HERMES

GUIDE OF SOULS

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KARL KERÉNYI
REVISED EDITION
¡EW PREFACE BY CHARLES BOER
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 MURPHY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF WC ONES Y + LA CROSSE

HERMES
GUIDE OF SOULS

KARL KERÉNYI

Translated from German by Murray Stein

REVISED EDITION
WITH A NEW PREFACE BY CHARLES BOER

AN
SPRING PUBLICATIONS, INC.
PUTNAM, CONNECTICUT
 Dunquin Series No. 24
by
First published in Switzerland, copyright © 1976
on.
Spring Publications, Inc. under the Berne Conventi
All rights reserved.
ns, Inc.
Seventh printing 2003. Published by Spring Publicatio
Cover design: Doris Ocsch. Cover image : Figur e of
igure d
Herm es
bowl,
Contents
taken {rom the ¡incide bottom af an Áttic red-f
467,133,
British Museum. {E58. Von Makron, Beazly ARV?
bottom.)
and as published by Stella, Mitologia Greca, p.93,
Printed in Canada—text un acid- tree paper , Preface to the 1995 Edition
Charles Boer
Acknowledgments for quotations from other authors haveator.
the transl
been made in the appropriate places in the text by
The translation was made from Herm es der Secle nführer,
Gabri ella Lautenberg, A Prefarory Note...
Albac Viglac 1, Rhein Verlag, Zürich, 1944.
David L. Miller, Robert Hinshaw and James Hillm
ascisted in the production of the final text.
an
Magda Keegy 23

by
No part ot this book my be reprod uced in any form or n
any electronic or mechanical mean s including infor matio
svstems without permission 10 writing from the publi
sher, Part One: The Hermes of Classical Tradition
except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer.
I. The Hermes Idea 29
Distributed in the United States by the Continuum
Publishing Group; in the United Kingdom, 2. The Hermes of the Niad 35
Fire and Europe by Airliſt Book Co. 3. The Hermes of the Odysey 41
4. The Hermes of the Hymn Sl
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication [ata 5. Hermes and the Night 89

Kerényi, Karl,
[Hermes der Seclentührer. English] Part Two: The Hermes of Life and Death
from German
Hermes. guide of souls / Karl Kerényi ; trancslated
Boer —Rev ed.
by Murray Stein , with a new preface by Charles
p. cm.—ſ(Dunquin series ; no. 24) 1. Hermes and Eros IOI
Includes bibliographical references. 2. Hermes and the Goddesses 109
ISBN 0-88214-224-0 {alk. paper)
ï. Hermes (Greck deity) #1, Title 3. The Mystery of the Herm 117
BLS820.MSK413 1996, 2003
95.51200
4. Hermes and the Rant 137
292.2’113—de20
CIP S. Silenos and Hermes 145

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 Preface to the 1995 Edition
by Charles Boer

Karl Kerényi would certainly have written a preface co chus

1942 Eranos-lecture-turned-book, his wife Magda writes in
her own 1976 preface to ir. He would have told us there was a
tHhurd way of lwing life, besides the Apollonian rational and
the Dionysian irrational ways of Nietszche: Hermes’ way, the
way of “roguery:” He fek “stolen from” on his “journey”
through life by the “God of Journies,” she says, when a book
is missing from hHus deck chair (and then his deck chair, too).
Kerényi worships Hermes at Delphi, we are told, instead of
the Apollo who officially lives there. And when Kerényi is buried
in Ascona, Switzerland, his grave bears the inscription (put on
by her, however) of those initiared into the Hermes mysteries.
Hermes, God of jokes and journies, thieves and magicians, the
cricky Guide of Souls, was, more than any orher, Kerényi's god.
Bur cimes change. Now twenty years after Magdas own
preface to this ageless little book, ir is time to write another. I
only wish, and che reader will, too, har Kerény were himself
i
here to do the job. For the games have stopped—the deck
chair games and all the rest, the playfulness of a learned man
 PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
mes, it can never be Hermes’ own way (as the New Hampshire
in love with the Greek myrhological imagination who rakes
professor recently found to his dismay when he cold his doz-
thar imagination as a measure of his own soul's movemenrs.
ing class a joke about a belly dancer and was immediarely
The half century that has passed sínce Kerényi wrote about
suspended, fined, and sentenced to a year of psychiatric brain-
“che Hermes idea” has seen Classics Departments turned over
washing). Whatever we make of Kerényis quaint playing wich
to compurer specialists, the delicious pancake of mythology
the god in his deck chair musings, he was ac leasr facing Her-
studies flap-doodled into those who love or those who hare
mes as the old Greek trickster presents himself to the
Joseph Campbell, and witnessed the gnashing of teeth from at
imagination. Ar Eranos Kerériyt was not trying for academic
leas: one bloodthirsty new professoressa our there against all
distance, for professional sophistication (where che profession
things Jungian, from “journies” and “soul-guides” ro qua
15 more important than the subjecr), least of all for the detach-
and Games (‘the title, as ir happens, of a 1970 book by David
menrt of the laboratory myrhologist in his Levi-Straussian lab
Miller thar also deserves a new look).
coar (yes, Claude actually wears one).
To be academically correct today you are no longer allowed
Kerényt was all too familiar with Nazi Hungary's ruthless
to “extrapolate” Greek gods and goddesses our of their an-
lockstep to pretend dispassion about myths. After all, he had
cient culture life and use them in your own. The psychological
just fld the Nazi academic machine itself and was hoping to
reading of mythology, in other words, is verboten. (Worse, is
mi- get permission to stay in Switzerland on the success of this
popular, to the point of bestsellerdom—a sure sign to acade
very lecture you are about to read. And once out, as is always
cians char it must be wrong.) The Levi-Strauss way of
the case in Europe, there was no turning back. Communist
myths—pay no attention to whac chey say individually, just
Hungarys post-war universities were a model of political cor-
pur them all in a compurer and read the print-out lisc down or
rectness and Marxist sociological thought where the last thing
across until you ger the pattern—is back. (Slow gerting started,
you were allowed to say was char the Greek god Hermes could be a
except in France, it flourished for a spell in the 1970s but
guide to soul in the modern world.
soon played itself our, one of the furst targets of deconstruction.)
Kerényi was as aware as anybody today of the territorial
Now it returns as the myth potion most acceptable to Ámeri-
limits of Greek myths and of the non-importabilicy of Her-
can universities today, especially in recent water-downed
mes. He writes: “In his 'such-ness, he is an hustorical fact which
versions that appeal the way the cosmetics ar che Clinique
r. cannot, by strict and honest historical means, be reduced to
counter appeal because che salesperson wears a white labcoa
something else: neither to a concept, to a ‘power; nor to a
IF chis kind of myrh study—mere sociology—doesnt mean
‘spirit—a gravestone or signpost spirit—not even to an idea
anything ro individuals, ar leas it looks scientific.
that would not contain in a nurshell everything char Hermes’
Whatever the contemporary academic approach to Her-
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION

‘cuch-ness' constitutes." (p. 90) The important phrase here 1s enlighten you or screw you.
‘by strict and honest historical means," because Kerényi him- Listen to how wonderfully incorrect he is here: “He is mosr
self is not going to work char way. likely the same dark depth of being from which we all origi-
y1
Working more in Hermes' own sleight-of-hand way, Kerén nate. Perhaps for this reason Hermes can so conmvincingly hover
‘world,
is soon saying things like this: “Tf a God is ‘idea’ and before us, lead us on our ways, show us golden treasures in
that con-
he remains nonetheless in connection with the world everyone through the split-second timing which is che spiric
,
tains all such ‘worlds’; he can only be an ‘aspect of the world af finding and thieving—all of this because he creates his real-
idea-
while the world of which he 1s an aspect possesses such ity out of us, or more properly through us, just as one fetches
a
aspects:" (p- 91) Now if you will let Kerényi ger away with water not so much out of a well as through the well from che
up
ctatemenrt like rhar—and 1 hope you will—you will end much deeper regions of the earth.” (p. SI)Wich a sentence as
to
owning the Brookhmn Bridge. He has by no means proven poetic as that you know this is not a contemporary thinker ar
you—or even yer argued—thar “god” means “world” and the Unuversity of Chicago but someone for whom wisdom 1s
unleash
“ vorld” can mean “idea”—bur he wants so badly to stil] a possibility.
ri-
“the Hermes idea” on a 1942 world 50 Nazified (char 15,
che
gidified’) against ir that he jumps over all the Marxisms, all IU.
correct-
structuralisms, all the legalities of European logical Who was Karl Kerényi? According to William McGuires
world
ness and starts right in seeing gods in world ideas and history of the Bollingen Founclation (Bollingen, An Adventure in
cus
ideas in gods. He tries to pull a lictle Hungarian hocus-po Collecting the Fast, Princeton. 1982) he lived out his exile with
for
in the same paragraph about how in Hungarian the word his family in the hills of Ascona, impoverished and unem-
so-
“light” and “world” are the same, but Kerényi is no philo ployed, but modestly sulbsidized (from 1947 until his dearh
pher. Nor am IL, but you dont have to be a professional logician in 1973 ar the age of seventy-six’), as were so many other Eranos
to see he's reaching here, as they say when you claim a point scholars, by the Bollingem Foundarion. McGuire says char af-
you haven't made. Yet only through this kind of wishful philo- ter 1950, Olga Froebe, the Mother of Eranos, did hot invite
have
sophical reasoning—a leap, yes, as Kierkegaard would Kerényi to lecture anymore because she thought he was “too
Her-
called it, a leap of faith—will you get to see the kind of charismaric.” There 1s surely more ro it than char, bur Eranos-
mes Kerényi sees and plays with. And, unless you like locksteps, leccuring was always a touchy business, especially in Olga’s day,
the
you do not want any other kind, not the academic, not and subject to elaborate s\iocial riruals, its protocols scometimes
yi's
laboratory, not even the Greek Tourism Office's. Kerén worthy of the King of Siam.
Hermes is the only one thar is going to rob you or enrich you, Kerényt lectured again in 1963, after Olga had gone on to

10 1
 \
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
che underworld. He published voluminoushy. Ás a Bollingen
Fellow, he published for them alone books on Asklepios,
Prometheus, Dionysos, Eleusis, and Zeus and Hera. Kerényi
also published a book with Jung, called Essays on a Science
of
Mythology. Ensconced in the Jungian aura, he long insisted hat
to
he was following his “own path” (as he wrote in a letter
Thomas Mann). Hermes, god of paths, had nor deserted
him
e
here, only cricked him, as usual, into chinking the pach—lik
the deck chair—was anyones own.
Jung said of Kerényi, “He has now supplied such a wealth
of connections with Greek mythology that the cross-fertiliza-
tion of the two branches of science can no longer be doubred.’
The garden of psychology-mythology hybrids looked so prom-
pruning
ising then, and Jung could have had no idea of the harsh
of
chat was to come by the end of the century. By “science,'
course, Jung meant Geistes-wissenchaft, not Natur-wissenschafrt.
y.
He meant “scholarhy studies” in the humanities, like histor
these
The laboratory was the last place he would have set out
plants to grow.
If you look back at where mythwas ol as og yt in the
a subjec
fGirst half of this century, before Kerényi and Jung hooked up,
before Eranos became the fountainhead it was, and before
ss
Bollingen started curning out one after another in an endle
golden series of books on myth, art, spirit, soul and psychol-
ogy, the landscape was as bleak as a commissar’'s lunch
pail.
In English you had only the residue of the nacure-obsessed
Victorians, books that developed a theme here or there from
Frazier or Harrison. It is almost a joke to recall char Jessie
a
Weston's From Rial to Romanc, thanks to T. S. Eliot, had
12
1
PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION
vogue in English Departmenrs right through che 1950s, (Didnt
anybody ever actually read it?) And even after that, a bigger
joke: Roberr Graves, desperate for bucks, had hastily puc ro-
gether two volumes of Greek Myrks for the unsuspecting reader
who did not realize that Graves made up some of the myrhs
himself and faked much of the rest, including the references.
(Anybody who stull even cares abour thus colossal put-on should
read Jay Macphersons review in Phoenix 12 [1958]). On the
other hand, whar could have been more of a Hermes thing to
do than that? Surely Graves, wearing thac wide-brimmed Her-
mes-hat of his as he dined off the royalties in the cheap ravernas
of Mallorca, had che lasr laugh.)
In German, things were better, chanks basically co
Nietszches monumental deepening of the subject from the
level where it was generally left by I19th-cencury hammerings
like Max Müller's Chips from a German Wórshop, and by classicists
bent on doing pure Alterumswissenschaft and nothing else. Nor
untilW. E. Orto, however, did the Nietszchean enlightenment
manage co cut through the fanatical German classicisr pen-
chant for scholarly overkull. (Kerényi became a student of Otros
in 1929, and hen became a lecturer in the History of Ancient
Religions and professor of Classical Phulology ar the Univer-
sity of Budapesr.) Ottos book, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual
Significance of Greek Religion, is a forerunner of myrth studies with
a soulful outlook.
H. }. Rose, whose widely-used 1928 myth handbook barely
masks its authors rationalist frenzy—logical-positivism was
the vogue then—and which masks not ar all his loathing of
psychology, denounced Otros book ar the time as “windy

HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
rhetoric.” Rose is the professor who argued chat Homer's Tro-
jan Horse was “quite concetwably a confused ceminiscence of
some Oriental siege-engine.” Rose is 50 rypical of British clas-
sícists (before E. R, Dodds woke them up) thar—I cant
resist—his notorious paragraph (in 4 Handbook of Greek Mythol-
osy) must be quoted here. Compare Kerényis soul reading of
Greek myrh ro this hugh tea declaration from Professor Rose:
The Grecks at their best were sane, high-spirited, clear-
headed, beauty-loving optimists, and not in the least other-
worldiy. Hence their legends are almost without exceptions
free from the cloudiness, the wild grotesques, and che
horrible feacures which beser the popular tradicions of less
gifred and happy peoples. Even their monsters are not very
ugly or uncouth, nor their ghosts and demons paralyzingly
dreadful. Their heroes, as a rule, may sorrow, but are nor
broken-hearted; on occasion they are struck down by adverse
fate, bur nor weakly overwhelmed; they meer with
extraordinary adventures, bur there is a certain tone ot
reasonableness running through rheir most improbable
exploits. As for rhe gods and other supernatural characters,
they are glorified men and women, who remain exrremely
human, and on the whole neither irrational nor grosslhy unfair
in their dealings. [p- 14]
This is the flavor of myrhical thought when the writer is
himself so anti-psychological (even, one could say, soulless) char
he proceeds as if the Greeks, too, had nothing to do with
psyche. Yer amazingly enough, it was H. J. Rose who trans-
lared into English one of Kerényis most important books (The
him in the preface, Kerény1
Heroes of the Greks, 1959). In thanking
| pays tribute to a “republic of learned men” that could permit
| uu
PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION
such generosity of effort when the translator himself is so clearly
opposed to the authors ideas. Perhaps che Hermes in Kerényi
was at work here, too, making inroads and bridging impasses
where the classícist mind in opposition was rigidly ser.
The incident 1s interesting only in that Roses own ratio-
nalist sentiment seems to be resurfacing in many books on
classical myth today, given the still Marxist premuse of all struc-
ruralist and post-structuralist approaches to the subjecr. Thar
premuse so hares the romanticism of soul that Nietzsche launched
myrh studies into, and which Jung (with his own disclaimers)
developed as a psychology, and which Kerényi then put in place
for the first time as a Jungian reading of classical myrth, thar its
exponents are now out for blood, Joseph Campbell's and per-
haps even yours, dear reader, for indulging yourself with a
psychological book thar subritles irself “Guide of Souls.”
Nonetheless, the soul of mythology and che mythology of
soul continues to be written, ancl Kerényis influence (and Jung’,
and Nierzsches) is stronger chan ever. See, for example, just
on the subjecr of Hermes alone, the writings of Rafael Lopez-
Pedraza, Wolfgang Fauth, William G. Dory, or Del McNeely.
But no one today carries on this tradition more magistert-
ally than James Hillman. If his carly books, like Re-Vsioning
Prychology (1975), were dipped in the heavy dark ink of Saturn,
others, like Me’'ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the Worlds
Getting Worse (1992), show the pranky winged foorprints of
Hermes, as Hillman and Michael Ventura shoot one-liners
and barbed ideas back and forth ar each other in an effort to
move psychology off its self-centeredess (what Hillman calls
“Me oh My”) and out into the soul of the world irself.
15
 PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
ing next to nothing of the content but strongly impressed by
If you ask Hillman chese days for come memory of Kerényi,
the enthusiasm, che hermetic body language of this lean, sil-
whom he knew personalh, you ger back a convoluted and twist-
ver-haired, nasal-toned, excited passionate finger-pointing,
ing document thar does to biography what Hermes himself
finger-wagging revealer of mysteries, for that was his style lcad-
did in the “Homeric Hymn to Hermes” when, after stealing
ing up to points through labyrinthine senrences and then
the catrle of Apollo, he covered his own tracks by putting his
exploding them onto the audience (small as it was) with inde-
shoes on backwards. ] quote the document in full here, dear
cipherable chalk marks representing Greek words on the
reader, not exactly as Hillman wants you to hear it, for he
blackboard. He not only spoke through the nose, bur by means
wants you to think I wrote it. In writing it, he has tried co
of the nose, drawing his forefinger ro his nose and as if closing
imitate my own jumpy style with all irs manic dashes and lasr-
a nostril (maybe a Kundalini trick of his own) and then deliv-
minute parencheses and other faults. 1 am being had here (the
ering the point from the point of his nose, finger shot forward
price one pays for scholarship!), though you (ar least I hope)
into the room.
would nor have been fooled. We must be grateful nonetheless
Hillman says he arranged chree trips to Greece for Kerényi
thar Hermes has helped Hillman into writing this ar all, if
for the Instirute where a small group of aficionados of this
that is the only way thac our greatest living soul doctor, con-
man, aficionados (feminine’) being the more accurate term, as
genirally opposed to aurobiography, will communicate wich
he dashed, and truly walked ar an incredible pace through ru-
his own legendary past. Here is the document you are sup-
ins, museums, desolare sites, up hills (winged heels, winged
posed to think I wrote:
thoughts) over rocks and chorndried brush-covered digs to
James Hillman slipped me some more “info” abour Her-
show the scudenrs who usually were nor the actual Institute
metic Kerényi: he lecrured and examined regularly in the fifties
studenrs bur followers of his way of opening che Greek world—
and sixties ac the Jung Instirute in Zürich; he certainly con-
including Malta and Sicily. He was che Hermes che parhfinder,
flicted chere with others of che faculry—holding our strongly
and che phallic charming allure was there too. Maybe char is
for the Greek view of religions and myth against the unavoid-
whar Olga Froebe meant with the term “too charismartic."
able Christian influences; he wrote regularly for the Neue Zúrcher
Kerényi did not fir in. Money was a part of ir. Genius, of
Zeitung, reviews, articles (many collected in hus Collected Works,
course, too. And being Hungarian and Pagan. When budpgers
which run through some seven volumes); Hillman while he
were discussed ac the Curatorium meetings there was always
was a scudent attended his lectures as did Hillmans wife on
always a deficit and Kerényi always was paid more than anyone
occasion during dimlir bare-roomed evenings at the Univer-
else and fought for his money—-the Greek trips were partly 50
sicy, Hillman's spotty German marching with Kerényi’s
he could have more employment and more income. But he was
Hungarianly complicared German to result in Hillman grasp-

17
16
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
recognized by the Curatorium for his gifts and special schol-
arlhy value—and besides, Jolande Jacobi who had a will of iron
and a voice to match, was Hungarian herself. So che money
angle also “belongs” to Hermes.
He tended to fight or quarrel or annoy or break with so
many people, including Porumann of Eranos, no love lost be-
tween him and von Franz either.
Hillman also remembers Paul Radin saying to him (chey
both collaborated on theTrickster book with Jung) har Kerény1
always had literary ambitions (or was 1 pretensions} and so
expanded his part of that text overh. He was a “man of ler-
ters.
Cerrainly his correspondence with Thomas Mann—who
lived the last of his life in Zürich (Hillman says he was a vis-
ible presence, for instance at a symphony concert in the
fifries)—brought our this literary síde, as also for instance
you find ir in the papers on classical literary writers’ contribu-
tions co the Oedipus story (Oedipus Variations).
Besides learning, besides intelligence, che man had humor.
He certainly did nor cover up the Hermertic aspect of phalli-
cism and sexuality. For instance it was Kerényi who taught
Hillman that scholarly cover-up uses the words “fertility-culr”
and “fertiliry” for plain old genital sexuality, and che myster-
ies on which he lectured (Eleusinian and Kabirean, etc.) were
loaded with one of Hermes’ main artractions: sex.
Kerényi was also one of the first who opened and even
approved the idea that che Greeks took drugs, or toxic sub-
stances ar the mystery festivals— this was part of a period when
LSD was being discovered in Basel and promoted populacly
18
PREFACE TO THE 1995 EDITION
and commercially and “scientifically.”
But thus dashing man with his wide-brimmed black hat
and long raincoat and battered pouchy briefcase crammed with
stuff he carried on and off che Zürich train spstem was scill
the scholar. One of his methods was not to stand upon the
texts alone, bur to go to the sítes, to feel the invisibles in the
place, to look carefully at images. He was a reader of images,
and not mere philology. For instance, once Hillman remem-
bers his saying that the way to grasp Dionysos was to lie down
in a vineyard under the staked vines in hottest summer and see
the shunmering heat glowing off the ripening bunches of swell-
ing grapes.
In his srudy in a village near Ascona where he worked in-
tently on the to-be-published editions of his collected works,
Hillman (who rook a few paid private lessons in Mythology
from Kerényi whule working on his own Eranos lectures in the
sixties) (for Kerérnyi did cutoring, finding analysts nor the only
ones who should be paid for private hours) saw the myriad
Little slips of corrections and revisions he had pasred into the
margins of his printed works as preparation for the revised
standard edition. Meticulous. After all, Hermes also rules the
sixth astrological house and the sign of Virgo, the mosr me-
ticulous of all zodiacal signs.
As for his death. He was in hospital in Zürich and seemed
to be “out of his head” either because of a fall from his bed, or
prior to a fall his agitation leading to che fall. Hillman said
19
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS PREFACETO THE 1995 EDITION

and buy the Brooklyn Bridge from this man. Be had. Be incor-
rect. Be foolish.
You pay with your soul for this kind of reading.
that scomehow the image of this wild old man fits the pattern
And Hermes does not take plastic.
of his life. He could nor really fir comfortably in che bed of
Zürich—his feer srill umpatient, his mind still flying.

III.
“Guide of Souls" is the usual translation given to the Her-
mes-epithet “psychopompos," and it refers to his role as che
God who leads souls into the underworld when they die. But
“pompos" (srill present in every French funeral stores “Pompes
et Funebres” description of itself) is more than guide, and even
more chan guide to the underworld. Ïc means to lead, but Hermes as
leader is not quite right either. le means something more like
co lead on, Hermes is che god who “leads you on.” Perhaps it is
nor the same in Hungarian, but in American English this means
he is deceiving you, taking advantage of your gullibility, “tak-
ing you for a ride.’ That, however, is how Hermes works, and
how he gets your “’soul" to move anywhere, how he gers you to
budge even a hair off whatever rigid position youre in—even
off a Jungian position if that is where all your hair is.
This is no mean trick, especially these days when Greek
Gods are no longer supposed to be anything bur artifacts of
one dead ancient white culture (out of many) and “soul” 1s
lambasted as a meaninglessly vague buzzword used by hope-
lessly imprecise New Agers with dubious academic credentials
and not a left-brain ro be found in their heads.
Reader, mon semblable, mon frére, all Il am trying to say in this
overcharged 905 preface chac Kerényi himself would have been
much too civilized and circumspect to write, is this: go ahead

21
 A Prefatory Note...

A few words of introduction to this book may cast come

light on the place of this Hermes monograph in the biographi-
cal 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 Her-
mes not only in regard to this book, bur also in respectto
further implications from evidence accumulared through che
Jasr three decades since this work was firsr conceived. Prob-
ably, for such a preface, he would have seized an idea he was
hinting at in the Introduction to his correspondence with Tho-
mas Mann, when he added the “Hermertic” as a chird

——
configuration to the dualism of Apollonian and Dionysian

e
which Nierzsche introduced into modern cultural history.
Kerényi understood the “Hermetic” as “a specific quality in
the nature, achievements, and life patterns of mankind, as well
as of the corresponding traits of roguery to be found on the
surface of mans world"!
When, in a letter to Kerényi, Thomas Mann wrote: “Her-
mes, my favorite diviruty” (‘page 48 in their correspondence),
he was obvious]hy alluding to his partners predilecrion for the
same God. Kerényis hesitation in elaborating his lecture on
Hermes—held in 1942 ar 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

IQuored from Mythology and Humanism - The Correspondence of Thomas Mann

and Karl Kerényi, trans. Alex. Gelley (Irhaca: Cornell Universiry Press,
1975), 9.
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
Religion, '? may be owing to che facr rhar he felt Hermes to be
so closely involved with his life, for he recognized the continu-
ous presence and effects of this divinity.
His special personal relation to Hermes derived from che
journey as the essential support of his life and his work. In the
preface to his “Unwillkürliche Kunstreisen,'* Kerényi wrote:
“This book is thoroughly commirred to the Hermetic ele-
ment of journey and life, to its surprises. . . But these words
are valid not only for thar book. Finding and losing belong to
the ambivalent sphere of the “God of journey” who so often
pur into Kerényis hand just the right reading marerial for a
voyage. Bur Hermes could also reveal his presence rhrough
contrariness, as we can read in Kerényis diary 1n the notation
for April 1, 1952:
The first time ir was with Anartole
... in che Isthmus Canal.
France's Révolte des Ange in a Greek cranslation, of which,
rwenty-five years ago, Miss Geroulanos, síster of che propriéaire
[the landowner of Trachones, near Athens, 1. M. Geroulanos
who is often mentioned in the diary during the fifties] said
with asronishmenr: “ir is writren exactly as one speaks.' And
now it is precisely Anarole France—in a not-as-good
translacion of Thais—thar was again stolen from me,
disappeared together with the chair [ had reserved. . . Does
Hermes wish ro play the same game with me again? In any
event I am left with the feeling of being stolen from,
somerhing uncanny, a vague sense of change in
circumstances— truly something hermetic.*
2Bollingen Series LXV., Princeton University Press.
3K. Kerényi, Merkauzgabe (München, Langen-Müller, 1967), Bd. 1, 69.
4[bid., 63.
24
A PREFATORY NOTE...
Hermaion, a gift of Hermes, meant for Kerényi that a book
or an article unexpectedly appeared at hand in the right mo-
ment, even independently of traveling. His Hermes lecture on
Ávugust 4, 1942, played an important part in his life, quite
concretely favoring a crucial journey: the appreciacion of this
lecture in the Swiss press facilirared permission to leave Hun-
gary 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 síite where, according to his intu-
ition, Hermes used to be worshipped, even though, as a classical
scholar, he was led co Delphi for the sake of ies chief diviruries,
Apollo and Dionysos. Exactly there is the point—geographi-
calhy as well as metaphoricall—-where personal life leads into
work, in this case to Hermes Psychopompos.
Kerény1 expressed it in a meditation about the “Angels” of
Rilke: the poer had experienced the "Angels," according to
Kerényi, as a spiritual place without the usual boundaries which
separate importance from unumportance. “Such a place[Kerényis
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. .. "5
A direct account of the genesis of the present work is to be
found in a letter dared November I 1, 1942, to Frau Hermann
Hesse:
The world of Hermes has been holding me captive ever
S Hérkawgade
Bd. ITL., 198. (italics
- M. K.).
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

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 che summer of 1943 the Hermes Lecture was published

in che Eranos-Jabrbuch IX. A secona edition, from which rhis
translation was made, appeared as a monograph in 1944 as
Number One of the new series “Albae Vigiliae,'’ “because I
felt compelled to publish ir for reasons related to my situation
after breaking ‘official’ connections with Hungary.’” Then be-
gan che difficult existence of the free, private scholar, although
inrerwoven and protected by Hermes. Part One
Kerényi died on April 14, 1973, exactly on the day when
The Hermes of Classical Tradition
chirry years of exile were complered. 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
“iniriated into the Mysteries of Hermes”; tetelesmenoi Hermei,
It was nor possible for Karl Kerényi to place his favorite
divinity into the series of archerypal monographs on the Gods,
but one is grareful to those who have helped the figure of “the
speech-gifted mediaror and psychogogue” to become, in the
fresh vestments of che English language, “for all to whom life
is an adventure—whether an adventure of love or of spirit—.
. . the common guide.”

Magda Kerényi
Ascona, January 19, 1976.
Karl Kerényi (München, Langen-
6Bricfwechsel aus der Nahe: Hermann Hess/ e
Müller, 1972), 120.
7Rhein-Verlag, Zürich.
BLetter to Thomas Mann, Dec. 21, 1944, op. cit. cup. 106.

26
 The “Hermes Idea”

The question thar we are seeking to answer, most simply

pur, is thus: What appeared to the Greeks as Hermes? We are
nor asking this question in order to elicit the simplesr answer,
namely, “a God.” To most people this would say nothing, or,
at besr, comethung highly questionable. By formulating the ques-
tion 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-his-
torical one, but at the same time it does not remain a purely
historical one either. One must recognize the historical fact
thar for the Greeks their God Hermes 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 sínce the time of
Homer, he possessed a distincthy delineated personality. As a

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
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. Ir is our task as historians to
represent this Hermes in his irreducible, highly personal total-
1ry.
Our inquiry passes beyond historical questions, however, if
we seek to rediscover the reality borne by the Greek name Her-
mes in the realm of timeless reality thar is nor conditioned by
history. The superficial appearances of the Gods' epiphanies
are conditioned by time and place, of course. Bur 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 whar we are looking for. To find
this we must obviously rely on the results of hisrorical research,
bur also beyond that on a scientific undersranding 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 nor be occupying our-
selves for the moment wich this question, although one musr
not forger it altogether. Ir 18 necessary to ask this question all
the more earnestly if one believes he has found the “original”
Hermes in something gross and inferior. lt 15 precisely this
omission that makes most of the hypotheses about origins no
more than mere unscientific conjectures. We should, however,
not presume thar the “something” which constitutes a God’s
reality musr necessarily correspond co something sublime, and
which according to our concepts—based precisely on the most
recent conceptions of the Greek Gods—1s inherent in the Hel-
PART 1: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
lenic God-idea. Otherwise we will fall into the error of Walter
E Orcto,° char 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 ar the same time separates him from
primitive aspecrts of his configuration—aspecrs thar the Greeks
chemselves never found incompatible with his Godhood.
“Wharever may have been choughr of Hermes in primitive
times," we read at the conclusion of Orro's superb portrait of
Hermes, “he must once have struck the eye as a brilliant flash
our of he depths, hat ir saw a world in the God, and the God
in the whole world. This 1s che origin of the figure of Hermes,
which Homer recognized and which later generarions held fast
to.’ A Hermes-world is supposed to have been revealed to the
Greeks— perhaps during thar lofty period whose highest and
possibly also las: 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 urufied torality in its
own night, "the realm whose divine image is Hermes.” T'hus
realm 1s characrerized and held together by a specific logic: Ie
15 a world 1n 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 ir, but they appear in a different
light than 1n the realms of the other Gods. Whar occurs in 1
comes as though from heaven and entails no obligations; what
1s done in 1r 15 a virtuoso performance, where enjoymenrt 1s
without responsibility. Whoever wants this world of winning
Walter E. Otto, The Homrieric Gods, New York (Pantheon, 1954), rrans-
lared by Moses Hadas. (The rranslarions of quotations from rhe Ger-
man original of this work are, unless otherwise indicated, my own. The
Hadas translation has, however, been consulred. -Tr.)
 PART E THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

Hermes musr also accept losing; of the previous quotations. And yet we must ask: Does this
gains and the favor of its God
other.’ Hermes is therefore ‘che rigid adherence to an idea thac is still plausible co us, to a way
the one is never without the
which under various conditions of being in the world that we can still experience, and by which
spirit of a form of ¿xistence
both gain and loss, both shows we would, like the Greeks, adjudge diwinuty, nor exclude from
always reappears and knows
the ourset an important part of the Hermes image and of the
kindness and takes pleasure in misfortune. Though much of
Hermes-worlkd? Would this not exclude precisely somethung
this must appear questionable from a moral point of view, it is
“Greek” char husrorically and sigruficantly belongs to Hermes?
nevertheless a form of being which with is questionable as-
Granted, this would be a meaning thar must disclose irself to
pects belongs to the basic images of living reality and therefore,
us as something both new and age-old, and also as scomething
¡in the Greek view, demands reverence, if not for all of its vart-
reaching beyond our historical vision, and perhaps even be-
ous expressions still for the torality of its meaning and being.”
yond our phulosophucal convictions. For if we are to have success
Should once such a “basic image of living reality” as this
in reviving the God's image in its fullness, we must be prepared
Hermes-world be elucidated, ir would not merely be held ro-
not only for what is immediately intelligible, but also for what
gerher and characterized by its specific logic, it would also
is strangely uncanny. Indeed, the images of the Greek Gods can
become lucid and convincing even to us. On the other hand,
be so resistant to conceptualization and logic that one can be
this capacity for illumination creates a disrance from the more
tempred in the course of an investigation to quote the famous
primutive and less intelligible image of Hermes which 1s shown
lines char were spoken to describe human beings:
to us ín most of the Priapic stacues, in the irhyphallic stones
(the “Herms”), not to mention the Titanic and ghostly as- Lam not a cleverly worked-out book,
pects of this Deity. Otherwise one can, in fact, Speak of Hermes I am a God with his self-contradiction ...1°
as a “way of being” who 15 at the same time an ‘idea,’ and on 10These cwo lines, in which the word “God” has been exchanged for
these grounds proclaum deep truths about the God. Hzs way Man, ' are from Conrad Ferdinand Meyers “Hurtens letzre Tage.”
is—ro 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 che meaning of his image. Whatever
he may do or produce reveals the same idea, and chart is Her-
mes.
The correctness of these words is as convincing as was chat

32
 The Hermes of the Iiad

Let us first become familiar with what can be learned abour

Hermes from the Homeric poems. It would certainly be a
rash conclusion to maintain that those features of the Hermes
imape which are nor mentioned in the lliad or in the Odyssey or
in the Homeric Hymns were unknown to the aurhor of thar par-
ticular work. For every missing feature thar makes an appearance
in one of the other sources and is sufficiently ancient, we musr
ask whar the reason for this silence might have been. Thar we
learn more about Hermes in the Odyssey than in the liad, and
more in the Hymn than in the Odyssey, has a very obvious rea-
son: the heroic world of the Hiad is much less the world of
Hermes than is that of the journey epic, the Odyssey, and Hus
world becomes more apparenrt still in the Hymn, nor because
the Hymn originates larer than the wo great epics, bur be-
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
heroic existence. IT har Hermes is not che guide of souls in the
cause it has the God himself for us hero.
Tiaddoes not necessarily mean that he is not the guide of souls
The world of the Tiadis nor the world of Hermes. If there
in general, bur only perhaps char in the world of Hermes, death
is one figure who dominates this world and gives it a character-
icself has a different appearance. What we do discover in the
istic stamp, it is Achilles, just as Odysseus dominates and
Tliad about the world and actwity of Hermes refers to alterna-
characterizes the world of the Odyssey. The world of the Lliad
tives of life, to the dissolution of fatal opposites, to clandestine
receives its essential tone from the finaliry of the fate char befalls
violations of boundaries and laws. Death can be viewed from
¡ts short-lived hero. The view thar life is once-and-for-all and
lifes point of view as its destined conclusion and necessary
inwardly desrined corresponds to the view char death is equally
dissolution through its opposite, Life's most obvious alterna-
final and obedient to the same law—-an unalterable, conclusive
tive course—1ts overflowing in generation and productivity, in
end. The hero's daimon of fate, which comes into being with
fruicfulness and multiplicacion-—appears, however, as some-
him at his birth—his own personal Ker’'—ripens into a daimon
tHung incalculable, as purest accident. At just this point in the
of death, and the soul, which is the suffering aspect of the
Iiad we meer Hermes.
same daimon, complains loudly against 1ts fate, for 1t leaves be-
It 1s Hermes whom his beloved Phorbas thanks for a wealth
hind manhood and youth for a bloodless and shadowy existence
of herds (Book XIV, 490). Hermes, too, was che lover of
in death. No escape from this is possible. Life 1s individual: it
Polymele, daughter of Phylas, whom he visited secretly in her
actualizes itself according to the inherent laws which govern
home and who bore him a son, Eudoros (Book XIV, I180fE).
the parricular hero in question, and it ends in his own particu-
With such references the warm air of procreation and enrich-
tar death. The hero is nor tricked or seduced by an unfamiliar
ing fruitfulness wafts into the armosphere of the Lliad, which is
death-daimon. The power char lures him to his death is origi-
otherwise so heavy with dire fatefulness. (The names Phorbas,
nally in him—in Patrodlos, in Achilles, in Hector, in all who
Polymele and Eudoros even suggesr wealth of herds and freely-
through their heroic courage fall co it. Nor once in the lliad
given abundance.) Hermes 1s deliberately kept at a distance
does Hermes appear to lead a soul away or to assume the role
from every heroic happening. Nor char he is rotally devoid of
of escorr.
every trace of fatality. The language of the epic often names
The reason is obvious: Hermes’ sphere of activity lies our-
him Argeiphontes instead of Hermes. It is a name meant to
side of chis world in which death forms the adamantine
recall a Titanic fear: slaying che many-eyed Argos with a sickle-
background as the concluding and excluding polar opposite of
sword, the same sword Kronos used to maim the sky God and
life, which the hero chooses at the same time as he chooses his
Perseus used to sever the head of the Medusa.'?
The constant
11CF. Kerényi, Der grosse Daimon des Symposion, Albac Vigilias XIII,
(Amsterdam, 1942), 32f; in "“Humanistische Seelenforschung"” Wéerte in 1I2CÉ. Jung-Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, Bollingen Series XXI,
Einzelauzgaben, vol. 1, (Munich, 1966), 306f,. (Princeton: Princeton UB I971), 3rd ed. (paperback), 127.

