Jane E. Nelson, Shakespeare and Religio Mentis: A Study of Christian Hermetism in Four Plays, Brill, 2022.

This book is in seven main chapters with miscellaneous additions. The chapters are “1. How Hermes Trismegistus became Hermes Christianus,” “2. The Transmission and Reception of Christian Hermetism in France and England in the Long Sixteenth Century,” “3.  Love’s Labour’s Lost: The Path to Self-Knowledge Deferred,” “4. King Lear: The Path to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Regeneration,” “5. Othello: The Path to Self-Knowledge Reversed,” “6. The Tempest: The Path to Immortality,” and “7. Shakespeare and the Path to Salvation.”

There is a note on Hermetism, distinguishing it from Hermeticism: “… Hermetism is restricted to the specific religious world view and philosophic discourse in and around the Corpus Hermeticum which was devoid of any kind of magic … The term ‘Hermeticism’ is reserved for that whole ensemble of magical ideas, related to Hermetism but including alchemy, magia, astrology and Cabala. These texts … are not part of this study. Even so, their beliefs saturate the culture in which Shakespeare lived and wrote; the plays show knowledge of both discourses, alchemy being the link between them, as the practical alchemical process, which transforms base metals into pure gold, functions as a trope of the gnostic ascent of the soul toward spiritual purity.” (xiv) As she later notes, the Hermetic texts were thought to contain the most ancient “theology” of the world: literally, “God’s earliest words to humankind.” (26)

The introduction gives the question which this volume seeks to answer: is there any evidence that Shakespeare knew of Hermetism  and the Hermetic texts, and if so, did they influence him? (1-2) She notes the ubiquity of religion in Shakespeare’s England, and that Catholics and Protestants had different views about Limbo, Purgatory, and the path to salvation, especially the relative value of faith and works in redemption. (2-3) These are different from Hermetism, which offered a religio mentis, a religion of the mind whereby one could work out for oneself salvation through knowledge or gnosis. It was a tolerant religion which could, it was hoped, become the new world religion and wipe away the civil strife of the internecine Christians. (3) Recent historical studies have revealed that Catholicism had a longer and more vigorous afterlife in England than previously thought. (4) Shakespeare’s desire to see a reconciliation of Catholic and Protestant is clearly evident in some of his plays. (8-9)

Nelson concludes this overview of the religious background thus: “Wherever Shakespeare’s guarded religious sympathies lie, the idea that one’s choices may be transformative … and the notion of religious toleration and peaceful reconciliation … may readily be found in the ancient wisdom narrative of the Hermetica attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.” (10)

After a discussion of modern studies, she concludes that while Hermetism and Hermeticism invoke an esoteric knowledge, Hermetism locates within each man the path to gnosis and salvation, understood as union  with the “Mind of God.” Hermeticism is distinguished in comprehending an assortment of beliefs and practices, often aimed at magical powers. (20) The two must be clearly held separate in our minds to understand how Shakespeare could see in Hermitism “a religion that had the potential to re-form the whole world.” (21) The significance of this ancient theology (I would call it a “theosophy”) lay in its simple approach to several questions: ethical, the creation, death (here being rather Platonic –  death is a change of state when the soul leaves the body), the central and privileged position of Man (“superior to all animals, possessed of dignity, of imagination and of rational mind, empowered with the will freely to choose one’s fate.”) (26)

On p.40, Nelson cryptically notes that of the plays she treats, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest “were only ever performed at court,” while King Lear and Othello were not published until 1608 and 1622, respectively, and were published with a Hermetic printer’s emblem on the title page. It may have been forbidden to discuss Hermetic texts in Elizabeth’s authoritarian England, but it was not forbidden, she says, to discuss or read a play (although I am not so sure it was so clear-cut). As an example of how a play could contain Hermetic material she cites the similarity between Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, (c.1487) and the line in Hamlet: What piece of work is a Man [. . .] in apprehension how like a god’ (2.2.305–308)

Chapter 1

This chapter is titled “How Hermes Trismegistus Became Hermes Christianus.” Nelson says something about ancient Hermetic and Platonic traditions. On p.50, n.13, she doubts that the ghost of Hamlet’s father can be intended to be coming from Purgatory. When she mentions Plato’s view that love of the beautiful can be a divine madness, she quotes Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V.i on lovers and madmen, saying that he has made a connection between Platonic madness and Hermetic ecstasy. (51-52) Central to this is her opinion that “For the contemplative Hermetist, the fleeting moment of gnōsis or true knowledge of God is achieved in a trance-like state of semi-conscious ecstasy; it is beyond reason, momentary, cannot be expressed in words, and is experienced in silence.” (51) Further, she notes that both Plato and “Hermes” both made contributions to the questions topical in Shakespeare’s time: fate, predestination, freedom and determination, the influence of the stars on man, what happens to the soul after death, and the source of evil. (52)

She finds Shakespeare’s understanding of Hecate (Macbeth and a German translation of hamlet said to be based on an older version of that play) as having a basis, directly or indirectly, in the ancient Chaldaean Oracles. (53)

Nelson discusses Arius and Nestorius, asserting that one might contend that Shakespeare “referenced” Nestorius in The Comedy of Errors, saying: “the identical Antipholus twins, simultaneously reference both Thomas the Wanderer and the Nestorian doctrine of two persons.” (59) In the footnote she adds that: “In The Comedy of Errors, a Hermetic hermeneutic adds another layer to the allegorical exegesis discussed in the Introduction, when the Duke asks of the Antipholus brothers: ‘which is the natural man, / And which the spirit? (5.1.332–333). She also finds not only Christological but specifically Nestorian themes in Richard II. (60)

Oddly, Nelson asserts a 6^th to 8^th century origin for the Emerald Tablet. (61) Incidentally, she several times states that the name “Poimandres” derives from Greek poimēn andrōn, shepherd of man (e.g. 64 n. 37). Peter Kingsley has contended, I think quite soundly, that a more likely derivation is from Egyptian and means “the intelligence / knowledge of Re,” and probably refers to Thoth. (“Poimandres: The Etymology of the Name and the Origins of the Hermetica,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 56 (1993), pp. 1-24).

Nelson says that Hermetic concept of regeneration is found in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but does not indicate where. (67) Referring to “the zodiac of human behaviours and feelings (the torments) and their remedies” of Book XIII of the Corpus Hermeticum, she asserts that a “close analysis” of King Lear “arguably sheds light on Shakespeare’s conceptualisation of his characters, their motivations and their psychology.” She also promises to compare two versions of King Lear to illustrate constrasting doctrines in Books I and XIII about whether “spiritual rebirth is achieved in this world or the next.” (68)

There is a bare reference to a mapping of the characters of The Merchant of Venice onto the Kabbalah’s Sephiroth, so that Tiphereth is allocated to Portia, Din to Shylock, and Hesed to Antonio; adding that Jessica’s marriage to Lorenzo points to “Jewish/Christian reconciliation,” and the “concord of sweet sounds” which “unites the Hermetic harmony in the golden heavens with the earthly harmony supplied by the musicians” (Merchant of Venice, V.i.54–88). (75)