Koine Greek for knowledge is gnosis, from whence comes the word gnostic, applied by the Church Fathers to all kinds of heresies that cropped up from trying to combine ancient paganism with the Gospel. Such efforts are futile and vain and an affront to God. One form was to try to reduce everything to numbers and their mystical connotations. What we call today science, when we mean physics, is basically divorced from this by a reductionism to empiricism and experimentality through the various schools of the Bernoulis and Issac Newton and finally the 18th century experimenters through to the twentieth century. The mystics never totally vanished - the Talmudic Jew Einstein was the worst example of a fake and thief who plagiarized, copied and altered according to his Talmudic whims any number of things.
The warning against gnosticism as heresy was committed forever to church teaching by St. Irenaeus. The name of gnosticism was taken from the warning given by St. Paul to St. Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6:20.
1 Timothy 6:20
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge [gnosis] falsely so called.
Godly knowledge has NOTHING to do with deciphering the false knowledge of the gnostics, ancient or modern. In so far as that is useful, it is only useful in heresiology to know what is condemned.
In being able to live a fruitful and godly life in Christ and attaining unto salvation, gnosticism will never avail anything. Heresiology is useful only in an apophatic sense and then only narrowly.
The below is the divine power of Christ who is the one who called us and it is present by virtue of faith and not by heresiology and certainly not by gnosticism..
2 Peter 1:3
As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him [Christ] who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue.
In so far as a misuse of earthly power is concerned the below article on the Triad is an example. Below that, the article on Hermes Trimegistus and below that on the Mother Goddess (which also shows modern misuse of earthly power in the last half ) together represent a brief overview of ancient paganism - this is what we were redeemed from. Those who would turn us back to such things by compromising with them and/or by false studies promising to reveal special knowledge of the enemy's deceits such as: cryptographic or occultic or revealing the Freemasons' preoccupation with numbers such as 33 etc., and claiming we should delve into these to gain esoteric understanding and that such understanding is in fact of the Holy Spirit and if we don't we are bereft of salvation, are the ones who in fact are guilty of Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Mark 3:[29] But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, shall never have forgiveness, but shall be guilty of an everlasting sin.
We must never have anything to do with such perdition bound heretics nor their "knowledge falsely so called." Michael Hoffman's blather about Revelation of the Method with his cryptological assertions is an example of this - it is trap to turn people who were just escaping those who live in error back by a puffed up mind [Col 2:18] to the way of perdition and apostasy.
Colossians 2:18
Let no man seduce you, willing in humility, and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh,
To them is applied this condemnation of St. Peter: Second Epistle of St. Peter
2Pt 1:[16] For we have not by following artificial fables, made known to you the power, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we were eyewitnesses of his greatness. [17] For he received from God the Father, honour and glory: this voice coming down to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. [18] And this voice we heard brought from heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount. [19] And we have the more firm prophetical word: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: [20] Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation.
and
2Pt 3:16...which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.
We are warned to have nothing to do with that but instead -
[17] You therefore, brethren, knowing these things before, take heed, lest being led aside by the error of the unwise, you fall from your own steadfastness. [18] But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen.
Tech_Journal: Triad Revisited – A Brief Look
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Triad Revisited – A Brief Look
The idea that Britain and France and the United States and Russia and the League of Nations had any right to divide up the Ottoman Empire in any fashion because of a War started in Europe among Europeans is absurd. That this war, World War I, which the Europeans dragged the Ottoman Empire into via the slaving colonialization of the region by Europeans (especially Oil grabs and “Emirate” creation beginning in 1892) and a specious European “alliance” forced on the Ottomans, had any lawful bearing on the lawful dominion of Arabs over the region is as ridiculous as is any idea that the European troops, or any other, had any business carrying their vile internecine war into the region for any reason. World War I was financed on both European sides by Rothschild and other Zionist Judaist Bankers for the specific purpose of invading the Middle East and unlawfully pillaging the Holy Land of Christ belonging to the Christian and Muslim Arab people and steal it from them. This is being carried forth by the Triad of superpowers, The United States and Russia and Red China, into a vile excuse to conquer the whole world for the Pan European Illuminati New World Order.
Iraq Iran Israel
Look up, your redemption is at hand: Hermes Trimegistus
The Justice of God: The virgin goddess of black magic - Durga and Agni - enslave and commit other genocides and abominations
Look up, your redemption is at hand: The virgin goddess of black magic
Tech_Journal: Durga and Agni - enslave and commit other genocides
Agni - India Missile Special Weapons Delivery Systems
In May 1989, India test-fired its first intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Agni. It is a two-stage missile with the first stage using the first-stage solid-fuel booster motor of the SLV-3 satellite launch vehicle. This marked the first time that India had used directly a component of its civilian space research program for military purposes. (12)The second stage is possibly a shortened version of the Prithvi. (13)The 18-meter long, 7.5-ton Agni has a range of up to 2,500 km (allowing access to southern China) and is capable of delivering a 1,000-kg payload. Although accuracy is reduced with increased range, the Agni is believed to be fairly accurate, employing a closed-loop inertial guidance system, said to have been developed with a great deal of West German assistance. (14) The second experimental flight of Agni was conducted in May 1992 but the mission objective could not be achieved fully. The post flight analysis was carried out and necessary modifications were incorporated for the next flight test. A second successful test of the Agni occurred in February 1994, firing at a sea-based target 1,200 km into the Bay of Bengal. The last test of Agni-1 in 1994 was tested at a trajectory designed to simulate a range of 2500km, with an actual range achieved of 1450km.
In 1994, the United States persuaded India to suspend testing of the Agni missile after three test flights.
India refers to the Agni not as a weapon system but as a "technology demonstrator project" to establish re-entry vehicle technologies. (15) As with the Prithvi, the U.S. has opposed the program as another potential proliferation affront to the MTCR, which India has criticized as biased in favor of the major powers. Notwithstanding its justifications for the Agni development, India formally suspended the program at the end of 1995. (16) Whether the suspension is real and the result of diplomatic pressure, technical problems, or other factors, is not evident. India may have decided to put the Agni under wraps until it decides the larger related issue of whether to test nuclear (perhaps thermonuclear) warheads for its missiles in the face of US and other diplomatic pressures to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the ratification process for which began in the fall of 1996. (17) In March 1997 Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda indicated that India would not give up the development of the Agni missile programme, a position echoed in July by Defense Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who denied that India had any immediate plans to further test fire the Agni missile. (17a)
India's turning point came when an openly pro-nuclear government took office in March 1998. The new coalition elected to power pledged, in the words of A.B. Vajpayee, to "exercise all options, including the nuclear option." The new government announced that a new version of the Agni with an extended range was under development.
On 11 April 1999 India successfully test-fired the Agni-II ballistic missile, with a range of 2000-km. The missile was launched from the IC-4 pad at Wheeler Island, a new launch site on the Orissa coast in Balasore district. Splashdown was 2,000-2,100 km. (1,250 mi.) down range in the Bay of Bengal, on a trajectory designed to simulate a range of 2800-3000km. The test had been in preparation since January 1999, but India delayed it in the hope of extracting concessions from the US. Pakistan responded on 14 April 1999 with a test firing of its Ghauri II missile from the Jhelum region in northeast Pakistan. After the successful Agni-II test, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said the Agni missile was ready to go into production, though he didn't specify the production or deployment schedule. The cost of the Agni missiles is estimated at Rs. 20-35 crores [$4.5 million to $8 million] per copy. It is anticipated that India may deploy several dozen of these missiles. Agni-2 has a theoretical ability to hit a target 3000km away with a 1000kg payload, and it is suggested that- a 200 kiloton 'boosted-fission' warhead has been designed for the Agni system. Should this be reduced to a 15-20 kiloton system, the payload could be reduced to as little as 250kg.
As of early 2000 it was suggested that there were between 5 and 9 Agni-1 missiles in existence, at least 1-2 Agni-2 and 2 prototypes of the Agni-3. These are all test models which could be fitted with warheads and used in an emergency. BDL has the capacity to produce up to 12 Agni IRBMs per year. It is believed that no real production has taken place since neither the Agni-1 or the Agni-2 is the definitive production variant of the Agni system.
The warning against gnosticism as heresy was committed forever to church teaching by St. Irenaeus. The name of gnosticism was taken from the warning given by St. Paul to St. Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6:20.
1 Timothy 6:20
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge [gnosis] falsely so called.
Godly knowledge has NOTHING to do with deciphering the false knowledge of the gnostics, ancient or modern. In so far as that is useful, it is only useful in heresiology to know what is condemned.
In being able to live a fruitful and godly life in Christ and attaining unto salvation, gnosticism will never avail anything. Heresiology is useful only in an apophatic sense and then only narrowly.
The below is the divine power of Christ who is the one who called us and it is present by virtue of faith and not by heresiology and certainly not by gnosticism..
2 Peter 1:3
As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him [Christ] who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue.
In so far as a misuse of earthly power is concerned the below article on the Triad is an example. Below that, the article on Hermes Trimegistus and below that on the Mother Goddess (which also shows modern misuse of earthly power in the last half ) together represent a brief overview of ancient paganism - this is what we were redeemed from. Those who would turn us back to such things by compromising with them and/or by false studies promising to reveal special knowledge of the enemy's deceits such as: cryptographic or occultic or revealing the Freemasons' preoccupation with numbers such as 33 etc., and claiming we should delve into these to gain esoteric understanding and that such understanding is in fact of the Holy Spirit and if we don't we are bereft of salvation, are the ones who in fact are guilty of Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Mark 3:[29] But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, shall never have forgiveness, but shall be guilty of an everlasting sin.
