My friend Professor J.Atlas told me once
that Assiout in Egypt - which is today a base for
integrist Islam forces - was, once, one of the
earliest settlement site of Ancient Egypt
(3,000 BCE).

Therefore, it would not have been at random
that Akhnaton chose this location, on the Nile
river, for his Solar City, AketAton (1350 BCE) -
which lay between Thebes, to the South, and to the North, the Sphynx, which had been dug out from the sand at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, which he later ended.%%

Aton was one of the earliest Egyptian gods - and worshipped in the city of On (Memphis, Heliopolis), 3,000 BCE, as the Sun God.
It was perhaps an early monotheism. Before Christianity the Ptolemeans chose this location for building Hermopolis Magna (Great City of the Traveller, 400 BCE).

Actually, today, there are debates as to whether Akhnaton's restoration of Atonism was monotheistic - as we may reasonably wonder whether Judaism, Christianity and Islam are monotheistic, since they excell so well in dividing the religion of Abraham. It is an opportunity to remember that during the European Middle-Ages, Monotheisms were four. There was Hermetism - with his text books, Hermetica - challenging a founding place beside Judaism, with the Torah, Christianity with its Bible, and Islam with Koran.

Akhnaton, 'First Monotheist'
1350 BCE, AketAton

During the Middle-Ages, Hermetism was also the theological foundation of Alchemy. Its patron was a said Egyptian Monotheist King who had built a Solar City. He was called Hermes Trismegistus. By the end of the Middle-Ages scholars suspected that he should logically be identified with his own disciple Moses. It put the Renaissance in great turmoil until, suddenly, he fell in disgrace, and Hermetism was abruptly repressed. Actually, according to his most specialized historian,  Frances A.Yates (1899-1981), this suppression halted the Renaissance and left it uncompleted.

Today, little remains after the repressive Inquisition but the Hermetica and frescos in Italy, paintings and... nothing less that the pavement entrance of Sienna Cathedral (here below, the scanner did not do such a great job) :

Hermes Trismegistus, presenting two variations of 'Tables'
Sienna Cathedral, 16th Cent. AD.

This brief recollection explains why, from the Renaissance until mid-20th Century, we knew so little of Hermetism ; it was repressed, taboo, and was not taught in Universities in the wake of the Inquisition. Only after the work of late F.Yates, we face its memory and certain consequences that I describe in this site and web page. My reader probably already understands that we have to face a similarity with the recently discovered historical Monotheist Egyptian King (who had also built a Solar City, and is also associated with Moses, and with a certain Hellenism), Akhnaton, who was notably subjected to repression during Ancient History - as well as in recent History - in the compulsive manner of mass neurosis .

So, in order to complete Frances Yates' work on this matter, let us begin with the..:

Prehistory of Hermes Trismegistus

The Solar City, AketAton (1350 BCE) was probably built after the Aton project, in order to cover, with one government, the East Mediterranean  (most of which was consituted by Egyptian provinces, or protectorates when Akhnaton came into power). After a brief radiance, it was destroyed, razed to the ground and erased from historical records (usually well kept by the Egyptians). During nearly one thousand years, the site was abandoned, and nothing remained but the engravings of the surrounding clifs, which are still visible today , exhibiting the peculiar features of Akhnaton worshipping Aton.
However, after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander from Macedonia (350 BCE), the Greek Ptolemeans ruled the country and built Hermopolis Magna on the ancient site of AketAton. It became the major center, between Alexandria and Thebes, and one can guess that Caesar and Cleopatra made a halt there, as pilgrims usually did, when they sailed up the Nile as nowadays tourists.

Hermes was a Greek god - the Traveller Messenger. He was associated to Thot, the Egyptian god who had given the Laws and the Letters to mankind. Hermes Thot was thus worshipped in the ancient site of AketAton, where the engraved cliffs representing Atonism were still visible%%.

