Taking The Shape of The Gods-Shaw2015

Aries – Journal for the Study
of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

ARIES
brill.com/arie
Taking the Shape of the Gods

A Theurgic Reading of Hermetic Rebirth*
Gregory Shaw
Department of Religious Studies, Stonehill College
gshaw@stonehill.edu
Abstract
Scholarship in the last few decades has corrected mischaracterizations of the Her-
metica and Iamblichean theurgy as examples of the decline of Hellenic thinking, but
questions remain of how to understand them, particularly since Iamblichus claims to
follow the teachings of Hermes. This essay attempts to shed light on hermetic rebirth
and the immortalization of the soul described in ch xiii and nh vi.6 by examining
them according to the principles of Iamblichean theurgy. I argue that hermetic immor-
talization and rebirth did not culminate in an escape from the body and the world but
were realized—to the contrary—as a divine and demiurgic descent into the world and
one’s body. While this essay owes a great debt to Garth Fowden’s The Egyptian Hermes,
my reading of hermetic rebirth does not follow his dualist understanding of hermetic
metaphysics and soteriology. The culmination of both theurgic and hermetic mysta-
gogy is non-dual: deification is realized in the world.
Keywords
Hermes – theurgy – Iamblichus – dualism and non-dualism – esoteric – demiurgy
* This is a revised version of a paper read at Hermen<eu>tica: New Approaches to the Text
and Interpretation of the Corpus Hermeticum, a conference at Princeton University in May,
2012. Thanks to Christian Wildberg for convening the conference and particular thanks to
Christian Bull and Anne van den Kerchove for their suggestions concerning the history and
transmission of Hermetic texts. I also wish to thank Dylan Burns for his incisive editorial
suggestions and Janelle Guyot and John Golden for their help on the abstract.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15700593-01501009

taking the shape of the gods 137
…
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immor-
tal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehen-
sible, is to know that one is immortal.
jorge luis borges1
…
The way of Hermes is the ‘way of immortality’.
garth fowden2
∵
The fourth-century Neoplatonic philosopher and theurgist Iamblichus begins
his defense of theurgy in On the Mysteries by attributing his wisdom to the
Egyptian Hermes:
The god Hermes, prince of eloquence, has from ancient times rightly been
considered common to all priests; he who presides over true knowledge of
the gods is one and the same throughout the world. It was to him indeed
that our ancestors dedicated the fruits of their wisdom, attributing all
their own writings to Hermes.3
Iamblichus writes under the name of Abamon, an Egyptian priest responding

to questions posed by Porphyry to one of Iamblichus’ students whom Porphyry
called ‘Anebo the Egyptian’, thus inviting Iamblichus to enter an Egyptian fic-
tion and take up his mask, the Egyptian priest Abamon. And Iamblichus is more
1 Borges, Labyrinths, 114.

2 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 110–111.
3 Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.2–2.3. All references follow the Parthey pagination preceded
by Myst. (De Mysteriis). Translations will be based on the translation of Clarke, Dillon, and
Hershbell with modifications and by consulting the recent text and translation by Saffrey and
Segonds of Jamblique: Réponse à Porphyre. The attribution of wisdom literature to a scribal
god was also the practice among Egyptian scribes who attributed their literature to Thoth, the
deity identified with Hermes. He was reported by Manetho to be the author of 36,500 books;
see Jasnow and Zauzich, The Egyptian Book of Thoth, 2.
Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

138 shaw
than willing, telling Porphyry bluntly that the letter sent to ‘my student Anebo
… was sent to me’, and proceeds to respond to his long critique of theurgy.4 The
exchange between Porphyry and Iamblichus was the culmination of increas-
ing tension between these two philosophers. Porphyry initiated the exchange
with his pointed questions as well as by setting the tone of its Egyptian for-
mat, and Iamblichus’ lengthy reply represents antiquity’s most eloquent and
sophisticated apology for the performance of religious ritual. Iamblichus’ Pla-
tonic school in Apamea encouraged the practice of theurgic ritual to effect a
union with the gods, a shift in method from the one promoted by Porphyry and
Plotinus for whom the true prophet (prophētēs) and priest (hierus) of the gods
was the philosopher.5 This was the source of tension between them and Por-
phyry’s letter, meant to be a devastating critique of theurgy, allowed Iamblichus
to explain his hieratic rites in a way that was consistent with Platonic and
Pythagorean principles. His response to Porphyry was so successful that subse-
quent leaders of the Platonic school, Syrianus, Proclus and Damascius, followed
the mystagogy of Iamblichus. Platonism became hieratic and Plato became, in
Proclus’ words, the “hierophant of true mysteries”.6 In On the Mysteries, in addi-
tion to acknowledging Hermes explicitly as his patron, Iamblichus reveals a
mystagogy that is strikingly similar to the mystagogy portrayed in the Hermetic
writings.7 The way of Hermes, Garth Fowden has succinctly put it, is the way of
4 Myst. 2.5–7. Saffrey and Segonds provide a thorough and convincing description of this
exchange, one that includes Porphyry’s growing irritation with Iamblichus for diverging from
the philosophical path of his master Plotinus. They suggest that Porphyry’s publication of the
Enneads was an implicit critique of Iamblichean theurgy and the Letter to Anebo made this
critique explicit. The student Anebo was fictional and the most likely Egyptian meaning of
his name, “Great is my master,” was intended to goad Iamblichus into a reply. See Saffrey and
Segonds, Porphyre, xix-xxxv1.
5 Saffrey and Segonds in their Porphyre, xxix–xxx; cf. Plotinus, Enneads 6.9 [9] 11.27–45.
6 Proclus, Plat. Theo. 1:5.16–6.3 (Saffrey/Westerink).
7 We do not know the specific Hermetic texts to which Iamblichus had access (although it
would be safe to assume less than the 20,000 or 36,525 books that he mentions in Myst.
261.1–3!). To suggest that theurgic mystagogy is similar to the Hermetic assumes that the
current Hermetica, based on the manuscript of Michael Psellus in the 11th century, reflect
in significant ways the hermetic texts known to exist in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. While
different communities emphasized different tractates, evidence suggests that the old Her-
metic texts were arranged according to a paideia that was followed by the Byzantine scribes.
Yet I am also convinced by Brian Copenhaver, Hermetica, xl–xlv, and Fowden, Egyptian Her-
mes, 8–9, that the theological biases of Byzantine scribes caused them to expunge from the
Hermetic texts obviously pagan or Egyptian elements that were discovered intact in the Her-
metic codex of Nag Hammadi v1,6. Psellus did the same with the Chaldean Oracles, twisting

immortality,8 and theurgy, under the aegis of Hermes, is also a way of immortal-
ity. Hermes insists that rebirth into divinity ‘cannot be taught’, and Iamblichus
maintains that theurgic mystagogy cannot even be thought. For Iamblichus
‘contact with the divine is not knowledge (oude gnōsis)’.9 True knowledge of
the gods, he says, cannot be reached through dialectical discussion, for ‘what
would prevent theoretical philosophers from achieving theurgic union with
the gods? This’, he states, ‘is simply not possible’.10 The polemic against the
“philosopher” Porphyry is plainly evident here and elsewhere in On the Mys-
teries.
It is one thing to appreciate the polemical nuances between Porphyry and
Iamblichus, quite another to try to understand a mystagogy that cannot be
taught or thought about. This is the crux of the problem we face in trying to
understand esoteric disciplines whose practitioners say they cannot be discur-
sively understood. I will address this problem by exploring Iamblichus’ use of
the terms “esoteric” and “gnōsis,” and then apply his understanding to the Her-
metic texts.
1 Theurgy, Scholarship, and the Challenge of the Veil
Iamblichus is largely responsible for introducing this mystagogic language to

us. In his Pythagorean writings he distinguishes exoteric teachings for the pub-
lic from the esoteric disciplines for initiates of the mysteries. The Pythagoreans,
he says, recognized differences among students; thus beginners were given
‘exoteric’ (exōterica) teachings while the more advanced were taught the ‘eso-
teric’ (esōterica).11 As represented by Iamblichus, the Pythagoreans distin-
guished students who merely heard the master (akousmatikoi) from those
who heard and saw the master’s mathematical demonstrations (mathemati-
koi). Iamblichus’ designation is unambiguous: those “within the veil” (eisō sin-
their meaning ‘to meet the dogmatic requirements of Christianity’ (Athanassiadi, ‘Psellos
and Plethon’, 246).
8 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 110–111.
9 Myst. 8.2.
10 Ibid., 96.13–97.1. One can clearly see Iamblichus’ polemical edge against the “philosopher”
Porphyry here and elsewhere in On the Mysteries.
11 Iamb. Comm. Math. 62.28–63.5, tr. Brisson, ‘Chapter 18’, 46. While these terms were already
associated with Pythagoreans before Iamblichus, he brought the distinction to promi-
nence in his Syrian school which was focused as much on Pythagorean mystagogy as it
was on Egyptian/Chaldean theurgy.

