There I was, reading another esoteric book about alchemy, registering about 20% of each sentence and writing smileys in the margin (it’s my book, I’m allowed to make notes!) when suddenly the content snapped into the real world. “. . . And this is what we mean when we say something is hermetically sealed.”!

I’d always taken the phrase “hermetically sealed” for granted, even wondered if I actually had it right or not because it seemed so unusual. But the history behind it is pretty neat!

Hermes Trismegistus is one of those mythological figures whose real origins have been told so many times by so many people that it’s hard to tell where there truth actually lies. The few threads common in most stories about him are:

  • He is associated with Hermes, the Greek god of communication, luck, travel, and all kinds of things — thievery included
  • He is also associated with Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, writing, and the moon (no thieves though)
  • He may or may not have written a bunch of texts which are now considered mystical (Hermeticism) and are rumored to have been used by such elusive groups as the Rosicrucians and Freemasons
  • He experimented with alchemy, and — drumroll please — developed a method of sealing test tubes so that none of the contents could spill out!

Whether developing new scientific tricks or philosophical mysteries to be discussed for centuries, Hermes Trismegistus makes for interesting reading. And so from now on, I think I’ll try to pay more attention to my research. 🙂

image from wiki commons

Selected Resources:

Alchemy and Alchemists, C. J. S. Thompson, Dover edition 2002.

“The Alchemical Origin of ‘Hermetically Sealed,'” Will Styler, https://wstyler.ucsd.edu/posts/hermetically_sealed.html

“On the Trail of the Winged God,” Stephan A Hoeller, http://gnosis.org/hermes.htm