DeConick A.D

83
SUPERPOWERS AND MONSTERS
Figure 3.3 Hermes Trismegistus, pictured in a floor inlay in Siena Cathedral, Italy. Public
domain image, Wikimedia Commons.
Kryptonic Weakness
The revelatory message of Hermes Trismegistus did not jibe with the
traditional forms of servant, covenant, and ecstatic spirituality. Hermes’s
message was disruptive; his understanding of the divine was unaccepted
by the general populace. People outside the Hermetic circles called the
Hermetics crazy and ridiculous. The Hermetics tell us that they endured
scorn, hatred, and even murder because of their teachings about the supreme
God and humanity’s divinity (Corpus Hermeticum IX.4). Their
peculiar beliefs about the immortality of the soul were treated by those
outside their group as comedic and delusionary (Asclepius 25 [Latin]).