Hermes Trismegistus may as well become explained inside Euhemerist fashion as a man world health organization was a boy of the god, & in the Kabbalistic tradition that was inherited by the Renaissance, it could be imagined that such the personage got been coeval sustaining Moses, communicating to the line of maven a parallel wisdom. (Occultist etymology has attached them, making of Moses the truncated title & positing the fully title, Thothmoses. This is presented in the royal surety thesis beneath.) The historiographer, but, would leave such speculation to the history of alchemy and the 19th-century history of occultism.

Origin
Two Thoth & Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures. So a Greek god of interpretative communication was combined by using a Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of Antiquity's pseudosciences of astrology and alchemy. Additionally, two gods were psychopomps, guiding souls to the hereafter.

A majority of Greeks, & late Romans, did non assume Hermes Trismegistus in the place of Hermes. Them gods remained distinct from either a single an additional. Cicero noted many people known as "Hermes": A Hermetic literature added to a Egyptian concerns by having conjuring spirits & animating statues that inform the oldest texts, Hellenistic writings of Greco-Babylonian astrology & a new developed practice of alchemy (Fowden 1993: pp65–68). Around the parallel tradition, the Hermetic philosophy rationalized & systematized religious cult practices and offered the maven the method of family ascension from the constraints of physical existence, which has led to confusion of Hermetism by using Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously [http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Merkur.html Dan Merkur, "Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth"]].

As a divine fountain of writing, Hermes Trismegistus was credited with tens of thousands of writings, of immense antiquity and high standing. Plato's Timaeus and Critias state that in the temple of Neith at Sais, there were secret halls containing historical records which had been kept for 9,000 years. Clement of Alexandria was under the impression that the Egyptians had forty-two sacred writings by Hermes, encapsulating all the training of Egyptian priests. Siegfried Morenz has suggested (Egyptian Religion) "The reference to Thoth's authorship...is based on ancient tradition; the figure forty-two probably stems from the number of Egyptian nomes, and thus conveys the notion of completeness." The Neo-Platonic writers took up Clement's "forty-two essential texts".

The so-called "Hermetic literature", the Hermetica is a category of papyri containing spells and induction procedures. In the dialogue called the Asclepius (after the Greek god of healing) the art of imprisoning the souls of demons or of angels in statues with the help of herbs, gems and odors, is described, such that the statue could speak and prophesy. In other papyri, there are other recipes for constructing such images and animating them, such as when images are to be hollow so as to enclose a magic name inscribed on gold leaf.

Hermetic revival
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, known as the Hermetica enjoyed great credit and were popular among alchemists. The "hermetic tradition" therefore refers to alchemy, magic, astrology and related subjects. The texts are usually distinguished in two categories the "philosophical" and "technical" hermetica. The former deals mainly with issues of philosophy, and the latter with magic, potions and alchemy. Among other things there are spells to magically protect objects, hence the origin of the term "Hermetically sealed".

The texts that were traditionally written at the dawn of time, the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon in De Rebus sacris et ecclesiaticis exercitiones XVI (1614) showed, by the character of the Greek, to be more recent: most of the "philosophical" Corpus Hermeticum can be dated to around AD 300.

New Age revival
Modern occultists continue to suggest that some of these texts may be of Pharaonic origin, and that "the forty two essential texts" that contained the core work of his religious beliefs and his life philosophy remain hidden away in a secret library.

In some of the readings of Edgar Cayce, Hermes or Thoth was an engineer from the submerging Atlantis and that he built or designed or directed the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt. Hermes Trismegistus is said to be an incarnation of Jesus.

Within the occult tradition, Hermes Trismegistus is credited with several wives, and more than one son who took his name, as well as more than one grandson. This repetition of given name and surname throughout the generations may at least partially account for the legend of his longevity, especially as it is believed that many of his children pursued careers as priests in the religion he started.

Fictional references
In White Wolf's World of Darkness, Hermes Trimegistus is held to be the founder of the faction of mages known as the Order of Hermes.

See Also
Alchemy Astrology Emerald Tablet Hermetic Hermetica Hermeticism Kybalion Occultism

Source
Copenhaver, Brian P. 1995.Hermetica: the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English translation, with notes and introduction, Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1995 ISBN 0521425433