We must never have anything to do with such perdition bound heretics nor their "knowledge falsely so called." Michael Hoffman's blather about Revelation of the Method with his cryptological assertions is an example of this - it is trap to turn people who were just escaping those who live in error back by a puffed up mind [Col 2:18] to the way of perdition and apostasy.
Colossians 2:18
Let no man seduce you, willing in humility, and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh,
To them is applied this condemnation of St. Peter: Second Epistle of St. Peter
2Pt 1:[16] For we have not by following artificial fables, made known to you the power, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we were eyewitnesses of his greatness. [17] For he received from God the Father, honour and glory: this voice coming down to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. [18] And this voice we heard brought from heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount. [19] And we have the more firm prophetical word: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: [20] Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation.
and
2Pt 3:16...which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.
We are warned to have nothing to do with that but instead -
[17] You therefore, brethren, knowing these things before, take heed, lest being led aside by the error of the unwise, you fall from your own steadfastness. [18] But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen.
Tech_Journal: Triad Revisited – A Brief Look
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Triad Revisited – A Brief Look
The idea that Britain and France and the United States and Russia and the League of Nations had any right to divide up the Ottoman Empire in any fashion because of a War started in Europe among Europeans is absurd. That this war, World War I, which the Europeans dragged the Ottoman Empire into via the slaving colonialization of the region by Europeans (especially Oil grabs and “Emirate” creation beginning in 1892) and a specious European “alliance” forced on the Ottomans, had any lawful bearing on the lawful dominion of Arabs over the region is as ridiculous as is any idea that the European troops, or any other, had any business carrying their vile internecine war into the region for any reason. World War I was financed on both European sides by Rothschild and other Zionist Judaist Bankers for the specific purpose of invading the Middle East and unlawfully pillaging the Holy Land of Christ belonging to the Christian and Muslim Arab people and steal it from them. This is being carried forth by the Triad of superpowers, The United States and Russia and Red China, into a vile excuse to conquer the whole world for the Pan European Illuminati New World Order.
Triad Revisited – A Brief Look
A great number of brave and honest Police and Judiciary, which is always the rule, have stood against the following. May they continue to do that and and may all of us support them.
The Triad is Russia, China and the United States until Israel replaces the United States, then it is Russia, China and Israel – then there were two, Russia and Israel and then there was one: ISRAEL THE HOME OF THE DAJJAL, ANTICHRIST – that last move is the real reason that Yamantau exists
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Defense Intelligence Agency
The DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (formed 1961), is part of the Intelligence Linkups that are part of the infrastructure in which is embedded the answer to the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). That crisis was staged by the Illuminati New World Order and gave the reason (brinksmanship of World War III) for a permanent link up of the Defense Computers of the United Statesand Russia United States of America and Russia Israel
Even the Central Banks don’t have ultimate power, they only have the power delegated to them by those who control these Nuclear National Military Infrastructures.
All Corporations and Industry, as well as the Banks, take their orders from these unseen International Militarist Power Brokers. Even the Intelligence Agencies of various countries, including the Triad, are permeated by these shadow dwellers.
_______________
The rest of the major linkups of the big three are here:
See:
The Justice of God: Al Debaran - Ancient Egyptian Banking The ancient money source of the Masonic Lodges.
The above Triad in the article at top is the political Triad of the 20th Century staged Cold War. See: The Justice of God: Putin and Communism and Zionism. The below Triads are the politico-religious Triads of Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Eurasian Houses of the Dragon, apostate Jewry, apostate Vatican Satanic attempt to wrest control of the world from God and rule it themselves - all instigated by Satan.
Look up, your redemption is at hand: Hermes Trimegistus
Hermes Trimegistus
Hermes Trimegistus is the triple god of the ancient Greeks and closely embedded with Isis-Horus of the ancient Egyptians. In the Gréco-égyptienne religion of the Roman dominated (both political and in the syncretistic religious sense) Mediterranean cultural milieu of the first century these were central to both Gnosticism and Hermeticism - both of which shared the belief that Lucifer (Satan - Saturn) was truly god on earth. The North African form of Hermes Trimegistus was Priapus and was most depraved in the worst sense. These are the sources for the Gnostic opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and biblical faith in Him as Redeemer. This is the magic of the Gnostics and Hermetics, condemned without reservation by God. This magical "secret knowledge" is the very ancient Hermetic proposition of calling God and the Devil two sides of the same coin. That is a lie from Satan. Those who listen to that lie will be condemned to hell eternally by Jesus Christ at His return from heaven at the end of this age to resurrect all men and judge the quick and the dead.
On the Trail of the Winged God
Hermes and Hermeticism Throughout the Ages
by Stephan A. Hoeller
There are few names to which more diverse persons and disciplines lay claim than the term "Hermetic." Alchemists ancient and contemporary apply the adjective "Hermetic" to their art, while magicians attach the name to their ceremonies of evocation and invocation. Followers of Meister Eckhart, Raymond Lull, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, and most recently Valentin Tomberg are joined by academic scholars of esoterica, all of whom attach the word "Hermetic" to their activities.
Who, then, was Hermes, and what may be said of the philosophy or religion that is connected with him? The early twentieth-century scholar Walter Scott, in his classic edition of the Hermetic texts, writes of a legend preserved by the Renaissance writer Vergicius:
Until relatively recently, no one had a clear picture of either the authorship or the context of the mysterious writings ascribed to Hermes. Descriptions such as the one above are really no more than a summary of the ideal laid down in the "Hermetic" writings. The early Christian Fathers, in time, mostly held that Hermes was a great sage who lived before Moses and that he was a pious and wise man who received revelations from God that were later fully explained by Christianity. None mentioned that he was a Greek god.
The Greek Hermes
The British scholar R.F. Willetts wrote that "in many ways, Hermes is the most sympathetic, the most baffling, the most confusing, the most complex, and therefore the most Greek of all the Olympian gods."2 If Hermes is the god of the mind, then these qualities appear in an even more meaningful light. For is the mind not the most baffling, confusing, and at the same time the most beguiling, of all the attributes of life?
The name Hermes appears to have originated in the word for "stone heap." Probably since prehistoric times there existed in Crete and in other Greek regions a custom or erecting a herma or hermaion consisting of an upright stone surrounded at its base by a heap of smaller stones. Such monuments were used to serve as boundaries or as landmarks for wayfarers.
A mythological connection existed between these simple monuments and the deity named Hermes. When Hermes killed the many-eyed monster Argus, he was brought to trial by the gods. They voted for Hermes' innocence, each casting a vote by throwing a small stone at his feet so that a heap of stones grew up around him.
Hermes became best known as the swift messenger of the gods. Euripides, in his prologue to the play Ion, has Hermes introduce himself as follows:
Hermes is thus of a double origin. His grandfather is Atlas, the demigod who holds up heaven, but Maia, his mother, already has a goddess as her mother, while Hermes' father, Zeus, is of course the highest of the gods. It is tempting to interpret this as saying that from worldly toil (Atlas), with a heavy infusion of divine inspiration, comes forth consciousness, as symbolized by Hermes.
Versatility and mutability are Hermes' most prominent characteristics. His specialties are eloquence and invention (he invented the lyre). He is the god of travel and the protector of sacrifices; he is also god of commerce and good luck. The common quality in all of these is again consciousness, the agile movement of mind that goes to and fro, joining humans and gods, assisting the exchange of ideas and commercial goods. Consciousness has a shadow side, however: Hermes is also noted for cunning and for fraud, perjury, and theft.
The association of Hermes with theft become evident in the pseudo-Homeric Hymn to Hermes, which tells in great detail how the young god, barely risen from his cradle, carries off some of Apollo's prize oxen. The enraged Apollo denounces Hermes to Zeus but is mollified by the gift of the lyre, which the young Hermes has just invented by placing strings across the shell of a tortoise. That the larcenous trickster god is the one who bestows the instrument of poetry upon Apollo may be a point of some significance. Art is bestowed not by prosaic rectitude, but by the freedom of intuition, a function not bound by earthly rules.
While Hermes is regarded as one of the earliest and most primitive gods of the Greeks, he enjoys so much subsequent prominence that he must be recognized as an archetype devoted to mediating between, and unifying, the opposites. This foreshadows his later role as master magician and alchemist, as he was regarded both in Egypt and in Renaissance Europe.
Mediterranean Hermes
One admirable quality of the ancient Greeks was the universality of their theological vision. Unlike their Semitic counterparts, the Greeks claimed no uniqueness for their deities but freely acknowledged that the Olympians often had exact analogues in the gods of other nations.
This was particularly true of Egypt, whose gods the Greeks revered as the prototypes of their own. It was a truth frequently recognized by the cultured elite of Greek society that some of the Egyptian gods, such as Isis, were of such great stature that they united within themselves a host of Greek deities.
The Romans, who were fully aware of the fact that their gods were but rebaptized Greek deities, followed the example of their mentors. As the Roman Empire extended itself to occupy the various Mediterranean lands, including Egypt, the ascendancy of the archetypes of some of the more prominent Egyptian gods became evident. Here we are faced with the controversial phenomenon of syncretism, which plays a vital role in the new manifestation of Hermes in the last centuries before Christ and in the early centuries of the Christian era.
During this period, the Mediterranean world was undergoing a remarkable religious development. The old state religions had lost their hold on many people. In their stead a large number of often-interrelated religions, philosophies, and rites had arisen, facilitated by the political unity imposed by the Roman Empire.
