The learn & practice of occult philosophy and magic, of a nature and severity associated by having writings attributed to the god Hermes Trismegistus, "Thrice-Greatest Hermes," a syncretistic deity who combines aspects of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. Hermeticism is as well associated using astrology and alchemy. These beliefs were influential inside European occult lore, especially from either a Renaissance forward, when a Hermetic Corpus was translated by Marsilio Ficino in1463 (published in 1471). This was on the videos of Cosimo de'Medici who saw them as more important than translating the works of Plato

At this period a Hermetic Corpus wwhen seen as existence supplementary ancient than each Plato & Pythagoras, though St Augustine thought Hermes lived later than Moses. When Augustine opposed hermeticism, occasionally Renaissance scholars claimed that Hermetic thought was nearer to Christianity than those of ancient Greek.

Nonetheless a claim that hermeticism embodied a oldest wisdom in a globe never recovered from either the function of Isaac Causabon published in 1614 which showed that the texts were written former between 200 & 300 AD by a few "semi-christians". This see was according to careful linguistic analysis.

Hermetic magic underwent the 19th century revival in American Europe, in which it was expert by population like a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aurum Solis and Eliphas Lévi.

From either a arcane language associated using these beliefs, comes a 2nd meaning:

The deliberate have of obscure, convoluted, or even esoteric imaging around various arts.