Why did the Greeks elect this site to worship the traveler Hermes as the Law/Letter giver? On the one hand, if Atonism had extended with Akhnaton - according to the theory Akhnaton=..=Oedipus - up to North, as far as the Aegean, and initiated Theseus at the foundation of Athens, it is not surprising that, coming back after the Athenian cycle , Greek initiates thought to re-implement, at its original place, the signification of their Egyptian link or origin.
On the other hand, if Greek history had nothing to do with Akhnaton, the Greek Ptolemeans chose AkhetAton at random or because it was a vacant lot where nobody would bother if they were worshipping foreign cults...They were even so discrete and polite that they never bothered to erase, and take out of view, the  provocative and unexplained engravings of the cliffs, which had nothing to do with their Hermetic cult.... this would have been a unique behavior in History of doctrinal settlements !

Anyhow, time passed and Hermopolis Magna was famous, until its last great visitors, Caesar and Cleopatra. At that time, Rome was powerful enough to challenge the Greek/Ptolemean civilization. The Italian growth - and therefore threat - which had already been foreseen when it caused Socrates death (the major accusation against Socrates having been his influence on the politics regarding Sicily/Italy, which pretended to become independant ), became a real invasion, and while the history of Eastern Mediterranean was lost in the arson of the Library of Alexandria, Hermopolis Magna also declined, was closed, and rapidly disappeared.
With the end of the Ptolemeans, the worship of Hermes-Thot seemed to come to its end forever... Yet, it coincides with the dawn of Christianity, which was going to provide important clues for understanding the mechanisms of memory from its perspective :

Birth of Hermes Trismegistus

Strabon is a renowned and academic historian of that time  (like Herodotus earlier). When he traveled in Egypt with Roman politicians, the priests, who kept the record of the Egyptian history - including missing pieces restored with the Ptolemeans - clearly declared to the delegation that the prophet Moses of their Israeli neighbors had been, in fact, an Egyptian ruler who had established a Monotheism and built a solar city, until he was forced into exile .
This identification that Ptolemeans were already delivering of Moses, matches the 20th century Egyptology  . It is necessarally indicating, already in this early time, a strong notion, that could not vanish without accomodating the suppression of the Greek/Ptolemean memory.
It helps in understanding Jesus' turning point in the history of the Mediterranean that  : while the identity of Moses as an Egyptian king was something which was known in the pre-Christian Mediterranean - Jesus suggested to the Rabbis a new identification of Moses (Moses 'unveiled' ) - but they refused to unveil the secret that they had to keep according to the Ancient Alliance (eg; keeping Moses' identity & exits secret). It is thus in the aftermath of the closing of Hermopolis Magna, that Jesus asserted his New Alliance, and declared that - given the refusal of the Rabbis to close the Ancient Alliance - his 'Message' would have to spread from outside of Israel. Indeed, a few decades later, Christianity rose in Roma, with a very specific reference, shared by the Fathers of the Church, about a Hermes, who the Christians would call Trismegistus (meaning Thrice Born, or Thrice Great, Triple Magician).

Reconstruction of the Triplex in Christian Rome, following the
termination of Hellenism/Ptolemean and Kadesh/Jerusalem

Noticeably, it has not been clear at first why they would call him Thrice - yet, certainly was it obvious why they would also call him Hermes-Thot - thus indicating, with other details presented in this page/site, that the Monotheist Egyptian King was in continuity with the memory that Hermopolis Magna had temporarly kept on the very site of AketAton.

Right from this point, already, I have tried to make my reader realize that the data are sufficient in requesting our attention toward the fact that the 20th Century discovery of Akhnaton, and his city, strongly indicate that Hermes-Thot, in Hermopolis Magna, was representing this earlier inhabitant and master of the site. Living aside the astounding insolence of the repression, and the absence of scholarship awakening on that subject, I give my reader the clear, simple and obvious gems that the desert and whatever razed cities (and culture..) deliver for his contemplation. The continuing history of Trismegistus discloses even more proof that Akhnaton has never been quite forgotten all along civilization's process :

History of Hermes Trismegistus legend/memory

I shall now present a series of excerpts from France A. Yates, who spent many years in Italy studying the Renaissance. This brilliant scholar, with the help of her two sisters, devoted her life to the History of Giordano Bruno, Hermetism, Art of Memory and Rosicrucianism. She became a founding Historian at the Warburg Institute, in the Royal University of London.

