The de Vere Society Newsletter October 2022

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R EVIEWS
Shakespeare and Religio Mentis: A Study of Christian Hermetism
in Four Plays

by Jane Everingham Nelson

Studies in Religion and the Arts, Published by Brill

Available through the Brill website at

https//[Link]/view/title/62441?rskey=KAXdPJ&result=1
and as an e-book through their MyBook programme:
[Link]

Preview by Robert Baxter

This preview is based on limited information available
on the Brill website. Unless otherwise indicated, page numbers in brackets are to
the printed book.

DVS member and Shakespeare scholar Jane Nelson has completed more than ten
years study of Hermetic1 thought circulating across Europe into England during
the Renaissance, with the very recent release of her book Shakespeare and religio
mentis. The book will be of immediate interest to the academic community – a huge
global market – but also to the great many independent Shakespeare scholars. For
a member of our honourable Society to have Brill, the leading international
academic publishing house, publish a work on Shakespeare is quite remarkable and
no mean achievement. The book is in the nature of an enquiry into evidence that
Shakespeare was familiar with and was influenced in the writing of his plays by
Hermetic thought or, as it is put in the Introduction ‘… that Shakespeare was
familiar with the religious philosophy of Hermetism as it is articulated in the texts
of Corpus Hermeticum2 and its companion text of Asclepius,3 collectively known as the
Hermetica’ (p. 1-2).
Jane Nelson, formerly Head of English at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide,
has a lucid expression of ideas and an attractive style of writing. The development

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of her argument is straightforward. First, explain the roots of Hermetic writing,
next show how they were carried into the Elizabethan England and then
demonstrate how Shakespeare came under its spell.
Chapter 1, entitled ‘How Hermes Trismegistus Became Hermes Christianus’
describes how Corpus Hermeticum and other pagan texts arrived in Renaissance
Florence in the fifteenth century where they were hailed as prisca theologiai,4 and
believed to be based on knowledge derived from ancient Egypt contemporaneous
with, or even preceding, the time of Moses.
Corpus Hermeticum is concerned with, to put it in a nutshell, the path to salvation
through gnōsis. It was written in Greek and upon its arrival in Florence, Cosimo
Medici engaged Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) an Italian scholar and humanist
philosopher, to set aside his translation of Plato and immediately set about
translating Corpus Hermeticum into Latin.
Marsilio Ficino was a contemporary of Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500) an
Italian poet, Christian Hermetist and pioneer of Christian kabbalah who then
‘Christianised’ Ficino’s work with his commentary Crater Hermetis.5 These two
works, Ficino’s and Lazzarelli’s, reconciled Corpus Hermeticum to Christianity and
the Hermetic doctrine they comprise is now referred to as Christian Hermetism.
The radical gnostic ideas contained in the Hermetica provided a stream
of alternative religious and philosophical discourse that continued to
flow, albeit sporadically, sometimes openly, and sometimes concealed
in various ways, throughout the long sixteenth century from 1494 to
1614 and beyond. Although the path to spiritual regeneration and
gnōsis was to be revealed only to initiates, the first Book of Corpus
Hermeticum called upon those who had been accepted and had received
knowledge to become a guide to others worthy of being admitted to
the secrets (p. 79).
Chapter 2, ‘The Transmission and Reception of Christian Hermetism in
France and England in the Long Sixteenth Century’, traces the story of how the
newly translated Latin texts, after spreading across Europe, arrived in England in
the sixteenth century where ‘… any practice that challenged the power of the
Church as institution was politically dangerous’.

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The material transmission of texts was effected by travellers,
merchants, students, scholars, diplomats and courtiers; by the sharing,
copying, translating, lending and gifting of manuscripts; by printers and
publishers; by buying and lending books and commentaries on books,
and through personal correspondence (p.80).
In London a group of courtiers who became interested in the new ideas
included John Dee, Philip Sidney, Walter Ralegh, George Peele and George
Chapman. They met regularly in secret at a house in the Strand. They talked
philosophy, read and interpreted the texts and discussed Hermetic spirituality, ‘a
joyful path that celebrated life and light. Its purpose was to heal the soul from
negativity, free it from such powerful influences as fear and aggression and open
its eyes to the beauty of existence’.6
I warmed to these gentlemen, pioneers on the ancient path of spiritual
enlightenment as they diligently pored over the Latin texts of Ficino and Lazzarelli
and others – no translations were available in English – and navigated through the
dangerous field of unorthodoxy.
Whilst Shakespeare was their contemporary, there is no evidence to suggest
that he was amongst their number. Did he too know of this optimistic gnostic
doctrine, extolling knowledge and love that brought with it the hope of ecumenism
and religious toleration?
For those who have been following our Chairman’s presentations7 on his
YouTube channel, Jane’s book is timely, for they – the presentations – have raised
questions concerning the influential role of John Dee (1527-1608). How was it that
he came to conceal Hermetic symbols within the title and dedication of
Shakespeare’s Sonnets? What was his relationship with Shakespeare? How was it
that Dee came under the influence of Hermetic thought? Dee’s interest in
esotericism probably started in 1550 or earlier and his catalogue indicates that he
owned numerous Hermetic texts, both technical and philosophical in his extensive
library. Whilst the role of Dee is examined along with Giordano Bruno and others,
Shakespeare and religio mentis is concerned with how Hermetic ideas infused
Shakespeare’s dramatic art.
The book is in two parts; Part 1 comprises the first two chapters and is
contextual. Part 2, being the greater part, is exegetical and adduces evidence to

