chiudi

La via filosofica di Ermete is a fundamental work of Hermetic interpretation and a masterpiece of sympathetic scholarship. The subject, the Latin Asclepius was the only one of treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus that was known and read throughout

La via filosofica di Ermete is a fundamental work of Hermetic interpretation and a masterpiece of sympathetic scholarship. The subject, the Latin Asclepius was the only one of treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus that was known and read throughout the Middle Age. Until the discovery of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and its translation by Marsilio Ficino in the fifteenth century, Hermetism was seen exclusively through the Asclepius and, naturally, through the allusions to it by the Church Fathers, especially Saint Augustine. As the longest of the Hermetic treatises, it is still holds a privileged place in the literature. Among its themes, that of the dignity of man was celebrated by Pico della Mirandola and became a catchword for the new humanism. Its lament for Egyot contributed to the Renaissance myth of that land, and eventually to the exploration of its past glories. Its doctrine of intermediate beings, whether called daemons, lesser gods, ora angels, provided the rationale for the ceremonial of an Agrippa, a Trithemius, a Jhon Dee. Most notoriously, because of Augustine’s horror of it, the Asclepius described the animation of statues by placing such gods or daemons in them. Taking the work on its own merits, scholars have differed in their opinions of its authorship and consistency. They have also differed in the degree to which they ascribe genuine Egyptian influence is more generally accepted. The Asclepius is not written as a single, logical treatise, but seems to jump from one theme to another, mixing didactic with rhetorical passages, and repeating itself. Consequently it has been as a compilation of various sources, thought scholars have disagreed in the way they divide and attribute the text. Another perceived difficulty is that the teaching of the Asclepius seems to contradict the other Hermetic treatises, particulary the Poimandres (opening treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum) in the important matters of doctrine, especially concerning the origin of man on earth and his fate after death. Ilaria Parri’s book aims to resolve this contradiction, and to smooth out the perceived irregularities. She divided her study into two parts, the first on the structure, the second on the doctrine of the Asclepius. In the first, she shows how the apparently disjointed strucure actually reflects a deliberate path, in which “Trismegistus” educates his pupil Asclepius. Dr. Parri writes: "It’s not a matter on mere repetitions, but of a speculative path constructed form successively deeper degrees of understanding, and a progressively closer approach to the truth"(p.35). One example for this deliberated structure will serve: that of the sudden digrssion on the animated statues, which so shocked (yet fascinated) Christian readers. Trismegistus says: “Just as the masters and father­ ─ or god to use his most august name ─ is maker of the heavenly  gods, so it is mankind who fashions the temple gods who are content to be near to humans”( Asclepius, 23). He is evidently referring to the statue in the Egyptian temples (statues ensouled and conscious, filled with spirit and diong great deeds; statues that foreknow the future and predicts it by lots, by prophecy, by dreams and by many other means; statues that make people hill and cure them, binging them pain and pleasure as each deserves" (Asclepius, 24). As Dr. Parri explains, the theme is introduced to underline one of the bolder doctrines of the Asclepius: that “just as God creates celestial gods, so man creates the terrestrial gods” (p.113). She adds: “It is in the fact the author’s theology that justifies hid theurgy: the supreme God of the Asclepius thinking and making man in his own image, also endows him with power of creating the gods” (p.125). In short, “the theurgical art expresses in concrete from the similitude to God” (p.243). These “gods” created by God are not, of course, the supreme God, but intermediate beings. The Asclepian theology, familiar from Platonism and Gnosticism, has supreme God, the One and cause of all, who gives the universe its being and light, but deputes ist governance to hierarchy of lesser gods, especially the “ousiarchs” or cosmic agents. But- and this is an essential theme of the Asclepius ─ man is potentially superior to all this lesser gods, because he alone is “formed of soul and body, both eternal and mortal by nature; he can adore the celestial things and govern the terrestrial” (p.58). Another reason for the seeming disjunction of the Asclepius is that its view of the human race is not uniform. The majority of mankind serves the divine purpose by taking care of the earth, maintaining its harmony, and beautifying it, thus replications on a microcosmic scale the work of God in the greater universe. If we perform this faithfully, at death we win the prize “of discharge and release from worldly custody, of loosing the bonds of morality so that god may restore us, pure and holy, to the nature of our higher part, to the divine!”(Asclepius,11). Unlike the situation in Platonism, only the wicked are forced to reincarnate: “forth unfaithful it goes differently: return to heaven is denied them, and a vile migration unworthy of a holy soul puts them in other body” (Asclepius, 12). But there is a higher goal to earthly life, in the intensive cultivation of our divine nature. Consequetly, beside the mass of humanity, “the Asclepius posits an ‘illuminated’ and sacred elite, who have succeeded in attaining the luminosity of a knowledge that grasps things beyond the penumbra of reason” (p. 236). Dr. Parri adds: “One can see, then how the full intellectual knowledge, theoretically available to all of mankind, in fact is acquired by only a few, because of the difficulties of life, the blindness of desires, the egotism of needs” (p.237). In these and many other istances, Dr. Parri reads the Asclepius as a unified work, reflecting in its variety its own doctrine: omnia unum esse et unum omnia (“all the things are one and the one is all things”, Asclepius, 1). One consequence of this doctrine is the decidedly positive attitude of the Asclepius, both in comparison to Judeo-Christian doctrine and some of the other Hermetic treatises. Its author does not regard man as a fallen being ─ whether through a mistaken desire for a material body, as in Poimandres, through matter having been created by an evil Demiurge, as in some form Gnosticism, or through disobedience, as in the Book of Genesis. “Man is not a fallen being, and the world is not a place o expiation, but rather Eden” (p. 211). It is rightful home, and he has work to do in it: thus: “for the men of the Asclepius to devote himself to agricolture and to building houses and refuges is not the consequence of a punishment, but expresses a obedience to the divine plan, for God does not want the world to be perfect without the human ‘arts’” (p 212, based on Asclepius, 8). As for the evil in the world, the Asclepius attributes it to man’s neglect of his duty to God and to the earth, which stem for his own nature as a hybrid material-spiritual being. If he concentrates execessively on his material nature, he falls into error and mistery, but he only has himself to balme. Likewise, the possible evil effects of the animated staues are not the fault of the gods within them, but of the operator, either through his ignorance or from malicious intentions (p.245). Dr. Parri’s originality consists in her presentation of the Asclepius as a doctrinal and philosophic entity complete in itself, influenced, certainly, by the other Hermetica but maintaining its author’s independence. Although its literary form is that of revealed wisdom, the author seems to have made “a continual effort to fir Hermetic theses, even contradictory ones, within an architecture that units them in a definite speculative order, no longer as solo voices of a revelation, but as articulations of a system” (p.253). The book is well documented, with original Latin given for all quotations and ample discussion, in the footnotes, of previous scholarship on the subject. (It has to be said that German sources are almost completely lacking here.) Following the general trend of Italian scholarship, the work is happily free of fashionable post-modernist theory. The Asclepius emerges as a very attractive work, perhaps more so in this presentation than in its original text, which is hard reading in any language. Dr. Parri has done a service to anyone who seeks a better understanding of Hermetic philosophy, either out of historical interest or as a source of genuine insight into the nature of God, the world, and man.
Data recensione: 01/05/2008
Testata Giornalistica: Archa Verbi
Autore: Joscelyn Godwin