Excerpts of her text will make solid stepping stones for understanding
the  20th century revelation which she grounded.

Before the Renaissance ended, with the invalidation of Trismegitus, the Magus was well known from the beginning of Christianity:

It was on excellent authority that the Renaissance accepted Hermes Trismegistus as a real person of great antiquity and as the author of the Hermetic writings {Hermetica), for this was implicitly believed by leading Fathers of the Church, Particularly Lactancius and Augustine.

With Lactancius and St Augustine, there was also Suidas, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria - and other religious scholars, as well as the philosophers Zosimus, Jamblichus, Fulgentius, Julian the Emperor, etc... (they were actually so various, and many, that is it hard to believe that his legend could have been a sudden forgery, made up in 300 AD, without any attempt of denunciation - re: Casaubon dating below).
This Egyptian King was also known under the name of Mercurius - and was clearly linked with Hermopolis Magna - where the 20th Century discovered AketAton and his mysterious King :

Augustine has written of Mercurius, continues Ficino, also Cicero and Lactancius. He repeats the information from Cicero that mercurius "gave laws and letters" to the Egyptians, adding that he founded the city called Hermopolis. He was an Egyptian priest, the wisest of them all, supreme as philosopher for his vast knowledge, as priest for his holiness of life and practice of the divine cults, and worthy of kingly dignity as administrator of the laws, whence he is rightly called Termaximus, the Three Times Great.

The prime commentator of Trismegistus in the Renaissance was Marsilo Ficino (1433-99 AD); he had received an order from Cosme de Medicis, to translate documents discovered in Macedonia. Ficino began with the common idea that the Pharaoh of Hermopolis had originated a uninterrupted lineage, from Egypt to Greece, up to Plato.

He (Termaximus) is called the first author of theology : he was succeeded by Orpheus, who came second amongst ancient theologians : Aglaophemus, who had been initiated into the sacred teaching of Orpheus, was succeeded in theology by Pythagoras, whose disciple was Philolaus, the teacher of our Divine Plato. Hence there is one ancient theology....... taking his origin in Mercurius and culminating in the Divine Plato.

The amazing consequences drawn from Cosme's new documents began with their emerging link with Judaism. A new dimension in Hermes Trismegistus appeared, as shown below, in the figurative mirror of Isis  :

Ficino, in his commentary (on the Pimander\Hermetica), is immensely struck by remarkable resemblances to the book of Genesis

This is the turning point of the Renaissance, the trigger
that will eventually lead it to a halt - or an end, according to Yates,
if this identification of Moses is not resumed at our present time.

Pinturicchio, Isis with Hermes Trismegistus and Moses,
(Room of the Saints, Appartemento Borgia, Vatican)

...it is above all what he took to be the resemblances to Moses (not so much to Plato {this was already admitted}) in this work which profoundly impressed Ficino. This is why, so he must have thought, the Fathers made such a point of dating Trismegistus in relation to Moses, because he seemed like an Egyptian Moses. Ficino continued to ponder over these marvels in later years; in the Theologica Platonica, he actually allowed himself to wonder whether, after all, Hermes Trismegistus was Moses. After speaking in that work of the account of creation in the Timaeus he adds : "Trismegistus Mercurius teaches more clearly such an origin of the generation of the wolrd. Nor need we wonder that this man knew so much, if this Mercurius was the same man as Moses, as Astapanus the historian shows with many conjectures."

Along with Astapanus, Strabon  also gave Moses this identity - as said earlier, it was thus a serious, profound and constant question which has pervaded the history of our civilization - after the destruction of AketAton and its deletion by Ramses. With the taboo that the latter ordered on Akhnaton's memory, we can acknowledge a severe trouble in the mass psychology memory, having followed during centuries  .
One can only guess  the cause of this difficulty, but at least the Renaissance clearly displays the process of repression.

Termination of Hermes Trismegistus

First, the narcissistic motive : not only the stressing of Trismegistus identity at the Renaissance was questioning the field of Judaism, but it was engaging another institution in Christianity :

...Hermes as the fons et origo of a wisdom tradition which led in an unbroken chain to Plato... (and also) ...Mercurius foresaw the ruin of the early religion and the birth of a new faith, and the coming of Christ.

