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He quoted Hermes Trismegistus, the mythical author of a corpus of second- and third-century Alexandrian mystical texts: “As above, so below.”

The Golden Dawn took the ritual finery of Freemasonry and synthesized it with a kind of mystical Christianity, Jewish Kabbalah, and the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, an invented figure from late antiquity.

They are drawn from the ancient works of Hermes Trismegistus, whose writings became popular during the Renaissance and Reformation.

According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected, however, of being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelæ in hieroglyphical and sacred language the principles of all knowledge.

Why, Sir, your Julius Cæsar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;——your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,—who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:——These, and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,—all came side-way, Sir, into the world.