Rating: 
Summary: More uninformed onesided favortism
Review: If ppl are going to make comments like, Hermetica predates the concepts of osiris(ausar) and isis(auset) then it would help if u show proof! The Egyptian concepts of god self and the material universe of alchemy are older than the Hermeticum which was just a copy of it by the western invaders athens(greeks)or a(hittite)group. There is historical evidence to support this claim, go to Egypt talk with the sufi's or any well known unbias anthropologist, archeologist,geologist, etc and also look at the artifacts which have been carbon dated as preceding the hermetica by 500 or more yrs besides ppls misconception of Egyptians explanation of the neteru as the attributes of one enitity speaks volumes lmao! the Egyptians also taught that everything came from a singular source which could only be known by its attributes and not as the god lmao or the male dominate figure hmmm! very sexist and patriarch tsk tsk. This book is like many other books that reveal the truth, always shot down.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to the Hermetica
Review: Speaking from the perspective of a fundamentalist Christian, this book has a lot of very revealing information concerning one of the most influential collections of literature on early Christian philosophers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. It's just one more reason that Christians should avoid philosophy altogether (Col. 2:9). Even so, it's well worth the time to read it. Did the idea of being "born again now" have its origin, in part, in the Hermetica? Possibly. Did the idea of mystic contemplation of the unknowable god, in contradistinction to Jer. 9:23-24, have its origin, in part, in the Hermetica? Again, possibly. This book is a good place to begin such investigative studies.This book gives only an overview of the material contained in the Hermetica. For more advanced studies, I would recommend "The Egyptian Hermes" by Garth Fowden and "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition" by Frances Yates. What's annoying is that a bibliography is given at the end of the book, but there are NO FOOTNOTES in the text. Comments such as "The pyramid texts of Saqquara...are over 5000 years old and yet contain doctrines that are identical to those expounded in the Hermetica [which were composed, most likely from pre-existing material, in the 2nd and/or 3rd cent. AD]" may or may not be found in the texts in the bibliography. There's no easy way to tell, other than purchasing and reading the listed titles. It's even more annoying that one of the books in the bibliography is badly misrepresented. The author's name is Lucie Lamy, not Lucy Lamy, and the title is "Egyptian Mysteries: New Light on Ancient Knowledge" not "The Mysteries of Ancient Egypt." This is the one that the aforementioned comment most likely came from, but it took me several weeks to realize the authors' mistake. Okay, I'm done griping now. Enjoy the read. :-)
Rating: 
Summary: well sumaarized
Review: The book is very easy to read and follow: which is the intention of the authors. The chapters are excellently introduced and short. I liked also the authors arguments that the Hermetica is an ancient Egyptian wisdom, and NOT Greek. Hermes is a Greek god equated to Tehuti: Tehuti (Egyptian) is the author of the "Hermetica", who is also called Thoth, or Hermes. The focus of the book is on the origin of existence and its intricacies. A good summarized book on Hermetic wisdom.
Rating: 
Summary: Book Description
Review: The first accessible translation of the great forgotten Egyptian classic that has influenced Western thought for more than five thousand years. The Hermetica is a classic piece of sacred literature, believed to have been written around 3000 B.C. by the Egyptian sage Hermes. So revered and honored was Hermes, and so great was his wisdom, that he was given the title Trismegistus, meaning "thrice-great," and was eventually considered a god. His writings, which influenced much of ancient Egyptian and Greek and modern Western thought and civilization, are without question as important as such well-known Eastern scriptures including the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, and the Tao Te Ching. In the past, translations of this ancient book were written primarily for scholars, archaeologists, and anthropologists. Now Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, two respected scholars of Western religion and philosophy, have done painstaking research to present a collection of excerpts that are easily understood by and relevant to, today's reader. Providing a fascinating introduction to the mystical philosophy of ancient Egypt and Greece that has shaped our world for five millennia, The Hermetica is a book for anyone interested in the first great Western civilization or in the knowledge of sacred traditions from all corners of the world. TIMOTHY FREKE is the author of many books on mystical philosophy, including The Tao Te Ching and, with PETER GANDY, The Complete Guide to World Mysticism.
