,,,
...

 
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS 

From the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Ed. by James Hastings, Scribner's Sons.

The name of Hermes Trismegistus stands, like that of Homer's, for a whole literature.  But this literature is philosophical and religions, not poetical.  It presents a curious phase of human though...

...
 These books of Hermes, which were connected with the religion of the Egyptians

...
 The earliest author who shows acquaintance with our Hermes is Lactantius.  He has frequent allusions to and quotations from Hermes Trismegistus, some of which we are able to verify by comparison with the extant works (2).  Plutarch (fl. A.D. 80) has a hearsay refence to the books of Hermes (3), but there is nothing to show that they are those known to us.  The most important of the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus is the Poemander (greek title).  The name looks as if it meant 'Shepherd of men'--a derivation which is indicated by the writer (xii. 19), and which has led to perhaps fanciful surmises of some connexion with the Shepherd (greek title) of Hermas.  It has been thought, on the other hand, that the word is really Egyptian, though Fabricius points out that (II greek word) occures as the proper name of a mythological person in Put. Mor.299 C, D, Graeca Quaest.37.  In the work before us, (greek title) is the name of a mysterious being, charterized as (greet words), who stands as the guide and instructor of Hermes.  He stands for the higher mind of Hermes himself, in accordance with what Plato says in the Timoeus (90 A), that a man's (greek word) is his own (greek word).  The Poemander gives his name to the whole work, but he is mentioned only in the first and in the thirteenth out of the fourteen chapters which constituted the work as published by Marsilius Ficinus.  Outside the first chaper, Hermes is rather the instructor of others.  We are  given to understand that, on the basis supplied by the Poemander, Hermes is competent to arrive at all truth for himself (Poem. xiii. 15).
...