This new ecumenism of the spirit was one that we might justly admire. Though often derided as mere syncretism by later writers, it possessed many features to which various ecumenicists aspire even today. It is by no means impossible that the Mediterranean region of the late Hellenistic period was in fact on its way toward a certain kind of religious unity. The world religion that might conceivably have emerged would have been much more sophisticated than the accusation of syncretism would have us believe. Far from being a patchwork of incompatible elements, this emerging Mediterranean spirituality bore the hallmarks of a profound mysticism, possessing a psychological wisdom still admired in our own day by such figures as C.G. Jung and Mircea Eliade.
An important feature of this era was the rise of a new worship of Hermes. Proceeding from the three principal Egyptian archetypes of divinity, we find three great forms of initiatory religion spreading along the shores of the Mediterranean: the cults of the Mother Goddess Isis, the Victim God Osiris, and the Wisdom God Hermes, all of which appeared under various guises.
Of these three we shall concern ourselves here with Hermes. It was during this period that the swift god of consciousness took his legendary winged sandals and crossed the sea to Egypt in order to become the Greco-Egyptian Thrice-Greatest Hermes.
Hermes of Egypt
The Egyptian god Thoth, or Tehuti, in the form of an ibis. With him is his associate, the ape, proferring the Eye of Horus. From E.A. Wallis Budge's Gods of the Egyptians.
The Greek Hermes found his analogue in Egypt as the ancient Wisdom God Thoth (sometimes spelled Thouth or Tahuti). This god was worshiped in his principal cult location, Chmun, known also as the "City of the Eight," called Greek Hermopolis. There is evidence that this location was a center for the worship of this deity at least as early as 3000 B.C.
Thoth played a part in many of the myths of Pharaonic Egypt: he played a role in the creation myth, he was recorder of the gods, and he was the principal pleader for the soul at the judgment of the dead. It was he who invented writing. He wrote all the ancient texts, including the most esoteric ones, including The Book of Breathings, which taught humans how to become gods. He was connected with the moon and thus was considered ruler of the night. Thoth was also the teacher and helper of the ancient Egyptian trinity of Isis, Osiris, and Horus; it was under his instructions that Isis worked her sacred love magic whereby she brought the slain Osiris back to life.
Most importantly, perhaps, for our purposes, Thoth acted as an emissary between the contending armies of Horus and Seth and eventually came to negotiate the peace treaty between these two gods. His role as a mediator between the opposites is thus made evident, perhaps prefiguring the role of the alchemical Mercury as the "medium of the conjunction."
Thoth's animal form is that of the ibis, with its long, slightly curved beak: statues of Thoth often portray a majestic human wearing the mask of head of this bird; others simply display the ibis itself.
It was to this powerful god that the Egyptian Hermeticists of the second and third centuries A.D. joined the image and especially the name of the Greek Hermes. From this time onward the name "Hermes" came to denote neither Thoth nor Hermes proper, but a new archetypal figure, Hermes Trismegistus, who combined the features of both.
By the time his Egyptian followers came to establish their highly secretive communities, this Hermes underwent yet another modification, this time from the Jewish tradition. The presence of large numbers of Jews in Egypt in this period, many of whom were oriented toward Hellenistic thought, accounts for this additional element. In many of the Hermetic writings, Hermes appears less as an Egyptian or Greek god and more as a mysterious prophet of the kind one finds in Jewish prophetic literature, notably the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Esdras, and 2 Enoch. Still, when all is said and done, the Jewish element in the Hermetic writings is not very pronounced. The Hermes that concerns us is primarily Egyptian, to a lesser degree Greek, and to a very slight extent Jewish in character.
Hermetic Communities
A Renaissance portraite of Hermes Trismegistus, from the floor of the cathedral at Siena, 1488; attributed to Giovanni di Maestro Stefano. The legend beneath the central figure reads "Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, the contemporary of Moses."
Who, then, actually wrote the "books of Hermes," which, since their rediscovery in the fifteenth century, have played such a significant role in our culture? The writings are all anonymous: their mythic author is considered to be Hermes himself. The reasoning behind this pseudonymous approach is simple. Hermes is Wisdom, and thus anything written through the inspiration of true wisdom is in actuality written by Hermes. The human scribe does not matter; certainly his name is of no significance.
Customs of this sort have not been uncommon in mystical literature. The Kabbalistic text known as the Zohar, currently believed to have been written in the medieval period, claims to be the work of Shimon bar Yohai, a rabbi of the second century A.D. Two of the best-known Christian mystical classics, The Cloud of Unknowing and Theologia Germanica,were written anonymously.
The members of the Hermetic communities were people who, brought up in the immemorial Egyptian religious tradition, offered their own version of the religion of gnosis, which others propounded in a manner more appropriate to the psyches of other national backgrounds, notably Hebrew, Syrian, or Mesopotamian. Sir W.M.F. Petrie3 presents us with a study of such Pagan monks and hermits who gathered together in the deserts of Egypt and other lands. He tells us of the monks' attention to cleanliness, their silence during meals, their seclusion and meditative piety. It would seem that the Hermeticists were recluses of this kind. Unlike the Gnostics, who were mostly living secular lives in cities, the Hermeticists followed a lifestyle similar to the kind Josephus attributes to the Essenes.
When it came to beliefs, it is likely that the Hermeticists and Gnostics were close spiritual relatives. The two schools had a great deal in common, their principal difference being that the Hermeticists looked to the archetypal figure of Hermes as the embodiment of salvific teaching and initiation, while the Gnostics revered the more recent savior figure known as Jesus in a similar manner. Both groups were singularly devoted to gnosis, which they understood to be the experience of liberating interior knowledge; both looked upon embodiment as a limitation that led to unconsciousness, from which only gnosis can liberate the human spirit. Most of the Hermetic teachings closely correspond to fundamental ideas of the Gnostics. There were also some, mostly minor, divergences between the two, to which we shall refer later.
Judging by their writings and by the repute they enjoyed among their contemporaries, the members of the Hermetic communities were inspired persons who firmly believed that they were in touch with the Source of all truth, the very embodiment of divine Wisdom himself.
Indeed there are many passages in the Hermetic writings in which we can still perceive the vibrant inspiration, the exaltation of spirit, in the words whereby they attempt to describe the wonders disclosed to their mystic vision. Like the Gnostics, of whom Jung said that they worked with original, compelling images of the deep unconscious, the Hermeticists experienced powerful and extraordinary insights to which they tried to give expression in their writings. Intense feeling generated by personal spiritual experience pervades most of the Hermetic documents.
The Hermetic Curriculum
Until comparatively recently there was very little information available concerning the method of spiritual progress that the Hermeticists may have followed. The Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945, contains at least one scripture whose content is unmistakably Hermetic. This is Tractate 6 of Codex VI, whose title is usually translated as The Discourse on the Eight and the Ninth. On the basis of this discourse, one of its early translators suggested a scheme of progress that was followed by some of the schools of Hermeticists.4
A Hermetic catechumen would begin with a process of conversion, induced by such activities as reading some of the less technical Hermetic literature or listening to a public discourse. A period of probation, including instruction received in a public setting, was required before progressing to the next stage.
This phase would be characterized by a period of philosophical and catechetical studies based on certain Hermetic works. (The Asclepius and the Kore Kosmou may be examples of such study material.) This instruction was imparted to small groups.
The next step entailed a progress through the Seven Spheres or Hebdomad, conducted in a tutorial format, one student at a time. This seems to have been a process of an experiential nature, aided by inspiring topical discourses. In this progression, the candidate is envisioned as beginning his journey from earth and ascending through the planets to a region of freedom from immediate cosmic influences. (The planets were regarded mostly as influences of restriction, which the ascending spirit must overcome.) One may note a close resemblance of this gradual ascent to similar ascensions outlined in various Gnostic sources, as well as to the later Kabbalistic patchwork on the Tree of Life.
The final step was what may be called the Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Trismegistus, of which The Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth is often regarded as a good example. Here the Hermeticist is spiritually reborn in a transcendental region beyond the seven planets. His status is now that of a pneumatic, or man of the spirit. (Note once again the similarity with Gnosticism.) This level entails an experience of a very profound, initiatory change of consciousness wherein the initiate becomes one with the deeper self resident in his soul, which is a portion of the essence of God. This experience takes place in a totally private setting. The only persons present are the initiate and the initiator (called "son" and "father" in this text). The liturgy takes the form of a dialogue between these two.
The Hermeticists had their own sacraments as well. These appear to have consisted primarily of a form of baptism with water and an anointing resembling "a baptism and a chrism" as mentioned in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. The Corpus Hermeticum mentions an anointing with "ambrosial water" and a self-administered baptism in a sacred vessel, thekrater, sent down by Hermes from the heavenly realms.
The Hermetic Writings
The original number of Hermetic writings must have been considerable. A good many of these were lost during the systematic destruction of non-Christian literature that took place between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. Ancient writers often indicate the existence of such works: in the first century A.D., Plutarch refers to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest; the third-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria says that the books of Hermes treat of Egyptian religion;5 and Tertullian, Iamblichus, and Porphyry all seem to be acquainted with Hermetic literature. Scott shows how the ancient Middle Eastern city of Harran harbored both Hermeticists and Hermetic books into the Muslim period.6
A thousand years later, in 1460, the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de' Medici, acquired several previously lost Hermetic texts that had been found in the Byzantine Empire. These works were thought to be the work of a historical figure named Hermes Trismegistus who was considered to be a contemporary of Moses. Translated by the learned and enthusiastic Marsilio Ficino and others, the Hermetic books soon gained the attention of an intelligentsia that was starved for a more creative approach to spirituality than had been hitherto available.
