With the exception of the third chapter of Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’: A Study,written in 1930 and William York Tindall’s 1954 essay “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition”(1) to my knowledge, very little has been said or published regarding the impact of Hermetic and Gnostic doctrines on the structural composition and thematic organization of Ulysses. Though these very early works make clear that it is impossible to grasp the meaning of the book without an understanding of the esoteric theories which underlie it and that these theories are, for the most part, grounded on Stephen and Bloom’s idealization of “ […] the East, its occult sciences and the oriental sources of all religion”(2) they do not focus on those same, specific, literary and historical documents which that same ‘East’ produced and with which Joyce was inevitably familiar. For this reason, The Corpus Hermeticum, Patristic texts and various Gnostic sources available to Joyce at the time such as the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus L3525, the Ryland’s Papyrus 463, the Berlin Codex 8502, the Bruce Codex and the Askew Codex (parts of which were translated and published in James Orr’s New Testament Apocryphal Writings published in 1923, owned by Joyce and reported in Thomas E. Connolly’s The Personal Library of James Joyce: A Descriptive Bibliography) are, I believe, fundamental hermeneutical keys in reading Ulysses and thus deserving some further, in-depth critical attention, especially in the light of what they may reveal in terms of Stephen’s (and perhaps Joyce’s) ‘nightmare’ vision of history.

The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of eighteen distinct and carefully arranged 14th Century manuscripts or tractates originally written in Greek in 2nd Century Egypt. It is generally believed that in the 3rd Century its influence spread throughout the Mesopotamian region and by the middle of the 11th Century it was well known in Constantinople. But it was not until the 15th Century that it finally found its way to Florence where Marsilio Ficino, at the bidding of Lorenzo Il Magnifico, translated it into Latin in 1462-3.(3) In extreme synthesis, what the eighteen manuscripts or libelli contain is a form of pagan Gnosticism, a fusion of Platonism and radical Judaism, rooted in the religious culture of Egypt under King Ptolemy I, who proclaimed himself Soter, or Savior and wished to provide a religiously inspired counterpart to the purely humanistic Aristotelianism which was then still in embryonic form. This new movement, in the course of a few centuries, effectively destroyed the sovereignty of the Egyptian priesthood, no longer recognizing infallible scripture nor any form of hierarchy or sacramentalism. In its place, this movement advocated and promoted a scheme of individual redemption but without a personal redeemer and final cosmic apocalypse. In its literary form, once disseminated outside Egypt, The Corpus gradually assumed the guise of successive dialogues between Hermes Trismegistus, a fusion of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, and the disciple chosen to receive gnosis or divine knowledge. Thoth was, in a sense, considered a scribe of the gods and reputed author of all sacred literature not only of The Corpus Hermeticum but of the Tabula Smaragdina or Emerald Tablet as well, another important hermetic revelation well known to Joyce.

The revival of academic interest in Hermetical studies was sparked by the scholarly publication of Richard Reitzenstein’s Poimandres in 1904. Shortly afterwards, the Anglo-American Theosophists in particular were greatly enthused by G.R.S. Mead’s English translation of The Corpus Hermeticum in 1906 – a translation closely supervised by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder and moving spirit of The Theosophical Society loved by Yeats and equally abhorred by Joyce. But in 1903, that same young man, writing book reviews in Paris for the Daily Express had favorably reviewed J. Lewis McIntyre’s Giordano Bruno. It was through “the Nolan” that Joyce came to appreciate the innovative spirit of hermetic ideas and not through “that hermetic crowd” (U 7.783) or “That Blavatsky woman” (U 7.784) he derides in the “Aeolus” episode.(4)

