The Latin Dialogue and Its Dangerous Prophecy

The Asclepius is a Hermetic dialogue that survives complete only in a Latin translation, once attributed to Apuleius but of uncertain authorship, in which Hermes Trismegistus instructs his pupil Asclepius on god, cosmos and humanity. The Greek original is lost, though Coptic fragments turned up among the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, confirming its late-antique date, broadly the second or third century CE, contemporary with the Greek Corpus Hermeticum and, like it, a product of Greek-speaking Egypt rather than of pharaonic antiquity, whatever its own claims. Its most famous and most troubling passage is the "god-making" section, which describes how the ancient Egyptians drew the souls of gods into temple statues to ensoul them, and laments, as a prophecy of Egypt's decline, a coming age when the gods will leave the land and the old worship fall silent. Augustine quotes and condemns exactly this passage in The City of God as devil-worship, one reason the text was read, and feared, throughout the Middle Ages. Its influence on Renaissance magic, especially on the idea that images could be made to hold spiritual power, was considerable, and Frances Yates and Brian Copenhaver trace its reception.