Thrice Greatest Hermes, Volume 2

Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Volume 2 is a book by George Robert Stowe Mead, first published in 1906. In this volume, which contains almost 1,000 footnotes, Mead presents translations of the core texts of the Corpus Hermeticum — including Poemandres (The Shepherd of Men), To Asclepius, The Secret Sermon on the Mountain, The Perfect Sermon, and others — interwoven with detailed commentaries and historical-philosophical notes.

The work aims to present these foundational Hermetic writings both as coherent spiritual discourses and as artifacts of late-antique theosophical tradition. Mead’s Volume II occupies a central place in the Hermetic revival of the early 20th century, helping to reintroduce and legitimize the Hermetica for scholars and esoteric readers alike.

By offering both a faithful translation and a sensitive scholarly apparatus, it has influenced later translators, historians of religion, and students of esotericism. Themes encountered within — such as the nature of mind, the relationship between the divine and the human, and the transformative role of gnosis — resonate across later currents in Western esoteric thought, Renaissance Hermeticism, and modern occult philosophy. For a book that contains these texts without the commentary, there is Mead's Corpus Hermeticum.