Floor mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus in the Cathedral of Siena, Italy, c. 1485
29 December 2020
A hermetic seal is an air-tight one, but why is it associated with Hermes, the Greek messenger god?
The association goes back to the beginnings of the philosophical movement of Neo-Platonism in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century C.E. In the classical world, Hermes, a god of communication, was often associated with the Egyptian god Thoth, a god of wisdom and secrecy. They were often combined in a deity labeled Hermes Trismegistus, that is Thrice-Great Hermes, and various core Neo-Platonic works were ascribed to this deity. The occult pseudoscience of alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry, arose out of this Neo-Platonic school.
In English, the adjective hermetic originally referred to alchemy. We see it appear in this general sense in a 1624 book about numerology, another occult practice, by William Ingpen, in which he refers to Joseph Duschesne, a.k.a. Josephus Quercetanus, a noted alchemist, as a hermetic:
There are fiue things rise among those Paracelsians, which they call as Elements; Elementa, matrices, agri, ventriculi, minerae, treated of by Quercetanus, an excellent Hermetick and Spagyrick.
(Spagyric also refers to alchemy, so Ingpen is a bit redundant here.)
But the association of seals with Hermes Trismegistus in English is even older. The phrase Hermes seal appears in a 1559 translation of Swiss naturalist Konrad Gesner’s Thesaurus Euonymi Philiatri, which gives a succinct description of how alchemists achieved an air-tight seal:
Of Hermes seal, that is, of ioyning together the mouthes of glasen vessels with a paire of hot burning tonges softlye thrusting them together, and how after they oughte to be opened againe, reade Vlstadius. cap. 20.
The phrase hermetic seal appears by 1650 in a translation of alchemist Arthur Dee’s Fasciculus chemicus. The translator was Elias Ashmole, an alchemist and antiquary whose collection formed the core of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University:
You shall make choise of a forme of the glassy Vessell round in the bottom or cucurbit, or at least ovall, the neck an hand breadth long or more, large enough, with a straight mouth, made like a Pitcher or Jugg, continued & uncutt and thick in every part, that it may resist a long, and sometimes an acute Fire: The cucurbit or Bolts head is called blind, because its eye is blinded with the Hermetick seal, lest any thing from without should enter in, or the Spirit steal out.
Hermetic seal can also be used figuratively, as seen in this 1663 sermon by Jeremy Taylor at the funeral of John Bramhall, the Anglican archbishop of Ireland:
But in the whole Christs Resurrection and ours is the Α and Ω of a Christian; that as Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to day, and the same for ever; so may we in Christ, become in the morrow of the Resurrection the same or better then yesterday in our natural life; the same body and the same soul tied together in the same essential union, with this onely difference, that not Nature but Grace and Glory with an Hermetick seal give us a new signature, whereby we shall no more be changed, but like unto Christ our head we shall become the same for ever.
Word origins are not always straightforward and obvious, but when they aren’t, there’s almost invariably some interesting historical tidbits involved.
Sources:
Dee, Arthur. Fasciculus chemicus or Chymical Collections. James Hasolle (Elias Ashmole), trans. London: J. Flesher for Richard Mynne, 1650, 241. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Gesner, Konrad. The Treasure of Euonymus Conteyninge the Wonderfull Hid Secretes of Nature. London: John Daie, 1559, 66. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Ingpen, William. The Secrets of Numbers. London: Humphry Lowns for John Parker, 1624, 43. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hermetic, adj. and n., seal, n.2.
Taylor, Jeremy. A Sermon Preached in Christs-Church Dublin, July 16, 1663, at the Funeral of the Most Reverend Father in God, John [Bramhall], Late Lord Archbishop of Armaugh, and Primate of all Ireland, third edition, enlarged. London: J.G. for Richard Royston, 1663, 6–7. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: unknown photographer, public domain image.