Hermetic Ascension | The Way of Hermes
This video explores Hermeticism as a spiritual path of salvation rooted in the teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek-Egyptian sage identified with the Egyptian god Thoth. Rather than presenting a single fixed doctrine, it traces a changing Egyptian priestly tradition centered on ethical life, ritual, silence, self-purification, and direct visionary knowledge of God. Its central conclusion is that Hermetic "rebirth" means moving from sensory confusion and destructive emotions toward an awakened awareness of unity with the divine Nous—the cosmic Mind.
1. What "Hermetic" Means
The video begins by warning that "Hermetic" is not a perfectly precise term. Across history, it has referred to many fields—alchemy, astrology, astronomy, arithmetic, and other occult or sacred sciences. This changing meaning reflects the fluid character of Hermes himself.
Greek Hermes was a trickster from birth: he escaped his mother Maia, stole Apollo's cattle, invented music and ritual, deceived his way onto Olympus, received Apollo's golden staff, and became the guide of souls into the underworld. The term Hermetic, like the god, has therefore taken on many forms.
For this discussion, Hermeticism specifically means the teachings and writings said to come from Hermes Trismegistus—"Hermes the Thrice-Greatest"—as well as the practices and rituals derived directly from those teachings. It can also include philosophers who clearly knew the Hermetic writings, even if some of their source texts have since been lost.
A major example is Iamblichus (c. 242–325 CE), a Syrian-born Platonist who is presented as a genuinely Hermetic philosopher familiar with Egyptian priestly literature and the Corpus Hermeticum. His contemporary, the alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, also connected sacred Egyptian and Hebrew wisdom with spiritual purification.
Zosimos describes true sacred science not as material manipulation, but as liberation of the divine element within human beings:
"It is not concerned with material and corruptible bodies. It operates without submitting to strange influences, supported by prayer and divine grace."
"Its adepts cleanse and save the divine soul bound in the elements, and free the divine spirit from its mixture with the flesh."
The narrator acknowledges an unavoidable scholarly problem: ancient Egyptian sources must pass through translation, partial survival, and sometimes flawed interpretations. Still, where sources appear credible, the best approach is to carefully listen to what they say while admitting uncertainty.
2. Thoth's Path of Life
An important early figure is Petosiris, chief prophet of Thoth at Hermopolis near the end of the fourth century BCE, when Macedonia ruled Egypt. Petosiris repaired temples, protected his city, and became locally renowned. His tomb provides a powerful clue to the religious "way of life" associated with Thoth.
Visitors to the tomb are told:
"Come, let me lead you to the way of life, that you may reach the abode of generations without coming to grief."
"Serving God is the good way. Blessed is he whose heart leads him to it."
"I have come here to the city of eternity, having done good upon the earth, having filled my heart with God's way."
This "way of life" already includes two central Hermetic requirements:
- Ethical conduct—doing good while alive.
- Divine service—devotion to and participation in the work of God.
The same pattern appears in the Poimandres, the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. After receiving a divine vision, Hermes does not simply retreat into private contemplation. He goes out to teach others so that they too may share in immortality. Teaching wisdom becomes a form of service to the divine.
However, the narrator emphasizes that there was probably never one neat, uniform Hermetic school with a permanent set of teachings. Egyptian religious life changed over centuries, under new rulers, in changing local communities, and as new priests added interpretations to older traditions. This explains why Hermetic writings can appear contradictory without necessarily losing their essential purpose.
The texts themselves admit their obscurity. In Corpus Hermeticum XVI, Asclepius reports Hermes saying:
"Those reading my books would find their organization very simple and clear, when on the contrary it is unclear and keeps the meaning of its words concealed."
Translation into Greek, the text says, would create even more confusion. So the video does not claim to reconstruct a flawless step-by-step Hermetic system. Instead, it seeks recurring principles that reveal the broad shape of the Hermetic path.
3. Egyptian Roots and the Books of Hermes
The video then examines evidence for an older Egyptian background to Hermeticism. By the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, beginning in 282 BCE, the Egyptian priest Manetho was already speaking of two Hermes figures and attributing many writings to Hermes Trismegistus. Manetho said that Thoth was the first Hermes and had inscribed sacred knowledge in hieroglyphs before a great flood.
