Cokky van Limpt

'Hermes conquers Europe'

Slightly enlarged text of an article which appeared in Trouw on 12 September 2002

Joost Ritman is celebrating, and where better to celebrate than in Venice, the city of light and love, where 'the divine likes to dwell'. Following a successful exhibition three years ago in Florence in 1999, the founder of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica again carried a part of his valuable collection of manuscripts and printed works back to the 'source', the sites where the ancient Hermetic tradition was re-discovered in the Renaissance. Now, five hundred years later, Hermes returns to the European city where his works were first printed.

Standing between the pigeons on the San Marco square in the heart of Venice, Ritman (61) points to one of the balconies of the Palazzo Ducale, the site of the inauguration of the exhibition Magic, Alchemy and Science from the 15th-18th centuries. The influence of Hermes Trismegistus, which took place a hundred days previously. Since that time, the Biblioteca Marciana opposite has been exhibiting a hundred manuscripts and printed books, 50 from Amsterdam and 50 from Venice. 'In March of this year, when I crossed the square together with Marino Zorzi, director of the Biblioteca Marciana, he said to me: "we are going to rekindle the flame"'.

And the flame caught on. More than 50,000 people – never before has an exhibition in the Biblioteca Marciana attracted so many visitors – mounted the stairs day after day to become enchanted by the magical appeal of the Hermetic works. Numerous Italian scholars and students, Dutch and other European visitors, Americans and Australians absorbed what the mysterious Hermes has to say.

Hermes Trismegistus ('thrice-greatest') has its roots in Antiquity, in Egypt, where Toth, god of wisdom and inventor of script, first made his appearance in the pyramid texts around 2,500 BCE. Fifteen hundred years later, around 1000 BCE, Toth is regarded by the Greeks as their god Hermes, messenger between gods and humans. Toth and Hermes become assimilated.

Sometime between the first and third centuries CE and probably in Alexandria – the Egyptian-Greek-Jewish-Christian melting pot of cultures – anonymous authors composed the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, the two best known Hermetic works. They contain revelatory texts offering insights in the origin of the world and the secrets of creation.

Hermetic thought considers God, cosmos and man to be an organic whole, a magical triangle. They are the three aspects of life. God is One and the One can never be known completely, but he manifests himself in the universe in a revealed way, particularly in man, according to the Hermetic philosophers: man bears the image of God. The Corpus Hermeticum puts it as follows: 'Man is a mortal God, God is an immortal man'. Or: 'as above, so below' – macrocosm and microcosm reflect each other.

By observing and studying the visual world, nature, forms of creation, the course of the stars and by experimenting with the four elements water, earth, air and fire, man can experience and come to know God and through this he also comes to know himself: he travels through matter to the light. 'In the Hermetic world this is called the quintessence', Ritman explains later at lunch. 'The fifth essence. The quinta essentia is a man who has reached the insight that the world of the four elements holds a connection with an invisible spiritual world'.

'But man will not be able to become aware of that connection if he only uses his rational faculties. It is also necessary for his heart to be involved, and his mind – his spiritual intuition. We read in the New Testament: "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind"'.

Because the heart and the intuition play an important role, the exhibition not only satisfies the intellectually curious. In order to familiarize the 'ordinary' visitor with Hermetic thought, a number of 'experiencable' elements have been added. There is for instance an impressive-looking well. Librarian Paola Cadelano explains: 'The well has been placed here to tell us that we must look at the source, meaning also at ourselves'. The text sculpted on the edge of the well reads: 'Visit the interior of the earth and you will find the hidden stone'. 'That hidden stone', Ritman adds, 'is the divine spark. You must reach to your innermost self in order to find the hidden key within yourself'.

The inside of the well is a construction of accumulated geometrical figures. Cadelano: 'These figures had a special significance in Antiquity. The square, for instance, symbolizes the earth, that which is below – with the four elements water, earth, fire and air – and the circle stands for perfection, the divine which is above'.

At the bottom of the well – cutting through the forms of the 'prima materia', as it were – there is a mirror, positioned exactly below a ceiling painting of Titian representing the patroness of Wisdom, Sapientia. The visitor looks at her and at the same time at himself. Sapientia herself also looks in a mirror which is held up by Eros, the god of love. 'Wisdom', Cadelano adds, 'regards itself in the mirror. It means she obtains profound wisdom by looking inward – with a loving gaze, because it is love which enables her to look in the mirror'.

The successful exhibition in Venice which, according to Cadelano, gave a new impetus to Italian research into the impact of the Hermetica on the arts and architecture of the Renaissance, is a sequel to the exhibition Marsilio Ficino and the Return of Hermes Trismegistus, which opened in Florence in 1999. Both events took place at the initiative of Joost Ritman and his library staff. The exhibition in Florence focussed on one of the major Renaissance philosophers, Marsilio Ficino. He moved in the circles of the Medici, affluent bankers to whom Ritman likes to refer, because they did not amass their wealth, but invested it in the arts and in culture. Ritman: 'They well understood that the important thing is not what you own, but what you leave behind'.