36
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
epither for Argerphonres, diaktoros, (“guide”), is related to words
char refer to the dead ones and to the wealth chat falls co chem.'*
His characterization as akaketa (‘‘berugnant,' “gracious”) wic-
nesses to a gentle dearh-God.The best translation of this epither
is “che painless one.’ Not even in the bartle of che Gods, lack-
ing in tragedy as it is, does Hermes take part.'* A Goddess,
sigruficantly nor a God, is assigned to be his opponent— Leto,
the Morther-Goddess who closely resembles her daughter,
Artemis. Bur Hermes is too clever to engage 1n combat with
her
sínce it is a hard thing
to come to blows with the brides of Zeus
who gathers che clouds. No,
sooner you may freely speak among the
immortal gods, and claim char you were
stronger than 1, and bear me.
(Book XXI, 498-501)
Wickh chese words he evades Leto. Fame has absolutely no
part in his world. Hermes’ skill in the Iliad is stricthy char of
he most unheroic evasionThe. office of messenger of the Gods,
which he orherwise occupies, he does not hold in the Tliad; any
allusion co this is avoided.!'* He has his place among the other
13C{. Hesych. s,u kiéra; Solmsen, Indog. Forsch 3. 96f; C.v. Ostergaard,
Hermes 38, 333; H. Günterr, Kalypro, Halle, 1919, 162f.
14Cf. Kerényi The Religion of the Greeks and Romans (hercinafter Greeks &
Romans), rrans. C. Holme, (London: Thames & Hudson), 1962, 199;
3rd ed. Greenwood Rpr, 1973. Originally cicled Die antike Religion,
(Amsrerdam/ Leipzig: Pantheon, 1941).
15This is especially sriking in Book 11, 104, where the text does not read,
“Zeus sent the scepter through Hermes ro Pelops," bur rather that Zeus
gave it to Hermes, Hermes to Pelops, Pelops ro Atreus, etc.
38
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
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
VW, 390), and he would also have stolen che corpse of Hector
had only the Gods been in agreement (Book XXIV, 24fÉ.).
Zeus prefers what he considers a better expedient, though he
still works through Hermes.The entire final bitrersweer book,
in which the heroic world of the Ziad suddenly displays its
unpredictable tenderness, srands under the sign of Hermes.
Zeus sends him to the aged Priam who is jusr then on the way
to retrieve from Achulles the body of his son. He is sent not as
a messenger—the messenger of Zeus in the lliadis Iris—but as
a guide (‘pompos). For ir is Hermes who likes to associare with a
person (Hermes, for to you beyond all other gods it is dearesr
to be mans companion ...’ Book XXIV, 334-35), to grant a
request, and to make a person imvisible. This is what he does
here, first ingrariating hiumself with the old man in the form of
a youth and then leading him in the ways of the chief. Wich his
help ir 15 posstble to steal che corpse away from the unrelenting
demon of revenge that possesses Achulles and the entire Greek
camp. Áchilles obeys Zeus and gives in, bur it is left co Hermes
to open the way for escape, and he does so by putting the
guards to sleep.
This poucthfully handsome, friendly, and chievish guide, who
possesses magical golden shoes wthuch transport hum 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 actributes of a seductive and lethal guide of souls, the
gentle psychopomp of the larer monuments? The reason the
poet does not allow him to appear in this role is, as we have
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS

seen, because it would nor conform to the world of the Liad.

The world of the Odyssey confirms this opinion, and 1t also
allows thus 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:

Meanwthule che suitors' ghosts were called away

by Hermes of Kyllene, bearing che golden wand
with which he charms the eyes of men or wakens
whom he wills.

He waved them on, all squeaking

as bars will in a caverrnis underworld,
all flirting, flicring criss-cross in the dark
if one falls and che rock-hung chain is broken.
So with faint cries the shades crailed afrer
Hermes, pure Deliverer.

He led them down dank ways, over gray

Ocean rides, the Snowy Rock past shores

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
of Dream and narrows of the sunset,
in swift flight to where che Dead inhabir
wastes of asphodel at the world's end.
The death of the suitors was nor a sad-chough-harmonious
conclusion to an heroic existence; their gluttonous lives were
extinguished with unexpected suddenness by the avenging arm
of the rerurning husband. Almost like animals they were slaugh-
rered, cheir lives left unfinished (as measured against the standard
of the hero) by this sudden death, cut down just as they were in
che midst of their youth. They fell like dull anumals, mere car-
casses, 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, Hermes shows himself as the
summoner of souls before burial, not for the purpose of force-
fully calling che souls back, but to beckon them away gently to
the distant meadows on the other síde. The staff which he
holds in his hand discloses its connection to a kind of “lulling
to sleep” (‘ornmata thelgein) and “re-awakening” that 1s different
from what occurs in the last book of the Iliad where these words
appear in their original meaning. There 1t 1s really only a mat-
ter of sleeping and awakening; here the text speaks of death,
but of death not as an unambiguous and final event. Re-awak-
ening in this context also contains a double meaning: it can
refer ro an escape from death irself.
The staff that has these qualities is beautiful and golden. It
establishes a distance berween the God and the dark swarm of
bat-souls.To be sure, this staff can also appear as horribly up-
42
PART E THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
setting 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 nor to the formless shade
The sable company he troops below
In idie ears against their doom appeal.
(Odes, Book I, XXIV)
Bur when the poer celebrates the God, he emphasizes the
golden color of the “gnshy wand”:
Thou layest unsported sauls to rest;
Thy golden rod pale spectres know;
Blest power! by all thy brethren blest,
Above, below.
(Odes, Book 1, 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 cangible sunlighc belongs exclusively to
the God. Homer depicts the guide of souls in his divine sub-
stantialiry, as distinguished from the insubsrantial swarms thar
plunge into the other world. Gentle, his golden staff gleam-
ing, Hermes appears even among the musty paths of ghosts.
Here, too, he is named akakaa, “painless,' since he does no
harm even to these unforrunate souls. On the contrary, his
presence softens the effects of Odysseus' fearful revenge, just
as the ferocity of Achilles was calmed in the last book of the
Tiad, which, as we saw, stands under the influence of Hermes.
The grear difference in this case is char he reveals his pentle,
golden aspect in a world which is not restricted to only “this
43
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
side” but racher in a world whose hero and symbol is Odysseus.
The Odyssey is nora poem of heroic life thar is set off starkly
it
against a background of once-and-for-all, irrevocable death;
is rather the poem of a kind of life char 15 permeated with
death, in which death is continuously and incessantly presenr.
The two poles, life and death, fuse here. The world of che
Odyssey is an existence in flux that 15 continuously in contact
with death, as warp with woof, Ïr consists as much of irs back-
and
ground and underground, of the yawning abysses benearh
over
behind, as it does of itself. Odysseus continuously moves
y pears ro be always in flight. In reality, he makes humself vanush
and through these. Bur not only 15 his existence in the Odysse
characterized by this movement; Telemachos, too, hovers be-
t around him becomes to hum ghostly and improbable, and even
cween life and death, as do, also, the suitors. Particularly caugh
in this suspension is the one who waits, Penelope, Burt in the
most proper and strictest sense, the one who 1s suspended over
the gulfs and chasms of existence is Odysseus.'*
We previously called the Odyssey a journey epic, and we must
as
now imagine the often experienced reality of “journeying”
“trav-
somerhing special, in contradistrinction to “roaming” or
(even
eling.’ Odysseus 1$ not a “craveler”” He is a “journeyer’”
¡E chis is sometimes malgré lui, “in spite of himself ”), not sim-
ply because of his moving from place to place, but because of
n, ad-
his existential sítuation. The traveler, despite his motio
wly
heres to a solid base, albeir one that is not narro
another
circumscribed. With each step, he takes possession of
piece of the earth. This raking possession is, of course, only
he
psychological. In chac with each extension of che horizon
ex-
also expands himself, his clam of possessíion on the carth
16Cf. Kerényi, Apollon, (Vienna/ Leipzig. 1937), [28ff, enl. ed. Dussel
dorf,
1953, 123ff.
44
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
pands continuously as well. But he remains always bound to a
solid earth benearh his feer, and he even looks for human fel-
lowshup. At every hearth thar he encounrers he lays claum to a
kind of native citizenship for himself. For the Greeks, the ap-
proaching stranger 1s kar’ exochen (‘an outstanding eminence”’)
and hiketes (‘one who comes to seek protection,’ “a supplianc”
or “fugitive”). His guardian is not Hermes, but Zeus, the God
of the widest horizon and the firmest ground. In contrast, the
situarion of the journeyer 1s defined by movement, fluctuation.
To someone more deeply rooted, even to the traveler, he ap-
(“volatizes himself ’) to everyone, also to himself. Everything
his own reality appears to hum as ghostlike. He 1s completely
absorbed by movemenr, but never by a human communiry that
would tie him down. His companions are the companions of
the journey: not those he wants to lead home, as Odysseus his
comrades, bur those he joins, as it 1s said of Hermes in the Tiad
(Book XXIV, 334-35). With companions of the journey, one
experiences 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 intimarely bound, who want to be
open to each other without reservation or boundary, as two
naked soul»—donït they go on a wedding journey (Hodizritsreise)?
Is thus journey not a “Heimfúrung” (‘taking home” the bride) as
well as an “Entfürung’”’(elopement”), and therefore also “her-
meric?” Journeying 15 the best condition for loving. The gorges

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
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 che sense that there no
chance exists for standing on firm ground, but only for further
floating berween life and death.
The journeyer is at home while underway, at home on the
road itself, the road being understood not as a connection
berween two definite points on the carth's surface, but as a
particular world. Ir is che ancient world of the path, also of the
“wet parhs" (che byera keleutha) of the sea, which are above all,
che genuine roads of the earth. For, unlike the Roman tugh-
ways which cut unmercifully straight through the countryside,
they run snakelike, shaped like irrationally waved lines, con-
forming to the contours of the land, winding, yet leading
everywhere. Being open to everywhere is part of their nature.
Nevertheless, they form a world in its own right, a middle-
domain, where a person in char volatized condition has access
co everything. He who moves about familiarly in this world-
——
of-the-road has Hermes for hus God, for it is here that the
most salient aspect of Hermes’ world is portrayed. Hermes 1s
o_o
constantly underway: he is enodios (‘by the road”) and hodios
(‘belonging to a journey’), and one encounrters him on every
path. He is constantly in motion; even as he siïts, 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, ar least since the
cime of the Odyssey, he is also called angelos (“messenger”), the
messenger of the Gods.
17Preller-Robert, Griechicche Mythologie 1, (Berlin, 1894), 421.
46
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
We would have to devote special attention to the office of
the divine messenger if we wanted to exhaust ies whole mean-
ing. As just an intimation of thus we will mention char Hecare,
too, as well as Hermes, may transporrt souls (both being guard-
1ans of the underworld), and she is also an angelos, Iris, too, has
a connection to this Goddess, which 1s 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. “Tid-
ings” (“Angelia”’)—a daughter of Hermes according to
Pindar—descends from the Gods more frequently when the
boundaries between life and death, time and eternity, carch
and Olympus are open. And they open casiy when they are as
volatized as they are in the world of the Odyssey, We find char
the Gods sent Hermes to Aigisthos with a warning, chough it
was in vaín (Book I, 38). And we see hum hurrying to Calypso
with che command of Zeus:
No words were lost on Hermes the Wayfinder, who bent to
tie his beautiful sandals on,
ambros1al, 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 Pierta down, down to sea level,
and veered to skim the swell. A gull patrolling
between che wave crests of the desolate sea
will dip to catch a fish, and douse his wings;
no higher above the whitecaps Hermes flew
47
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

until the distant island lay ahead ... another source, he made invisible everything he touched.'* The
(Book V, 37-49) “art of oath-taking,’ in its primordial mythic dimensions, 15
described for us in the Hymn to Hermes.
Jusr as it needs no further explanation here thar Hermes is
the divine messenger, and needs none when he appears in the
lasr book as guide of souls, so it needs none when he appears
in an other characteristic place of the Odyssey, on the island of IB-lesiod, Hragmenis, 1 [2 (Rzach); Servius in Verg., Aenead 11, 79.

Circe, as the wise-to-magic savior of the hero. He meers

Odysseus so naturally there char Odysseus shows no surprise
when Hermes gives him his hand, addresses him, and offers
him the ancidote to the magic potion of Circe (Book, 277).
Just where the armosphere of the Odyssey is most thickhy clouded
with spooky possibilities, there the presence of Hermes is leasr
surprising. And Odysseus himself, who drifts about within
this armosphere, has a wholly personal relation to Hermes.
On his mothers side he descends from Hermes, although not
much is made of this in the Odyssey; more is said of his grand-
father, Autolycos, who was also mentioned in the lliad as he
arch-thuef of the heroic age. Autolycos was a son of Hermes,
who, like his facher, was a master in the art of taking oaths
(Tliad, Book XIX, 395). He honored Hermes especially (19,
397). Odysseus says to the faithful swineherd, Eumaios, thar
all people owe ir to this God (Hermes) if their works are blessed
with ‘grace and fame” (chariskai kudos) (Odyssey, Book XV, 320),
even those who are servants. There can be no doubr char the
gift of cunning belongs to the Hermes-Aurolycos line, only in
Odysseus it no longer possesses the primordial myrhic dimen-
sions that ir had for them. Odysseus is merely “polytropos”
(“‘versatile”), while Autolycos, according to one source, pos-
sessed the capacity to transform himself, and, according to

48 49
 4

The Hermes of the Hymn

The poet of the “Hymn to Hermes” presents primordial

myrchological marerial in a form char could later be integrated
into and become part of the classical tradition. The serenely
scintillacing, waggish irony with which he glorifies che Titanic
event corresponds also to the atticude of his hero. What addi-
tional information we ger here about Hermes does not 5o much
enlarge his portrait to include new aspeces as deepen it to-
wards the Titanic. Since he 1s integrated into the world of
Zeus, Hermes naturally does not belong to the race of Titans.
Yer as we follow him we sense in him the essence of the pre-
Olympian world, even apart from the fact char he appears as a
divine child and har the childhood of the Gods belongs not to
Olympian myrh but to a far more ancient mythology.'? In the
19Cf. my treatment of the Hymn to Hermes in Jung-Kerényi op. cit,
SIFff
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
Enounios Hermes 1s the chthonios. IT he basic meaning revealed here,
Hymn, an Olymp1ian God grows out of the primal chuld, and ‘“‘fast as death,’ suits the messenger Hermes, not only as an
un-
with this development his pre-Olympian hisrory becomes Arcadian or Kylleruan Deity but also as an Olympian. These
whole
cluded in his classical umage.We should really study the two poles—the provincial cult and the Olympian office—de-
poem in detail, but we hope to do an adequate job of under- fine him nor as one who fluctuates, bur as one who 1s coming
standing it by interpreting only key passages. into existence. What sort of coming into existence 1s the birth
Muse, of a God? A Greek poer imagined it:
sing Hermes,
. . . whom Maia mothered,
son of Zeus and Maia,
che nymph with beautiful hair,
caretaker of Cyllene,
awesome, Iying with Zeus
and the sheepland Arcadia,
She kept away from
messenger of the gods,
the wonderful company of the gods,
the helper . . .®
and lived in a shady cave.
Two associations to Hermes, who is being celebrated here, Here che son of Cronus had
the nymph with beautiful hair,
are emphasized straight away. The one is to a Greek province
in the carly hours of evening,
where he was especially honored, Arcadia, and in particularly while sweert sleep held
Kyllene.
to a mountain there which was the location of his cult, the pale arms of Hera,
itself as
Associated to these is the myrth of his birth, which in and where no man
yet and no god could see.
a primal child mythologem antedates the Olympian order,
1s ro the
is easily spliced unto chat order. The other association
For In comparison to the Goddesses who are at home on the
Olympian—Hermes belongs to them as cheir messenger.
incor- bright heights of Ohympus, Hermes’ mother is a mere nymph.
this role he receives the Homeric epithet eriounios, often
with an She is a Goddess who is bound up with the Arcadian land-
rectly translated “che beneficial one:” A comparison
g scape, originally probably a type of primordial mocher-daughter
Arcadian gloss*! reveals a meaning thar could very well belon
case Goddess.?* Her name is sometimes Maia (which as an
also to a death God: “the quick one.” In facr, there 15 one
are appellative is a designation of old women: the grandmochers
¡n which two chthonic Gods who receive human sacrifices
the and wet-nurses), scometimes Maias, char is, “daughter of Maia’
named eriounioi22 and Aristophanes declares outrighr that
Her associations with the audacious Titan Atlas, whom Hesiod
,
20 The Homeric Hymrns, tr. Charles Boer, (Spring Publications, 1970) names as her father, and with che sky as the eldesr of che Pleza-
macher, op. cit.
21GF, Hesych, s.v. aun; Th. Bergk, Philol. 11, 384; Rader
on this passage; C. M. Bowra, } Hell. Stud. 54, 68. 23Cf. Jung-Kerényi, 106.
2Antoninus Liberalis, 25.