Although Manetho's original writings survive only in fragments, the tradition suggests that a "way of Thoth" existed before the surviving Greek Hermetic texts. An inscription from 172 BCE mentions a servant of Thoth who knew the path of life given by Thoth's teachings and condemned those who abandoned it.
The Egyptian Book of Thoth, written in Demotic Egyptian, also contains themes that resemble later Hermeticism: secret knowledge, servants of Thoth, and an expectation that certain spiritual steps can lead a person to "see heaven." This makes it unlikely that Hermeticism was merely a later Greek philosophical creation imposed upon Egypt.
By the early first century CE, the astrologer Thrasyllus used the title Trismegistus in Greek. Earlier astrological works attributed to Hermes were already known in the second century BCE. The Roman astrologer Manilius praises Hermes for revealing the heavenly mysteries:
"Thanks to you, we know the farther reaches of the sky: the constellations, the names and movements of the stars, their importance and their influence."
Yet the video's main concern is not astrology. It is the Hermetic route to salvation.
The narrator argues against the idea that Hermetic priesthood was only a hybrid product of Platonism, Gnosticism, and Roman-era Greek influence. Scholars such as Garth Fowden, Christian Bull, and others have argued that Hermeticism inherited an older, complex Egyptian religion that was gradually expressed in Greek forms as Greek thinkers came to Egypt looking for ancient wisdom.
The name Poimandres itself may derive from an Egyptian deified king, suggesting a native Egyptian origin for one of the most important Hermetic texts. Greek and Roman writers also repeatedly identify Hermes/Thoth with Egyptian wisdom, writing, language, astronomy, and philosophy.
Iamblichus makes the priestly connection especially direct:
"Hermes, the god who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common among priests."
"Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes."
According to Iamblichus, Plato and Pythagoras developed their philosophies from Egypt's ancient "pillars of Hermes":
"We shall discuss it for you according to the ancient pillars of Hermes, which Plato and Pythagoras knew before us and from which they constituted their philosophy."
There are clear Platonic influences in surviving Hermetic works, but the video portrays this as an exchange and continuation rather than a simple replacement of Egyptian religion by Greek philosophy.
4. The Human Problem: Descent into Matter
The Hermetic myth found in the Poimandres says that human beings are twofold:
- Mortal in body.
- Immortal in their essential nature.
The soul's entry into a body brings pain, pleasure, emotional confusion, and the possibility of corruption. Unlike some strongly dualistic Gnostic systems, however, this descent is not initially described as a cosmic accident created by an evil being. It begins as a kind of union or "romance" between the primordial human and Nature. Yet this union opens the way to spiritual forgetfulness and attachment to bodily life.
Hermetic salvation therefore involves distancing oneself from the clouding effects of uncontrolled desire and emotion. But it is not simply an escape from the world or a wish to die and leave the body behind. Instead, the path combines:
- Ethical transformation
- Meditation and silence
- Prayer and hymns
- Ritual practice
- Intellectual understanding
- Visionary experience
- Union with divine Mind and Life
The end goal is contact with the fundamental noetic light—the divine intelligible light or Mind that permeates the universe.
The discovery of the Hermetic text The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth among the Nag Hammadi codices strengthened the view that Hermeticism was a kind of mystery tradition. It likely involved books, rituals, prayers, songs, secrets, and graduated teachings.
5. Rebirth and the Twelve Torments
The heart of the video is its reading of Corpus Hermeticum XIII, a dialogue in which Tat asks Hermes to teach him how to be born again. Hermes has previously told Tat that nobody can be saved without rebirth, but he initially spoke in riddles. Tat has prepared himself and is approaching the state of becoming "a stranger to the cosmos"—living in the world without being spiritually enslaved by it.
Hermes explains his own rebirth in language that cannot be reduced to ordinary instruction:
"Seeing within me an unabated 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."
"This thing cannot be taught, nor can it be seen through any elementary fabrication that we use here below."
"Now you see me with your eyes, my child, but by gazing with bodily sight you do not understand what I am."
Rebirth is not understood merely through the physical senses. It requires an inner capacity awakened by divine power. Hermes recalls a famous Hermetic principle:
"If you have not made yourself like God, you are not able to understand God, for like is understandable only to like."
Tat fears that he lacks this capacity, but Hermes answers with a direct spiritual instruction:
"Draw into yourself, and it will come."
