Hermeticism lays great emphasis on the sun, which is regarded as a kind of relay
station for God s creative and sustaining power and described in turn as the visib
le god and a second god .33 But although it isn t so surprising to find the sun given
such prominence in the Hermetica, some passages about its importance are intrigu
ingly specific. Treatise XVI, in which Asclepius expounds various points of teac
hing to King Ammon, contains two particularly tantalizing statements: For the sun
is situated at the centre of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown 34; and Around th
e sun are the eight spheres that depend from it: the sphere of the fixed stars,
the six of the planets, and the one that surrounds the earth. 35
These spheres correspond to the modern concept of orbits, as it was thought that t
he celestial bodies were fixed to transparent spheres. Under the old Ptolemaic s
ystem the spheres surround ( depend from ) the Earth, with the sun occupying its own
sphere. But this is not what is described in Treatise XVI, with the spheres sur
rounding the sun, which is situated at the centre. And the Earth has its own sph
ere which, like the other planets, depends from the sun in a way that
only makes sense in Copernican terms.
Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact the heliocentric aspects are only me
ntioned in passing, when some other principle is being elucidated. It appears th
at the writers of at least these particular Hermetic treatises took the Earth s jo
urney around the sun for granted. Clearly, by referring to Hermes Trismegistus i
n his own exposition of the heliocentric system
besides quoting from Ficino on t
he sun as the embodiment of God Copernicus shows that he was at least familiar w
ith the prototype for his own ideas. As Frances Yates concluded:
One can say, either that the intense emphasis on the sun in this new wor
ldview was the emotional driving force which induced Copernicus to undertake his
mathematical calculations on the hypothesis that the sun is indeed at the centr
e of the planetary system; or that he wished to make his discovery acceptable by
presenting it within the framework of this new attitude. Perhaps both explanati
ons would be true, or some of each.
At any rate, Copernicus discovery came out with the blessing of Hermes Tr
ismegistus upon its head, with a quotation from that famous work in which Hermes
describes the sun-worship of the Egyptians in