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The Definitive Edition: First Print.
[FORTHCOMING SOON]
6 x 9 in. | illustrated | b&w | 248 pp. | matte cover finish | POD
ISBN: 978-1-989339-27-5
-
The Definitive Edition: First Print.
6 x 9 in. | illustrated | b&w | 248 pp.
Hermetica I is presented as a finely crafted hardback volume (6" × 9" or 229 × 153 mm), quarter-bound in Ratchford Windsor (Warwick) book cloth & Elefantenhaut High White paper, section-sewn and finished with a rounded hollow spine for durability and elegance. The pages are printed in black ink on 140 gsm Arena Rough Natural paper and complemented by colour endpapers featuring distinct designs at the front and back. Finishing details include gold foil blocking on the spine and front cover, a blind debossed line on the front, gold head and tail bands, and a matching gold bookmark ribbon. The book is housed in a 160 gsm Golden Star K Extra White dust jacket with french-flaps, UV printed in black, and all materials used are FSC MIX certified.
Limited to 500 copies | ISBN: 978-1-989339-27-5
-
The Definitive Edition: First Print.
6 x 9 in. | illustrated | b&w | 248 pp.
The Source edition of Hermetica I is presented as a finely crafted hardback volume (6" × 9" or 229 × 153 mm), half-bound in Wicotex Brillianta (Grey) book cloth & Genuine Leather (Black), section-sewn, and finished with a rounded hollow spine with a Suede insert (Brown). The pages are printed in black ink on 140 gsm Arena Rough Natural paper and complemented by hand-made Marbled endpapers. Finishing details include gold foil blocking on the spine and front cover, a blind debossed line on the front and back covers, gold head and tail bands, and a matching gold bookmark ribbon. The book is housed in a sumptuous Slipcase wrapped in Wintan Safia (Black) recycled leather, with straight, angled sides and a card insert at the foot of case to guide book. Finishing details include a blind debossed logo on one of the sides. All materials used are FSC MIX certified.
Limited to approx. 25 copies | ISBN: 978-1-989339-27-5
Contents
About the Author
Preface
Abbreviations
¶ PART I:
Introduction to the Way of Immortality
1. ch 1: The Poimandres of Hermes Thrice Great
2. ch 7: The Greatest Vice among Humans is Ignorance about God
3. ch 6: In God Alone is Goodness, and Nowhere Else
4. ch 4: Hermes to Tat: The Mixing Bowl
¶ PART II: General Discourses
5. ch 3: A Sacred Discourse of Hermes (On Creation)
6. ch 14: (On God as Creator)
7. ch 16: Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon (On the Sun as Creator and On Daimones)
8. ch 2: General Discourse of Hermes to <Asclepius> (On Space)
9. ch 8: No Being is Destroyed, though Deceived People Call Changes “Losses” and “Deaths”
10. ch 17: (On Divine Images)
11. (The Asclepius or Complete Discourse) A Sacred Volume of Hermes Thrice Great Spoken to Asclepius
12. ch 9: On Thought and Sensation
¶ PART III: Detailed Discourses
13. ch 12: On Common Consciousness
14. ch 11: Higher Consciousness to Hermes
15. ch 5: Hermes to his Son Tat: God Invisible is Most Visible
16. ch 10: The Key of Hermes Thrice Great
¶ PART IV: Revelatory Discourses
17. ch 13: Discourse of Hermes Thrice Great to His Son Tat on a Mountain, a Hidden Discourse on Rebirth and the Pledge of Silence
18. <The Eighth Reveals the Ninth>
19. The Prayer of Thanksgiving
¶ Appendix
20. ch 18: (On Music and the Praise of Kings)
¶ PART V: Essays
Hermetic Spirituality: The Sixteen Principles
Hermetic Deification
Bibliography
Index
Description
This volume presents the Hermetic writings as a central and enduring current within Western spirituality, born from the encounter between Egyptian religious wisdom and Greek philosophical thought in late antiquity. Composed at a time when traditional cults and forms of knowledge were under threat, the Hermetica preserve a vision of spiritual rebirth, divine knowledge, and inner transformation that continued to shape later philosophical and Christian traditions, often without acknowledgment. These texts are not peripheral speculations but articulate a serious and integrated spiritual worldview aimed at awakening higher consciousness and participation in divine life.
Rather than treating the Hermetica as a loosely assembled anthology or merely as historical documents, this book approaches them as a corpus structured by initiation and spiritual formation. Guided by indications within the texts themselves, the tractates are arranged to reflect a movement from exhortation and preparation, through doctrinal grounding, toward revelatory experience. Reading, in this context, becomes a disciplined engagement—one that ancient readers understood as capable of effecting genuine inner change rather than serving purely intellectual ends.
The Hermetic path presented here resists easy categorization. It does not collapse into abstract philosophy, nor does it reduce spiritual experience to dogma or belief. Instead, it unfolds in stages, holding together cosmology, ethics, and contemplative practice, and culminating in rebirth and direct vision of the divine realms. Apparent tensions within the corpus—between world-affirmation and renunciation, or between unity and distinction—are shown to reflect different moments within a coherent process of spiritual transformation.
Although grounded in years of careful scholarship and translation, this book is not written for specialists alone. It speaks to readers who wish to understand the historical depth of the Hermetic tradition while remaining attentive to its spiritual demands. For practitioners and academics alike, it offers an invitation to encounter the Hermetica not only as texts to be analyzed, but as writings intended to shape perception, practice, and inner life.
M. David Litwa, PhD
Dr. Litwa's career began with a monograph on deification (becoming god) as seen through the lens of the Pauline writings (We Are Being Transformed, 2012). In 2013, he offered a general introduction to deification in Western culture from the Pharaohs to modern Transhumanists. Then in 2016, he focused on the politics and literature of self-deification (Desiring Divinity). He has twice engaged gospel literature as a witness to Jesus’s literary deification (Iesus Deus, 2014) and to a particular historiographical genre (How the Gospels Became History, 2019). A fascination with alternative Christian movements inspired him to edit and translate the anonymous Refutation of All Heresies (2016). After that came the annotated translation of important Hermetic testimonial and fragments (Hermetica II, 2018). Litwa has finished a project on angelification traditions in Hellenic and Christian literature (Posthuman Transformation, forthcoming 2021). He has published history of alternative Christian movements in the second-century CE (Found Christianities). A full book on one of these movements, the Carpocratians, came out in 2022. It contains the first ever fully commentary on "Secret Mark." Dr. Litwa's most popular book, The Evil Creator (2021), tells the secret history of how Christians like Marcion came to view the creator as evil. Late Revelations is a short, accessible argument for a late date of the final form of the Gospels and Acts. Hermetica I is a new translation of the Corpus Hermeticum based on a better edition of the Greek text.
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