Yates details and explains how the implication of Trismegistus with historical Jesus was presented in the Hermetic literature.

When God had created the second god, he seemed to him beautifull and he loved him as the offspring of his divinity ("as his Son" according to Lactantius, who regards this as one of the passages in which Hermes prophesies Christianity)"

This global understanding of Philosophy and Monotheism was announcing that after the King (Trismegistus) a man from a low social class would acheive the Majesty of the People. It was certainly far too threatening to the need of power by division in the human collectivity. The scandal spread rapidly throughout Europe. Disturbing both the Jewish community and Christian institutions, when Philosophy was ready to yeld to Modern Science, Hermetism could be isolated and become a scoria of primitiveness.

...Erastus is another Protestant writer who strongly condemns magic, and in particullar Ficino's magic, which he identifies with Egyptian abominations and with the Platonists. "Would you think this man a priest of God," he cries, "as he wished to appear, and not rather the patron and high priest of Egyptian mysteries?" And he accuses Ficino of being addicted to "loathsome and clearly diabolical fables."

Second, the alibi : Yates shows how, in an offensive environment, a single argument has been sufficient for discrediting the entire Hermetic system. It was a dating, theorized by Isaac Casaubon, who described the Triplex's references as a fraud perpetrated by Neoplatonics of the third century A.D. This is also reported by Tobias Churton :

...In 1614 the 'brilliant' scholar of Greek, Isaac Casaubon had shown in his De Rebus Sacris et Ecclesiaticis Exercitiones XVI that the Corpus Hermeticum could not possibly have been written by an ancient Egyptian sage - be he Hermes Trismegistus or anyone else. The Greek style was of the period of Plotinus (second and third century) and, furthermore, it had clearly escaped the attention of former commentators that neither Plato nor Moses nor Aristotle nor indeed any pre-Christian writer had ever made reference to this Hermes Trismegistus.

It is with this single strike that the Renaissance has been stopped.
Evidently Modern Science bursted then, yet without history
and after an Alchemy which had lost its head - it still goes blind today.
Yates made also notice of the political opportunity
that the Western World had scuttled in that repression.

Within a few decades following Casaubon, the memory of Hermetism  and Hermes Trismegistus disappeared almost as completely as the memory of Atonism and Akhnaton, after Ramses' repression. Yet the Ramsessides lasted a millenium before the Greek (re)built Hermopolis Magna - it is only three centuries after the Inquisition's repression that the Renaissance has an opportunity to be resumed :

Renaissance of Hermes Trismegistus in the 20th Century
(or The Second Renaissance or The Renaissance restarted )

Churton's excerpt above argues that Hermes Trismegitus had "never been mentioned by Plato" - but in the aftermath of Socrates termination, the previously secret knowledge was disclosed by Sophocles too, who revealed the Triplex politician king Oedipus - "nor Moses" - but as much Moses was entitled to speak for himself, he is also known for hiding his identity - "nor Aristotle" - but Aristotle was teaching Alexander the Macedonian who was going to have Hermopolis Magna built - "nor indeed any pre-Christian writer" - and this is the major and decisive point which is given by the 20th century Archeology :

The Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, which were discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic scriptures which invalidate Casaubon's dating.

In other words there is, today, not a single legitimate reason for neglecting the memory of Hermes Trismegistus - and before him, the signification of Hermopolis Magna - and before it, the AketAton experience, in one single continuum.

The Hermetic studies alone all indicate that an Egyptian Monotheist king to be identified with Moses and Orpheus had built this city - while Egyptology alone discovers Akhnaton as the Monotheist builder of AketAton, to be identified with Moses (Osman) and Oedipus (Velikovsky)  .