53
52

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
des, suggest a Titaness. In the Hymn she receives he epicher
aidoie (‘‘majestic”’), which in Hesiod 1s applied to the primal
Gods of theTitan period, the theon genos aidoion (the respected
race of Gods"). She did not escape from the “sacred congrega-
tion of the Gods” as some translations have ir, but racher she
“shunned” ir (eleuaro) and took up abode in a cave (antron naiousa).
There she and Zeus begar Hermes, Stolen love, bur for that
reason all the more fully enjoyed (misgesketo),** deepest night
(nuktos amolgoï’, sleep as a helper in decewing Hera (as he [Dios
apate] helps deceive Zeus in the Iiad), and above all secrecy
(lethon}—these elements are woven together ro formulare the
firsr phase in the evolution of Hermes. In thus nor only 15 a
“wish” of Zeus fulfilled, as che German translation states, but
chrough this fulfillment his noos (“‘mind” or “insighr’’} achieves
irs end (Dios noos exeteleito’). T he second stage 1n che evolution of
Hermes 1s this:
Burt,
when he mind of great Zeus
was near co completion,
and the tenth moon
was already fixed in the sky,
and he was bringing to light again
all his grear works . . .
This coming into being, this birth, is revelatory: es te phoos
agagen, arisema te erga tetukio (it came to light, and all the works
were revealed”). The revelacion comes by stages. First, the newly
born God himself becomes manifest through the association—
Schol,
24The ancient interpreters already emphasized che stolen love. CE.
¡n Hom. Il XXIV 24; for modern interpretarions, cf. S. Eitrem, Philologus
65, 1906, 249.
54
PART [: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
or, one could say, in the consrellation—of various elements.
This God 15 Hermes, with characteristic Hermetic attributes:
. . « she produced her child,
the very crafry,
the super-subtle
Hermes:
ehief,
cattle-rustler,
carrier of dreams,
secret agent,
prowler,
and soon to show his stuff
with the immorral gods.
’
Let us examine these attributes. “The painless one” 15 miss-
ing; nowhere in the whole Hymn does the epither akaketa appear.
Here Hermes 1s 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
Phatakia—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 che
epiphany of the psycho-pomp, 1s again removed into the dis-
tance of another world. Missing here, too, is any hinr of
Phalakian mildriess; we must think rather of the deceitfulness
of musleading dreams. All the rest of che arrribures tesrify to
this. The first of chese, polytropos (‘wiley”’), is the well-known
epichert for Odysseus. And pyledokos (“gare-warcher”) in the last
line would nor mean “guard of the gate,” bur rarher che dan-
25Cf, Kerényi, Apollon, op. cir, [36ff; Zed ed., 129fff,
55
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
gerous “nocturnal scout” (nuktos opopetera) who takes his unsus-
pecrting victim on the dark streer at the city gate. We are faced
with the skilled highwayman and bandir, as well as the flarter-
ing deceiver.
We are prepared, then, for the second phase of Hermes’
revelacion, “who soon should show forth deeds renowned
among the deathless Gods.” There follow nov as further rev-
elations the deeds which the poer combines with the firsr stage
(rhe birth) intro a temporal sequence of three, and he ties thus
trinity to the number four, which is also temporally conceived:
Born in the morning,
he played the lyre
by afternoon, and
by evening had scolen che carte
of the Archer Apollo—
all on rhe fourth day
of this month
in which che lady Maia
produced him.
The associarion of Hermes to the number four certainly
does nor originate with our poert; it 15 ar leasr 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 nor only ro
Hermes but also co Aphrodite,** who 1s closely connected to
him in other ways as well. The solid association of Hermes
with che number four is further established by the facr thar in
26CF. W. Schmidc, “Geburtstag im Altervum,' Relipionsgesch Versuche und
Morarbeiten VI, 1, Giessen, 1908,
56
PART [: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
Argos the fourth month had the name Hermaios.*” The qua-
ternity was for the ancients one of the most constant
consticuents of the Hermes image; chey further acknowledge
this in che four-cornered form of the Herms. The late author,
Murrtianus Cappella, summarizes che general opinion: numerus
quadratus ipsi Cyllenio deputatur, quod quadratus deus solus habeatur (‘the
quadraric number is reckoned to Cyllenius itself, because ir is
possessed by the quadratic God alone”). Whether the qua-
dratic image or he birthday on the fourth day of the month
came first 1s unimporrant, \We are dealing here with a basic
number, an expression of divine totalicy, which the poer play-
fully links with the trinicy. The number three also is not
unfamuliar to Hermes: he is shown with three heads,?* and his
staff in the Hymn 1s “golden and three-pointed.” In this po-
etic play the birth coincided with the morning, and che pure
harmony of the Iyre at noon 1s nor accidental, For Pindar the
sunbeams themselves are the hammers that play chis divine
instrument, whose tones create order just as does the light of
the sun. We need not take special pains to point our that the
darkest aspect of Hermes appears with the coming of night. In
all of chus che process of revelacion 1s linked in the sunplest and
most natural way with the brightening and darkening face of
the cosmos. Bur 15 the revelation to be seen as prumarily 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
27Preller-Robert, op. cit, 391.
28] ykophr. 680. Harpocr. 5. A four-headed Hermes stood ar the in-
rersection of three roads un Kerameikos, Hesych. 5. tribephalos. Thas shows
thar ir 15 not based on the number of roads.
 PART I[: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITTION
HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
Meeting and finding are revelations of Hermes’ essence.
re-
leap of imagination char creates the world of Hermes, that Thar the poer is fully conscious of this 15 indicared by che
arranges the narural world into the special cosmos of Hermes, words he associartes with che find: murios olbos (‘“endless de-
to this
thac gives che world the face of Hermes? The answer light”). With this he has entered explicith into the sphere of
and
admits of no doubt. The revelacion proceeds by leaps Hermes: “happiness and riches" are, according to line 524,
bounds outward from within irself: products of Hermes’ staff. “Olbos,' which is here even “end-
For after he jumped down from less,"' means fortune, bur, more chan char, it tends toward
the immortal loins of his mother unplying sclid and true happiness. Hermes’ relation to happi-
he couldn't lie srill very long ness and fortune, which is recognized by the whole tradition,
in his sacred cradle, begins now co show its particular feature. According to the
bur leaped right up Tliad he bestows fortune through fruirfulness and thus belongs
to search for the cartle of Apollo, (as was alrcady pointed our) to the wider field of accidental
climbing over the chreshold
happenings. In the Odyssey he, along with the other Gods, is
of this high-roofed cave.
called “giver of excellent gifts” (Book VIT, 335, 325). Only
The text speaks literally of a leap (bog’ anaixas). With this now in the Hymn does the Hermetic gain reveal us finding
begins the rushing advance of Hermes, which moves at once to and thieving features.
a further revelation of his essence: Accidental discovery 1s in itself nor yet quire Hermetic; ir
is merely the stuff of Hermetic activity, which is then shaped
There
to the meaning of the God. In every cosmos the accident re-
he found a turtle
mains fundamental, a residue of the chaortic primordial
and ir brought him
lots of fun: condition,” and this is true also af the Hermetic cosmos. Her-
Hermes vas the first mes has taken control of his cosmos, and chrough him every
to manufacture songs find, which in itself belongs to the Gods and not to man, be-
from the turtle he encountered comes a theft that is put co better use. The Greek word for
outside the door, windfall, bermaion, sigrufies that it belongs to Hermes. This
as it was cating was also the name given to the offerings that were lefr ar che
the splendid grass
roadside Herms. These were windfalls for hungry travelers who
outsíde che door of their home.
stole them from che God in his own spirit, just as he would
It moved along
with an affected step. 29CÉ. Jung-Kerényi, 57.
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS

understanding, the general The son of Zeus,

have done. According to anque
the helper, '
meaning of Hermes proceeded from this pifering ac the ]
CT UC,
Herm Hermes sanctions the act if the accidental find is seized
riadas So aa laughing,
as a theft, whether or not ir falls immediately in hus realm, and said this:
Correspondingly, the robber takes his booty just as Hermes “Whar a great sign,
would have done—-as a find. Should two people set out on an whar a help this is for me!
TI won’ ignore it.
underraking together, they call to one another “Koinos Hermes,”
Hello chere,
which means “a theft done togerher” rather chan “a find made
lietle creature,
togerher-” Better yet, ir means “a find and a theft done to- dancing up and down,
gether:' Fundamentally this 1s the motto of every business companion at festivals,
undertaking. Even the most honest business is directed toward how exciting ir 1s
a no-man's land, a Hermetic intermediate realm that exists to see you. Where did
berween the rigid boundaries of “mine and yours,’ where find- your beautiful covering
ing and thieving are still possible. Mere unscrupulousness, come from? Your shell
is kaleidoscopic,
however, is not of itself Hermeric; with it belongs intelligence
youre a turtle
and the art of living. Should a stupid fellow have good luck, he
who lives in the mountains.
owes it to the widless Hercules, who was especially honored as But I'm going to pick you up
a God of luck in Italy. Such a person becomes dives amico Hercule and take you home with me.
. precious little mythologem to
(“rich friend of Hercules”)The You'll be a big help to me,
which Horace alludes (Sar. II, 6, TOFÉ) 1s rold by his inter- and ] won't slight you,
preter Porphyrio. Mercurius once ler Hercules talk him into but you have to help me first.
You'll find it much better
enriching a srupid man. Mercurmus showed him a rreasure which
at our house— outside here
he could use to buy the piece of land he was working. He did
things are bad.
so, but then proved himself unworthy of the Hermeric wind-
Alive, of course,
fall by continuing to work the same piece of land! youre good medicine
We come now to the place in the Hymn where an acciden- againsr the pains
tal discovery—a mpyrchological primal animal, the of black magic.
tortoise?!!—becomes an Hermetic work of art: Burt dead, dead
you'll make great music!”
30Suidas, Photius, Etym. Magn. s.v. bermaion.
31CÉ. Jung-Kerényi, 57ff. The tortoise also has a connection to Aphrodne:
Phidias places the Goddess arop this animal, cf, Plutarch, Conjug. praec.
VIL 421.

60

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
He said all this,
then, picking up
this lovable toy
with both hands
he returned to his house,
carrying it with him.
When he got back
he took a grey, stecl knife
and stabbed out the life
of the turtle that lived
in the mountains,
Here it is nor “the luck-bringing son of Zeus” who laughs,
speaks, and acts, bur rather the “swift as death son of Zeus”
(Dios eriounios huios). The irony of his words springs from his
divinitry and is as merciless as Being itself. le 15 based on “see-
ing through.” Secing through is divine. Greek tragedy offers
its spectators a divine standpoint in that it allows them to
participate in such a penetrating vision. The spectator sees in
che king che guilty fugitive while he is still ruling and govern-
ing. In che same way Hermes “sees through” the tortoise. There
is no doubt what he sees there. He names che unsociable beast
with an expression that alludes ro a divinely established desig-
nation of the Iyre, “friend of the feast."*? He sees already che
glorious instrument while the poor tortoise is still alive. For
the tortoise, that glory means a painful death. If che “through-
seer”’ of such a fate is God, he makes light of the irony of the
situation thar is visible only to him. But it 1s Titanically cruel-
32 The passage alluded to here reads in the Ode *... I too hear sound-
ing the Iyre, which the Gods make the friend of feasrs’’ This parallel is
important because it heightens even more the irony of Hermes’ words;
che hearer is allowed through this technique to feel the insincere usage of
flowery language.
62
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
hearced rf he bursts our laughing at whac he sees,” if his words
make chat irony manifesr, and if his violent deed helps ro ful-
fill char destiny. This is whar Hermes does, not naively, but
roguishhy and without compassion. The crueley of his irony
reaches ins height in his roguish use of the proverbial line: "Bes
it 15 to bide at home, since danger is abroad.” On the other
hand, che divine scoundrel does have a poinr, for our of his
victims death he conjures music, this unique way for mortal
humans to cransform the harshness of exisrence into Phaiakian
muldness. “Cheerfulness and love and sweer slumber” are, ac-
cording to Apollo, the gifrs of this Hermetic art, which Hermes
translates into a revelation of his essence. Originally, music
was the gifr of Hermes, and in the cones of the syrinx it re-
mains 5so. T his is nor Apollonic music. Let us listen to the song
char Hermes sings to the first notes of che Iyre:
And when 1t 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, ar festivals,
making rcheir smarr cracks.
The song of Hermes is no less roguish than were his words;
ie 15 compared to the impudent mocking songs thac Greek
youths would fling back and forth ar one another. If his words
33Kerényi, Greeks & Romans, op. cüt., 193,
63
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
previously were cruelly ironic, they now show him to be utterly
without shame. Ir is possible that a verse following the farsr
line has been lost;** nevertheless the translation rermamns cer-
tain in all essentials. Hermes sings of cwo themes: love and
riches. The second of these corresponds to an aspect of him
The first theme reveals a síde of
thar we have already discussed.
him that until now has been hidden, the one that knows no
shame.
He sang about
Zeus, rhe son of Cronos,
and Maia in her beautiful shoes,
how they talked during their love affair,
a boast abour
his own glorious origin.
And he honored the servanrs 3:
of che nymph
and her magnificent house.
And the tripods in the house.
And che abundant cauldrons.
Hermes sings insolenthy of the love affair of his parents.
One should not think char this was customary among che
Greeks. The Homeric style, which in general is also character-
istic of che Hymn, is very restrained in erotic matters. Ar che
same time, however, it is not at all prudish. Ie is sunply stated
when and where a love union took place, if this 15 in any way
important, bur the full derails are never given. The single ex-
ception 1s the song of the Phatakian minstrel, Demodokos,
which tells of the surprised lovers, Aphrodite and Ares, T his
song conforms to the atmosphere of the Phaiakians, which
34Cf. Radermacher on this passage.
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
within the Hermetic world of the Odyssey corresponds to the
gentlest aspect of Hermes. In that song, too, the shamelessness
of Hermes is revealed for the first time in the classical trad1-
tion. In Demodokos' song he appears with the other Gods
who have been called together by the cuckold Hephaistos as
witnesses to his own shame, to view the glorious pair caught in
the net. Asked by hus 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 Ohymp1-
ans, shows his colors with these words:
“Would I nor, though, Apollo of distances!
Werap me in chains three times the weight of these,
come goddesses and gods to see the fun;
only ler me be bestride che pale-golden one!”
(Book VII, 33942}
Thar finding and chieving in the realm of love are also
Hermetic traits needs no further commenrt:°5* a secrer love af-
fair was the first stage in the evolution of the God. Ir was, in
relation to Hera, thievish love; in relation to Zeus and the
nymph, it was a love affair (“Liebeshandel”’) in whar is perhaps
the full meaning of this ambiguous word. The original text
T
speaks explicithr of “Hetaira love” (heraireie philores). his can
also be unselfish love that 15 snatched in the spirir of Hermes.
And ic would be shameless in the Hermetic sense to ask if
there might nor afrer all be come connection berween thus love
relacionship and the treasures of Maia, who, according to Her-
mes’ words (11.167ff.), has no connection to riches.
The Hermeric rraits, which the Hymn now reveals in the
3I5Otto, op. cit, 11 If, also Jung-Kerényi, 54.
 PART E THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
portant, however, to understand the mearung of thus word more
motifs of finding and thieving, seem to be almost entirely nega-
exactly. The basic meaning of concrete “kinship” or “family”
tive: the negative aspects of the ihyphallic Herms, the
This shamelessness reaches its apex in che song
is not indicated here, but rather the abstract ‘origin,’ which 1n
<hamelessness.
the heroic period was just as real as che other. For Hermes this
abour che love affair of his own parents. In all this negativity,
is additionally important because of his position on Olympus.
however, something very precise and posïtive 15 expressed. Wih-
His impudent song 1s a genealogia; as such it completes the my-
out question, the Herm expresses che essentially phallic nature
thology, and even substitutes for ir. Myrhology deals with
of the God, bur just whar this “essentially phallic” nature may
origin{(s) as basic reason for everything that exists in the present
be has yet to be answered by the Hymn. The Hymns mode of
or will exisr in the future. In the genealogy, ancestors of “fa-
expression 15 every bit as restrained as that of the Homeric
mous names" (geneen onomakiuton) occupy the place of origin, as
epic. On the other hand, how far ir is from any sort of prud-
emergence proceeds forth from the primordial depths. The
ishness is shown in the scene (1 1.293-98) where the lLictle rogue
gencalogy turns the great original mythic theme into a family
behaves toward Apollo in a truly indecent way. In the present
tree.?* The family tree must begin, of course, with the earliesr
passage he speaks of the oaridzrin{“‘to hold bold converse with”)
Gods. This is che manner of Hesiod's Theogony. Another way is
of Zeus and Maia in betaireie philotes (‘‘hetairic love”). The furst
that of the Hymn, in which Hermes “names his praise-worthy
word refers to the talk of lovers and is later applied to the
descenr.” His impudence proves to be the conscious return of
merry-making of the Gods on Ohmpus (1.170). Ir 15, how-
the offspring to his source. Indeed, Hermes’ impudence is the
ever, a phallic word, although as finely literary as “Minne”; in
consciousness of his own origin and reason for being, an un-
the same sense, the entire “Hymn to Hermes” may be called a
broken and linear consciousness of his development which is—as
highly Literary monumenr to phallic shamelessness.
the development of the God has shown us—a further character-
We must observe, however, thar there is a kind of reticence
istic feature of Hermes.
in the Hymn: the explicitness of the Herms is nor marched in
The clue ro understanding this consciousness more exactly
the tone or contents of che Hymn. Why not? Not because of
comes to lighr in the second song thar Hermes sings, with
prudishness or literary restraint. The first is simply not present,
which he enchants Apollo. We will look ar it now, even though
and the indecency of line 296 defeats the second. The real
it occurs much later in the Hymn:
reason is yet to be discovered. For now, we may realize what the
Hymn specifies as the core and the meaning of the shameless Suddenly he started playing the Iyre
song. Á further statement is added to the line telling of the louder, reciting a prelude—
love of Zeus and Maia: “and he told the tale of his begetting . and the sound accompanying him
In this translation genee is rendered as “begerting”; it 15 um- 36CÉ. P Philippson, Genealogie als mytbische Form, Symbolae Osloenses 7,
1936.

66
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS PART IT: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION

was lovely— the first she does not allow to dry up, the second she causes to
about the immortal gods flow over. In the Hymn she appears as the Goddess who 1s set
and che dark carch, over Hermes like a daimon of fare. This is the meaning of the
how they were in the beginning, original text: he gar lache Majados huion (‘For he was ordained the
and whar prerogatives cach one had.
son of Maia”). Its che fate of Hermes that for humself and for
And che first of the gods
those with him there 1s no chance of losing oneself. He cannot
that he commemorated with his song
was Mnemosyne, Mother of Muses, ever escape from memory. He is possessed by ir, and he carnes
for che son of Maia it as inherited knowledge of all primordial sources of being. In
was a follower of hers. thus his consciousness reveals iself more exactly as spiricual-
And all of hem, psychological, just where we believed we would be able to
all the immortal gods, recognize its phallic aspecrt,
according to age We need nor give up either of these two undersrandings of
and how each one vas born,
Hermes. The Tiramc element, co which che phallic aspect can
the glorious son of Zeus
belong,** breaks furiously to the fore the momenr he ceases ro
recited, singing them all
in order, playing his Iyre on his arm. play the lyre for the first time:

Hermes here presents a full-blown theogony. Hesiod be- And when he had sung abour these,
other subjects were found
gins with praise ro che Muses. It is natural chac a God should
pressing in his mind.
begin further back toward the source, with the mother of the Bur hen,
Muses. The Great Goddess Mnemosyne, one of the wives of picking up the hollow lyre,
Zeus, may be compared to a source (Quelle) for several reasons,. he pur ir in his sacred cradle.
(Te is not meaningless thar she has a spring—Quelle—in Lebadeia; He was gerring hungry:
it is also sigruficant that her daughrers are figures analogous to he bounded our
the spring Goddesses.)*’ She is memory as the cosmic ground of che fragrant room
yet with an eye out too,
of self-recalling which, like an eternal spring, never ceases flow-
and working on a shrewd crick
ing. She even grants, again precisely through the Muses, pleasant,
in his head, like those
healing lapses of memory (Theogony 55); in these one does not done by robber types
forget oneself, but only what 15 meant ro be forgotten. For thus who operate
reason the blessings of Mnemosyne aíd the dead and the poers:
38Cf, Otto, op, cit, 33 & 106; Kerényi, Greeks & Romans, op. cit, 198f.
37Cf. Kerényi, Apollon, 110; 3rd ed., 109,
 PART E THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
But then glorious Hermes humself
at this hour
wanted some of the sacred mear:
of the dark nighr.
immortal or not,
In the divine sínger—in the shameless, Titanic one—the thief the delicious smells
croubled him.
was already present. An inordinate hunger for meat awoke in
His noble hearr
him: kreion eratidzon (‘being extremely greedy for meat”) is the persuaded him, however,
phrase in the text, which in the Tliad is applied to a lion. As the nor to let hem pass
story unfolds it becomes clear char this hunger brings some- down his own divine guller,
thing un-Olympian and Titanic ro light. Instead of devouring though he wanted to,
the two animals which he separares from the others and slaugh- badly.
ters, he sacrifices them to the cwelve Gods in a way that 1s both He pur them away at first
exemplary and skillful (Odysseus as beggar has this skill and in the high-roofed stable,
che fat and the abundarit meat,
owes it to Hermes). The bloody offering is a Titanic practice,
then he held them up
invented in its simple form by Prometheus, who, in accordance
into che air,
with his Titanic nature, tries to ger the meat for himself.*’ Her- as a commemoration
mes shows his Olympianism by counting himself as one of the of his recent foray.
rwelve Gods (through his birth their number becomes even
and complete’) and, like the disrant heavenly ones, by taking The entire theft must be seen from the beginning in the
part in the offering only symbolically and nor giving way to his lighr of his accentuared divine standpoint. Ie is not the Tr-
greed for meat. ranic prank of a divine wonder-child cold merely for che sake
of entertainment; it is revelation of divine essence and
Hermes, fundamentality. His thieving 1s the nee phore:®® nor “childish
with a happy heart, theft,” but “new theft” or “new larceny,’ che Hermetic theft,
cook our the rich meats
which 15 only now being introduced into the world. Earlier
onto a Smooth rock
there existed thieving only through use of power and might,
and cut them,
arbitrarily, Titanic thieving. Hermes states explicitly—we will hear ic later
into welve parts, in the Hymn-char he could also plunder Apollo's treasures at
but he treared each part 40The word phones was handed down by tradition, The correction is by
as if it were perfect for gifr-offering. G. Hermann; besides its better sense, ii: recommends irself because the
word appears again in y. 385, where the famous Moscow script (in Leiden)
39CÉ, Kerényi, Greeks
& Romans, ISI. has pboren; the otliers plonen,

70
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
use to bind hum (1.140). In every sense his art is enchanting.
Delphi. He consciously refrains from indulging in a Titanic
The master enchanter volatizes himself before our very eyes
power-play, which would be less than divine. He possesses the
like a breach of wind. Returning home from his novel thievery,
W har holds hum
power, the slyness, the lack of scruples for it.
back is his divine nature, through which the Titanic nature Hermes,
changes into ingenious charm and loses its violence. Hermes son of Zeus,
reveals a new kind of thieving or larceny, a divine kind. Apollo the helper,
suffers no loss from it; indeed he gains the Iyre and a singularly slid in through an opening
into che room,
relared, yet antagonistic, brother. Instead of violence there ap-
like a breeze in aurumn,
pears here inventiveness and animated swiftness. Everyttung like a mise
moves ahead by leaps and bounds (alto—"rumble,’ 65; theon— He went directly
“running, " 70), as does Hermes' revelation itself from the into the rich shrine of the cave,
moment of his birth, and as do his actions in the remainder of tip-toeing.
the Hymn (‘sumenos—"running, darting," 150; anorouse thoos spondei He didn't make a lot of racket
ion—"he leaped up quickly and made haste,” 415; as one usually does on the floor.
essumenos—"hastily," 320; speudonte—"he hastened," 397; The glorious Hermes
quickly got into his cradle.
errosanto—"they moved rapidly," 505). All of this 1s befirting to
He wrapped his blanker
this God (as ic is to Apollo also*’). As a babe he does noc yer around his shoulders,
have his winged sandals, so he invenrs them out of tamarisk just like a baby,
and myrtle branches, not only to confuse the pursuer with the playing in his hand
prodigious tracks, but also to make use of the speed giwen by with the dloth
the myrtle, a plant with an explicit connection to death.** In around his knees.
chis way he drives the cartle and yer avoids the rigors of travel- There he lay,
holding onto his lovely Iyre
ing (‘hodoiporien aleeinon—"avoiding the journey’). According to
with his left hand.
the Odyssey the magic powers of plants are familiar to him, and Bur the god
he works magic also with the branches char Apollo wants to couldn't fool his mother,
4lln che Hymn they seem to appearas rivals—cf, Eitrem, op. cit. sup. This is the goddess,
however only superficial appearance: a divine foreplay preceding the di- who saíid this:
vision of territories, not a competition between cults. “Just whar are you up to, smartie?
42CE, 5, Eitrem, Hermes und díe Toten, Christiania Videnskabs-Selskabs For- Where were you char you come in
handlinger, 1909, 5, 24f.

72

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
ar rhis hour ot che night,
impudence written all over you?
Now I'm beginning to think
you would walk righr out the front door
under the arm of Apollo,
if it werent bolted on all sides
with chains thar are unbreakable,
put there so you wouldnït go plundering
all over che valley! Well go ahead!
Get out! Your father made you
just to be a headache
to gods and men!”
Hermes answered her
shrewdiy:
“Mother,
why do you aim these things at me,
as if I were a lictle kid
who knew a lor of rules
in his head, and could be scared,
a kid who could be scared
E
by his mothers words?
Why, 1 shall be engaged
in the greatest art of all—
DEI:
always concerned for you,
of course, and for myself.
Were not going to stick around here,
as you want, the only two
among all the immortal gods
wirhour any gifts,
without even prayers!
[ts much better
skulls once again:
to spend every day
talking with the gods,
74
PART IT: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
rich, bountiful, loaded with
cornfields, rhan ro just
sit around home here
in this creepy cave.
As for honors,
I'm going ro ger in on the same ones
thar are sacred to Apollo.
And if my farher won’ srand for ir,
T'l] still cry,
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. 1'll go to Pyrho,
barging righr in
to his grear house.
And then T'Il cart off
load of eripods
and beautiful cauldrons and gold
and fiery iron
and lots of good stuff.
You'll see—
if you want to.’
Thar®s how the cwo 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 gwes Hermes che chance to show hus
When Hermes,
 PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
then he opened three special rooms,
the son of Zeus and Maia,
using a shiny key.
saw who 1t was,
The rooms were full of nectar
the Archer Apollo
and delicious ambros1a.
and that he was mad
There was a lor of gold insíde too,
abour his cattle,
and silver, and many dresses
he sand down deeper
of the nymph, some dark,
under the fragrant covers,
some silvery—
the way a heap of ashes
the sort of rhing
covers over the burnt-out remains
thar the sacred houses
of a tree scump
of the blessed gods
That was how Hermes
have insíde.
tried to hide himself
When the son of Leto
when he saw Apollo,
had finished looking around
He rolled up his head
the back rooms of the great house,
and his hands
he spoke words to Hermes:
and his feet
“Listen, kid,
together in a litrle ball,
Iying in your cradle,
faking sweer sleep,
tell me where my cows are,
looking like a baby
and quick!
jusr after his bach,
Were going to fight this out
chough he was really awake.
and it wont be very pretty!
And he held his Ihyre
'm going to take you
under his arm.
and throw you into black Tarrarus,
But he knew chem,
into a hopeless darkness.
the son of Zeus and Leto
What a terrible end!
didn't fail to recognize
And neither your mother
the very beautiful mountain nymph
nor your father
and her dear son,
will bring you back
that ciny child,
co the light of day!
disguising himself
You'll wander upon the earth,
wich brilliant tricks.
leading little people around!”
Apollo looked around
every corner of the entire house,

77
76
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS PART T: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADTTION

The “lite people”"—this phrase trying to convey the mean- I'm interested
ing of oligoi andres in the original-are most likely che dead, who in other kinds of things:
drift about insubstantially with a “frail buzzing” or “chirp- sleep 1s what 1 care about,
and the milk of my mother.
ing" (tetriguiai); chey are che “likenesses of living creatures” as
] care about blankets
che Odyssey expresses it. Here, for the first time in the Hymn,
around my shoulders.
this connection between Hermes and the dead 1s alluded ro. And having hor baths!
Apollo threatens him with confinemenr in thar dark under- 1 sure hope
ground realm, where he can spend his time leading the souls nobody hears
around. For a moment the image of psychopomp emerges, thus whar this argument is about!
making way for the sly psychagogue, for che shameless guide of And it would be a big surprise for the gods: a baby,
jusr new-born,
souls, for the prototype of all furure rhetoricians and sophists,
who could walk right in the door
for Hermes Logios. In the following speech the “arr of oach-
with a herd of cows.
taking," too, 1s practiced in the words of the original sophist: Whar youre talking about
is ridiculous.
Hermes answered him coolly: [ was jusr born yesterday!
My feet are still precty sofr.
“Son of Lero, The ground undernearh
why do you speak so rudely, is precty hard.
and why come here If you want,
looking for your animals? T'U swear a great oath
] didn'r see anything, on the head of my father:
1 didn'c learn anything, 1 declare thar 1 am myself
I didn't hear anything not guiley,
from anybody else. nor did I see any other chief
I don't have any information to give, of your cattle,
and the reward for information wharever cartle are, anyway—
wouldn’t go to me I've only heard about them.”
if I did. And while he said this,
I'm not like a person he pecked our
who drives away carttle, from under his bright epelids,
I'm not big enough! looking here and there.
This wasnt my work!

78
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
And he whistled too,
for a long time,
like scomebody listening to a lie.
The Archer Apollo,
laughing sofrly,
said this to him:
“You trickster,
you sharpie,
the way you talk
] ber you have broken into
a lor of he expensive homes
in nights past
and left more than one man
with nothing more to sït 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 youre in the mood for
mear, and you come across
herds of carrle
and flocks of sheep.
Bur 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
this honor among the gods:
80
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
for all cime
you will be called
“The Prince of Thieves!'”
Phoebus Apollo
said this and then
setzed him.
The powerful Argeiphontes,
lifred up by the gods arms,
intentionally
released an omen,
an insolent servanr
of his stomach,
a reckless little messenger.
Right afrer this,
he suddenly sneezed too.
This final indecency places Hermes at the opposite pole
from che mortally clean God Apollo;*? yer, ar the same cime,
through his Iyre he remains extremely close to him. Ir is in-
comparable how this infant is able to show us che whole breadch
and range of the Hermetic world. We think of Horace, the
poet of indecent Epodes and of lighr, 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 rhe upper regions / And of he
lower”) (Odes I, 10). After this all har is lefr in the Hymn 1s
chac the value of this extensive realm, in which even che lowest
is nor unholy, be recognized on Olympus, and thar harmony
be broughr ro the border-line between the fraternal (but con-
43CÉ. Kerényi, Apollon, 166f; 3rd ed., 152f.
4Horace, Carm. II 7, 13; 17, 29; Sa, 11 6, 15; Kerényi, Apol on, 21 8f; 3rd
ed.. 217f.
8l
 PART E: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

flict-laden) spheres of Hermes and Apollo.

their probing curiosity. He does not trust Hermes with such
The recognition of Hermes comes in Zeus’ outburst of an exalted calling; indeed, he addresses hum in this important
laughrer, when the new-born infant dares to repeat his arcful
passage not as an equal, but as the “Eriunios Daimon of the Gods"
perjury in the presence of his facher (368fk.). Apollo, too, (SSI). “Daimon,' if not exactly disparaging, lies less near the
laughed at the first oath of the thief. This 1s char divine laugh- detached diwinury of an Apollo and closer to a meeting with
ter that vouches for the harmlessness of the Titanic heritage of and touching of the mortal. The great revealer of truth does,
the Gods within their own circle.* In the reciprocal delinea- however, leave to the swift-as-dearh daimon a peculiar oracle.
”
Je is in the form of the three “praiseworthy sisters," whose
tion of spheres, Apollo receives the Iyre and Hermes the cartle
and symbol of shepherdhood, which in this case is not a
names are not given. The description of them is a puzzle, which
shepherd's sraff, bur a whip (497). This atrribute is distin- is intentional since this is suited to oracular language (553):
guished by its form from the splendidly rich staff of Hermes, For there are some Faces,
which is called “golden” and “triple-leafed.” Whether this is a three of them,
description of the caduceus, the staff of the herald, which ap- sísters by birth,
pears so frequently on monuments, remains very questionable. virgins
For the time being, Hermes has only the form of a herald who rake pleasure in their swift wings.
Their heads have been sprinkled over
(331). We will soon see in whar connection the Hymn men-
with a white barley-powder.
cions his ambassadorial office; the caduceus with is double
They make their homes
serpenr motif may very well originate in that sphere. Here it under the cliffs of Parnassus.
seems much more that Apollo is simply turning over to his They raughr divination
brother all relacions that he previous]y has had co a specific independent of me, while I
aspect of the chthonic world, to his possessions of herds and was still a child practicing tt
other treasures.!* around my cartle.
Of great sigruficance 1s the dividing up of the oracle. Apollo My father didn't stop them.
From there, they
recains for himself whar “lies in the mind of Zeus alone” (535),
fly, now here,
his “secrer counsel” ($38). Only he can use ir to help human now there,
beings, or to punish them if they earn such trearment through and eat beeswax
45CÉ, Kerényi, Greeks & Romans, 198f. and accomplish everything.
46The underworldly meaning of his service as shepherd to King Admetus, And when they have been fed
whose queen has a Persephone-Demeter-Hecate form, is also supported on the golden honey,
by this connection. On Apollo’s dark features, cf Apollon, op. cit., 48ff; 3rd
ed., 43f.

83
82
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
they are inspired
and want to pronounce truths,
all of their own accord,
If, however,
they are kept away from
his sweer food of the gods,
hen they try to lead you astray.
They are bees—this 1s 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 cov-
ered 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 chem-
selves with honey. They swarm about gifred children and lend
chem the gifts of the muses.*? They also have souls; indeed, for
anciquity they are pure souls.** Bees that are sared with the
“cweer food of the Gods"—honey’*—are like souls full of en-
The word for their “swarming about” (thuiosin) means
chusíasm.
the swarming of the furious Maenads. These enigmatic sisters
are bees, but as bces hey are souls, whose ability or inability to
prophesy depends on whether they are “full” or “empry.’ The
Hermertic oracle is dependent on these conditions, conditions
which we find expressed in pure intellectual form in Platos
4780 it stands in the legends of Pindars and Platos chiidhoods. Accord-
ing to Pindar (01. 6, 45), the lamos received the gifr of prophesy
through serpenrs nourishing him wirh honey, For a collection of ex-
amples, cf. A. B. Cook, Hell Stud. 15, IFE
48Vergil, Georg. IV, 219,
490n honey as food of the Gods, cf. H. Usener, “Milch und Honig”
KTeine Sehrifien IV, 400. Cf. alo Radermacher on this passage of che Hymn,
where further literacure on this theme can be found.
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
Symposium.
The later classical tradition knows nothing of this anymore.
Hermes’ connections to dice and locteries and other oracles of
chance are famuiliar.* Less frequently one finds Hermes as the
general master of animals, since Apollo extends to hus brother
che power over herds (S67fE.). At the end Apollo says some-
thing sigruficanr about Hermes’ messenger role:
. . . Ts for the glorious Hermes
to rule, and to be
the only recognized messenger
to Hades, who himself
never takes a gift from anybody.
This cime, though, he will give him
a pift that is far from leasr.
Whar kind of a “herald” Hermes would be for the house
of Hades 1s indicated in the second clause: for this ambassa-
dorial office he receives nothing (adotos per con’). For who rewards
a herald who performs such a task? “Not che worst gift” (peras
ouk elachiston) is how the mysteries express their view of death.
Doubtless the psypchopomp and his office are meant here. He
is a “herald appointed to Hades’ and this is on he strength
of his ordination. This is clearly signified in the first clause:
oion d'eis Aiden tetelesmenon angelon eínai (‘and ler hum alone be
herald appointed to Hades”). The word tetelesmenon means a bir
more than merely “proper” or “correct” (as it is translated
into German; the English translation omirs it. —Tr). Preceding
the tetelesmenon einai there must unconditionally be a telein (‘to
SOCÉ. the entry in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenc. VIT, 784; also cortes Mercurii, F.
paa Gótier im alien Rom, Versuche und Vorarbeien XKXUIL I, 1930,
ación
—
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS PART IT: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION

carry out a transaction”), a formal preparation and appoint- and the son of Cronus
ment. This “making ready” is in Greek linguistic use an added his favor.
And Hermes mingles now
ordination, even tf it be so only in a figurative sense. One could
with all men and gods.
be “initiared” or “ordained” into the position of commander And even though
of troops; the word would then relate to the outcome of an he helps a few people,
election. According to our text, therefore, Hermes became mes- he chears an endless number
senger and escort to Hades only after a preliminary ceremony of rhe race of mortal men
had been completed. To think of an ordination is justified by in rhe darkness of might.
the whole context, Ie belonged to the essence of che Greek
The deceptions of Hermes are harmless only for che Gods.
mpysteries that through their initiations one came into friendly
Like everything else Titanic, these deceptions dissolve in che
relation to Hades. (From thus it follows that for one who 1s
Jaughrer of the Olympians. For humans ir curns our differ-
initiated, dearh is “nor che worst gifr.”) About the ordination
enthy, especially if rhey meer up with the arts of Hermes in his
of che femurune angelos, Hecate, we have the report thar she
special element, the night. In the night he executed his first
received her initiarion from the Kabeiror. Only afrer this is she
theft. Indeed, for his sake he moon rose twice and chereby
supposed to have been connected to Hades.*! Hermes has che
doubled the night. Apollo called him a “companion of black
closest possible relation co the Kabeirean mysteries. Ie seems
night” (290), Afrer rhe theft “he lay dark as night in his cradle”
thar one 1s led here beyond classical tradition to an ar least
(358), and deepest rughrt belonged to the constellarion of his
equally ancient mystical tradition,
conception and coming into being. Ir is certainly significant
har che Hymn, which has celebrated him in birth as che
We are now at the end of the Hymn:
“warcher of the night” in rhe sense of a dangerous adventurer,
And hats how closes with this dark aspect of the God.
the lord Apollo
came to love the son of Maia,
with many signs of friendship,
SISchol. in Theocr. 1] TI, 12; G. Kaibel, Com. Graec. fragm. 1, 161. The
story by which this inítiation of the angelos is established belongs to a
more recent layer cf the mythological account, but ir does not follow
from chis chat whar is estrablished is nor iesclf much older. On che con-
nection of Hecate to the Kabeiroi, cf. Kerényi, Das Argaische Fest, Albae
Vigüliae XI, Amsrerdam, 1941, 67; 4h ed, in Werkaug, vol, I, München,
1966, 140.

