Thoth

Thoth occupies a significant, if rarely centred, position in the depth-psychology corpus, appearing most densely at the intersection of Hermetic tradition, alchemical symbolism, and Gnostic anthropology. The corpus treats him along two distinguishable axes. The first is mythological-historical: Thoth as the Egyptian deity of writing, hieroglyphs, and secret knowledge, who through Hellenistic translation became Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary author of the Hermetic corpus and patron of alchemy. Place’s historical study of the Tarot is the most expansive on this axis, tracing the legend of the Book of Thoth and the conflation of the Egyptian god with the Greek Hermes. The second axis is properly depth-psychological: Jung and von Franz invoke Thoth as an identifier of the Gnostic first man, the Anthropos figure standing at the origin of alchemical speculation on the self. In the Zosimos texts as read by Jung and von Franz, Thoth-Adam names the primordial spiritual man whose fall into matter constitutes the drama that alchemy symbolically re-enacts. Sardello extends this by situating Thoth as the divine source of the Hermetic tradition underlying alchemical philosophy. Derrida, in an outlying but noteworthy passage, reads Thoth through Hegel as the demigod of writing, structurally subordinate to the god of thought — a tension that resonates with depth psychology’s own ambivalence about the written, secondary, mediating function of symbol-work.

In the library 10 passages

Thoth invented the Egyptian picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Some of the oldest hieroglyphic texts claim Thoth as their author, including the famous Egyptian Book of the Dead. The priests of Thoth claimed to have secret texts authored by Thoth that contained magic instructions.

Place provides the most comprehensive account of Thoth as divine originator of sacred writing, secret knowledge, and magic, and traces how this figure gave rise to the legend of the Book of Thoth and its eventual identification with the Tarot.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis

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The first man, Thoth or Adam, is a divine man; his name

Von Franz identifies Thoth with the Gnostic Anthropos, the divine first man of alchemical and Gnostic speculation, equating him with Adam as the primordial spiritual being whose descent into matter defines the alchemical opus.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis

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Thoth or Adam. He bears within him the spiritual man, whose name is light (os). This first man, Thoth-Adam, is symbolized by the four elements.

Jung reads the Zosimos Gnostic text to present Thoth-Adam as the cosmic spiritual man constituted by the four elements, whose seduction into embodiment by Pandora-Eve structures the psycho-spiritual drama of alchemy.

Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis

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While the word hermetic is Greek, hermeticism comes under the sign of the Egyptian god Thoth. The Emerald Tablet is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, said to be an actual human being, the embodiment of Thoth.

Sardello places Thoth at the originary source of the entire Hermetic and alchemical tradition, identifying him as the divine principle that Hermes Trismegistus embodies and through which world-soul philosophy flows.

Sardello, Robert, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992supporting

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corresponding to the stature of the Sphinx, the animality of spirit asleep in the stony sign, the mediation between matter and man, the duplicity of the intermediary, is the figure of Thoth, the god of writing.

Derrida, drawing on both Plato’s Phaedrus and Hegel, reads Thoth as a structurally ambiguous demigod — the intermediary between matter and spirit, divine and human — whose function as god of writing mirrors his secondary, duplicitous status in the hierarchy of thought.

Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting

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Etteilla published his new deck, which is now called the Grand Etteilla but it seems that Etteilla originally referred to it as the Book of Thoth.

Place documents how the legend of Thoth as author of secret sacred knowledge was directly appropriated by occultist Etteilla, who named his reformed Tarot deck the Book of Thoth, cementing Thoth’s role in modern esoteric Tarot tradition.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting

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Thoth, 94, 212, 230

An index entry in Jung’s Alchemical Studies indicating Thoth’s appearance at multiple points in Jung’s broader mapping of alchemical symbolic figures, placing him alongside Mercurius and other mythological mediators.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967aside

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