Kircher’s hieroglyph decipherment was entirely false but mystical

Evidence

By ‘Hermetic’ Kircher meant that the language had literally been devised by Hermes Trismegistus and was organized in such a way that its ideograms represented the fundamental metaphysical forces operative in the real world. (Kircher obstinately regarded Hermes as a historical figure of great antiquity, despite Isaac Casaubon’s earlier demonstration that the Hermetic literature had been forged in late antiquity.) Kircher’s ‘decipherment’ of the hieroglyphs allowed him to present an exciting picture of ancient Egyptian culture that was both quite mystical and utterly false. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 187

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘Hermetic’ meant for Kircher — a language literally invented by Hermes Trismegistus encoding metaphysical forces.