Siena Cathedral

The Siena cathedral, from all accounts, appears to have an amazing mosaic floor. It includes this image, of Hermes Trismegistus, and on the table supported by the two sphinxes the Latin is inscribed:

'DEUS OMINUM CREATOR SECUM DEUM FECIT VISIBILEM ET HUNC FECIT PRIMUM ET SOLUM QUO OBLECTATUS EST VALDE AMAVIT PROPRIUM FILIULM QUI APPELLATUR SANCTUM VERBUM'

That is:

(as an abbreviation of a passage from Asclepius conflated with a passage from Pimander)

'God, the creator of all things, made the second invisible God, and made him first and alone, in whom He was well pleased, He loved deeply as his own Son, who is called the Holy Word'.

The Hermetic texts were composed by various writers between 100AD to 300 AD. They contain Platonism, Stoicism, Jewish and Persian philosophy. There were essentially two types of treatises, the occult texts of astrology, magic and alchemy and the second type being written later, concerning gnosticism, that is, discovering the divine within the self through a mystical rapport with the world and mankind.

An intense piety characterises the Hermetic writings, where a psychological shift from reason to belief is endemic in science and in religion. An astrological cosmos is typically assumed, where the material world is ruled by the stars and the seven planets. Each celestial body is controlled by demons, and time is astrologied into the thirty-six decans, Egyptian sidereal gods ruling the All.

There are two ways of achieving gnosis, the optimistic path, accepting the universe as divine, where god reveals himself in everything, and man, through his intellect, can become like enough to god to be able to comprehend Her. Pessimistic gnosticism interprets the material world as a form of divine punishment, where man can escape the confines of the body through asceticism and piety, thereby elevating himself above matter and ascending to God.

Ref: French, P. (1972) John Dee, The World of an Elizabethan Magus, pp. 68-71