140 shaw
donos) are mathematikoi and those “outside the veil” (exō sindonos) are akous-
matikoi.12
Drawn from Iamblichean Pythagoreanism, the term “esoteric” thus refers to
those who are privy to inner (eisō) teachings. But our attempts to understand
the significance of these teachings have not been particularly successful, and
this, I would argue, is because we do not recognize what is at stake. Again,
Iamblichus is unambiguous. Describing Pythagorean askēsis he says: ‘If we wish
to practice mathematics in a Pythagorean way, we should zealously pursue its
god-inspired, anagogic, cathartic, and initiatory process’.13 Esoteric Pythagore-
anism was a mystagogic process that led to a transformed state of conscious-
ness, hardly mathematics as we understand it today. And this is the problem.
We can scarcely imagine what mystagogy to a transformed state is supposed to
be. In his work on Neoplatonic Pythagoreans, Dominic O’Meara accounts for
this, explaining that ‘the hierarchical transcendent metaphysics of Neoplaton-
ism [and of Pythagoreanism] is antithetical to the flat reductionist physicalism
of today’.14 In our flat worldview there can be no “higher” states, so when our
texts speak of them most scholars simply assume these passages are a kind of
rhetorical strategy used by authors to elevate their status in a social or reli-
gious context. As regards esoteric and exoteric, we tend either to imagine the
distinction socially, establishing an inner group from an outer, or we imagine
it in terms of discursive complexity, with the exoteric as simpler and the eso-
teric more complex. In effect, we apply our own cultural standards and think-
ing to the ancient texts and, as a result, see only ourselves mirrored in them.
Iamblichus maintained that the ‘entire system of Pythagorean mystagogy was
enshrined in symbols … [but] like the oracles of the Pythian god they are hard to
understand or follow for those who consult the oracle in a superficial manner’.15
Sara Rappe has pointed out that Iamblichus reacted against the discursive
habits of his contemporaries by emphasizing that wisdom is non-discursive,
and thus his Pythagorean Exhortation to Philosophy is ‘an esoteric handbook
that invokes symbols rather than [discursive] tenets’.16 Iamblichus’ critique of
the instability and discursive shallowness of Greek intellectuals may equally be
applied to scholars today who reduce Neoplatonic and Hermetic mystagogy to
rhetorical strategies, politics, or some other form of status-seeking:
12 Iamb. Vit. Pyth. ch. 89; cf. 72.

13 Idem, Comm. Math. 69.26–29.
14 O’Meara, Platonopolis, 205.
15 Iamblichus, vp 247.
16 Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism, 14 (my emphasis).

For the Greeks by nature are followers of the latest trends and are eager to
be carried off in any direction, possessing no stability themselves. What-
ever they receive from other traditions they do not preserve; even this
they immediately reject and change everything through their unstable
habit of seeking the latest terms.17
Myst. 259.4–10
An outstanding exception to this scholarly habit is a recent article by Wouter

J. Hanegraaff that examines gnōsis in the Hermetica.18 Hanegraaff, faced with
the difficulty of trying to do justice to texts that speak of a knowledge that ‘can-
not be taught,’ surveys the approaches of scholars who live in O’Meara’s ‘flat
reductionist physicalist’ world. According to Hanegraaff, such scholars deny
the possibility of going beyond the discursive and so interpret mystagogic lan-
guage as simply another discursive strategy. As he puts it: ‘Rather than trying
to take the sources seriously … scholars who choose this perspective end up
“correcting” the sources’ point of view by replacing them with agendas of their
own’.19 Hanegraaff explains that in studies of the Hermetica today ‘the ortho-
dox position in the field’ is ‘descriptivist’. In this approach scholars are allowed
to repeat the statements of the texts and put them into their philological and
cultural contexts but must abstain from engaging in the deeper hermeneu-
tics of what these texts state as their goal: ‘a salvational and noetic experience
(often referred to as “gnōsis”) that cannot be verbalized, and which is consid-
ered to be wholly superior to rational philosophical discussion’.20 Hanegraaff’s
hermeneutic enters the mystagogy of these authors by imagining with them a
“hierarchy of knowledge” that is demonstrated through a careful reading of the
texts.21 Hanegraaff allows the texts to come alive and he reveals an internal con-
17 A similar criticism of the Greeks in contrast to the Egyptians is found in the Hermetica:
‘For the Greeks, O King, who make logical demonstrations, use words emptied of power,
and this very activity is what constitutes their philosophy, a mere noise of words. But
we [Egyptians] do not [so much] use words (logoi) but sounds (phōnai) which are full
of effects’ Corp. Herm. xvi.2, Nock and Festugière, 232. Dylan Burns argues that not all
uses of such ‘syllables of power’ are understood in a theurgic sense. The Sethian use of
such “sounds” relied on ‘different conceptions of what it means to become divine’ than
those shared by theurgists and, I would argue, Hermetists; Burns, Apocalypse, 117–118;
138–139.
18 Hanegraaff, ‘Altered States’, 128–163.
19 Ibid., 130.
20 Ibid., 133.
21 Ibid., 136.

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sistency that has escaped purely descriptivist approaches.22 There are risks in
Hanegraaff’s method, of course, but to presume a kind of objectivist knowledge
of mystagogic texts requires that one engage everything but the mystagogy. And
to engage it requires that one enter into it. And it is this, Hanegraaff astutely
observes, that frightens scholars because we are afraid of being seen as ‘not
objective enough’.23 This remains a neuralgic point for all scholars of religion,
but it is an especially sensitive one for those who work with esoteric teachings
that claim to lead to gnōsis understood as non-discursive awareness.
Now, this tension between the discursive and non-discursive was already
played out between Iamblichus and Porphyry. Iamblichus explains to Porphyry
that discursive knowing is divided, but prior to this division the soul possesses
an innate gnōsis of the gods. He says:
For an innate gnōsis (emphutos gnōsis) of the gods co-exists with our very
nature and is superior to all judgment and choice, reasoning and proof.
This gnōsis is joined from the beginning with its cause and is interwoven
with the soul’s essential yearning for the Good. Indeed, to tell the truth,
the contact we have with the divine is not to be taken as knowledge
(gnōsis). For knowledge, after all, is separated (from its object) by some
degree of otherness. But prior to the knowledge that knows another as
being, itself, other, we possess a spontaneous and unitary connection with
the gods.
Myst. 7.11–8.5
Iamblichus’ use of gnōsis must be understood in context. As ordinary knowl-

edge, gnōsis is divided and discursive, but there is a kind of “knowing” that is not
discursive, an undivided gnōsis that is innate and tied to our “essential yearn-
ing” for the Good. I believe this exemplifies Hanegraaff’s hierarchy of knowing.
Gnōsis is often used in a monolithic way to designate a trans-rational state, but
we must be careful to distinguish the ordinary gnōsis of discursive knowing
from non-discursive gnōsis. The latter, for us, is not “knowing” at all; for Her-
metists and Neoplatonists, however, it indicates a state anterior to knowing, a
state that is not capable of being rationally grasped but realized, nevertheless,
through symbolic transmission.
22 See, for example, Hanegraaff’s explanation of the erasure of separation between subject
and object seen in the ecstatic encounter of the visionary and Poimandres, a critical
gnostic experience overlooked by previous scholars; ibid., 140–141.
23 Ibid., 132.

Iamblichus says Pythagoreans did not conceive of esoteric teachings as more

discursively complex; they were not interested in the ‘subtlety and acuity of
demonstrations’,24 but in what opened their students to reality.25 Iamblichus
provides quite a few directions about how this opening happens, but it is easy
to misunderstand what he says. As scholars we are far more the heirs of Por-
phyry than of Iamblichus, and to grasp what Iamblichus means by theurgic or
mathematic initiation we naturally look for discursive explanations. Porphyry
did just that. He asked Iamblichus, a reputed master of theurgic divination, for
a ‘precise articulation’ (diarthōthein) of divining the future—a request which
seems reasonable to us—but Iamblichus chastises Porphyry for assuming that
divination could be understood as if it were a natural phenomenon or a tech-
nique capable of objective analysis.26 He says:
From the tone of your question, you believe something like this about
foreknowledge: ‘that it can come into being’ and that it is among ‘the
things existing in nature’. But it is not something that comes into exis-
tence, and it does not at all behave like a natural change, nor is it an
artifact invented for use in daily life, nor is it, generally, a human achieve-
ment at all.
Myst. 100.2–5
Iamblichus reproves Porphyry, telling him—and by extension all who think

as he does—not merely that his assumptions about theurgic divination are
mistaken but that his very way of thinking is mistaken and keeps him from
understanding the phenomenon. For those of us who sift evidence and pro-
vide rational accounts of ancient philosophy, Iamblichus’ rebuke is sobering.
Even to begin to understand the mystagogy and esoteric teaching of later Pla-
tonists and Hermetists, we need to recognize the profound challenge they pose
to our accustomed habits of thought. Plotinus says discursive thinking is a kind
of sorcery that puts us under the spell of our thoughts,27 and Iamblichus tells
Porphyry he needs a talisman to protect him from the habit of trying to under-
stand theurgy in discursive categories.28 Yet as scholars we think and write
24 Iamb. Comm. Math. 62.11–12, tr. Brisson, ‘Chapter 18’, 45.

