Hermeticism and Kabbalah. On the historical connection between Hermetic and Jewish mysticism

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Hermeticism draws not from the classical Hermetic Corpus but from medieval Jewish and Arabic traditions, particularly through Kabbalistic works that emerged from the Spanish Renaissance of Alfonso X. Recent scholarship suggests a synthesis of Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Jewish mystical philosophy predates Pico, challenging Frances Yates's claim that he first supplemented Hermeticism with Kabbalah. The connection between the two traditions may have roots in the Hellenistic period, as textual inconsistencies in Hermetic treatises could reflect original philosophical content rather than later interpolations. Hermeticism originally a mystical anthropological doctrine, gradually shifted toward astrology, attracting diverse authors from antiquity to the Renaissance.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Hermes of Pico della Mirandola has nothing in common with the hero of the treatise Asclepius and the texts of the Hermetic Corpus. Pico's gaze is directed deep into the medieval Jewish and, eventually, Arabic tradition. More precisely, through the cabbalistic works, for the first time available to the bright representative of the Italian Renaissance, there came to life the fruits of another Renaissance, the Spanish Renaissance of Alfonso X de Castilla (1252–1284), while through the “Sabian” magic Hermeticism became an integral part of Jewish mystical philosophy. According to modern studies, by this time we can speak of the beginning of the synthesis of Kabbalah and Hermeticism in mystical Jewish philosophy (Idel 2003, 395 sq.). So one can now qualify Frances Yates's (1964) famous statement that only by the efforts of Pico della Mirandola that Hermeticism was “supplemented” by Kabbalah. To what extent than one can argue that the connection between Hermeticism and Kabbalah is not accidental, but prepared by contacts between Jewish philosophy and Hermeticism at the earliest stages of their formation, perhaps as early as the Hellenistic period? Such a connection is assumed by many authors, since, from the point of view of the internal criterion, we cannot be sure that all the textual inconsistencies in the treatises of the Hermetic corpus are necessarily later interpolations, much less the interventions of the later and practically oriented astrologer, as Ch. Wildberg (2013) believes, because there is nothing in them that could not have been written by a philosopher of the Hellenistic or Roman period. It is nevertheless clear that, originally being a mystical anthropological doctrine, Hermeticism steadily moved in an astrological direction, which made it attractive to the most diverse authors from antiquity to modern times, and one of the most enigmatic and colorful philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, thought himself to be their successor.