The Renaissance Hermitist Counterculture Discovered and Described by Yates

According to the Yates paradigm, as it's become known, Hermeticism was a key factor in the intellectual development of European thought out from the Middle Ages. The thinkers described by Yates under the rubric of hermetic philosophy included quite a diverse cast of characters. They just weren't the discrete, essentialized tradition which Yates oversimplistically painted a picture of. But they really did represent distinct currents of thought from mainstream Christianity.