25 Iamb. Comm. Math. 62.12–15, tr. Brisson, ‘Chapter 18’, 45.
26 Myst. 99.10–100.6; diarthrōthein at 99.9.
27 Plot. Enn. 4.4 [28] 43.16. Cited by Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism, 104.
28 The term Iamblichus uses is ‘greatest talisman/counter-spell’, (megiston alexipharma-
kon—Myst. 100.8–101.2). Plato uses alexipharmakon in a similar way to indicate an anti-
dote to mistaken views. Those who would be lawgivers must possess the writings of the

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discursively. Perhaps we need to recognize that our discursive brilliance—our

‘subtlety and acuity’—is of little help for understanding the esoteric dimension
of later Platonism and Hermetism. As Iamblichus says to Porphyry: ‘[W]hat
you are trying to learn is impossible’ because Porphyry—like us—wants to
understand theurgic divination in rational terms.29 The challenge of the later
Platonists is that they use discursive language as a glyph, leading not to ratio-
nal conclusions, but to a non-semantic awareness that, in Iamblichus’ terms, is
activated in theurgy.30
Following Hanegraaff, I want to explore the immortalization and rebirth of
the soul as described in Corpus Hermeticum 13 (On Rebirth) and Nag Ham-
madi Codex vi,6 (On the Eighth and Ninth) by entering the hermeneutics of
these texts and their assumed hierarchy of knowing. I will employ Iamblichean
principles to guide my interpretation and assume that the Hermetic teachings
may be read as esoteric in a Pythagorean sense. That is, they are teachings
for insiders that aim to lead them beyond the confines of discursive thinking
and to recover the innate gnōsis described by Iamblichus. Further, I will argue
that Hermetic rebirth is better understood in a non-dualist framework than in
the dualist metaphysics and soteriology suggested by Fowden and J.-P. Mahé.
Finally, I will argue that Hermetic immortalization and rebirth aims—in theur-
gic terms—to initiate the soul into demiurgy. In the non-dualist Platonism of
Iamblichus the material cosmos is not opposed to the divine but is, rather,
the living manifestation of the Creator. The natural world, so conceived, is
theophanic activity, and to enter this “divine action” (theourgia) the soul must
enter the rhythm of its pulse. In the esoteric mystagogy of Iamblichus material
objects and the complexities of embodied life are transformed from obstacles
divine lawgiver and use these as a talisman (alexipharmakon) against all other speeches
(Leg. xii 957d).
29 ho epicheireis mathein estin adunaton (Myst. 99.10–100.1). And, of course, for scholars it is
assumed without question that Neoplatonic divination is a product of human culture. One
of the most brilliant scholars of late antique magic and religion puts it this way: ‘whatever
our ancient sources may claim about the greater powers that enabled it to work—gods,
demons, the cosmos itself—divination is an utterly human art …’ (S. Johnston, Mantikē, 10,
my italics).
30 Iamblichus says that while henōsis does not take place ‘without knowledge’, such knowl-
edge is only useful if it takes us beyond knowing, for ‘divine union and purification go
beyond knowledge’ (Myst. 98.7–10). Sara Rappe highlights this non-semantic aspect of
Neoplatonism. She writes: ‘… it had already become a standard topos for Plotinus that
his designation for the absolute principle, ‘the One’, was not semantically significant …
for Damascius, the ineffability of the One engulfs the metaphysical enterprise, infecting it
with non-sense, with in-significance’ (Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism, 209).

into icons of demiurgic activity. The opacity of embodied life becomes transpar-
ent, transfigured theurgically into symbols of the gods. Thus, Hermetic rebirth
is not an escape from the material world as imagined in dualist metaphysics.
Hermetic rebirth and the immortalization of the soul are realized when the
initiate experiences him/herself as giving birth to the cosmos.
Taking Hanegraaff’s risk of appearing ‘not objective enough’, I confess that
one of the most challenging and attractive aspects of studying Neoplatonism is
to engage in the practice required of any deep reader of their texts, that of con-
sciously entering their mystagogy and taking the risk of “not-knowing”: when
one no longer actively knows but passes into unknowing receptivity, a kind
of anterior awareness—sheer attention (prosochē), as Damascius describes
it—that is present, but hidden, in one’s discursive habits.31 This non-grasping
attention, I would argue, is akin to what Iamblichus calls our innate gnōsis, a
non-discursive awareness quietly present even in one’s discursive habits, and
further, that one may discover that our discursive habits can be nurtured, redi-
rected, and led back to their noetic root. I would contend that this is precisely
the function of esoteric teachings, and it is a practice that is consistent with
Neoplatonic metaphysical and soteriological principles. In Neoplatonic meta-
physics the presence of a non-discursive noēsis already dwells in discursive
thinking just as, to borrow Plotinus’ imagery, ‘the life sap of a huge plant’ is
present in all its branches yet remains ‘firmly settled in the root’.32 The undi-
vided is present in the divided; the One is in the Many; the noetic is in the
discursive; and esoteric teachings are those which lead initiates to discover the
noetic through the discursive, not by escaping to an eternal noetic realm else-
where but finding it already present in the multiplicity and temporality of this
world. The noetic remains hidden in plain sight, revealed to those who know
how to see. The mystagogic vision of the Neoplatonists is non-dual. There is
no “other” world, no noetic place, no “realm” of Forms, and esoteric teachings
allowed initiates to enter an experience of noēsis that cannot be “objectified”
because it is inseparable from the demiurgic activity that gives rise to objective
existence: the life-giving sap remains hidden in the tree.
It seems to be the unspoken agreement of scholars to veil such views as being
their “interpretations” of Proclus, Iamblichus, or Plotinus but, in fact, unless
one has some taste of this experientially, we really cannot communicate their
31 On to prosektikon or more simply, prosochē, in Damascius as representing the ‘One of the

soul’, see Damascius, Problems and Solutions, 33; also see Damacius Commentary on the
Phaedo, 162; compare also the injunction to attain an ‘empty mind’ (keneon nous) in the
Chaldean Oracles, infra, n. 130.
32 Plot. Enn. 3.8 [30]10.10–12.

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mystagogy. I understand why many scholars prefer to discuss everything but

the mystagogy: the use of language, the transmission of manuscripts, changes
in politics, social power, and economics. It is safer ground and less existentially
challenging to focus on objective facts, and they are unquestionably important.
These contextual data are essential to insure that our understanding of esoteric
texts rests on solid historical foundations, but eventually one has to ask what
it is these initiates were trying to communicate.33 For unless we assume—and
many scholars do—that they were simply deceiving themselves and talking
nonsense, then to interpret what they wrote requires more than an objective
analysis of contextual data; it requires our participating in their mystagogy. And
there is no reason that this cannot be done intelligently and with scholarly
discipline.34 But this participation requires that we imagine a hierarchy of
knowing that Hermetists and Neoplatonists recognize and describe in their
mystagogic texts. It is in this spirit that I wish to interpret the Hermetic texts
through the lens of Iamblichean theurgy.
Until recently, theurgic Platonism and Hermetism have been misunderstood
by scholars who found them lacking in the rational argumentation we value
so highly in the ancient Greeks and our own academic culture. Scholars such
as A.-J. Festugière and E.R. Dodds maintained that the Hermetica and On the
Mysteries do not measure up to the standards of Hellenic philosophy. In fact,
the core elements of theurgic and Hermetic mystagogy were dismissed by
these and other scholars as superstitions and banalities, the product of lesser
minds and examples of the sad decline of Greek thought in the late antique
world.35
Yet Festugière’s scholarship, despite its ‘excessively rationalistic approach’,36
allowed Mahé and Fowden to deepen our understanding of the Hermetica and
33 I am reminded of Jean Trouillard’s penetrating remark: ‘Savoir que Parménide a influencé

Platon m’éclaire peu si je ne saisis ni ce que Parménide ni ce que Platon ont voulu dire’.
Trouillard, L’ un et l’ âme, 1.
34 Jeffrey J. Kripal has written on the challenge this presents to the study of religion narrowly
conceived as a discursive enterprise limited to the study of ‘contextual’ data; The Serpent’s
Gift, 117–120. Kripal’s exploration of the scholar as intellectual and mystic is particularly
illuminating; see Kripal, Roads of Excess, passim.
35 Even the eminent scholar, Pierre Hadot, who wrote brilliantly about philosophy as a ‘way
of life’ and not simply a conceptual discipline, dismissed theurgy as ‘superstitious and
puerile … an unfortunate attempt to compete with Christianity;’ Hadot, The Present Alone,
38. For misreadings of the Hermetica, see Kingsley, ‘Poimandres’, 66–69; see also van den
Broek, ‘Religious Practices’, 79–95.
36 The characterization by Mahé, ‘Hermes Trismegistos’, 3943.

to correct earlier mischaracterizations prompted by Festugière’s judgment of

these texts as entirely Hellenic with its Egyptian elements an ‘oriental mirage’.37
The discovery of Hermetic treatises among the Nag Hammadi codices have
refuted Festugière’s contention that there was no Hermetic community, that
Hermetic texts had no roots in Egyptian priestly literature, and that Hermetism
was simply a Greek literary phenomenon.38 Finally, thanks to Mahé, J.G. Grif-
fiths, and Fowden, it is clear that the Hermetica are not derivative Hellenic
philosophy cast in Egyptian colors but are close to what Iamblichus had said:
The documents that circulate under the name of Hermes contain Her-
metic doctrines, even if they often employ philosophical terminology.
This is because they were translated from the Egyptian tongue by men
not unacquainted with [Greek] philosophy.39
David Frankfurter has argued that the Hermetica were likely produced by Egyp-
tian scribes translating their practices into the dominant language and philo-
sophic concepts of the Hellenic world—very much what Iamblichus claimed
in the 4th century.40 That Hermetic manuscripts, technical as well as philo-
sophical, reflect the influence of genuine Egyptian prayers, texts, and modes of
transmission is no longer in question.41 Pre-Hellenic Egyptian materials are evi-
dent in the Hermetica; the question is to what degree.42 The fact that Pythagore-
anizing Platonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus turned to Egypt and Chaldea
37 Festugière, La Révélation Vol. 1, 20; cited by Uzdavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth, 15.
38 See van den Broek, ‘Religious Practices’, 80–84.
39 Myst. 265.10–266.1
40 Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 217–237; as per Edward Butler’s suggestions in his
Hermetic “tweets”: http://lemon-cupcake.livejournal.colm/36741.html. The figure in dia-
logue with Thoth may have received his name: ‘one who seeks knowledge’ from the Hel-
lenic influence of the figure of the philosophos; see Jasnow and Zauzich, 13. See also Jan
Assman’s astute analysis of the effect of social change on Egyptian priests in the Ptole-
maic age and how they adapted under Greek influence: ‘In a certain sense the Egyptian
mysteries functioned both as a successor institution to the pharaonic state and as a com-
pensation for its loss’ (Assman, Religio Duplex, 20–22).
41 The dialogue form seen in the Hermetica is found in the Book of Thoth; see Mahé, ‘Prelim-
inary Remarks’, 353–363.
42 The name “Poimandres,” for example, is now understood to mean the ‘mind of Ra’ rather
than the Hellenized ‘shepherd of men;’ see Kingsley, ‘Poimandres’, 46–51; see also Copen-
haver, Hermetica, 95. Copenhaver agrees with Kingsley that J.G. Griffiths initially proposed
the Coptic pe eime en re = ‘the knowledge of Re’ as the source for the name ‘Poimandres’,
which agrees with the content of Corp. Herm. 1.2.

