This chapter deals with an aspect of the Nag Hammadi texts often portrayed as one of the reasons why they do not fit into a Christian context: namely, the many passages touting different constellations of vowels and magical letters. These have not been neglected in previous research but have mainly been treated separately, in light of the particular text and their specific context, representing their ‘pagan’ origin. This chapter focuses on the question of why this phenomenon appears in an otherwise chiefly Christian text collection and how they would have been understood and used by those who owned, copied and read the Nag Hammadi texts. The magical vowel features in the texts are read in light of the mystical practices with letters of Pachomius the Great, as described in Pachomius’ Letter 6 and the Greek Vita Pachomi. It is argued that the magical letter feature of the texts would have made them of particular interest for monks in a Pachomian milieu.

Historical writing described a form of imaginal enchantment, as illustrated by Hans Jonas’ concept of “gnosticism,” André-Jean Festugière’s “religion of the world,” and Frances A. Yates’ “Hermetic Tradition.” The importance of overcoming philhellenist ideologies, and the centrality of nonduality and embodiment to Hermetic spirituality.

When Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) translated the ancient Corpus Hermeticum in 1460 and unlocked the secrets of the mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus, he discovered a wellspring of knowledge that promised to transform humanity’s understanding of both the world and its Creator. He and many others believed that the writings of Hermes conveyed the prisca sapientia, or ancient wisdom, once vouchsafed to Adam in the Garden but then lost after humanity’s fall from divine grace. The philosophical tradition known as hermeticism quickly spread across Renaissance Europe, alongside renewed interest in the mystical Judaic practice of the Kabbalah, another source of wisdom that sought to reveal the hidden traces of God in the universe. These traditions of learned magic inspired the archetypal Renaissance magus, the English philosopher John Dee (1527-608), in his quest for knowledge. He conversed with angels and advised some of Europe’s most powerful monarchs, but like the fictional figure of Faustus, who dabbled in dark arts and damned himself for eternity, Dee had to contend with the distrust and fear of contemporaries who believed that magic was the work of demons.

Writing in Ezra Pound and Referentiality, the poet Bob Perelman notes that ‘we have been living in … the Golden Age of Pound Studies’ in which ‘Pound’s already-published writing was read assiduously; much of the huge bulk of his other public and private writing was published; the ramifications of his references were exfoliated, his ellipses were spelled out, the ideograms were translated’. So why, he (provocatively) asks, has it not ‘become increasingly possible and even easy to read Pound’? Perelman’s question, as Pound’s papers continue to surface, becomes ever more pertinent. What in particular has been the value of Pound’s manuscript materials for reading his poems? I wish to suggest that it has been considerable, but also that it does not and can never absolve readers of their critical obligations or resolve certain fundamental ambiguities in Pound’s work.