The Hermetica: Amazon.ca: Timothy Freke: Books

Product Description

Book Description

Credited to Hermes, an Egyptian sage who lived around 3000 BC, "The Hermetica" is the foundation of the western mystery tradition. This text contains historical background information and a selection of Hermes' writings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Timothy Freke is the author of many books on mystical philosophy, including The Tao Te Ching and, with Peter Gandy, The Complete Guide to World Mysticism. He lives in England.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
The philosophy that Hermes teaches is not just a clever intellectual exercise. Read the first page

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Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

Average Customer Review

3.6 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Thought Made Accessible, Aug 18 2000

By

F. P. Kovacs (Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Hermetica (Mass Market Paperback)

I was wary of this book when I first purchased it, but to my delight it turned out to be the best introduction to the Hermes/Thoth literature available. Beyond the value of its clear and readable presentation of some of the oldest wisdom tracts in the Western World, the authors also briefly touch on the provinence of the works. Because the Hermes Corpus was declared a fraud in the 17th century, the heavy lifting required to point out that they are not is simply beyond the scope of this volume. But any reader who is intrigued by the material can go on and discover for themselves the story of Hermes and make their own judgement. I place the rediscovery of the Hermes Corpus on the same level as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts, so this fine introductory volume should be considered by anyone interested in ancient literature and spirituality.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the Wisdom of the Pharaohs!, Jun 19 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hermetica (Mass Market Paperback)

Unfortunately this is a terribly pointless book that splices questionable "translations" of arbitrary excerpts from the corpus hermeticum together to make up a whole new series of poems. The relationship between these poems to the original ideas is left unclear, and you must basically rely on the understanding and synthesis of the ideas by the authors. Given any book and one can splice random segments together to say just about anything, and the qualifications of the authors seem unclear at best. What is unfortunately clear is that they mostly want to sell the book to silly new agers, not to anyone who may have a serious interest in the original ideas and their sources, which are an interesting multi-cultural mishmash of late pagan neoplatonism, Christianity and yes, local but very degenerated Egyptian folk ideas. The arguments about the relationship to very ancient Egyptian ideas is totally feeble, and has no basis is fact. What is clear is there are no sources in the actual (and extensive) ancient Egyptian texts that have survived that give any credence to the hypothesis that real corpus hermeticum is some kind of faithful transmission of ancient Egyptian ideas (especially not from the time of the old kingdom) much less this hopelessly re-edited mishmash. If you want to learn about real ancient Egyptian religious ideas about the cosmos there are plenty of translations of the real thing. If you are interested in the origin of hermetic ideas you would be better off buying another book, either a real translation, or any honest book on the subject.

The shallowness of this book is for me summarized by the silly meaningless hieroglyphics that are included along side of the text, presumably to convince somebody that the poems are a kind of translation of the ancient Egyptian (for example, they stop just where the text of the poems stop). Of course the hieroglyphics are just a decoration, with the same meaningless series of signs repeated over and over again. They haven't even tried to reproduce the actual appearance of real hieroglyphics. The whole book smacks of a deliberate manipulation in favor of something that might sell well to shallow new agers. This books should be called not "The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs" but "The Wisdom of Freke and Gandy", something which clearly has questionable value. They get no points from me for their poem since they so deliberately obscure the actual sources of their composition (not translation!).

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5.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy simply worded..., Jun 7 2008

By

Machushka (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Hermetica (Mass Market Paperback)

I never liked reading philosophical books that use all the big fancy words that you need to look up in a dictionary (you then end up spending more time reading your dictionary).
This a down-to-earth translation of a philosophical Egyptian text apparently written 3000 B.C that had a major impact on the Western civilization.
It provides a view of Creation, role of God,gods and men, origin of matter, soul and mind. Each text is preceded with a Freke's summary of the point that the philosopher Hermes was trying to make. This book contains collections of excerpts containing the essential wisdom of the ancient Egyptians.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars This book actually is worth opening
Contrary to what our reviewer in Houston claims, this book is definitely worth a read, at least for those interested in understanding ancient Egyptian thought. Read more

Published on April 10 2006

1.0 out of 5 stars Misinformed
I have not read the book itself, but by reading the description on the back cover it is obvious that the publishers, if not the author himself, are misinformed. Read more

Published on July 3 2004