Light of Hermes Trismegistus

Charles Stein is a poet and independent scholar with a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut and a bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek from Columbia University. The author of several books of poetry, including From Mimir’s Head, as well as literary works such as Persephone Unveiled and The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum, he lives in Barrytown, New York.

“I have to go back forty years to Stanley Lombardo’s pitch-perfect renderings of Parmenides and Empedocles to match Stein’s resourceful lucidity and poetic nimbleness. His commentaries are rigorous and impeccable, and the translations are an exaltation unto themselves. Stein has sounded the depths. These are more than documents, they are vitalities.”

• Preface Introduction The Text Itself Is the Secret • Hermeticism Reconvened: A New Imagination of Intelligence • Hermeneutics: The Further Life of the Text as Further Life of the God • Mystical Union: Parmenides, Being, and a Divine Background to the Realm of the Gods • Hodos Agnosia: The Way of Unknowing • The Divine Background and Egypt • Greece and Egypt • A Pagan Theodicy? • A God Is a Filter for Being • Configuration • The Incursive Moment One The Theogony of Hesiod Translated Text Commentary on the Theogony • Making Gods, Making Worlds, Making Peoples, Making Poets • The Middle Voice • Self-Reference • Primordial Xaos • Genealogy, Logic, Chance • The Titans • Gender and the Gods • Form upon Chaos • Bardic Performance as Theophany • More on the Divine Background • Fate, Chance, Divination • Intransitivity • Atemporality and Eternity Two The Homeric Hymn to Hermes Translated TextCommentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Hermes and Magic • The Tortoise Lyre • On the Practice of Conscious Listening • Self-Reference in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Further Notes on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes Three The “Poem of Parmenides” Translated Text Commentary on the “Poem of Parmenides” • Parmenides as Mystic • Everything That Seems Must Seem to Be (from Fragment 1) • That Is (from Fragment 2) • To Think IS (from Fragment 3) • Indications (from Fragment 8) • The One • All NOW • Resembling “a well-rounded sphere” (from Fragment 8) FourEgypt • Eternal Egypt • Egypt and Greece • The Priest Is the God for Whom He Officiates • The World as Inscription • Thoth • Our World as Counter Egypt • The Continuum • The Opening of Stone • The Pyramid FiveThe Poimandres Translated Text Commentary on the Poimandres • The Name Poimandres • Initiation and Death • Atemporal Essence and Inalienable Immediacy • Go in Fear of the Reified Invariant Six The Chaldean Oracles Translated Text Commentary on the Chaldean Oracles • The Configuration of Apparent Being in the Chaldean Oracles • Telestics • Theurgy • The Double Womb of Hekate • Flower of Mind • A Certain Mind Thing: Poetics and Apophasis • Hekate in Hesiod • The Hounds of Hekate • The Noetic Mandala: Synthemata and the Configuration of Correspondences Seven “The Vision of Isis” from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius Translated Text Commentary on “The Vision of Isis” • Isis and Osiris • Isis and the Moon • Eros and Persephone Eight“On Divine Virtue” by Zosimos of Panopolis Translated Text Commentary on “On Divine Virtue” • The Retroflection of Quality in Technical and Theoretical Hermetica • The Dissociation of the Sensibility • The Impossibility of Alchemy • The Origin of Alchemy in Metallurgy • The Emerald Tablet and the Language of Alchemy • The Odyssey and Alchemy: Hermes and Odysseus • Notes on the Greek Magical Papyri • Magical Charge, Ritual Violence • Language and Act BibliographyIndex