5 W's on Four Historic Figures

"As within, so without, as above, so below, as the universe, so the soul."
      -one of many English renderings of the Emerald Tablet, see link below

      In any case we're off on a long Mystery Series quest for Enoch, for Idris, for Hermes Trimegistus, and even for Thoth. Yes, That Thoth, and whether he, or rather it, influenced the legend of any of the others, or was even perhaps the source for those legends, and maybe: were they all one in the same.

      Of course this one is going to get way off track, even using the general guide of the old standard 5 W's (with the H of course). And it is going to get weird, such as when we check in with our old friends in New Orleans where the Krewe salutes St. Francis. But, we'll follow the information and try to maintain our course and speed and come to some manner of conclusion. Or rather: Conclusions.

      So shall we begin with the first of the "W"s and go through and identify who we are talking about. And just to keep things flowing we'll take them in the name most often used for them.

WHO (repeat as needed)
      Enoch.
      There's several Enochs in the Old Testament. There's one that is the son of Cain and is mentioned in Genesis 4 as building a city. There's another with a similar name in Hebrew but it translated to English as Hanoch in Exodus who was a son of Reuben. Then then there is an Enoch in 1 Chronicles.
      But the Enoch we're talking about is the one that was a great-(etc)-grandson of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, and a great----grandfather of Noah of boat building fame, and is mentioned in Genesis 5 with a very few words including the famous line: "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him" (KJV). See below for various resource links.
      And this Enoch is also mentioned in the Gospel of Luke in the linage of Christ on its way back to Adam. He is also in the "Roll Call of Faith" in Hebrews 11, which adds a bit of information not found in Genesis, "that he should not see death". The last mention of him is in the Epistle of Jude where verses fourteen and fifteen quote a prophesy ascribed to him. But that's all that The Bible says about him.
      Remember the reference for that quote because it will come up later as it brings up something else about Enoch that we have to talk about. But for right now, we're moving on to our next 'who'.

      Idris (a.s. (we'll explain that after while)).
      The name occurs twice in the Qur'an. First in Surah 19 where he is listed as a man of truth and a prophet who lived somewhere between the time of Adam and the birth of Noah, then later in Surah 21 where he is praised with a couple of others for his Constancy and Patience. See link below to an online edition where you can read it for yourself, and remember those two words, they come up again shortly.
      There is a stark similarity to the story of Enoch from Genesis in a verse in Surah 19: "we raised him to an exalted place". While it doesn't directly say that Allah "took him", it most certainly implies it.
      There are other similarities we'll come to later, but most of that is in what neither text actually says. There's very little about either man. But that hasn't stopped Islamic academics from going into depth about his life and times, and vaunted status in the "fourth heaven", and so on.
      And, of course, there are some that say Idris couldn't be Enoch, more for political reasons that anything else. Which makes the words used in the Qur'an rather odd when you consider the meaning of the Hebrew name: 'dedicated' and 'disciplined'.

      And we'll come back to him as well. Next name....

      Hermes Trismegistus, literally "Hermes 'the' Thrice Great".
      Now we have to clarify the clarification. The Hermes we are talking about is the one that has always been down here with us. The other Hermes is the Olympian god that was the messenger of the gods, among other functions (such as being the patron of gamblers), and the forerunner of Mercury.... all puns intended, don't try this at home as The Desk is a Professional.... and may have simply been the Egyptian's Thoth with a bit of a wardrobe change, which we'll deal with later. See a link to more about the Olympian, and everybody/thing else below. And, keep that idea that he was from elsewhere, or other when, we'll come back to it in a moment.
      There is some bleedover with the various stories of the gods and the activities of our Hermes, and what amounts to a demotion. But for this outing, we're going to leave that until after the next entity in our discussion and, at this point, only talk about a human. But remember that connection, it will come back up later.

