From Neoplatonism to Renaissance Hermeticism
How a late-antique philosophy of ascent became the Renaissance ancient theology.
Renaissance thinkers believed in a prisca theologia, an ancient theology handed down from Hermes and Pythagoras to Plato and his late followers. This path reads that lineage in order, so you can see what the Renaissance inherited and what it reimagined.
Who This Path Is For
Readers of philosophy and esotericism who want to follow one continuous line of ideas across fifteen centuries.
The Syllabus
The Pythagorean origins
Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras and the Golden Verses: the ideal of the philosophical life as purification.
The oracles
The Chaldean Oracles, the “scripture” of the later Neoplatonists.
Theurgy
Iamblichus on the Mysteries: the case for ritual as the completion of philosophy.
The system
Proclus sets out the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being in rigorous propositions.
The Hermetic rediscovery
The Corpus Hermeticum, which Ficino translated in 1463 believing it older than Plato.
Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander — Corpus Hermeticum (Greek, ed. Parthey 1854)
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander — Corpus Hermeticum (Greek, ed. Parthey 1854)
Hermes Trismegistus
1854 · Greek · Egyptian Mysticism
The Renaissance synthesis
Pico’s 900 Conclusions and Bruno’s Heroic Frenzies: the inheritance transformed into Renaissance philosophy and poetry.
