Mechanical Interpolation in the Corpus Hermeticum

The podcast episode discusses the concept of mechanical interpolation in the Corpus Hermeticum. It explores how the main text of the Hermetic treatises has been corrupted by marginalia, resulting in sentences that do not make sense in the context. These marginalia are believed to be annotations made by ancient scholars who were interested in Hermetism. The theory is that these annotated texts were later copied by scribes who merged the annotations with the main text, resulting in a confusing and fragmented narrative. The speaker emphasizes the need to carefully examine the manuscript readings to reconstruct a clean main text and understand the coherent Hermetic doctrine.