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ENDRE ÁDÁM HAMVAS My aim in this paper is to prove the following propositions: 1. There are traces of initiation rituals in Hermetic literature. 2. The Hermetic initiation rituals are a special kind of religious practice which can be called the spiritualization of the ritual. This spiritualization means a kind of spiritual interpretation of the empirical ritual. The function of this spiritualization process is to internalize the empirical ritual, which was considered materialistic and therefore alien to the real nature of God. 3. I will examine some elements of this spiritualized ritual: the baptism and the drinking of the life-giving potion. 4. I will demonstrate through some early Christian texts that the spiritual or symbolic interpretation of baptism and the drinking of the life-giving potion were known not only to the Hermetic authors, and these examples provide evidence that other religious communities used this method of spiritual interpretation as well. This will lead us to my main thesis, that the examples of spiritual rituals are evidence of the Hermetic initiation and that, hence, the spiritualization of the empirical rituals represented (and should be understood as) a special kind of religious practice. 2. THE NATURE OF HERMETIC INITIATION The above statement means that a person who wants to be initiated undergoes the process of initiation voluntarily, and in the course of this initiation, the whole of his or her personality gets a new, divine character.® This is certainly true of the Hermetic mysteries. These dialogues take place between two or three people (as in the case of the Latin Asclepius), and in the course of a specific dialogue, it can be seen that the person who manages the dialogue is the mystagogue, while the others who raise questions about the nature of the cosmos, God, and mankind are his sons, though not his biological but rather his spiritual sons. This can be noticed, for instance, in CH XIII, where Tat—who is probably also the biological son of Hermes— makes a strange statement, as he does not understand his father’s teaching: Father, what you tell me is impossible and contrived, and so I want to respond to it straightforwardly: I have been born a son strange to his father’s lineage. Do not begrudge me, father; 1 am your lawful son.’ About the meaning of initiation rituals in general, see Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth: The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture, New York, Harper & Bros., trans. by Willard R. Trask, 1958. CH. XIII. 3. For the citation of the Hermetic texts, 1 am using the following edition: Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English translation, with notes and introduction). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. For another reliable English translation, see Clement Salaman (ed.), The Way of Hermes. + 16 e Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 16 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:09