The most extensive collection of Hermetic writings is the Corpus Hermeticum, a set of about seventeen short Greek texts. Another collection as made by a scholar named John Stobaeus in the firth century A.D. Two other, longer texts stand alone. The first is the Asclepius, preserved in a Latin translation dating probably from the third century A.D. The second takes the form of a dialogue between Isis and Horus and has the unusual title of Kore Kosmou, which means "daughter of the world."
The reaction of the Christian establishment to these writings was ambivalent. It is true that they were never condemned and were even revered by many prominent ecclesiastics. An authoritative volume of the Hermetic books was printed in Ferrara in 1593, for example. It was edited by one Cardinal Patrizzi, who recommended that these works should replace Aristotle as the basis for Christian philosophy and should be diligently studied in schools and monasteries. The mind boggles at the turn Western culture might have taken had Hermetic teachings replaced Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas as the normative doctrine of the Catholic Church!
Such, however, was not to be. One of the chief propagandists of Hermeticism, the brilliant friar Giordano Bruno, was burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1600, and although others continued with their enthusiasm for the fascinating teachings of the books of Hermes, the suspicions and doubts of the narrow-minded continued to dampen any general ardor.
By the seventeenth century, the Hermetic books had enjoyed intermittent popularity in Europe for some 150 years. The coming of the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing religious strife, however, stimulated a tendency toward rationalistic orthodoxy in all quarter. Another factor was the work of the scholar Isaac Casaubon, who used internal evidence in the texts to prove that they had been written, not by a contemporary of Moses, but early in the Christian era.7
By the eighteenth century, the Hermetic teachings were totally eclipsed, and the new scholarship, which prided itself on its opposition to everything it called "superstition," took a dim view of this ancient fountainhead of mystical and occult lore. There wasn't even a critical, academically respectable edition of the Corpus Hermeticum until Walter Scott'sHermetica appeared in 1924.
If one needs an example of how egregiously academic scholarship can err and then persist in its errors, one need only contemplate the "official" scholarly views of the Hermetic books over the 150-year period up to the middle of the twentieth century. The general view was that these writings were Neoplatonic or anti-Christian forgeries, of no value to the study of religion. By the middle of the nineteenth century, such scholars as Gustave Parthey8 and Louis Menard9 began to raise objections to the forgery theory, but it took another 50 years for their views to gain a hearing.
The Occult Connection and the Hermetic Renaissance
Hermes Trismegistus and the creative fire that unite the polarities. D. Stolcius vn Stolcenbeerg, Viridarium chymicum, Frankfurt, 1624
On the Trail of the Winged God Hermes and Hermeticism Throughout the Ages, from: http://www.gnosis.org/hermes.htm
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Please see this for a connection of all of this to the medieval and Renaissance Knights of Malta:
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On the Trail of the Winged God
Hermes and Hermeticism Throughout the Ages
by Stephan A. Hoeller
There are few names to which more diverse persons and disciplines lay claim than the term "Hermetic." Alchemists ancient and contemporary apply the adjective "Hermetic" to their art, while magicians attach the name to their ceremonies of evocation and invocation. Followers of Meister Eckhart, Raymond Lull, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, and most recently Valentin Tomberg are joined by academic scholars of esoterica, all of whom attach the word "Hermetic" to their activities.
Who, then, was Hermes, and what may be said of the philosophy or religion that is connected with him? The early twentieth-century scholar Walter Scott, in his classic edition of the Hermetic texts, writes of a legend preserved by the Renaissance writer Vergicius:
They say that this Hermes left his own country and traveled all over the world…; and that he tried to teach men to revere and worship one God alone, …the demiurgus and genetor [begetter] of all things; …and that he lived a very wise and pious life, occupied in intellectual contemplation…, and giving no heed to the gross things of the material world…; and that having returned to his own country, he wrote at the time many books of mystical theology and philosophy.1
Until relatively recently, no one had a clear picture of either the authorship or the context of the mysterious writings ascribed to Hermes. Descriptions such as the one above are really no more than a summary of the ideal laid down in the "Hermetic" writings. The early Christian Fathers, in time, mostly held that Hermes was a great sage who lived before Moses and that he was a pious and wise man who received revelations from God that were later fully explained by Christianity. None mentioned that he was a Greek god.
The Greek Hermes
The British scholar R.F. Willetts wrote that "in many ways, Hermes is the most sympathetic, the most baffling, the most confusing, the most complex, and therefore the most Greek of all the Olympian gods."2 If Hermes is the god of the mind, then these qualities appear in an even more meaningful light. For is the mind not the most baffling, confusing, and at the same time the most beguiling, of all the attributes of life?
The name Hermes appears to have originated in the word for "stone heap." Probably since prehistoric times there existed in Crete and in other Greek regions a custom or erecting a herma or hermaion consisting of an upright stone surrounded at its base by a heap of smaller stones. Such monuments were used to serve as boundaries or as landmarks for wayfarers.
A mythological connection existed between these simple monuments and the deity named Hermes. When Hermes killed the many-eyed monster Argus, he was brought to trial by the gods. They voted for Hermes' innocence, each casting a vote by throwing a small stone at his feet so that a heap of stones grew up around him.
Hermes became best known as the swift messenger of the gods. Euripides, in his prologue to the play Ion, has Hermes introduce himself as follows:
Atlas, who wears on back of bronze the ancient
Abode of the gods in heaven, had a daughter
Whose name was Maia, born of a goddess:
She lay with Zeus, and bore me, Hermes,
Servant of the immortals.
Hermes is thus of a double origin. His grandfather is Atlas, the demigod who holds up heaven, but Maia, his mother, already has a goddess as her mother, while Hermes' father, Zeus, is of course the highest of the gods. It is tempting to interpret this as saying that from worldly toil (Atlas), with a heavy infusion of divine inspiration, comes forth consciousness, as symbolized by Hermes.
Versatility and mutability are Hermes' most prominent characteristics. His specialties are eloquence and invention (he invented the lyre). He is the god of travel and the protector of sacrifices; he is also god of commerce and good luck. The common quality in all of these is again consciousness, the agile movement of mind that goes to and fro, joining humans and gods, assisting the exchange of ideas and commercial goods. Consciousness has a shadow side, however: Hermes is also noted for cunning and for fraud, perjury, and theft.
The association of Hermes with theft become evident in the pseudo-Homeric Hymn to Hermes, which tells in great detail how the young god, barely risen from his cradle, carries off some of Apollo's prize oxen. The enraged Apollo denounces Hermes to Zeus but is mollified by the gift of the lyre, which the young Hermes has just invented by placing strings across the shell of a tortoise. That the larcenous trickster god is the one who bestows the instrument of poetry upon Apollo may be a point of some significance. Art is bestowed not by prosaic rectitude, but by the freedom of intuition, a function not bound by earthly rules.
While Hermes is regarded as one of the earliest and most primitive gods of the Greeks, he enjoys so much subsequent prominence that he must be recognized as an archetype devoted to mediating between, and unifying, the opposites. This foreshadows his later role as master magician and alchemist, as he was regarded both in Egypt and in Renaissance Europe.
Mediterranean Hermes
One admirable quality of the ancient Greeks was the universality of their theological vision. Unlike their Semitic counterparts, the Greeks claimed no uniqueness for their deities but freely acknowledged that the Olympians often had exact analogues in the gods of other nations.
This was particularly true of Egypt, whose gods the Greeks revered as the prototypes of their own. It was a truth frequently recognized by the cultured elite of Greek society that some of the Egyptian gods, such as Isis, were of such great stature that they united within themselves a host of Greek deities.
The Romans, who were fully aware of the fact that their gods were but rebaptized Greek deities, followed the example of their mentors. As the Roman Empire extended itself to occupy the various Mediterranean lands, including Egypt, the ascendancy of the archetypes of some of the more prominent Egyptian gods became evident. Here we are faced with the controversial phenomenon of syncretism, which plays a vital role in the new manifestation of Hermes in the last centuries before Christ and in the early centuries of the Christian era.
During this period, the Mediterranean world was undergoing a remarkable religious development. The old state religions had lost their hold on many people. In their stead a large number of often-interrelated religions, philosophies, and rites had arisen, facilitated by the political unity imposed by the Roman Empire.
This new ecumenism of the spirit was one that we might justly admire. Though often derided as mere syncretism by later writers, it possessed many features to which various ecumenicists aspire even today. It is by no means impossible that the Mediterranean region of the late Hellenistic period was in fact on its way toward a certain kind of religious unity. The world religion that might conceivably have emerged would have been much more sophisticated than the accusation of syncretism would have us believe. Far from being a patchwork of incompatible elements, this emerging Mediterranean spirituality bore the hallmarks of a profound mysticism, possessing a psychological wisdom still admired in our own day by such figures as C.G. Jung and Mircea Eliade.
An important feature of this era was the rise of a new worship of Hermes. Proceeding from the three principal Egyptian archetypes of divinity, we find three great forms of initiatory religion spreading along the shores of the Mediterranean: the cults of the Mother Goddess Isis, the Victim God Osiris, and the Wisdom God Hermes, all of which appeared under various guises.
Of these three we shall concern ourselves here with Hermes. It was during this period that the swift god of consciousness took his legendary winged sandals and crossed the sea to Egypt in order to become the Greco-Egyptian Thrice-Greatest Hermes.
Hermes of Egypt
The Egyptian god Thoth, or Tehuti, in the form of an ibis. With him is his associate, the ape, proferring the Eye of Horus. From E.A. Wallis Budge's Gods of the Egyptians.
The Greek Hermes found his analogue in Egypt as the ancient Wisdom God Thoth (sometimes spelled Thouth or Tahuti). This god was worshiped in his principal cult location, Chmun, known also as the "City of the Eight," called Greek Hermopolis. There is evidence that this location was a center for the worship of this deity at least as early as 3000 B.C.
