The Man with Too Many Faces

Thoth keeps showing up wearing someone else’s face

The ancient portal to adventure awaits the one who clicks this image.

I’ve got a soft spot for what’s known as comparative mythology—the strange intersections of myth, mystery, and history across sometimes disparate cultures worldwide. I like exploring the half-lit places. The shadows between old stories and forgotten truths. The spots on the map where all the labels have rubbed off, and you have no idea what’s buried underneath.

A story I’m currently hooked on is Hermes Trismegistus.

The Thrice-Great One

Hermes Trismegistus—whose name means “Hermes the Thrice-Great”—is the alleged author of a set of ancient texts known as the Hermetica. These writings blend Greek philosophy, Egyptian cosmology, early mysticism, astrology, and something we’d now call proto-science... the art of alchemy.

All other names aside, what we’re talking about is the pursuit of divine knowledge. The idea that wisdom is a pattern written into the structure of the universe—and that some people, under the right conditions, can read it.

Scholars tell us that Hermes Trismegistus isn’t one person, but a fusion of two cultural heavyweights:

Hermes, the Greek god of knowledge, speed, communication, and trickery.

Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, and time.

Two figures, two different mythologies, blended together under Hellenistic rule in Egypt, and merged into a single figure that a whole lot of people believed was a real historical person.

While modern historians are quick to call Hermes Trismegistus a myth, the ancient world took him seriously. Philosophers like Plato and Iamblichus referenced him in their writings. Early Christian and Islamic thinkers preserved his works. Alchemists in the Renaissance practically worshipped the guy. Even Sir Isaac Newton, one of the founding fathers of physics, translated parts of the Hermetica.

Totally a coincidence that one of the smartest people in history believed in and studied alchemy. Move along. Nothing to see here.

To them, this stuff wasn’t metaphor. This was scripture, science, spirituality... all rolled into one.

They had their reasons. And those reasons went way back.

The Link to Thoth

It’s pronounced like “both.” I know some are wondering.

In Egyptian myth, Thoth is the scribe of the gods. He’s credited with inventing writing, establishing the laws of the cosmos, and maintaining the balance of Ma’at—the concepts of order, harmony, truth. Thoth was sometimes depicted as an ibis-headed man (a long-necked bird with a sharp, curved beak), sometimes as a baboon, and always as a figure who stood at the edge of things: life and death, divine and mortal, chaos and order.

He didn’t command armies or hurl lightning bolts. He wrote things down. Mostly he wrote down what he understood about how the universe works. And the weird thing is, despite living approximately five-thousand years ago, he tended to get things pretty close. Often dead-on.

And he got around.

If you start digging into cross-cultural connections, you find echoes of Thoth all over the place. One such echo is the Biblical figure of Enoch, from Genesis, who walked with God and who apparently never died, because God took him directly to heaven.

There’s Metatron (not a Transformer), the scribe-angel who records the deeds of humanity in Jewish mysticism. In viking lore there’s Odin, who hung on Yggdrasil to gain secret knowledge. In Mesoamerica there’s Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent who brings language and law to the people.

There are enough gods and men in this list to form their own pantheon, and they all do the same thing:

They bridge the gap between heaven and earth. They take what is unknowable, and try to make it knowable.

More Than Myth

Back to Hermes Trismegistus. What makes him so strange isn’t just the myth—it’s how much of what’s attributed to him has gone on to shape real-world history. It’s a Trismegistus world, and we’re just living in it.

The Hermetica wasn’t just mythological musing. It seeded alchemy, Renaissance humanism, Rosicrucianism, even elements of Freemasonry. It shows up in everything from Shakespeare to Jung to Aleister Crowley (not a good guy... I’ll have to write something about him some other time). Hermetic principles—like the phrase “as above, so below”—continue to influence spiritual seekers and speculative thinkers to this day.

Really hoping no one is taking inspiration from Aleister Crowley.

Even modern quantum physicists have pointed out that Hermeticism’s view of interconnectedness echoes concepts like entanglement and resonance. Not because Trismegistus had a particle collider, but because the ancients intuitively grasped patterns we’re only now quantifying.

