Iara Lima

Why does Thoth remain one of the figures that fascinates me most?

The answer has changed over time.

At first, I saw him primarily as the god of magic, writing, and knowledge. Today I continue to recognize these attributes, but I have come to see something even more interesting, because Thoth represents one of the oldest images of the transformative power of the word.

Over more than three thousand years, different traditions reinterpreted his figure. In Ancient Egypt, Thoth was the god associated with writing, wisdom, the calculation of time, measurement, records, and what the Egyptians called Heka, a term often translated as “magic,” but which also expresses the idea of a creative power present in the very order of the universe.

In many Egyptian myths, Thoth appears restoring order through the word, knowledge, and writing.

Later, during the Greco-Egyptian period, his image was brought closer to the god Hermes. From this approximation was born the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, a central character in the Hermetic tradition, to whom various philosophical and esoteric texts gathered under the name Corpus Hermeticum would be attributed.

Centuries later, European esoteric currents also came to associate Thoth with the tarot, alchemy, and ceremonial magic.

These are different traditions, each having built its own reading of this figure. But what interests me is not deciding which one is the “true” one, but rather observing how all of them recognized in Thoth the same quality that the power of language acts as an instrument of transformation.

In Egyptian tradition, writing was never merely about recording information. Hieroglyphs were called Medu Netjer, an expression often translated as “divine words.” Naming something meant participating in its existence, and writing was not understood merely as a representation of the world, but as part of the very order that sustained reality.

Naturally, we do not share today the same religious understanding as the ancient Egyptians. Still, I continue to find in it a profoundly timely reflection.

Writing transforms it does not always transform the entire world. But it transforms the one who writes. And, sometimes, it also transforms the one who reads.

When I think of Thoth, I am immediately reminded of the scene of the Judgment of Osiris. While Anubis weighs the heart before the feather of Maat, it is Thoth who records the result.

He observes. He listens. He writes.

His function is not to dominate through force, but to organize knowledge.

Perhaps that is precisely what brings me closest to him not because I see researchers as sorcerers, but because all writing carries consequences.

A scientific paper modifies debates. A book preserves a memory. A thesis inaugurates new questions. Every time we produce knowledge, we leave a mark on the world. That is why I began to see in Thoth a symbolic image of the researcher.

But I see it as an archetype that brings together fundamental qualities for those who dedicate their lives to investigation: curiosity, rigor, observation, memory, and a commitment to the word.

Over the centuries, many myths attributed to Thoth secret books, magical formulas, and knowledge reserved for initiates.

Regardless of the historical value of these narratives, I like to notice how they reveal an ancient fascination with the idea that knowledge transforms the one who seeks it.

Perhaps every library holds a little of that same promise not the promise of power over others, but the possibility of expanding our way of understanding the world.

It is at this point that Thoth remains alive for me.

Not only as a character from Egyptian mythology, but also as an image that recalls the responsibility of those who write. Writing is never a neutral gesture every word organizes a memory. Every memory influences an interpretation. And every interpretation can transform the way we inhabit the world.

Perhaps that is the true magic of writing. Not that of casting spells.

But that of silently modifying what we are capable of thinking.