Ficino presided over the Platonic Academy which had assembled around Cosimo de Medici in Florence. At the latter's request Ficino translated the works of Greek philosophers into Latin, including all of Plato's work. Ficino was also commissioned by Cosimo to produce the first Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, after a Greek manuscript acquired by Cosimo in 1462. This codex was of course one of the highlights of the exhibition in Florence in 1999.

As this manuscript was long held to be the oldest preserved copy of the Corpus, the emergence of an even older Greek manuscript copy of the Corpus Hermeticum from the treasures of the Marciana, which came to light while research for the exhibition was in progress, caused quite a stir amongst the Italian and Dutch library staffs. This copy came from the library of Cardinal Bessarion, who, as it turned out, was already in the possession of a copy of the Corpus Hermeticum two years before Cosimo acquired his. The exhibition in the Marciana proudly opens with this precious manuscript once owned by Bessarion.

In Florence Ficino and the Medici were the pivotal figures; in Venice the exhibition revolves around this same Bessarion (1400-1472). He was one of the illustrious Greek scholars who contributed to the re-discovery of Greek philosophy in the West. A Byzantine humanist and neoplatonist philosopher, Bessarion left his traces both in the Eastern-Orthodox and in the Roman Catholic Churches. Born in Trabzon (Turkey) and bred in Constantinople, he rose to become archbishop of Nicea, patriarch of Constantinople and Cardinal in Rome.

When after the Council of Ferrara and Florence in 1438 Greek Orthodox resistance against the unification plans with the Latin church mounted, he decided to move to Italy permanently, bringing with him his entire library: cases filled with Greek philosophical and Hermetic works. In 1468, four years before his death, he bequeathed his literary legacy to the city of Venice: the starting capital of the present Marciana.

'He introduced the Greek world to the West', Ritman says with admiration. 'When in 1453 Constantinople fell to the Turks and Byzantium perished, a new font of wisdom sprang up in Italy. This exhibition will acquaint you with that birth moment: ancient knowledge is being carried over into another culture with another language. That original ancient culture disappears for inexplicable reasons and the tradition is transferred to a new place and a new era. That is the point: it perishes, but you must each time try to rescue it. It persishes even though it is imperishable, so you are carrying the seed of the tradition over to a new soil, a new city, a new land. And in this way the Hermetic tradition continually renews itself, into the present'.

Paola Cadelano likens 'signor' Ritman with noticeable appreciation to the fifteenth-century Bessarion. Both began collecting rare books from their youth and both turned their collections into a library which allowed the heritage of the past to be preserved for future generations. Bessarion effortlessly combined the Hermetic revelation with the Christian one. In doing so he introduced the spatiality of the Greek-Christian world into the confining framework of scholasticism. This generated an enormous influence on theology and philosophy, science, arts and architecture. The invention of printing carried the works of Hermes far and wide. But around the beginning of the 17th century, the pressure of the Inquisition made it dangerous, even impossible, to print books relating to this 'heretical' subject. Many a great mind, amongst whom Giordano Bruno, died at the stake for convictions then considered heretical. Once again Hermes had to move, this time to find a home amongst affiliated minds and printing-houses in Northern Europe. The entire second part of the exhibition as a result focusses on books printed outside Italy.

People like the 17th-century German mystic Jacob Böhme and the adherents of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood salvaged and disseminated the message of Hermes in yet another culture, in another place. In the Age of Enlightenment, the mechanical world picture more and more displaced the organic cosmology of the Hermetists, although Hermetic thought never quite disappeared. The Rosicrucians in particular guarded the originally Greek heritage. Joost Ritman, himself a Rosicrucian, is a living example. Dutch translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius have been brought out by the library's publishing house In de Pelikaan. And librarian Carlos Gilly heads an elaborate research programme.

The discovery in Egypt of the Nag Hammadi codices (1945) and the translation of these almost two-thousand-year-old gnostic-Christian, Hermetic and Platonic texts, again brought Hermes, a phoenix of Western civilization, to light – this time reaching an even wide audience.

Amsterdam is now undoubtedly the Hermetic focus of Europe: Amsterdam University has a Chair in Hermetic philosophy, but what is more, the city boasts the unique library founded by Ritman. In addition to Hermetic, mystical and alchemical books and manuscripts, the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica houses the largest collection of Rosicrucian works in the world.

Ritman was decorated twice this year for his achievements: he was invested with the Order of the Dutch Lion and he also received the silver medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 'I look upon these awards as a recognition, but also as an acknowledgement of the importance which the universal Hermetic knowledge can have for the renewal of the scholarship and the arts.'

The next extensive project Ritman and his staff will undertake is called 'Magical Amsterdam, city of Hermes and Jacob Böhme'. 'With this title we wish to demonstrate that the spiritual powers of inspiration are also embedded in the cement and in the water of Amsterdam'.