      We dealt with Ol' Herm in some depth in our article about Alchemy, see link below, and we'll come back to it later, but we're going to look at him in a slightly different light here. While there may not have been one singular guy with that name (or title) on his mail slot in the office, somebody had to have written, taught, repeated, whatever, the information later referred to as Hermeticism.
      There are several texts that form the overall library, and, as is the way of things, it is likely that none of them were written by anybody who made their dinner reservations in the name of 'Hermes, party of five'. There are links below to free versions of several of them.
      The oldest of the known Greek texts with the Hermes byline were probably written somewhere before 1000 AD, perhaps as early as 300 AD. Some definitely contain much older material, and it is not out of the question that much of it came from the East, perhaps from as far away as India and China along the trade routes. Just as the seeds of the mathematical ideas of Pythagoras arrived with boatloads of trade goods from the Orient.
      There are also other works in various languages along the same lines that were widely known, often either claiming to be written by Hermes, or were up front commentaries and analysis of 'his' work. Some of these was available to physicians and scholars like Galen around 200 AD, who may have seen an original source for the Hermes document when he was studying in Egypt. As well as polymaths like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in around 1000 AD who is known to have drawn from Aristotle, who had lived around 350 BC. The trend of going deep into this material as a source of insight and inspiration even had Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727) doing his own translation of it. There's a link below to a recent magazine article about Sir Isaac and the Great Work.
      Of course that period was before science and medicine and magic and religion and political economy all diverged into separate and almost siloed fields, who then all but ignore each other.
      But the term is also found in the rest of the world when a container is Hermetically sealed so that nothing can get into, or out of, it. The usage of the term is related to the idea that those with Hermetic knowledge kept secrets. Which we'll come back to when we look at some different groups.

      From this far out, we can't be sure, but there may well have been somebody who collected the information from as many sources as he could, both foreign and domestic, distilled it down, and began disseminating it in an organized way... perhaps in a way that was worthy of a god. Which may be good enough for our purposes here. And we're going to revisit this idea in a moment.

      The next name may be the most interesting, and influential, of the four, and the hardest to pin down. And before we're done, we'll come back to Herm as well.

      Thoth. Also known as: Tehuti (Djehuty), Lord Mat, Khemenu, Techu, and so on.
      He was the Egyptian god that was usually depicted with the head, and 'nose', of an Ibis. A medium sized wading bird with a long thin curving beak. Thoth (under his various names) is also usually seen with writing instruments, and the disc of the moon is often over his head.
      While he was important in ancient Egypt, his status diminished over time, and eventually his primary temple at Luxor was used as a quarry, both to construct other temples, and by the people who needed stone for their own projects.
      Thoth is the one with the pen and pad standing next to the scales when a dead person's soul is being judged by other gods. Thoth is also seen with the king in the next world either guiding or advising the deceased royal, as well as taking care of his other duties because Thoth, like the Greek's Hermes, was quite busy.
      But it is his role in bringing information to humanity that we're interested in here. Which is also what later caught the eye of the Greeks

"As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it."
- John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

      And that's enough of the "Who" for now. Moving on to ...

WHAT:(four times)
      Many people think that the Biblical Enoch, the one from chapter 5 that "exited stage Up", wrote, or perhaps dictated at least the first of the several books that bear his name.
      While the First Book of Enoch is ancient, as some parts of it were discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls cache, it most assuredly does not go back to the Pre-Flood era when the good Enoch was alive. Think about it, if the book had been written by Noah's great-great.... grandfather, it would have had to be preserved for how many hundreds of years, and then Noah would have had to have packed the manuscript in his carry on bag and have taken it on the Ark with him.
      No. The stand-alone book known as First Enoch, as well as the rest of them, are what is called a pseudographic, a text written usually years after the fact and then attributed to a famous individual. In some cases the falsely attributed text is very convincing. Which is the case with 1 Enoch.
      The book goes into detail about his encounter with various angelic beings that give him all sorts of knowledge and advice. And some of it is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, including a text in the epistle of Jude which quotes 1 Enoch 1 : 9.
      Let's just go ahead and "run the tape". This is Jude 14 and 15 (NKJV - see links below)

"Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.'"

