Charles Stein is a poet and independent scholar with a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut and a bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek from Columbia University. The author of several books of poetry, including From Mimir’s Head, as well as literary works such as Persephone Unveiled and The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum, he lives in Barrytown, New York.

Preface

Introduction

The Text Itself Is the Secret
• Hermeticism Reconvened: A New Imagination of Intelligence • Hermeneutics: The Further Life of the Text as Further Life of the God • Mystical Union: Parmenides, Being, and a Divine Background to the Realm of the Gods • Hodos Agnosia: The Way of Unknowing • The Divine Background and Egypt • Greece and Egypt • A Pagan Theodicy? • A God Is a Filter for Being • Configuration • The Incursive Moment

One The Theogony of Hesiod
Translated Text
Commentary on the Theogony
• Making Gods, Making Worlds, Making Peoples, Making Poets • The Middle Voice • Self-Reference • Primordial Xaos • Genealogy, Logic, Chance • The Titans • Gender and the Gods • Form upon Chaos • Bardic Performance as Theophany • More on the Divine Background • Fate, Chance, Divination • Intransitivity • Atemporality and Eternity

Two The Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Translated Text
Commentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Hermes and Magic • The Tortoise Lyre • On the Practice of Conscious Listening • Self-Reference in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Further Notes on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Three The “Poem of Parmenides”
Translated Text
Commentary on the “Poem of Parmenides” • Parmenides as Mystic • Everything That Seems Must Seem to Be (from Fragment 1) • That Is (from Fragment 2) • To Think IS (from Fragment 3) • Indications (from Fragment 8) • The One • All NOW • Resembling “a well-rounded sphere” (from Fragment 8)

Four
Egypt
• Eternal Egypt • Egypt and Greece • The Priest Is the God for Whom He Officiates • The World as Inscription • Thoth • Our World as Counter Egypt • The Continuum • The Opening of Stone • The Pyramid

FiveThe Poimandres
Translated Text
Commentary on the Poimandres
• The Name Poimandres • Initiation and Death • Atemporal Essence and Inalienable Immediacy • Go in Fear of the Reified Invariant

Six
The Chaldean Oracles
Translated Text
Commentary on the Chaldean Oracles
• The Configuration of Apparent Being in the Chaldean Oracles • Telestics • Theurgy • The Double Womb of Hekate • Flower of Mind • A Certain Mind Thing: Poetics and Apophasis • Hekate in Hesiod • The Hounds of Hekate • The Noetic Mandala: Synthemata and the Configuration of Correspondences

Seven
“The Vision of Isis” from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius
Translated Text
Commentary on “The Vision of Isis” • Isis and Osiris • Isis and the Moon • Eros and Persephone

Eight
“On Divine Virtue” by Zosimos of Panopolis
Translated Text
Commentary on “On Divine Virtue” • The Retroflection of Quality in Technical and Theoretical Hermetica • The Dissociation of the Sensibility • The Impossibility of Alchemy • The Origin of Alchemy in Metallurgy • The Emerald Tablet and the Language of Alchemy • The Odyssey and Alchemy: Hermes and Odysseus • Notes on the Greek Magical Papyri • Magical Charge, Ritual Violence • Language and Act

Bibliography

Index