87
 Hermes and the Night

The basic texts of the classical tradicion have been open

before us. We do not need to introduce those later texts that
merely preserve this tradition or vary it slighth. An example of
this is a tale char appears in a Hymn co Hermes by Alkaiws:
the litcle catrle 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 Artic arr; he is holding our his hand to
someone who is already no-one. 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

52Porphyry in Hor. Carm. I 10, 9.

 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
sublime than he was, for example, on har archaic vase-painr-
ing 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 spiri-
tualized epiphanies on the attic grave lekyihoi. If through che
vase-paincing of che fifth century we reach a fourth, psychic
dimension, we still really only ger closer to those fields of as-
phodels that make up the volatizing, devouring background of
the muild, but relentless and unyielding psychopomp: he him-
self, however, has nor become any less mysterious.
We are not merely trying to establish che identity of a name,
bur rather to apprehend always the same God. For the Greeks
he was whar 1s depicred in che classical tradition, which in-
cludes also the picrorial representarions, In his “such-ness," he
15 an historical fact which cannot, by strict and honesr hisrori-
cal means, be reduced to somethung else: neither to a concept,
to a “power, nor to a “spirit"—a gravestone or signpost
spirit*—not even to an idea char would not contain in a nut-
shell everything that Hermes’ “such-ness” constitutes. What
Otros brilliant description of Hermes allowed of the God to
shune forth proved iself correct and in accordance with rhe
interpretacions of the texts, bur ir was nor the “totality” of
hum, which 1s really the “truth.” Incorrect was the negative
parr of rhe statemenr. “In che new religion—as the Homeric-
5S3The first was the postulation of L. Curtius, Die antike Herme, Diss.
München, 1903. The second was char of L. Deubner, Der irhyphallicche
Hermes, Stuttgarr, 1937, 201f, Deubner speaks of a "God of the road”
chough what he means 15 no more chan che spirit of the signpost: “From
the signpost grew the God of the road” (page 203}.
90
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
classical period is called chere—Hermes is nor a God of procre-
acion and fertility, even if he can appear as such, since his
wonderful rule also leads toward the good of loves union and
generation of children. It is always the magical escort thar de-
termines the content of his activity, the leading to a precious
gain . . .’ “The procreative power is positively not the essence
of Hermes”
The correct, positive starement—thar che world of Hermes
stands under a “special sign, namely char of deft guidance and
sudden gain”"—does not, however, exhaust that world. To char
world belongs also the rejected parts and the disavowed: the
phallic as well as the spiricual, the shameless as well as che
gentle and merciful, even if the connection berween all these
qualiries does not seem to make sense. Ás a reduction of the
Hermes world, the sentence, “In the favor of the Guide 1s
revealed che true essence of che God,’ is not much berrer chan
ies reduction to a hypostasis of a general divine readiness to
help and a devilish joy at others' misforrune, 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
monuments, as a Hermes world? The mulripliciry of the tradi-
tion suggests this term. “World” can be a comprehensive idea
if as an autonomous entirery it accommodartes the observer as
if he were moving about in the world he normally is surrounded
by. The world of che Tliador that af the Odyssey accommodares
us in this way. Every such world, however, 15 ar the same time a
worked-ourt idea of the world thar existed already prior to chis
expression of it and that lenr icself to che finished expression
of the idea. There can be no “world"—even if it is the purely
91
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
spiritual epiphany of an intellectuallhy Juminous God-which is
not “worldly;” har is, which does nor 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, ir has the ability to
shine forth in its totaliry as idea, ir possesses the Light of the
idea and is itself in its own way lighred
and clear.
There are words in which this notion appears as the an-
cient, long since forgotten wisdom of languages: the Hungarian
vilás 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 con-
vincing— could also be the idea of Hermes. Indeed, only then
would ir be a “basic form of living reality.’ lt would be such a
basic form for another reason, namely char ir, like realiry al-
ways does, contains so much thar is obscure for us. Whar 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 accusromed to phulosophical and not to
myrthological 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 (Górierlebre, oder mythologische Dichtung der
Alten, 3xd ed., Berlin, 1804)? just where he is treating Mer-
cury, thar “to a certain extent, and when looked at from a
certain exalted standpoint, every divine form comprehends
54With thanks to Armin Kesser (Zürich) for having poinred our the
accord between Moritz and myself.
92
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
within itself che essence of all things.” The author of the clas-
sical description of Hermes, Walter E. Otto, is unwillingly a
rrue disciple of Moritz, in that he consciously adopts an ex-
alted standpoint, and looking from there perceives in the Greek
forms of divinity the “essence of things," namely, he meaning
of a realm of being whose living spirir—bur a spirit made of
the same material, a kind of spirirual condensation— appears
as the respective Godhead. However elevated this point of view
may be, it must seek its justificarion in the realistic worldliness
of the divine images as apprehended from this perspective. So,
for Otro, Hermes is on the one hand “the spirit of a configu-
rarion of exisrence which returns again and again under he
most dissimilar conditions"; on the other hand, he is che Spirit
of a complerely concrete “world-like" aspect of the world char
accommodares us always again in a special realmhe is ‘a spirit
of night.” The question is whether the “world-likeness,' which
is offered through the association to night, really does com-
pletely fill the image of Hermes as ir is handed down and
make it convincing, even while, perhaps, remaining partially
obscure.
Nyx, the Goddess of Night, is at any rate nor identical
with Hermes, and Apollo distinguishes his brother from her
sufficiently when he calls him “fellow of che night.” Yer, as
Ortro correctly points out, we automatically chunk of Hermes
in connection with much char the Greeks saíd of Nighr. This
is not part of the classical tradition, bur concerns something
thar corresponds ro it. Let us read the superbly beautiful pages
which Otro, in his portrait of Hermes, devores to the experi-
ence of nughr.
93
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION

their rounds which no man ever leaves alive.

A man who is awake in the open field at night Who can protect him, guide him aright, give
or who wanders over silent parths experiences him good counsel?
The spiric of Night icself,
the world differently than by day. Nighness the genius of ¡rs kindliness, its enchantrenr,
vanishes, and with ir distance; everything
its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom.
is equally far and near, close by us and yer She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The
mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures.
weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care,
There are whispers and sounds, and we do not
and she causes dreams to play about their souls.
know where or what chey are. Qur feelings, too,
Her protection is enjoyed by che unhappy and
are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness
persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom
about whar is intimare and dear, and a seductive
her ambivalenr shadows offer a chousand
charm abour the frighrening. There 1s no longer
devices and contrivances. With her vel she
a disrinction between the lifeless and the liwing,
also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps
everything is animarte and soulless, vigilant and
ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and
asleep ar once. Whar the day brings on and makes
revealed. Music is che true language of her
recognizable gradually, emerges our of the dark
mystery—the enchanting voice which sounds for
with no incermediary stages. The encounter
eyes that are closed and in which heaven and
suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle:
carth, the near and the far, man and nature,
What is the thing we suddenly see—an
present and past, appear to make themselves
enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log?
understood.
Everything teases the traveler, puts on a
familiar face and the next moment is urterly Bur the darkness of night which so sweetly
‘strange, suddenly terrifies with awful invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance
gestures and immediately resumes a familiar and illumination upon the spirir. Ir makes
and harmless posrure. it more perceptive, more acute, more enter-
prising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like |
Danger lurks everywhere. Our of the dark
a shooting star—rare, precious, even magical
jaws of the nighr which gape beside the
knowledge.
traveler, any moment a robber may emerge
without warning, or 5ome ecrie terror, or che And so night, which can terrify the solitary
uneasy ghost of a dead man—who knows what may man and lead him astray, can also be his friend,
once have happened at thar very spor? Perhaps his helper, his counselor.*?
mischievous apparitions of the fog seck to
5SOrro, op, cit, 1 18-20.
entice him from the right parh into the deserr
where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance

94
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
Having entered with Otto into his experience, we may well
ask: is nor then Night the very sruff of Hermes? That which
gives hum reality? Yes, if one knows the God beforchand and
brings his image along, then one recognizes in him the famil-
tar characteristics of the might and vice versa. Yer, one does nor
find all the Hermertic characteristics in Night. Something es-
sential is missing. Otro humself admirs as much, even though
he takes this relling point rather lightly. “This picture,’ he con-
tinues afrer his descripuon 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 mas-
culine and saucier pitch and the spirir of whar is peculiarly
Hermes will stand before us.”** But precisely this more mascu-
line and audacious aspecrt, this active essence, would have to be
removed from the Hermes idea if we wished to discover 1ts
worldliness in the connection to nighr. The passtvity of night
and the active quality of the traditional Hermes separare chese
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 har of night ir-
self? Is not this active world present in those parts of the
human and animal worlds of whuch 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 another sense, in an Hermetic sense, che night of the
psychopomp. The night of generation and the night of dying,
do we nor carry these in us?—an undivided night, which 1s happy
S6Ibid., 120,
96
PART I: THE HERMES OF CLASSICAL TRADITION
to join itself to the night “our there," as a twin sister of the
grear, all-nclusive world?
From sunply the “night our here” one could not derive
the robber or the thief, nor che psychopomp nor the impudent
God of the Hymn to Hermes. From the poer of the Hymn we
learned about hus birth and developmenr. We know where he
comes from and whar type of consciousness he exemplifies.
He1s most likely the same dark depth of being from which we
all originace. Perhaps for this reason Hermes can so convinc-
ingly hover before us, lead us on our ways, show us golden
treasures in everyone through the split-second ciming which is
the spirit of finding and thieving—all of this because he creates
Hus reality our of us, or more properly through us, just as one
fetches water not so much our of a well as through the well
from the much deeper regions of the earth.
We turn now to the monuments and documents of antig-
uity, which show Hermes in the closest relacion to the origins
of life and to immortalicy. His world revealed irself in classical
tradition as one that is more directed outward. Despire the
thievery and deceir and shamelessness—and this is probably
the most wonderful thing about ir—a divine innocence is prop-
erly suited to and inherent in it. Hermes has nothing to do
with síns and atonemenrt.*? Whar he brings with him from the
springs of creation is precisely the “innocence of becoming.”
57An exception is that of the Danaides, who murdered cheir men on the
wedding nighe and through char offended Hermes, who is the
Epirhalamites, the protector of the bridal chamber. They had, therefore,
to be cleansed chrough him. Apollod. Bibl IT 1, 5, II.
97
 HLYaq
UNY 9411 JO SINYUJH HL
ONL.LUYUvVd
 1

Hermes and Eros

The answer to the question, “Whar 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 chat rests on the basic
assumprion that a man stands in the world alone, endowed
only with a consciousness that is exclusively restricted to the
ability of recewing scienrifically evaluated sense impressions.
No such assumption exists, however, when it comes to that
other experience of the world which the antique statements
correlate with Hermes. The experience of the world in this
manneris open to the possibility of a transcendent guide and
leader who 1s also able to provide impressions to conscious-
ness, bur of a different kind: impressions thar are palpable and
 PART Il: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
we have to complete the foregoing sentence with: . . . to che
manifest, that in no way contradict the observations and con-
guidance of souls, an activity that strerches even beyond life.
clusions of narural science, and yer extend beyond the attitude
Here Hermes remained complecely enigraric to us. We expe-
described above, which is the common one today. With Her-
rienced the world with him in the Hymn ro Hermes. If we did
mes as leader in life=so the classical tradition teaches us—the
not know it beforehand, we must have discovered chere chat
world receives a special nuance, the Hermetic accent as we
one has a different experience of the world with an antique
have become acquainted with i.This Hermetic aspect is thor-
God than one would have without him. Speaking mythologi-
oughky empirical, and it remains within che realm of a nacural
cally, each God is che source of a world thac without him remains
experience of the world. The sum toral of pathways as Her-
invisible, but with him reveals irself in its own light, and this
mes' playground; the accidental “falling into your lap” as the
world passes beyond the world-picture of nacural science. Her-
Hermetic material; its transformation through finding—
mes too, therefore, is more than merely the luminous idea of a
thieving-the Hermetic event—into a Hermetic work of art,
world. He is irs source, through whom char world originared
which is also always something of a ricky optical illusion,
and hrough whom it becomes intelligible. As the basis of un-
into wealth, love, poetry, and every sort of evasion from che
derstanding the world, he is also idea, though one we have not
restrictions and confinemenr imposed by laws, circumstances,
yet fully grasped.
The nocrurnal God of adventurers seems ro
destinies—how could these be merely psychic realities? They are
stand alone in Greek mythology, withour parallel and alto-
de world and they are one world, namely, char world which
gecher strange.
Hermes opens to us.
“On rhe day of Aphrodite's birth,’ begins a well-known
The realiry of the Hermes world proves at least the pres-
myrhologem,
ence of a standpoint from which ir is revealed; more than char,
¡t testifies to something active thar is nor merely revealing it- the gods were making merry, and among them
self from thar standpoint, but that is ever again suddenly present was Mertiss son Resource [Poros], the son of Craft. And
and drives the world to give concrete expression to che Her- when they had supped, Need [Penia] came begging
metic works of art and illusionThe. source of this experience at the door because there was good cheer inside.
Now, it happened chac Resource, having drunk
and configuracion of the world, which ar the mention of Her-
deeply of the heavenly nectar—for this was
mes' name breaks intro the light of day (and broke forth also before the days of wine—wandered our into
wichour mentioning his name, only less clearly), is Hermes the garden of Zeus and sank into a heavy
himself, It must possess the complere Hermetic breadth, from sleep, and Need, thinking thar to ger a child
the phallic to . . . From here we are as yet unable to meo by Resource would mitigare her penury, lay
with any perspicacity, for on the basis of che classical tradition down beside him and in time was brought to bed

