What were the Technical Hermetica? The Kyranides

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]The ancient philosophy and spirituality of hermeticism is most often studied in the works which detail its cosmology, its theory of the soul and of course its sotiology or theory of salvation.

[00:00:11]However, it's equally documented and in some sense even better documented that the cosmology developed in the hermetic spiritual philosophy also had profound practical ramifications.

[00:00:23]That is one might add to the speculative and theoretical dimension of hermeticism a technical practical dimension. Indeed, the distinction between the theoretical and technical or practical hermetica really represents a kind of spectrum much more so than a division much like the relationship between physics and engineering we might say. But these practical aspects of hermeticism usually denoted under the eegis of alchemy, astrology and magic or better I would say the among other of the so-called hermetic or occult sciences are often studied much less than their theoretical hermetica counterparts. Why that bias?

[00:01:04]And we'll get into it. But as an introduction to the practical hermetica, I want to turn to one of the most famous manuals in the entire genre, the Corines. This volume was said to have been revealed by Hermes Trismagistus himself, then written upon an iron pillar in the vicinity of the Tower of Babel. Yes, that tower of Babel. before being passed down to the Persian king Kirani, hence its name, the Corines, before being given over by Harpocrates, the Creation Horus, to his daughter, and is said to detail a vast alphabet of natural sympathies through which various medical marvels could be accomplished.

[00:01:45]Make sure you subscribe here to Esoterica for explorations of topics in esoteric history. And if you'd like to support the work of providing evidencebacked, free and accessible content like this, I'd hope you consider checking out my Patreon where you can help to keep the lights on around here and some of the cool merch we have on the channel. And if you're new to the study of esotericism and you want to get a reliable lay of the land and the literature, make sure to check out my free study guide. And if you're interested in historical books on topics in the occult and the mystical alchemy and magic, check out our rare bookstore over at esoterica rare books. You can find all those links in the description and in the pinned comment below. But now, let's turn to that great classic of the technical hermetica, the ancient lore of the Corines. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.

[00:03:05]As I mentioned in the introduction, scholars typically divide the corpus of hermetic literature into the theoretical and the technical hermetica. Now, this division is just pretty artificial in that in the way that the ancients would have probably just seen this as one continuous worldview and way of being in the world. I think perhaps like an expert baker wouldn't sharply distinguish the theory of baking from the doing of it. Or as I mentioned in the episode's introduction, maybe is engineering as a kind of applied physics. I don't think they would have made a sharp distinction between technical and theoretical elements because they were both necessary in some sense for salvation. But to be sure, the so-called technical hermetica certainly have received much less scholarly attention. I suspect this is primarily because the theoretical hermetica can still be appreciated for their philosophical and spiritual merit, even if they're rejected as a kind of debased Greek philosophy with just Egyptian window dressing. While much of the technical hermetica has been regarded as completely disproven by the rise of enlightenment science. Thus, astrology, alchemy, magic, and hermetic medicine.

[00:04:14]All incredibly important dimensions of the being of a hermeticist among the elements of the technical or practical hermetica have just received far less scholarly attention. And in some sense, I think this is completely tragic.

[00:04:27]Though this tide is turning and especially elenistic astrology, historical alchemy and other elements of the technical hermetica are finally receiving the scholarly attention they deserve profoundly. But along with the three great hermetic or occult sciences, that is to say alchemy, astrology, and magic or better the one of the sub fields of magic was the development of hermetic medicine. Now, of course, as a united worldview, none of these domains can be easily alienated from the other.

[00:04:57]Alchemical medicines would have been produced using astrological timings, all of which were underwritten by the doctrine of cosmic sympathies. But for our purposes, we can tease out a bit of the specific dimension of hermetic medical practice. One of which, by the way, was debated all the way from antiquity all the way into the modern period by beginning with a little bit of hermetic cosmology. Unlike say the epicurion cosmos which was filled with simply atoms simply bumping into each other as they fell through an infinite void, the hermeticists saw their cosmos as a vast interconnected totality.

[00:05:32]Indeed, these connections were both causitive and at least some of them were occult which is just to say hidden from the normal senses. The task of the Magus was to discover these occult connections or sympathies and regain their human dignity as a microcosm of the divine and ultimately achieve postmortem salvation in the process. And of course, discovering and wielding such power in the interest of magnifying human dignity was simply magic for many hermeticists.

[00:06:00]Perhaps most profoundly stated in Agrippa's three books of occult philosophy. But the hermeticists also saw the human body as deserving its proper dignity as well. They weren't dualists. At least many of them weren't.