"Suspend the perceptions of the body, and there will be generation of divinity."
"Cleanse yourself from the irrational avengers of matter."
These "irrational avengers" are the forces that use bodily existence as a prison and torment the inward person through the sufferings of sense. The text lists twelve avengers, associated with the zodiac:
- Ignorance
- Grief
- Incontinence or lack of self-control
- Lust
- Injustice
- Greed
- Deceit
- Envy
- Treachery
- Anger
- Recklessness
- Malice
The goal is not self-hatred or rejection of embodied life. It is liberation from the patterns that make a person spiritually reactive, confused, cruel, addicted, selfish, or unaware.
These destructive forces are overcome by the Decad, the ten divine powers. The subtitles most clearly identify several of them:
- Knowledge of God, which removes ignorance.
- Joy, which drives away grief.
- Self-control, comparable to temperance or abstinence.
- Perseverance, which defeats lust.
- Justice, which counters injustice.
- Generosity, which opposes greed.
- Truth, which defeats deceit.
The remaining virtues address the other destructive tendencies. Together, these powers remake the person. Rebirth requires the symbolic "death" of the older self who lives only through sensory cravings and emotional impulses.
After receiving the teaching, Tat experiences a vast expansion of consciousness:
"I no longer picture things with the sight of my eyes, but with the mental energy that comes through the 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."
"Father, I see the universe, and I see myself in mind."
This is a key Hermetic moment: the initiate recognizes that the true self is not limited to the ordinary, isolated ego. The mind awakens to its participation in the life of the whole cosmos.
6. Silence, Hymns, and Visionary Ascent
Hermes tells Tat to remain silent and rejoice, because agitation can block the teaching. Silence, stillness, and inward tranquility are not incidental details; they are repeated conditions for Hermetic knowing.
Tat is also instructed in a ritual posture for a sacred hymn:
"Stand in the open air. Face the south wind when the setting sun descends and bow down in adoration. When the sun returns, bow likewise toward the east. Be still, child."
The ritual connects the initiate to cosmic rhythms—the setting and rising sun, the winds, heaven, earth, and the divine source of all. The hymn calls upon the world itself:
"Open, O earth, and open, you heavens; and be still, you winds."
The initiate does not merely worship a distant creator. Through the hymn, the person recognizes the divine activity that moves through the entire universe and through their own consciousness. Hermes describes creation as a cycle:
"Your counsel goes forth from you into the universe [and] returns."
Hermetic ascent is therefore a movement from multiplicity back toward unity. The primordial human descended from unity into the many forms of material existence; the reborn initiate moves inwardly from fragmentation, desire, and illusion toward the One.
The narrator compares Hermetic preparation with practices in other ancient mystery traditions:
- In Apuleius's Metamorphoses, Lucius undergoes immersion, purification, and ten days of fasting before initiation into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris.
- Pythagoreans were said to keep silence for two to five years.
- Egyptian priests reportedly prepared for major rites through fasting, abstinence, and ritual purification—sometimes for up to forty-two days.
The result is not empty quietness, but a pregnant, spiritually receptive stillness. The Poimandres describes this beautifully:
"The closing of my eyes became true vision, and my silence became pregnant with good things."
Likewise, Hermetic vision is said to occur through the "eyes of the heart," not merely the physical eyes:
"If your vision is sharp and you understand it with the eyes of your heart, believe me, child, you shall discover the road that leads above."
"The vision of it has a special property: it takes hold of those who have had the vision and draws them up, just as the magnetic stone draws iron."
This is an especially striking Hermetic claim: the vision itself becomes the guide. Salvation is not based only on belief in an authority. It is based on lived, direct experience of divine reality.
7. Visualization and Becoming Like God
The video next identifies an implied Hermetic practice of visualization. In Corpus Hermeticum XI, Mind teaches Hermes that the seeker should expand the imagination beyond ordinary bodily limitation:
"Having conceived that nothing is impossible to you, consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all art, all learning, the temper of every living thing."
"Go higher than every height and lower than every depth. Collect in yourself all the sensations of what has been made: fire and water, dry and wet."
"Be everywhere at once: on land, in the sea, in heaven. Be not yet born; be in the womb; be young, old, dead, beyond death."
"When you have understood all these at once—times, places, things, qualities, quantities—then you can understand God."
