the figure of Hermes Trismegistus was often equated with Enoch, the pre-Flood patriarch who “walked with God” and received hidden wisdom. In late antique and medieval texts—particularly in Islamic Hermetica and Christian Cabala—Hermes/Enoch is treated as the primordial priest-prophet who inscribed divine science upon tablets or pillars, just as Enoch recorded heavenly mysteries on tablets of sapphire.
This parallel laid the foundation for the idea that Hermetic knowledge and Hebrew revelation are two expressions of one perennial wisdom.
The Kabbalah provided a cosmological framework easily harmonized with Hermetic philosophy. Renaissance magi such as Pico della Mirandola and Cornelius Agrippa interpreted both systems as languages describing the same ascent of the soul through the celestial spheres. The ten Sephirot correspond to the Hermetic hierarchy of being, while the divine Tetragrammaton (YHWH) was used in Hermetic talismans and invocations. Theurgy in both streams seeks union with the divine through purification and contemplation of archetypal forms.
Alchemical symbolism mirrors Hebrew Temple theology. The vessel or furnace corresponds to the inner sanctum, the athanor to the altar, the prima materia to the dust of Adam. The goal of transmutation—restoring matter to spiritual perfection—parallels the Kabbalistic doctrine of tikkun, the restoration of the shattered vessels of creation.
Freemasonry, these ideas were reinterpreted architecturally. The building of Solomon’s Temple became an allegory for the Great Work: the initiate reconstructs the inner temple using the lost Word (Logos) recovered through light and geometry. The pillars Boaz and Jachin echo the two Hermetic principles—Sulphur and Mercury, active and passive, sun and moon—while also recalling the Mosaic and Solomonic traditions of sacred architecture.
Rosicrucian and High-Degree Masonic systems, Hermetic, alchemical, and Kabbalistic symbols were deliberately merged: the Rose and Cross signifying the union of opposites, the pentagram as both Solomon’s Seal and the microcosmic man, and the Shekinah or divine Presence reinterpreted as the alchemical lumen naturae.
Hermeticism preserves the language of cosmic order; Hebrew mysticism preserves the covenantal revelation; and Masonry transforms both into an initiatory architecture through which the seeker, like Hermes and Enoch, ascends once more “toward the Light.”