Never mind this evening's unskilled labour with... those people, I have been preoccupied with translating a little Ammianus Marcellinus (22.15.30) regarding the sacred tablets of Hermes Trismegistos.
"There are certain subterranean hidden places and σύριγγες (‘tubes’), full of twists and turns, one comes to (as is conveyed) those that have experiences of ancient rituals, that knew beforehand a flood was coming, and were afraid, lest the memory of the ceremonies may have been forgotten. They had arranged setting apart (the tablets of Hermes Trismegistus), deep inside, with much toil making a mine-shaft across various places and by having knocked down walls, they carved many kinds of wild creatures and birds, and innumerable species of animals. They call these characters hieroglyphs (ἱερογλῠφῐκαί ‘sacred signs’)." (trans. Latham, 10th of January, 2022).
This is a curious passage, and from the nuances of the Latin and Ancient Greek, it seems to imply that these sacred tablets were engraved upon cylinders, or perhaps something similar, maybe columns. The noun Ammianus uses is syringes which in Ancient Greek is σύριγγες, and can mean the tomb of an Egyptian king or maybe a mine-shaft of some kind, among its other definitions. It may even mean 'pan pipes' or hollow reeds for making music. Yet ultimately, based on its context, it is more likely a sacred space dedicated beneath pyramid in a maze complex (for its context is in discussing the Egyptian pyramids).
There is also more to this, perhaps the most telling is from Iamblichus' Egyptian Mysteries (8.4.265). Quite clearly, "the books which are circulated under the name of Hermes contain Hermetic opinions, though they frequently employ the language of philosophers for they were translated from the Egyptian tongue by men who were not unskilled in philosophy" (trans. Taylor). It is curious, but modern philologists and students of Egyptology accept only one meaning of each word, from Champollion, and the Rosetta Stone (upon which, Hermes Trismegistos is actually mentioned, as a matter of fact). Yet, before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, there were Herculean attempts at deciphering the symbolic and allegorical meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs by the likes of Athenasius Kircher. As such, Kircher is dismissed by many Egyptologists today, but is actually still used by practising hermeticists, because there is actually more than one meaning to each of these hieroglyphs. What philologists claim to be the 'true' meaning of a glyph, is actually only the common, base meaning, not the sacerdotal meaning of the same glyph, as evidenced by Diodorus Siculus (1.81.1-7). It is bit like graphology or astrology - seen as a so-called 'psuedo' science, but actually knows more than any scientist. The difference is between someone that is an open minded intellectual, that will perhaps at least be open to the possibility that there is more to life than can be seen down a microscope, and those that shut themselves off, and will admit of no other possibility. It is a kind of inverted snobbery, borne of ignorance, impatience, and dismissal. It is not science, and certainly not a sacred science, which is precisely what hermeticism is.
This is just, even still, scratching the very surface of a very deep iceberg. There are books, which if I told you about, you would probably not believe, because they do not meet the criteria of modern science. They are subjective, introspective, meditative experiences of forward thinking practitioners that commune with spirits. There is much wisdom to be found there, far beyond anything some grounded in reality, blinkered don may believe, because they cannot see the text, the artefact or the bare bones epigraphic evidence to analyse, objectively. Perhaps the greatest example of this is to be found in Gilbert and Sullivan.
“Strephon: Sir, you are England’s Lord High Chancellor, but are you Chancellor of birds and trees, King of the winds and Prince of thunderclouds?
Lord Chancellor: No… But my difficulty is that at present there’s no evidence…
Strephon: No evidence!…
Lord Chancellor: …It’s not evidence. Now an affidavit from a thunderstorm, or a few words on oath from a heavy shower, would meet with all the attention they deserve.”
Iolanthe, Act 1 (Gilbert, [2021] 1882, p.12).
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment