Hermes
Guide of Souls

by Karl Kerényi

 
Table of Contents

A Prefatory Note Magda Kerényi

Part I

1. The "Hermes Idea"
2. The Hermes of the Iliad
3. The Hermes of the Odyssey
4. The Hermes of the Hymn
5. Hermes and the Night

Part II

1. Hermes and Eros
2. Hermes and the Goddesses
3. The Mystery of the Herm
4. Hermes and the Rant
5. Silenos and Hermes



A Prefatory Note

A few words of introduction to this book may cast some light on
the place of this Hermes monograph in the biographical context
of its author. To do more than this would be pretentious, because
Karl Kerényi himself would certainly have presented his own
preface with his ideas about the God Hermes not only in regard to
this book, but also in respect to further implications from
evidence accumulated through the last three decades since this
work was first conceived. Probably, for such a preface, he would
have seized an idea he was hinting at in the Introduction to his
correspondence with Thomas Mann, when he added the "Hermetic" as
a third configuration to the dualism of Apollonian and Dionysian
which Nietzsche introduced into modern cultural history. Kerényi
understood the "Hermetic" as "a specific quality in the nature,
achieve-ments, and life patterns of mankind, as well as of the
corresponding traits of roguery to be found on the surface of
man's world." When, in a letter to Kerényi, Thomas Mann wrote:
"Hermes, my favorite divinity" (page 48 in their
correspondence), he was obviously alluding to his partner's
predilection for the same God. Kerényi's hesitation in
elaborating his lecture on Hermes-held in 1942 at Eranos and not
written down until one year later-into a volume like Prometheus,
Dionysos, Asklepios and Zeus and Hera in his series "Archetypal
Images in Greek Religion," may be owing to the fact that he felt
Hermes to be so closely involved with his life, for he recognized
the continuous presence and effects of this divinity.

His special personal relation to Hermes derived from the journey
as the essential support of his life and his work. In the preface
to his "Unwillkürliche Kunstreisen," Kerényi wrote: "This book is
thoroughly committed to the Hermetic element of journey and life,
to its surprises. . . ." But these words are valid not only for
that book. Finding and losing belong to the ambivalent sphere of
the "God of journey" who so often put into Kerényi's hand just
the right reading material for a voyage. But Hermes could also
reveal his presence through contrariness, as we can read in
Kerényi's diary in the notation for April 1, 1952:

. . . in the Isthmus Canal. The first time it was with Anatole
France's Révolte des Anges in a Greek translation, of which,
twenty-five years ago, Miss Geroulanos, sister of the
proprié-taire [the landowner of Trachones, near Athens, I. M.
Gerou-lanos who is often mentioned in the diary during the
fifties] said with astonishment: "it is written exactly as one
speaks." And now it is precisely Anatole France-in a not-as-good
translation of Thais-that was again stolen from me, disap-peared
together with the chair I had reserved. . . Does Hermes wish to
play the same game with me again? In any event I am left with the
feeling of being stolen from, something uncanny, a vague sense of
change in circumstances-truly something hermetic.

Hermaion, a gift of Hermes, meant for Kerényi that a book or an
article unexpectedly appeared at hand in the right moment, even
independently of traveling. His Hermes lecture on August 4, 1942,
played an important part in his life, quite concretely favoring a
crucial journey: the appreciation of this lecture in the Swiss
press facilitated permission to leave Hungary and then later to
establish himself definitely in the free world. He seems to have
rendered homage to this daimon of his fate in 1952, during his
first post-war visit in Delphi. There he walked each day to the
site where, according to his intuition, Hermes used to be
worshipped, even though, as a classical scholar, he was led to
Delphi for the sake of its chief divinities, Apollo and Dionysos.
Exactly there is the point-geographically as well as
metaphorically-where personal life leads into work, in this case
to Hermes Psychopompos. Kerényi expressed it in a meditation
about the "Angels" of Rilke: the poet had experienced the
"Angels," according to Kerényi, as a spiritual place without the
usual boundaries which separate importance from unimportance.
"Such a place [Kerényi's meditation continues] can be assumed
also in the sanctuary of a God of antiquity, for instance in that
of Hermes. Apparently this was the case with my Hermes, Guide of
Souls. . . ." A direct account of the genesis of the present work
is to be found in a letter dated November 11, 1942, to Frau
Hermann Hesse:

The world of Hermes has been holding me captive ever since my
lecture until the day before yesterday, and you will be amazed
how much it grew and ripened since its conception in the
lecture-an unexpected and passively received conception into its
final, and even for myself, surprising shape.

In the summer of 1943 the Hermes Lecture was published in the
Eranos--Jahrbuch IX. A second edition, from which this
translation was made, appeared as a monograph in 1944 as Number
One of the new series "Albae Vigiliae," "because I felt compelled
to publish it for reasons related to my situation after breaking
'official' connections with Hungary." Then began the difficult
existence of the free, private scholar, although interwoven and
protected by Hermes. Kerényi died on April 14, 1973, exactly on
the day when thirty years of exile were completed. His grave in
Ascona bears the inscription-mentioned on one of the last pages
of this volume-which had been used on the isle of Imbros for
those "initiated into the Mysteries of Hermes": tetelesmenoi
Hermei. It was not possible for Karl Kerényi to place his
favorite divinity into the series of archetypal monographs on the
Gods, but one is grateful to those who have helped the figure of
"the speech-gifted mediator and psycho-gogue" to become, in the
fresh vestments of the English language, "for all to whom life is
an adventure-whether an adventure of love or of spirit-. . . the
common guide."

Ascona, January 19, 1976. Magda Kerényi





The "Hermes Idea"

The question that we are seeking to answer, most simply put, is
this: What appeared to the Greeks as Hermes? We are not asking
this question in order to elicit the simplest answer, namely, "a
God." To most people this would say nothing, or, at best,
something highly ques-tionable. By formulating the question as we
have, we are assuming only that the name Hermes corresponds to
something, to a reality, at least to a reality of the soul, but
possibly to one with more inclusive implications. In this way the
question does not become a wholly non-historical one, but at the
same time it does not remain a purely historical one either. One
must recognize the historical fact that for the Greeks their God
Her-mes was not a mere nothing, as he is for contemporary man;
nor was he a formless power. He was something very precise, and,
at least since the time of Homer, he possessed a distinctly
delineated personality. As a person, though, he never displayed
the arbitrariness of a mere power; he was always much more
contained by the definition of his own inherent meaning. It is
our task as historians to represent this Hermes in his
irre-ducible, highly personal totality.

Our inquiry passes beyond historical questions, however, if we
seek to rediscover the reality borne by the Greek name Hermes in
the realm of timeless reality that is not conditioned by history.
The superficial appear-ances of the Gods' epiphanies are
conditioned by time and place, of course. But no Deity can be
reduced completely to color of skin, hairdressing, clothing, and
other attributes without something being left over. This "left
over" part is precisely what we are looking for. To find this we
must obviously rely on the results of historical research, but
also beyond that on a scientific understanding of major
mythology.

Closely connected to the first question ("What appeared to the
Greeks as Hermes?") is a second: How could just this appear to
the Greeks as God? We will not be occupying ourselves for the
moment with this question, although one must not forget it
altogether. It is necessary to ask this question all the more
earnestly if one believes he has found the "original" Hermes in
something gross and inferior. It is precisely this omission that
makes most of the hypotheses about origins no more than mere
unscien-tific conjectures. We should, however, not presume that
the "something" which constitutes a God's reality must
necessarily correspond to some-thing sublime, and which according
to our concepts-based precisely on the most recent conceptions of
the Greek Gods-is inherent in the Hellenic God-idea. Otherwise
we will fall into the error of Walter F. Otto, that great scholar
of Greek religion, who in the most brilliant pages he ever wrote
describes Hermes as a Deity whose idea is obvious to us, and at
the same time separates him from primitive aspects of his
configura-tion-aspects that the Greeks themselves never found
incompatible with his Godhood.

"Whatever may have been thought of Hermes in primitive times," we
read at the conclusion of Otto's superb portrait of Hermes, "he
must once have struck the eye as a brilliant flash out of the
depths, that it saw a world in the God, and the God in the whole
world. This is the origin of the figure of Hermes, which Homer
recognized and which later generations held fast to." A
Hermes-world is supposed to have been revealed to the
Greeks-perhaps during that lofty period whose highest and
possibly also last form of expression was the Homeric epic-a
realm and domain having a place among the other domains of the
world-as-a-whole, yet forming a unified totality in its own
right, "the realm whose divine image is Hermes." This realm is
characterized and held together by a specific logic: "It is a
world in the full sense which Hermes animates and rules, a
complete world, and not some fragment of the sum total of
existence. All things belong to it, but they appear in a
different light than in the realms of the other Gods. What occurs
in it comes as though from heaven and entails no obligations;
what is done in it is a virtuoso performance, where enjoyment is
without responsibility. Whoever wants this world of winning gains
and the favor of its God Hermes must also accept losing; the one
is never without the other." Hermes is therefore "the spirit of a
form of existence which under various conditions always reappears
and knows both gain and loss, both shows kindness and takes
pleasure in misfortune. Though much of this must appear
questionable from a moral point of view, it is nevertheless a
form of being which with its questionable aspects belongs to the
basic images of living reality and therefore, in the Greek view,
demands reverence, if not for all of its various expressions
still for the totality of its meaning and being."

Should once such a "basic image of living reality" as this
Hermes-world be elucidated, it would not merely be held together
and characterized by its specific logic, it would also become
lucid and convincing even to us. On the other hand, this capacity
for illumination creates a distance from the more primitive and
less intelligible image of Hermes which is shown to us in most of
the Priapic statues, in the ithyphallic stones (the "Herms"), not
to mention the Titanic and ghostly aspects of this Deity.
Otherwise one can, in fact, speak of Hermes as a "way of being"
who is at the same time an "idea," and on these grounds proclaim
deep truths about the God. His way is-to cite once more the
classical description by Otto-"so unique and so fully delineated,
it moves so unerringly through all his activities, that one has
only to notice it once to have no further doubt as to his
essence. In this we recognize both the unity of his activities
and the meaning of his image. Whatever he may do or produce
reveals the same idea, and that is Hermes."

The correctness of these words is as convincing as was that of
the previous quotations. And yet we must ask: Does this rigid
adherence to an idea that is still plausible to us, to a way of
being in the world that we can still experience, and by which we
would, like the Greeks, adjudge divinity, not exclude from the
outset an important part of the Hermes image and of the
Hermes-world? Would this not exclude precisely something "Greek"
that historically and significantly belongs to Hermes? Granted,
this would be a meaning that must disclose itself to us as
something both new and age-old, and also as something reaching
beyond our historical vision, and perhaps even beyond our
philosophical convictions. For if we are to have success in
reviving the God's image in its fullness, we must be prepared not
only for what is immediately intelligible, but also for what is
strangely uncanny. Indeed, the images of the Greek Gods can be
so resistant to conceptualization and logic that one can be
tempted in the course of an investigation to quote the famous
lines that were spoken to describe human beings:

I am not a cleverly worked-out book, I am a God with his
self-contradiction . . .











 




                   



The Hermes of the Iliad

Let us first become familiar with what can be learned about
Hermes from the Homeric poems. It would certainly be a rash
conclusion to maintain that those features of the Hermes image
which are not mentioned in the Iliad or in the Odyssey or in the
Homeric Hymns were unknown to the author of that particular work.
For every missing feature that makes an appearance in one of the
other sources and is sufficiently ancient, we must ask what the
reason for this silence might have been. That we learn more about
Hermes in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, and more in the Hymn
than in the Odyssey, has a very obvious reason: the heroic world
of the Iliad is much less the world of Hermes than is that of the
journey epic, the Odyssey, and his world becomes more apparent
still in the Hymn, not because the Hymn originates later than the
two great epics, but because it has the God himself for its
hero.

The world of the Iliad is not the world of Hermes. If there is
one figure who dominates this world and gives it a
characteris-tic stamp, it is Achilles, just as Odysseus dominates
and characterizes the world of the Odyssey. The world of the
Iliad receives its essential tone from the finality of the fate
that befalls its short-lived hero. The view that life is
once-and-for-all and inwardly destined corresponds to the view
that death is equally final and obedient to the same law-an
unalterable, conclusive end. The hero's daimon of fate, which
comes into being with him at his birth-his own personal Ker
-ripens into a daimon of death, and the soul, which is the
suffering aspect of the same daimon, complains loudly against its
fate, for it leaves behind manhood and youth for a bloodless and
shadowy existence in death. No escape from this is possible. Life
is individual: it actualizes itself according to the inherent
laws which govern the particular hero in question, and it ends in
his own particular death. The hero is not tricked or seduced by
an unfamiliar death-daimon. The power that lures him to his death
is originally in him-in Patroclos, in Achilles, in Hector, in all
who through their heroic courage fall to it. Not once in the
Iliad does Hermes appear to lead a soul away or to assume the
role of escort.

The reason is obvious: Hermes' sphere of activity lies outside of
this world in which death forms the adamantine back-ground as the
concluding and excluding polar opposite of life, which the hero
chooses at the same time as he chooses his heroic existence. That
Hermes is not the guide of souls in the Iliad does not
necessarily mean that he is not the guide of souls in general,
but only perhaps that in the world of Hermes, death itself has a
different appearance. What we do discover in the Iliad about the
world and activity of Hermes refers to alternatives of life, to
the dissolution of fatal opposites, to clandestine violations of
boundaries and laws. Death can be viewed from life's point of
view as its destined conclusion and necessary dissolution
through its opposite. Life's most obvious alternative course-its
overflowing in generation and productivity, in fruitfulness and
multiplication-appears, however, as something incalculable, as
purest accident. At just this point in the Iliad we meet Hermes.

It is Hermes whom his beloved Phorbas thanks for a wealth of
herds (Book XIV, 490). Hermes, too, was the lover of Polymele,
daughter of Phylas, whom he visited secretly in her home and who
bore him a son, Eudoros (Book XIV, 180ff.). With such references
the warm air of procreation and enriching fruitfulness wafts
into the atmosphere of the Iliad, which is other-wise so heavy
with dire fatefulness. (The names Phorbas, Polymele and Eudoros
even suggest wealth of herds and freely-given abundance.) Hermes
is deliberately kept at a distance from every heroic happening.
Not that he is totally devoid of every trace of fatality. The
language of the epic often names him Argeiphontes instead of
Hermes. It is a name meant to recall a Titanic feat: slaying the
many-eyed Argos with a sickle-sword, the same sword Kronos used
to maim the sky God and Perseus used to sever the head of the
Medusa. The constant epithet for Argeiphontes, diaktoros,
("guide"), is related to words that refer to the dead ones and to
the wealth that falls to them. His characterization as akaketa
("benignant," "gracious") witnesses to a gentle death-God. The
best translation of this epithet is "the painless one." Not even
in the battle of the Gods, lacking in tragedy as it is, does
Hermes take part. A Goddess, significantly not a God, is assigned
to be his opponent-Leto, the Mother-Goddess who closely
resembles her daughter, Artemis. But Hermes is too clever to
engage in combat with her

since it is a hard thing
to come to blows with the brides of Zeus
who gathers the clouds. No,
sooner you may freely speak among the immortal gods,
and claim that you were stronger than I, and beat me.
(Book XXI, 498-501)

With these words he evades Leto. Fame has absolutely no part in
his world. Hermes' skill in the Iliad is strictly that of the
most unheroic evasion. The office of messenger of the Gods, which
he otherwise occupies, he does not hold in the Iliad; any
allusion to this is avoided. He has his place among the other
Gods, qualified by his own mastery; he is the master thief. He
stole Ares, who was bound up in chains, out of his prison (Book
V, 390), and he would also have stolen the corpse of Hector had
only the Gods been in agreement (Book XXIV, 24ff.). Zeus prefers
what he considers a better expedient, though he still works
through Hermes. The entire final bitter-sweet book, in which the
heroic world of the Iliad suddenly displays its un-predictable
tenderness, stands under the sign of Hermes. Zeus sends him to
the aged Priam who is just then on the way to retrieve from
Achilles the body of his son. He is sent not as a messenger-the
messenger of Zeus in the Iliad is Iris-but as a guide (pompos).
For it is Hermes who likes to associate with a person ("Hermes,
for to you beyond all other gods it is dearest to be man's
companion . . ." Book XXIV, 334-35), to grant a request, and to
make a person invisible. This is what he does here, first
ingratiating himself with the old man in the form of a youth and
then leading him in the ways of the thief. With his help it is
possible to steal the corpse away from the unrelenting demon of
revenge that possesses Achilles and the entire Greek camp.
Achilles obeys Zeus and gives in, but it is left to Hermes to
open the way for escape, and he does so by putting the guards to
sleep. This youthfully handsome, friendly, and thievish guide,
who possesses magical golden shoes which transport him over earth
and sea and a magical staff with which he puts people to sleep
and awakens them again-has he not all the characteristics and
attributes of a seductive and lethal guide of souls, the gentle
psychopomp of the later monuments? The reason the poet does not
allow him to appear in this role is, as we have seen, because it
would not conform to the world of the Iliad. The world of the
Odyssey confirms this opinion, and it also allows this aspect of
Hermes to come to the fore.