103
102
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
of Love [Eros]...
As the son of Resource and Need, it has been
his fate to be always needy; nor 1s he delicate
and lovely as most of us believe, bur harsh and
arid, barefoot and homeless, sleeping on he
naked earth, in doorways, or in the very streers
beneath the stars of heaven, and always partaking
of his mothers poverty. But, secondly, he brings
his father’s resourcefulness ro his designs upon
the beautiful and good, for he 15 gallant, imperuous,
and energetic, a mighty hunter, and a master of
device and artifice—at once destrous and full of
wisdom, a lifelong seeker afrer truth, an adept
in sorcery, enchantment, and seduction.**
The mythologem later speaks of those conditions of full-
ness and emptiness that according to the Hymn apply also to
the Hermeric oracle. Those bees are relaced 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 fachers nature, while
what he gains will always ebb away as fast.
So Eros is never altogether in or out of need ....
Ït is nor necessary to point our har we are dealing here
with the grear Daimon of Plaro’s Symposium. The myth is cold
by Socrates, who is supposed to have heard it from the wise
priestess of the Arcadian Mantineia, Diotima. This source ref-
erence 1s certainly not withour basis and meaning.*? To whar
S8Placo, Symposium, in The Collecied Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton &
Huntingron Cairns, Bollingen Series LAXI, New York, 1961, 555-56.
59Cf. Kerényi, Der grosse Daimon, 14f; in Herkaug, vol. 1, 293ff.
104
PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
extent chis myrhologem 1s based nor only on Platos vision but
also on an older religious tradition one will never know ex-
actly. Moreover, such a differentiation is of no importance for
our purposes. Plato’s genius here brings forrh a genuine
myrhologem. The method of characterizing a divine being by
means of his becoming 1s the same here as in the Hymn ro
Hermes. Here as there, these are realities, which are being ap-
prehended myrthologically. The relationship among chese
realities—Poros and Eros to Hermes-1s what concerns us.
If Eros 1s a realiry—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 che more he en-
compasses 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 Platos,
used to provide Eros with an abstraction for a farher. Alkman,
a hyrical poer of che seventh century, mentions him with Áisa
as one of the cwo oldest deities (‘peraitatoi sion), against whom
no amount of heroism can prevail (Fr. 1, 13fk.). The antique
interpreter makes the additional remark chat Poros is here iden-
tical with Hesiod's Chaos. Yet, while this oldest being of the
Theogony is original formlessness, lacking direction or move-
ment and taking back into itself everything thar has form,
Poros, according to his name and his son, seems co be the
worlds fullness on its path towards free unfolding un eternal
movemenr forward, masculine and active, prepared for ambush
and attack and overflowing with every kind of crearivity and
fruirfulness. Aisa, who is paired with him as che ferninine prin-
Compare P Philippson, Geuealogie als mytbiche Form, op. cit., 16.
105
 PART IT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
luminous understanding of the spirir, bur not the cold calcu-
ciple, can only sigrufy the restriction and limitacion char is
lating cleverness of Hermes. Though far removed from blind
tailored ro the fate of the individual, The unrestricted move-
compulsion,® Eros does nor however signify the Hermeric free-
ment of Poros is indicared also in this, thar heroism, when
dom of soaring flight for which he gives wings to even the
compared to hum, is named apedilo—"without winged sandals.”
most slugpish souls. Even the spirirual part of Eros, che memory
“No man may fly to heaven,’ warns the next passage.
of dererminative primordial images, flows into bonds and ties.
Similar to thus father is Eros, the Hermes-like God of ad-
Predestination, regulation by primordial images, idealism be-
venturers. How does Eros then compare to Hermes himself?
long to Eros. For this reason the love poems written in his
In many ways he shares with him the Hermetic range of being.
spirit are 50 completely different from those of Horace, which
On che one hand, he 1s a divine child who had a very ancient
came into being under the sign of Hermes.® Looked ar from
cultric monumenrt in hespiar-a
T' crude stone, compared to which
the world of Hermetic possibiliries, Eros, despite hus compre-
the phallic Herms show much grearer differentiation.*! On
hensive nature, appears limited--a somewhar more idealistic
the other hand, Hesiod, the poet from Askra, which is not far
and less cleverly curned-our, dumber son of Hermes.
from Thespiar, describes him much as does the great love poem.
For us it is at leasr a hint toward understanding the Her-
In che Theogony he appears with Gaia, immediarely afrer Chaos,
mes idea that the nature of Eros includes phallus, soul, and
as the chird Being and brings with him acrivity and movement,
spirit, and char he even reaches out beyond the life of the indi-
the driving force thar unfolds in progeny, scomething which
vidual. For this reason, tradicions in which Eros is in fact a son
that masculine or feminine primal Being does nor possess.
of Hermes hold a special importance for us, They do nor
Most likely, cherefore, he 1s the first masculine Being in the
belong to the classical tradition but form another alongside it,
cosmos but he is also, as he “unfolds his limbs," “spiricual” or
one that is more shrouded in mystery. Cicero, who preserves
“psychic,"' as are Fainting and Death. And he 1s no less swift
this tradition for us in his works on the Gods (De narura deorum
chan swift-as-death Hermes. He comes soaring on his wings,
IN, 23, 60), recalls in one passage che “writers of more secret
if nor literally so in Hesiod, just so, according to the primitive
texts, qui interiores serutantur et reconditas literas. There he shares
mythological accounr, in the Orphic cosmogony.*? Wherein
the results of such research in a systemartically organized, for-
the negative aspects show themselves already for Hesiod lies in
mal way. The different variacions of myrhs are sumply listed
this: he over-powers the insight in the breast and che rational
with a distinction made between various Gods of the same
counsel of all Gods and men” (Theog. 122). This limitation
name. According to this system, the firsr Eros was a son of
through Eros occurs all the more with the profusion of the
Hermes and the first Artemis, the second Eros was the son of
erotic. According to Plato he brings wonderful memory, the
$3CÉf. Kerényi, Der grosse Daimon, 23FE, 36f; in MHérkaug., vol. I, 300,
61Jung-Kerényi, SI. 309
62]bid., 55, and Der grosse Daimon, 34f,, resp. 308É. &6CE. Kerényi, Apollon, 218; 3rd ed., 217.

106 107
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

Hermes and the second Aphrodite: Cupido primus Mercurio et

Diana prima natus dicitur, secundus Mercurio et Venere secunda.
The quesrion of a mystical tradition, ro which the ending
of the Hymn ro Hermes alludes, still remains open. Still unex-
plained, 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 sull the
enticing mystery of Hermes. We will now go on ro consider
less classical phenomena, presenr them and let them speak for
rhemselves, as the classical tradition spoke for irself.

Hermes and che Goddesses

Hermesas the companion of Goddesses is well-known

also
in the classical tradition. In the Odyssey, Eumaios, who lives
out in the woods, offers a portion of the slaughtered swine to
the nymphs and to Hermes (Book XIV, 435); in thus he bears
witness to a long-standing, ancient connection among these
Deities. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite speaks of this in
more detail (11. 257f). The nymphs, who in the Odyssey are
mentioned defore Hermes, are according to their portrayal there
neither immortal Goddesses nor human women. With them
crees 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 che more generous with their gifts. They are the wer-
65CÉ. these passages in Allen-Sikes.

108

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
nurses for divine and semi-divine children. They enjoy the “im-
mortal foods of the Gods” and perform beautiful round dances
with hem. According to a later passage in the Hymn to
Aphrodite, ir is these nymphs “with whom the Sileno: 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
che masculine counterpart and completion of che fernirune na-
ture-spirits, Hermes, in this relationship to the nymphs, is less
one for whom the nymphs embody the Eternal-Feminine which
he has to serve chan one for whom they are the opportunity
thar he erternally masters.
Yet, this 15 only one aspect of this relationship. For in the
cule of the nymphs, as we know it particularly from countless
votive reliefs in the hills and caves of Arctica, Hermes is ex-
pressIy assigned to the Goddesses as their permanent escorr
(synopaon). On the reliefs he is always leading a threesome of
them, the smallest chotr so ro speak, just as he was also coor-
dinared with the three Charities on che Acropolis in Athens.**
As though he were unveiling a mystery, he leads the earnestlhy
striding threesome up to us, to tell us that it is just these three
who allow everything to bursr into life in che deeps of the
caves, the springs, the roots, the hills, On a wonderful marble
tabler stands a worshiper, who is depicred as much smaller
than the others and who is being shown this “holy revealed
mystery" of untamed fruitfulness, irs femrinine nature to which
however also belongs a masculine componenr.*? As much as
66Preller-Roberr, op. cit. 1, 323; cf. Plurtarch, De aud. poet. 44e.
67From the second half of the fifth century. Cf. L. R. Farnell, The Cultsof
the Greek States V, Oxford, 1909, Plare IV
110
PART TI: THE HERVES OF LIFE AND DEATH
the classical conception m4 distribute the feruinine aspect of
the world among springs axd streams, grotros and trees, with
this threesome it is certainhhinting ar che primordial image of
thar Grear Goddess, of whan we know thar she is a trinicy.** Jf
primal femirunity was assigued to a tree as its nymph, so chat
both would have ro die wher the cree was felled, Grear Demeter,
too, the most maternal of the feminine trinities, would also
feel its pain. The connectior berween che Grear Goddess and a
nymph is neither obvious ner classical either. Ir is expressed by
the Hellenistic poet Kallinachos in the language of feeling
(Hymn. 6,40). It exisred, & the holy groves of Demerer or
Persephone demonstrate, alongside the classical tradition. The
revelation of the Feminine & three distinct figures means only
thar che original core-knowedge of one Grear Goddess with
three aspects has been disselved in classical imapgery. In char
original understanding, the riad was still one: a maidenly be-
ing, maidenly nor like humin brides bur like springs and all
primal waters, who became a primal mother and hen re-ap-
peared once again in her bude-like, maidenly daughrer. The
more secret traditions illumnate the relationship of Hermes
to this primordial feminine >eing.
Cicero, basing himself ona los: mpthologem,® reports thar
Hermes is supposed to hare fachered Eros with che first
Artemis. According to anotner mprh, 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 Grear Goddesses, can b: combined into a genuinely pre-
6CE, Jung-Kerényi, 112-115.
690n Cicero’ source, see ]. B. Mayors edition, Cambridge, 1885, III,
199fff & 205.
111
 PART 1: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
pears in the Cyprian cult of the Goddess as her masculine as-
Olympian mythological story. Here, unlike the account in the
pect. Aphroditos.’* The original Hermes had no special need
Kyllenic birth myrhologem that we Know from che Hymn,
of a love affair with Aphrodite in order to beger Eros wich her:
Hermes is not made into a son of Zeus and integrated hereby
he possessed her as his feminine aspect, and perhaps che latter
into the Olympian world order. He is a son of Quranos and
was even the more prormunent part: before the masculine narure
Hemera, “Heaven” and “Brighr Day,’ and he becomes
in hum became aroused.
priapically aroused through catching sight of a Goddess.”” Al-
Who, though, was the original Goddess, the great evocatrice?
though this scene is supposed to have been played our in
Cicero passes down two names: Persephone, and the mother
northern Greece (we will soon learn about the scenery), thus
of Eros by Hermes, the first Artemis. Properz (II 2,1 1)! named
mythologem could well be the text for the ichyphallic re-
a third who urures these two to form an original trinitrarian
presentations of Hermes, which show him as the phallus.”!
image, and he also described che scenery of che primal wed-
This mythologem can hardly be understood as merely an in-
vention har was intended to explain the cultic monuments. ding:
Wharit relates is a primordial mythological theme of the great- Mercurio sacris ferrur Bocbeidos Undis
est significance: ir 1s the first evocation of che purely masculine virgineum Brimo composuisse latus
principle through the feminine.
(‘by the holy waters of Lake Boibeis has Brimo lain her
Do we know for sure, then, thar the primordial mythologt-
maidenly body at Hermes’ side”’). Brimo is the Great Goddess
cal Hermes , we are now speaking, was an unequivocally
of whom
of northern Greece, and in the Thessalonian ciry of Phera she
masculine being before this scene was enacted? The opposite is
is named Pheraia. She could be equared with Demeter and
much more likely to have been the case. Aphrodite, the daugh-
Persephone on the one hand or with Artemis-Hecare on che
ter of Ouranos and Hemera, is called his síster; for her, too,
other, since she contained all of these in germ-like form within
this parentage is meaningful. Her descent from the sky-God 1s
herself.”* In her rerritory lies che lake whose name in dialect
confirmed by another birth account in the primal-mythologi-
signifies “owned by Phoebe,’ and it is cherefore the possession
cal style, in Hesiod.”? Her luster marches the light-nature of
of just this “first” Artemis. There she appeared in that el-
Hemera, while Hermes’ nocturnal nature does so to a much
ementary sort of maidenliness which does not fear the masculine
lesser extent. The androgynous firse being, who since
as Something lechal or dangerous, but rather challenges, requests,
Theophrasrus has been known as Hermaphroditos and as such
and creates 1. Granted, this masculinury 15 a kind “thar had no
has been ascribed to Hermes and Aphrodite as their son, ap-
73]bid., 54.
70Cicero nar. deor. III 22, 56; Mercurius
De , umis Calo patre, Die matre natus, 74Based upon Turnebus' good conjectural reading of he text: Brimo in
cuius obscenius excitara namra traditur, quod aspectu Proserpinar commotus síl. place of the meaningless primo.
71CÉ, Jung-Kerényi, 53. 75CÉ. Jung-Kerényi, I20f,
T2]bid., 56.

[113
112
 PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
Grear Goddess, in the form of Hecate, sometimes took as her
independent personality behind it but was a mere God-servant
lover Hermes,*? somertimes the merman Triton,® corresponds
for the woman.” to use the words of the modern author’? who
to such associations of Hermes with bodies of warer. But our
had deep empathy into feminine nature and who imagined such
oldest source, Hesiod, names Hermes just in the passage where
to be the case for female devotees of a purely phallic God. Just
he most mightiy praises Hecate (Theog. 444), and it 1s just
as for Hermes rhe feminine 1s norhing more than an opportu-
these wo who belong most obvioush to one another.
nity, so for the primal woman he was only an impersonal
Of all the classical manifestacions of the primordial Great
masculinuty, almost a roy.
We may perhaps completely ignore here the descent from
Goddess who called Hermes inro the world as the prototype
of rhe secrer lover, Hecare is che most Hermeric. Ás a messen-
Quranos and Hemera and count it as valid only for Aphrodite.
ger (angelos) she must be vinged, just like her purely celestial
Hermes, the primal lover 1s called forth (or brought forth)
Doppelgángerin, Iris. Like Hermes, Hecate guides souls; and at
from the primal woman: he is her own masculine counterpart
crossToads, represented by the Hecaraia which were built up
in the case of the primal Aphrodite, the phallic servant-God
on three-cornered pillars, she appears just as out of place in
in the case of the primal Artemis of Lake Boibeis. All these
the classical world as do the four-cornered roadside Herms.
elements of the seminal situation are contained in the cradi-
At every new moon she there received cakes and smoked offer-
cion: che Grear Goddess, the living primal Herm, and as
ings, as did Hermes.** With Herrnes she guards the gates and
background somerhing about the primal waters, which in
with hum, too, brings wealth and good fortune to barns (Theog.
mpyrhological language is the arena of becoming."” Ir may be
444). She has hardh less to do witch fruitfulness than has
reasonable co suppose thar Hermes’ possesston in
Hermes. Associations with a kind of eroticism that one may
Peloponnesian Pharai of a spring with sacred fish in it, a sort
find crass and vulgar and a connection ro souls and spirits are
of fishpond, reflects a vague memory of this original scene.’*
characteristic for her.** The same is the case (and the problem)
In Arcadia, too, he was honored in the vicinity of swamp and
with Hermes, and with him it is even more problemarical since
spring.”? Often the Herms do nor simply show the way but
we can now compare father and son also from this angle. On
indicate where the next spring is to the wanderer.*’ According
to one tradition, the Hermes statue—a very ancient Herm—of
the lofty level of the idealistic, ingenuous Eros, with his pas-
che Thracian city Amos was fished out of the sea.*’ Thar the sion for self-sacrifice and for reaching out beyond his own life,
the union of phallus, soul, and spirit seems conceivable, but
76D, H, Lawrence, Lady Chatterley5 Lover.
77CÉf. Jung-Kerényi, 46f. 82She bore him three daughters:
Schol. in Lyc. Alex. 680.
78Pausanias, VII 22, 4; and Jung-Kerényi, 55. 83He conceived Krataiis with her: Schol. in Hom. Od XII, 124;
79Ar Phencos and Srymphalos; see Farnell, op cit, W. 80. Theopomp in Porphyry's On Abstinence, TI, 16.
80CF. U. vy Wilamowirz-Moellendorf, Hellenistische Dicbrung, 11, Berlin, 1924, s4Preller-Robert, op. cit., I, 322, 402.
102f. 85Cf. Kerényi, Apollon, 157; 3. ed. T4Sf.
81Kallimachos, Diegeres (Norsa & Virelli), Florence, 1934, VII, Z2ff,.

115
114
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

on thus low, Hecatean level . . . ? We musrt recall chat the Her-

metic essence, seen in his most ancient representations, may
only to us appear so low and vulgar, whereas there, where Hecate
ruled che world of northern Greece and Thrace** in the form
of “Aphrodite Zerynthia,' it is precisely the crassest thar is the
holiesr and mosr sptiritual.
86CÉ. Kerényi, Das Argáiche Fent, 67; in Werkaug, vol. 1, 140.

The Mystery of the Herm

Through the mythologem we have discussed above, which

1s a very ancient story that Herodotus was already probably
huncing at, Hermes, the source of his own world, was traced
back ro the source of life irself. More precisely, he was traced
back co a masculine kind of life-source that remains very close
to the feminine, yer only so close that ic, being che more active,
can still manage to bless che other more constant one with cwo
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 nor 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

116
 PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
relared manifestations of the Herm form, which strikes us as
form the texr. In point of fact, the traditions of that story have
s0 Strange.
long since been connected to the reference in Herodotus.*?
We call to mind, now, this strange thing, the Herm, not
Working directly from the religious life, the historian says char
only its ithyphallic form but also its quadraric groundplan:
the Acthenians were che first of the Greeks co adopt the
quod quadratus deus solus habeatur (‘let the four-square God alone
ithyphallic structure of their Herms from the Pelasgians, whose
possess this”), as was said. The quadratic form, however, calls
cultic practices continued in the mysteries on Samothrace. In
for a different critical examination than the ithyphallic form
those same mysteries, the enlightening sacred histories would
with which it 15 bound up, and only the latter is attribured ro
be related as well (11, 51).
the mysteries of Samorhrace. The square form char became
Herodotus is nor unsupported in antiquity in his asser-
classical was known in antiquity to be an Athenian invention.*?
tion. Kallimachos, a learned authority on living Greek religion,
In ies oldest form, rather broad and more slab han pillar, ur
believed him withour needing to call upon other sources or
may originate in similarly shaped tombstones,* bur it 15 nor
his own experience. His poem, which began with a question to
believed that the idea of Hermes developed out of those. If
an ithyphallic Herm, has not been preserved; we know only
che phallic aspecr, though, belongs intrinsically to the Hermes
from a summary of the contents that the God who was ad-
idea, then ir could easily enough have drawn tomb and tomb-
dressed did not refer to the fabled Pelasgians but explicitly to
stone into its realm. The artis: could also have drawn his
the Tyrsenians, the ancient Mediterranean folk who lived on
inspiration from there. Burt the Herm itself was created only
rhe islands of rheThracian Sea, and ro their mystery teachungs
when the pure quadratic form came to prevail in the
(‘mystikos logos).*® Greek scholars and testimonies from the clas-
groundplan. This form 1s an archerypal expression of torality,
sical and Hellenistic periods confirm that the Herms have an
inasmuch as it 15 rooted in the very foundation of the world.
import which was also expressed in a sacred tale, in a
The Greek coin minters unconsciously, though for har no
They describe, too, where both thus mode of rep-
mythologem.
less symbolicalhy, used this same form as quadratum-incusum{ the
resentarion and this mythologem are ar home: in Samorthrace.
forged square”’) on che more chthonic side of their small round
The world of northern Greece and Thrace forms a connected
works of art.?! Since the quadratic base is so firmly and
geographical area around this island, and chis region includes
chthonically rooted, it fits to the phallic representation. In
the territory of Lake Boibeis. The mythologem that has its
setting art Lake Boibeis can, for internal as well as external 89Pausanias, [ 24, 3 and IV 33,3.
reasons, be essentially identical with the sacred story of 901. Curtius, “Die antike Herme,' 7ff, (and against R. Lullies, Die Typen
der griechischen Herme, [Kónigsberg, 1931], 42) in Die Wissenschaft am Scheide-
Samorthrace. Perhaps present also in the same place there are wege von Leben und Geist, Klages-Fesischrifi (Leipzig, 1932), 26, 9.
91Cf. Kerényi-Lanckoronski,
Der Mythos der Hellenen in Meisterverken der Münz-
87CÉ, C. A. Lobeck, Aglaopbamus, II, Kónigsberg, 1829, 1213. kunst, (Amsterdam/ Leipzig, 1941), 21; in Mérkausg, vol. 1, 211.
88Kallimachos, Diegeseis, VIII 33fE cf. IV 1.

