The Forbidden Universe: The Origins of Science and the Search for the Mind of God

by Lynn Picknett

  Hermeticists see human beings as enjoying a special place in creation. As essentially divine beings stuck in animal bodies, according to Hermeticists, human beings possess not only the divine spark (which is present in everything) but effectively share in God’s mind. Humans are the only beings in God’s creation with the potential to become divine. Salvation, in the Hermetic scheme, comes from the use of our advanced mystical and intellectual faculties. As Treatise X of the Corpus Hermeticum states:

  For the human is a godlike living thing, not comparable to the other living things of the earth but to those in heaven above, who are called gods. Or better – if one dare tell the truth – the one who is really human is above these gods as well, or at least they are wholly equal in power to one another.17

  One therefore ascends through knowledge, which comes through both greater intellectual and philosophical understanding of the cosmos and the more spiritual form of enlightenment called gnosis. But the relationship between creator and humanity is an endless cycle, as Magee notes:

  Hermeticists not only hold that God requires creation, they make a specific creature, man, play a crucial role in God’s self-actualization. Hermeticism holds that man can know God, and that man’s knowledge of God is necessary for God’s own completion.18

  So, not only did the Hermetic vision provide a more satisfactory explanation of why the universe exists, it also gave human beings potentially the most exalted role – though one that has to be earned. As Asclepius declares, ‘a human being is a great wonder, a living thing to be worshipped and honoured’.19 The Hermetica encourages people to use all their faculties, powers and talents in the pursuit of both self knowledge and knowledge of the universe. A major part of the kinship with creation involves observing the world around us and delving deeply to discover its hidden workings. In Hermeticism, this is not mere lofty sentiment, but one of the major paths to salvation. The Hermetic motto ‘Follow nature’20 – which would come to have a profound effect on the beginnings of science – bears witness to this cornerstone of the philosophy.

  MAGIC AND MYSTERY AT HARRAN

  Wherever and whenever Hermeticism originated, it was being discussed by both Christian and non-Christian writers in the Roman Empire from the second century onwards. But it disappeared soon after Christianity became the dominant Roman religion and persecutor of pagans in the fourth century. Apart from a fragmentary presence, the Hermetica basically vanished from Europe until the Renaissance. But its wisdom survived outside the Christian world, focusing on the city of Harran, some fifty miles south of Edessa in south-eastern Turkey. How it came to be established there is unknown, but presumably Hermeticists fleeing from Christian persecution would provide an answer.

  By the time Harran fell into Arab hands in the mid-seventh century it was a renowned centre of learning. Two centuries later, according to tradition – which may or may not be apocryphal – the inhabitants were given a stark choice by the caliph al-Mamun: convert to Islam, be massacred, or identify themselves as one of the ‘peoples of the book’. The Qur’an requires tolerance and protection for the latter – such as Jews and Christians – provided they venerate a prophet recognized by Islam.

  Unsurprisingly rejecting the option to be massacred, the residents of Harran identified themselves as Sabians, one of the ‘peoples of the book’ mentioned in the Qur’an.21 But the Sabian prophet was found in neither the Old nor the New Testament. Instead they proudly declared him to be Hermes and their holy book the Corpus Hermeticum. Fortunately the Qur’an identifies Hermes with the prophet Idris, the Muslim rendering of the Old Testament Enoch. The Sabians of Harran also venerated Asclepius as a prophet and Agathodaimon (‘Good Spirit’), a character in the Hermetic dialogues, as a great teacher and an intermediary with God.22 They went on pilgrimages to the two great pyramids at Giza, revering them as the tombs of Hermes and Agathodaimon.23

  Soon after the al-Mamun episode was supposed to have happened, the great library of Baghdad, the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) – which was also a centre for research, translations of foreign works and an observatory – was re-established. Many Sabians moved there, the most eminent of which was the renowned polymath Thabit ibn Qurrah (835–901). It was here, in Baghdad, that the Hermetic books were translated into Arabic. The foundation of Arab science in the Middle Ages was therefore laid by the Sabians, and inspired by the Hermetica.24

