New Thinking • Mar 29, 2025 Gary Lachman is the author of twenty-one books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. He has written a rock and roll memoir of the 1970s, biographies of Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, P. D. Ouspensky, and Colin Wilson, histories of Hermeticism and the Western Inner Tradition, studies in existentialism and the philosophy of consciousness, and about the influence of esotericism on politics and society. Here he points out that the Corpus Hermeticum originated in Alexandria, Egypt, during a period of fusion among Greek and Egyptian traditions. Hermes Trismegistus represents an amalgamation of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes. The original literature is of unknown authorship and focuses on the attainment of higher stats of consciousness. Hermeticism serves as the backbone of the western esoteric tradition that also includes astrology, tarot, alchemy, and ceremonial magick. Hermeticism was particularly influential during the Renaissance. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on March 20, 2019)