Hermetism: Hermetica imprimir
 
The Urartu Lodge recognizes as fundamental book the CORPUS HERMETICUM, therefore it is always in the altar together with the compass and the square.
Let’s do a brief history of the Hermetism, from its born to its integration, on a different movements, mentioning the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasonry as the most important ones.
It was in Egypt where the Hermetic Tradition had the origin that let it evolve to the notable level of Initiatic revelation that can be discovered in its treaties today. It was not the Egypt of Pharaohs, in which this development reached its growth, but the Egypt of the Ptolemy, based on an important level of hellenization on an Egyptian base with a remarkable affluence of different cultures, centralized in one city: Alexandria.
Alexander the Great came to Egypt in year 332 (before this Era) to found a city with his own name in the east of the Nile’s mouth, even though the Greeks were performing several activities in Egypt since 7th century (before this Era).
Ptolemy, Alexander’s General, took care of Egypt at the time of his king’s death. He gave himself the title of Ptolemy Soter (Savior), and twenty monarchs of his dynasty and blood ruled during the next three centuries .
The complete dynasty formed the model of regional but foreign monarchs, performing their reign through a small number of foreign officials, dividing the territory in districts named nomos (nomoi in Greek) and establishing an administration that forced to acquired some level of hellenization –specially on the language- to every Egyptian who wanted to prosper with the new rulers.
By this way, with the Ptolemy and under the Roman dominion, the Hellenism came to be the dominant cultural mode throughout Egypt, achieving also an accommodation to some beliefs of foreign residents, who also adapted theirs to the Egyptian environment.
The famous library was founded by Ptolemy I in an unknown date, being its organizer Demeter of Falcera (contemporaneous of Aristotle).
The library accumulated papyrus, engravings and even printed books, and in Julius Caesar era, it had fame of having secret books, keys of an unlimited power.
It is important to remark the social-cultural context in the City, for Alexandria becomes the metropolis of the knowledge at that time, due to the convergence and affluence of different cultures under the Roman dominion.
The library of Alexandria received several attacks, being Julius Caesar the first to subtract part of the intellectual riches by partly destroying it. Another offensive was ordered by queen Zenobia, and one more time the library resisted the attacks of its enemies. Also Diocletian tried to burn all the books and secret writings of alchemy. Finally, the total destruction was made by the Arabs (646 this Era), burning all the books about alchemy and astrology.
That is the way how the fertile culture of Alexandria was molded by the greek, Jewish and Iranian culture that had rooted in Egypt.
In the middle of this cultural and spiritual whirlpool, during many centuries in which the Ptolemy, the Romans and the Byzantines alternated in the government of the Nile valley, the writings that have been called HERMETICA appeared.
Experts and studious of these writings establish the apparition of the Hermetica as an answer to the highly complex Greek-Egyptian culture of the Ptolemy, Roman and primitive Christian times, in which theological and, in a wider sense philosophical, subjects are treated. These subjects reveal to the man the knowledge of the origins, the natural and moral properties of the divine, the material and human being, in order that the man can use this knowledge with the purpose of reaching his own salvation.
The impact of the Nag Hammadi discoveries over the understanding of the Hermetica was notable. To find hermetic theoretical writings in Egyptian language, in Copt, beside the most rowdyish speculations of the Gnostic imagination, constituted a sensational challenge to the old vision of things, which maximum exponents asseverated that the Hermetica could be completely understood in a greek post-platonic context.
Other studious published the most important and exhaustive studies about the Hermetica of Nag Hammadi based in Armenian Definitions, titled From Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius: Definitions. The Armenian version is probably from the second half of 6th century. The term “definitions”, common in Greek literature, also appears in the title of CORPUS HERMETICUM XVI, but THE ARMENIAN WORK IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT due to its argument about the wisdom Egyptian literature as the origin of the Hermetica and its subsequent evolution from some relatively unthreaded collection of maxims or sayings to more articulated and coherent literary forms.
The most important result of the study performed on this text and the Hermetica of Nag Hammadi is the confirmation of the hypothesis of various studious, many of them Egyptologists, about the mistake of most of the people who demeaned the Egyptian elements in Greek and Latin treaties, considering them as simple ornaments. These studious arrived to the conclusion that the hermetic sentences derived from similar elements present in the ancient wisdom Egyptian literature, specially in the type known as “Instructions”, which goes back to the Ancient Empire, and they suggested that it was found in the familiar gnomic form a proper Greek vehicle to a Hellenistic audience.
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