                



The Hermes of the Odyssey

The last book of the Odyssey begins with an epiphany of Hermes:

Meanwhile the suitors' ghosts were called away
by Hermes of Kyllene, bearing the golden wand
with which he charms the eyes of men or wakens
whom he wills.

He waved them on, all squeaking
as bats will in a cavern's underworld,
all flitting, flitting criss-cross in the dark
if one falls and the rock-hung chain is broken.
So with faint cries the shades trailed after
Hermes, pure Deliverer.

He led them down dank ways, over gray
Ocean tides, the Snowy Rock past shores
of Dream and narrows of the sunset,
in swift flight to where the Dead inhabit
wastes of asphodel at the world's end.

The death of the suitors was not a sad-though-harmonious
conclusion to an heroic existence; their gluttonous lives were
extinguished with unex-pected suddenness by the avenging arm of
the returning husband. Almost like animals they were slaughtered,
their lives left unfinished (as measured against the standard of
the hero) by this sudden death, cut down just as they were in the
midst of their youth. They fell like dull animals, mere
carcasses, as though the souls in their bodies had been choked
off. Then Hermes "summoned" their souls. This word "summon"
(exekaleito) would otherwise be translated "to conjure up," as
one does spirits of the dead who sojourn in the grave or in the
underworld. Here, however, Her-mes shows himself as the summoner
of souls before burial, not for the pur-pose of forcefully
calling the souls back, but to beckon them away gently to the
distant meadows on the other side. The staff which he holds in
his hand discloses its connection to a kind of "lulling to sleep"
(ommata thel-gein) and "re-awakening" that is different from what
occurs in the last book of the Iliad where these words appear in
their original meaning. There it is really only a matter of
sleeping and awakening; here the text speaks of death, but of
death not as an unambiguous and final event. Re-awakening in this
context also contains a double meaning: it can refer to an escape
from death itself.

The staff that has these qualities is beautiful and golden. It
estab-lishes a distance between the God and the dark swarm of
bat-souls. To be sure, this staff can also appear as horribly
upsetting if, like Horace, one considers it from the viewpoint of
the one being led away:

His grisly wand let Hermes once uphold,
The blood returns not to the formless shade
The sable company he troops below
In idle ears against their doom appeal.
(Odes, Book I, XXIV.)

But when the poet celebrates the God, he emphasizes the golden
color of the "grisly wand":

Thou layest unspotted souls to rest;
Thy golden rod pale spectres know;
Blest power! by all thy brethren blest,
Above, below.
(Odes, Book I, X.)

Here there is mention of the fortunate souls which even in the
underworld will not be completely deprived of light. In Homer,
the gleam of tangible sunlight belongs exclusively to the God.
Homer depicts the guide of souls in his divine substantiality, as
distinguished from the insubstantial swarms that plunge into the
other world. Gentle, his golden staff gleaming, Hermes appears
even among the musty paths of ghosts. Here, too, he is named
akaketa, "painless," since he does no harm even to these
unfortunate souls. On the con-trary, his presence softens the
effects of Odysseus' fear-ful revenge, just as the ferocity of
Achilles was calmed in the last book of the Iliad, which, as we
saw, stands under the influence of Hermes. The great difference
in this case is that he reveals his gentle, golden aspect in a
world which is not restricted to only "this side," but rather in
a world whose hero and symbol is Odysseus.

The Odyssey is not a poem of heroic life that is set off starkly
against a background of once-and-for-all, irrevocable death; it
is rather the poem of a kind of life that is permeated with
death, in which death is continuously and incessantly present.
The two poles, life and death, fuse here. The world of the
Odyssey is an existence in flux that is continuously in contact
with death, as warp with woof. It consists as much of its
background and underground, of the yawning abysses beneath and
behind, as it does of it-self. Odysseus continuously moves over
and through these. But not only is his existence in the Odyssey
characterized by this movement; Telema-chos, too, hovers between
life and death, as do, also, the suitors. Particu-lar-ly caught
in this suspension is the one who waits, Penelope. But in the
most proper and strictest sense, the one who is suspended over
the gulfs and chasms of existence is Odysseus.

We previously called the Odyssey a journey epic, and we must now
imag-ine the often experienced reality of "journey-ing" as
something special, in contradistinction to "roaming" or
"traveling." Odysseus is not a "traveler." He is a "journeyer"
(even if this is sometimes malgré lui, "in spite of himself"),
not simply because of his moving from place to place, but
be-cause of his existential situation. The traveler, despite his
motion, adheres to a solid base, albeit one that is not narrowly
circum-scribed. With each step, he takes possession of another
piece of the earth. This taking posses-sion is, of course, only
psychologi-cal. In that with each extension of the horizon he
also expands himself, his claim of possession on the earth
ex-pands continu-ously as well. But he remains always bound to a
solid earth beneath his feet, and he even looks for human
fellowship. At every hearth that he encounters he lays claim to a
kind of native citizenship for himself. For the Greeks, the
approaching stranger is kat' exochen ("an outstanding eminence")
and hiketes ("one who comes to seek protection," "a suppliant" or
"fugitive"). His guardian is not Hermes, but Zeus, the God of the
widest horizon and the firmest ground. In contrast, the situation
of the journeyer is defined by movement, fluctuation. To someone
more deeply rooted, even to the traveler, he appears to be always
in flight. In reality, he makes himself vanish ("volatizes
himself") to everyone, also to himself. Everything around him
becomes to him ghostly and improb-able, and even his own reality
appears to him as ghostlike. He is completely absorbed by
movement, but never by a human community that would tie him down.
His companions are the companions of the journey: not those he
wants to lead home, as Odysseus his comrades, but those he joins,
as it is said of Hermes in the Iliad (Book XXIV, 334-35). With
companions of the journey, one expe-riences openness to the
extent of purest nakedness, as though he who is on the journey
had left behind every stitch of clothing or covering. Is it not
true that those today who wish to be free of the bonds to the
community in which they grew up and to which they were intimately
bound, who want to be open to each other without reservation or
boundary, as two naked souls-don't they go on a wedding journey
(Hochzeitsreise)? Is this journey not a "Heimfürung" ("taking
home" the bride) as well as an "Entfürung" ("elopement"), and
therefore also "hermetic?" Journeying is the best condition for
loving. The gorges over which the "volatized one" passes like a
ghost can be the abysses of unbelievable love affairs-Circe and
Calypso islands and holes; they can be abysses also in the sense
that there no chance exists for standing on firm ground, but only
for further floating between life and death.

The journeyer is at home while underway, at home on the road
itself, the road being understood not as a connection between two
definite points on the earth's surface, but as a particular
world. It is the ancient world of the path, also of the "wet
paths" (the hygra keleutha) of the sea, which are above all, the
genuine roads of the earth. For, unlike the Roman highways which
cut unmercifully straight through the country-side, they run
snakelike, shaped like irrationally waved lines, conforming to
the contours of the land, wind-ing, yet leading everywhere. Being
open to everywhere is part of their na-ture. Nevertheless, they
form a world in its own right, a middle-domain, where a person in
that volatized condition has access to everything. He who moves
about familiarly in this world-of-the-road has Hermes for his
God, for it is here that the most salient aspect of Hermes' world
is portrayed. Hermes is constantly underway: he is enodios ("by
the road") and hodios ("belong-ing to a journey"), and one
encounters him on every path. He is constantly in motion; even as
he sits, one recog-nizes the dynamic impulse to move on, as
someone has acutely observed of his Herculean bronze statue. His
role as leader and guide is often cited and celebrated, and, at
least since the time of the Odyssey, he is also called angelos
("messenger"), the messenger of the Gods.

We would have to devote special attention to the office of the
divine messenger if we wanted to exhaust its whole meaning. As
just an intimation of this we will mention that Hecate, too, as
well as Hermes, may transport souls (both being guardians of the
underworld), and she is also an angelos. Iris, too, has a
connection to this Goddess, which is established by the pres-ence
of her cult on the Hecate island near Delos. To the essence of
Iris, however, belongs the unreachable distance of a celestial
sign, such as the rainbow, whose name she bears. Thus she fits
into the world of the Iliad as a messenger of the Gods. "Tidings"
("Angelia")-a daughter of Hermes ac-cording to Pindar-descends
from the Gods more frequently when the boundaries between life
and death, time and eternity, earth and Olympus are open. And
they open easily when they are as volatized as they are in the
world of the Odyssey. We find that the Gods sent Hermes to
Aigisthos with a warning, though it was in vain (Book I, 38). And
we see him hurrying to Calypso with the command of Zeus:

No words were lost on Hermes the Wayfinder,
who bent to tie his beautiful sandals on,
ambrosial, golden, that carry him over water
or over endless land in a swish of the wind,
and took the wand with which he charms asleep-
or when he wills, awakens-the eyes of men.
So wand in hand he paced into the air,
shot from Pieria down, down to sea level,
and veered to skim the swell. A gull patrolling
between the wave crests of the desolate sea
will dip to catch a fish, and douse his wings;
no higher above the whitecaps Hermes flew
until the distant island lay ahead . . .
(Book V, 37-49)

Just as it needs no further explanation here that Hermes is the
divine messenger, and needs none when he appears in the last book
as guide of souls, so it needs none when he appears in an other
characteristic place of the Odyssey, on the island of Circe, as
the wise-to-magic savior of the hero. He meets Odysseus so
naturally there that Odysseus shows no surprise when Hermes gives
him his hand, addresses him, and offers him the antidote to the
magic potion of Circe (Book V, 277ff.). Just where the atmosphere
of the Odyssey is most thickly clouded with spooky possibilities,
there the presence of Hermes is least surprising. And Odysseus
himself, who drifts about within this atmosphere, has a wholly
personal relation to Hermes. On his mother's side he descends
from Hermes, although not much is made of this in the Odyssey;
more is said of his grandfather, Autolycos, who was also
mentioned in the Iliad as the arch-thief of the heroic age.
Autolycos was a son of Hermes, who, like his father, was a master
in the art of taking oaths (Iliad, Book XIX, 395). He honored
Hermes especially (19, 397). Odysseus says to the faithful
swineherd, Eumaios, that all people owe it to this God (Hermes)
if their works are blessed with "grace and fame" (charis kai
kudos) (Odyssey, Book XV, 320), even those who are servants.
There can be no doubt that the gift of cunning belongs to the
Hermes-Autolycos line, only in Odysseus it no longer possesses
the primordial mythic dimen-sions that it had for them. Odysseus
is merely "polytro-pos" ("versatile"), while Autolycos, according
to one source, possessed the capacity to trans-form himself, and,
according to another source, he made invisible everything he
touched. The "art of oath-taking," in its primordial mythic
dimen-sions, is described for us in the Hymn to Hermes.









The Hermes of the Hymn

The poet of the "Hymn to Hermes" presents primordial mythological
ma-terial in a form that could later be integrated into and
become part of the classical tradition. The serenely
scintillating, waggish irony with which he glorifies the Titanic
event corresponds also to the attitude of his hero. What
additional information we get here about Hermes does not so much
enlarge his portrait to include new aspects as deepen it towards
the Titanic. Since he is integrated into the world of Zeus,
Hermes naturally does not be-long to the race of Titans. Yet as
we follow him we sense in him the essence of the pre-Olympian
world, even apart from the fact that he appears as a divine child
and that the childhood of the Gods belongs not to Olympian myth
but to a far more ancient mythology. In the Hymn, an Olympian God
grows out of the primal child, and with this development his
pre--Olympian history becomes included in his classical image. We
should really study the whole poem in detail, but we hope to do
an adequate job of under-standing it by interpreting only key
passages.

Muse,
sing Hermes,
son of Zeus and Maia,
caretaker of Cyllene,
and the sheepland Arcadia,
messenger of the gods,
the helper . . .

Two associations to Hermes, who is being celebrated here, are
empha-sized straight away. The one is to a Greek province where
he was espe-cially honored, Arcadia, and in particularly to a
mountain there which was the location of his cult, Kyllene.
Associated to these is the myth of his birth, which in itself as
a primal child mythologem antedates the Olympian order, yet is
easily spliced into that order. The other association is to the
Olympi-ans-Hermes belongs to them as their messenger. For this
role he receives the Homeric epithet eriounios, often incorrectly
translated "the beneficial one." A comparison with an Arcadian
gloss reveals a meaning that could very well belong also to a
death God: "the quick one." In fact, there is one case in which
two chthonic Gods who receive human sacrifices are named
eriounioi, and Aristophanes declares outright that the Enounios
Hermes is the chthonios. The basic meaning revealed here, "fast
as death," suits the messenger Hermes, not only as an Arcadian or
Kyllenian Deity but also as an Olympian. These two poles-the
provincial cult and the Olympian office-define him not as one who
fluctu-ates, but as one who is coming into existence. What sort
of coming into existence is the birth of a God? A Greek poet
imagined it:

. . . whom Maia mothered,
the nymph with beautiful hair,
awesome, lying with Zeus
She kept away from
the wonderful company of the gods,
and lived in a shady cave.
Here the son of Cronus had
the nymph with beautiful hair,
in the early hours of evening,
while sweet sleep held
the pale arms of Hera,
and where no man
and no god could see.

In comparison to the Goddesses who are at home on the bright
heights of Olympus, Hermes' mother is a mere nymph. She is a
Goddess who is bound up with the Arcadian land-scape, originally
probably a type of pri-mordial mother-daughter Goddess. Her name
is sometimes Maia (which as an appellative is a designation of
old women: the grandmothers and wet-nurses), sometimes Maias,
that is, "daughter of Maia." Her associations with the audacious
Titan Atlas, whom Hesiod names as her father, and with the sky as
the eldest of the Pleiades, suggest a Titaness. In the Hymn she
re-ceives the epithet aidoie ("majestic"), which in Hesiod is
applied to the pri-mal Gods of the Titan period, the theon genos
aidoion ("the respected race of Gods"). She did not escape from
the "sacred congregation of the Gods," as some translations have
it, but rather she "shunned" it (eleuato) and took up abode in a
cave (antron naiousa). There she and Zeus begat Hermes. Stolen
love, but for that reason all the more fully enjoyed
(misges-keto), deepest night (nuktos amolgoi), sleep as a helper
in deceiving Hera (as he [Dios apate] helps deceive Zeus in the
Iliad), and above all secrecy (lethon)-these elements are woven
together to formulate the first phase in the evolution of Hermes.
In this not only is a "wish" of Zeus fulfilled, as the German
translation states, but through this fulfillment his noos ("mind"
or "insight") achieves its end (Dios noos exeteleito). The second
stage in the evolution of Hermes is this:

But,
when the mind of great Zeus
was near to completion,
and the tenth moon
was already fixed in the sky,
and he was bringing to light again
all his great works . . .

This coming into being, this birth, is revelatory: eis te phoos
agagen, arisema te erga tetukto ("it came to light, and all the
works were revealed"). The revelation comes by stages. First, the
newly born God himself becomes manifest through the
association-or, one could say, in the constellation-of various
elements. This God is Hermes, with characteristic Hermetic
attributes:

. . . she produced her child,
the very crafty,
the super-subtle Hermes:
thief,
cattle-rustler,
carrier of dreams,
secret agent,
prowler,
and soon to show his
stuff with the immortal gods.

Let us examine these attributes. "The painless one" is miss-ing;
nowhere in the whole Hymn does the epithet akaketa appear. Here
Hermes is merely the "ruler of dreams" (hegetor oneiron), not the
"leader of souls." To this we could perhaps compare the Homeric
passage in which the dream-like people of Phaiakia-a Hermetic
people, worthy of the world of the Odyssey-sacrifice to Hermes
before going to sleep (Odyssey, Book VII, 138); yet the last book
of the Odyssey, with the epiphany of the psycho-pomp, is again
removed into the distance of another world. Missing here, too, is
any hint of Phalakian mildness; we must think rather of the
deceit-fulness of misleading dreams. All the rest of the
attributes testify to this. The first of these, polytropos
("wiley"), is the well-known epithet for Odys-seus. And pyledokos
("gate-watcher") in the last line would not mean "guard of the
gate," but rather the dangerous "nocturnal scout" (nuktos
opopetera) who takes his unsuspecting victim on the dark street
at the city gate. We are faced with the skilled highwayman and
bandit, as well as the flattering deceiver. We are prepared,
then, for the second phase of Hermes' revelation, "who soon
should show forth deeds renowned among the deathless Gods." There
follow now as further revelations the deeds which the poet
combines with the first stage (the birth) into a temporal
sequence of three, and he ties this trinity to the number four,
which is also temporally conceived:

Born in the morning,
he played the lyre
by afternoon, and
by evening had stolen the cattle
of the Archer Apollo-
all on the fourth day
of this month
in which the lady Maia
produced him.

The association of Hermes to the number four certainly does not
origi-nate with our poet; it is at least as ancient as the Hymn
and probably much older. The birthdays of the Gods were not
established in the cults without some rationale. The fourth day
of the month was, for example, sacred not only to Hermes but also
to Aphrodite, who is closely connected to him in other ways as
well. The solid association of Hermes with the number four is
further established by the fact that in Argos the fourth month
had the name Hermaios. The quaternity was for the ancients one of
the most constant constituents of the Hermes image; they further
acknowledge this in the four-cornered form of the Herms. The late
author, Murtianus Cappella, summarizes the general opinion:
numerus quadratus ipsi Cyllenio depu-tatur, quod quadratus deus
solus habeatur ("the quadratic number is reckoned to Cyllenius
itself, because it is possessed by the quadratic God alone").
Whether the quadratic image or the birthday on the fourth day of
the month came first is unimportant. We are dealing here with a
basic number, an ex-pression of divine totality, which the poet
playfully links with the trinity. The number three also is not
unfamiliar to Hermes: he is shown with three heads, and his staff
in the Hymn is "golden and three-pointed." In this poetic play
the birth coincided with the morning, and the pure harmony of the
lyre at noon is not accidental. For Pindar the sunbeams
themselves are the hammers that play this divine instrument,
whose tones create order just as does the light of the sun. We
need not take special pains to point out that the darkest aspect
of Hermes appears with the coming of night. In all of this the
process of revelation is linked in the simplest and most natural
way with the brightening and darkening face of the cosmos. But is
the revela-tion to be seen as primarily an interpretation of this
natural cycle? As we stand with the poet on the day of Hermes'
birth, the "first of Tetras," are we merely confronting the
natural world? Or are we participating in a leap of imagination
that creates the world of Hermes, that re-arranges the natural
world into the special cosmos of Hermes, that gives the world the
face of Hermes? The answer to this admits of no doubt. The
revelation proceeds by leaps and bounds outward from within
itself:

For after he jumped down from
the immortal loins of his mother
he couldn't lie still very long
in his sacred cradle,
but leaped right up
to search for the cattle of Apollo,
climbing over the threshold
of this high-roofed cave.

The text speaks literally of a leap (hog' anaixas). With this
begins the rush-ing advance of Hermes, which moves at once to a
further revelation of his essence:

There
he found a turtle
and it brought him
lots of fun:
Hermes was the first
to manufacture songs
from the turtle he encountered
outside the door,
as it was eating
the splendid grass
outside the door of their home.
It moved along
with an affected step.

Meeting and finding are revelations of Hermes' essence. That the
poet is fully conscious of this is indicated by the words he
associates with the find: murios olbos ("endless delight"). With
this he has entered explicitly into the sphere of Hermes:
"happiness and riches" are, according to line 524, products of
Hermes' staff. "Olbos," which is here even "endless," means
fortune, but, more than that, it tends toward implying solid and
true happiness. Hermes' relation to happiness and fortune, which
is recognized by the whole tradition, begins now to show its
particular feature. According to the Iliad he bestows fortune
through fruitfulness and this belongs (as was already pointed
out) to the wider field of accidental happenings. In the Odyssey
he, along with the other Gods, is called "giver of excellent
gifts" (Book VIII, 335, 325). Only now in the Hymn does the
Hermetic gain re-veal its finding and thieving features.
Accidental discovery is in itself not yet quite Hermetic; it is
merely the stuff of Hermetic activity, which is then shaped to
the meaning of the God. In every cosmos the accident remains
fundamental, a residue of the chaotic primordial condition, and
this is true also of the Hermetic cosmos. Hermes has taken
control of his cosmos, and through him every find, which in
itself belongs to the Gods and not to man, becomes a theft that
is put to better use. The Greek word for windfall, hermaion,
signifies that it belongs to Hermes. This was also the name given
to the offerings that were left at the roadside Herms. These were
windfalls for hungry travelers who stole them from the God in his
own spirit, just as he would have done. Accord-ing to antique
understanding, the general meaning of Hermes proceeded from this
pilfering at the Herm. Hermes sanctions the act if the accidental
find is seized as a theft, whether or not it falls immediately in
his realm. Correspondingly, the robber takes his booty just as
Hermes would have done-as a find. Should two people set out on an
undertaking together, they call to one another "Koinos Hermes,"
which means "a theft done together" rather than "a find made
together." Better yet, it means "a find and a theft done
together." Fundamentally this is the motto of every busi-ness
undertaking. Even the most honest business is directed toward a
no-man's land, a Hermetic intermediate realm that exists between
the rigid boundaries of "mine and yours," where finding and
thieving are still possible. Mere unscrupulousness, however, is
not of itself Hermetic; with it belongs intelligence and the art
of living. Should a stupid fellow have good luck, he owes it to
the witless Hercules, who was especially honored as a God of luck
in Italy. Such a person becomes dives amico Hercule ("rich friend
of Hercules"). The precious little mythologem to which Horace
alludes (Sat. II, 6, 10ff.) is told by his interpreter Porphyrio.
Mercurius once let Hercules talk him into enriching a stupid man.
Mercurius showed him a treasure which he could use to buy the
piece of land he was working. He did so, but then proved himself
unworthy of the Hermetic windfall by con-tinuing to work the same
piece of land!

We come now to the place in the Hymn where an accidental
discovery-a mythological primal animal, the tortoise -becomes an
Hermetic work of art:

The son of Zeus,
the helper,
looked at it,
then burst out laughing,
and said this:
"What a great sign,
what a help this is for me!
I won't ignore it.
Hello there,
little creature,
dancing up and down,
companion at festivals,
how exciting it is
to see you. Where did
your beautiful covering
come from? Your shell
is kaleidoscopic,
you're a turtle
who lives in the mountains.
But I'm going to pick you up
and take you home with me.
You'll be a big help to me,
and I won't slight you,
but you have to help me first.
You'll find it much better
at our house- outside here
things are bad.
Alive, of course,
you're good medicine
against the pains of black magic.
But dead, dead
you'll make great music!"
He said all this,
then, picking up
this lovable toy
with both hands h
e returned to his house,
carrying it with him.
When he got back
he took a grey, steel knife
and stabbed out the life
of the turtle
that lived in the mountains.

Here it is not "the luck-bringing son of Zeus" who laughs,
speaks, and acts, but rather the "swift as death son of Zeus"
(Dios eriounios huios). The irony of his words springs from his
divinity and is as merciless as Being itself. It is based on
"seeing through." Seeing through is divine. Greek tra-gedy offers
its spectators a divine standpoint in that it allows them to
par-ticipate in such a penetrating vision. The spectator sees in
the king the guilty fugitive while he is still ruling and
governing. In the same way Her-mes "sees through" the tortoise.
There is no doubt what he sees there. He names the unsociable
beast with an expression that alludes to a divinely es-tablished
designation of the lyre, "friend of the feast." He sees already
the glorious instrument while the poor tortoise is still alive.
For the tortoise, that glory means a painful death. If the
"through-seer" of such a fate is God, he makes light of the irony
of the situation that is visible only to him. But it is
Titanically cruel-hearted if he bursts out laughing at what he
sees, if his words make that irony manifest, and if his violent
deed helps to fulfill that destiny. This is what Hermes does, not
naively, but roguishly and without compassion. The cruelty of his
irony reaches its height in his roguish use of the proverbial
line: "Best it is to bide at home, since danger is abroad." On
the other hand, the divine scoundrel does have a point, for out
of his victim's death he conjures music, this unique way for
mortal hu-mans to transform the harshness of existence into
Phaiakian mildness. "Cheerfulness and love and sweet slumber"
are, according to Apollo, the gifts of this Hermetic art, which
Hermes translates into a revelation of his essence. Originally,
music was the gift of Hermes, and in the tones of the syrinx it
remains so. This is not Apollonic music. Let us listen to the
song that Hermes sings to the first notes of the lyre:

And when it was finished,
he took the lovely toy
and tried it out with a pick.
It sounded terrible!
The god tried to improvise,
singing along beautifully,
as teen-age boys do,
mockingly, at festivals,
making their smart cracks.

The song of Hermes is no less roguish than were his words; it is
com-pared to the impudent mocking songs that Greek youths would
fling back and forth at one another. If his words previously were
cruelly ironic, they now show him to be utterly without shame. It
is possible that a verse fol-lowing the first line has been lost;
nevertheless the translation remains certain in all essentials.
Hermes sings of two themes: love and riches. The second of these
corresponds to an aspect of him that we have already dis-cussed.
The first theme reveals a side of him that until now has been
hidden, the one that knows no shame.

He sang about
Zeus, the son of Cronos,
and Maia in her beautiful shoes,
how they talked during their love affair,
a boast about
his own glorious origin.
And he honored the servants
of the nymph and her magnificent house.
And the tripods in the house.
And the abundant cauldrons.

Hermes sings insolently of the love affair of his parents. One
should not think that this was customary among the Greeks. The
Homeric style, which in general is also characteristic of the
Hymn, is very restrained in erotic mat-ters. At the same time,
however, it is not at all prudish. It is simply stated when and
where a love union took place, if this is in any way important,
but the full details are never given. The single exception is the
song of the Phai-akian minstrel, Demodokos, which tells of the
surprised lovers, Aphrodite and Ares. This song conforms to the
atmosphere of the Phaiakians, which within the Hermetic world of
the Odyssey corresponds to the gentlest as-pect of Hermes. In
that song, too, the shamelessness of Hermes is revealed for the
first time in the classical tradi-tion. In Demodokos' song he
appears with the other Gods who have been called together by the
cuckold Hephais-tos as witnesses to his own shame, to view the
glorious pair caught in the net. Asked by his brother Apollo if
he would like to share the couch with the Goddess even though
thus bound up in chains, Hermes, to the hearty laughter of the
other Olympians, shows his colors with these words:

"Would I not, though, Apollo of distances!
Wrap me in chains three times the weight of these,
come goddesses and gods to see the fun;
only let me be bestride the pale-golden one!"
(Book VIII, 33942)

That finding and thieving in the realm of love are also Her-metic
traits needs no further comment: a secret love affair was the
first stage in the evolution of the God. It was, in relation to
Hera, thievish love; in relation to Zeus and the nymph, it was a
love affair ("Liebeshandel") in what is per-haps the full meaning
of this ambiguous word. The original text speaks explicitly of
"Hetaira love" (hetaireie philotes). This can also be unselfish
love that is snatched in the spirit of Hermes. And it would be
shameless in the Hermetic sense to ask if there might not after
all be some connection between this love relationship and the
treasures of Maia, who, according to Hermes' words (11.167ff.),
has no connection to riches.

The Hermetic traits, which the Hymn now reveals in the motifs of
find-ng and thieving, seem to be almost entirely negative: the
negative aspects of the ithyphallic Herms, the shamelessness.
This shamelessness reaches its apex in the song about the love
affair of his own parents. In all this nega-tivity, however,
something very precise and positive is expressed. Without
question, the Herm expresses the essentially phallic nature of
the God, but just what this "essentially phallic" nature may be
has yet to be answered by the Hymn. The Hymn's mode of expression
is every bit as restrained as that of the Homeric epic. On the
other hand, how far it is from any sort of prudishness is shown
in the scene (11.293-98) where the little rogue behaves toward
Apollo in a truly indecent way. In the present passage he speaks
of the oaridzein ("to hold bold converse with") of Zeus and Maia
in hetaireie philotes ("hetairic love"). The first word refers to
the talk of lovers and is later applied to the merry-making of
the Gods on Olympus (1.170). It is, however, a phallic word,
although as finely liter-ary as "Minne"; in the same sense, the
entire "Hymn to Hermes" may be called a highly literary monument
to phallic shamelessness.

We must observe, however, that there is a kind of reticence in
the Hymn: the explicitness of the Herms is not matched in the
tone or contents of the Hymn. Why not? Not because of prudishness
or literary restraint. The first is simply not present, and the
indecency of line 296 defeats the second. The real reason is yet
to be discovered. For now, we may realize what the Hymn specifies
as the core and the meaning of the shameless song. A further
statement is added to the line telling of the love of Zeus and
Maia: "and he told the tale of his begetting . . ." In this
translation genee is rendered as "begetting"; it is important,
however, to understand the meaning of this word more exactly. The
basic meaning of concrete "kinship" or "family" is not indicated
here, but rather the abstract "origin," which in the heroic
period was just as real as the other. For Hermes this is
additionally important because of his position on Olympus. His
impudent song is a genealogia; as such it completes the
mythology, and even substitutes for it. Mythology deals with
origin(s) as basic reason for everything that exists in the
present or will exist in the future. In the genealogy, ancestors
of "famous names" (geneen onomakiuton) occupy the place of
origin, as emergence proceeds forth from the primordial depths.
The genealogy turns the great original mythic theme into a family
tree. The family tree must be-gin, of course, with the earliest
Gods. This is the manner of Hesiod's Theogony. Another way is
that of the Hymn, in which Hermes "names his praise-worthy
descent." His impudence proves to be the conscious return of the
offspring to his source. Indeed, Hermes' impudence is the
consciousness of his own origin and reason for being, an unbroken
and linear conscious-ness of his development which is-as the
development of the God has shown us-a further characteristic
feature of Hermes.

The clue to understanding this consciousness more exactly comes
to light in the second song that Hermes sings, with which he
enchants Apollo. We will look at it now, even though it occurs
much later in the Hymn:

Suddenly he started playing the lyre
louder, reciting a prelude- a
nd the sound accompanying him was lovely-
about the immortal gods and the dark earth,
how they were in the beginning,
and what prerogatives each one had.
And the first of the gods
that he commemorated with his song
was Mnemosyne, Mother of Muses,
for the son of Maia
was a follower of hers.
And all of them,
all the immortal gods,
according to age
and how each one was born,
the glorious son of Zeus recited,
singing them all in order,
playing his lyre on his arm.

Hermes here presents a full-blown theogony. Hesiod begins with
praise to the Muses. It is natural that a God should begin
further back toward the source, with the mother of the Muses. The
Great Goddess Mnemosyne, one of the wives of Zeus, may be
compared to a source (Quelle) for several rea-sons. (It is not
meaningless that she has a spring-Quelle-in Lebadeia; it is also
significant that her daughters are figures analogous to the
spring Goddesses.) She is memory as the cosmic ground of
self-recalling which, like an eternal spring, never ceases
flowing. She even grants, again precisely through the Muses,
pleasant, healing lapses of memory (Theogony 55); in these one
does not forget oneself, but only what is meant to be forgot-ten.
For this reason the blessings of Mnemosyne aid the dead and the
poets: the first she does not allow to dry up, the second she
causes to flow over. In the Hymn she appears as the Goddess who
is set over Hermes like a daimon of fate. This is the meaning of
the original text: he gar lache Maja-dos huion ("For he was
ordained the son of Maia"). It is the fate of Her-mes that for
himself and for those with him there is no chance of losing
oneself. He cannot ever escape from memory. He is possessed by
it, and he carries it as inherited knowledge of all primordial
sources of being. In this his consciousness reveals itself more
exactly as spiritual-psychological, just where we believed we
would be able to recognize its phallic aspect.

We need not give up either of these two understandings of Hermes.
The Titanic element, to which the phallic aspect can belong,
breaks furiously to the fore the moment he ceases to play the
lyre for the first time:

And when he had sung about these,
other subjects were found
pressing in his mind.
But then,
picking up the hollow lyre,
he put it in his sacred cradle.
He was getting hungry:
he bounded out
of the fragrant room
yet with an eye out too,
and working on a shrewd trick
in his head, like those
done by robber types
who operate
at this hour
of the dark night.

In the divine singer-in the shameless, Titanic one-the thief was
al-ready present. An inordinate hunger for meat awoke in him:
kreion eratidzon ("being extremely greedy for meat") is the
phrase in the text, which in the Iliad is applied to a lion. As
the story unfolds it becomes clear that this hunger brings
something un-Olympian and Titanic to light. Instead of devouring
the two animals which he separates from the others and
slaughters, he sacrifices them to the twelve Gods in a way that
is both exemplary and skillful (Odysseus as beggar has this skill
and owes it to Hermes). The bloody offering is a Titanic
practice, invented in its simple form by Prometheus, who, in
accordance with his Titanic nature, tries to get the meat for
himself. Hermes shows his Olympianism by counting himself as one
of the twelve Gods (through his birth their number becomes even
and complete) and, like the distant heavenly ones, by taking part
in the offering only symbolically and not giving way to his greed
for meat.

Hermes,
with a happy heart,
took out the rich meats
onto a smooth rock
and cut them,
arbitrarily,
into twelve parts,
but he treated each part
as if it were perfect for gift-offering.
But then glorious Hermes himself
wanted some of the sacred meat:
immortal or not,
the delicious smells troubled him.
His noble heart
persuaded him, however,
not to let them pass
down his own divine gullet,
though he wanted to,
badly.
He put them away at first
in the high-roofed stable,
the fat and the abundant meat,
then he held them up
into the air,
as a commemoration
of his recent foray.

The entire theft must be seen from the beginning in the light of
this ac-centuated divine standpoint. It is not the Titanic prank
of a divine wonder-child told merely for the sake of
entertainment; it is revelation of divine es-sence and
funda-mentality. His thieving is the nee phore: not "childish
theft," but "new theft" or "new larceny," the Hermetic theft,
which is only now being introduced into the world. Earlier there
existed thieving only through use of power and might, Titanic
thieving. Hermes states explicitly-we will hear it later in the
Hymn-that he could also plunder Apollo's treasures at Delphi. He
consciously refrains from indulging in a Titanic power-play,
which would be less than divine. He possesses the power, the
slyness, the lack of scruples for it. What holds him back is his
divine nature, through which the Titanic nature changes into
ingenious charm and loses its violence. Hermes reveals a new kind
of thieving or larceny, a divine kind. Apollo suffers no loss
from it; indeed he gains the lyre and a singularly related, yet
antagonistic, brother. Instead of violence there appears here
inventiveness and animated swiftness. Everything moves ahead by
leaps and bounds (alto-"nimble," 65; theon- "running," 70), as
does Hermes' revelation itself from the moment of his birth, and
as do his actions in the remainder of the Hymn (sumenos-"running,
darting," 150; anorouse thoos spoudei ion-"he leaped up quickly
and made haste," 415; essumenos-"hastily," 320; speudonte-"he
hastened," 397; errosanto-"they moved rapidly," 505). All of this
is befitting to this God (as it is to Apollo also ). As a babe he
does not yet have his winged sandals, so he invents them out of
tamarisk and myrtle branches, not only to confuse the pursuer
with the prodigious tracks, but also to make use of the speed
given by the myrtle, a plant with an explicit connection to
death. In this way he drives the cattle and yet avoids the rigors
of traveling (hodoiporien aleeinon-"avoiding the journey").
According to the Odyssey the magic powers of plants are familiar
to him, and he works magic also with the branches that Apollo
wants to use to bind him (1.140). In every sense his art is
enchanting. The master enchanter volatizes himself before our
very eyes like a breath of wind. Returning home from his novel
thievery,

Hermes,
son of Zeus,
the helper,
slid in through an opening
into the room,
like a breeze in autumn,
like a mist
He went directly
into the rich shrine of the cave,
tip-toeing.
He didn't make a lot of racket
as one usually does
on the floor.
The glorious Hermes
quickly got into his cradle.
He wrapped his blanket
around his shoulders,
just like a baby,
playing in his hand
with the cloth
around his knees.
There he lay,
holding onto his lovely lyre
with his left hand.
But the god
couldn't fool his mother,
the goddess,
who said this:
"Just what are you up to, smartie?
Where were you that you come in
at this hour of the night,
impudence written all over you?
Now I'm beginning to think
you would walk right out the front door
under the arm of Apollo,
if it weren't bolted on all sides
with chains that are unbreakable,
put there so you wouldn't go
plundering all over the valley!
Well go ahead!
Get out! Your father made you
just to be a headache
to gods and men!"
Hermes answered her
shrewdly:
"Mother,
why do you aim these things at me,
as if I were a little kid
who knew a lot of rules in his head,
and could be scared,
a kid who could be scared
by his mother's words?
Why, I shall be engaged
in the greatest art of all-
always concerned for you,
of course,
and for myself.
We're not going to stick around here,
as you want, the only two
among all the immortal gods
without any gifts,
without even prayers!
It's much better to spend every day
talking with the gods,
rich, bountiful, loaded with
cornfields, than to just
sit around home here
in this creepy cave.
As for honors,
I'm going to get in on the same ones
that are sacred to Apollo.
And if my father won't stand for it,
I'll still try,
I'm capable certainly,
to be thief number one.
And if the glorious son of Leto
searches for me,
I think
things will turn out the worse
for him. I'll go to Pytho,
barging right in
to his great house.
And then I'll cart off
load of tripods
and beautiful cauldrons and gold
and fiery iron
and lots of good stuff.
You'll see-
if you want to."
That's how the two of them
carried on with each other,
one, the son of Zeus,
holder of the aegis,
the other, the lady Maia.

The arrival of Apollo gives Hermes the chance to show his skills
once again:

When Hermes,
the son of Zeus and Maia,
saw who it was,
the Archer Apollo
and that he was mad
about his cattle,
he sand down deeper
under the fragrant covers,
the way a heap of ashes
covers over the burnt-out remains
of a tree stump
That was how Hermes
tried to hide himself
when he saw Apollo.
He rolled up his head
and his hands
and his feet
together in a little ball,
faking sweet sleep,
looking like a baby
just after his bath,
though he was really awake.
And he held his lyre
under his arm.
But he knew them,
the son of Zeus and Leto
didn't fail to recognize
the very beautiful mountain nymph
and her dear son,
that tiny child,
disguising himself
with brilliant tricks.
Apollo looked around
every corner of the entire house,
then he opened three special rooms,
using a shiny key.
The rooms were full of nectar
and delicious ambrosia.
There was a lot of gold inside too,
and silver, and many dresses
of the nymph, some dark,
some silvery-
the sort of thing
that the sacred houses
of the blessed gods
have inside.
When the son of Leto
had finished looking around
the back rooms of the great house,
he spoke words to Hermes:
"Listen, kid,
lying in your cradle,
tell me where my cows are,
and quick!
We're going to fight this out
and it won't be very pretty!
I'm going to take you
and throw you into black Tartarus,
into a hopeless darkness.
What a terrible end!
And neither your mother
nor your father
will bring you back
to the light of day!
You'll wander upon the earth,
leading little people around!"

The "little people"-this phrase trying to convey the meaning of
oligoi andres in the original-are most likely the dead, who drift
about insub-stantially with a "frail buzzing" or "chirping"
(tetriguiai); they are the "likenesses of living creatures" as
the Odyssey expresses it. Here, for the first time in the Hymn,
this connection between Hermes and the dead is al-luded to.
Apollo threatens him with confinement in that dark underground
realm, where he can spend his time leading the souls around. For
a moment the image of psychopomp emerges, thus making way for the
sly psychagogue, for the shameless guide of souls, for the
prototype of all future rhetoricians and sophists, for Hermes
Logios. In the following speech the "art of oath-taking," too, is
practiced in the words of the original sophist:

Hermes answered him
coolly:
"Son of Leto,
why do you speak so rudely,
and why come here l
ooking for your animals?
I didn't see anything,
I didn't learn anything,
I didn't hear anything
from anybody else.
I don't have any information to give,
and the reward for information
wouldn't go to me if I did.
I'm not like a person
who drives away cattle,
I'm not big enough!
This wasn't my work!
I'm interested
in other kinds of things:
sleep is what I care about,
and the milk of my mother.
I care about blankets
around my shoulders.
And having hot baths!
I sure hope nobody hears
what this argument is about!
And it would be a big surprise for the gods: a baby,
just new-born,
who could walk right in the door
with a herd of cows.
What you're talking about
is ridiculous.
I was just born yesterday!
My feet are still pretty soft.
The ground underneath
is pretty hard.
If you want,
I'll swear a great oath
on the head of my father:
I declare that
I am myself not guilty,
nor did I see any other thief
of your cattle,
whatever cattle are, anyway-
I've only heard about them."
And while he said this,
he peeked out
from under his bright eyelids,
looking here and there.
And he whistled too,
for a long time,
like somebody listening to a lie.
The Archer Apollo,
laughing softly,
said this to him:
"You trickster,
you sharpie,
the way you talk
I bet you have broken into
a lot of the expensive homes
in nights past
and left more than one man
with nothing more to sit on
than his doorsill,
looting his home
without a sound.
And you'll be a nuisance
to shepherds in the fields
of mountain-valleys,
whenever you're in the mood for
meat, and you come across
herds of cattle
and flocks of sheep.
But come on,
get out of that cradle,
unless you want
to sleep your deepest
and final sleep,
come on,
companion of black night!
For from now on
you will hold t
his honor among the gods:
for all time
you will be called
'The Prince of Thieves!'"
Phoebus Apollo said this
and then seized him.
The powerful Argeiphontes,
lifted up by the god's arms,
intentionally
released an omen,
an insolent servant
of his stomach,
a reckless little messenger.
Right after this,
he suddenly sneezed too.

This final indecency places Hermes at the opposite pole from the
mor-tally clean God Apollo; yet, at the same time, through his
lyre he remains extremely close to him. It is incomparable how
this infant is able to show us the whole breadth and range of the
Hermetic world. We think of Horace, the poet of indecent Epodes
and of light, delicate, dignified Odes, for whom Mercurius was
the protector and divine model. He names him beloved in all
spheres: superis deorum gratus et imis ("Pleasing thus the gods
of the upper regions / And of the lower") (Odes I, 10). After
this all that is left in the Hymn is that the value of this
extensive realm, in which even the lowest is not unholy, be
recognized on Olympus, and that harmony be brought to the
borderline between the fraternal (but conflict-laden) spheres of
Hermes and Apollo.

The recognition of Hermes comes in Zeus' outburst of laughter,
when the new-born infant dares to repeat his artful perjury in
the presence of his father (368ff.). Apollo, too, laughed at the
first oath of the thief. This is that divine laughter that
vouches for the harmlessness of the Titanic heri-tage of the Gods
within their own circle. In the reciprocal delineation of
spheres, Apollo receives the lyre and Hermes the cattle and
symbol of shep-herdhood, which in this case is not a shepherd's
staff, but a whip (497). This attribute is distin-guished by its
form from the splendidly rich staff of Hermes, which is called
"golden" and "triple-leafed." Whether this is a description of
the caduceus, the staff of the herald, which appears so
frequently on monuments, remains very question-able. For the time
being, Hermes has only the form of a herald (331). We will soon
see in what connection the Hymn mentions his ambassadorial
office; the caduceus with its double serpent motif may very well
originate in that sphere. Here it seems much more that Apollo is
simply turning over to his brother all relations that he
previously has had to a specific aspect of the chthonic world, to
his possessions of herds and other treasures.

Of great significance is the dividing up of the oracle. Apollo
retains for himself what "lies in the mind of Zeus alone" (535),
his "secret counsel" (538). Only he can use it to help human
beings, or to punish them if they earn such treatment through
their probing curiosity. He does not trust Her-mes with such an
exalted calling; indeed, he addresses him in this important
passage not as an equal, but as the "Eriunios Daimon of the Gods"
(551). "Daimon," if not exactly disparaging, lies less near the
detached divinity of an Apollo and closer to a meeting with and
touching of the mortal. The great revealer of truth does,
however, leave to the swift-as-death daimon a peculiar oracle. It
is in the form of the three "praiseworthy sisters," whose names
are not given. The description of them is a puzzle, which is
inten-tional since this is suited to oracular language (553):

For there are some Fates,
three of them,
sisters by birth,
virgins
who take pleasure in their swift wings.
Their heads have been sprinkled over
with a white barley-powder.
They make their homes
under the cliffs of Parnassus.
They taught divination
independent of me,
while I was still a child practicing it
around my cattle.
My father didn't stop them.
>From there, they f
ly, now here,
now there,
and eat beeswax
and accomplish everything.
And when they have been fed
on the golden honey,
they are inspired
and want to pronounce truths,
all of their own accord.
If, however,
they are kept away from
this sweet food of the gods,
then they try to lead you astray.

They are bees-this is the solution of the riddle. For the
ancients, bees have a maidenly quality. Moreover, bees "rejoice
in swift wings," as the text states. Their "heads" come up
covered with pollen, as if "sprinkled with barley flour." They
feed on "honeycombs," or more precisely they feed on the wax with
which they will build their honeycombs. They satisfy themselves
with honey. They swarm about gifted children and lend them the
gifts of the muses. They also have souls; indeed, for antiquity
they are pure souls. Bees that are sated with the "sweet food of
the Gods"-honey -are like souls full of enthusiasm. The word for
their "swarming about" (thuiosin) means the swarming of the
furious Maenads. These enigmatic sisters are bees, but as bees
they are souls, whose ability or inabil-ity to prophesy depends
on whether they are "full" or "empty." The Hermetic oracle is
dependent on these conditions, conditions which we find
ex-pressed in pure intellectual form in Plato's Symposium.

The later classical tradition knows nothing of this anymore.
Hermes' connections to dice and lotteries and other oracles of
chance are familiar. Less frequently one finds Hermes as the
general master of animals, since Apollo extends to his brother
the power over herds (567ff.). At the end Apollo says some-thing
significant about Hermes' messenger role:

. . . it's for the glorious Hermes
to rule, and to be
the only recognized messenger
to Hades, who himself
never takes a gift from anybody.
This time, though, he will give him
a gift that is far from the least.

What kind of a "herald" Hermes would be for the house of Hades is
indicated in the second clause: for this ambassadorial office he
receives nothing (adotos per eon). For who rewards a herald who
performs such a task? "Not the worst gift" (geras ouk elachiston)
is how the mysteries express their view of death. Doubtless the
psychopomp and his office are meant here. He is a "herald
appointed to Hades," and this is on the strength of his
ordination. This is clearly signified in the first clause: oion
d'eis Aiden tetelesmenon angelon einai ("and let him alone be
herald appointed to Hades"). The word tetelesmenon means a bit
more than merely "proper" or "correct" (as it is translated into
German; the English translation omits it. -Tr.). Preceding the
tetelesmenon einai there must unconditionally be a telein ("to
carry out a transaction"), a formal preparation and appointment.
This "making ready" is in Greek linguistic use an ordination,
even if it be so only in a figurative sense. One could be
"initiated" or "ordained" into the position of com-mander of
troops; the word would then relate to the outcome of an election.
According to our text, therefore, Hermes became messenger and
escort to Hades only after a preliminary ceremony had been
completed. To think of an ordination is justified by the whole
context. It belonged to the essence of the Greek mysteries that
through their initiations one came into friendly relation to
Hades. (From this it follows that for one who is initiated, death
is "not the worst gift.") About the ordination of the feminine
angelos, Hecate, we have the report that she received her
initiation from the Kabeiroi. Only after this is she supposed to
have been connected to Hades. Hermes has the closest possible
relation to the Kabeirean mys-teries. It seems that one is led
here beyond classical tradition to an at least equally ancient
mystical tradition.

We are now at the end of the Hymn:

And that's how
the lord Apollo
came to love the son of Maia,
with many signs of friendship,
and the son of Cronus
added his favor.
And Hermes mingles now
with all men and gods.
And even though
he helps a few people,
he cheats an endless number
of the race of mortal men
in the darkness of night.

The deceptions of Hermes are harmless only for the Gods. Like
everything else Titanic, these deceptions dissolve in the
laughter of the Olympians. For humans it turns out differ-ently,
especially if they meet up with the arts of Hermes in his special
element, the night. In the night he executed his first theft.
Indeed, for his sake the moon rose twice and thereby dou-bled the
night. Apollo called him a "companion of black night" (290).
Af-ter the theft "he lay dark as night in his cradle" (358), and
deepest night belonged to the constellation of his conception and
coming into being. It is certainly significant that the Hymn,
which has celebrated him in birth as the "watcher of the night"
in the sense of a dangerous adventurer, closes with this dark
aspect of the God.