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show that Shakespeare did, in fact, have a comprehensive knowledge of Hermetic
doctrine that has not been previously recognised.
The book has the sub-title of A Study of Christian Hermetism in Four Plays, namely
Love’s Labour’s Lost, King Lear, Othello and The Tempest. These four plays were
selected as markers, as it were, to illustrate how Shakespeare’s understanding of the
Hermetic religious philosophy grew over the years.
To demonstrate how the argument develops I can do no better than quote
short extracts from two chapters, Chapter 3 which has the title of ‘Love’s Labour’s
Lost: The Path to Self-Knowledge Deferred’ and Chapter 4 entitled ‘King Lear: The
Path to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Regeneration’:
[In] Love’s Labour’s Lost … ideas from the Corpus Hermeticum … and
echoes of … the Crater Hermetis, reverberate throughout the play. [This
play] entertained the English court of Elizabeth with a light-hearted
love comedy mocking a French king whose plans to follow the ascetic
life and ascend to god-like status and immortality are thrown into
disarray by the arrival of a princess and her ladies (p.117).
[It] ends as the young king embarks on his journey of self-knowledge.
He is to spend a twelvemonth, offstage, remote from the
responsibilities of kingship learning about love – that it is in the mind –
and about loving service (p.141).
King Lear … also wants to divest himself of the cares and
responsibilities of office. … reader and audience accompany the king
along his painful journey and witness his growth into knowledge of
himself, as he learns what love means and understands the real
responsibilities of kingship with its obligation to care for all its subjects
(p.141).
Moving on to Othello, this is a short extract from Chapter 5 which has the title
‘Othello: The Path to Self-Knowledge Reversed’:
Othello, viewed through the lens of Hermetism, stands as riposte to King
Lear. The Moor’s transformation from a ‘perfect soul’ in the first act (I,
ii, 31) to an ‘ignorant’ dolt in the fifth (V, ii, 160) is a reversal of Lear’s
ascending trajectory from ignorance of self to knowledge (p.175).

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Jane writes elsewhere: ‘[King Lear’s] progress toward knowledge of self may
be interpreted as the Hermetic ascent toward spiritual rebirth, while a Hermetic
reading reveals Othello to be Lear’s mirror image illustrating his descent into
ignorance’.8
To complete our brief look at some of the evidence, we turn to the fourth play,
The Tempest. This is a short extract from Chapter 6 entitled ‘The Tempest: The Path
to Immortality’:
In The Tempest, the audience encounters in Prospero, Duke of Milan, a
man who, after long years of contemplative study, has already ascended
the Hermetic path to knowledge, and has almost attained the god-like
status to which Ferdinand of Navarre aspired. Whereas in Love’s
Labour’s Lost the audience farewells the young King Ferdinand as he
resumes his delayed journey to knowledge and spiritual rebirth, and in
King Lear, audience and reader accompany the old king along the
painful way of Hermes to salvation, in Prospero, the audience meets a
man in the prime of life, and one for whom the years of contemplation,
which cost him his dukedom, are in the past … Hermetic thought
colours the play (p.204).
In short, a Hermetic hermeneutic interprets Prospero as a Christian
Hermetist and, when the Epilogue is added to a performance, as a
Christian Hermetist with Catholic sympathies (p.205).
Jane suggests that Lazzarelli’s Crater Hermetis may have influenced the
dramaturgy of Love’s Labour’s Lost; she found that by comparing the play with The
Tempest a progression can be seen in Shakespeare’s understanding of Hermetic
religious philosophy that grew more profound over time.9
For my final comments on Part 2, I would like to quote the opening part of
Chapter 7 entitled ‘Shakespeare and the Path to Salvation’; it is just so good and so
beautifully crafted:
In sixteenth century Europe religion mattered. God mattered. And
nothing mattered more to men and women than the salvation of one’s
immortal soul. However, for many, institutionalized religion was a
source of anxiety, doubt and scepticism. It was also a site of
controversy, intolerance and war. The Church, Traditional and