Thoth played a part in many of the myths of Pharaonic Egypt: he played a role in the creation myth, he was recorder of the gods, and he was the principal pleader for the soul at the judgment of the dead. It was he who invented writing. He wrote all the ancient texts, including the most esoteric ones, including The Book of Breathings, which taught humans how to become gods. He was connected with the moon and thus was considered ruler of the night. Thoth was also the teacher and helper of the ancient Egyptian trinity of Isis, Osiris, and Horus; it was under his instructions that Isis worked her sacred love magic whereby she brought the slain Osiris back to life.
Most importantly, perhaps, for our purposes, Thoth acted as an emissary between the contending armies of Horus and Seth and eventually came to negotiate the peace treaty between these two gods. His role as a mediator between the opposites is thus made evident, perhaps prefiguring the role of the alchemical Mercury as the "medium of the conjunction."
Thoth's animal form is that of the ibis, with its long, slightly curved beak: statues of Thoth often portray a majestic human wearing the mask of head of this bird; others simply display the ibis itself.
It was to this powerful god that the Egyptian Hermeticists of the second and third centuries A.D. joined the image and especially the name of the Greek Hermes. From this time onward the name "Hermes" came to denote neither Thoth nor Hermes proper, but a new archetypal figure, Hermes Trismegistus, who combined the features of both.
By the time his Egyptian followers came to establish their highly secretive communities, this Hermes underwent yet another modification, this time from the Jewish tradition. The presence of large numbers of Jews in Egypt in this period, many of whom were oriented toward Hellenistic thought, accounts for this additional element. In many of the Hermetic writings, Hermes appears less as an Egyptian or Greek god and more as a mysterious prophet of the kind one finds in Jewish prophetic literature, notably the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Esdras, and 2 Enoch. Still, when all is said and done, the Jewish element in the Hermetic writings is not very pronounced. The Hermes that concerns us is primarily Egyptian, to a lesser degree Greek, and to a very slight extent Jewish in character.
Hermetic Communities
A Renaissance portraite of Hermes Trismegistus, from the floor of the cathedral at Siena, 1488; attributed to Giovanni di Maestro Stefano. The legend beneath the central figure reads "Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, the contemporary of Moses."
Who, then, actually wrote the "books of Hermes," which, since their rediscovery in the fifteenth century, have played such a significant role in our culture? The writings are all anonymous: their mythic author is considered to be Hermes himself. The reasoning behind this pseudonymous approach is simple. Hermes is Wisdom, and thus anything written through the inspiration of true wisdom is in actuality written by Hermes. The human scribe does not matter; certainly his name is of no significance.
Customs of this sort have not been uncommon in mystical literature. The Kabbalistic text known as the Zohar, currently believed to have been written in the medieval period, claims to be the work of Shimon bar Yohai, a rabbi of the second century A.D. Two of the best-known Christian mystical classics, The Cloud of Unknowing and Theologia Germanica,were written anonymously.
The members of the Hermetic communities were people who, brought up in the immemorial Egyptian religious tradition, offered their own version of the religion of gnosis, which others propounded in a manner more appropriate to the psyches of other national backgrounds, notably Hebrew, Syrian, or Mesopotamian. Sir W.M.F. Petrie3 presents us with a study of such Pagan monks and hermits who gathered together in the deserts of Egypt and other lands. He tells us of the monks' attention to cleanliness, their silence during meals, their seclusion and meditative piety. It would seem that the Hermeticists were recluses of this kind. Unlike the Gnostics, who were mostly living secular lives in cities, the Hermeticists followed a lifestyle similar to the kind Josephus attributes to the Essenes.
When it came to beliefs, it is likely that the Hermeticists and Gnostics were close spiritual relatives. The two schools had a great deal in common, their principal difference being that the Hermeticists looked to the archetypal figure of Hermes as the embodiment of salvific teaching and initiation, while the Gnostics revered the more recent savior figure known as Jesus in a similar manner. Both groups were singularly devoted to gnosis, which they understood to be the experience of liberating interior knowledge; both looked upon embodiment as a limitation that led to unconsciousness, from which only gnosis can liberate the human spirit. Most of the Hermetic teachings closely correspond to fundamental ideas of the Gnostics. There were also some, mostly minor, divergences between the two, to which we shall refer later.
Judging by their writings and by the repute they enjoyed among their contemporaries, the members of the Hermetic communities were inspired persons who firmly believed that they were in touch with the Source of all truth, the very embodiment of divine Wisdom himself.
Indeed there are many passages in the Hermetic writings in which we can still perceive the vibrant inspiration, the exaltation of spirit, in the words whereby they attempt to describe the wonders disclosed to their mystic vision. Like the Gnostics, of whom Jung said that they worked with original, compelling images of the deep unconscious, the Hermeticists experienced powerful and extraordinary insights to which they tried to give expression in their writings. Intense feeling generated by personal spiritual experience pervades most of the Hermetic documents.
The Hermetic Curriculum
Until comparatively recently there was very little information available concerning the method of spiritual progress that the Hermeticists may have followed. The Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945, contains at least one scripture whose content is unmistakably Hermetic. This is Tractate 6 of Codex VI, whose title is usually translated as The Discourse on the Eight and the Ninth. On the basis of this discourse, one of its early translators suggested a scheme of progress that was followed by some of the schools of Hermeticists.4
A Hermetic catechumen would begin with a process of conversion, induced by such activities as reading some of the less technical Hermetic literature or listening to a public discourse. A period of probation, including instruction received in a public setting, was required before progressing to the next stage.
This phase would be characterized by a period of philosophical and catechetical studies based on certain Hermetic works. (The Asclepius and the Kore Kosmou may be examples of such study material.) This instruction was imparted to small groups.
The next step entailed a progress through the Seven Spheres or Hebdomad, conducted in a tutorial format, one student at a time. This seems to have been a process of an experiential nature, aided by inspiring topical discourses. In this progression, the candidate is envisioned as beginning his journey from earth and ascending through the planets to a region of freedom from immediate cosmic influences. (The planets were regarded mostly as influences of restriction, which the ascending spirit must overcome.) One may note a close resemblance of this gradual ascent to similar ascensions outlined in various Gnostic sources, as well as to the later Kabbalistic patchwork on the Tree of Life.
The final step was what may be called the Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Trismegistus, of which The Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth is often regarded as a good example. Here the Hermeticist is spiritually reborn in a transcendental region beyond the seven planets. His status is now that of a pneumatic, or man of the spirit. (Note once again the similarity with Gnosticism.) This level entails an experience of a very profound, initiatory change of consciousness wherein the initiate becomes one with the deeper self resident in his soul, which is a portion of the essence of God. This experience takes place in a totally private setting. The only persons present are the initiate and the initiator (called "son" and "father" in this text). The liturgy takes the form of a dialogue between these two.
The Hermeticists had their own sacraments as well. These appear to have consisted primarily of a form of baptism with water and an anointing resembling "a baptism and a chrism" as mentioned in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. The Corpus Hermeticum mentions an anointing with "ambrosial water" and a self-administered baptism in a sacred vessel, thekrater, sent down by Hermes from the heavenly realms.
The Hermetic Writings
The original number of Hermetic writings must have been considerable. A good many of these were lost during the systematic destruction of non-Christian literature that took place between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. Ancient writers often indicate the existence of such works: in the first century A.D., Plutarch refers to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest; the third-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria says that the books of Hermes treat of Egyptian religion;5 and Tertullian, Iamblichus, and Porphyry all seem to be acquainted with Hermetic literature. Scott shows how the ancient Middle Eastern city of Harran harbored both Hermeticists and Hermetic books into the Muslim period.6
A thousand years later, in 1460, the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de' Medici, acquired several previously lost Hermetic texts that had been found in the Byzantine Empire. These works were thought to be the work of a historical figure named Hermes Trismegistus who was considered to be a contemporary of Moses. Translated by the learned and enthusiastic Marsilio Ficino and others, the Hermetic books soon gained the attention of an intelligentsia that was starved for a more creative approach to spirituality than had been hitherto available.
The most extensive collection of Hermetic writings is the Corpus Hermeticum, a set of about seventeen short Greek texts. Another collection as made by a scholar named John Stobaeus in the firth century A.D. Two other, longer texts stand alone. The first is the Asclepius, preserved in a Latin translation dating probably from the third century A.D. The second takes the form of a dialogue between Isis and Horus and has the unusual title of Kore Kosmou, which means "daughter of the world."
The reaction of the Christian establishment to these writings was ambivalent. It is true that they were never condemned and were even revered by many prominent ecclesiastics. An authoritative volume of the Hermetic books was printed in Ferrara in 1593, for example. It was edited by one Cardinal Patrizzi, who recommended that these works should replace Aristotle as the basis for Christian philosophy and should be diligently studied in schools and monasteries. The mind boggles at the turn Western culture might have taken had Hermetic teachings replaced Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas as the normative doctrine of the Catholic Church!
Such, however, was not to be. One of the chief propagandists of Hermeticism, the brilliant friar Giordano Bruno, was burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1600, and although others continued with their enthusiasm for the fascinating teachings of the books of Hermes, the suspicions and doubts of the narrow-minded continued to dampen any general ardor.
