L’alchimie et la tradition hermétique

L’alchimie et la tradition hermétique

Alleau asks what the Hermetic tradition actually is, and whether its origins can be found in the literature attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Moving from Hermes and Thoth to the Pleiades, Sumerian temples and the Flood, he proposes an older priestly inheritance carried by seafaring civilizations. Myth, sacred language, navigation and metallurgy become clues to a common initiatory knowledge behind the later forms of alchemy.

1. 0:00 — Alchemy and the Hermetic tradition
2. 0:27 — Berthelot and the study of alchemy
3. 1:14 — Hermetism and modern historical research
4. 3:23 — What does Hermetic tradition mean?
5. 4:55 — Chinese and Indian alchemy
6. 5:55 — Alexandria and the Egyptian question
7. 7:25 — Greek and Egyptian divine correspondences
8. 8:26 — Thoth, the moon and the measure of time
9. 10:05 — Writing, magic and the sciences
10. 11:13 — The creative voice and the Logos
11. 13:09 — Hermes Trismegistus and the sacred books
12. 16:15 — Late literature and ancient tradition
13. 18:07 — Actium and the end of the Ptolemies
14. 21:10 — Reading myth as an archaeological clue
15. 22:40 — The genealogy of Hermes
16. 24:18 — The Pleiades across civilizations
17. 26:04 — Navigation and the serpents of Hermes
18. 28:02 — The archaeological question in Mesopotamia
19. 30:59 — Eridu and the architecture of the sanctuary
20. 33:15 — Enki and a tradition saved from the waters
21. 36:05 — Adam, Eve and the Sumerian sacred pun
22. 37:36 — The unity of the ancient priestly tradition
23. 39:00 — Metallurgy and the origins of civilization

René Alleau — 1 recording in the archive.

Related reading: Aspects de l’alchimie traditionnelle by René Alleau.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me first to thank Club 44 for honouring me with an invitation to speak to you this evening about alchemy and the Hermetic tradition. I will not conceal that this is a difficult and obscure subject: a vast historical field whose exploration is relatively recent. It was first investigated systematically at the end of the nineteenth century by the great French chemist Marcellin Berthelot and his collaborators. His works, The Origins of Alchemy in 1885, the Collection of Ancient Greek Alchemists in 1888, and the Introduction to the Study of the Chemistry of the Ancients and the Middle Ages, to mention only the principal titles, long remained the chief reference sources for historians of science. In the history of philosophy and religions, it was more recently still, only in 1944, that Father Festugière, director at the École pratique des hautes études, published his important work on the Hermetism of the Alexandrian school, The Revelation of Hermes Trismegistus. Other scholars in this field, such as Reitzenstein and [name unclear], were still pioneers at the beginning of the twentieth century. As the complexity of the questions involved became better understood, these studies developed into a specialized discipline in their own right. Important contemporary historians, including von Lippmann, Ruska, Holmyard and [name unclear], made substantial scholarly contributions. Broader investigations by Jung, Bachelard, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin also demonstrated alchemy's fundamental importance for analytical psychology and the history of religions. More recently, these investigations have extended into the history of art, particularly painting and literature, through the analyses and theses of researchers such as Van Lennep, Hartlaub and Sterling. To this very brief survey we should add related perspectives, particularly in Chinese and Indian studies. This may give you some idea of the breadth of a subject which plainly cannot be presented in a single lecture unless its examination is confined to precise and limited questions. That is why I thought a study of the relationship between alchemy and the Hermetic tradition might be of general interest, insofar as it raises a question that I consider fundamental and that has not yet been resolved. What does the expression 'Hermetic tradition' mean, and how can alchemy be connected with that tradition? In other words, I shall try to clarify certain lines of research that may illuminate the origins of Hermetism and alchemy. Although I do not claim to succeed where…