It is interesting, at this point, to have a closer look at The Corpus Hermeticum and see how its structural organization of eighteen separate tractates is surprisingly similar to the three-part division of Ulysses. Closely corresponding to the Telemachia are the first four tractates: “Poimandres”, “To Asclepius”, “The Sacred Sermon” and “The Cup or Monad” in which Hermes Trismegistus, assuming the role of the son, receives divine revelation from the supreme being Poimandres “Man-Shepherd”, a wholly transcendental father-figure, who cathesizes his “Son” on various subjects such as the story of creation, bisexual man – the Adam Kadmon who falls into nature mentioned in “Proteus” (U 3.41), the historical ‘nightmare’ willed by the demiurge and the eventual, necessary re-unification or re-union of the mortal with the immortal. In these four dialogues the main peculiarity is that the revealer does not even contemplate in the slightest the possibility of a redeemer. The following six tractates, which parallel the middle section of Ulysses, deal mostly with the macrocosmic and microcosmic, god in man and man in god but what is most striking to a reader of Joyce is the analogy of the tenth tractate, significantly entitled “The Key”, to the tenth episode “Wandering Rocks”. Both have the same structural function in their respective narrative contexts of summarizing or encapsulating apparently unrelated events or actions, previously mentioned or currently unfolding and, at the same time, of introducing a different thematic focus distinct and quite autonomous arising from, and generated by, the preceding processes. In the case of Ulysses, the narrative, from this point onwards, converges exclusively on Bloom’s gravitational attraction towards Stephen excluding, almost completely, the social, professional and political ramifications which previously linked his existence to the Dublin of his day and, as far as The Corpus is concerned, the remaining tractates concentrate entirely on Asclepius’s identification and absorption in the Common Mind or the Absolute. In the former, there is a progressive assimilation of father toward son and in the latter the opposite process is true. The apotheosis of both processes culminate, strangely enough, in the fifteenth episode of both works: “A Letter to Asclepius” in The Corpus Hermeticum and, at the end of the “Circe” episode, with Bloom’s vision of Rudy in Ulysses. In the third and final part of Ulysses there is the homecoming of the father-son figures while in The Corpus there is a similar, analogical correspondence between Asclepius and King Ammon.

The Tabula Smaragdina, on the other hand, a text purporting to reveal the secret of the primordial substance and its transmutations, repeatedly translated by medieval alchemists but also by scientific and theological geniuses such as Roger Bacon, Isaac Newton and Albertus Magnus may have been useful to Joyce not on account of its structural composition (it is simply a collection of fourteen maxims or sayings) but for its direct and unequivocal approach concerning man’s creative ability to fashion and determine his universe in accordance to his spiritual origins. This idea is most explicit in the second maxim: “That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, to perform the miracles of the one thing.”(5) (which Joyce parodies in Finnegans Wake as “The tasks above are as the flasks below, saith the emerald canticle of Hermes and all’s loth and pleasestir, are told, on excellent inkbottle authority” (FW 2.2.263). As Gilles Quispel has noted, this saying is also present in the Gnostic “Gospel of Thomas”, another collection of sayings but here presented as “the secret words which the Living Jesus spoke to Didymus Judas Thomas”, indicating that these Hermetic sayings are almost contemporaneous with The Corpus since the “Gospel of Thomas” was originally written in Edessa in 140 AD.(6) It also shows the close connection and interdependence between the Hermetic tradition and Gnostic thought which both originated in Egypt in the 2nd Century AD. Another popular maxim, though traditionally not included in The Tabula Smaragdina but reported in the hermetic gnomology of Johannes Stobaeus, a fifth century magus from Stobi, Macedonia and more than likely known to Joyce since often included in various hermetic anthologies is: “He who knows himself, knows the All but whoever knows the All but fails to know himself lacks everything.”(7) This precept would go a long way in explaining the meandering and seemingly illogical peripatetics of both Bloom and Stephen and Joyce’s scrupulousness in documenting this strenuous and painstaking process in attaining even the slightest and most superficial knowledge of self.

This same overwhelming concern for self-knowledge and spiritual liberation which, in my opinion, supported and inspired Joyce not only during the seven long years of work on Ulysses but during his entire artistic career, was nourished and sustained, consciously and unconsciously, by the spirit of Valentinian Gnosticism as well – that formidable intellectual and religious movement that ignited the cultural landscape of 2nd Century Christian Europe. But let us consider, in a more systematic manner, Joyce’s formal acquaintance with Gnostic thought since the textual references that will be mentioned seem to suggest a knowledge that is not merely superficial. Historically, the main source of Gnosticism has been the five-volume polemic of St. Irenaeus, The Exposure and Overthrow of Falsely-So-Called Gnosis (180 AD). In the Preface, the then Bishop of Lyon states that his principal objection to Gnostic doctrine is their claim that the creator of the world is not the true God, hence their rejection of the Genesis story. What Irenaeus found most revolting was a gospel, believed to have been written by Valentinus, known as “The Gospel of Truth”. A version of this same gospel was later found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945 and it has helped scholars to correct the many biases of Irenaeus. The central message involves the necessity to know oneself – for only in this way can man know God. This knowledge involves understanding the creation of the world and the origin of the Demiurge.(8)