  The Sabians disappeared from Baghdad and Harran during a clampdown on non-Muslims in the middle of the eleventh century. It is possible they became devotees of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which aims at individual communion with the divine. Although Sufism had been around for centuries, it underwent a formalization during the eleventh century that was, some think, due to a Sabian influx.25

  Many specialists have noted that the revival of interest in the Hermetica in Byzantium coincided with the end of Sabian Hermeticism.26 But was this purely coincidence? Psellus, the Byzantine Platonic philosopher, became the first westerner to write about the Hermetica in half a millennium and many have speculated that Sabians, fleeing persecution, had carried their precious literature with them to Constantinople.

  THE REDISCOVERY

  One of the great patrons of the early Renaissance was Cosimo de’ Medici, scion of the banking dynasty that pretty much owned the republic of Florence. Cosimo was also hugely ambitious in his vision of what he and his court could accomplish, sending agents out in search of key books, and employing one of the great scholars of the age, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), on massive learned projects and as tutor to his grandson Lorenzo. Cosimo’s aim was nothing less than to re-establish Plato’s Academy, this time in Florence, with Ficino as its head. The lynchpin of this somewhat ambitious task was the first ever translation of Plato’s complete works from Greek into Latin, then the lingua franca of scholarly Europe.

  Just as Ficino was about to dip his quill into the ink and get started on Plato, an even more exciting prospect presented itself. One of Cosimo’s agents, a monk named Leonardo de Pistoia, returned from Macedonia with a Greek manuscript of the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum. Ficino records that in 1463 Cosimo ordered him to drop his translation of Plato forthwith in order to concentrate exclusively on the Corpus Hermeticum – an urgency that was probably the result of Cosimo becoming gravely ill, and desperately wanting to read the Hermetic books before he died. He got his wish, with a year to spare.

  Because of the mysterious aura surrounding Trismegistus and his lost books, this was by far Ficino’s most popular work, as evidenced by the many copies of the manuscript and several editions of the first printing of 1471. The discoveries that Ficino’s translation made possible sent seismic shockwaves throughout the academic community in Florence and beyond, being widely and feverishly discussed and debated. The books enticed Pico della Mirandola to Florence, where he studied under Ficino between 1484 and 1486, when he departed for Rome with his nine hundred theses. As Tuveson writes in The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes (1982), ‘with the translation by Ficino of the Hermetica in the fifteenth century, a kind of “new force” had entered the Western world.’27

  One reason for the excitement generated by the rediscovery of the Hermetica was precisely because it was so radically different from Christianity’s stifling view of creation and humanity’s place within it. Another was the idea that an ancient original religion, now lost, lay behind all other religions. This was variously known as the prisca theologia (‘ancient theology’), prisca philosophia (‘ancient philosophy’) or philosophia perennis (‘perennial philosophy’). Many believed that this ancient, lost religion could be found in Egypt, as even the Bible acknowledged that its civilisation and religion predated that of the Israelites. Indeed, there was even a suggestion that Moses himself learned great secrets from the Egyptians. Given that Hermes Trismegistus was thought to be the renowned sage of ancient Egypt, it was logical that the Hermetica could contain the ancient theology.

  Ficino was hugely influential in his own right. H
is close relationship with these books lured him ever deeper into the Hermetic world, and he began to discern strangely recurring themes. A modern writer on Italian history, Tim Parks, describes Ficino’s momentous declaration:

  The whole world, it seemed, had always followed a single faith whose ancient priests included Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, St Paul, St Augustine.28

  Thus, according to Ficino, a secret line of priests linked the ancient pagan and Christian beliefs. Ficino threw himself into trying to recover and reconstruct this ‘single faith’, concluding that it was a magical current flowing under and linking many otherwise apparently irreconcilable belief systems. From this he developed the idea of ‘natural magic’, one that worked with the forces of nature rather than by the conjuration of demons or spirits.