By the seventeenth century, the Hermetic books had enjoyed intermittent popularity in Europe for some 150 years. The coming of the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing religious strife, however, stimulated a tendency toward rationalistic orthodoxy in all quarter. Another factor was the work of the scholar Isaac Casaubon, who used internal evidence in the texts to prove that they had been written, not by a contemporary of Moses, but early in the Christian era.7
By the eighteenth century, the Hermetic teachings were totally eclipsed, and the new scholarship, which prided itself on its opposition to everything it called "superstition," took a dim view of this ancient fountainhead of mystical and occult lore. There wasn't even a critical, academically respectable edition of the Corpus Hermeticum until Walter Scott'sHermetica appeared in 1924.
If one needs an example of how egregiously academic scholarship can err and then persist in its errors, one need only contemplate the "official" scholarly views of the Hermetic books over the 150-year period up to the middle of the twentieth century. The general view was that these writings were Neoplatonic or anti-Christian forgeries, of no value to the study of religion. By the middle of the nineteenth century, such scholars as Gustave Parthey8 and Louis Menard9 began to raise objections to the forgery theory, but it took another 50 years for their views to gain a hearing.
The Occult Connection and the Hermetic Renaissance
Hermes Trismegistus and the creative fire that unite the polarities. D. Stolcius vn Stolcenbeerg, Viridarium chymicum, Frankfurt, 1624
Although the Hermetic system has undeniably influenced much of the best of Christian thought, the most abiding impact of Hermeticism on Western culture came about by way of the heterodox mystical, or occult, tradition. Renaissance occultism, with its alchemy, astrology, ceremonial magic, and occult medicine, became saturated with the teachings of the Hermetic books. This content has remained a permanent part of the occult transmissions of the West, and, along with Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, represents the foundation of all the major Western occult currents. Hermetic elements are demonstrably present in the school of Jacob Boehme and in the Rosicrucian and Masonic movements, for example.
It was not long before this tradition, wedded to secret orders of initiates and their arcane truths, gave way to a more public transmission of their teachings. This occurred initially by way of the work of H.P. Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth century.
G.R.S. Mead, a young, educated English Theosophist who became a close associate of Mme. Blavatsky in the last years of her life, was the main agent of the revival of Gnostic and Hermetic wisdom among the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century occultists. Mead first became known for his translation of the great Gnostic work Pistis Sophia, which appeared in 1890-91. In 1906 he published the three volumes of Thrice Greatest Hermes, in which he collected all the then-available Hermetic documents while adding insightful commentaries of his own.10 This volume was followed by other, smaller works of a similar order. Mead's impact on the renewal of interest in Hermeticism and Gnosticism in our century should not be underestimated.
A half-century later, we find another seminal figure who effectively bridged the gap between the occult and the academic. The British scholar Dame Frances A. Yates may be considered the true inaugurator of the modern Hermetic renaissance. Beginning with a work on Giordano Bruno and continuing with a number of others, Yates not only proved the immense influence of Hermeticism on the medieval Renaissance but showed the connections between Hermetic currents and later developments, including the Rosicrucian Enlightenment - itself the title of one of her books.
While some decades ago it might have appeared that the line of transmission extending from Greco-Egyptian wisdom might come to an end, today the picture appears more hopeful. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi Library generated a great interest in matters Gnostic that does not seem to have abated with the passage of time. Because of the close affinity of the Hermetic writings to the Gnostic ones, the present interest in Gnosticism extends to Hermeticism as well. Most collections of Gnostic scriptures published today include some Hermetic material.
Gnosticism and Hermeticism flourished in the same period; they are equally concerned with personal knowledge of God and the soul, and equally emphatic that the soul can only escape from its bondage to material existence if it attains to true ecstatic understanding (gnosis). It was once fashionable to characterize Hermeticism as "optimistic" in contract to Gnostic "pessimism," but such differences are currently being stressed less than they had been. The Nag Hammadi scriptures have brought to light a side of Gnosticism that joins it more closely to Hermeticism than many would have thought possible.
There are apparent contradictions, not only between Hermetic and Gnostic writings, but within the Hermetic materials themselves. Such contradictions loom large when one contemplates these systems from the outside, but they can be much more easily reconciled by one who steps inside the systems and views them from within. One possible key to such paradoxes is the likelihood that the words in these scriptures were the results of transcendental states of consciousness experienced by their writers. Such words were never meant to define supernatural matters, but only to intimate their impact upon experience.
From a contemporary view, the figure of Hermes, both in its Greek and its Egyptian manifestations, stands as an archetype of transformation through reconciliation of the opposites. (Certainly Jung and other archetypally oriented psychologists viewed Hermes in this light.) If we are inclined to this view, we should rejoice over the renewed interest in Hermes and his timeless gnosis. If we conjure up the famed image of the swift god, replete with winged helmet, sandals, and caduceus, we might still be able to ask him to reconcile the divisions and contradictions of this lower realm in the embrace of enlightened consciousness. And since, like all gods, he is immortal, he might be able to fulfill our request as he did for his devotees of old!
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The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol. 40, Summer 1996),
and is reproduced here by permission of the author.
Notes
1. Walter Scott, ed., Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings Which Contain Religious and Philosophical Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus (Boston: Shambhala, 1985 [1924]), vol. 1, p. 33. The demiurgus mentioned here is clearly of the Platonic rather than the Gnostic kind.
2. R.F. Willetts, "Hermes," entry in Richard Cavendish, ed., Man, Myth and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural (New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1970), p. 1289.
3. Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity (London: Rider & Co., 1900) pp. 50-65.
4. L.S. Keizer, ed. And trans., The Eighth Reveals the Ninth: A New Hermetic Initiation Discourse (Seaside, Calif.: Academy of Arts & Humanities, 1974), pp. 54-63.
5. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:14.
6. Scott, vol. 1, p. 97.
7. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 42.
8. Gustav Parthey, Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin, 1854).
9. Louis Menard, Étude sur l'origine des livres hermetiques et translations d'Hermès Trismegistus (Paris, 1866).
10. G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1992 [1906]).
It was not long before this tradition, wedded to secret orders of initiates and their arcane truths, gave way to a more public transmission of their teachings. This occurred initially by way of the work of H.P. Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth century.
G.R.S. Mead, a young, educated English Theosophist who became a close associate of Mme. Blavatsky in the last years of her life, was the main agent of the revival of Gnostic and Hermetic wisdom among the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century occultists. Mead first became known for his translation of the great Gnostic work Pistis Sophia, which appeared in 1890-91. In 1906 he published the three volumes of Thrice Greatest Hermes, in which he collected all the then-available Hermetic documents while adding insightful commentaries of his own.10 This volume was followed by other, smaller works of a similar order. Mead's impact on the renewal of interest in Hermeticism and Gnosticism in our century should not be underestimated.
A half-century later, we find another seminal figure who effectively bridged the gap between the occult and the academic. The British scholar Dame Frances A. Yates may be considered the true inaugurator of the modern Hermetic renaissance. Beginning with a work on Giordano Bruno and continuing with a number of others, Yates not only proved the immense influence of Hermeticism on the medieval Renaissance but showed the connections between Hermetic currents and later developments, including the Rosicrucian Enlightenment - itself the title of one of her books.
While some decades ago it might have appeared that the line of transmission extending from Greco-Egyptian wisdom might come to an end, today the picture appears more hopeful. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi Library generated a great interest in matters Gnostic that does not seem to have abated with the passage of time. Because of the close affinity of the Hermetic writings to the Gnostic ones, the present interest in Gnosticism extends to Hermeticism as well. Most collections of Gnostic scriptures published today include some Hermetic material.
Gnosticism and Hermeticism flourished in the same period; they are equally concerned with personal knowledge of God and the soul, and equally emphatic that the soul can only escape from its bondage to material existence if it attains to true ecstatic understanding (gnosis). It was once fashionable to characterize Hermeticism as "optimistic" in contract to Gnostic "pessimism," but such differences are currently being stressed less than they had been. The Nag Hammadi scriptures have brought to light a side of Gnosticism that joins it more closely to Hermeticism than many would have thought possible.
There are apparent contradictions, not only between Hermetic and Gnostic writings, but within the Hermetic materials themselves. Such contradictions loom large when one contemplates these systems from the outside, but they can be much more easily reconciled by one who steps inside the systems and views them from within. One possible key to such paradoxes is the likelihood that the words in these scriptures were the results of transcendental states of consciousness experienced by their writers. Such words were never meant to define supernatural matters, but only to intimate their impact upon experience.
From a contemporary view, the figure of Hermes, both in its Greek and its Egyptian manifestations, stands as an archetype of transformation through reconciliation of the opposites. (Certainly Jung and other archetypally oriented psychologists viewed Hermes in this light.) If we are inclined to this view, we should rejoice over the renewed interest in Hermes and his timeless gnosis. If we conjure up the famed image of the swift god, replete with winged helmet, sandals, and caduceus, we might still be able to ask him to reconcile the divisions and contradictions of this lower realm in the embrace of enlightened consciousness. And since, like all gods, he is immortal, he might be able to fulfill our request as he did for his devotees of old!
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The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol. 40, Summer 1996),
and is reproduced here by permission of the author.
Notes
1. Walter Scott, ed., Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings Which Contain Religious and Philosophical Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus (Boston: Shambhala, 1985 [1924]), vol. 1, p. 33. The demiurgus mentioned here is clearly of the Platonic rather than the Gnostic kind.
2. R.F. Willetts, "Hermes," entry in Richard Cavendish, ed., Man, Myth and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural (New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1970), p. 1289.
3. Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity (London: Rider & Co., 1900) pp. 50-65.
4. L.S. Keizer, ed. And trans., The Eighth Reveals the Ninth: A New Hermetic Initiation Discourse (Seaside, Calif.: Academy of Arts & Humanities, 1974), pp. 54-63.
5. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:14.
6. Scott, vol. 1, p. 97.
7. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 42.