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Reformed, agreed on the immortality of the soul, although they may
have forgotten the pagan origin of the concept, but on the question of
the route to salvation the Church was divided.10 There was
disagreement over whether salvation was the reward of good works and
faith, or faith alone, or whether one’s destiny had already been decided
by God before Adam’s fall in Eden.
By contrast the body of pagan Hermetic texts that arrived in the Latin
West in 1462 offered individual men and women a path to salvation –
through knowledge of self and love for others, to perfection and the
reciprocated love and knowledge of God or gnōsis – that was
empowering and enabling. The Corpus Hermeticum, purged of magic and
revered as prisca theologia, promised a doctrine that could save the
human race, and brought with it the hope of reconciliation, tolerance
and peace.
Who knew?
Shakespeare knew.
In all four plays discussed here – Love’s Labour’s Lost, King Lear, Othello
and The Tempest – there is evidence that the playwright has a substantial
knowledge of the doctrine of religious Hermetism. With the possible
exception of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s understanding of
Hermetic theosophy and his close knowledge of Corpus Hermeticum is
more extensive and more profound than could have arisen from
hearsay or casual discussion. The evidence and nature of Hermetic
thought embedded in the selected plays strongly suggests that
Shakespeare not only studied the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, and
knew the companion text, the Asclepius, but that he also read the
commentaries available at the time – Lazzarelli’s Crater Hermetis, and [a
lengthy commentary on a French translation of the Pymander (the first
tractate in the Corpus Hermeticum) by Bishop Foix de Candale (1512-
1594)].
Close similarities of thought and verbal borrowings connecting the
plays with the Commentaires are an indication that Shakespeare was also
reading Foix’s French translation of Pymander. Of course, that does not
exclude the possibility that Shakespeare consulted other translations
and commentaries’11 (pp.232-3).

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How will the academic audience handle this? Is it not unbelievable and utterly
untenable that the Stratford man, with no university education, could have
achieved such an advanced level of knowledge of the texts and doctrines of
Christian Hermetism? Will Shakespeare and religio mentis provoke doubts in at least
some academic minds over the authorship of plays? Will some find they are at last
persuaded by the strong evidence now provided?
The book may be controversial for another reason, as academics apparently
tend to look on 'esoteric' teachings with something approaching contempt. As
Wouter Hanegraaff writes in his recent book Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical
Imagination:
Most scholarship in this domain is less concerned with meaning and
the understanding of content than with tracing the genealogy of
separate elements from a historical and comparative perspective. Thus
when the Hermetica use a certain term or describe a certain concept,
the first thing that most scholars will ask themselves is ‘where does this
originally come from?’ and ‘where else do we find this in the literature
of the period?’ (p.7)

Shakespeare and religio mentis contains four appendices:

Appendix 1: ‘From Hermes to Hermes Trismegistus’
This provides the early bibliographic background to the texts purported to
be based on religio-philosophical ideas that emanated from Hellenic Egypt,
famed in the ancient world for its magic. I quote:
It is really not possible to say exactly when writings about astrology,
practical alchemy, magic and theurgy began to circulate under the name
of Hermes and when the title Trismegistus was added. It is the case
that hundreds of texts have been attributed to him over the centuries,
but the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum that concern us here are believed
to have been written in the same milieu as the synoptic gospels, and the
Latin Asclepius somewhat later (p.256).
Appendix 2: ‘More about the Hermetic Theosophy’
This is an abbreviated commentary on each of the Books in the Corpus
Hermeticum