Not only with the clear indication of a repetition - of something thus previously ill solved - but also with an avalanche and flood of evidence, scholars of the end of the 20th Century kept remarkably silent. This is to show either that evidences are stupidity compared with solid prejudices, or what scholar's institution has been suspected to be for a long time - an office of a political repression.
They are paid for doing this job, and they do it very well, since their silence is nevertheless accompliced with Truth : it gives, in the heretic hands which they usually let be assassinated (Socrates, Cicero, Bruno), an abundance of clues (as hereby used), and indications for understanding an industry which culminates today :

The Continuing Alchemy

We must ask ourselves if, in fact, the memory of Akhnaton was ever deleted. If it was only masked under the veil of Moses, or kept in the Orphic secrets, then worshiped as Hermes-Thot and later as Hermes Trismegistus, is it with the Modern Age that its oblivion is absolute?
Yates again teaches a lot to us, through her investigation of the post-Renaissance Repression and Rosicrucianism. She thought that the European cultural challenge of the Renaissance regarded the credit of Hermeticism, and that Rosicrucianism (which appears on the historical stage after the execution at stake of the last Ficinian, Giordano Bruno) was the underground continuation of the vivid tradition of Hermetism and its Alchemy.

Her analysis of the beginning of Rosicrucianism has certainly been confirmed by the following re-emergence of Hermetism, with Fabres d'Olivet in 1800 (who theorized that the Hebrew letters were the secret hieroglyphs from Egypt given by an heretic egyptian leader: Moses  ) during the French Revolution - followed by St Yves d'Alveydres, and  later by a Synarchy which was at the core of the most tragic events in Europe in search for a unification by 1939.
In the same wake, the lodge master, Jean Cocteau, depicted the transformation of Orpheus into Oedipus - keeping a continuum from the Triple HermesThot-Moses-Orpheus with the Akhnaton-Moses-Oedipus contemporarily revealed by Egyptology (Osman-Velikovsky-Kelper  ). Eventually, at the very present time, Rosicrucian lodges announce, without ambiguity, that their founder was Akhnaton (with his entire18th dynasty).

I could thus present, during a lecture hosted by the United Nations, in March 12, 1995, the following graph which summarizes the vicissitudes of memory along three milleniums, after its Primal Scene memory (in grey the open/conscious phases of memory).

The time scale is read from right to left in keeping with
the East-West (Goddess Europa in her Mediterraenan phase) spread of Western civilization
(in yellow the phases of repression/Unconscious beginning with the division Hellenism+Judaism)

The present site displays another - equivalent yet animated - graph. These time tables strongly indicate a reason to consider the idea of a certain structure, and phases, to realize an effective memory (History), and even a notion of Time, in the human species/society.
This idea was first introduced by S.Freud.

Since Freud was only guessing, yet longing for the extension of his individual psychology to mass psychology - it is an obvious opportunity to apply his concepts of Drive and Repression in the Akhnaton presence today.

The knowledge of one's origins - and/or its repression - are not least of the determination of a behavior. This is evidence which today shames academia  which represents the comprehension of science and its guidance following Archeology, Egyptology, History, and its discoveries of Akhnaton and his many Names. But the shameful silence builds a neurosis which is called guilt and work. This is a perfect condition for acheiving a deed which repels.
Psychoanalysis again shows clearly that the inhibition of transformation, or evolution, creates pleasure, and there is probably nothing more pleasant for a mass psychology than to repeat, and repeat again, a situation of ignorancy. On the opposite progress really disgusts - unless one keeps unconscious of what it really consists.

This very human condition offers a wonderful opportunity to realize an industrial shift combined with an absolute oblivion. We must suggest that the more the origins of our civilization will be repressed, the more it will tend to acheive its goals.
Hermetism was known to cover three degrees of Magic (alias three degrees of Alchemy). Its Natural Magic can be compared with Physics, its Celestial Magic with Psychology and its Ceremonial Magic with Sociology - or even politics. The latter, especially, was considered in the past in regard to Europe, but humanity today faces a global challenge. It is in terms of 'Ecology' that we must consider the probable continuing operations of Alchemy at the present time, if the notion of an Unconscious at work is valid.