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, as late as 1938, while working on what was to become Finnegans Wake, Joyce was still debating with himself and his friend Jacques Mercanton, the nature and role of the demiurge in relation to the creative process. As reported in Ellmann’s biography, Joyce seems to address his own mind rather than Mercanton: “Isn’t this the way the demiurge must calculate in making our fine world? … Perhaps, after all, he reflects less than we. I reconstruct the life of the night the way the Demiurge goes about his creation, on the basis of a mental scenario that never varies. The only difference is that I obey laws that I have not chosen. And he? …” (JJII 707-08). That question, to my knowledge, is never answered by Joyce. But if we understand the context of this conversation aright and place it within its appropriate Gnostic framework, the answer cannot help but be “Yes”, the Demiurge as well obeys laws that he has not chosen. However, to make any sense of this answer we must first consider it in relation to the compositional make up of Ulysses.

The first thing to note in this respect is the deliberate identification and superimposition of the first six episodes and the first three hours in the lives of Stephen and Bloom on the morning of June 16, 1904. Joyce employs a typically Gnostic technique of making deliberate, analogical correspondences between different levels of meaning or conceptual frameworks. For example, in these initial episodes, equally divided in two groups of threes, Joyce associates with Stephen the arts of theology, history and philology while contra posing them to Bloom with whom Joyce associates the corresponding arts of economics, botany/chemistry and religion. The interesting aspect is that the art of theology in Episode 1 is contrasted to the art of religion in Episode 6. And this contrapuntal procedure is sustained throughout the 18 episodes. Let us then begin with “Telemachus”. According to the Linati scheme, the Art is theology, the Colours white and gold (Vatican and Church colours) and the symbol is that of the heir. Thus, Mulligan’s opening intonation of “Introibo ad altare Dei” (U 1.5) gives the episode its ecclesiastical tone and substance; the immediate reference to ‘Chrysostomos’ (U 1.26) introduces the Patristic setting and theme and the third reference to Stephen’s ‘absurd name’ (U 1.34) gives us the figure of the artificer or demiurge – all contained in the first page of the book. Of course, this last point of the name brings us back to A Portrait, and the apprenticeship of Stephen Dedalus as aspiring demiurge and forger of a new conscience for his Ireland. But the actual fashioning remains hypothetical. It is in “Telemachus” that this goal begins to take concrete form. Hence, the three references to the Mass/Church, Patristic setting and Demiurge – together with the addition of the milk woman who seems to have “entered from a morning world” (U 1.399) – all coalesce in Stephen’s mind and is there identified as the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church, et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam (U 1.651) threatened by “a horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the broody mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sebelius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son.” (U 1.655-59). This is how Stephen summarizes the various heresies that characterized the first nine hundred years of historical Christianity. But, what is of particular importance for us here is his reference to Valentine, or Valentinus, the great Gnostic teacher born at Phrebonis, in the Egyptian Delta, around 100 AD. He was educated in Alexandria and there gained a considerable following. Sometime between 136 and 140, he went to Rome and founded a school that preached the gospel of Christian salvation based on gnosis, or the direct apprehension of the divine. This doctrine was well received and, in a relatively short time, he gained a solid reputation and a wide following – so much so that, at the time, he was one of the candidates most likely to occupy the seat of Bishop of Rome. But this popular acclamation was short-lived. His gospel message was declared heretical by the so-called orthodox Christians and his followers persecuted. However, the very fact that Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, writing in 180 AD, was still very much worried about the persistence of this doctrine among Christians of his own congregation and elsewhere is indicative of the continued threat it posed for orthodox Christianity. Stephen seems to dismiss this whole heretical tradition in a seemingly facile, dismissive fashion: “Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields” (U 1.662-64). But his ironic intent is clearly underlined in his assumed ecclesiastical tone and exaggerated metaphorical imagery. The Valentinian message of salvation based on personal gnosis is much more attractive to Stephen’s temperament than the martial stance to defend dogmatic truths imposed by an external authority such as the Roman Church. There is a final, important clue in this opening episode that supports a Gnostic reading: it is that one, sole, isolated, final word – “Usurper” (U 1.744). In Valentinian theology, as we shall see, the Demiurge is the primordial, divine usurper!

