are these often
cited by the Neo-Platonists, but Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus
composed commentaries upon them.[1324] Some think that these citations
and commentaries have reference to a single work put together by
Julian the Chaldean in the period of the Antonines. This “mass of
oriental superstitions, a medley of magic, theurgy, and delirious
metaphysics,”[1325] was reverenced by the Neo-Platonists of the
following centuries as a sacred authority equal to the _Timaeus_ of
Plato. Our next chapter will therefore deal with the writings of the
Neo-Platonists upon whom this spurious mystic literature had so much
influence.