 




            

Hermes and the Night

The basic texts of the classical tradition have been open before
us. We do not need to introduce those later texts that merely
preserve this tradi-tion or vary it slightly. An example of this
is a tale that appears in a Hymn to Hermes by Alkaios: the little
cattle thief steals also the bow and quiver from his threatening
brother. Whether he appears as child, youth, or adult, we
confront in Hermes a surprising image. We see his earnest bearded
face against a whitegrounded sepulchral vase from a period of
high Attic art; he is holding out his hand to someone who is
already noone. We see in another of these wonderful
representations how the dead woman loses herself in the depths of
the eyes of the seductive guide of souls. In appearance he may
have become more detached and even more sublime than he was, for
example, on that archaic vase-painting where, sickle-sword in
hand, he is hastening away to slay the Argos, or on another which
shows him winged, sitting with his magic wand, a conjurer of the
spirits of the dead. We can set up around ourselves a whole
gallery, including those spiritualized epi-phanies on the attic
grave lekythoi. If through the vase-painting of the fifth century
we reach a fourth, psychic dimension, we still really only get
closer to those fields of asphodels that make up the volatizing,
devouring background of the mild, but relentless and unyielding
psychopomp: he himself, however, has not become any less
mysterious. We are not merely trying to establish the identity of
a name, but rather to apprehend always the same God. For the
Greeks he was what is depicted in the classical tradition, which
includes also the pictorial representations. In his "such-ness,"
he is an historical fact which cannot, by strict and hon-est
historical means, be reduced to something else: neither to a
concept, to a "power," nor to a "spirit"-a gravestone or signpost
spirit -not even to an idea that would not contain in a nutshell
everything that Hermes' "such-ness" constitutes. What Otto's
brilliant description of Hermes al-lowed of the God to shine
forth proved itself correct and in accordance with the
interpretations of the texts, but it was not the "totality" of
him, which is really the "truth." Incorrect was the negative part
of the statement. "In the new religion-as the Homeric-classical
period is called there-Hermes is not a God of procrea-tion and
fertility, even if he can appear as such, since his wonderful
rule also leads toward the good of love's union and generation of
children. It is always the magical escort that determines the
content of his activity, the leading to a precious gain . . ."
"The procreative power is positively not the essence of Hermes."

The correct, positive statement-that the world of Hermes stands
under a "special sign, namely that of deft guidance and sudden
gain"-does not, however, exhaust that world. To that world
belongs also the rejected parts and the disavowed: the phallic as
well as the spiritual, the shameless as well as the gentle and
merciful, even if the connection between all these qualities does
not seem to make sense. As a reduction of the Hermes world, the
sentence, "In the favor of the Guide is revealed the true essence
of the God," is not much better than its reduction to a
hypostasis of a general divine readiness to help and a devilish
joy at others' misfortune, all in one person.

What are we trying to say when we conceive the "such-ness" of
Hermes, as historically presented in texts and on monu-ments, as
a Hermes world? The multiplicity of the tradition suggests this
term. "World" can be a com-prehensive idea if as an autonomous
entirety it accommodates the observer as if he were moving about
in the world he normally is surrounded by. The world of the Iliad
or that of the Odyssey accommodates us in this way. Every such
world, however, is at the same time a worked-out idea of the
world that existed already prior to this expression of it and
that lent itself to the finished expression of the idea. There
can be no "world"-even if it is the purely spiritual epiphany of
an intellectually luminous God-which is not "worldly," that is,
which does not function as a space to contain the content of the
revelation in a fitting way. If a God is "idea" and "world," he
remains nonetheless in connection with the world that contains
all such "worlds"; he can be only an "aspect of the world," while
the world of which he is an aspect possesses such idea-aspects.
Indeed, it has the ability to shine forth in its totality as
idea, it possesses the light of the idea and is itself in its own
way lighted and clear.

There are words in which this notion appears as the ancient, long
since forgotten wisdom of languages: the Hungarian világ means
"light" and "world," and the derivative adjective világos
("light" and "clear") can also mean "world-like." "Light" and
"clear" in the sense of "world-like"-and therefore convincing-
could also be the idea of Hermes. Indeed, only then would it be a
"basic form of living reality." It would be such a basic form for
another reason, namely that it, like reality always does,
contains so much that is obscure for us. What has been passed
down by tradition would really make up a realistic "world," which
as idea would perhaps gradually dawn even on those of us who are
accustomed to philosophical and not to myth-ological ideas.

The forerunner of the modern concept of the antique Gods as
ideas, Goethe's friend Karl Philipp Moritz, has the sentence in
his Handbook of the Gods (Götterlehre, oder mythologische
Dichtung der Alten, 3rd ed., Berlin, 1804) just where he is
treating Mercury, that "to a certain extent, and when looked at
from a certain exalted standpoint, every divine form compre-hends
within itself the essence of all things." The author of the
classical description of Hermes, Walter F. Otto, is unwillingly a
true disciple of Moritz, in that he consciously adopts an exalted
standpoint, and looking from there perceives in the Greek forms
of divinity the "essence of things," namely, the meaning of a
realm of being whose living spirit-but a spirit made of the same
material, a kind of spiritual condensation- appears as the
respective Godhead. However elevated this point of view may be,
it must seek its justification in the realistic worldliness of
the divine images as apprehended from this perspective. So, for
Otto, Hermes is on the one hand "the spirit of a configuration of
existence which returns again and again under the most dissimilar
conditions"; on the other hand, he is the Spirit of a completely
concrete "world-like" aspect of the world that ac-commodates us
always again in a special realm-he is "a spirit of night." The
question is whether the "world-likeness," which is offered
through the association to night, really does completely fill the
image of Hermes as it is handed down and make it convincing, even
while, perhaps, remaining par-tially obscure.

Nyx, the Goddess of Night, is at any rate not identical with
Hermes, and Apollo distinguishes his brother from her
sufficiently when he calls him "fellow of the night." Yet, as
Otto correctly points out, we automatically think of Hermes in
connection with much that the Greeks said of Night. This is not
part of the classical tradition, but concerns something that
corresponds to it. Let us read the superbly beautiful pages which
Otto, in his portrait of Hermes, devotes to the experi-ence of
night.

A man who is awake in the open field at night
or who wanders over silent paths experiences
the world differently than by day. Nighness
vanishes, and with it distance; everything
is equally far and near, close by us and yet
mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures.
There are whispers and sounds, and we do not
know where or what they are. Our feelings, too,
are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness
about what is intimate and dear, and a seductive
charm about the frightening. There is no longer
a distinction between the lifeless and the living,
everything is animate and soulless, vigilant and
asleep at once. What the day brings on and makes
recognizable gradually, emerges out of the dark
with no intermediary stages. The encounter
suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle:
What is the thing we suddenly see-an
enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log?
Everything teases the traveler, puts on a
familiar face and the next moment is utterly
strange, suddenly terrifies with awful
gestures and immediately resumes a familiar
and harmless posture.

Danger lurks everywhere. Out of the dark
jaws of the night which gape beside the
traveler, any moment a robber may emerge
without warning, or some eerie terror, or
the uneasy ghost of a dead man-who knows what may
once have happened at that very spot? Perhaps
mischievous apparitions of the fog seek to
entice him from the right path into the desert
where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance
their rounds which no man ever leaves alive.
Who can protect him, guide him aright, give
him good counsel? The spirit of Night itself,
the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment,
its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom.
She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The
weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care,
and she causes dreams to play about their souls.
Her protection is enjoyed by the unhappy and
persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom
her ambivalent shadows offer a thousand
devices and contrivances. With her veil she
also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps
ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and
revealed. Music is the true language of her
mystery-the enchanting voice which sounds for
eyes that are closed and in which heaven and
earth, the near and the far, man and nature,
present and past, appear to make themselves
understood.

But the darkness of night which so sweetly
invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance
and illumination upon the spirit. It makes
it more perceptive, more acute, more enter--
prising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like
a shooting star-rare, precious, even magical
knowledge.

And so night, which can terrify the solitary
man and lead him astray, can also be his friend,
his helper, his counselor.

Having entered with Otto into his experience, we may well ask: is
not then Night the very stuff of Hermes? That which gives him
reality? Yes, if one knows the God beforehand and brings his
image along, then one recognizes in him the familiar
characteristics of the night and vice versa. Yet, one does not
find all the Hermetic characteristics in Night. Something
es-sential is missing. Otto himself admits as much, even though
he takes this telling point rather lightly. "This picture," he
continues after his description of the night experience, "falls
short of a true likeness of Hermes, but it does have something of
all of his characteristics. We need only transpose it to a more
masculine and saucier pitch and the spirit of what is peculiarly
Hermes will stand before us." But precisely this more masculine
and audacious aspect, this active essence, would have to be
removed from the Hermes idea if we wished to discover its
worldliness in the connection to night. The passivity of night
and the active quality of the traditional Hermes sepa-rate these
two aspects of the world at their very cores.

But is the world of active and audacious masculinity, which
befits Hermes, a less nocturnal world than that of night itself?
Is not this active world present in those parts of the human and
animal worlds of which Hermes has been given charge?-and where
the act of becoming takes place? In this Hermes-world there is
naturally also entropy: this is the night in an-other sense, in
an Hermetic sense, the night of the psychopomp. The night of
generation and the night of dying, do we not carry these in
us?-an un-divided night, which is happy to join itself to the
night "out there," as a twin sister of the great, all-inclusive
world?

>From simply the "night out there" one could not derive the robber
or the thief, not the psychopomp nor the impudent God of the Hymn
to Hermes. From the poet of the Hymn we learned about his birth
and development. We know where he comes from and what type of
consciousness he exemplifies. He is most likely the same dark
depth of being from which we all originate. Perhaps for this
reason Hermes can so convincingly hover before us, lead us on our
ways, show us golden treasures in everyone through the
split-second timing which is the spirit of finding and
thieving-all of this because he creates his reality out of us, or
more properly through us, just as one fetches water not so much
out of a well as through the well from the much deeper regions of
the earth.

We turn now to the monuments and documents of antiq-uity, which
show Hermes in the closest relation to the origins of life and to
immortality. His world revealed itself in classical tradition as
one that is more directed out-ward. Despite the thievery and
deceit and shamelessness-and this is probably the most wonderful
thing about it-a divine innocence is properly suited to and
inherent in it. Hermes has nothing to do with sins and
atone-ment. What he brings with him from the springs of creation
is precisely the "innocence of becoming."











 






Hermes and Eros

The answer to the question, "What appeared to the Greeks as
Hermes?" can, on the basis of the classical tradition, be
expressed as follows: he is the supra-individual source of a
particular world-experience and world-configuration. Certainly
there is also an experience of the world that rests on the basic
assumption that a man stands in the world alone, endowed only
with a consciousness that is exclusively restricted to the
ability of receiving scientifically evaluated sense impressions.
No such assumption exists, however, when it comes to that other
experience of the world which the antique state-ments correlate
with Hermes. The experience of the world in this manner is open
to the possibility of a transcendent guide and leader who is also
able to provide impressions to consciousness, but of a different
kind: impressions that are palpable and manifest, that in no way
contradict the observations and conclusions of natural science,
and yet extend beyond the attitude described above, which is the
common one today. With Hermes as leader in life-so the classical
tradition teaches us-the world receives a special nu-ance, the
Hermetic accent as we have become acquainted with it. This
Hermetic aspect is thoroughly empirical, and it remains within
the realm of a natural experience of the world. The sum total of
pathways as Hermes' playground; the accidental "falling into your
lap" as the Hermetic material; its transformation through
finding- thieving-the Hermetic event-into a Hermetic work of art,
which is also always something of a tricky optical illusion, into
wealth, love, poetry, and every sort of evasion from the
restrictions and confinement imposed by laws, circumstances,
destinies-how could these be merely psychic realities? They are
the world and they are one world, namely, that world which Hermes
opens to us.

The reality of the Hermes world proves at least the presence of a
standpoint from which it is revealed; more than that, it
testifies to something active that is not merely revealing itself
from that standpoint, but that is ever again suddenly present and
drives the world to give concrete expression to the Hermetic
works of art and illusion. The source of this experience and
configuration of the world, which at the mention of Hermes' name
breaks into the light of day (and broke forth also without
mentioning his name, only less clearly), is Hermes himself. It
must possess the complete Herme-tic breadth, from the phallic to
. . . From here we are as yet unable to move on with any
perspicacity, for on the basis of the classical tradition we have
to complete the foregoing sentence with: . . . to the guidance of
souls, an activity that stretches even beyond life. Here Hermes
remained completely enigmatic to us. We experienced the world
with him in the Hymn to Hermes. If we did not know it beforehand,
we must have discovered there that one has a different experience
of the world with an antique God than one would have without him.
Speaking mythologically, each God is the source of a world that
without him remains invisible, but with him reveals itself in its
own light, and this world passes beyond the world-picture of
natural science. Hermes too, therefore, is more than merely the
luminous idea of a world. He is its source, through whom that
world originated and through whom it becomes intelligible. As the
basis of understanding the world, he is also idea, though one we
have not yet fully grasped. The nocturnal God of adventurers
seems to stand alone in Greek mythology, without parallel and
altogether strange.

"On the day of Aphrodite's birth," begins a well-known
mythologem,

the gods were making merry, and among them
was Metis's son Resource [Poros], the son of Craft.
And when they had supped, Need [Penia] came begging
at the door because there was good cheer inside.
Now, it happened that Resource, having drunk
deeply of the heavenly nectar-for this was
before the days of wine-wandered out into
the garden of Zeus and sank into a heavy
sleep, and Need, thinking that to get a child
by Resource would mitigate her penury, lay
down beside him and in time was brought to
bed of Love [Eros] . . .
As the son of Resource and Need, it has been
his fate to be always needy; nor is he delicate
and lovely as most of us believe, but harsh and
arid, barefoot and homeless, sleeping on the
naked earth, in doorways, or in the very streets
beneath the stars of heaven, and always partaking
of his mother's poverty. But, secondly, he brings
his father's resourcefulness to his designs upon
the beautiful and good, for he is gallant, impetuous,
and energetic, a mighty hunter, and a master of
device and artifice-at once desirous and full of
wisdom, a lifelong seeker after truth, an adept
in sorcery, enchantment, and seduction.

The mythologem later speaks of those conditions of fullness and
emptiness that according to the Hymn apply also to the Hermetic
oracle. Those bees are related to this Daimon, Eros. "In the
space of a day," it is said of him,

he will be now, when all goes well with him,
alive and blooming, and now dying, to be born
again by virtue of his father's nature, while
what he gains will always ebb away as fast.
So Eros is never altogether in or out of need . . .

It is not necessary to point out that we are dealing here with
the great Dai-mon of Plato's Symposium. The myth is told by
Socrates, who is supposed to have heard it from the wise
priestess of the Arcadian Mantineia, Diotima. This source
reference is certainly not without basis and meaning. To what
extent this mythologem is based not only on Plato's vision but
also on an older religious tradition one will never know exactly.
Moreover, such a dif-ferentiation is of no importance for our
purposes. Plato's genius here brings forth a genuine mythologem.
The method of characterizing a divine being by means of his
becoming is the same here as in the Hymn to Hermes. Here as
there, these are realities, which are being apprehended
mythologically. The relationship among these realities-Poros and
Eros to Hermes-is what concerns us.

If Eros is a reality-and for Plato he is, as he is for anyone who
has experienced him-then Poros, who has the positive qualities of
Eros, is even more so. As in Hesiod's genealogy of the Gods, the
more content a figure has and the more he encompasses the cosmos
and contains the world (or, to use our earlier term, the more
world-like he is), the higher he stands. This is the case with
Poros. He is not an invention of Plato's, used to provide Eros
with an abstraction for a father. Alkman, a lyrical poet of the
seventh century, mentions him with Aisa as one of the two oldest
deities (geraitatoi sion), against whom no amount of heroism can
prevail (Fr. l, 13ff.). The antique interpreter makes the
additional remark that Poros is here identical with Hesiod's
Chaos. Yet, while this oldest being of the Theogony is original
formlessness, lacking direction or movement and taking back into
itself everything that has form, Poros, according to his name and
his son, seems to be the world's fullness on its path towards
free unfolding in eternal movement forward, masculine and active,
prepared for ambush and attack and overflowing with every kind of
creativity and fruitfulness. Aisa, who is paired with him as the
feminine principle, can only signify the restriction and
limitation that is tailored to the fate of the individual. The
unrestricted movement of Poros is indicated also in this, that
heroism, when compared to him, is named apedilos-"without winged
sandals." "No man may fly to heaven," warns the next passage.

Similar to this father is Eros, the Hermes-like God of
adventurers. How does Eros then compare to Hermes himself? In
many ways he shares with him the Hermetic range of being. On the
one hand, he is a divine child who had a very ancient cultic
monument in Thespiai-a crude stone, compared to which the phallic
Herms show much greater differentiation. On the other hand,
Hesiod, the poet from Askra, which is not far from Thespiai,
describes him much as does the great love poem. In the Theogony
he appears with Gaia, immediately after Chaos, as the third Being
and brings with him activity and movement, the driving force that
unfolds in progeny, something which that masculine or feminine
primal Being does not possess.

Most likely, therefore, he is the first masculine Being in the
cosmos but he is also, as he "unfolds his limbs," "spiritual" or
"psychic," as are Fainting and Death. And he is no less swift
than swift-as-death Hermes. He comes soaring on his wings, if not
literally so in Hesiod, just so, according to the primitive
mythological account, in the Orphic cosmogony. Wherein the
negative aspects show themselves already for Hesiod lies in this:
"he over-powers the insight in the breast and the rational
counsel of all Gods and men" (Theog. 122). This limitation
through Eros occurs all the more with the profusion of the
erotic. According to Plato he brings wonderful memory, the
luminous understanding of the spirit, but not the cold
calculating cleverness of Hermes. Though far removed from blind
compulsion, Eros does not however signify the Hermetic freedom of
soaring flight for which he gives wings to even the most sluggish
souls. Even the spiritual part of Eros, the memory of
determinative primordial images, flows into bonds and ties.
Predestination, regulation by primordial images, idealism belong
to Eros. For this reason the love poems written in his spirit are
so completely different from those of Horace, which came into
being under the sign of Hermes. Looked at from the world of
Hermetic possibilities, Eros, despite his comprehensive nature,
appears limited-a somewhat more idealistic and less cleverly
turned-out, dumber son of Hermes.

For us it is at least a hint toward understanding the Hermes idea
that the nature of Eros includes phallus, soul, and spirit, and
that he even reaches out beyond the life of the individual. For
this reason, traditions in which Eros is in fact a son of Hermes
hold a special importance for us. They do not belong to the
classical tradition but form another alongside it, one that is
more shrouded in mystery. Cicero, who preserves this tradition
for us in his works on the Gods (De natura deorum III, 23, 60),
recalls in one passage the "writers of more secret texts," qui
interiores scrutantur et reconditas literas. There he shares the
results of such research in a systematically organized, formal
way. The different variations of myths are simply listed with a
distinction made between various Gods of the same name. According
to this system, the first Eros was a son of Hermes and the first
Artemis, the second Eros was the son of Hermes and the second
Aphrodite: Cupido primus Mer-curio et Diana prima natus dicitur,
secundus Mercurio et Venere secunda.

The question of a mystical tradition, to which the ending of the
Hymn to Hermes alludes, still remains open. Still unexplained,
too, was the reticence of the Hymn, which we noticed in contrast
to the explicitness of the ithyphallic Herms. These are yet
unresolved problems, and behind them beckons still the enticing
mystery of Hermes. We will now go on to con-sider less classical
phenomena, present them and let them speak for them-selves, as
the classical tradition spoke for itself.











 




                   




Hermes and the Goddesses

Hermes as the companion of Goddesses is well-known also in the
classical tradition. In the Odyssey, Eumaios, who lives out in
the woods, offers a por-tion of the slaughtered swine to the
nymphs and to Hermes (Book XIV, 435); in this he bears witness to
a long-standing, ancient connection among these Deities. The
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite speaks of this in more detail (11.
257ff.). The nymphs, who in the Odyssey are mentioned before
Hermes, are according to their portrayal there neither immortal
Goddesses nor human women. With them trees came into being, and
along with their long-lived mistress they finally pass away. In
the classical conception, not even the nymphs of wells and
springs live forever. For this reason they are all the more
generous with their gifts. They are the wet-nurses for divine and
semi-divine children. They enjoy the "immortal foods of the Gods"
and perform beautiful round dances with them. According to a
later passage in the Hymn to Aphrodite, it is these nymphs "with
whom the Silenoi and the excellent scout, the Argos-slayer, make
love in the depths of the lovely grottos." Hermes appears here
for the first time in a list with the Silenoi, those half-animal
and (above all) phallic creatures. But whereas the Silenoi seem
to be there merely as the masculine counterpart and completion of
the feminine nature-spirits, Hermes, in this relationship to the
nymphs, is less one for whom the nymphs embody the
Eternal-Feminine which he has to serve than one for whom they are
the opportunity that he eternally masters.

Yet, this is only one aspect of this relationship. For in the
cult of the nymphs, as we know it particularly from countless
votive reliefs in the hills and caves of Attica, Hermes is
expressly assigned to the Goddesses as their permanent escort
(synopaon). On the reliefs he is always leading a three-some of
them, the smallest choir so to speak, just as he was also
coordinated with the three Charities on the Acropolis in Athens.
As though he were unveiling a mystery, he leads the earnestly
striding threesome up to us, to tell us that it is just these
three who allow everything to burst into life in the deeps of the
caves, the springs, the roots, the hills. On a wonderful marble
tablet stands a worshiper, who is depicted as much smaller than
the others and who is being shown this "holy revealed mystery" of
untamed fruitfulness, its feminine nature to which however also
belongs a masculine component. As much as the classical
conception may distribute the feminine aspect of the world among
springs and streams, grottos and trees, with this threesome it is
certainly hinting at the primordial image of that Great Goddess,
of whom we know that she is a trinity. If primal femininity was
assigned to a tree as its nymph, so that both would have to die
when the tree was felled, Great Demeter, too, the most maternal
of the feminine trin-ities, would also feel its pain. The
connection between the Great Goddess and a nymph is neither
obvious nor classical either. It is expressed by the Hellenistic
poet Kallimachos in the language of feeling (Hymn. 6,40). It
existed, as the holy groves of Demeter or Persephone demonstrate,
alongside the classical tradition. The revelation of the Feminine
as three distinct figures means only that the original
core-knowledge of one Great Goddess with three aspects has been
dissolved in classical imagery. In that original understanding,
the triad was still one: a maidenly being, maidenly not like
human brides but like springs and all primal waters, who became a
primal mother and then re-appeared once again in her bridelike,
maidenly daughter. The more secret traditions illuminate the
relationship of Hermes to this primor-dial feminine being.

Cicero, basing himself on a lost mythologem, reports that Hermes
is supposed to have fathered Eros with the first Artemis.
According to another myth, the second Aphrodite became through
Hermes the mother of a second Eros. Both of these stories, as
well as other reports of Hermes' love affairs with Great
Goddesses, can be combined into a genuinely pre-Olympian
mythological story. Here, unlike the account in the Kyllenic
birth mytho-logem that we know from the Hymn, Hermes is not made
into a son of Zeus and integrated thereby into the Olympian world
order. He is a son of Ouranos and Hemera, "Heaven" and "Bright
Day," and he becomes priapically aroused through catching sight
of a Goddess. Although this scene is supposed to have been played
out in northern Greece (we will soon learn about the scenery),
this mythologem could well be the text for the ithyphallic
representations of Hermes, which show him as the phallus. This
mythologem can hardly be understood as merely an invention that
was intended to explain the cultic monuments. What it relates is
a primordial mythological theme of the greatest significance: it
is the first evocation of the purely masculine principle through
the feminine.

Do we know for sure, then, that the primordial mythological
Hermes, of whom we are now speaking, was an unequivocally
masculine being before this scene was enacted? The opposite is
much more likely to have been the case. Aphrodite, the daughter
of Ouranos and Hemera, is called his sister; for her, too, this
parentage is meaningful. Her descent from the sky-God is
confirmed by another birth account in the primal-mythological
style, in Hesiod. Her luster matches the light-nature of Hemera,
while Hermes' nocturnal nature does so to a much lesser extent.
The androgynous first being, who since Theophrastus has been
known as Hermaphroditos and as such has been ascribed to Hermes
and Aphrodite as their son, appears in the Cyprian cult of the
Goddess as her masculine aspect. Aphroditos. The original Hermes
had no special need of a love affair with Aphrodite in order to
beget Eros with her: he possessed her as his feminine aspect, and
perhaps the latter was even the more prominent part before the
masculine nature in him became aroused.

Who, though, was the original Goddess, the great evocatrice?
Cicero passes down two names: Persephone, and the mother of Eros
by Hermes, the first Artemis. Properz (II 2,11) named a third who
unites these two to form an original trinitarian image, and he
also described the scenery of the primal wedding:

Mercurio sacris fertur Boebeidos Undis
virgineum Brimo composuisse latus

("by the holy waters of Lake Boibeis has Brimo lain her maidenly
body at Hermes' side"). Brimo is the Great Goddess of northern
Greece, and in the Thessalonian city of Phera she is named
Pheraia. She could be equated with Demeter and Persephone on the
one hand or with Artemis-Hecate on the other, since she contained
all of these in germ-like form within herself. In her territory
lies the lake whose name in dialect signifies "owned by Phoebe,"
and it is therefore the possession of just this "first" Artemis.
There she appeared in that elementary sort of maidenliness which
does not fear the masculine as something lethal or dangerous, but
rather challenges, re-quests, and creates it. Granted, this
masculinity is a kind "that had no independent personality behind
it but was a mere God-servant for the woman," to use the words of
the modern author who had deep empathy into feminine nature and
who imagined such to be the case for female devotees of a purely
phallic God. Just as for Hermes the feminine is nothing more than
an opportunity, so for the primal woman he was only an impersonal
masculinity, almost a toy.

We may perhaps completely ignore here the descent from Ouranos
and Hemera and count it as valid only for Aphrodite. Hermes, the
primal lover is called forth (or brought forth) from the primal
woman: he is her own masculine counterpart in the case of the
primal Aphrodite, the phallic servant-God in the case of the
primal Artemis of Lake Boibeis. All these elements of the seminal
situation are contained in the tradition: the Great Goddess, the
living primal Herm, and as background something about the primal
waters, which in mythological language is the arena of becoming.
It may be reasonable to suppose that Hermes' possession in
Peloponnesian Pharai of a spring with sacred fish in it, a sort
of fishpond, reflects a vague memory of this original scene. In
Arcadia, too, he was honored in the vicinity of swamp and spring.
Often the Herms do not simply show the way but indicate where the
next spring is to the wanderer. According to one tradition, the
Hermes statue-a very ancient Herm-of the Thra-cian city Amos was
fished out of the sea. That the Great Goddess, in the form of
Hecate, sometimes took as her lover Hermes, sometimes the merman
Triton, corresponds to such associations of Hermes with bodies of
water. But our oldest source, Hesiod, names Hermes just in the
passage where he most mightily praises Hecate (Theog. 444), and
it is just these two who belong most obviously to one another.

Of all the classical manifestations of the primordial Great
Goddess who called Hermes into the world as the prototype of the
secret lover, Hecate is the most Hermetic. As a messenger
(angelos) she must be winged, just like her purely celestial
Doppelgängerin, Iris. Like Hermes, Hecate guides souls; and at
crossroads, represented by the Hecataia which were built up on
three-cornered pillars, she appears just as out of place in the
classical world as do the four-cornered roadside Herms. At every
new moon she there received cakes and smoked offerings, as did
Hermes. With Hermes she guards the gates and with him, too,
brings wealth and good fortune to barns (Theog. 444). She has
hardly less to do with fruitfulness than has Hermes. Associations
with a kind of eroticism that one may find crass and vulgar and a
connection to souls and spirits are characteristic for her. The
same is the case (and the problem) with Hermes, and with him it
is even more problematical since we can now compare father and
son also from this angle. On the lofty level of the idealistic,
ingenuous Eros, with his passion for self-sacrifice and for
reaching out beyond his own life, the union of phallus, soul, and
spirit seems conceivable, but on this low, Hecatean level . . . ?
We must recall that the Her-metic essence, seen in his most
ancient representations, may only to us ap-pear so low and
vulgar, whereas there, where Hecate ruled the world of nor-thern
Greece and Thrace in the form of "Aphrodite Zerynthia," it is
pre-cisely the crassest that is the holiest and most spiritual.





The Mystery of the Herm

Through the mythologem we have discussed above, which is a very
ancient story that Herodotus was already probably hinting at,
Hermes, the source of his own world, was traced back to the
source of life itself. More precisely, he was traced back to a
masculine kind of life-source that remains very close to the
feminine, yet only so close that it, being the more active, can
still manage to bless the other more constant one with two new
things: with itself, and with the continuance of its active
nature, the child. This "continuance can also be called Eros, but
it can be Hermes himself in infant form as it was in the Hymn. In
the Herms the masculine aspect of the life-source does not appear
as blossoming in the child, nor as unfolding in the classical
Hermes image; it appears rather as congealed in its kernel. For
this the northern Greek mythologem could form the text. In point
of fact, the traditions of that story have long since been
connected to the reference in Herodotus. Working directly from
the religious life, the historian says that the Athenians were
the first of the Greeks to adopt the ithyphallic structure of
their Herms from the Pelasgians, whose cultic practices continued
in the mysteries on Samothrace. In those same mysteries, the
enlightening sacred histories would be related as well (II, 51).

Herodotus is not unsupported in antiquity in his assertion.
Kallimachos, a learned authority on living Greek religion,
believed him without needing to call upon other sources or his
own experience. His poem, which began with a question to an
ithyphallic Herm, has not been preserved; we know only from a
summary of the contents that the God who was addressed did not
refer to the fabled Pelasgians but explicitly to the Tyrsenians,
the ancient Mediterranean folk who lived on the islands of the
Thracian Sea, and to their mystery teachings (mystikos logos).
Greek scholars and testimonies from the classical and Hellenistic
periods confirm that the Herms have an import which was also
expressed in a sacred tale, in a mythologem. They describe, too,
where both this mode of representation and this mythologem are at
home: in Samothrace. The world of northern Greece and Thrace
forms a connected geographical area around this island, and this
region includes the territory of Lake Boibeis. The mythologem
that has its setting at Lake Boi-beis can, for internal as well
as external reasons, be essentially identical with the sacred
story of Samothrace. Perhaps present also in the same place there
are related manifestations of the Herm form, which strikes us as
so strange.

We call to mind, now, this strange thing, the Herm, not only its
ithyphallic form but also its quadratic groundplan: quod
quadratus deus solus habeatur ("let the four-square God alone
possess this"), as was said. The quadratic form, however, calls
for a different critical examination than the ithyphallic form
with which it is bound up, and only the latter is attributed to
the mysteries of Samothrace. The square form that became
classical was known in antiquity to be an Athenian invention. In
its oldest form, rather broad and more slab than pillar, it may
originate in similarly shaped tombstones, but it is not believed
that the idea of Hermes developed out of those. If the phallic
aspect, though, belongs intrinsically to the Hermes idea, then it
could easily enough have drawn tomb and tombstone into its realm.
The artist could also have drawn his inspiration from there. But
the Herm itself was created only when the pure quadratic form
came to prevail in the groundplan. This form is an archetypal
expression of totality, inasmuch as it is rooted in the very
foundation of the world. The Greek coin minters unconsciously,
though for that no less symbolically, used this same form as
quadratum-incusum ("the forged square") on the more chthonic side
of their small round works of art. Since the quadratic base is so
firmly and chthonically rooted, it fits to the phallic
representation. In Arcadia, where the "Kyllenic style" probably
was most authentic, the square structure was especially favored,
also for the cultic statues of other Gods. Later it becomes very
commonplace and loses most of its expressiveness. Of the Arcadian
Deity Herms, that of Zeus Teleios in Tegea is significant for
understanding the archetypal meaning of this form. Teleios
denotes a totality that also incorporates the chthonic side of
being. As an epithet applied to Zeus and Hera, it stands for the
wholeness that is attained in marriage. Through this prototypical
(if not "ideal") marriage pair, this type of wholeness is
exemplified for us humans.

From the Greek point of view, the quadratic form as applied to
the Herm is not odd. Also not strange or shocking for the Greeks
was the ithyphallic shape. For the Olympians this was entirely
unfitting, except for Hermes, whom we are trying to understand.
In Attica, however, some lesser Gods similar to Priapus of the
Hellespont, were honored, among them one who was his equivalent:
Tychon. His name means "lucky marksman," one for whom "having
good fortune" (naturally in erotic affairs) is something natural.
Of Hermes, who receives this same epithet, one can indeed say
that it hits the mark. And the same applies to his priapic form.
Yet, the Athenians distinguished Hermes from such lesser Gods and
thought rather of a sacred story from the mysteries which
explained this situation for them. Not only Herodotus and other
scholars did this, but the common people did also. There was a
famous statue of "Hermes at the Gate," the propulaios, in front
of the propylaeum of the Acropolis, which folk-usage called
amuetos, "not a participant in the mysteries." This statue was
the work of Alkamenes; it was a Herm, but one in which the
excessive phallus, which reminded Hero-dotus of the Kabeiroi, was
suppressed. The outline that remained did not appear as a full-
fledged sign of a tetelesmenos ("initiated one"). We must
consequently follow Herodotus and Kallimachos and approach the
mystery of the Herm in their terms.

