Corpus hermeticum

The Corpus Hermeticum and Hermetic Tradition

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Archive Notes

In the following section we provide:

• The complete Corpus Hermeticum;
• Hermetic Excerpts and Fragments preserved in classical literature;
• A compilation of the Hymns of Hermes; and
• Hermetic texts from Nag Hammadi.

Introduction
The Hermetic tradition represents a non-Christian lineage of Hellenistic Gnosticism. The tradition and its writings date to at least the first century B.C.E., and the texts we possess were all written prior to the second century C.E. The surviving writings of the tradition, known as the Corpus Hermeticum (the "Hermetic body of writings") were lost to the Latin West after classical times, but survived in eastern Byzantine libraries. Their rediscovery and translation into Latin during the late-fifteenth century by the Italian Renaissance court of Cosimo de Medici, provided a seminal force in the development of Renaissance thought and culture. These eighteen tracts of the Corpus Hermeticum, along with the Perfect Sermon (also called the Asclepius), are the foundational documents of the Hermetic tradition. 
The texts presented here, below, are taken from the translation of G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, Volume 2 (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906); they are reproduced completely, with Mead's original footnotes. (The entire three volume text of Mead's Thrice Greatest Hermes, along with a full-text search function, is available in our online G.R.S. Mead Collection.)
In supplement to the Corpus Hermeticum, we have appended to this collection the important Hermetic texts discovered in 1945 within the Nag Hammadi Library.
Though written over a century ago, Mead's Thrice Greatest Hermes provides an excellent compendium and reference to the Hermetic literature. His commentary on the texts is unequalled. However for a modern reader there is a problem with Mead's translations: he translates using an outmoded and pompous-sounding Victorian English. ...
For a more easily readable (and very reliable) modern print edition, we recommend the respected 1995 translation of the Hermetica by Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation.

What is the Hermetic tradition, and what did it teach?