Esoteric Coffeehouse

Since the Apocalypse failed to occur in 2000, there is a new end of the world being prophesied: December 21, 2012. Apparently, the ancient Mayan calendar “reset” itself on this date, the end of a “Great Cycle” (1). As this date corresponds to a significant astronomical event, the Sun crossing the Equator of the Milky Way, expectations of a ‘new’ apocalypse are on the rise (2). In this context, what strikes me is how a prophecy that has been made more than one thousand years ago by an obscure culture is making headlines today. It made me think about the long lasting power of the millennial tradition in Western culture. Chances are, if nothing of note occurs on 21 December, the attention will be focused on 2060, the date Isaac Newton predicted for the apocalypse (3).  Apocalyptic-millennial thinking is nothing new to the West: it has been pervasive for two thousand years or more, and no past ‘failed’ prediction impeded believers to move on to another apocalyptic date.  To observe millennial thinking in process and its results, I’m going to briefly look at a “case study”: the Renaissance.

Before proceeding, perhaps it would be useful to differentiate between “apocalypse” and “millenarianism”. Apocalypse refers to the tragic events at the end of days: the emphasis is on catastrophe, suffering, dramatic events, portents and death. Millenarianism, on the other hand, is a belief in the transformation of the world into a better place. I see these as two sides of the same coin: apocalypse is the destructive aspect, and millenarianism the positive, constructive side. They do not have to occur together, but most often they do: a more or less dramatic change has to take place for the world to be transformed.

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During the Renaissance, scholars were convinced that the surviving Hermetic fragments – notably the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet – originated in ancient Egypt. They believed that the Hermetic manuscripts were authored by a sage called Hermes Trismegistus, who was contemporary to the Biblical Moses and the great Pharaonic civilization. The Renaissance thinkers hence regarded with reverence the Corpus, and brilliant scholars like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno and others sought to unveil the perennial wisdom contained in the Hermetic writings. A veritable revolution of ideas and letters was unleashed, with a flourishing of alchemy, magic, astrology and kabbalistic practices.

However, in 1614, a French classical scholar named Isaac Casaubon destroyed the magic of Hermes Trismegistus. He maintained, upon careful analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum, that the writings were not originating from ancient Egypt but from the 200-400 AD Greek circles, and that Hermes Trismegistus, far than being a contemporary of Moses, was rather a contemporary of the late Roman emperors. Undeniably, there are elements in the Corpus Hermeticum that mirror late antique Greek philosophy.

Casaubon’s deconstructive analysis may have dealt a deadly blow to the Renaissance belief in the antiquity of Hermetic writings, but it did not stop esoteric groups and thinkers from regarding them highly. Nevertheless, academic scholars avoided the analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum until the middle of the 20^th century.

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