"And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones
To execute judgement upon all,
And to destroy all the ungodly:
And to convict all flesh
Of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed,
And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

      And now we'll throw this spanner into the works and see how thing run.
      Enoch is also mentioned in one of the oldest, and oddest, of the Old Testament Apocryphal Books. The "Book of Giants (see links below). He is mentioned by name and title, as a holy man that can interpret dreams, and so on. A famous individual, whom we look elsewhere (see "Giant" link below) either comes to him, or sends a representative, to have a troubling dream addressed, and Enoch does so. He also speaks some prophesy about them, and the prophesy should now look somewhat familiar, and the holy man offers some sage advice.
      In the story, the individuals involved ignore the advice of the Man Walking With God, and things don't work out so well for them.

      So let's ponder this for a moment.
      The text of part of 1 Enoch, as well as "Giants" were found in the caves of Qumran, which means it was in existence during the "400 years of silence" when the Essene community was living away from Jerusalem to stay out of the political and religious mess the city was in. As to whether or not they are the ones that stashed the religious texts as well as innumerable records of the communities "almost endless" rules, as well as receipts for the sale of sheep and the use of water which makes up the bulk of the records, that is still in dispute. In any case, those books, and a BUNCH of other stuff was thought to be sufficiently important to go to a lot of trouble to hide.
      What is known for certain is that when Rome leveled Jerusalem, and most of Judea with it, in about 68 AD, and anything that passed for what could be called Jewish Civilization ceased to exist in the province, at least most of the First Book of Enoch was already in long term storage not far from the Dead Sea.
      Jude was the brother of James, and probably a half-brother of Jesus, which means he was alive while whoever hid the scrolls in the caves were actively writing and secreting them down by the Sea. And there had to have been some version of 1 Enoch in circulation, perhaps as a spoken word narration, or perhaps as a written scroll available for reading in the Synagogue. In either case, Jude was familiar with the text, and quoted it in his letter, rendering the Hebrew original into Greek.

      Moving on to Idris (as).

A tangent on "a.s."
      Most people are familiar with a series of letters that come as an interjection after the name of the Prophet of Islam as an honorific. You'll see PBUH, meaning "peace be upon him", or a similar phrase. This does two things. We'll look at the second of those first, which is to make sure that out of all the Muhammad's in history, it lets everybody know you're talking about the Prophet and not the famous boxer or somebody else. In Christianity you see this when the mother of Christ is referred as "the Virgin Mary" and various New Testament figures listed as "Saint Luke" or "the Apostle Matthew".
      The first and most important is this: It shows respect for the founder of the religion, which you also see from certain devout, and very traditional Christians who will whisper "praise Him" or cross themselves and so on when they mention Jesus, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, or even somebody like Saint Paul or one of the other Apostles. You also see it with observant Jews when the Name of GOD comes up and they refuse to say it, and if they do have to say it, they will make a blessing gesture or say "Amen" so it was a prayer and in no way can be assumed to be taking the Lord's name in vain. So while many in the West don't understand Muslims doing it, there's good reasons behind the tradition.
      It is worth noting here that many will use a similar phrase if they mention Allah. Such as saying "Dhikrullah / Dhikr" (remembrance of God), or "Who is worthy of all praise", or "the Most Holy One", and so on. Which again echos what we just said about those who make the sign of the cross at the mention of Jesus's name.

      The letters after Idris's name (a.s.) with or without the periods, means 'alayyhi assalaam', Arabic for "peace be upon him", and is used with other figures from the history of the faith, such as ancient prophets, instead of the longer phrase which is held almost exclusively for Muhammad.
      You will also run across RA (Radi Allah) which essentially means the same thing, and a handful of other terms which mean that, or ask for blessings up him, or other phrases to honor them.
      And, of course, the use of the initials of the phrase, or the converting it into English instead of using the original language is seen by some in the more conservative branches of the faith as not showing sufficient respect, and is actually being lazy. When you are dealing with humans, some things are the same no matter what your talking about.
End Tangent

      If you take the name of Enoch out of the equation, there is almost nothing substantial about Idris. Some credit him with being the first make to make Jihad (holy / just war) in the name of Allah, but that is scarcely supported by the text unless you are very generous with your interpretation of what is there.
      But again, direct Scriptural evidence hasn't slowed anybody down with crediting one who was obviously a very good man with all sorts of wonderful deeds, and one even includes a skilled trade, making him out to be a very devout tailor. There is also a famous hadith (a record of something the prophet said to one of his companions) by Abu Dharr al-Ghifari who said:

"Four - that is, messengers - were Syrians; Adam, Shiith, Nuh, and Idris, who was the first to write with a pen. Allah revealed 3 scrolls to him." (see link below for background)
      - Note: some translations make it thirty scrolls.