In the environs of Samothrace we find (as expected) parallels and
allusions even outside the mysteries, especially if we add to the
region of Thrace the nearby and variously related region of
Phrygia. Here appears Priapus, a son of Hermes according to later
traditions. His cult had its home at the Helle-spont on ancient
Phrygian soil, and from the Greek city states located there it
expanded outward. He constitutes an important parallel not merely
because Hermes is also at work in his activity when he restores
virility to the hero of Petronius' picaresque novel (Sat. 140).
This simply bespeaks the times and conforms to the intentionally
base level of the novel's style. All the more significant,
though, is that Hermes' guardianship of souls is underscored pre-
cisely in this connection and explained as follows: qui animas
ducere et reducere solet ("the one who leads souls away and leads
them back again"). The Priapus connection is important, too,
because he is related to death in a way that is similar to
Hermes. He guards not only gardens but graves. Wherever he is
placed is mortis et vitai locus, the place of life and death.
This epigram, which so succinctly and precisely describes his
vital place in the realm of death, derives from the time of the
first Caesars (CIL, VI, 3708); it agrees, however, with the
Phrygian usage of placing phalli on graves as markers.

One famous recent scholar of antiquity did not want to believe in
the existence of such tombstones, despite the reports of
travelers. Others have considered their form merely accidental
and unimportant. It was a step forward when a great archeologist
thought to look for some meaning in the most beautiful example of
this group of monuments, and we are grateful for the publication
of his work. He held that the phallic marker was a symbol of
father-right and could originally have belonged only on the
graves of men. The image was meant to preserve the virility of
the dead man. This explanation moves roughly at the level of
Petronius. It is unclear on the point of "father-right symbol,"
since phallic shapes appeared on the graves of Etruscan men, who
may well have been living still in a culture dominated by mother-
right. It presumes in addition that the meaning which the author
ascribes to the marker was forgotten even before the tombstone
was created, for the nearly one-meter high stone phallus bears
the name and portrait of a woman, "Lysandra of Alexandros." The
mistaken interpretation does not diminish our gratitude to the
au-thor who has made public this unique monument from the Museum
of Smyrna. For on the condition that one credits it with a vital
meaning, it speaks an intelligible language. Set into the lower
portion of the mushroom-shaped phallic monument is a Herm. It
shows the late form of the Herms, the period of the gravestone
being II century B.C.; it is not ithyphallic. Outside on both
sides appear two dogs. the animals that accompany the female
guide of souls, Hecate. Present here, then, is the sphere of
Hecate-Hermes, into which the realm of Hades can ghost-like
discharge itself. In the corona of this lower part the dead
woman, waited on by a smaller maiden figure, reigns like a
Demeter. From the two sides two winged creatures present her with
a gar-land and a sacred sash. Their butterfly wings identify them
as symbolic re-presentations of the soul, as "psyches." To the
right of the enthroned woman coils a serpent with head upraised.
It reminds us of Demeter's serpent on a frequently found
representation of the mystery, which the initiate, who stands
before the throne of the Goddess, befriends.

The whole of the monument constitutes a transfigured sphere,
accented as spiritual by means of the two psyche figures; it
grows upward, as it were, out of the lower parts. These psyche
figures, as Curtius noticed, are remark-able in that they are
wearing men's clothing, hence are souls of the male sex which are
presenting the dead woman there with the symbols of immortality.
These masculine psyches are particularly suitable to this
monument, which in its totality shows a development and
completion of the Herm that is encased in its base. The monument
directly poses the question; does not the stone phallus, and with
it the Herm, have for the transfigured woman the same meaning as
do those masculine souls, as the primary source of immor-tality
on which women draw the same as men? An eternal source of further
procreation and life? For this is what the soul would be, as
understood from the point of view of its source the masculine
aspect of the life-source.

As source of life, the phallic is related to soul not only in the
region of Phrygia; it was so for the Greeks already in archaic
times. In other words, seed is also soul. This view appears
already on a black-figured Attic vase. There we find a black-
bearded man who is blowing on a double flute; he is ithyphallic.
Four drops of semen are falling towards a large fluttering
butterfly, which itself seems to be the first of the spilled
drops. Moreover, on a gem this role of discharging souls is taken
by an ithyphallic Herm, which is usually considered to represent
Priapus but could just as well be Hermes. Again a butterfly
flutters there, and the spiritual atmosphere is emphasized by a
peacock on a cistern. On the older Italian gems the blue-gold
bird of heaven is a symbol of immortality, and it plays a part in
the rebirth story of Ennius. In Greek the butterfly has the same
name as soul, psyche, but the moth is named phallaina, a feminine
form of phallos, just as lukaina ("she-wolf") is the feminine
form of lukos ("wolf"). Although this name (in Latin phallaena,
from which Italian and Spanish have falena) is adapted to the sex
of the psyche of the soul-butterfly which is considered to be
feminine, it confirms the view that is invoked by the phallic
tombstone of Lysandra: the psyche as fluttering moth has a
masculine origin. (The double meaning of psyche, which probably
first meant "soul" and only later "butterfly" is unparalleled in
any other language.) This is illustrated in the most tangible way
possible by the two aforementioned representations. This
(butterfly) psyche carries forward something that is masculine,
and this is the same sort of immortality which Lysandra is
symbolically presented with in the two masculine psyches.
Immortality is looked upon here in general, and so too for woman,
under the aspect of the active, the masculine.

Which God reigns over this aspect of immortality? Undoubtedly it
is Hermes, the phallic and active one. Proceeding from the wider
environment of the Samothracian mysteries, we found the meaning
of the combination of those factors which otherwise appeared so
difficult to understand in the na-ture of this God. We found this
meaning not in a dogma or teaching but in genuine, direct
perception, in a truly evident and vivid aspect of the life-
source as it is experienced. Such a perception can very well
appear in freely floating images-in symbolic representations and
in natural objects that are considered as symbols; however, it
can also constitute in a crystallized form, the sub-stance of
religious celebrations, of mysteries. In any case, behind the
symbol-whether it be a natural object, a symbolic representation,
or a celebration-a further, fifth dimension opens. The life-
source, understood four-dimen-sionally (physical and temporal) as
procreation, has several aspects: a mas-culine and a feminine, a
creative and a lethal. If one insights it, however, through the
source of all things, it holds another dimension. Another way of
saying it would be that an aspect considered in itself, for
instance the mas-culine as phallus (or, as moth seen as phallus),
loses for us the fourth dimen-sion (time) and exchanges it for
the fifth; it exchanges the temporal aspect for timeless meaning
and for the source that has no beginning, for pure being.

The dimension of time is missing from all the forms of Greek
religion, from its cults, its myths, its mysteries. In myth it
appears as a special pre-time, out of which time proceeds.
Wherever one looks in the world of this religion, the unfettered
eye can see primordial meaning and primal source, a source
perceptible in the sculpture of nature.

The main thing that is known to us about the mysteries of
Samothrace is that they brought to mind the masculine aspect of
this source that con-tinues forever actively working within the
human being. According to Herodotus and other witnesses, the Gods
who reign on Samothrace, the Kabeiroi, are just as masculine as
the Herms, and they are so in an even more impersonal way since
they appear only in groups. In the central shrine of the mystery
religion on Samothrace there stood an ithyphallic pair. In a
Hermetic-lucky way the aged Goethe divined their essence:

They are Gods! Wondersome odd,
Who ever again re-create themselves
And never know what they are.

This "never knowing" would be the blind phallus, the pure
impulse, in contrast to the Hermetic phallus which, in its own
special way, is conscious of being so. Goethe's Kabeiroi reach
the level of psyche or spirit only by stages; unlike Hermes, they
do not have it from the moment of their genesis. Just how things
stood on this point in respect to the original, pre-Greek
Kabeiroi, we shall probably never be able to find out. In the
Greek world the Kabeiroi acquired a state of transparency after
the manner of the Greek Gods; sometimes it was of a Dionysian
sort, sometimes of a Hermetic. On an elegant vase-painting from
the Kabeiroi shrine at Thebes, the masculine line of the life
source descends from Father Kabeiros, continues through his son
Pais, then runs on to Pratolaos, the first human, and reaches
finally the masculine side of the first pair of lovers-Mitos, the
man named "germseed," who signifies unending continuation. The
means of mediation between Gods and men, between the original
source of souls and the animated crea-ture, is here Dionysian: it
passes through the wine goblet before which Pais stands and to
which Pratolaos turns his back. Here the Dionysian mode rules,
and the father himself, in all his mightiness, is Dionysos.

A different kind of mediation is the Hermetic, that type which
comes through the guide of souls and messenger. In the Hymn,
Hermes' ambassa-dorial office was traced back to an initiation
ceremony, and in this way he was associated explicitly with the
Underworld. The God of the mystery is himself generally the first
to be initiated, as Demeter was in Eleusis; there she pre-figured
the experience which was then re-experienced and re-lived by her
devotees. There can be no further doubt about what mysteries were
meant in the Hymn. The Kabeiroi cleansed the angelos on the
shores of Lake Acheruse and made her a Goddess of the realm of
souls. They are Gods of souls, according to their phallic nature.
Out of his relation to the Kabei-nan nature grows Hermes' role as
guardian of souls, which consists in "ducere et reducere," and
also in his ambassadorial role, which in the Hymn is linked up
with his guardianship. This is probably the point where Hermes
and the Kabeiroi agree so completely that it was possible for the
Herm to be consid-ered the authentic symbol for the Samothracian
mysteries. It is as the God of the Kabeirian mysteries that
Hermes is ithyphallic and a guide of souls. This is the reason
why the phallic aspect was allowed to appear in the Hymn only
indirectly, only in the Titanic behavior of the God, and also why
the ghostly aspect was only hinted at. This ghostly aspect
derives from the source of life being a discharging of souls.
Those dwarfish and grotesque-indeed -basically ghostlike and
embryonic-figures on the vase paintings of the The-ban Kabeirion
are only one manifestation of the soul's nature: in this image it
stands under the sign of Dionysos and develops in the direction
of comedy. The original discharger of souls, however, remains
forever the guide of souls, the messenger and herald between the
realm of souls and the world of the born.

The great Goddess, who at Lake Boibeis called forth the first
discharger of souls, is under many names and guises the mother of
souls and mistress of ghosts: as Hecate, as Rhea Kybele (the Near
Eastern form of the primal Artemis), as Demeter, as Persephone.
As was already pointed out, there are many reasons for
identifying the mythologem that was told about her with the
sacred story of the Kabeiroi mysteries hinted at by Herodotus.
This identification has a genuine probability. Whether the two
stories were exactly the same and included the same names is a
question that can never be an-swered. Their correspondence is
sufficiently and essentially proven by the fact that the same
mythological situation can be established in Samothrace. The
great primordial Goddess, called by all the names just mentioned,
rules on the island.

The classical mythographic tradition, which deliberately avoids
clarity in statements about the mystery Deities, gives the name
Kabeiro to the prim-ordial Mother of the Kabeiroi, and speaks,
moreover, of three "Kabeirian nymphs." This tradition breaks down
the trinitarian form in the same clas-sical way as does a
sculptor when he surrounds a Hecate statue with three dancing
maidens and as does another one when he depicts her as three
sepa-rate, lesser Goddesses and outfits them with the attributes
of the Great God-dess. The "Kabeirian nymphs" are related to the
Kabeirian Mother in the same way. In Thebes, the Great Goddess
Demeter is named Kabiria and proves by this her connection both
to the realm of the dead and to the Ka-beiroi. In all of these
manifestations she is that feminine foundation of the absolute-
masculine, of the Kabeiric essence, about which the mythologem of
the primal Herm instructed us.

It is a soul-realm as the primordial foundation of all
actualizations in life that appears here in feminine images: a
middle realm between being and non-being and also a foundation
for the ambassadorial office. The primor-dial mediator and
messenger moves between the absolute "no" and the abso-lute
"yes," or, more correctly, between two "no's" that are lined up
against each other, between two enemies, between woman and man.
In this he stands on ground that is no ground, and there he
creates the way. From out of a trackless world-unrestricted,
flowing, ghostlike-he conjures up the new creation. To him
belongs the soul-conjuring wand of the wizard and necro-mancer,
which we so often see in the hand of Hermes. To him also, how-
ever, belongs a herald's staff, around which intertwine two
antagonistic-loving serpents, a symbol of mediation. In the high
archaic period this prototypical image appears as the girdle on
the body of the primordial Goddess herself, on the Giant Gorgo in
Korfu, who is another form of the original Artemis. Perhaps this
appears on the staff of Hermes (the caduceus) in the monuments of
such a late period because he has his origin in the mystery of
mediation between life and death. In Athens one of the carriers
of the Eleusinian mys-teries had to belong to the family stock of
the herald, whose ancestral father was Hermes. Moreover,
according to one tradition it was Hermes who together with Daeira
(a puzzling manifestation of the original Goddess) begot Eleusis,
who was the founder of the mystery-site.

What, then, are the most prominent associations of Hermes to the
Ka-beirian mysteries? Up to this point we have spoken only of the
general features of his Kabeirian nature. To these belonged,
first of all, the Herm as a phallic monument. Before we can
evaluate the evidence correctly, two more general discussions are
necessary. One has to do with the Herm. To its complete form
belongs the head which is borne by the quadratic base; this is
symbolic of its self-knowing, self-conscious nature. The name of
the God comes, however, from the lower part. Hermeias, contracted
as Hermes, is a further development of herma, which is the name
not of a "stone heap" (hermax or hermaion, both of them derived
from herma) but of a single stone, which could be used also as a
support or a ship's ballast; the word meant all of these things.
The simplest conceivable monument (a phallus monument) was the
primordial symbol of the Kabeirian and Hermetic ideas; this
symbol was offered by nature herself.

The Kabeirian idea appeared among the ancient Mediterranean
peoples, pre-Greek peoples of the islands and mainland; the
Hermes idea appeared among the Greeks. In this way an archetype,
in two culturally typical manners, was stimulated to unfold,
since the stone pointed to a direct human experience of something
divine. Therefore, the "Hermeias" could reveal it-self in many
places within the realm of Greek culture, even if not always so
clearly to everyone as it did to a seer specially chosen by him,
a poet of genuine Hermetic spirit. Where the Kabeiroi preceded
him with their cult, mythologem, and mystery, the new God could
pass as one of them, a Ka-beiros who had become spiritually
pellucid. But which one of this multi-tude is Hermes? How can
Hermes identify himself with a plurality of figures which at the
very least must consist of father and son? This is the second of
the broader questions, and we need still to discuss it.

In the masculine principle per se-as abstracted from individual
persons-the begetter and the begotten are both present; indeed,
they are identical. In the mythologem of Aphrodite's birth, the
phallus is also the child, just as Hermes is both the Kyllenic
monument (the Herm) and the Kyllenic child. This identity
receives its most tangible expression in the image of the
paternal seed falling to earth in the form of fruit. If we
conceive of the soul as masculine, as the eternal seed that is
the begetter and procreator, it is also always what is begotten,
at once father and son. The ithyphallic pair (as the smallest
number) in Samothrace represents the masculine in its minimal un-
folding. Of these two, one must be the Kabeirian father, and the
various Kabeirian genealogies bear out this assumption. On the
often discussed Theban vase-painting we see father and son.
Granted, the further development- primordial men and primordial
seeds-is also indicated here, but we are not now interested in
the Kabeirian precursors of the human race, who fol-low in the
genealogies from the third place onwards. According to the sacred
history that Herodotus alludes to, Hermes must be the original
begetter. Yet the relevant documentary witnesses equate him
explicitly with only the young Kabeiros, the son, named Kasmilos.
It never became part of classical tradition that there are two
Hermes figures. We recall that the word eriounios ("luck-
bringer"), which is otherwise an epithet only for Hermes, appears
as the name of a pair of chthonic Gods. And on vases we see the
old and the young Hermes side by side, both carrying in the same
scene the herald's staff. So Kabeirian is this God that he can
even appear as a duality.

Tradition has it that one of the islands on which the Kabeiroi
were at home, Imbros, belonged jointly to them and to Hermes, and
that there he went by the un-Hellenistic name of Imbramos ("the
one from Imbros"). This signi-ied a pre-Greek Hermes, who
certainly was one of the original Kabeiroi. Here, too, according
to one inscription, there were "initiates into the mysteries of
Hermes" (tetelesmenoi Hermei). After the foregoing discussion it
is superfluous to ask whether Hermes was identical here with
Kasmilos; like Hermes, Kasmilos is named among the Kabeiroi on an
inscription, and yet he is somewhat removed from them. Hermes was
both father and son at the same time. The situation is similar in
the case of Hephaistos as father of the Kabeiroi: under his sign,
all the Kabeiroi are Hephistoi. The most important evidence,
therefore, is to be judged in this light. Following this line of
thought, the triad that is narrowly described as Kabeirian would
be equi-valent to Demeter and Persephone (that is, the primal
Goddess under two aspects) and Hades; the fourth figure, who is
set apart, Kasmilos, would be equivalent to Hermes. Moreover, in
the vase paintings where two Hermes figures show up, one thinks
automatically that the elder is Hades, the more paternal spouse
of Persephone, and that only the younger one is Hermes.

