Hermeticism - Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser: Faerie Queene
Hermeticism
Originally, the traditions deriving from the Hermetica, mystical writing of the Hellenistic period attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the mythical archpriest and descendant of the Egyptian god Thoth.
The Hermetic teachings show a blend of Neoplatonism early Christian influences complemented by elements of non-classical and non-Christian tenets. Babylonian and Egyptian philosophy and Jewish Gnosticism contributed the belief that chaos can be a source of life, that creation is a recurrent process, and that man is divinely creative and can be axalted to the level of God. Since in the Corpus hermeticum the creation-myth of the first man (Anthropos) bears some resemblance to the story of Adam in Genesis, these texts gave rise to a Christian interpretation as early as the time of the Church Fathers, but it was the Renaissance Neoplatonists who drew special attention to Hermeticism.
Ficino¡¦s translation of the Hermetic texts in 1471 gave rise t...