8. Gustav Parthey, Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin, 1854).
9. Louis Menard, Étude sur l'origine des livres hermetiques et translations d'Hermès Trismegistus (Paris, 1866).
10. G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1992 [1906]).
On the Trail of the Winged God Hermes and Hermeticism Throughout the Ages, from: http://www.gnosis.org/hermes.htm
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Please see this for a connection of all of this to the medieval and Renaissance Knights of Malta:
The Knights of St. John (SMOM)
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The Justice of God: The virgin goddess of black magic - Durga and Agni - enslave and commit other genocides and abominations
Look up, your redemption is at hand: The virgin goddess of black magic
The virgin goddess of black magic
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Orthodox Church is correct and Roman Catholicism is wrong about the blessed virgin Mary who is the Theotokos and the mother of Jesus Christ Who is God in the flesh. The virgin Mary is not the immaculate conception, she immaculately conceived by the Holy Spirit the only true God in the flesh Who is Jesus Christ and is therefore the mother of God (not of His divine nature but His human nature which is divinized by His divine nature in the enhypostasia of the communion of idioms or hypostatic union of His two natures of God and of man, in theological terms) for He is One Person – of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity One God. Mary is of course totally loyal to Jesus Christ and has nothing to do with the virgin goddess (Isis and others) of black magic, which was used by the ancient Gnostic apostates as a substitute for the real virgin Mary mother of the God-Man Jesus Christ. He, Jesus Christ is the second Person of the Holy Trinity and therefore is God. Mary is therefore in this sense the mother of God. It is in this sense that she always has been confessed by the Church to be the mother of God. She is not a goddess.
Meet the virgin goddess of black magic -- she is the “immaculate one” (A LIE) who is Satan and false god and temptress and the rehashed pagan mother goddess that the early Gnostics (who claimed they were the knowers of the unknown god) worshipped.See this short excerpt, to illustrate, from:
"Thunder, Perfect Mind" from the Nag Hammadi Library
I am ... within.I am ...of the natures.
I am the creation of the spirits.
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the abiding and I am the dissolving.
I am the one below, and they come up to me.
I am the judgement and the acquittal.
I, I am sinless, and the root of sin derives from me.
I am the hearing which is attainable to everyone and the speech which cannot be grasped.
I am a mute who does not speak, and great is my multitude of words. ( this is Sarasvati)
The Mother Goddess was the beginning (the mother) of all the gods and goddesses and all sorcery /magic in connection with them.
In India the mother goddess is Durga and takes the form of Kali.
The yogis, ajivika or sramana or sadhu, of India, worshipped the fire god Agni (the god called “The Knower” whose tongue is the goddess Kali the goddess of destruction, a hermaphrodite god-goddess) imported from ancient Assyria/Persia, and engaged in the practice of the magical incantations of the kashshaph (sorcery) and nachash (serpent black magic) practices, amongst others, of ancient Mesopotamia, which made their way there through ancient Assyria/Persia as well. This strange fire (Hebrew: esh) with the sorcery and magic and rest of the occult practices listed together therein are condemned by God in Deuteronomy 18:10, 11. The final abomination of this is listed first in Dt:18:10: Neither let there be found among you any one that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire…. (DRV) That final abomination is human sacrifice by fire sacrifice (as in Agni) to false gods/goddesses in the hope of gaining preternatural power from fallen spirits; the apostate angel, Satan - the devil, is the chief fallen spirit of the rest and who Jesus Christ said was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. Jn:8:44: You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning: and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, andthe father thereof. (DRV)
Sorcery/magic and astrology began, in the post flood world, in Chaldaea Sumeria Assyro-Babylonian Mesopotamia.
For the Astral (known as Omina) connection to sorcery/magic (Hebrew Ashshaph/Kashshaph) see this excerpt from:
Astrology and Judaism in Late Antiquity
The doctoral dissertation of Lester Ness, Accepted by MiamiUniversity, 1990
Chapter One
Astrology In Mesopotamia…
Astrology In Mesopotamia…
The Cult Of The Planet-Gods
Having introduced the chief gods, we shall now examine literary evidence demonstrating the cult of the planet-gods. We shall look at the Creation Epic (Enuma Elish) and at a variety of prayers and magical texts. I shall use simple and common definitions for prayer and magic here. In prayer, one makes a request of a god. The magician tries to coerce or even command a god. In practice, however, the distinction may break down. For example, knowing the habits of a god, his likes and dislikes, one might make a request in such a way that it would be unlikely, even impossible to reject. Certainly, there was no clear distinction between prayer and magic in Mesopotamia./35/ It is the modern scholars who have drawn it, and in many cases they have been force to "fudge," coining the term "Gebetsbeschwrungen," or"Prayer-spells"….
Magical ceremonies in Mesopotamia were private, small-scale,versions of the rituals performed publicly in the temples. Magical practitioners of different sorts were usually priests. References to the astral aspects of the various gods are common, although they do not crowd out other aspects./38/
[end of excerpt]
This commanding of gods even extended to making them speak (the statues and other images) by occult means. The magicians who engaged in such things generally did it for money. In Jesus Christ's time on earth before His Ascension into heaven (from whence He will come again to judge the quick and the dead), He warned about these fakirs.
From Jesus Christ:
Mk:13:22:
22 For there will rise up false Christs and false prophets: and they shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce (if it were possible) even the elect. (DRV)
Mt:7:15:
15 ¶ Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (DRV)
From St. Paul:
Gal:1:8:
8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. (DRV)
From St. Peter:
2Pt:1:20
20 Understanding this first: That no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. (DRV)
From St. John:
Rv:13:15, 16:
15 And it was given him (the Antichrist) to give life to the image of the beast: and that the image of the beast should speak: and should cause that whosoever will not adore the image of the beast should be slain.
16 And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand or on their foreheads: (DRV)
Rather than take the Mark then, the early saints were martyred for their faith. Something that we must not hesitate to do when confronted with that choice. One of the early martyrs was St. Irenaeus of Lyons author of Against Heresies. For the creed of the early church which he recorded for posterity (which is also the original Apostles creed) see:
For the true Christian confession of faith see:
Eternal Faith and Beliefs Page 3
To the West, before the ancient Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent bringing with them the Mesopotamian gods and goddesses in Aryan dress, Nammu of Osiria-Summeria was the goddess (the chaotic primordial sea from which emerges the Devil) which was the first source of all gods and goddesses in the history of the post flood (of Noah) world.
Murugan-Agni and the goddess or Durga, Durga-Sukta, was a most ancient dual male female god/goddess of all gods and goddesses in India. This is prefigured in Nammu of Osiria-Summeria. Agni is also the son of Dyaus Pita, the sky god, and his consort Prthivi.
Mahadevi-Durga, the mother goddess of India, whose Hindu system of exploitation has kept the Dalits enslaved for 4,000 years, is now for the last 13 years giving birth to variations of the pagan god Agni (Agni is the fire god), as a nuclear fire bringing missile - this is a Hindu caste system version of the Roman/Cretean mother goddess Magna Dea as Roman Hera Great Goddess/matron goddess, Hera Teleia, who, by Jupiter (Zeus), gave birth to Vulcan (Greek: Hephaestus, Cretean god: Velchanos), the Roman fire god and god of war.
Prior to modern slavery over the last 1,200 years, earlier - the Roman Empire was the last greatest (in size and impact) of the ancient empires built on slavery. The last slave based empire, which is to be world wide, will be built on the ruins of all empires before it, with Rome as a head - and finally Jerusalem as a short lived head over all. India is just one of many of those former ones to be incorporated. This last empire will have all the hideous ruination and evil and depravity and all of the false gods and goddesses of all the former ones before it as the core and base of it all. The reason is simple, those "gods" and "goddessses" are the fallen angels and the demons that served Satan in those earlier slaveries and still and always will serve Satan and which always lead men astray into destruction, and with all the men that follow them, will go with the Devil into hell at the Parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ - His Second Coming.
India has been a nuclear weapons armed power for quite a few years now. Now, as the world always expected, they have developed a delivery system which can penetrate deep into China with nuclear tipped Ballistic Missiles.
From FAS article below this latest news on India missile launch: "...the cost of the system would be difficult to justify unless used as a nuclear delivery vehicle."
Agni-III
Although the Agni-II does reach deep into China it still does not threaten its major cities. As of early 1999 India was reportedly developing a longer-range Agni-III with a 3,500-km reach, capable of engaging targets deeper inside China. Other reports sugges that India is contemplating the development of the 5000 km range variant of the Agni, with a solid-fueled second stage. Although India has claimed that this missile will be used only to carry a conventional warhead, the cost of the system would be difficult to justify unless used as a nuclear delivery vehicle.
20 April 2012 Last updated at 00:04 ET
The Agni range of missiles has been fully developed in India
India media hail Agni-V long-range missile launch
The Agni range of missiles has been fully developed in India
India's media has hailed Thursday's successful launch of a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile able to carry a nuclear warhead.
The media said the launch of the Agni-V missile had propelled India into the "elite group" of nations who possess such weaponry.
The missile has a range of more than 5,000 km (3,100 miles), potentially bringing targets in China within range.
India said the launch was "flawless" and the missile had reached its target.
With this, India joins an elite nuclear club of China, Russia, France, the US and UK which already have long-range missiles, although with a much greater range. Israel is also thought to possess them.
"Missile Muscle", headlined The Indian Express newspaper.
"India has carefully worked on the range of capability of the Agni-V to ensure that it does not alarm the world," the newspaper wrote.
"The revealed range, over 5,000km, makes it a LRBM, or long-range ballistic missile, something that does not carry the more sinister connotation of an ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile, which would have had a range of over 5,500km."
