pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

98
HERMES Trismegistus
The divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus,
in XVII. books. Translated formerly out of the Arabick into Greek,
and thence into Latine, and Dutch, and now out of the original into
English; by that learned divine Doctor Everard.
London: printed by Robert White, for Tho. Brewster, and Greg. Moule, at
the Three Bibles in the Poultrey, under Mildreds Church, 1650.
8vo: A–O8 P4 , 116 leaves, pp. [16] 215 [1]. Title within a border of
Xeurons, woodcut initials.
140 x 90mm. A few headlines shaved, light browning.
Binding: Nineteenth­century sheep, original front free endleaf
retained. Rubbed.
Provenance: A few pencil annotations (nineteenth­century?); Bernard
Quaritch Ltd (collation note on rear pastedown). Walter Pagel’s
signature, undated, on pastedown.
First edition in English. Thomason copy annotated 25 September 1649.
Another edition was printed in 1657 together with the second book.
Wing H1565; ESTC R202412.
‘The “Pimander”, the Wrst treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum, gives an
account of the creation which, although it seems to recall Genesis... diVers
radically from Genesis in its account of the creation of man. The second
creative act of the Word in the “Pimander” after the creation of light and the
elements of nature, is the creation of the heavens, or more particularly of the
seven Governors or seven planets on which the lower elemental world was
believed to depend. Then followed the creation of man.’ (Yates p. 256.)
The translator is identiWed in library catalogues as John Everard (1575?–
1650?). The address to the reader is signed J. F. and states that the translator
is no longer living.
Searching ESTC, this appears to be the Wrst printing of the Hermetic
Corpus in English. The only earlier appearance of any work attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus is in the ‘Iatromathematica’ included in John Harvey’s
Astrologicall addition (1583). An edition of Hermetic texts in Latin, Hermetis
Trismegisti opusculum edited by Francesco Patrizi printed at Ferrara in 1591,
as part of Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia, was reissued in London by
R. Field in 1611 with a new titlepage and dedication.
Frances A. Yates ‘The Hermetic tradition’ p. 256 in Charles S. Singleton, ed., Art,
Science, and History in the Rennaisance (1967).