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Appendix 3: ‘From the Mémoires of Marguerite de Valois’
Appendix 4: ‘The Family of Love, or Familia Caritatis’
This provides the historical background of Familia Caritatis, (also known as the
Familists), which was a mystical religious sect founded by Hendrik Niclaes
(c.1502–1580) in 1540 when he arrived in Emden in East Frisia at the same
time as Jan Łaski (1490–1560) who possibly brought with him an edition of
the Corpus Hermeticum.
By way of summing up, the book sets out to provide evidence of Shakespeare’s
knowledge of the Hermetic texts and how this matured over the years in the writing
of his plays. I found Jane’s arguments to be fascinating and persuasive. The book
will greatly enrich our appreciation of Shakespeare’s play-writing craft. It will
expand our understanding of the contribution that his plays made to religious
debate in the tumultuous sixteenth century.
I greatly look forward to reading the book when it arrives as it promises to
shine a light into Shakespeare’s mind – his personal quest for salvation and his role
as a ‘guide to the worthy’; he must have spent many hours alone over the years
studying Hermetism and Hermetic literature. He embraced it and applied the
philosophy to his life in such a way that it became pervasive in his plays and poetry.
This insight into the deep spirituality that hallmarked Shakespeare’s writing
reveals something of the the spiritual hunger that drove his inspiration that in turn
poured out through his phenomenal intellect into his writing.
Shakespeare and religio mentis is quite exceptionally brilliant and will be of special
interest for DVS members. No member should be without a copy, even at its
whopping cost – Brill’s books are never cheap. Without doubt, we have an eminent
scholar in our camp!
Thank you, Jane. I am sure all of us in DVS will want to give you our hearty
congratulations. We quite expect that Shakespeare and religio mentis will generate huge
interest amongst both its professional and lay readership.

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End Notes
1. As an explanation, quoted from Roelof Van den Broek, ‘Hermetism’ in Wouter J
Hanegraaff, ed. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill, 2006:
The most characteristic feature of hermetic thought is the idea of an
indissoluble interrelationship between God, the cosmos and man, which
implies the unity of the universe … It was a firm hermetic conviction that
everything that exists, both in the material and spiritual world, is
fundamentally one, because it derives from the One, God … This idea of
the indissoluble relationship between God, cosmos and man dominates the
hermetic worldview and its piety (p.559).
2. Quoted from the Back Cover of Clement Salaman & others: The Way of
Hermes: New Translations of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Definitions of Hermes
Trismegistus to Asclepius. Inner Traditions, 2004:
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of short philosophical treatises, a
powerful fusion of Greek and Egyptian thought, written in Greek in
Alexandria between the first and third centuries AD and rediscovered in
the West in the fifteenth century. These writings, believed to be the
writings of Hermes Trismegistus, were central to the spiritual work of
Hermetic societies in Late Antique Alexandria (200-700 A.D.), and aimed
to awaken gnosis, the direct realization of the unity of the individual and
the Supreme.
3. Quoted from Wouter Hanegraaff, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination:
Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. Cambridge 2022:
The spiritual keynote of the Asclepius is an ethos of loving care for all
creation, in an attitude of gratitude, worship, wonder and praise for the
awesome divine Source of bounty, wisdom, and beauty from which all
things have come (p.54).
4. Prisca Theologia holds that one true theology that is the real basis for all religions
was given to man in antiquity.
5. Literally meaning ‘The Hermetic Mixing Bowl”, Crater Hermetis is Lazzarelli’s
Christian version of Hermetic philosophy.
6. Wouter Hanegraaff op. cit. p. 10.
7. Alexander Waugh, YouTube Channel, ‘John Dee, William Shakespeare and the
Triangular Lodge at Rushton’ 29 Oct 2019, ‘The Incalculable Genius of John
Dee’ 28 Jan 2022, ‘John Dee: His Secret Sigil found after 400 Years!’ 30 Jun

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2022, and ‘Edward de Vere: His Poetical Pentagram’ 20 Jul 2022:
[Link]
8. Quoted from Abstract of Jane’s doctoral thesis ‘Shakespeare and Christian
Hermetism: religio mentis a study of esoteric thought in four plays.’ Faculty of
Arts, Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide,
2019.
9. Ibid.
10. This is the corresponding footnote at this point in Shakespeare and religio mentis:
Followers of the Reformed Church, able now to read the Bible in their
vernacular, would have found few references to soul in either Testament.
The concept originates with Plato who held that ‘the immortal soul is the
true self imprisoned for a time in an alien body’. Nevertheless, by the fifth
century the soul had come to be universally regarded as an image of God
(Genesis 1:26) and St Augustine explained it as an image of the Trinity
comprising memoria, intelligentsia and voluntas. (Dictionary of the Christian
Church 1520).
11. This is the corresponding footnote at this point in Shakespeare and religio mentis:
Other translations available at the time, which future scholars may wish to
examine, were the translation and commentary by Friar Rosselli probably
owned by Dee and the new translation published by Francesco Patrizi in
1591. Patrizi used only the fourteen chapters that were known to Ficino
and rearranged the order of the chapters. He based his version on that of
Turnebus and Foix de Candale, and, like him, included two books derived
from the Stobaean fragment. He also added the Asclepius (Scott III, 321:
Yates 1964, 1991, 182).

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