'Awesome success'
But other papers described Agni-V as an ICBM, with The Hindu headlining: "Agni-V propels India into elite ICBM club."
"However, responsible possession of nuclear-armed missiles for the purposes of deterrence also requires working assiduously to remove sources of friction that can erupt into open conflict," the newspaper said in an editorial.
"It is important that India and China start talking to each other on nuclear issues."
The Pioneer described the launch as an "awesome success".
"... whatever China says, the fact remains that Agni-V has rattled that country... The bare truth is that China has to now deal with India as a major player in missile technology. And, it's not just China but also the rest of the world which has to come to terms with India's new-found status," the newspaper said.
The Asian Age said the launch had "opened up options for India", and that the "most remarkable thing about it is that it is entirely indigenous".
The Times of India said the Agni-V had helped India "roar" into the "elite ICBM club".
"India can, however, sit at this high table only when the Agni-V, which just about meets the 5,500km ICBM benchmark, becomes fully operational after four to five repeatable tests," the newspaper said.
Analysts say the Agni (meaning "fire" in Hindi and Sanskrit) missile family is to be the cornerstone of India's missile-based nuclear deterrent.
The Agni-V is 17.5m tall, solid-fuelled, has three stages and a launch weight of 50 tonnes. It cost more than 2.5bn rupees ($480m; £307m) to develop.
Agni
In May 1989, India test-fired its first intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Agni. It is a two-stage missile with the first stage using the first-stage solid-fuel booster motor of the SLV-3 satellite launch vehicle. This marked the first time that India had used directly a component of its civilian space research program for military purposes. (12)The second stage is possibly a shortened version of the Prithvi. (13)The 18-meter long, 7.5-ton Agni has a range of up to 2,500 km (allowing access to southern China) and is capable of delivering a 1,000-kg payload. Although accuracy is reduced with increased range, the Agni is believed to be fairly accurate, employing a closed-loop inertial guidance system, said to have been developed with a great deal of West German assistance. (14) The second experimental flight of Agni was conducted in May 1992 but the mission objective could not be achieved fully. The post flight analysis was carried out and necessary modifications were incorporated for the next flight test. A second successful test of the Agni occurred in February 1994, firing at a sea-based target 1,200 km into the Bay of Bengal. The last test of Agni-1 in 1994 was tested at a trajectory designed to simulate a range of 2500km, with an actual range achieved of 1450km.In 1994, the United States persuaded India to suspend testing of the Agni missile after three test flights.
India refers to the Agni not as a weapon system but as a "technology demonstrator project" to establish re-entry vehicle technologies. (15) As with the Prithvi, the U.S. has opposed the program as another potential proliferation affront to the MTCR, which India has criticized as biased in favor of the major powers. Notwithstanding its justifications for the Agni development, India formally suspended the program at the end of 1995. (16) Whether the suspension is real and the result of diplomatic pressure, technical problems, or other factors, is not evident. India may have decided to put the Agni under wraps until it decides the larger related issue of whether to test nuclear (perhaps thermonuclear) warheads for its missiles in the face of US and other diplomatic pressures to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the ratification process for which began in the fall of 1996. (17) In March 1997 Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda indicated that India would not give up the development of the Agni missile programme, a position echoed in July by Defense Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who denied that India had any immediate plans to further test fire the Agni missile. (17a)
India's turning point came when an openly pro-nuclear government took office in March 1998. The new coalition elected to power pledged, in the words of A.B. Vajpayee, to "exercise all options, including the nuclear option." The new government announced that a new version of the Agni with an extended range was under development.
Agni-II
Authorization for the development of the longer range Agni-II was given by the BJP-led coalition government in March 1998. The Agni-II uses a solid propellant second stage replacing the liquid propellant Prithvi short range missile used as upper stage of the Agni-I. It can be launched within 15 minutes as compared to almost half a day of preparation for the earlier version of the Agni. Another major development is a highly mobile platform for it to be transported secretly by rail or road anywhere in the country. The far more accurate terminal navigation and guidance system that the Agni II incorporates, which constantly updates information about the missile flight path using ground-based beacons, improved accuracy by a factor of at least three over that of the Agni-I.On 11 April 1999 India successfully test-fired the Agni-II ballistic missile, with a range of 2000-km. The missile was launched from the IC-4 pad at Wheeler Island, a new launch site on the Orissa coast in Balasore district. Splashdown was 2,000-2,100 km. (1,250 mi.) down range in the Bay of Bengal, on a trajectory designed to simulate a range of 2800-3000km. The test had been in preparation since January 1999, but India delayed it in the hope of extracting concessions from the US. Pakistan responded on 14 April 1999 with a test firing of its Ghauri II missile from the Jhelum region in northeast Pakistan. After the successful Agni-II test, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said the Agni missile was ready to go into production, though he didn't specify the production or deployment schedule. The cost of the Agni missiles is estimated at Rs. 20-35 crores [$4.5 million to $8 million] per copy. It is anticipated that India may deploy several dozen of these missiles. Agni-2 has a theoretical ability to hit a target 3000km away with a 1000kg payload, and it is suggested that- a 200 kiloton 'boosted-fission' warhead has been designed for the Agni system. Should this be reduced to a 15-20 kiloton system, the payload could be reduced to as little as 250kg.
Agni-III
Although the Agni-II does reach deep into China it still does not threaten its major cities. As of early 1999 India was reportedly developing a longer-range Agni-III with a 3,500-km reach, capable of engaging targets deeper inside China. Other reports sugges that India is contemplating the development of the 5000 km range variant of the Agni, with a solid-fueled second stage. Although India has claimed that this missile will be used only to carry a conventional warhead, the cost of the system would be difficult to justify unless used as a nuclear delivery vehicle.As of early 2000 it was suggested that there were between 5 and 9 Agni-1 missiles in existence, at least 1-2 Agni-2 and 2 prototypes of the Agni-3. These are all test models which could be fitted with warheads and used in an emergency. BDL has the capacity to produce up to 12 Agni IRBMs per year. It is believed that no real production has taken place since neither the Agni-1 or the Agni-2 is the definitive production variant of the Agni system.
Chronology
- Early 1980s: Development of the IGMDP starts; problems hamper test-firing.
- May, 1989: Agni-I launch
- May, 1992: Agni-I launch, partial failure
- Feb, 1994: Agni-I launched; five-year restraint period observed
- April 11, 1999: Agni-II, extended range version of Agni-I, successfully test-fired with a re-entry launch vehicle.
Sources and Resources
- The Indian Drive towards Weaponization: the Agni Missile Program - By Michael Kraig - May 2000
- 12. Gary Milhollin, "India's missiles with a little help from our friends," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov 89, pp. 31-35.
- 13. Jane's Defence Weekly, 3 June 89, p. 1052.
- 14. Gary Milhollin, "India's missiles with a little help from our friends," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov 89, pp. 31-35.
- 15. "Indians Place Cloak Over Missile Plans," Defense News, 11-17 Dec 95, p. 5.
- 16. "India puts Agni IRBM program on ice," Jane's International Defense Review, Jan 96, p. 5.
- 17. "Test Ban Talks At Impass," The Washington Post, 15 Aug 96, p. A29.
- 17a. INDIA / MISSILES Voice of America 3/4/97 and INDIA MISSILES Voice of America 7/31/97
- Agni-II missile successfully test fired India Express Sunday, April 11, 1999
- INDIA MISSILE Voice of America 11 April 1999
- INDIA / MISSILE Voice of America 11 April 1999
- Agni-II missile test fired April 11 (UNI):
"Hermes Trimegistus is the triple god of the ancient Greeks and closely embedded with Isis-Horus of the ancient Egyptians. In the Gréco-égyptienne religion of the Roman dominated (both political and in the syncretistic religious sense) Mediterranean cultural milieu of the first century these were central to both Gnosticism and Hermeticism - both of which shared the belief that Lucifer (Satan - Saturn) was truly god on earth. The North African form of Hermes Trimegistus was Priapus and was most depraved in the worst sense. These are the sources for the Gnostic opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and biblical faith in Him as Redeemer. This is the magic of the Gnostics and Hermetics, condemned without reservation by God. This magical "secret knowledge" is the very ancient Hermetic proposition of calling God and the Devil two sides of the same coin. That is a lie from Satan. Those who listen to that lie will be condemned to hell eternally by Jesus Christ at His return from heaven at the end of this age to resurrect all men and judge the quick and the dead."
Quite true.
Then this - not true of course that Hermes ever professed the true God -
"The early twentieth-century scholar Walter Scott, in his classic edition of the Hermetic texts, writes of a legend preserved by the Renaissance writer Vergicius:
They say that this Hermes left his own country and traveled all over the world…; and that he tried to teach men to revere and worship one God alone, …the demiurgus and genetor [begetter] of all things; …and that he lived a very wise and pious life, occupied in intellectual contemplation…, and giving no heed to the gross things of the material world…; and that having returned to his own country, he wrote at the time many books of mystical theology and philosophy.1"
The only god other than himself that Hermes would have pointed to would have been Zeus who was a snake god, or Apollo who was a sun-god - both completely pagan abominations.
The Hermetic Monadic Pantheistic unity that the pagan systems resolved into, was in no way the same as the One True God. The pagan unity was only a materialistic worship of creation itself, shared by pagans, Gnostics and sorcerers. It is completely offensive to God.
That Hermetic Monadic Pantheistic unity is also the abominable false god that some "Muslim" exegetes try to make Allah (swt) into. Allah is not that, nor could He ever be that. He is the same True God that the old testament Jews worshipped and that Christians worship.