Editing Order of Hermes (section)

== History ==
The Order of Hermes has it's roots deep in the heart of [[Egypt|Ancient Egypt]], from the invention of heiroglyphs and of writing. People were huge on the power of True Names back then, and the idea that you could in fact take those names, grab them from the ether, and then write them down was a kind of magic all it's own, and because they all believed it, it worked. This helped to create the first and greatest Mages as we understand them, according to the Hermetics, who kept ancient society going for as long as they could, all for their kings and for their gods, all the way up until Ancient Greek times, where all but two of those great mages names became lost to history, but boy what a pair they ended up being: the Biblical Solomon, who in their teachings is the greatest pioneer of summoning magic and a breakthrough artist in Goetic works...and Hermes Trismegistus; the man who created the hermetic foundational document known as the '''Corpus  Hermeticum'''; which was the annotated guide on how to do all the crazy shit that these mages were capable of. The first group to attempt to understand magic through these terms in a wellspring of mystical thought was the Cult of Mercury, a fucking enormous group of Roman Mages who spent all their time trying to keep the empire from collapse. Once it began to collapse due to things outside of the Cult's control (namely the fact that they were unbelievably spread out) the Cult disappeared into the mists of time as little more than disparate mystics across Europe, but not before leaving a ''lot'' of written work behind that enterprising mages in the future could use.

The Dark Ages meant the end of unity for these Hermetic predecessors, but it did allow for quite a good many Mages to expand their horizons and learn without the problematic issue of "keeping Rome alive" cutting into study time, and often began to take inspiration and ideas from the Verbenae and the burgeoning Choir in order to improve their arts. It wasn't all sunshine and roses during this time of freedom; while Mages were allowed to become extremely important in their local communities; they began to gain tons of political power and enormous, monstrous egos. Further, the Mages of this time got into a ''lot'' of fights over basically nothing because they were effectively landed lords in a lot of cases, and those fights got brutal in a big damn hurry, turning learned men into little more than thugs with a spellbook, and going out and away from their Covenants effectively meant getting mugged by magic at any moment. 

The Order of Hermes as it is understood now comes to be in the 700's, as two major figures of their work; Bonisagus and Trianoma. Both were fed up with the idea of being afraid to go outside to get rotten mutton and eggs, and so gathered a great many of the best mages of the day, 12 in total, and gave themselves a code of conduct, a united Reality Paradigm, and a symbol of which to unite them. Given that most of them were Mercurian Cultists before, they naturally chose the Order of Hermes, and set about basically strong-arming pretty much every last mage in Europe into joining and agreeing with their new tenets, or just zapping them if they refused. This unifying action came right in the knick of time, because the Order of Reason had shown up and were looking to finally kick some sense into these asshole Wizards and so they spent a good long time trying very hard to avoid the nascent Technocracy and the opportunistic Choir. But with unity, came a number of the major concepts that most traditions to this day still pay some lip service to, such as the Theory of the Nine Spheres and whatnot. 

From then on, the Hermetics spent pretty much every intervening age either trying to consolidate themselves, strengthen their paradigm, gather Ancient Hermetic knowledge that's been lost to the ages, and dealing with many of their wayward houses joining other Traditions; or outright incursions from within from factions such as the Tremere. They also spent a ''long'' time basically joining any colonialist or imperialist group that popped up from the Renaissance onwards in hopes of either expanding the influence of the occult or gaining resources to go gather such knowledge, up to and including a ''lot'' of Hermetics joining the Nazis. In the modern era, Hermetics have either tried to expand their influence through the internet or Sleeper secret societies, or have actively chosen to become detached to reality and throw themselves into their learning and gathering, becoming the stereotypical deranged wizards of lore.