In “Nestor,” Joyce shifts our attention from the early history of the Church to history in general and Irish history in particular. The great historical figures here mentioned, Pyrrhus (U 2.18), Julius Caesar (U 2.48), Columbanus (U 2.144), Averroes and Moses Maimonides (U 2.158) and indirectly referred to Giambattista Vico (U 2.25), Aristotle (U 2.50-52) and Giordano Bruno (U 2.159), as well as lesser, local celebrities the likes of Fred Ryan (U 2.256), George W. Russell (U 2.257), Charles Stewart Parnell and Katherine O’Shea (2.394-95) are all puppets whose tangled strings do not permit them a proper recital but sway them to and fro in a seemingly absurd world stage. This is Stephen’s view of history, the “nightmare” from which he is trying to awake (U 2.377). This same idea of chaos pervading every event in human history, of something gone wrong from the very beginning is explained in Gnostic terms by the origin of the demiurge and his ill-fated attempt to create the universe in his image and likeness. History is the logical consequence of this original imperfection. Stephen’s attempt “to awake” from this nightmare, or a creation gone sour, is analogous to the protagonist’s awakening described in the Gnostic poem “The Hymn of the Pearl”(9) in which a divine prince, finding himself in our world and unaware of his true identity, must try to remember his origins in order to escape from the same, imprisoned condition, acutely felt by Stephen. It is this theme of estrangement, this refusal to accept the mere succession of events happening in linear, irreversible time that shapes and defines the two protagonists’ apparently random and chaotic existence and, at the same time, gives purpose and scope to their continual search for some sort of deliverance.(10)

In “Proteus”, we come across the hermetic, mystical philosophy of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) – a Renaissance variant of Gnostic thought – through Stephen’s mental attempts to decipher the “Signatures of all things” (U 3.2). Walking along, the beach of Sandycove, Stephen is reminded of Blake’s Los Demiurgos (U 3.18) and the prison-house of the world he constructed with his mallet, the “Limits of the diaphane” (U 3.4). But there is also “Adam Kadmon” (U 3.41) and “Heva, naked Eve” (U 3.41-42) to counteract this idea of forced constraint. They are the primordial couple much celebrated in Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical doctrine – another nineteenth century Gnostic variant. Thus, the “Womb of sin” (U 3.44) or Eve’s belly, the source of all sin and corruption, suggests another fundamental Gnostic doctrine which, in effect, rejects this Augustinian dogma of Original Sin by asserting that the notion of sin is really the manifestation of ignorance propagated by the Demiurge and not something attributable to man’s free will. The subsequent reference to Arius (U 3.50-52), born around 256-336 AD, also implies the theological controversies that characterized the first two centuries of Christianity, especially the developing dogmas concerning the consubstantiality of the Trinity and the transubstantiality of the bread and wine consecrated at Mass into the body and blood of Christ. The historical answers given to these and similar questions concerning the divine nature of Jesus differentiated orthodox Christianity from the various Christian sects then in full bloom and these same concerns animate Stephen’s thoughts throughout this episode and beyond. Thus, in this Part I of Ulysses, which is mostly concerned with various beginnings, the question of origins encapsulates all other themes and this very same idea is what characterized the essence of Valentinian theology.

