Human as Third God
The divine status and potential of humanity.
Hermeticism teaches that God is first, the cosmos second, and humanity third in the divine hierarchy. Humans are not mere creatures but 'mortal gods' with the potential to ascend to full divinity.
What a great miracle is man, a being worthy of reverence and honor.
This teaching profoundly influenced Renaissance humanism.
Asclepius
Written about in
- What Hermeticism says about illness and the body failing
Hermeticism ranks humanity third, after God and the cosmos, and calls human beings mortal gods with the potential to ascend to full divinity. Both halves of that phrase are meant. The tradition's high estimate of the human being never includes a promise that the body will hold.