  The robust joy in life that marked the Hermetic path extended well beyond that of academic study. As American researcher Peter Tompkins writes:

  Ficino regarded sexual desire as a current of energy responsible for the cohesion of the entire universe … Ficino even went so far as to recommend the pagan revels of Bacchus (or Pan) as a way of escaping from normal human limitations into an ecstasy in which the soul was miraculously transformed into the beloved god himself.29

  Ficino’s masterwork was Three Books on Life (De vita libri tres), published in 1489, which was extremely influential on arcane philosophers such as Agrippa. But once again, despite being a synthesis of several magical and philosophical systems, Hermeticism stood firmly as the heart and soul of Ficino’s work.

  The next step would be from Florence to Rome. Astounding though it may seem to us today, many in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church were sympathetic to the message of Hermeticism, and considered it to be compatible with Christianity.

  The Hermetica proclaimed that the material universe was created by a lesser god, or Demiurge, who had been assigned the task by the God of all. In Asclepius, God is said to love this second god as ‘His own Son’,30 which has obvious parallels with Jesus. In Pimander, the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum, God’s creative Word is also described as the ‘Son of God’31 – to some a clear echo of the majestic opening of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’.

  Such references led some early Christian proselytes, such as the late-third/early fourth-century author Lactantius, to accept Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christ. This view was by no means unanimous: others such as St Augustine ascribed Hermes’ foreknowledge to warnings from worried demons. But when the Hermetica was rediscovered in the fifteenth century, at least enthusiasts could argue their case by invoking early Church authorities.

  Some thinkers tried hard to find a compromise, accepting the philosophy and cosmology but rejecting the magic, while others, such as Pico della Mirandola, pointed out that the two sides of the Hermetica were inseparable and argued this demonstrated that magic – provided there was no occult nastiness such as conjuring spirits – was a legitimate Christian activity. After all, Moses had engaged in magical contests with the pharaoh’s magi and had probably learned magic in Egypt. Some even suggested that Jesus had performed his miracles by means of natural magic.

  Others went further, seeing Egypt as the origin of the wisdom inherited first by the Jews and then by the Christians. This, they argued, elevated Hermes to at least an equal footing with Moses, who despite not being a Christian, was still deserving of respect for his contribution to the religious tradition into which God had chosen to send his son.

  The extent to which men in high places accepted this reasoning – even, astonishingly, including the Pope himself – can be demonstrated by resuming the story of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who we left earlier languishing in a Parisian prison after his arrest on the orders of Pope Innocent VIII. He didn’t languish for long. As Pico was from a well-connected family, his powerful supporters interceded with the Pope on his behalf. One such supporter was Charles VIII of France, and another Lorenzo de’ Medici – ‘the Magnificent’ – who was now one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Florence. Eventually the Pope allowed Pico to return to Florence, under Lorenzo’s guarantee that he would behave himself, although his works remained on the banned list.

  In 1492 Innocent VIII died and was succeeded by the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia, who wore the papal crown as Alexander VI. His reign certainly began with a bang. He not only absolved Pico and his works from all taint of heresy but wrote him a fan letter, and the fact he did so early in his reign demonstrates how strongly he felt about it. Tantamount to a papal endorsement, the letter was included in subsequent editions of Pico’s books. In the event, Pico’s repatriation was short lived, as he died in 1494, at the age of just thirty-one.

  But why did Alexander support this heretical upstart? As his fan letter suggests, Pico and the Pope shared a passion for all things Hermetic. The Borgia Pope even commissioned tell-tale decorations for his personal rooms in the Vatican – the Appartamento Borgia – which survive to this day. In the series of frescoes on mythological themes by Pinturicchio, Hermes Trismegistus is depicted twice, possibly three times if an image of Mercury slaying the giant Argus is intended as a veiled reference to him.

  The first Hermetic reference in Alexander’s apartment is in a series of pictures showing the pagan and Jewish prophets who allegedly foresaw Christ’s coming. So far this is conventional: images or statues of Hermes Trismegistus appear in several cathedrals for the same reason. More unexpected is a painting in which Hermes and Moses are shown sitting before Isis, implying that Alexander accepted Hermes’ equal status to Moses and that both drew their wisdom from Egypt. Judaism is seen as having emerged from the Egyptian Hermetic religion just as Christianity was to emerge from Judaism. Not only does Isis therefore appear in the Vatican, but she is depicted in all her power and glory – not as some pagan deity wretchedly grovelling to a triumphant Christianity.