Basically, Hermes Trismegistus was effectively the father of alchemy, and alchemy was effectively the root of modern science. Chemistry and physics—both Newtonian and quantum—have their roots in alchemy.

So was Hermes Trismegistus real?

There’s doubt. He may not have been real, in the passport-and-birth-certificate sense. Honestly, the verdict is still out.

But honestly, can you tell me with absolute certainty that any historical figure existed? Once we get past a couple hundred years ago, evidence tends to become anecdotal. We’re all just taking some history book writer’s word on everything, in the end.

It’s hard for me to believe, though, that a figure documented so extensively, with so much attributed to him across multiple cultures, was just a figment of the world’s imagination. Occam’s Razor alone dictates that it’s more likely the stories are based on a real person than the notion that so many people accidentally made up the same guy.

I should confess: I am a true believer, in God mostly. But one thing I’ve never been able to make myself believe in is coincidence.

I’m also skeptical about coffee alternatives that “taste just like coffee,” by the way.

So ultimately, I have to weigh in on the side of “probably existed.” Might not have had mystical powers (remains to be seen). May or may not have figured out how to make the Philosopher’s Stone and live forever (science can get weird). But I think there’s enough story here to indicate someone is at the heart of it, regardless of the rest.

The Face Behind the Mask

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the idea that maybe Hermes Trismegistus isn’t just a composite figure—but a cipher. A mask for an even older story. One that shows up in different robes, under different names, in different languages.

We keep telling the same story. Maybe the figure who brings truth and wisdom and divine insight to humanity—who risks being misunderstood or killed for it—is perhaps a kind of archetype. One we need to keep rediscovering.

So we probably will.

A NOTE AT THE END

Recently I wrapped up the book I’m co-writing with JD Barker. It’s in line for some copyediting now—the great typo hunt. Once that’s done and corrections are made, it makes its way through the rest of the process—layout, cover, beta readers. And it will get a release date. It’s close. I’m excited, and JD seems to be as well. I think you, too, will love it.

In the meantime, I’ve got more books to write.

I put things on a kind of pause while I did this book. I needed to do that. I had gone through this moment in my life where I was severely burnt out, to the point that writing became painful. That scared me, if I’m being honest.

Writing is such a big part of my life, of who I am, that losing it would mean losing me. That’s how it feels, anyway.

I also needed to take my time with it because I was doing something different than I’ve done in the past. This book had a different trajectory, a different purpose. It meant a lot. Maybe not more than my other books, but in context, in that moment in time... well, it sort of did mean more.

I needed to write that book. I needed to prove to myself that I could. And now that I have, it’s like I got a kind of reset. I’m back. I’m writing more.

The book I’m currently working on is not a Kotler book. I need to say that now, because I do get a lot of people asking.

I’m not done with Kotler. Or Alex Kayne. I have books already waiting to be written in both of those series. But I needed to put my attention on something a little different, once I finished the book with JD. I needed something “the same but different.” The same general genre and energy as that other book, but different enough that it’s not a clone.

That’s because I had a realization: When that book does release, and if it does as well as I think it will, it might have people looking for another book just like it(ish). And while there are some similarities between that book and my Kotler and Kayne books, I feel like there needs to be more of a bridge.

All this stuff about Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus is part of what I’m pulling together. I’m exploring this story a bit further, and I think I’m doing it in a way that readers will find surprising and enjoyable. I think you’re going to like it, in other words.

I’m fresh into this thing. I’m about 15% into a first, rough draft. So there will be some time before it’s ready to go to prime time. But I’ll keep you updated on progress, and especially on when it’s nearing completion.

But I can already tell that this book has the old mojo in it. I can tell that I’m back.

And it feels really good to be back.

If you can’t wait for those two books...

You can always pick up something from my library. There are around 70 titles available, from your favorite bookshop. Go peruse the catalog at https://kevintumlinson.com/books and find your new favorite.