Hermes Trismegistus

"Thrice-great Hermes" — the legendary Greek-Egyptian sage in whose mouth the Hermetica were placed: a fusion of Thoth, scribe of the gods, with Hermes the messenger. Almost certainly no single man; the name is a lineage wearing a face. The Renaissance believed him a contemporary of Moses and read the Hermetica as a gentile revelation running parallel to Sinai — which is precisely why Pico and Ficino twinned him with Abraham and why Christian Cabala became possible at all. Casaubon dated the texts to the common era in 1614 and the spell broke; the ideas outlived the forgery. He stands here as ancestry, not authority.