[00:06:12]The human body was divine in some significant sense. Thus, we shouldn't be surprised that hermetic philosophy would combine the medicine of the soul, the theosophical elements of the worldview with the medicine of the body. And surprise, surprise, Pariselian medicine, truly a kind of hermetic medicine per excellence, would actually set the start for modern medical theory, so pharmarmacology and toxicology. and it would represent a decisive break with the learned Romano Islamic medical tradition inaugurated by figures like Galen and Ibans Cena. But of the ancient medical textbooks of hermetic medicine, the Corines the most outstanding and influential. You'll be unsurprised to learn that the textual history of the Corines is both murky and complicated to say the very least. Originally composed in Greek, its acrostic formula and the principle of the eton only really work in Greek. The text has been ascribed to various people including the school of pseudommocritist, the famous alchemist, Bolus of Mendes, who was a physician who flourished in the 3rd or 2nd century B.C.E. and also a totally different Bolus who we know primarily from the writings of Aristotle student Theoprastus.

[00:07:25]The internal history of the text has it being revealed by Hermes Trismagist way back in primordial antiquity before being passed to King Kuranus or Kirani of Persia. Most likely meant to be the sixth century Persian king Cyrus who has messianic overtones in the Hebrew Bible before being recomposed by Harocratian the Alexandrian in the 4th century of the common era and then bequeathed to his daughter. Of course, the text is somewhat bookended by two Greco Egyptian gods. Thoth Hermes on the one hand and then sort of Horus on the other. And it seems that the text, at least the first two parts of it, were then reconstituted with a larger body of literature by a Byzantine editor between the fifth and the 8th centuries before finally being translated into Latin by Pascalis Romanus at Constantinople in 1169 as the Liber Physical Verutum Compassion at Curationum. The only English edition of the full text, as much as it is, was actually produced in 1685 as the magic of Kirani, though it actually has far better editions in both French and German. As I mentioned, at least the first text was said to have been revealed by Hermes Meagista before being carved on an iron pillar in Syriak letters, probably Aramaic letters.

[00:08:42]Carving documents into precious metals and stones is a pretty common idea in hermeticism. I mean the emerald tablet anyone and this is just a staple of such literature. That pillar by the way was said to be in the vicinity basically down the road from where the giants of old built the tower of babel in their audacious attempt to climb to the heavens resulting in the scattering of the languages as described in Genesis 11. The first text is a Greek acrostic which details 24 sets the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet but sets of stones, gems, herbs, fish, birds and their various marvelous powers both on their own and of course in combination with the principle of the eton. That is to say the metaphysical link between the words involved is a crucially important aspect of the theory uniting the text and a hermetic principle that runs all the way into contemporary times. The next three books of the text are themselves acrostic beastiaries detailing the magical medical use of various animals and their body parts.

[00:09:42]And while copied during the Middle Ages, the text didn't really enjoy a very strong reputation because it wasn't based on the humoral theories of the established galinic medical theory of the time. And people basically thought that it was magic because it kind of is.

[00:09:57]People actually got persecuted for holding it. But that doesn't make the text any less interesting and certainly doesn't make the text any less hermetic.

[00:10:04]But being basically a list of things, the text is pretty resistant to summary.

[00:10:10]But in lie of just summarizing it, I'd like to explore an especially important section of the text actually intersects interestingly with with archaeology.

[00:10:20]Section epsilon deals with four sympathetically connected elements. the herb rocket or aruga sativa just arugula which you might have on your salad the bird the night and gale the sea urchin and finally a stone or a gem called the uanthos which is a bit mysterious and we'll come back to in just a moment in the standard translation of the curedes we're told quote in the uthas stone the all golden Aphrodite is engraved binding up her hair and the lock on her head and a root of the plant and a nightguel's tongue are put underneath. Wear it after setting and you will be loved by everybody and you will be well known and seem sweet voiced not only to human beings but also to gods and demons.

[00:11:06]Every wild beast will flee from you. So a pretty good deal all things told.