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to communicate their mystagogy was, I would argue, because they believed

these traditions employed a symbolic mode of expression which they consid-
ered superior to discursive thinking and ‘syllogistic reasoning’.43 These Platon-
ists were after more than a rational understanding of divinity. They wanted to
recover an ‘innate gnōsis of gods … superior to all judgment, choice, reasoning,
and proof’.44 To recover this gnōsis was to recover their divinity, and Iamblichus
maintained that the Greeks had lost touch with this sacred mystagogy, one that
was preserved by Egyptians in the writings of Hermes.
Iamblichus’ idealization of Egyptians and Chaldeans undoubtedly exempli-
fies the ‘Orientalizing’ habit that was prevalent among late antique Platonists
(and Plato too for that matter).45 As historians of religions we recognize that
while there are certainly authentic “Egyptian” elements represented in On the
Mysteries, the “Egypt” of Iamblichus is largely an imaginal construct, an elabo-
rate self-conscious fantasy (as his response to Porphyry clearly indicates). But
I believe it would be a mistake to characterize his Egyptian mystagogy as a
‘fetishization of Oriental wisdom’, as if he confused his imaginal construct with
historical fact, as if he didn’t know he was pretending to be an Egyptian priest.46
I would suggest, rather, that such veils, such highly charged imaginal constructs,
are evident in virtually all religious discourse, and further, that it is precisely
through such imaginal constructs that mystagogy is transmitted.47 If histori-
43 On the symbolic mode of Egyptian theology, see Myst. 249.10–250.5; 37.6–11; on the sym-
bolic mode of Pythagorean mystagogy, see notes 15 and 16 supra; on the inability of syllo-
gistic reasoning to penetrate theurgic mysteries, see ibid., 9.11.
44 Ibid., 7.11–12.
45 See Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 7–8. Burns provides a nuanced history of the Orientaliz-
ing and “auto-Orientalizing” tendencies among Platonists; see Burns, Apocalypse, 20–28.
He argues that Iamblichus and other Platonists interpret the Chaldeans and Egyptians
according to Platonic and Pythagorean principles. The Pythagoreanizing of these tradi-
tions made them universally accessible, thus creating a new kind of religiosity in the late
antique world, one that gave Platonic philosophy an Oriental mask.
46 Burns (Apocalypse, 25) characterizes the Hellenic turn toward Oriental wisdom as ‘fetishi-
zation’, by which I assume he means the Platonists’ projection of mystic authority on
Egypt, Chaldea, etc., but this, I would argue, calls for an interpretation of this projection,
their ‘imagined Egypt’. If, however, “fetishization” is taken pejoratively to mean a kind of
“irrational and excessive” interest in Egypt then the term seems inadequate, considering
the intellectual depth and complexity of later Platonic thinkers. There is far more going
on than self-delusion.
47 In this sense, Iamblichus’ “Egypt” functions as a sunthēma of the intelligible world. Proclus
says Egypt should be ‘likened to the whole invisible order, the source of visible things’; see
Tarrant, Proclus’ Commentary, 190. Scholars need to be attuned to the poetic depth of the

ans are looking for undisputed “facts” regarding revelatory wisdom they will
always come up empty-handed, for the facts of mystagogues are veils or, put
more bluntly, “lies” that conceal and reveal the secrets of their mystagogy.48
The transmission of imaginal constructs that simultaneously conceal (literally)
and reveal (symbolically) is the very substance of esoteric discourse and I see
no reason why scholars should limit themselves to a “one-dimensional” (literal)
view of this discourse.49 That Orientalizing shaped the context of Platonic mys-
tagogy is indisputable, but recognizing this cultural inflection does not address
the more difficult challenge of trying to understand the non-discursive gnōsis
that Platonists attribute to the Egyptians. It does not lift the veil.
The theurgy of Iamblichus has gone through a rehabilitation not unlike that
of the Hermetica. Jean Trouillard revealed that far from expressing a deficiency
of rationality, the theurgy of the later Platonists followed Plotinian lines of
reflection to the very roots of thought.50 He argued that theurgy ritually enacts
a way to enter mysteries that discursive thinking, necessarily divided, can-
not penetrate.51 Recent scholarship, in agreement with Trouillard, has shown
Iamblichus to be a critically important philosopher who unified the teach-
ings of Plato and Aristotle within a Pythagorean framework and integrated this
philosophic synthesis with the oldest forms of traditional worship.52 His sta-
Neoplatonists, for whom “Egypt” functions as evocative symbol. Perhaps Rumi, in the 13th
century, best captures this symbolic ambivalence: ‘I keep secret in myself an Egypt that
doesn’t exist. Is that good or bad? I don’t know’ (Barks, tr., The Essential Rumi, 120).
48 As Sufi scholar William Chittick puts it, ‘The veil conceals the secrets but no secrets can
be grasped without the veil’ (‘The Paradox of the Veil’, 60). This, again, is Pythagorean
mystagogy: ‘with Pythagorean symbols what seems to be made known is really being
concealed, and what is concealed is revealed to the mind’ (Plutarch, Moralia, frag. 202).
49 Both pious believers and rational materialists engage in this one-dimensional reading.
Both are focused on proving or disproving the literal truth of the exorbitant claims of
mystical or religious discourse. I am suggesting that the scholar of religions must engage
a third approach, one that enters the hermeneutical depths of this discourse.
50 See Trouillard, ‘La théurgie’, 171–189.
51 Myst. 8.2–4: ‘Knowledge, after all, is separated (from its object) by some degree of other-
ness’.
52 John Dillon has been the pre-eminent scholar of Iamblichean Platonism since his publi-
cation in 1978: Iamblichus Chalcidensis: In Platonis Dialogos Commentariorum Fragmenta;
Polymnia Athanassiadi has published numerous articles that address Iamblichus’ influ-
ence on his tradition; most recently, La lutte pour l’ orthodoxie. Before his untimely death
in 2011, Algis Uzdavinys was a virtual Lithuanian meteorite who fired through a number of
studies on Iamblichean theurgy and its comparison to ancient Egyptian religion. His most
notable are Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth and Philosophy & Theurgy in Late Antiquity.

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tus among Platonists is reflected in Damascius’ praise of Iamblichus as ‘the

best interpreter of divine realities’.53 There remains some reservation among
scholars as regards theurgy, but on the whole theurgical Platonism is no longer
regarded as deficient Hellenic thinking but a legitimate development of late
antique Platonism.
Despite its acceptance, the problem of understanding theurgy and later
Platonism remains. Some scholars continue to interpret theurgy and theurgists
in a way that overlooks the radical non-dualism of their tradition. For theurgical
Platonists, Plato was a ‘leader and hierophant of true mysteries’54 and Platonic
philosophy was mystagogy. But to what end? Many scholars struggle with
articulating the consummation of this mystagogy. Our initial mistake is to read
Platonism as dualism, which leads us to assume that Platonists want to escape
from the material realm to enter the noetic world of immaterial Forms (as if
these were separable to begin with!). This, Trouillard argued, is a misreading of
Plato based on a literalizing of his mythical language regarding the Forms.55 It
is certainly a misreading of theurgic Platonism, and it is precisely this kind of
dualism that Iamblichus criticizes in Porphyry who said that because the gods
are immaterial they cannot be engaged in material rites. This way of thinking,
Iamblichus warned, destroys our intimacy with the gods.
This doctrine [he says] spells the ruin of all holy ritual and theurgic com-
munion between gods and men, since it places the presence of superior
beings outside the earth. It amounts to saying that the divine is at a dis-
tance from the earth and cannot mingle with men, and that this lower
region is a desert, without gods.56
As a Pythagorean non-dualist, Iamblichus believed that the gods, like the arith-
moi, are everywhere. Nature is the active manifestation of the supernatural
(huperphuēs) and the cosmos is the revelation of gods and numbers. The theur-
gic world is theophany, a breathing agalma of the Demiurge,57 and theurgists
53 Princ. 3:119.6–8 (Combès/Westerink).