      There are also some very old traditions that Idris delivered everything from farming advice to medical knowledge. Essentially the same library of information credited to Enoch, as well as our next two candidates.

      Hermes / Hermes Trismegistus
      Ok, we're going to go with a very generalized view of him, whatever and whoever he was. If he was at all. And What he did.
      While the name and much of his work is associated with the classic age of Greece. Much of the writings attributed to him seem to have been written in one or another of the languages from what is now the Middle East, many manuscripts were only preserved in Arabic, whether or not they were originally written in that language is unknown.
      You'll find everything from representations of the Emerald Tablet, as well as volumes and volumes of commentary on it by everybody up to and including Sir Isaac Newton, and other works that claim to have been written by Hermes himself, even though some of them are known to have been penned around 1000 AD in Europe.
      And, we're going to say it right here and right now: it is entirely possible that who- and/or what- ever we are identifying as Hermes was, first and last and always was... Thoth the Egyptian with the 'pointy nose', whom we'll meet in a moment. And you can really meet him, or at least an animated robot driven by AI at the Egyptian museum, see link below.

      The mystical Emerald Tablet of Hermes is also known as the Emerald Tablet of Thoth, and in some cases they go further to label him Thoth the Atlantean. And it more than just a popular book of fiction from the 1930s that did that (link below). But we're going to have to come back to that when we talk about him, or rather, it.

      Let's look at the evidence, or rather the serious lack of it, for a human who would sit at the lunch table at the convention with the place holder "Thrice Greatest Hermes" as one version of the Tablet makes it.
      While it is supposed that he lived during the Golden Age of Greece, give or take 500 to 400 BC, or was perhaps a figure during the period when the Ionian League was busy inventing the Western Civilization a couple of hundred years before that, that those golden Greeks would perfect. In either case, at least some of the information that he had collected most certainly came from the East and South. And it was there that much of it was preserved. But as far as hard evidence that he was anything ranging from a single man to a group project at some Ionian or Athenian school... there is no documentation, period. No grave inscription, no citation by Plato that Socrates had spent a month sitting and arguing the finer points of philosophy with him, no letter from the Pharaoh to another king about this funny old teacher, nothing.
      Add to that the fact that the same information is presented in older languages, including several in an early form of Arabic.

      All of this would be a lot easier of an original manuscript with the author's signature of anything we've talked about turned up in the library of some monastery or museum or something. But so far, none have.

      And we're going to cheat with Thoth.
      Other than being one of the major ancient Egyptian gods during what is called the Late Ancient Period, about 650 BC or so, we find him in his role as the "records keeper" at judgment, and things like that. Thoth is credited with bringing all sorts of learning to man, including a standard calendar, writing, science, and so on. Which is exactly what the other three are said to have done. Which is good enough for us for now, and we can move on to ....

WHEN? .....
      This is a tricky one, and we'll work backwards, or maybe it's forward, from Thoth.
      Nevermind what you'll see below that claims that Thoth was from Atlantis. That's a fairly new role that he would probably be rather surprised by. But when you're an ibis headed (or baboon-shaped) moon god, maybe you get used to statements like that.
      In any case, Thoth was already on the scene to take care of Isis when she was pregnant with Osiris. Another story has it that he manifested himself at the creation, or was born from the lips of the sun when it came into being, and so was created as the moon. So he's been around for awhile.