It should not be very difficult at this point to see Joyce’s three-part division of Ulysses, as representing the Gnostic three-fold nature of man (matter, soul, spirit) as well as its cyclical correlative of creation, existence and reintegration. In this sense, the whole book is emblematic of the process of initial ignorance, progressive enlightenment and ultimate salvation, all perfectly illustrated in the 15th episode in which Joyce concentrates a process of gnosis within the temporal framework of the first hour of June 17, 1904 but really within an a-temporal dimension since most of what ‘happens’ in this episode is essentially internal and technically not taking place during the chronological span of Bloomsday. For this reason, ‘Circe’ stands out from the rest of the book: independent and isolated from everything that proceeded it and everything that followed it. The home coming could have been more easily effected had Bloom taken Stephen directly to Eccles Street from the Westland Row Station, after he was given the slip by Mulligan and Haines. But Joyce is here concerned with creating a different kind of world where internal/external categories, cause and effective relationships, and subject/object distinctions no longer have the same kind of meaning as they do in the natural world. Joyce intends to reconstruct “the life of the night” in the same way the Demiurge “goes about his creation.” This reconstruction is done on the basis of a “mental scenario that never varies” that is, from a kind of pre-existing, spiritual blueprint. For the Demiurge, this spiritual blueprint is his imperfect notion of the Pleroma; for Joyce it is the unconscious. Joyce obeys laws that he has not chosen (he cannot shape or control the unconscious) and he asks himself if this is also the case with the Demiurge. I believe that in writing ‘Circe’ he found his answer. The Demiurge is in the very same position. He too obeys laws that he has not chosen. He too is a part of a greater design and does what he does because ordained to do so: hence his creation of the world and Joyce’s creation of Nighttown, or the world of the night.

The twelve major visions experienced by Stephen and Bloom transpose and re-arrange the structure of the entire narrative. They also show the progressive advancement of both characters in their quest for a higher gnosis. Significantly, Stephen does not experience any kind of vision before he reaches the brothel. Of the six he does experience, four occur in the Music Room and two occur after he leaves the brothel. Once in the Music Room, we see Stephen emulating perfect fifths on the pianola. This association with music already distinguishes the manner and substance of Stephen’s visions from those of Bloom. Stephen is not afflicted by sexual guilt nor by problems of social acceptance. Instead, he is obsessed by the meeting of extremes: “Jewgreek is greekjew”, (U 15. 2097-98) death being the highest form of life, perfect fifths and empty fifths, the ground of being and becoming. He must ‘recycle’ mountains of intellectual excesses. It is in his first vision that Hermes Trismegistus and his Poimandres appear (U 15. 2269). Hermetic ideas must be re-thought and re-cast in different moulds. On this lighter note, the musicality of Stephen’s world is jarred by his second vision of Philip Drunk and Philip Sober. Artifoni warns him: “Ci rifletta, lei rovina tutto” (Reflect upon it, you are ruining everything.) Stephen’s life is at a standstill. He is not yet an artist nor a failed Dubliner, like many of his friends.

The waltz around the Music Room serves as prelude to Stephen’s most horrifying but saving vision: “Stephen’s mother emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and thorn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould.” (U 15. 4157-59) Coming to terms with his family life, especially with his mother, is Stephen’s most difficult test. It was through his family that he was subjugated by the other nets of religion and state. He must sever these ties once and for all. With the symbolic smashing of the chandelier and shouting his battle cry “Non Serviam”, (U 15. 4228) he achieves the gnosis necessary to continue his spiritual journey.

Rushing from the brothel to the street outside, Stephen experiences his fifth and sixth vision. Biddy the Clap and Cunty Kate are the catalysts for the apparition of Edward VII, Rumbolt, the Croppy Boy, Pope Hennnesy, Old Grummy Granny, the Citizen the navvy and the disembodied voices. From family to state: this vision is symbolic of Stephen’s second victory – his emancipation from Ireland and all it represents. There remains the third and most insidious one: the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. And it is in his sixth and final vision that Stephen sees a Black Mass being celebrated by Father Malachi O’Flynn. This is the vision that finally frees Stephen from the taboos of orthodoxy, the conventional, the morally approved. He is no longer subjected to the god of the Mosaic Law, of the empire and judge of life and death. But this requires that he pay with his present life. He must die and be resurrected: “Private Carr rushes towards Stephen, fists outstretched and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls stunned.” Awaking, Stephen stretches out his arms murmuring Yeats’s verses from “Who Goes With Fergus” – anticipating a new golden dawn, finally liberated from the tyranny of an imperfect creation.