The Hermetic tradition focuses in on the god Hermes Trismegistus. This gods name means Thrice Great Hermes and is the name that the Greeks gave to the Egyptian god Thoth. The tradition teaches that “the material world is corrupt and inferior, and that humanity contains within itself an element from a higher level of existence to which people should strive to return.”(Rives, pp. 167)I had a hard time finding specific aspects that the god possess, but I think that he is associated with this higher aspect of humanity. The Hermetic tradition teaches that salvation is possible through learning this true nature. The text Poimandres says, “life and light are god and father, from whom the man came to be; so if you learn that you are from light and life, and you happen to come from them, you shall advance to life once again”.(Rives, pp. 179)

In the Corpus Hermeticum XIII dialogue, Tat learns that the material world and the material body are illusions, something lesser than the true form. By knowing this truth the lower form can be escaped and the higher level can be entered into. Hermes makes it clear that this knowledge is a gift from the creator god and is already present in man, “This kind of knowledge is not taught, O son, but through God it is remembered, whenever he wills.”(Corpus Hermeticum XIII.3) To achieve this Hermes tells Tat that he must retreat into himself and separate himself from the material world. “Make idle the senses of the body and the spirit will be born” (Corpus Hermeticum XIII.7). This enlightened state of mind is described as a sort unity or presence with all things. To have “Nous”, Hermes says is “to no longer picture oneself with regard to the three dimensional body” (Corpus Hermeticum XIII.13).

This text fits into Rives discussion of religious esoterica in Chapter 6 fairly neatly. The text offers a divine wisdom and interaction with the divine that Rives lays out on page 162. The Hermetic tradition offers a path to salvation that seems similar to me to the Gnostic tradition, a point that Rives also makes. To go a bit further, when removed from contextI don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that some of the passages sound a bit Christian in general. The advantage of the dialogue genre has when discussing salvation is that the knowledge of salvation and how to attain it can be shown to come directly from the source. If this knowledge is shown in a text as coming right from a god or divinity then I think that would go a long way to making it more credible.