      The next oldest would be the human man known as Enoch / Idris.
      By some calendars Enoch lived around 3400 BC. Adam was still alive when he was born, and both 'checked out' (so to speak) within a few years of each other. Enoch only being 365 years old.
      If Idris was not the same guy, there is absolutely no information about him otherwise, so, for today, we're going to ignore the Islamic scholars that say otherwise and go with the idea that Enoch's email account was under the name "Idris" so nobody would confuse him with the son of Cain who was several years older.
      And now we're going to say this, again. The books known as the Books of Enoch have NOTHING to do with the man that was "the Seventh from Adam".
      Think about it this way. Noah was born after Enoch had exited stage right... or up, as the case may be. Then Noah was six hundred years old when it started raining. If 1 Enoch had been written before the flood, the text would have been ancient even before Noah put them on the shelf in the Captain's Study on the Ark.
      It is possible for a hand written manuscript to survive that long. And below we have an example of a paper script that is believed to have been partially written by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) which would make it on the order of over four hundred years old, and still readable.

      However, there are some textual clues that the earliest parts of 1 Enoch may have been written was perhaps 500 to 300 BC, however, it most certainly was a compendium of earlier oral legends and mythology. As for the Second Book of Enoch, It is comparably new, probably generated during the Early Middle Ages, about 500 to 800 AD, although it may be based on older material. All other books with Enoch's name on them are modern frauds.

      Next would come another one that probably did not write the material his name has been attached to. Hermes.
      There is reasonable evidence that by about 200 BC in Egypt that a person whose coffee cup said "property of Herm the T-G", which was probably a pen name they chose to attach to the work, spent their spare time writing up the texts that became legendary and inspired howevermany individuals and even organizations that came later, right up to today.

      Let's stop off and look at a good example that is part of the "when". The ORIGINAL Order of the Golden Dawn and related groups.
      While there have always been mystical groups, mystic orders, priests of mystery religions and magical guilds, and everything else that way, certain ones find the right place and the right time going great guns, and then fizzled. Some, like the Greek's Eleusinian Mystery Cult (see link below) from the Golden Age of Greece in about 500 BC. The powerful and influential cult eventually died out. One of the reasons being they they didn't like to share their secrets with new adherents, and by the Christian era it was a shadow of its former self and more a curiosity than a mainstream religion.
      Perhaps by the end of their run they were more known for their grand procession from the center of Athens to the Hall of Initiation in Eleusis, about three miles, more than the story of Demeter and her daughter. But even today you still see some occult groups claiming that they have recreated the rituals and perform the rites that were acted out in the ruins of Eleusis, which is now a stop for tour buses in greater Athens.
      But the idea that a select group of people had knowledge that others did not, and perhaps possessed magic or the know how to perform certain acts that others could not.
      Which explains everything from various mystical orders such as the Rosicrucians and even the Masonic order.
      The "original" Order of the Golden Dawn was formed by a group of Masons based on legends and myths from some supposed ancient manuscripts in the 1880s and 1890s in England. But around 1910 fractures had formed, and by the 1930s most of the temples had disbanded, with the last two ceasing operation in the 1960s and seventies.
      The current Golden Dawn, "the Hermetic Order of the".... was assembled from what was available in 1988 in the US, and while they do not claim to be a direct decedent, they say they have a link through their initiation by another affiliation. But it appears that the new order is treading the path the others followed before them as their website was last updated two years ago.

      But the latest incarnation of the Golden Dawn has come into this discussion because of the name, or term, they chose to differentiate themselves from the older Order, "Hermetic". Which means of, or related to, Hermes Trimegistus. Who we'll come back to, again.

WHERE?
      There is little doubt that all of our figures come from some part of the Middle East.
      Even Hermes with his Greek-ish name is thought to have come from Egypt where Thoth was at least a seasonal resident. And Idris and Enoch most certainly were from the area, although, pre-Flood, exactly where they would have called home is a bit of a mystery.

      But when you are dealing with the source of the information presented by the various players, "the Middle East" isn't the entire answer.
      The Book of Enoch, and the Legend of Thoth both contain details that the knowledge relayed came from "out of town" experts.
      With Enoch, and, we have to assume Idris, the information was relayed through angelic beings. With Thoth, well, he was 'the angel', or at least he had similar credentials.
      And, oh, yes, before we wrap this one, we'll stop by a place where The Krew of Thoth put on fancy dress and ride around town. Perhaps if the Eleusisians had done it that way, they'd still be around.

HOW? (don't worry "why" is coming soon)

      And it is right here that we run right into that term we used before and moved on, but now we have to dig into it for a minute.
      Alchemy.