54 Procl. Plat. Theo. 1:5.16–6.3.
55 Trouillard, La mystagogie, 135: ‘We constantly run the risk of slipping into a scholarly
Platonism that would double the world of objects by taking for a definitive system the
mythic presentation of the theory of the Ideas’ (my translation).
56 Myst. 28.6–11, translated by Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, 101, (modified).
57 Tim. 37c6, where the cosmos is described as an agalma of the ever-lasting gods: an agalma
is a shrine or cult object through which a god becomes present. Iamblichus refers to the
cosmos as a visible agalma of the gods (Myst. 32.7).

enter this activity, this divine breath and theourgia, by performing rites that
align them with its continual revelation. In sum, the goal of theurgy is noth-
ing less than the unification of theurgist with the activity, the energeia, of the
Demiurge: In its deepest sense theurgy is demiurgy.58
2 Dualism and Non-dualism in the Hermetica
I begin with a distinction raised by Mahé, who divides the Hermetica ‘accord-
ing to two tendencies’ as regards the material cosmos: optimistic and pes-
simistic;59 the same distinction is characterized in metaphysical terms by Brian
Copenhaver as ‘monist or dualist’.60 Some treatises profess an acosmicism (and
dualism) that aims to escape from the world while others see immortaliza-
tion through our homologization to the cosmos: not escape but transforma-
tion. When applied to the Hermetic treatises, this distinction is not entirely
straightforward, and Fowden’s careful reading of the Hermetica shows that the
monism and dualism regarding the cosmos are not contradictory themes but
reflect different degrees of spiritual awakening in aspirants.61 According to Fow-
den, in the earlier stages of Hermetic paideia (for initiation and learning are
combined) the initiate embraces his body, the world, and even his sexuality as
expressions of the divine.62 But in the more advanced degrees of initiation—
outlined in Corp. Herm. 13 and nhc vi,6—the initiate leaves his body and
materiality behind. For Fowden, the monism evident in some Hermetic texts—
affirming the powers of the divine in the world—is superseded by the dualism
of escaping from the cosmos in the attainment of gnōsis.63 Copenhaver sum-
marizes Fowden’s interpretation as follows:
Scholars have taken pains to analyze and schematize parts of the Corpus
as monist or dualist, optimist or pessimist, but Fowden proposes to see
such variations as sequential rather than contradictory. Thus, a positive
58 As Iamblichus put it, the goal of theurgy is to ‘establish the soul in the demiurgic god in his
entirety’ Myst. 292.12–13. The distinction between rites of theurgy and sorcery, according
to Iamblichus, is that the former are in analogia with divine creation; the latter are not
(ibid., 168.12). Theurgy is demiurgy.
59 Mahe, ‘Hermes Trismegistos’, 3940.
60 Copenhaver, Hermetica, xxxix.
61 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 102.
62 Ibid., 107.
63 Ibid., 113.

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view of the cosmos as good and worth understanding would suit an earlier
stage of the initiate’s labors and, hence, a treatise focusing on a time when
the body’s needs were still great while a negative treatment of the world
as evil and unworthy of thought might befit a farther station in the spirits
journey … closer to the culmination of gnōsis, which entailed liberation
from the body.64
Mahé agrees with Fowden and says that dualism also underlies the rebirth
treatise of nhc vi,6, where it is implicit rather than explicit.65 For both these
scholars, Hermetic rebirth and the immortalization of the soul take place
within a dualist and acosmic framework. I believe they are mistaken, and by
reading the Hermetica theurgically I hope to show that the ultimate state for
Hermetist (and theurgist) is a non-dual embodied state fully united with the
act of demiurgy-creation.
I agree with Fowden that the apparent contradictions of monist and dualist
themes in the Corpus reflect sequential stages of progress in initiates but dis-
agree with his privileging of the dualist stage.66 Fowden shows how intimately
the principles of Iamblichean theurgy are tied to the Hermetica, but I believe a
theurgical reading of rebirth can demonstrate that the final stage of Hermetic
spiritual progress is not dualistic; in fact, the sequences are quite the oppo-
site. From a theurgic perspective, dualism and acosmicism mark a preliminary
stage of the initiate’s experience followed by a monist or non-dualist embrace of
the entire cosmos, one that marks the culmination of rebirth and immortaliza-
tion. The reversal of sequence that I propose reflects a reversal of orientation:
when the initiate’s particular and mortal perspective is replaced by the uni-
versal perspective of a god. I would argue that this is the goal of both theurgy
and Hermetism. To assume that dualism marks the final stage of illumination
or that Hermetic gnōsis is world-denying strikes me as a misreading—even an
aborting—of the rebirth desired by Hermetists. Nevertheless, pessimism about
the body and material world are clearly evident in Corp. Herm. 13, so let us first
explore the passages that support the dualist interpretation.
In Corp. Herm. 13.1 Tat reminds Hermes that after having asked for the
teaching on rebirth, he replied: ‘When you are ready to become a stranger to the
64 Copenhaver, Hermetica, xxxix; my emphasis.

65 Mahé, Hermes en haute Egypte, 1:53.
66 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 99–100; 109–110, seems to nuance his judgment, noting that
hermetic deification occurs while one is in the body and in the world; he also addresses
the overlapping monist and dualist strands in the Hermetica (142–148) yet maintains that
hermetic gnōsis is dualist.

world I will give it to you’.67 After an exchange in which Hermes tells Tat that
the experience of rebirth cannot be taught in an ordinary manner, he reveals
his divine status:
I have nothing to say but this: seeing within me a formless vision that
came from the mercy of god, I went out of myself into an immortal
body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in Mind
(Nous). This thing cannot be taught, nor can it be seen by the physical
body … Now you see me with your eyes, my child, but by gazing with
bodily sight you do not see what I am. I am not seen with such eyes, my
child.68
The immortal body of Hermes is not physical, even if he speaks through a

physical form. Then Hermes tells Tat that the ‘birth of divinity will begin’
when he quiets his senses: ‘Cleanse yourself’, he continues, ‘of the irrational
torments of matter’,69 which he describes as 12 vices ranging from ignorance
to malice. ‘These’, he says, ‘use the prison of the body to torture the inner
person with the sufferings of the senses’.70 Liberation from the prison of the
body and its 12 tormenters—associated with the 12 zodiacal signs—frees the
divine inner self from its prison and gives the initiate rebirth in an immortal
body.71
In light of these passages, Fowden quite reasonably interprets Hermetic
rebirth as an escape from the body and the physical cosmos. To support his
interpretation, he compares the Hermetica that encourage worship of terres-
trial gods to the ‘material’ sacrifices discussed by Iamblichus in On the Myster-
ies, and the Hermetic passages that worship the hyper-cosmic god to Iambli-
chus’ ‘immaterial’ sacrifices.72 Fowden acknowledges that for theurgist and
Hermetist the differentiation of material and immaterial sacrifices are ‘graded
rather than absolute’;73 yet he nevertheless asserts that the material cult by
67 Corp. Herm. 13.1; I have used Copenhaver’s translation throughout this essay with occa-
sional modifications based on the text of Nock and Festugière.
68 Corp. Herm. 13.3.
69 Ibid., 13.7.
70 Ibid.
71 From Corp. Herm. 1, the archetypal man who falls into embodiment; the 12 signs of the
zodiac are identified as constraining the Hermetist at Corp. Herm. 13.12.
72 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 143 n. 2.
73 Ibid., 144.

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virtue of its materiality is ‘inferior’.74 Fowden’s dualist approach assumes a kind

of opposition between material and immaterial worlds, as if the presence of one
would negate the other. It is precisely this kind of thinking that Iamblichus says
cannot be applied to theurgical matters.75 It is all too easy for us to see a sym-
metric shift—from material to immaterial or from multiplicity to unity—as if
these were distinct and conceptually equivalent categories, but they are not,
and to think so overlooks the asymmetry and subtlety of the Pythagorean cos-
mos shared by theurgists and Hermetists alike. One cannot move from material
to immaterial as if they were separate orders, for the immaterial gods are not
separate from matter; they are, Iamblichus says, already present to it imma-
terially, just as simpler numbers are present in their complex derivatives.76
The gods are wholes, and as wholes, they cannot be opposed to parts; parts
are of a different order entirely: they are in wholes. Thus, although divine
beings may be distinguished from their creations conceptually, in reality they
can never be separated or their creations would not exist. As Iamblichus put
it:
It is true of superior beings in the cosmos that, even as they are not
contained by anything, so they contain everything within themselves; and
earthly things [possess] their existence by virtue of the pleroma of the
gods … 77
To oppose the divinity of the immaterial realm to the inferiority of the mate-
rial realm misses their deeper continuity.78 Metaphysically, this continuity is
rooted in the mystery of the One and the Many, and the recognition by Pla-
tonists that the One exists only by virtue of the Many. Paradoxically only when
the One is revealed and simultaneously veiled as the Many does it come into
being. Put starkly, the One of Plato’s Parmenides is only by becoming not one,
but many: to reveal itself it must be disguised and inverted into what it is not.
This principle of inversion is fundamental to Pythagorean metaphysics and is
reflected at every level of the cosmos. In this metaphysics of inversion shared by
both Hermetists and theurgists, material reality is not deficient but is the organ
74 Ibid., 148.
75 Myst. 8.2–5.
76 Ibid., 218.10–13.
77 Ibid., 28.12–29.1.
78 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 142, acknowledges this but seems to remain fixed on a dualist
interpretation in which the Hermetist and, I assume, theurgist seek to escape from matter
and the body.