[00:11:12]Aside from having to tear out the tongue of a night and gale. Sometimes this stuff gets pretty dark but again. All right. I'm sure some of you are getting Greek magical papyrie vibes and that's to be expected. All of this material is bound up with one another. But what we have are four elements bound together in some relationship of magical sympathy specifically with the goddess Aphrodite to produce a few specific effects especially making one well regarded by people gods and demons. That gods and demon part is pretty intense but also to repel beasts. Curiously, the use of the sea urchin is missing in this oldest stratum of the text while the other three are combined for that specific effects. Further, the language of binding and the specific Greek verb for Aphrodites hair being bound up has religious, magical, and sexual undertones. And wouldn't you know it, just such stones engraved with just such an image of Aphrodite, often with the magical name Aurori Francis, a name we don't quite really understand, are actually present have survived all the way down from antiquity. Further, rocket or arugula, I'm just going to start calling them rocket salads as opposed to arugula salads, was widely regarded as an aphrodesiac in antiquity, though another section of the Corines actually have it has inverse power. It ensures priestly chastity in another text local to the Corines. But there's even a folk etmological link with the Latin eruka again arugula and the fame Roman shrine of Venus Iukina. So again this is a lot of word plays we have in the text. We also have the use of the tongue of the night andale known of course for her beautiful song though again this is admittedly a bit gruesome along with the root of the plant all set into a kind of jewelry perhaps as a magical ring or a necklace amulet of some kind. Now the difficult question about the stone or the gem in question for all of this to be carved upon just what was the uanthos? A clue to this might be that in three manuscripts the textier reads pankros literally the all colored and not uanthos as a substantive while that does persist as the adjective. Now this stone was actually known from other lapard such as demagaron and ply but there's a problem it seems to break the acrostic we would expect the stone in question to begin with an epsilon. So perhaps the uanthos was a kind of technical or code word for this other gem known as the ponras. Also it's worth noting that the pancrus was also known as the pantheros in other lapidaries.

[00:13:49]And remember the end of our text in the in Greek pandeon fuzatis wild animals will flee from you. Pontheron.

[00:13:59]Panthetherion. There might be a kind of multiple layers of puns and word plays, all which make the magic work. Really very typical of the kind of thing we expect in magical texts. But if this identification holds, it may have been a kind of opal, specifically a blue opal since this is attested in both surviving examples of such stones and in another place in the Corines where it is described as having a dark blue color with golden veins. again linking it with the pancruson or the all gold of Aphrodite. And in longer Byzantine and then Latin redactions, including that 17th century English translation, we have further recipes for arugula for stopping lust, causing lust, causing erections, using the eyes and the heart of the nightingale to cause sleeplessness, even using it to cause death from sleeplessness, which just sounds awful. And also finally, our sea urchin does get used to treat epilepsy.

[00:14:56]Each of the 24 sections of the first book follow suit. The next four books of which sometimes are added to additional books bringing the total of some Corin manuscripts to six are of all acrostic beastiaries. Book two and three deal mostly with various insects and land animals and birds, while book four primarily is dealing with sea creatures, especially fish, and detail how various parts of the animal can be harvested and used to produce various kinds of marbles, especially medical marbles. And here we find a wide range of animals which are treated quite horribly. Again, a bit of a trigger warning. If you're sensitive to animals being harmed, you may not want to read the Corines or the Picatrix for that matter. But they're harvested for various purposes and then are used to treat a range of things including hemorrhoids to staunch bleeding to aid or prevent conception, curing dandruff, exorcisms, hangover cures, dandruff exorcisms, and hangover cures just in one go. Lots of them deal with erections or the lack thereof.

[00:16:03]Epilepsy, dividing the future, treating gout, leprosy, insanity, including inducing insanity. Some of them also are love magic or as we call it around here, erotic binding magic because there's no consent involved. And you need consent to have love. Inducing mental illness and curing it, inducing illusions and curing those. malaria, even correcting one's eyesight, which I could use that.

[00:16:28]If you've ever had the image of a mage or a witch mixing various stones and bugs and herbs and animals into a cauldron, the Corin very much gives off that kind of vibe. But at the heart of the logic of the text is that very hermetic principle of occult sympathetic causation. Thus, this text is one very much of hermetic natural magic and well worth studying for anyone interested in the practical dimension of hermeticism.

[00:16:56]Sadly, only book one has received a scholarly edition in English and it's published by Brill, but it's well worth a study, especially if you're interested in the practical dimensions of ancient hermeticism. Again, the hermetic sciences have long been interested in healing. This is nothing new. from texts like the Corines all the way down to the Rosie Crucian commitment to Europeanwide free healthcare. Also, American Rosie, are you guys just like sleeping on us out there? Of course, you can also consult the 17th century English edition, which is definitely fascinating. You get weird sisters from McBth vibes, especially if you want to read it in original pronunciation. If you have French or German, you can consult better editions, including the critical edition of both the Greek and the Arabic text from antiquity. And as far-fetched as these texts might strike us today, it's best, it's necessary really to appreciate them as products of their time on their own terms, buoied by their own hermetic worldviews. But I'll be coming back to other texts in the technical and practical hermetica, especially some fascinating texts in astrology. So stay tuned for those.

[00:18:07]Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.