  Other peculiar pro-Egyptian imagery in the Borgia apartments relates to bulls. As that animal was the Borgia family’s symbol, this may not be so surprising, at least at first glance. However, the bas-reliefs in Alexander’s apartments clearly associate the Borgia bull with the sacred Apis bull of Egypt, which is shown being worshipped and, in turn, worshipping the cross. Once again an association between Christianity and the religion of Egypt is implied, linked thematically with a Borgia pope worshipping Christ, suggesting that the relationship between Hermeticism and Christianity was important to Alexander.

  However, extraordinary though it may seem, this is not to imply that Alexander wasn’t a Christian, or that a closet occultist had infiltrated the highest office of the Church. It was quite permissible to see Christianity as the heir of a tradition that stretched back to ancient Egypt, and one to be celebrated. Such associations belonged to the new spirit of the time. Indeed, the most surprising thing about the Appartamento Borgia frescoes is that they indicate that even a Borgia pope was capable of caring more deeply about his religion’s origins than most Catholics at the time.

  THE TRIUMPH OF HERMES

  Eighty years after the rediscovery of the lost books of Hermes, Copernicus gave pride of place to the legendary Egyptian sage in his own seminal work on the movements of the planets. But why?

  It is hardly surprising that Copernicus was familiar with the Hermetica, having studied in Rome and Padua in the 1480s and 90s, where it was on everyone’s lips. But evidence suggests that the works meant considerably more to him than mere intellectual fashion. The debt Copernicus owed to the Hermetica is demonstrated by the fact that the three revolutionary ideas he was to famously propose – the Earth’s motion in space, its rotation on its own axis and the orbiting of the Earth and other planets around the sun – all appeared in the Hermetica.

  Asclepius, for example, provides the following statement in the middle of a discourse on ‘classes’, or archetypes:

  The class persists, begetting copies of itself as often, as many and as diverse as the rotation of the
world has moments. As it rotates the world changes, but the class neither changes nor rotates.32

  Hermeticism lays great emphasis on the sun, which is regarded as a kind of relay station for God’s creative and sustaining power and described in turn as the ‘visible god’ and a ‘second god’.33 But although it isn’t so surprising to find the sun given such prominence in the Hermetica, some passages about its importance are intriguingly specific. Treatise XVI, in which Asclepius expounds various points of teaching to King Ammon, contains two particularly tantalizing statements: ‘For the sun is situated at the centre of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown’34; and ‘Around the sun are the eight spheres that depend from it: the sphere of the fixed stars, the six of the planets, and the one that surrounds the earth.’35

  These ‘spheres’ correspond to the modern concept of orbits, as it was thought that the celestial bodies were fixed to transparent spheres. Under the old Ptolemaic system the spheres surround (‘depend from’) the Earth, with the sun occupying its own sphere. But this is not what is described in Treatise XVI, with the spheres surrounding the sun, which is situated at the centre. And the Earth has its own sphere which, like the other planets, ‘depends from’ the sun in a way that only makes sense in Copernican terms.

  Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact the heliocentric aspects are only mentioned in passing, when some other principle is being elucidated. It appears that the writers of at least these particular Hermetic treatises took the Earth’s journey around the sun for granted. Clearly, by referring to Hermes Trismegistus in his own exposition of the heliocentric system – besides quoting from Ficino on the sun as the embodiment of God – Copernicus shows that he was at least familiar with the prototype for his own ideas. As Frances Yates concluded:

  One can say, either that the intense emphasis on the sun in this new worldview was the emotional driving force which induced Copernicus to undertake his mathematical calculations on the hypothesis that the sun is indeed at the centre of the planetary system; or that he wished to make his discovery acceptable by presenting it within the framework of this new attitude. Perhaps both explanations would be true, or some of each.