"Nowadays, certainly, the number of hermetics has grown increasingly small. But it was never particularly large, because the aurea catena they write about does not run through schools and conscious tradition but through the unconscious. Hermeticism is not something you choose, it is a destiny, just as the ecclesia spiritualis is not an organization but an electio."
- Jung, Letter To Rudolf Bernoulli, 5 October 1944
(aurea catena - the “golden chain” of alchemy, the series of wise men of whom the first was said to be Hermes Trismegistos, Thrice Greatest Hermes, identified with Thoth, the Egyptian god of learning, and as such considered the father of alchemy)