THE ETERNAL HERMES: FRO GREEK GOD TO ALCHEMICAL MAGUS

PREFACE

The title of this collection encompasses two figures who are both
distinct and complementary: Hermes-Mercurius, the God with the
caduceus, who belongs to Greek and Roman mythology, and
Hermes Trismegistus, whose appearance can be traced back to the
early Alexandian epoch. Each of the six chapters stands on its own,
having been published separately, and deals either with the God
Hermes, or with Hermes Trismegistus-or with both. Given the
similar inspiration running through all six essays, David Fideler
and Joscelyn Godwin suggested that they might constitute an
anthology endowed with some homogeneity. Therefore, for the
purpose of the present edition, the articles in this volume have been
for the most part corrected and enlarged, and their inevitable
overlappings have been reduced. In their original version, they were
published as follows:

Chapter 1: "Hermès," in Dictionnaire des mythes littéraires, ed
Pierre Brunel (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1988), pp.705-732.

Chapter 2: "The Children of Hermes and the Science of Man,
published in English in Hermeticism in the Renaissano
(Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europel,
ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Washington: The
Folger Shakespeare Library; London and Toronto: Associated
Presses, 1988), pp.24-48. From Symposium held in March
1982, at the Institute for Renaissance and Eighteenth Century
Studies in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C

Chapter 3: "D'Hermès-Mercure à Hermès Trismégiste: au
confluent du mythe et du mythique," in Présence d'Hermès
Trismégiste, ed. Antoine Faivre and Frédérick Tristan (Paris
Albin Michel, series "Cahiers de l'Hermétisme," 1988). From
Symposium held in July, 1985, in Cerisy-La-Salle on "The
Myth and the Mythical.'"

Chapter 4: "Présence d'Hermès dans la ville (Le Picatrix, Gustav
Meyrink, Luis Buñuel, George Miller)," in O Imaginário da...