The instruction is not simply to fantasize. It is to train awareness to recognize its deeper, divine scope. Human consciousness is seen as the divine feature within us: constrained by the body, certainly, but fundamentally capable of knowing reality in a God-like way.
The text contrasts this expansive practice with a mind trapped in fear and limitation:
"If you shut your soul up in the body and abase it and say, 'I understand nothing. I can do nothing. I fear the sea. I cannot go up to heaven. I do not know what I was. I do not know what I will be'—then what have you to do with God?"
The video interprets visualization as a practical way of harmonizing one's imagination with the divine consciousness encountered in mystical ascent. By imaginatively transcending time, place, life, death, and physical boundaries, the initiate learns to see beyond the narrow identity created by fear and sensory attachment.
8. Initiation, Individual Experience, and Divine Service
The narrator raises an important uncertainty: was Hermes's out-of-body vision in the Poimandres the same thing as Tat's rebirth in Corpus Hermeticum XIII? The answer is not certain.
Hermes's vision seems especially intense and mystical, while Tat's experience is framed more as a teaching-based rebirth involving moral purification, silence, stillness, hymnody, and the reception of divine powers. Different initiates may have had different experiences, even if they followed similar books, prayers, and rituals.
As the narrator puts it, two people could read the same Hermetic writings, sing the same hymns, and offer the same prayers, yet emerge with very different degrees or forms of spiritual realization. Divine mercy remains essential; mystical experience cannot be mechanically guaranteed.
Still, the Hermetic path can be outlined as a coherent spiritual discipline:
- Recognize the soul's divine origin.
- Withdraw from destructive sensory and emotional habits.
- Replace the twelve avengers with divine virtues and powers.
- Cultivate silence, stillness, prayer, hymns, and reverence.
- Prepare through purification and disciplined living.
- Expand the mind through contemplative visualization.
- Receive direct knowledge of divine Mind.
- Serve others by guiding those worthy of instruction.
The final point matters greatly. Hermes does not remain isolated after his vision. He teaches humanity. The Poimandres asks him:
"Having learned all this, should you not become guide to the worthy, so that through you the human race might be saved by God?"
Thus, Hermetic salvation is not presented as mere private escape. The initiate should embody the Hermetic ethos in the world, seeing things not merely as they appear but as they truly are. Divine service includes helping others awaken from ignorance.
9. Hermeneutics and the Final Good
The video closes by discussing hermeneutics, a word associated with Hermes in his role as interpreter. Hermeneutics is the practice of interpretation—especially the idea that rereading a text can reveal new meanings as the reader changes and deepens.
This is particularly fitting for the Hermetica because the writings are intentionally symbolic, condensed, and sometimes difficult. There may not have been a final point at which every initiate received one standardized explanation. Some may have been given texts, hymns, rituals, and contemplative tools, then left to encounter the divine directly—in a temple, in the desert, or in private practice.
Such an individual visionary experience would not necessarily be regarded as suspicious or demonic. Within a Hermetic setting, it could be seen as a valid fulfillment of initiation: the student becoming equal to the teacher by directly realizing the soul's unity with God.
The ultimate Hermetic promise is expressed in the Poimandres:
"This is the final good for those who have received knowledge: to be made God."
This does not mean becoming a separate all-powerful deity in an ordinary sense. It means recognizing that the immortal soul participates in one divine consciousness—the Nous that exists within and beyond the universe.
The video concludes that Hermetic texts may be less technically elaborate than Plato or Plotinus, but this may be their strength. They aim more directly at salvation through experience: freeing oneself from sensual enslavement, discovering tranquility, replacing grief with joy, and realizing that the soul is an immortal aspect of divine unity.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth summarizes this vision of God:
"He has created everything, who, being self within self, supports everything—being perfect, the invisible God to whom one speaks in silence."
Conclusion
The Way of Hermes is presented as a path of ethical transformation, inner purification, silence, visionary awareness, and divine service. Its purpose is not to reject life, but to stop being ruled by ignorance, grief, lust, greed, anger, and the other forces that turn the soul downward into forgetfulness.
At its highest point, Hermetic rebirth reveals that the seeker is not merely a body trapped in a world of change. Through awakened Nous, the individual recognizes unity with the divine source of all things—and carries that recognition into a more disciplined, compassionate, and spiritually awake life.
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