The ancient Italian testimonies concerning Mercurius correspond
extensively to the non-classical tradition concerning Hermes, and
they would support what here has been worked out as the God's
phallic nature. To go into this would lead us too far astray from
our intention of letting the Greek material tell its story.
However, one may observe in passing that on Etruscan mirrors
Hermes is called turms aitas, "Hermes of Hades." This expresses,
in the ancient Italian manner, Hermes' chthonic aspect, as well
as the Hades-Hermes pair, Kabeirian father and son. In Italy the
latter was also named Mercurius Camillus, after Kasmilos, whose
role in the Samothracian mysteries is compared by Varro to that
of the Roman boy, the camillus, at the wedding celebration.
Kasmilos-Camillus, the divine boy and the son of a divine father,
seems to be the prototype for the sons of holy Roman families,
especially for those of the flamen Dialis ("high priest of
Jupiter").

This unique identification of Hermes with the young Kabeiros
corresponds to the classical viewpoint, which already in the
Iliad has him appear in the form of a youth. Sculptors of archaic
times present him sometimes as bearded, sometimes as youthful;
this youthfulness always remains charac-teristic of him. It is
connected originally with Hermes' Kabeirian nature, just as it is
also connected to his close relationship to the youths of the pa-
laestra. His youthful image was the only classical-Hellenistic
form that was suitable for both the "divine child" and the "son,"
for the first-born and the first-begotten. His protection of the
palaestra is also Kabeiric. He stands there, whether youthful or
bearded, as a Kabeirian Eros who strikes us as curious: as the
active and manifest original source and at the same time as the
prototype of a playfully and nimbly unfolding masculinity.











Hermes and the Rant

Have we with Hermes reached right into the mysterious abyss of
the ac-tive seed? Whether taken literally or symbolically, only
these words can define the point from which the world of Hermes
opens itself and comes into actual being. Here the question,
which we put aside at the beginning of our inquiry, crops up:
"How could just this appear to the Greeks as God? We are
referring not to the world of Hermes but rather to its origin. We
are not speaking of the phallus, but literally of something
abysmal, of something that is active from the pre-historic
depths, whose symbolization as given by nature itself-every
bodily organ also expresses its meaning-is this so-called
fertility symbol. If this is indeed the way these things are
related, then the question proves to be unnecessary, and what
remains for us is to show the depths that open for us with Hermes
wherever they make themselves noticeable in the monuments.

A unique report has come down to us that relates to an area which
lies in closest proximity to the mysteries: the family cult, or
in any case a cult that was practiced in the innermost part of
the Greek home. Here occurs the first mention of the
hermaphrodite in the literature. Theophrastus characterizes the
superstitious person, among others, in the following sketch:

"On the fourth and seventh day of the month he has wine cooked at
home, goes out and buys myrtle branches, incense, and offering
cakes, and returns home where he crowns the hermaphrodites with
garlands the whole day through."

Does the exaggeration consist only in saying that the
superstitious person did this every fourth and seventh day of the
month and for the whole day, or does it also lie in saying that
in the innermost part of his house stood not only one but several
statues of the hermaphrodite? Was the presence of at least one
hermaphroditic statue within the house just as common as a Hermes
and a Hecate out in front of the house, in the yard, or at the
gateway to the road? Unfortunately we know too little about the
Greek house-cult to be able to answer this with certainty, either
affirmatively or negatively. This much, though, seems to be
certain, that all three kinds of divine statue be-longed among
the relics of the house that were inherited from the ancestors;
they belonged to the "paternal," and possibly also the
"maternal," Gods. These were, in any case, related to the origins
of the family: they represented the inexhaustible source of life
and souls from which the family continued to originate over and
over again. And, indeed, the hermaphrodite within the house
represents so to speak the origin of the source: he represents
the pri-mal condition restored in marriage, the one who precedes
even the genesis of the first Herm and the generation of souls.
It is not without good reason that a widow is found imploring the
hermaphrodite in a small Attic temple dedi-cated to him: she is
expecting from him restoration of that condition which is far
more than transient happiness in love or mere amorous union. Even
today the Greeks call the married couple to androgyno, "the
androgene."

The position of the Herm at the entrance-whether in the yard or
on the road -is that of the mediator. Hermes' connection to the
center of the house, to the Goddess of the hearth, is attested by
a Homeric Hymn to Hes-tia (XXIX). Every now and then he appears
in this "innermost nook": Kallimachos tells how, blackened by
smoke, he bounds up from there to frighten divine maidens (Hymn.
3, 69). Those "innermost nooks" include the bridal chamber and
bedroom, and there, according to a tradition from Euboia, Hermes
rules as Epitha1amites. The Kabeirian guide of souls is at work
both within the house and without. He guides souls out of his
realm-the world of paths and roads-back into the warm life of the
household, which in Greek signifies the "family." In his official
capacity as mediator between the worlds of night and day, spirits
and men, and (standing before the temple) between the worlds of
Gods and mankind, he is called Proopylaios ("before the gate")
and Pylaios ("before or at the gate"). This is not only because a
thief is the best doorkeeper! One inscription names him Pylaios
("the one at the entrance") and Harmateus ("driver of the
chariot"). Two other epithets-strophaios ("standing at the door-
post," also "cunning," "versatile") and stropheus (the "socket"
in which the pivot of the door moves)-show him closely related to
door hinges and therefore to the en-trance, but also to a middle
point, to the socket, about which revolves the most decisive
issue, namely the alternation life-death-life.

So little about the Hermes festivals has been handed down in the
tradition because they have to do with the most secret source and
pivot-point of hu-man existence. There were few temples of
Hermes, moreover, just because that crucial issue was felt
wherever people lived and died. Through Hermes, every house
became an opening and a point of departure to the paths that come
from far off and lead away into the distance. Standing at the
doorway, he indicates that here is a source of life and death, a
place where souls break in, as though he were pointing out a
spring of fresh water. At a Hermes fes-tival on Crete, the "low
ones," the slaves, were elevated and served by their masters. At
another festival on Samos -the feast of Hermes Charidotes-the
populace was allowed to steal and to commit highway robbery.
Everywhere that Hermes appears, even when it is as "guardian,"
there is an influx and invasion from the underworld. This is not
an invasion of death but rather, to coin a phrase, of
"underworldly life." To this belong all the "serving spirits,"
that whole "service industry," which Hermes represents in several
forms. The inversion of the master-slave relationship has its
nearest parallel in the Roman Saturnalia, a winter solstice
festival, whose meaning was the strengthening of the weakest in
that wonderful growth that one re-experiences with the sun after
having already experienced it as seed and embryo. That which
hovers between being and non-being, seemingly powerless,
repressed in servitude, re-duced to the life in the nocturnal
darkness of the seed, finds its way upward. Hermes, the
psychopomp, also called Harmateus, the "soul-carrier," guides it,
brings it back .

An ancient manifestation of Hermes points particularly to the
parallelism between the sun and of the leading upward of the
soul. At the festival of Tanagra, the only festival of Hermes
whose sacred rituals-they were de-dicated to eliciting the God's
presence-are intimately familiar to us, the handsomest youth
carried a ram on his shoulders around the city's walls. He did
this in imitation of the God who is said to have driven off a
pestilen-tial illness in this manner. The image of ram-bearer
(Kriophoros), as Her-mes is so often portrayed, is a highly
significant manifestation. The story that Hermes had performed
this act for exactly this purpose may be a later addition to the
mythologem; this becomes plainly apparent in its basic fea-tures-
the epiphany with the ram and the circumambulation-and is hardly
to be segregated from the further connections of Hermes to the
ram. As a sacrificial animal and theriomorphic expression, the
ram belongs generally within the Kabeirean context. When Hermes
begot Saos, the founding hero of Samothrace, with Rhene (the
"sheep"), he certainly did so in the guise of a ram. A whole
series of gem pictures shows him as a ram with one or more-in one
case even with four-other rams. Unmistakable, too, is the sacred
history of the mother-mysteries, to which Pausanias alludes (II,
3,4); what is said there about Hermes and the ram Pausanias
knows, but will not reveal. As a ram, Hermes begets the divine
child of the mysteries, who though he is not merely the sun yet
does resemble the new-born sun, and as son of the ram-father is
also presumably the lamb (or the ram) which Hermes brings and
carries around the neighborhood, thereby making him a sun-bearer
of the new sun. It is not without good reason that the golden
rams of saga are gifts of Hermes. As is well known, he gives such
sun-like animals to the house of Atreus and to Phrixos.

We did not wish to consider the depths of Hermes, and yet they
have themselves led us, on a truly Hermetic path, far in this
direction. From a purely historical investigation, our inquiry
has led to the pre-historical ram-God, whose form was taken not
only by Hermes but also by his brother Apollo, who as a primal
child was also a small sun. Granted, this figure is not in the
classical Greek manner. Its lack of refinement can perhaps be
best adduced in a crude ram-headed Herm that was found in the
neighborhood of Gythion. In this city, located in southern
Peloponnesus, there was at the end of the second century A.D. a
temple for the ram-headed sun-God of the Egyptians, Ammon
(Pausanias III, 21, 8). In addition, a cult statue of Apollo
Karneios testifies that this God was formerly worshipped in this
same place. His epithet stems from karnos, a pre-Greek word for
livestock, which in Greece always meant primarily sheep. Here the
later Apollo is preceded by a ram-God, whose former, old-
Mediterranean importance is veri-fied by the fact that Ammon-most
likely an ancient relative-settled fi-nally in just this cultic
spot. Carna, who in Rome bears the feminine form of the name
Karnos, was a moon-Goddess; with Janus, in whom the Ro-mans
rightly knew a sun-God and whom they equated with Apollo, she
formed a couple, as is typical of sun and moon personifications
in other mythologies. Hermes is never named Karneios, and his
dual relation to the ram-as father and as bearer-does not
indicate a simple identity with the sun. He is not the source of
light, as the sun is, but rather the source of this source. He
also begot the moon-like and dark Pan. His world originates be-
fore sunrise, and as the source of his world he can only be the
one who him-self allows a source of illumination to originate in
the outpouring of souls. Is not, then, the sun re-born in every
soul that is newly guided upward, just as it is in every drop of
water that mirrors it? Under the aspect of Hermes, however, the
sun belongs to the soul more essentially than it does to a mir-
ror, where it is accidental. In the prehistoric depths of the
life-source, light and its mirror are begotten simultaneously;
there, as great Greek philosophers also knew, the source of light
and the source of soul are one and the same.




Silenos and Hermes

It is not without good reason that Hermes was supposed to be the
inven-to r of language. It belongs to the Hermetic wisdom of the
Greek lan- guage itself , to one of its most ingenious chance
hits, that the word for the simplest mut e stone monument, herma,
from which the name of the God stems, corresponds phonet ically
to the Latin sermo, "speech" or any verbal "exposition." The word
herma, which in the Greek does not have this meaning, does
however form the basic verb al root for hermeneia, "explanation."
Hermes is hermeneus ("interpreter"), a ling uistic mediator, and
this not merely on verbal grounds. By nature he is the bege tter
and bringer of some-thing light-like, a clarifier, God of ex-
position and inter-pretation (of the kind also that we are
engaged in) which seeks and in his spirit-the spirit of the
shameless ex- position of his parents' love affai r-is led
forward to the deepest mystery.

For the great mystery, which remains a mystery even after all our
discuss ing and explaining, is this: the appearance of a speaking
figure, the very embodi ment as it were in a human-divine form of
clear, articulated, play-related and th erefore enchanting,
language-its appearance in that deep primordial darkness wher e
one expects only animal muteness, wordless silence, or cries of
pleasure and pain. Hermes the "Whisperer" (psithyristes)
inspirits the warmest animal darkne ss. His epiphany supplements
the Silenos aspect of the life-source, in which the animalistic
factor within the Greek pantheon shows its presence, and with in
it forms a fundamental harmony and totality.

Hermes and Silenos-or the Silenoi (plural)-harmonize in their
phallic nat ure more than just superficially. The brilliant
messenger of the Gods, whom Praxiteles represented in the famous
statue of Olympia, carried the child Dionysos on his arm, a task
ordinarily left to the "teacher of Dionysos," the old Silenos.
Just why Hermes can appear in this role was made com-prehens ible
to us through the meaning of Kriophoros. He is the designated
bearer of all divine children, since he is the bringer of souls
and of sun-children. His relat ion to Dionysos again comes to
light in his designation as a God of the vineyard s on the island
of Lesbos. Silenos, or Hermes, with the little Dionysos form a
kind of variation on the same theme, and are the two sides of the
same reality . The supreme knowledge of the Greeks, not however
expressed in conceptual term s, that the Hermetic-spiritual
aspect exists in friendly union with the animal-di vine aspect,
is revealed most beautifully on a wonderful vase-painting. This
conjunction occurs there most likely without the artist intending
it. Nevertheless, it will still best summarize our reflections.

We recall that the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite mentions Hermes with
the Sil enoi as lovers of the nymphs. It is another thing
altogether when a London vase, a so-called Psykter of the painter
Duris, dating from the first quarter of the fifth century shows a
whole troop of frisky Silenoi, some of them ithypha llic, whose
leader-the eldest of a Satyr choir, as it were-appears with the
emb lems of Hermes: the traveler's mantel and the herald's staff.
We must linger at t his picture before moving on to another more
com-prehensive one. Here no nymp hs are apparent. Drunkenness and
wine gob-lets, with which the figures playfully move about,
indicate the half-bestial, half-divine devotees of Dionysos. But
w hy the presence here of Hermes in the leading Silenos? It is
believed that this picture reflects the choir of a Satyr drama
performing some specific role, simila r to the ambassadorial role
of Hermes in whose place the satyr choir was commissioned, as for
instance to lead Hephaistos back up to Olympus. This is one
possibility, but there is another. The appearance of Silenoi, as
devotees of Dionysos, would be in itself most natural during the
Dionysian soul-festi val in the month of Anthes-terion [the
eighth month of the Attic year, correspon ding to end of February
beginning of March. -Tr.]. A noted scholar of religion he ld the
Silenoi and Satyrs to be the spirits themselves, the souls of the
dead. H e erred per-haps only in that the identification of
Satyrs and Silenoi with the s ouls of the dead has no evidence to
back it up and goes against the pictorial imagi-nation. But from
this point of departure, we recognize what these f igures
represent: the source of life which is opened up and is
discharging itsel f. The days of the Anthesteria ("Feast of the
Flowers") were open days for the s ouls, and the fifth and last
of them, chytroi ("feast of the pots"), was a Herm es day. On
this day the identical meaning of the Silenic nature and the
office of soul-leader may have manifested itself through the
Hermes costume .

Concerning the actual picture we are here dealing with, it is not
merely a matter of conjectural possibilities. We are speaking of
a Berlin amphora, dating from the same period as the Psykter of
Duris, whose craftsman is usually named after this piece. A
connoisseur of Greek vase-painting char-acterizes the artist in
the following way: "The slender elegance of his dy-namic figures
that embellish rather than narrate a tale never attained in its
quiet poetrys uch a pure form as in the figures of the Berlin
vase." Here the choir disappear s completely from the observer's
vantage point; whether or not it remains i n the background is
unimportant. Before us stands a unique pair: Silenos and Hermes.
The delicate figure of a deer between them hints at the untamed
world which has been rendered tractable by Dionysian magic, and
this highly significant d ivine playing takes place on a surface
that is etched with the lines of eternal rhythm, the spirals. So
far as we can surmise, this is not a scene from a Satyr drama.
Even if it were so, the facial features would tell everything-the
bestial yet grave face of the one and the super-humanly
intelligent head of the o ther, and despite this difference the
inter-fusion of their essential forms. Si lenos has the lyre and
lyre-pick of Hermes, while Hermes, behind him almost lik e a
DoppelgE4nger yet clearly marked by his winged hat and shoes,
holds the Dionysian vessel of Silenos in his hand. They have
exchanged roles, and this was al lowed because at bottom, where
Hermes is merely a Kabeiros, they have one and t he same
function: the con-juring of luminous life out of the dark abyss
that each in his own way is.

It was the Hermetic tune, an unforgettable melody of Greek
mythology, tha t with all its variations from the Kabeiroi-
Silenoi aspects to the role of the speech-gifted mediator and
psychogogue was to resound in these reflection s. Whoever does
not shy away from the dangers of the most pro-found depths a nd
the newest pathways, which Hermes is always prepared to open, may
follow him and reach, whether as scholar, commentator, or phi-
losopher, a greater find a nd a more certain possession. For all
to whom life is an adventure -whether an adventure of love or of
spirit-he is the com-mon guide.

Koinos Hermes!