Esoteric traditions are, well, esoterically complex as a rule, and that goes especially for Hermes Trismegistus, the emblematic figure representing--even personifying--the Western Esoteric tradition in its long and convoluted history. Who is he? Good question. Perhaps he's indeed a highly complex amalgam of the Egyptian god Thoth, the classical gods Hermes and Mercury, a priest in Alexandrian Egypt, and a legendary human sage roughly contemporary with Moses--among other things. God or man, angel or devil, master alchemist or proto-pharmacist, culture hero or trickster? Depends on who you ask. For anyone interested in this subject, then, it's all too easy to get lost without some guideposts of some sort.



And that's exactly what Antoine Faivre provides in "The Eternal Hermes" here. It's an excellently helpful overview, road-map, or starter kit, if you will. A collection of six separate articles, it gives the curious reader a good solid grasp of the general outlines of Hermes Trismegistus in a sympathetically objective scholarly tone. Chapter one, "Hermes in the Western Imagination" traces in as much detail as possible under the circumstances the varying influences contributing to Hermes' composite character and differing perceptions and characterizations of him throughout history from antiquity to the present. Chapter two, "The Children of Hermes and the Science of Man" attempts to define this figure's distinguishing orientations and spiritual traits (and of the movements which recognize him as their guardian and inspiration). Chapter Three, "From Hermes-Mercury to Hermes Trismegistus: The Confluence of Myth and the Mythical" focuses more on Hermes' slippery nature somewhere between deity and pseudo-historical personage, with obscure half-states in between.



Chapter four, "Hermes's Presence in the City" then remarkably demonstrates how the figure of Hermes, perhaps under other names but recognizable nonetheless, can be identified and analyzed in works of modern culture, both literature and film--in this case, Gustav Meyrink's novel "The Green Face", Luis Bunuel's film "Los Olvivados", and the sci-fi action movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome". Places where one might not think to look at first, certainly. Chapter Five, "The Faces of Hermes Trismegistus" is a quick but illuminating survey of Hermes' iconography over time, as shown through 39 illustrations culled from any number of rare manuscripts and other cool sources. Finally Chapter Six, "The Inheritance of Alexandrian Hermetism: Historical and Bibliographical Landmarks" is perhaps the ultimate "further reading" list, lightly narrativized with commentary and infinitely helpful in creating order out of a chaos of sources.



Of course, if the book has one drawback, it's that, at under 200 pages, depth must be sacrificed to breadth. Faivre will often hint at what seem like mind-blowingly fascinating tales and legends only to seem pressed to move along without further ado. Furthermore, those for whom Hermeticism (or some related form of Western Esotericism) is a living spiritual path might find this book a bit dry and detached. Those coming at the subject with more academic and/or historical concerns in mind will be less distracted by this, naturally. Folks of either approach (and in-between) though will doubtlessly find this book to be enormously informative, and the manner in which it usefully lends a modicum of organization to what otherwise at first seems to be an impossibly confusing welter of stuff will facilitate further and deeper investigations according to one's own guiding lights.