Rating:
Summary: Easy To Understand Interpretation
Review: The Hermetica at only 160 pages can be read in only one day if the reader chooses to rush through it. Mr. Freke and Mr. Gandy has a casual writing style that makes it possible to do so if the reader desires to just glean the surface of the contents. It's highly inadvisable. This is a book to own and meditate on the deeper meanings of its contents. The works of Hermes were collated in the city of Alexandria in Egypt during the second and third centuries CE. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city and the citizens were known for their desire for knowledge. But the golden age of Alexandria ended when the Christian 'Holy' Roman Empire came into power and a millennium period came in known as the Dark Ages. The owners of the Hermetic books continually had to find a sanctuary where they could feel safe. One place was the city of Florence, which ended the Dark Ages and started the Renaissance. The main idea in Hermes' teaching is God as Cosmic Consciousness. Similar ideas seems to me to be in other mystic outlooks of other religions. As a person who has an interest in all religions and spiritual writings and traditions this is a great little book. You can take this book and read just a few pages a day and ponder its meaning on different chapters. Over time, your understanding will increase and deepen. The only part I personally didn't care for is the astrological parts of the writings. This is inherent to the Hermetica and not the fault of Mr. Freke and Mr. Gandy. They are the interpreters. Due to my own personal tastes and beliefs I choose to ignore that part but it is still a beautiful way to explore the meaning of life. I also like to compare religions and I see many other mystical viewpoints in it and it helps expand my understanding of life. I highly recommend buying this book.
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Summary: Invaluable for Seekers of Truth
Review: The Introduction is a fantastic review of Hermes/Thoth, the library at Alexandria and the struggle to keep this valuable knowledge preserved. The main text is very easy to read and has a larger print to assist. Each chapter is fascinating and the sources for each chapter of the text are provided as is a 'further reading' list. For the knowledge within this text, the price of the book is insignificant, indeed! Can't recommend enough.
Rating: 
Summary: A nibble of the Hermetica
Review: This book is the condensed crib-note version of the Hermetica. You can read it entirely on one cross town bus trip. It's enough to peak curiosity, but this is such a small extract of the entire Hermetica that it's nearly useless. It's just a sound-bite.
Rating:
Summary: A nibble of the Hermetica
Review: This book is the condensed crib-note version of the Hermetica. You can read it entirely on one cross town bus trip. It's enough to peak curiosity, but this is such a small extract of the entire Hermetica that it's nearly useless. It's just a sound-bite.
Rating: 
Summary: an insipid new age pastiche of the Hermetica
Review: This book really gives very little idea of the majestic scope, philosophic depth and range of authentic Hermeticism: it in effect just provides a watered-down New Age pastiche carefully censoring out those tractates from the original 'Corpus Hermeticum' which teach an uncompromising Iranian-derived Spirit-Matter dualism and pessimist Gnosis concerning the material world or other presently unfashionable ideas.Even those translations of the 'Hermetica' now considered outdated such as those of W.Scott and G.R.S. Mead are vastly preferable and the Scott text published by Shambala is a far better investment and contains the whole 18 complete tractates and Stobaea Hermetica to boot. Avoid this insipid conflation of watered-down extracts and turn instead to the real wisdom-teaching of Hermes Trismegistos.
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Summary: Not the Wisdom of the Pharaohs!
Review: Unfortunately this is a terribly pointless book that splices questionable "translations" of arbitrary excerpts from the corpus hermeticum together to make up a whole new series of poems. The relationship between these poems to the original ideas is left unclear, and you must basically rely on the understanding and synthesis of the ideas by the authors. Given any book and one can splice random segments together to say just about anything, and the qualifications of the authors seem unclear at best. What is unfortunately clear is that they mostly want to sell the book to silly new agers, not to anyone who may have a serious interest in the original ideas and their sources, which are an interesting multi-cultural mishmash of late pagan neoplatonism, Christianity and yes, local but very degenerated Egyptian folk ideas. The arguments about the relationship to very ancient Egyptian ideas is totally feeble, and has no basis is fact. What is clear is there are no sources in the actual (and extensive) ancient Egyptian texts that have survived that give any credence to the hypothesis that real corpus hermeticum is some kind of faithful transmission of ancient Egyptian ideas (especially not from the time of the old kingdom) much less this hopelessly re-edited mishmash. If you want to learn about real ancient Egyptian religious ideas about the cosmos there are plenty of translations of the real thing. If you are interested in the origin of hermetic ideas you would be better off buying another book, either a real translation, or any honest book on the subject. The shallowness of this book is for me summarized by the silly meaningless hieroglyphics that are included along side of the text, presumably to convince somebody that the poems are a kind of translation of the ancient Egyptian (for example, they stop just where the text of the poems stop). Of course the hieroglyphics are just a decoration, with the same meaningless series of signs repeated over and over again. They haven't even tried to reproduce the actual appearance of real hieroglyphics. The whole book smacks of a deliberate manipulation in favor of something that might sell well to shallow new agers. This books should be called not "The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs" but "The Wisdom of Freke and Gandy", something which clearly has questionable value. They get no points from me for their poem since they so deliberately obscure the actual sources of their composition (not translation!).
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