Spiritual Teachings of Tehuti

Philosophical, spiritual, religious, metaphysical and scientific influence of the mythical personality Tehuti on the world culture is immense. Tehuti was deified by ancient Egyptians and he was accepted and respected by all societies in the Near East. He is mentioned as the source of knowledge and inspiration in all mystical and esoteric traditions in the Near East.

During the Greek rule of Egypt, Tehuti was identified as Hermes of Greek mythology. Tehuti is also identified as the Hermes Trismegistus of Hermetica. Prophet Idris mentioned in Quran was most probably Tehuti. In Jewish esoteric tradition Tehuti is sometimes identified with the mysterious prophet Enoch.

Tehuti is credited with the invention of the sacred hieroglyphic writing. In ancient Egypt he was known as the scribe of gods (Neteru). In Greek mythological description he was the dispatcher of divine messages.

Tehuti taught astronomy, architecture, geometry, medicine, metaphysics and spirituality to the ancient Egyptians. The books attributed to Tehuti became collectively known as “Hermetica”. These books were rediscovered in 15’th century Florence and helped to inspire the Renaissance.

Many famous personalities in the Western world mentioned Tehuti (Thoth, Hermes) as a great influence on their intellectual life. Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Botticelli, Roger Bacon, Paracelcus, Thomas More, William Blake, Kepler, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Walter Raleigh, Milton, Victor Hugo, Carl Jung are only some of the names, the list is endless.

The influence of Tehuti in Islamic mysticism cannot be ignored. Prophet Muhammad is said to have seen prophet Idris (Tehuti) during his most profound spiritual experience (Isra and Miraj).

12’th century Iranian Sufi philosopher Yahya Suhrawardi claimed that Tehuti’s philosophy was transmitted through Pythagoras and Plato, and in the Middle East through the Zoroastrian Magi. This philosophy reached him through his own teacher the Sufi mystic Al Hallaj. Both Al Hallaj and Suhrawardi were executed by the orthodox Islamic authorities.

Spiritual Teachings

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy argue that the spiritual teachings of Hermes Trismegistus were lost in “dead weight of academic translations, Christian prejudice and Occult obscurities”. They observe that all previous versions of Hermetica in English language are “very dense, impenetrable, and loaded down with notes and subtext that make them difficult to digest.” I whole-heartedly agree with this assessment. This is why I will quote from their book “The Hermetica” [1] to summarize the spiritual teachings of Tehuti.

• “God is Oneness. God is the source of all.”
• “Because He unites everything, His nature is paradoxical. He is the creator who creates himself. He is always hidden from us, yet He is also the world around us. He has no particular name, because all names refer to him.”
• “God is the Supreme Mind. He is everywhere and always. The human mind is an image of the Supreme Mind.”
• “Everything exists as an idea within the Mind of God. He creates all things, in the same way that our minds create thoughts. Just as the nature of mind is to think, so the nature of God is to create.”
• “God is constantly creating creation, and will never stop.”
• “The Cosmos is His body, and we can come to know him by contemplating its extraordinary order and beauty.”
• “The universe is a gigantic work of art, signed by an unknown master. Humble amazement is a prerequisite for coming to know God.”
• “In the beginning there is unity. Unity separates into two fundamental forces, which generate everything. Hermes describes them as Light and Life, which became Mind and Soul.”
• “The Oneness of God is both Light and Life. These two forces are the parents of Mind of the Cosmos.”
• “The Cosmic Mind receives energy from God and gives it to all the things within the Cosmos. Through this the Cosmos is completely saturated with Soul — the Life Force. Everything in it is alive. Nothing is dead, not even the so called inanimate things. The Cosmos is a great living being.”
• “Everything in the Cosmos is constantly changing. For God, there is no past, present and future — only eternity. Freeing ourselves from the illusion of time is yet another way we can experience God.”
• “Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that you cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points both precede and follow one another for ever.”
• “Destiny, working through the planetary gods, governs all creation. They pour an uninterrupted stream of Life-force into all forms of matter, making them ceaselessly change from one state to another in a process we call living and dying. The gods are ruled by the goddess Destiny who makes sure that all they do accords with God’s will.”
• “God creates an ordering principle — the Mind of the Cosmos. This ordering principle continually organizes chaotic matter into beautifully ordered physical Cosmos. Time is one of the principles by which the Cosmos is ordered.”
• “The Cosmic Mind is an idea expressed by the Mind of God. The physical Cosmos is a thought expressed by the Mind of the Cosmos.”
• “At the heart of the Cosmos is the life-giving sun which is an image of the life-giving soul at the heart of every person.”
• “God created humankind because he wanted there to be a creature capable of appreciating the great beauty of his Cosmos.”
• “Hermetica teaches that the universe will not be finished until mankind has played his part in the story. The arts and sciences invented by humanity complete the grand plan of Destiny, art completes what nature cannot finish. All those who cooperate with the will of the Creator apply their skill and knowledge to enhance the beauty of the Cosmos.”

Metaphysical Teachings

G.R.S. Mead is regarded as a pioneer in the field of Gnostic and Hermetic studies. For a grand survey of studies on Thoth (Tehuti) and the metaphysical teachings attributed to Tehuti, please see Mead’s book [2].

References

[1] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, “The Hermetica”, Parcher & Penguin (1997), ISBN 0–87477–950–2

[2] G.R.S. Mead, “Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis”, Weiser (2001), ISBN 0–87728–947–6

Author’s articles on physics and philosophy: sureshemre.wordpress.com

Author’s articles at Medium