Another equally interesting point is that in the Islamic tradition the Prophet Idris is identified both with Hermes and with Enoch; this double assimilation seems to indicate a continuity of tradition going back beyond the Egyptian priesthood which, as far as Enoch is concerned, could only have been heir to the heritage of what he represents, for he himself clearly belongs to an earlier age. (NA: Should it not be concluded from this same assimilation that the Book of Enoch, or at any rate what is known by this name, must be considered as an integral part of the whole corpus of the “Hermetic books”? On the other hand, some say also that the Prophet Idris is the same as the Buddha. What has already been said shows well enough how we are to take this assertion which refers in fact to Budha, the Hindu equivalent of Hermes. It could not refer to the historic Buddha, whose death is known to have taken place, whereas Idris is expressly said to have been borne up to heaven alive, just as is Enoch in the Bible.) At the same time, the sciences attributed to Idris and placed under his special influence are not the purely spiritual sciences, which belong to Christ, but alchemy and astrology and other “intermediary” sciences; these are, in fact, the sciences that can, strictly speaking, be called Hermetic. But this brings us to another consideration, which might seem, at any rate at first glance, to be a rather strange reversal of the usual correspondences. For each of the planetary spheres there is a major prophet who presides over it and is its “POLE” (qutb). Now, it is not Idris who presides over the Heaven of Mercury, but Christ, whereas Idris presides over the Heaven of the Sun; and, naturally, this involves the same transposition in the astrological correspondences of the sciences that are attributed respectively to these two “POLEs.” This raises a very complex question, the full treatment of which would be quite beyond the scope of the present article; we may have occasion to come back to it, but for the moment the following few remarks will perhaps afford a glimpse of the solution and will in any case show that far from being a mere confusion, the reversal that might seem erratic in the eyes of a superficial and “outward” observer has in fact a deep-rooted cause. Essays: Hermes