      While the overall science and practice of Alchemy is far older than the name Hermes Trismegistus (it may not be older than our other friends, stand by), and is recorded in ancient records everywhere from Sumer to China in one form or another.
      However, as was stated before, somebody, and it may have been Ol' Herm himself, or at least somebody who used that name, collected a great deal of the information and put it together, on all sorts of topics. Some of which was later reworked by everybody else for reasons of their own. Yes, some of the Hermes text was straight up Alchemical, complete with mystical symbolism and magical references couched in poetic language with Biblical quotes, and some was a bit more practical dealing with everything from recipes to health advice.
      But it had a good run and became the baseline for, or perhaps mother of, everything we see on the syllabus for "Science Classes" at every Community College in the country.
      Oh, did you catch those two words in that description of the Hermetical Text? "Biblical quotes".

      Classic Alchemy, while dealing with everything from mystical ideas and magic formulas always came back to the Bible. The Alchemist was trying to do in a few hours or days what GOD did at the moment of Creation.
      Yes, the caricature of the old time Alchemist is the disagreeable old man with a white beard in a musky room full of old books with bottles of strange substances and odd looking tools, muttering half forgotten words from Latin over a steaming hellsbroth in a big iron pot.....
...... .... ..... oh, well, that is also a working description of this writer on a Good day while cooking lunch. But we'll move on.....
      But what that old man was doing was trying to refine natural substances in order to do several different things, besides trying to turn cow manure into gold. He was also attempting to identify the natural items that would, NOT make man "live forever", but to extend the then average lifespan of maybe fifty good years into the HUNDREDS of years seen in the ages of the patriarchs.

"OK, fine, is it time for a conclusion?"
      Yeah, sure. We can do that.

      While we don't know anything about the three men, and one 'beaked one', we discussed, we do know their legacy.
      Science. Medicine. Agriculture. And all of the other arts and sciences are their legacy. Not bad considering that some dry-mouthed academic types would say that none of the major players in this essay even existed. And in fact, that at least three of them are more or less modern inventions.
      And they would especially say that Thoth is a total work of fiction, and is merely something interesting the Egyptians put on the walls of their tombs, and a colorful legend, and nothing more.

      Well, OK. While we don't give too much credence to the idea that the individual with 'Thoth' on the back of his softball jersey had the head of an Ibis, we will say that it is NOT totally impossible that some-body with advanced knowledge stopped by at some point and left us a 'how to' manual.

      In any case, we'll look at a specific example where at least the ideas from Thoth have translated rather nicely into the modern era.
      In the post World War Two years in New Orleans, Louisiana, a group of locals got together to organize a Mardi Gras parade group that would march past the various hospitals and convalescent centers that were treating veterans and others that could not get out to the usual parade routes and, thusly, never got to have that hour or so of enjoyment that the costumes, decorated floats with music, and the trinkets thrown to the crowd, brought to people.
      The Krewe of Thoth was born. And their main website is linked below.
      Today, nearly eighty years later, they continue the same mission.
      And a few years ago, the theme for their parade was the general good example of charity and service represented by Saint Francis of Assisi. Yes, the 'Krewe' of an Egyptian god saluted one of the most legendary figures in European Christianity.
      The Krewe also tends a bit more to the patriotism represented by those disable veterans in the homes around the original parade route from 1947, as in 2025 the Grand Marshal for their parade were The Victory Belles singing group from the National World War II Museum in NOLA (see link below). The Belles entertain at the museum, and have appeared at other veteran and charitable venues. And elsewhere as on a float in the Thoth Parade!

      The final point here is that whether you accept on faith the existence of Enoch / Idris, or buy into the any of the legend of Hermes Trismegistus, or even simply want to see the Thoth Krewe's parade.... you have benefited from the central idea that They, as a group, brought to us.
      Yes, you have.
      For one... we can write, and you can then read, this.

            and that was the WHY?

