Hermetica I, Hardcover Edition (Pre-Order)

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Hermetica I: The Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and Nag Hammadi Hermetica Ordered as a Path of Initiation.

Author: M. David Litwa, PhD.

The Definitive Edition with a revised Introduction, added Appendices, and Index.

By M. David Litwa, PhD.

Illustrations by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal, MA. Fount Ultd., 2026

The Hermetic corpus is a spiritual and intellectual treasure stemming from ancient Egyptian sages who could write and think in Greek. Since the Renaissance, this corpus has appeared in an order that doesn’t fit the path of spiritual initiation suggested by the corpus itself. This edition reorders the corpus—including the Latin Asclepius and the Nag Hammadi Hermetica—into four progressing parts: introductory tractates, general discourses, detailed discourses, and revelatory discourses. A focused commentary follows each tractate. The book is written for all lovers of the Hermetica, but in particular for those who are willing, in some sense, to join the way of immortality.

This volume presents the Hermetic writings as a central and enduring current within Western spirituality, born from the encounter between Egyptian religious wisdom and Greek philosophical thought in late antiquity. Composed at a time when traditional cults and forms of knowledge were under threat, the Hermetica preserve a vision of spiritual rebirth, divine knowledge, and inner transformation that continued to shape later philosophical and Christian traditions, often without acknowledgment. These texts are not peripheral speculations but articulate a serious and integrated spiritual worldview aimed at awakening higher consciousness and participation in divine life.

Rather than treating the Hermetica as a loosely assembled anthology or merely as historical documents, this book approaches them as a corpus structured by initiation and spiritual formation. Guided by indications within the texts themselves, the tractates are arranged to reflect a movement from exhortation and preparation, through doctrinal grounding, toward revelatory experience. Reading, in this context, becomes a disciplined engagement—one that ancient readers understood as capable of effecting genuine inner change rather than serving purely intellectual ends.

The Hermetic path presented here resists easy categorization. It does not collapse into abstract philosophy, nor does it reduce spiritual experience to dogma or belief. Instead, it unfolds in stages, holding together cosmology, ethics, and contemplative practice, and culminating in rebirth and direct vision of the divine realms. Apparent tensions within the corpus—between world-affirmation and renunciation, or between unity and distinction—are shown to reflect different moments within a coherent process of spiritual transformation.

Although grounded in years of careful scholarship and translation, this book is not written for specialists alone. It speaks to readers who wish to understand the historical depth of the Hermetic tradition while remaining attentive to its spiritual demands. For practitioners and academics alike, it offers an invitation to encounter the Hermetica not only as texts to be analyzed, but as writings intended to shape perception, practice, and inner life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: M. David Litwa, PhD.

Dr. Litwa's career began with a monograph on deification (becoming god) as seen through the lens of the Pauline writings (We Are Being Transformed, 2012). In 2013, he offered a general introduction to deification in Western culture from the Pharaohs to modern Transhumanists. Then in 2016, he focused on the politics and literature of self-deification (Desiring Divinity). He has twice engaged gospel literature as a witness to Jesus’s literary deification (Iesus Deus, 2014) and to a particular historiographical genre (How the Gospels Became History, 2019). A fascination with alternative Christian movements inspired him to edit and translate the anonymous Refutation of All Heresies (2016). After that came the annotated translation of important Hermetic testimonial and fragments (Hermetica II, 2018). Litwa has finished a project on angelification traditions in Hellenic and Christian literature (Posthuman Transformation, forthcoming 2021). He has published history of alternative Christian movements in the second-century CE (Found Christianities). A full book on one of these movements, the Carpocratians, came out in 2022. It contains the first ever fully commentary on "Secret Mark." Dr. Litwa's most popular book, The Evil Creator (2021), tells the secret history of how Christians like Marcion came to view the creator as evil. Late Revelations is a short, accessible argument for a late date of the final form of the Gospels and Acts. Hermetica I is a new translation of the Corpus Hermeticum based on a better edition of the Greek text.