through which immaterial powers are revealed even as they are simultaneously
concealed.79 Hermetism is well named to transmit this metaphysics of inver-
sion.80 The Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth are both gods of paradox,
trickery, and deception.81 Hermes, the god who reveals the divine will to man, is
also the god who lies: his very revelation is deception. Hermes’ transmission of
divine will is an enactment of the metaphysics of inversion; he simultaneously
veils and reveals the One. His speech, Plato says, ‘is twofold: true and false’.82
Such is the esoteric transmission that cannot be ‘taught’ discursively. It requires
a living hermeneutics of the kind seen in the encounter between Hermes and
Tat, where things are not as they appear to be. Tat’s comments make this plain:
‘You tell me a riddle, father … Father, what you tell me is impossible … You have
driven me quite mad, father; you have driven me out of my mind so that I now
no longer see myself’. To which Hermes replies: ‘My child, I wish that were so’.83
Peter Kingsley captures the painful intimacy of this exchange and the initiative
Hermes takes to penetrate appearances. He writes:
The disciple desperately wants to understand: to find consistency, the-

oretical understanding. But his intellect is frustrated, flattened, evoked
79 Iamblichus explains the nature of the cosmogony and its metaphysics of inversion by
quoting Heraclitus: ‘neither speaking nor concealing but signifying (sēmainontes)’, to
explain both how the gods perform demiurgy and provide the means for divination
through their creation (Myst. 136.1–4). In his critique of Porphyry’s dualist conception
of the gods, believing that their transcendence separates them from the material realm,
Iamblichus says: ‘Indeed, what is it that prevents the gods from proceeding in any direction
and what hinders their power from going further than the vault of heaven?’ (ibid., 27.7–9).
As regards Porphyry’s contention that the gods cannot be found in matter Iamblichus
replies: ‘In fact, the truly real, and that which is essentially incorporeal, is everywhere
that it wishes to be … As for me, I do not see in what way the things of this realm are
fashioned and given form, if the divine creative force and participation in divine forms
does not extend throughout the whole of the cosmos’ (ibid., 27.10–28.3; tr. Clarke, Dillon,
Hershbell, modified slightly).
80 Describing Hermes as an archetypal trickster, Lewis Hyde writes: ‘Trickster is the mythic
embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and
paradox’ (Hyde, Trickster, 7).
81 Fowden discusses the reputation of the Egyptian Thoth and Greek Hermes for trickery. He
notes that the Stoics regard Hermes as both logos and Demiurge which Fowden suggests
may have ‘owed something to the Egyptian understanding of Thoth as creator’ (Fowden,
Egyptian Hermes, 23–24).
82 According to Plato, Hermes is the god of speech and father of all things (to pan); he makes
them circulate and ‘is twofold, true and false’ (Crat. 408c 1–4).
83 Corp. Herm. 13.3–4. The translation is from Kingsley, ‘Knowing Beyond Knowing’, 22–23.

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only to be pushed to the edge of extinction—until the understanding

starts to come from an entirely different level. That other level is what
the disciple was after all along.84
As contemporary interpreters of the Hermetica, we face a similar dilemma. We

too want to find consistency, some kind of theoretical understanding of the
Hermetic treatises. Yet the contradictions we encounter are striking. On the
one hand, we read passages where Hermes tells Tat:
Unless you first hate your body you cannot love yourself, but when you
have loved yourself you will possess Divine Mind … My child, it is impos-
sible to be engaged in both realms: the mortal and the divine. Since there
are two kinds of entities: corporeal and incorporeal, corresponding to
mortal and divine, one is left to choose one or the other … One cannot
have both together.85
Yet, on the other hand Hermes tells Asclepius:
God is not without sensation and understanding, though some would

have it so, committing blasphemy in an excess of piety. For all things
that exist are in god, Asclepius. They have come to be by god’s agency,
and they depend on him, some of them acting through bodies, others
moving through psychic substance … [G]od does not [merely] contain
these things. He is all of them … 86
And to Tat’s question: ‘Is god in matter, then, father?’ Hermes replies:
Yes, for if matter is not energized by god, my son, do you think it could be
anything but a formless heap? But who energizes it if it is energized? We
have said that the activities (energeias) are parts of god. By whom, then,
are all living things made alive? By whom are immortals made immortal?
Things subject to change—by whom are they changed? If you say matter
or body or essence, know that these are also activities (energeias) of
god and materiality is the activity (energeian) of matter, corporeality the
84 Kingsley, ‘Knowing Beyond Knowing’, 22–23. Discursive thinking becomes transparent to

the soul’s innate gnōsis.
85 Corp. Herm. 4.6.
86 Ibid., 9.9.

activity (energeian) of bodies and essentiality the activity (energeian) of

essence. And this is god, the All … There is nothing that he is not.87
3 Rebirth as Giving Birth: The Demiurgic Mystery
These contradictions of the Hermetica caused Fowden to develop a psycholog-

ically nuanced interpretation: the contradictions are not evidence of incoher-
ence among the Hermetic authors, but reflect the progressive stages of initi-
ates as they move from a world-affirming monism to a world-denying dualism.
Plotinus was faced with a similar dilemma to make sense of Plato’s view of
matter and embodiment. In his treatise On the Descent of the Soul, he said:
‘[Plato] … does not always speak consistently, so that his meaning might easily
be grasped’.88 Dodds pointed out that the task for Platonists was to reconcile
the positive view of matter and embodiment portrayed in the cosmology of
the Timaeus with the negative view seen in the psychology of the Phaedo and
Phaedrus; Dodds notes, rightly, that Plotinus was not successful in his reconcil-
iation since he favored the pessimistic view of matter seen in the Phaedo.89 It is
precisely in this context that Iamblichus presents a workable reconciliation by
distinguishing more clearly than Plotinus the experience of the universal soul
from that of the particular soul. It is only for the particular soul, the embodied
mortal person, that matter is an obstacle and detriment. His solution can be
applied to the Hermetic writings as well. Iamblichus explains:
The conflict of views in this issue may easily be solved by demonstrating

the transcendence of wholes with respect to parts and by recalling the
transcendent superiority of gods to men. For example, I mean that the
entire body of the cosmos is ruled by the World Soul and celestial bodies
are governed by the celestial gods, and there is no passionate contamina-
tion in their reception nor is there any impediment to their noetic activity;
but for the individual soul in communion with a body both these detri-
ments are experienced.90
87 Ibid., 12.22–23.1.
88 Plot. Enn. 4.8 [6] 2.27–28.
89 Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 25.
90 Myst. 200.1–7.

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Iamblichus’ understanding of the difference between the human soul,

whom he calls ‘the lowest divinity’,91 and the celestial gods, has to do with
our respective vehicles. The metaphysics of inversion requires that our vehi-
cles both reveal and veil our essence. Drawing largely from the Pythagorean
imagery of the Timaeus, Iamblichus held that all divine beings share in the cre-
ation of the cosmos. The souls of the heavenly gods are complete in themselves
(autoteleis),92 and their vehicles (ochēmata) reveal their powers immediately
in the heavenly round. Iamblichus says the Demiurge provides each human
soul with an ochēma ‘produced from the entire ether (pantos tou aitheros) …
which has a creative power’,93 but unlike the heavenly gods, in the exercise of
this power, we become self-alienated (allotriōthen).94 In geometric terms, the
existence of gods is circular: their essence inseparable from their activity, their
beginning identical with their end. In human souls this circle is broken: having
entered generated life, we fall into rectilinear existence and become creatures
whose beginnings are separated from our end. When we animate bodies we
lose our original spherical vehicle and become trapped in oppositions: the divi-
sions, collisions, impacts, reactions, growths and breakdowns that Iamblichus
says are the unavoidable consequences of material life.95
Theurgic divinization and Hermetic rebirth allow initiates to recover their
immortal bodies and participate in demiurgy. Rebirth is realized as giving birth,
not escaping from the world but creating it. To read Hermetic rebirth as an
escape from the material world is to miss the demiurgic dimension of the
soul’s immortalization; this is certainly important for theurgists and, I would
argue, for Hermetists as well. Fowden understandably looks to progressive
stages of immortalization to explain the contradictions of the Hermetica, but
his privileging of dualism as the final stage denies to the soul the culmination of
its immortalization: its participation in the creation of the cosmos. According
to Iamblichus this mistake is rooted in a misunderstanding of catharsis where
the cleansing of the soul, the Lesser Mysteries, is taken as an end in itself,
rather than as a means to receive the transformative vision received in the
Greater Mysteries. The purpose of catharsis is not to escape from the body but
to overcome the confusions of embodiment and allow the divine to take its seat
in one’s own body. The cleansing of the soul from its bodily fixations is merely a
91 Ibid., 34.6.
92 In Finamore and Dillon, Iamblichus De Anima, 130.
93 Comm. Tim. frag. 84 (Dillon).
94 Simplicius, De anima, 223.26; he also says that according to Iamblichus the embodied soul
is also ‘made other to itself’ (heteroiousthai pros heautēn), 223.31.
95 These are experiences in the material realm according to Iamblichus (Myst. 217).

preliminary stage to be followed by an active and demiurgic cooperation with

the gods. Iamblichus explains:
[T]he most useful goals of catharsis are withdrawal from foreign ele-
ments; restoration of one’s own essence; perfection; fullness; indepen-
dence; ascent to the creative cause; conjunction of parts to wholes; and
the contribution of power, life, and activity from the wholes to the parts.96
Iamblichus says this is the ancient teaching, which he contrasts with the view of
some Platonists (Porphyry and Plotinus?) who see catharsis as withdrawal from
the body and separation from the material world. These, he maintains, are the
‘lesser goals’ (smikra telē) of catharsis,97 and although Iamblichus recognizes
their value, they merely prepare the soul for the greater goal of shared demiurgy.
In fact, to give priority to the lesser goals leads to the kind of dualism seen in
Porphyry’s desire to escape from the material realm.98 Deified theurgists do
not escape from their bodies or from nature; they embrace both from a divine
perspective. The deeper goals of catharsis include the demiurgic activity of
uniting with the creative cause, of joining parts to wholes, and of sewing the
power and activity of the gods into all parts of the cosmos.99
It is easy to read Hermes’ injunction to discard the physical body and the
senses as dualist. In Iamblichean theurgy and the Hermetica there is a provi-
sional dualism in the initial cleansing of the soul from embodied confusion,
but this dualism occurs within a larger non-dual context. Consider, for example,
Hermes’ hymn of rebirth given at the culmination of Corp. Herm. 13. In typical
hermetic style he says ‘it cannot be taught; it is a secret kept in silence’, and then
he sings it. It is a hymn of praise directed toward the physical sun, the shining
Eye of Nous.100 Here, the theurgical elements of Hermes’ teaching become evi-
dent for it is not Hermes who sings but the divine Powers that sing through
him. Hermes invokes them:
96 In Finamore and Dillon, Iamblichus De Anima, 70.1–5 (my translation).

