Author: Mr. Magpie (---.shawcable.net)
Date: 04-26-2005 07:52
You write, "I know, I know, that's a lot of stuff there! The subject of Hermetic magic is a complex and varied one; a full treatment of it would take us far afield to Gnosticism, early Christianity, the Jewish Kabbalah, Greek and Egyptian mythology and medieval Alchemy."
Someone whose curiosity was sparked by your column, however, could start with the Corpus Hermeticum, available freely online in several locations. More specifically, I'd point them towards the Asclepius dialogue, not only because it was one of the more influential ones thanks to its Latin version, but because it's a nice, tidy summary of the important details of Hermetism that influence later Hermeticism. Someone wanting a better translation could splurge and pick up Brian Copenhaver's, and for secondary sources, could probably pick up Garth Fowden's The Egyptian Hermes pretty easily.
If they've got access to a university library, they might check out Festugière's La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste to get a sense of the distinction between philosophical and practical Hermetica, although at that point, it might start looking too much like work. Still, finding Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition -- especially for someone who's running a Renaissance-based game -- would be worthwhile. Her scholarship has come under some fairly serious criticism lately, but that doesn't mean that you can't get some great ideas out of it for games.
Speaking of ideas for games, here are a few thoughts on using the Hermetica that don't specifically have to do with magic systems:
1) They're nostalgic: This comes out especially in the lament for Egypt in the Asclepius, but you can see it in the general level of reverence for all things past. The world has grown steadily worse and worse, people have forgotten their gods, and language is corrupt. The Renaissance magi who studied the C.H. because they thought that Hermes was a contemporary of Moses were motivated by the same sense that wisdom had been lost through the centuries, but that returning to an earlier age could bring about transformation.
2) They become idealistic: From the Middle Ages on, you see the desire to build perfect cities, to rewrite the constellations in order to make them more virtuous, or to find a way to create a synthesis of Hermetic and Biblical teachings that would lead to a better, truer religion. When Giovanni "Mercurio" da Correggio rode into Rome on Palm Sunday, 1484, wearing a crown of thorns and a sign that announced that he was the Pimander, he was doing exactly this, and was probably driven by a very similar vision of the future.
3) They conceal: I don't mean that they conceal the secrets of the universe, but that they conceal their sources. The C.H. is full of ideas from fairly contemporary Stoicism and Neoplatonism, and there are even a few Biblical passages thrown in there, but you'd never know it, because everything is shrouded in the veil of antiquity. In a game, a Hermetic order could have been founded five years ago, but give the impression that its lineage runs back thousands of years, because that's just the way things work. (For a more modern example, there's the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor from the 19th century, who were adept at producing documents to explain how they were descended from Egyptian philosopher-magi.)
4) They adapt: They may be looking to the past for guidance, but the people who are interested in the Hermetica seem to have no problem adapting bits and pieces of the ideas to their own religion, their own culture, and their own time. (If the stories about Harran are true, you had a city that quietly added Hermes to the list of prophets when they converted to Islam, which I still find incredibly amusing.) You could set up an entire scenario around a modern interpretation of the god-making section of the Asclepius, with a 21st-century magus wiring together a living image of Isis from spare computer parts.
I'll doubtless think of more when I've had my coffee, but this is a start.
-Mr. Magpie
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