Resource Links and other stuff:
We'll start with the best, or at least the prettiest, first:
The Victory Belles https://www.nationalww2museum.org/events-programs/events/128637-victory-belles

"Thoth, known as the Krewe of the Shut Ins, parades on the Sunday prior to Fat Tuesday each year through Uptown New Orleans with the most unique route in Mardi Gras. Still holding on to our roots we continue to parade on a route designed to pass some of the same institutions that we were organized to pass back in 1947."
The Krew of Thoth https://thothkrewe.com/

In the CPCC Genesis Study where we looked at Giants we spent some time discussing their interaction with Enoch.

Other External sources related to the above:

Multiple translations of Genesis 5 : 24 https://biblehub.com/genesis/5-24.htm

The Hebrew in the Interlinear: Genesis 5, with English Text https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/5.htm

the 16 times the word "Chanok" (English- Enoch) in the Old Testament https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2585.htm

The passage from the Book of Jude https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jude&version=NKJV

First Book of Enoch https://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_1.HTM

"Read, study, and learn The Noble Quran." https://quran.com/

The Book of Giants: Dead Sea Scrolls Texts http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm

A reconstruction of the story: Book of Giants http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/book_of_giants.pdf

Warning: this site is overloaded with ads-
Hermes https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Hermes.html

Emerald Tablet of Hermes https://sacred-texts.com/alc/emerald.htm
-and-
the Corpus Hermeticum https://sacred-texts.com/chr/herm/index.htm
-also see the Zohar:
"Of The Patriarch Henoch And The Sin Of The Antediluvians." https://sacred-texts.com/jud/zdm/zdm046.htm

And of course there is this:
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn https://hermeticgoldendawn.org/
(the dictionary under their resources tab is useful)

The Famous (perhaps- infamous) Emerald Tablet https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/emerald-tablet-hermes-trismegistus

Also see:
Texts of the Corpus Hermeticum http://www.gnosis.org/library/hermet.htm#CH
Includes the Hermetic Texts in the Nag Hammadi Collection and other works not on the sacred-texts site.

"Isaac Newton, World's Most Famous Alchemist" https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/isaac-newton-worlds-most-famous-alchemist
(the magazine site is almost unreadable because of the ads)
A transcript of a PBS program on the subject:
Magic or Mainstream Science? An interview on Newton's alchemy with historian Bill Newman https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/alch-newman.html

"Of Greek Gods, Gold, and Gibberish" https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/of-greek-gods-gold-and-gibberish/

Jude, Brother Of Jesus: A Detailed Look Into His Life And Significance https://digitalbible.ca/article-page/bible-study-biblical-characters-who-is-Jude,-brother-of-Jesus-1699570178958x373980467795229440

On the Prophet Idris https://www.islamestic.com/story-of-prophet-idris-enoch-as/
-and-
Where he is mentioned in a Hadith https://hadithoftheday.com/idris/

It is what the link says it is: https://www.alchemywebsite.com/

Egyptian Museum: Thoth https://egyptianmuseum.org/deities-thoth
Make sure you watch their video of an animated robot Thoth (as a human) driven by AI.

The story of Thoth, Egyptian god of writing, wisdom and magic. https://www.huntmuseum.com/stories/objects-in-focus/thoth-baboon-and-ibis-god-of-the-moon/

Encyclopedia articles about...
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thoth
-and-
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hermes-Trismegistos-Egyptian-god
-and-
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eleusinian-Mysteries

Originally published in mimeographed form in the 1930s by a mysterious 'Dr. Doreal':
"The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean
Translation & Interpretation by Doreal"
https://archive.org/details/EmeraldTabletsOfThothTheAtlantean_201809/page/n7/mode/2up

Shakespeare's only surviving playscript now online: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2020/07/shakespeares-only-surviving-playscript-now-online.html

And from TheMediaDesk -
Alchemy: "Just the word conjures up men with long white beards standing over glowing crucibles as they sprinkle obscure compounds into a bubbling morass while mumbling arcane phrases in Latin trying to make Gold out of corn silk." http://themediadesk.com/files8/alchemy.htm

The Index to our Genesis Study Index Page

NOTE: The Bible Study Lesson presented above is posted as a reference document to begin a conversation of the topic. And that's it. Please accept it at such.

http://centralparkchurchofchrist.org