97 Ibid., 70.5–10.
98 For references to Porphyry’s position see Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 13–15.
99 In his De Anima, Iamblichus says: ‘According to the Ancients, souls freed from generation
co-administer the cosmos with the gods … [these] liberated souls create the cosmos with
the angels …’. See Finamore and Dillon, 74.6–9 (my translation).
100 The role of the sun as the agalma of the Nous and of the One itself was part of the later
Platonic tradition. See, for example, Proclus’ practice of theurgic communion with Helios
in his Platonic Theology 2.11, cited by Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 127–128. His prayer is
remarkably similar to that of Hermes in Corp. Herm. 13.

160 shaw
O Powers within me, sing to the One and to the All. Sing together, all you
Powers within me, as I wish it. O Holy Gnōsis, you have bathed me in light;
through you I am singing the noetic light. I take joy in the joy of Nous. All
you Powers sing the hymn with me.101
After identifying the Powers that liberate the soul from its confusion, Hermes,
who has become united with the will of the Demiurge, continues:
The Powers that are in me sing these things; they chant the universe [into
existence]. They complete your Will, your plan, as it proceeds from you
and returns to you as [perfected] universe.102
Hermes performs this theurgic hymn to demonstrate to Tat the culmination

of rebirth: becoming united with the will of the Demiurge, participating in
cosmogenesis, and chanting the universe into being. To enter this state is
to shift one’s orientation from part to whole, from mortal to immortal. Any
aversion the initiate may have felt toward the body to achieve the lesser goals
of catharsis would have been overcome through this rebirth and experience of
the whole.
Iamblichus says that from this divine and noetic perspective the soul ‘con-
tains otherness and multiplicity’.103 One’s physical body is no longer a prison
but becomes the nexus through which divinity is hermetically revealed and
concealed. To see the body or material reality as an obstacle would indicate
that the soul was still in a preliminary stage of catharsis. Having united with the
creative cause, the soul bestows demiurgic generosity to all things, including
its own body. According to theurgists, this shift of orientation is marked by the
recovery of our spherical ochēma that moves circularly with the Nous.104 The
initiate then exists in a particular mortal body but at the same time, as Hermes
reports, ‘I went out of myself into an immortal body’. He entered the spheri-
cal ochēma of theurgists that is co-extensive with the cosmos.105 In this state
101 Corp. Herm. 13.18.

102 Ibid., 13.19.
103 Iamblichus says ‘the more we raise ourselves from parts to wholes, the more we discover
the eternal union that exists there … contains otherness and multiplicity’ (Myst. 59.7–11).
104 In his Timaeus commentary, Iamblichus says: ‘the noēsis of the soul and the circular
motion of [celestial] bodies imitate the activity of the Mind (nous)’ (Comm. Tim. frag. 49.1
[Dillon]).
105 Corp. Herm. 13.3. The ochēma for Iamblichus is an immortal body through which we
receive and express the Nous and become homologous to the entire cosmos. Praising the

the mortal body becomes the living agalma—as the cosmos is an agalma—
encircled by the Demiurgic Nous. Hermes describes this experience as fol-
lows:
I imagine no longer with the sight of my eyes but with the noetic activity
of the [divine] powers. I am in heaven, in earth, in water, in air; I am
in animals, in plants, in the womb, before the womb, after the womb …
everywhere.106
He has become divine in the purified etheric body that theurgists call Augoei-
des, the body of light, and yet he remains a man and speaks to Tat.107 This dual
orientation is intrinsic to all of theurgy, as Iamblichus explains:
The whole of theurgy presents a double aspect. One is that it is conducted

by men, which preserves our natural rank in the universe; the other is that,
being empowered by divine symbols, it is raised up through them to be
united with the gods and is led harmoniously into their order. This can
rightly be called taking the shape of the gods.108
For theurgists matter was only an obstacle to the soul if it had not yet been
purified. Once purified, the soul’s material obstacles become divine icons.
Theurgists remain human; they preserve ‘our rank’ in the universe, yet at the
same time are united with the gods and ‘take on their shape’. Iamblichus’
understanding that the soul’s divinization is non-dual is clear:
The benevolent and gracious gods shine their light generously on theur-
gists, calling their souls up to themselves, giving them unification, and
sphere, Iamblichus says: ‘it takes in all the shapes in the cosmos by reason of its spherical
shape; the sphere is the only shape that can include all the elements. Therefore, as by
its singleness it reflects its similarity to the noetic Universe, so by its spherical shape it
imitates that Universe’s containing of wholes’ (Comm. Tim. frag. 49.4 [Dillon]).
106 Corp. Herm. 13.11.
107 Iamblichus designates a genre of theurgic divination as phōtagōgia, by which theurgists
draw divine light into their etheric bodies. He says: ‘This [phōtos agōgēn] somehow
illuminates the ethereal and luminous vehicle (augoeides ochēma) surrounding the soul
with divine light, and through this vehicle divine appearances … take possession of our
imagination’ (Myst. 132.9–12). It is through this ‘luminous spirit’ (augoeides pneuma) that
theurgists provide a place (chorein) to receive the gods (ibid., 125.5–6).
108 Ibid., 184.1–6.

162 shaw
accustoming them, while they are still in their bodies, to be detached from
their bodies and turned to their eternal and noetic principle.109
When Hermes says to Tat that ‘you see me with your eyes, my child, but by
gazing with bodily sight you do not understand what I am; I am not seen with
such eyes’, he is speaking from the theurgic place of two realms: human and
divine.110 Tat sees Hermes in his natural rank in the universe, not in his etheric
and immortal body. Yet, to negate the visible body in favor of the etheric, follow-
ing a dualist orientation, would negate the demiurgic activity that characterizes
the divine. From Iamblichus’s perspective, it would cut oneself off from the
gods. For the later Platonists, divinity is not a state; it is an activity; it is the
energeia emanating from the One, unfolded and inverted demiurgically by the
Nous. The culmination of rebirth in this perspective must include the physical
body or it would not be genuine rebirth. Like Hermes, the purified soul receives
the energeiai of the Nous in the continual creation of the world; the initiate
shares in demiurgy. Hermetic rebirth is to give birth to the cosmos.
4 Conclusion: The Womb of Silence, the Chōra of the Cosmos
According to Iamblichus, the curriculum for reading of Platonic dialogues

begins with the study of the Alcibiades i and Phaedo that portray the mate-
rial body as a prison, and culminates with the study of the Timaeus and Par-
menides where material bodies and theological states reveal the powers of the
One orchestrated by the Demiurge.111 The portrayal of matter in this curricu-
lum is alchemically transformed as it reflects the soul’s gradual alignment with
the ‘eternal measures’ (metra aidia) of the Demiurge.112 The Platonists’ view of
the material cosmos shifts from pessimism to optimism, from dualism to non-
109 Ibid., 41.4–11.

110 Corp. Herm. 13.3.
111 Dillon, Iamblichi Chalcidensis, 15; see the Platonic source for attributing this curriculum
to Iamblichus: Westerink, The Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ch. 26.15–
16. The culminating dialogues are the Timaeus and the Parmenides, which Iamblichus
designated as ‘perfect’ (teleious; 26.34), the former covering everything addressed in the
‘physical’ and the latter everything in the ‘theological’ dialogues.
112 Myst. 65.6. See this paideia laid out in the Timaeus 43b–44c where the soul’s proportions,
disturbed in the experience of birth, can be recovered through right education; also see
Timaeus 90c–d where the embodied soul learns to realign itself with the measures of the
Demiurge revealed in the heavens.

dualism. In the theurgic culmination of this paideia, the soul ritually receives
the demiurgic energeiai and the body becomes, as Iamblichus puts it, ‘an organ
of the gods’113 just as Hermes becomes a vehicle for divine powers. Hermetic
paideia follows the same process as theurgic paideia. Although Hermetic ini-
tiation cannot be taught, Hermes reveals an essential condition to experience
rebirth. Rebirth comes from the ‘womb of silence’.114 Before Hermes sings the
hymn of rebirth he declares that it is ‘hid in silence’. In nhc vi,6, at the initi-
ation into the eighth and ninth spheres, Hermes says to his son that ‘language
is not able to reveal this … the souls and the angels that are in it sing a hymn
in silence;’ he then tells his son to ‘sing it’ while remaining silent.115 Hermes
transmits this mystery after having reached the ‘beginning of the Power that is
above all powers, the one that has no beginning … a fountain bubbling with
life’.116 Here the intimacy described by Kingsley is evident, for between father
and son a spiritual transmission occurs not seen even in Platonic texts.117 The
father says: ‘It is your business to understand; it is my job to be successful at
speaking the words that spring from the source that flows inside me’.118 Not only
must the student be receptive, the teacher also must be receptive to the flow of
the primal fountain. It is not information that is transmitted but noetic activ-
ity: the fountain flows through the father and the son as they enter its noetic
energeia. As Mahé observes, ‘what is most important is not what Hermes and
the disciple say but what they do and what they experience while saying it’.119
This is the insight behind the theurgic turn among later Platonists. It is what
cannot be taught and what Porphyry, looking for a precise articulation, cannot
learn. This, in my view, is the esoteric teaching that leads to gnōsis. It is not sub-
tle or secret information but transformed awareness. What cannot be thought
can nevertheless be received—and enacted.
The trigger for this transmission is silence, when the mind becomes still,
when we become utterly receptive. In his discussion of Egyptian deities in
On the Mysteries Iamblichus reiterates this point in his discussion of Hermetic
theology. He says:
113 Ibid., 115.4–5.

114 Corp. Herm. 13.2.
115 nhc vi,6.58,16–20. Unless otherwise stated, I refer to the translation of D. Parrott in
Robinson (ed.), Nag Hammadi Library in English.
116 Ibid.
117 Kingsley, ‘Knowing Beyond Knowing’, 23–24.
118 nhc vi,6.55.19–22; translation by Kingsley, ‘Knowing Beyond Knowing’, 23.
119 Mahé, ‘La voie d’ immortalité’, 365; my translation and emphasis.

