Beginning in the 7th century C.E., a series of Arabic texts �bear witness to the important role played by Egyptian local color and Greek influence in the Arab imagination after the coming of Islam to Egypt, that is, from 640 onwards� (Faivre, 18 19). Within this Arabic literature is �a succession of �visionary recitals��surrounding Hermes Trismegistus, relating the religious and secular sciences through the familiar motif of ancient and uncovered knowledge (Faivre 19). To explicate, the literature �is full of scenarios presenting a personage who discovers in a tomb of Hermes, beneath a stele, revelations of theosophy, astrology, and alchemy,� which are the very same sciences that the Egyptians and Graeco-Romans used to illustrate the Logos of the Universe through the component elements of the cosmological and earthly realms (see pgs. 4-5).

Other Arabic myths about Trismegistus further detail the similarities found between themselves and earlier Egyptian and Graeco-Roman myths. The Book of Crates, an Arabic text dating from the early 6th century C.E., relates that �the first Hermes, who lived before the Deluge, foresaw the coming disaster; before the world was destroyed, he built the pyramids to enshrine the secrets of the sciences� (Faivre 19). As Thoth had hidden either himself or his ancient books in the numinous recesses of the earth to be discovered by mystic seekers, so too was Trismegistus sought out by Islamic seekers in these sacred places. The intent of Islamic seekers compared to Pagan adherents was also quite similar, in that Muslims wished to discover and save the secrets of their sciences, both religious and secular, which Islam prized as expressions of Allah�s divine force that ordered exoteric and esoteric realms through His Logos (Faivre 18).

Through the immense popularity for Greek and Hellenic texts, the Arabic importation of Trismegistus and his corpus became integrated within the greater Islamic tradition itself, reflecting an ancient, infallible source by which many Islamic sciences sought to substantiate their sacred doctrines.

While Trismegistus proper is not mentioned in the Qu�ran, early Islamic hagiographers identified him with the figure Idris, who was recognized as a �Thrice Wise� shaykh who was also Enoch, the person who had created the first city and had thus established one of the first symbols of Order for humanity (Faivre 19). Idris/Trismegistus was also seen as �an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world,� who set down the constructive elements of the prime material plane through alchemy and of the cosmos through astrology (Faivre 19, 20).

In fact, Trismegistus� three successive incarnations were used in precisely the same manner as the Hellenized Egyptians, namely to explain the source of civilized order and their religious and secular sciences. The first Hermes was �a civilizing hero,� associated with Enoch as the creator of human order in the form of the first city. He had also carved the sacred sciences in the pyramids by using hieroglyphics (Faivre 19). The second Hermes meanwhile �was the initiator of Pythagoras,� Pythagoras being a critical figure in not only mathematical, but metaphysical, realms of knowledge (Faivre 20). Finally, Tat, the third incarnation of Hermes, �was the first teacher of alchemy,� one of the main religio-secular sciences of early Islam (Faivre 20).

To substantiate Trismegistus� inclusion into the Islamic tradition, several myths from the Emerald Tablet and Book of Crates explain that he was taken by an angel, presumably Gibriel (Gabriel), and placed on the seventh sphere while still in physical form (Faivre 20). This place within the celestial spheres of Allah elevated him above Jesus and Moses themselves and placed him in a nearly comparable position to the level of transcendence the Prophet Muhammad achieved during his Mi�raj. Thus, the elevated and infallible Trismegistus �links Muslim consciousness with the pagan past,� substantiating Islamic cosmological and metaphysical doctrines via the perceived Truth of Trismegistus� gnosis as a means of achieving a greater understanding of Allah and his force in the form of the secular and religious sciences (Faivre 20).

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