What is usually known today as "ecological activism" (the "green cowboys in the wood") is very far from this awareness - it may look somewhat as the opposite. Yet this discrepancy fits with the process of the unconscious. The intellectual effort is not so demanding to realize that computers and Artificial Intelligence will do better than the political Greens. On this topic, we shall estimate Trismegistus' prophecy:

Just as the Lord and Father is the creator of the gods of heaven, so man is the author of the gods who reside in the temples. Not only does he receive life, but he gives it in his turn. Not only he progresses towards God, but he makes gods. - Do you mean the statues, O Trismegistus? Yes, the statues, Asclepius, They are animated statues full of sensus and spiritus who can accomplish many things, foretelling the future, giving ills to men and curing them - they mingled a virtue, drawn from material nature, to the substance of the statues... terrestrial or man-made gods...... made of herbs, stones, aromatics, sacrifices, hymns, concerts, celestial harmonies.

Though the detailed receipe must be updated today, we shall have little doubt that the centuries long insistant exercises for acheiving these miraculous robots, eventually oriented our contemporary fierce inventivity - especially added Yates' intuition that the Art of Memory - that she studied closely - was an equivalent preparation for our Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Brain).
The Alchemy is still alive in what remains blindness - and in the motive - of our scientists today. This rare discourse that akhnaton.net publishes, notices that another part of the three folded realm of Magic challenges the genetic Algorithm of the thinking machine, which will probably be acheived within tirty years from now : the biological Algorithm which is the DNA of genetics was not so clearly imagined by the ancient Alchemists. This is the Cabala that the present site puts forwards - in the Freudian tradition of biology - asserting the link between the Code and the Letter  and promoting Genetics under the aegis of Akhnaton Triplex.

Best wishes

In this series you can also find:

Akhnaton, Moses, Oedipus, Triple Hermes, Freud, Lacan, Velikovsky, Osman, Theaux.

NOTE : Actually Yates did not support the identification of Hermes Trismegistus with Akhnaton. The identification Trismegistus=Akhnaton proceeds in three steps : first, to remember the Middle-Ages' memory of Trismegistus - second, to invalidate the invalidation of Trismegistus (re: Casaubon) - third, to compare the re-established Trismegistus with the recently discovered Akhnaton. Late Yates contribution in this matter was published in 1964 - she completed the first step; when I met her students, they confirm that, having acknowledged the Nag Hammadi documents, at the end of her life, she suspected the second step. I don't know if she ever mentioned the third step, that I have theorized alone and presents hereby.

NOTE : I insist on this tragedy of knowledge, not only because the established intellectuals have pissed me off - which is not very important; but more important, because it is a key to the mass psychology which is due to enjoy a transformation with the restoration of an ecological sanity. A solution for ignorance and guilt is requested there and, first step, the objective envision that the human institutionalized mastery of knowledge is a failure - before the Artificial Intelligence tool. .

NOTE : When we think of our present time in continuity with the past (that is not a natural thought), we realize a link with the Renaissance - and we see ourselve in the situation of a Second Renaissance .  But these Renaissance things go with the Reincarnation idea which gets clarified with the present day Genetics. I shall simply wonder why we did not call the Renaissance the Resurrection as our culture/civilization would indicate ? The question may be examined with Freudian scrutiny ; beside two negations/nonsenses, the repressed truth may be that the Renaissance was an halt, awaiting to be resumed.

ADDENDA 980326

With the 20th century identification of Hermes Trismegistus as Akhnaton, and Moses and Oedipus, the universal meaning of Christ is greatly comforted. It gives in contrast, an idea of the quality of the intuition that was developed by the Alchemists during the Renaissance - as it fully explains (as Yates says sub) Pico's conclusion using the sole Orphic and Cabalisitc tools .

The connection between magic and Christianity in Pico's formulations is made even closer and more formidable by his extraordinary claim that Magia and Cabala help to prove the divinity of Christ. The seventh of the magical conclusions is as follow : Nulla est scientia, que nos magis certificet de diuinitate Christi, quam Magia & Cabala. What exactly he meant by this amazing statement is nowhere fully explained, but this was the conclusion to which most execption was taken, which raised a storm of protest, and which he concentrated on apologising for and defending in his Apology.

The storm of protest may not be different, yet, when Genetics, and thus divinity of Creation, resurrection etc.. will be afordable . This may explain the reason why the intelligence of its setting will partake more from an artificial effect of our repression, that from our full awareness.

END OF THE PAGE

FOOT PAGE

© William Theaux 1949-1999