164 shaw
Hermes gives first rank to Kmeph, the leader of celestial gods whom he
declares to be Nous thinking himself and turning his thoughts to himself;
but prior to him he places the Indivisible One that he calls the “first act
of magic” and which he calls Heka. It is in him that the primal noetic
element rests and who is the primal object of noēsis, and it is he, it must
be specified, who is worshipped by means of silence alone.120
Iamblichus identifies the Indivisible One with the Egyptian Heka, the god of
magic who, according to the Coffin Texts, exists before all other gods, before
all duality, and who plays an essential role in cosmogenesis.121 The synthesis of
the god of magic and cosmogony in Abamon’s defense of theurgy seems fitting,
for upon receiving this divine power, the theurgist shares in the demiurgy of
the cosmos which, as perpetually enacted by the Egyptian Heka, is ‘magic of
a higher order’.122 But to worship this god and receive his power one must be
silent. The initiate must become, as Hermes tells Tat, a pure receptacle, a womb
that understands in silence.123
According to Iamblichus the One cannot be known, yet we are ‘enveloped
in its divine presence’.124 Prior to discursive awareness, we possess an innate
gnōsis of the gods that is co-existent with our nature. Accessing this gnōsis is
possible only through theurgic receptacles and Iamblichus provides an exten-
sive taxonomy of appropriate ritual objects that correspond to the capacities
of theurgists.125 In proportion to one’s receptive capacity (epitedeiotēs), these
120 Myst. 263.1–5. I am convinced by the argument of Dennis Clark and before him, Elsa Oréal,
that the inexplicable Eikton of the Greek text should receive a rough breath and indicate
the Egyptian god of magic, Heka. This, in turn, helps to correct the otherwise puzzling
suggestion by Gale of prōton maieuma at 263.4 as ‘first product’ (found in the Clarke,
Dillon, Hershbell translation) for prōton mageuma found in the earliest manuscripts. This
correction of Gale’s “emendation” would restore the Greek text and replace ‘first product’
with ‘first act of magic’, which would be appropriate for the god of magic, Heka (see Clark,
‘Iamblichus’, 10–11). My translation follows that of Clark, 3. Saffrey and Segonds, Jamblique,
195; 328–329, retain mageuma as ‘premier oeuvre magique’ from the earliest manuscripts
m and v, c. 1460 and c. 1458.
121 Clark, ‘Iamblichus’, 11–12.
122 Ibid., 12–13.
123 Corp. Herm. 13.2.
124 Myst. 8.8.
125 Iamblichus spells this out in On the Mysteries. There are three kinds of theurgy that
correspond generally to embodied souls as well as specifically to the needs of any soul
depending on what divine energy it needs to receive. See my discussion in Shaw, Theurgy
and the Soul, 162–216.

ritual objects (sunthēmata) unite the theurgist with the deity either by habit,
communion or complete union.126 Ultimately, by virtue of catharsis and grad-
ual filiation with the divine, theurgists regain their spherical ochēmata and can
offer the divine a receptacle that Iamblichus says is like the ‘pure and divine
matter’ that receives the gods in cosmogony.127 For the later Platonists, Plato
revealed this unknowable matrix of revelation in the Timaeus: it is the mysteri-
ous maternal receptacle (hupodochē) and space (chōra) that allows the Forms
to come into existence.128 This cosmogonic chōra, which Plato says cannot be
thought,129 has—according to Iamblichus—its correlate within us and is the
receptacle for every act of theurgy.130 This womb of creation that Plato calls
nurse and mother is utterly empty: it is semantically vacant, silent, and ungras-
pable.131 This chōra is the womb of Hermetic rebirth through which the initiate
is reborn by giving birth to the world. The silence of the Hermetica and theur-
gists is not the negation of sound or speech—as if silence were the alternative
to language; it is, rather, the root and source, the womb from which all sounds
126 Iamblichus says that prayer ‘greatly enlarges the soul’s receptacle (hupodochē) of the gods’
(Myst. 238.13–14). It has three stages: (1) the soul is collected and becomes conscious
of the presence of the gods; (2) we are conjoined to the gods and experience their
gifts; and (3) the soul experiences a complete union (henōsis) with the divine (ibid.,
5.26). In his discussion of the soul’s possession by the gods, Iamblichus also makes a
three-fold distinction: ‘sometimes there is mere participation, sometimes a communion,
and sometimes even union (henōsis) …’ (ibid., 111.10–13).
127 Ibid., 232.17
128 Tim. 51a; 52b.
129 Ibid., 52b.
130 The role of the receptacle spelled out in Myst. 232.11–233.6, 238.13–239.10. See Shaw, ‘The
Chōra’, 103–129.
131 The chōra is the “Nurse of Becoming” (geneseōs tithēnē; 52d), Mother and Receptacle
(mētēr kai hupocochē; 51a), completely void of all forms (50e) and scarcely an object of
belief (mogis piston), i.e., unthinkable (52b). In the Chaldean Oracles the theurgist is told
to approach the undivided noetic source as follows: ‘You must not perceive it intently,
but—bringing back the sacred eye of your soul—extend an empty mind (keneon nous)
into that Intelligible to know it, for it exists outside your mind;’ Chaldean Oracles, frag.
1 (Majercik). I have used Majercik’s translation as well as Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism,
224; also see Ahbel-Rappe’s remarks in her translation of Damasc. Princ., pp. 237–238. In
his Commentary on the Timaeus, i.257.30–258.8, Proclus maintains that this unthinkable
receptacle—known only through a ‘bastard kind of thinking’ (nothos logismos 52b)—is
the highest state possible to the soul. He puts it bluntly: ‘the bastard (nothon) is better
than the nous’ (dioti kreittōnos tou noein) (258.4–5). I use the translation from Lankila,
‘Hypernoetic Cognition’, 152.

166 shaw
arise.132 This original silence is the functional equivalent of the whole with
respect to parts; just as the whole contains and remains hidden in its parts, so
silence remains hidden in language, and it is the presence of this noetic silence
that is awakened and transmitted in the esoteric discourse between Hermetic
father and son: simultaneously revealing and concealing the mystery.133
Thus, Hermes sings the cosmogonic hymn by remaining silent, which is to
say, by remaining utterly receptive, as the cosmogonic chōra of the Timaeus is
receptive to the Forms and births them from her womb. The theurgist and Her-
metist reach the primal silence of the One only by receiving and uniting with its
creative energeiai: chanting out the sounds that cosmogonically proceed from
it. Hermetic initiates are revealed as lords of cosmogenesis, the ‘lord of citizens
in every place’,134 yet remain hidden. They take on ‘the shape of the gods’, yet
remain mortal, ‘holding our natural place in the cosmos’.135 Hermes tells his son
‘sing while you are silent’.136 The secret remains hidden while being revealed.
The way of Hermes is the way of immortality concealed and revealed in mortal
existence.
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Aries – Journal for the Study

of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

Taking the Shape of the Gods

Hermes – theurgy – Iamblichus – dualism and non-dualism – esoteric – demiurgy

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15700593-01501009

Iamblichus writes under the name of Abamon, an Egyptian priest responding

1 Borges, Labyrinths, 114.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

1 Theurgy, Scholarship, and the Challenge of the Veil

Iamblichus is largely responsible for introducing this mystagogic language to

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

12 Iamb. Vit. Pyth. ch. 89; cf. 72.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

An outstanding exception to this scholarly habit is a recent article by Wouter

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

Iamblichus’ use of gnōsis must be understood in context. As ordinary knowl-

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

Iamblichus says Pythagoreans did not conceive of esoteric teachings as more

Iamblichus reproves Porphyry, telling him—and by extension all who think

24 Iamb. Comm. Math. 62.11–12, tr. Brisson, ‘Chapter 18’, 45.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

discursively. Perhaps we need to recognize that our discursive brilliance—our

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

31 On to prosektikon or more simply, prosochē, in Damascius as representing the ‘One of the

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

mystagogy. I understand why many scholars prefer to discuss everything but

33 I am reminded of Jean Trouillard’s penetrating remark: ‘Savoir que Parménide a influencé

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

to correct earlier mischaracterizations prompted by Festugière’s judgment of

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to communicate their mystagogy was, I would argue, because they believed

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Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

tus among Platonists is reflected in Damascius’ praise of Iamblichus as ‘the

53 Princ. 3:119.6–8 (Combès/Westerink).

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2 Dualism and Non-dualism in the Hermetica

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64 Copenhaver, Hermetica, xxxix; my emphasis.

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The immortal body of Hermes is not physical, even if he speaks through a

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virtue of its materiality is ‘inferior’.74 Fowden’s dualist approach assumes a kind

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The disciple desperately wants to understand: to find consistency, the-

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

only to be pushed to the edge of extinction—until the understanding

As contemporary interpreters of the Hermetica, we face a similar dilemma. We

Yet, on the other hand Hermes tells Asclepius:

God is not without sensation and understanding, though some would

84 Kingsley, ‘Knowing Beyond Knowing’, 22–23. Discursive thinking becomes transparent to

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

activity (energeian) of bodies and essentiality the activity (energeian) of

3 Rebirth as Giving Birth: The Demiurgic Mystery

These contradictions of the Hermetica caused Fowden to develop a psycholog-

The conflict of views in this issue may easily be solved by demonstrating

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

Iamblichus’ understanding of the difference between the human soul,

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 136–169

preliminary stage to be followed by an active and demiurgic cooperation with

96 In Finamore and Dillon, Iamblichus De Anima, 70.1–5 (my translation).

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