119
118
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
Arcadia, where the “Kyllenic style” probably was most authen-
tic, che square structure was especially favored, also for the
culric statues of other Gods.°? Later ir becomes very common-
place and loses mosr of irs expressiveness. Of the Arcadian
Deiry Herms, thar of Zeus Teleios in Tegea 1s signuficant for
understanding the archerypal meaning of this form. Telezos
denotes a totality that also incorporares che chthonic side of
being. As an epither applied to Zeus and Hera, ir stands for
the wholeness chat is attained in marriage. Through chis pro-
rorypical (if not “ideal”) marriage pair, this rype of wholeness
is exemplified for us humans.”
From the Greek point of view, the quadratic form as ap-
plied to the Herm 1s nor odd. Also nor strange or shocking
for he Greeks was the irhyphallic shape. For the Olympians
this was entirely unfitting, except for Hermes, whom we are
crying to understand. In Artica, 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” (natu-
rally in erotic affairs) is something nacural, Of Hermes, who
recewes this same epithet, one can indeed say chat 1 huts che
mark.?* And the same applies to his priapic form. Yet, the
Arhenians distinguished Hermes from such lesser Gods and
92M. W. De Visser, Die nicht menschengestaltigen Gótter der Griechen, (Leiden,
1903), 23, and the entry in Realene. VIL Pauly-Wissowa, 704f,
93T his importanr fact completely eluded H, Bolkenstein in his "Telos bo
gamos," Mededeel. Kon ink, Akad. Merenseh. Afd. Letterk. Deel 76, Series B., No.2.,
(Amsterdam, 1933}.There also, quite unintentionally, he seeks to weaken
The most complete collection of their
the testimony of ancient scholars.
remarks 15 to be found in his article.
Cf H. Herter, De dis Anicis Priapi sémilibus, Diss. (Bonn, 1926}.
95Otto, Homeric Gods, op. cir., 111.
120
PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
thought rather of a sacred story from the mysteries which ex-
plained this situation for chem. Not only Herodorus and other
scholars did this, but the common people did also. There was a
famous statue of “Hermes ar the Gate," the propulaios, in front
of the propylacum of the Acropolis, which folk-usage called
amuétos, “not a participant in the mysteries."** This statue was
the work of Alkamenes; it was a Herm, bur one in which the
excessive phallus, which reminded Herodorus of the Kabeiroi,
was suppressed.""” The outline that remained did not appear as
a full-fledged sign of a etelexmenos (“initiated one”). We must
consequently follow Herodotus and Kallimachos and approach
the mystery of the Herm in their terms.
In the environs of Samorthrace we find (as expecred’) paral-
lels and allusions even ourside 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 irs home ar the
Hellespont on ancient Phrygian soil, and from che 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 che hero of Petrontus'
picaresque novel (Sar. 140). This simply bespeaks the times
and conforms to the intentionally base level of the novel's style.
All the more sigruficant, chough, is thar Hermes’ guardianship
of souls is underscored precisely in this connection and ex-
96CÉ. Preller-Robert, 1, 402.
97"Benearh the head of the propulaios, which Alkemenes completed, one
can no longer think of the ithyphallus," says Wilamowirz in Der Glaubeder
Hellenen 1, (Berlin, 1931), 162. Noceworthy is che inner inscription on
the copy found in Pergamon: CNOTHISAUTON thar is, “know thyself/"
the divine-human in you.
121
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
plained as follows: qui animas ducere et reducere solet (“the one who
leads souls away and leads them back agan’). The Priapus
connection is important, too, because he is relared co deach in
a way that is similar co Hermes. He guards noc only gardens
bur graves. Wherever he is placed is mortis et vitai locus, the place
of life and death. This epigram, which so succinctly and pre-
cisely describes his vital place in che realm of death, derives
from the cime of the firsr 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 acci-
dental and unimportanr. Ir was a step forward when a great
archeologist thought to look for come meaning in che most
beautiful example of this group of monuments, and we are
grateful for the publication of his work.?’ He held char the
phallic marker was a symbol of facher-right and could origi-
nally have belonged only on the graves of men. ['he image was
meant to preserve the viriliry of the dead man. This explana-
tion moves roughly ar the level of Petronius. It is unclear on
the point of “father-right symbol,’ since phallic shapes ap-
peared on the graves of Etruscan men, who may well have
been living still in a culture dominaced by morher-right.' Ir
presumes in addition that the meaning which the author as-
cribes to the marker was forgotten even before the tombstone
was created, for the nearly one-merer high stone phallus bears
93H. Herter, “De Priapo/” Religionagesd. Versuche u. Vorarbeiten XIII (Giessen,
1932), 232 & 229.
99L. Curtius, in Klages-Festscbrift, op. cit. I9fE.
t00Cf. E. Althcim, Epochen der róm, Gesch., (Frankfurc a/M., 1934), 234ff,
122
PART 11: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
the name and portrair of a woman, “Lysandra of Alexandros.”"
The mistaken interpretation does noc diminish our grati-
rude to che author who has made public this unique monument
from the Museum of Smyrna. For on the condition thacr one
credits ir with a vital meaning, ir speaks an intelligible lan-
guage. Set into the lower portion of the mushroom-shaped
phallic monument 1s a Herm. Ie shows the lare form of che
Herms, the period of the gravestone being II century B.C.; ir
1s not ithyphallic. Outside on both sides appear two dogs, the
anumals thar accompany the female guide of souls, Hecate.
Present here, then, is che sphere of Hecate-Hermes, into which
the realm of Hades can ghosr-like discharge itself. In the co-
rona of this lower part the dead woman, waited on by a smaller
maiden figure, reigns like a Demeter. From the two sídes wo
winged creartures present her with a garland and a sacred sash.
Their butterfly wings identify them as spmbolic representations
of the soul, as “psyches."To the right of the enthroned woman
cos a serpent with head upraised. Ie remunds us of Demerer's
serpent on a frequently found representation of the mystery,
which the initiate, who stands before the throne of the God-
dess, befriends,!°!
The whole of che monumenr constitutes a transfigured
sphere, accented as spiritual by means of the two psyche fig-
ures; it grows upward, as it were, out of the lower parts, These
psyche figures, as Curtius noticed, are remarkable in chat they
are wearing mens clothing, hence are souls of the male sex
which are presenting the dead woman there with the symbols
of immorrality. These masculine psyches are particularly suir-
able to this monument, which in its tortality shows a
IOICf, Farnell, op. cit. IT, Plate XVa, of the Urna Lavacelli in Rome.
123

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
development and completion of the Herm thar 1s encased in
irs base. The monumenr directly poses the question; does nor
the stone phallus, and with it he Herm, have for the transfig-
ured woman the same meaning as do those masculine souls, as
the primary source of immorrtality on which women draw the
same as men? Án 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
che region of Phrygia; it was so for the Greeks already 1n ar-
chaic times. In other words, seed is also soul. [his view appears
already on a black-figured Arcic vase.122 There we find a black-
bearded man who is blowing on a double flute; he 15 idtyphallic.
Four drops of semen are falling towards a large fluttering bur-
cerfly, which itself seems to be che firsr 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
flurters chere, and the spiritual armosphere 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 ir plays a part
in rhe 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 ferni-
rune form of lukos (‘wolf ").!® Although thus name (in Lan
102Cf, H. Günterc, Kalypro, Halle, 1919, for further references.
103CE Herter, “De Priapo/’op. cit, 134, [G0É.
104CF, Kerényi, Pythagoras und Orpheus, Albae Vigiliae Ll, Amsterdam, 1940,
57.
105CÉ O. Immisch, Glotta 6, 1915, 193. Also, Günrerr, op. cit., 220.
124
PART Il: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
phallaena, from whuch Italian and Spanish have falena) is adapred
to the sex of the psyche of the soul-butterfly which is consid-
ered to be feminine, it confirms the view char is invoked by the
phallic tombstone of Lysandra: the psyche as flurtering moth
has a masculine origin. (‘The double meaning of psyche, which
probably firsr meant “soul” and only later “butterfly” is un-
paralleled in any other language.) This 15 illustrared in the most
tangible way possible by the two aforementioned representa-
tions. This (butterfly) psyche carries forward something rhac
is masculine, and this is the same sort of immortalicy which
Lysandra is symbolically presented with in the wo masculine
psyches, Immortality 1s looked upon here in general, and so
too for woman, under the aspect of the active, che masculine.
Which God reigns over this aspect of immortaliry? Un-
doubtedly it is Hermes, the phallic and active one. Proceeding
from che wider environment of the Samothracian mysteries,
we found the meaning of the combination of those factors
which otherwise appeared so difficule to understand in the
nature of this God. We found this meaning not in a dogma or
teaching but in genuine, direct perception, in a truly evidenr
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 con-
sidered as symbols; however, it can also constitute in a
crystallized form, the subsrance of religious celebrations, of
mysteries. Ïn any case, behund the symbol-whether it be a natu-
ral 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
125
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
aspects: a masculine and a feminine, a creative and a lechal. If
one insights ic, however, through the source of all things, 1
holds another dimension. Another way of saying ir would be
char an aspect considered in itself, for insrance the masculine
as phallus (or, as moth seen as phailus), loses for us che fourth
|
1
TT
dimension (time and exchanges ir for the fifth; ir exchanges
the temporal aspect for rimeless mearung and for the source
hac has no beginning, for pure being.
The dimension of time is missing from all the forms of
Greek religion, from its culrs, its myrhs, irs mysreries. In myth
it appears as a special pre-time, out of which time proceeds.'**
Wherever one looks in the world of chis religion, the unfer-
tered eye can see primordial meaning and primal source, a source
perceptible in the sculprure of narure.
The main thing chac is known to us about the mysreries of
Samorthrace is that they broughr ro mind the masculine aspecr
of this source that continues forever actively working within
che human being.” According to Herodorus and other wit-
nesses, the Gods who reign on Samorhrace, che Kabeiro1, 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 che mystery religion on Samorthrace there stood
an ithyphallic pair.'*5 In a Hermetic-lucky way the aged Goethe
divined cheir essence:
106Cf. P Phlilippsons pioneering work, Zeitart des Mythos in Untersuchungen
über den Griechischen Mythos, {Zürich, 1944), 43Fff.
107CFf. Kerényt. Der grosce Dainion, 29ff; Merkausg., vol. I, 3Z04tf.
108Hippolytus, Refutario Harr, \' 8, 9.
126
PART IT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
They are Gods! Wondersome add,
Who ever again re-create themselves
And never know what they are.109
This “never knowing” would be the blind phallus, the pure
iumpulse, in contrast to the Hermetic phallus which, in its own
special way, is conscious of being so. Goethes Kabeiroi reach
the level of psyche or spirit only by stages; unlike Hermes, they
do nor 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 our. In the
Greek world the Kabeiroi acquired a stare of transparency af-
ter the manner of the Greek Gods; sometimes it was of a
Dionysian sort, scometimes 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, contin-
ues through his son Pais, then runs on to Pratolaos, he firsr
human, and reaches finally the masculine side of the firsr pair
of lovers Mitos, the man named “germseed," who signifies
unending continuation.!!° The means of mediation between
Gods and men, berween the original source of souls and the
animated creature, 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 1s the Hermetic, that type
which comes through the guide of souls and messenger. In the
e FaustTI, BO7SÍE Cf. Kerényi, Das Azg. Fest, SB; Werkaug, vol.
, 133F/.
110Pictured in Wolters-Bruns, Das Kabirenbeiligtum bei Theben, Berlin, 1940,
Plate 5.
127
 PART TIT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS

Hymn, Hermes’ ambassadorial office was traced back to an the born.

The grear Goddess, who ar Lake Boibeis called forth the
iniciation ceremony, and in this way he was associated explic-
itly wich che Underworld. The God of che mystery is himself
first discharger of souls, is under many names and guises the
mother of souls and mistress of ghosts: as Hecate, as Rhea
generally the first to be initiated, as Demeter was in Eleusis;
there she pre-figured the experience which was then re-expert- Kybele {the Near Eastern form of the primal Arremis), as
Demeter, as Persephone. As was already pointed out, there are
enced and re-lived by her devotees. There can be no furcher
many reasons for identifying the myrthologem that was cold
doubt about what mysreries were meant 1n the Hymn. The
about her with the sacred story of the Kabeiroi mysteries hinted
Kabeiroi cleansed the angelos on the shores of Lake Acheruse
at by Herodorus. This identification has a genuine probabil-
and made her a Goddess of the realm of souls. They are Gods
of souls, according to their phallic nature. Out of his relation iry. Whether rhe two stories were exactly the same and included
the same names is a question that can never be answered. Their
to the Kabeinan nature grows Hermes’ role as guardian of
correspondence 1s sufficiently and essentially proven by che
souls, which consists in “ducere et reducere;’ and also in hus am-
bassadorial role, which in the Hymn is linked up with his
fact thar the same myrhological síruation can be established in
guardianship. This is probably che point where Hermes and Samorhrace. The grear primordial Goddess, called by all che
names just mentioned, rules on the island.'"!
che Kabeiroi agree 50 completely chac ir was possible for the
The classical myrhographic tradition,‘'? which deliberarely
Herm to be considered the authentic symbol for the
avoids clarity in stacements about the mystery Deities, giwes
Samothracian mysteries. Ïe is as the God of the Kabeirian
the name Kabeiro to the primordial Mother of the Kabeiroi,
mysteries char Hermes 1s ithyphallic and a guide of souls. This
and speaks, moreover, of three “Kabeirian nymphs.” ['hus tra-
is the reason why the phallic aspect was allowed co appear in
dition breaks down the trinitarian form in the same classical
che Hymn only indirecth, only in che Titanic behavior of the
God, and also why the ghostly aspect was only hinted ar. This way as does a sculptor when he surrounds a Hecare statue
with three dancing maidens and as does another one when he
ghostly aspect derives from the source of life being a discharg-
depicts her as three separare, lesser Goddesses and outfits hem
ing of souls. Those dwarfish and grotesque—indeed basically
with the arrributes of the Great Goddess.!!* The “Kabeirian
ghostlike and embryonic—figures on the vase paintings of the
nymphs" are related to the Kabeirian Mother in the same way.
Theban Kabeirion are only one manifestation of che souls
In Thebes, the Grear Goddess Demerer 1s named Kabiria and
nature: in this image it stands under the sign of Dionysos and
develops in the direction of comedy. The original discharger ¡ICE Preller-Roberr, op. cir, 1, 328, 4; 851, 2; 856f.
of souls, however, remains forever the guide of souls, the mes- 112Akusilaos of Argos and Pherekpdes of Athens, both of the fifth cen-
by O, Kern inPauly-Wissowa,
curyB. C. Cf. che passage Realene X, 1399f
senger and herald berween che realm of souls and the world of [e E. Perersen, Archiol.-epigr Minbeil. aus Oesterreich 5, 1881, 26ff, and
32

129
128
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
proves by this her connection both to the realm of che dead
and co the Kabeiror, In all of hese manifestations she is char
feminine foundation of the absolute-masculine, of the Kabeiric
essence, about which the mpythologem of the primal Herm in-
structed us,
Je is a soul-realm as the primordial foundation of all actu-
alizations in life thac appears here in feminine images: a middle
realm berween being and non-being and also a foundation for
the ambassadorial office. The primordial mediaror and mes-
senger moves berween the absolute “no” and the absolure “yes,”
or, more correctly, berween two "nos" that are lined up againsr
each other, berween two enemies, berween woman and man. In
this he stands on ground that is no ground, and there he cre-
ates the way. Erom our 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, however, belongs a herald's scaff, around which intertwine
two antagonistic-loving serpents, a spmbol of mediation. In
the high archaic period chis prororypical image appears as the
girdle on the body of the primordial Goddess herself, on the
Giant Gorgo in Korfu, who 1s 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 Achens one of the carriers of the Eleusinian mys-
teries had to belong to the family srock of the herald, whose
ancestral father was Hermes.''* Moreover, according to one
tradition it was Hermes who together with Daeira (a puzzling
114CÉ Preller-Roberc, op. cit, 1, 411, 1.
130
PART I: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
manifestation of the original Goddess) begor Eleusis, who was
the founder of the mystery-site,!!*
Whar, then, are the mosr prominenrt associations of Her-
mes to the Kabeirian mysteries? Up to this point we have spoken
only of the general features of his Kabeirian nature. To these
belonged, firse of all, che Herm as a phallic monumenr. Before
we can evaluate the evidence correctly, wo more general dis-
cussions are necessary. One has to do with the Herm. To irs
complete form belongs the head which is borne by che qua-
dratic base; this is symbolic of its self-knowing, self-conscious
nature. The name of the God comes, however, from the lower
part. Hermezas, contracted as Hermes, is a further develop-
ment of herma, which is the name not of a “stone heap” (Bermax
or hermaion, both of them derived from herma) but of a single
stone, which could be used also as a supporr or a ship's ballast;
the word meanr all of chese things. '!*The simplest concewable
monument (a phallus monumenr’) was the primordial symbol
of the Kabeirian and Hermetic ideas; thus sypmbol was offered
by nature herself,
The Kabeirian idea appeared among che ancient Medirer-
ranean 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 stimulared
115Pausanias, 1 38, 7.
116 Herma, however, never meant “Herm," for this is expressed in Greek
by "Hermes" or “small Hermes," bermilion.
17Cf. original German edition of Jung-Kerényi, Einfübrung in das Vesen der
Mythologie, Amsterdam/ Leipzig (Pantheon), 1941, 37, n. 1, which ques-
tion has been further claborated by che author in “Archetypisches und
Kulrurrypisches in der Griechischen und Rómischen Religion," Paideuma
(Frankfurc a/M.) V 3, 1951, 98-102.
131
 HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
co unfold, since the stone pointed to a direct human experi-
ence of something divine. Therefore, the “Hermeias” could
reveal itself in many places within the realm of Greek culture,
even if nor always so clearly to everyone as it did to a seer
specially chosen by him, a poer of genuine Hermeric spirit.
Where the Kabeiroi preceded him with their cule, 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 mulcitude is Hermes? How can Hermes identify humself
with a plurality of figures which ar the very least musr consist
of father and son? This is the second of the broader questions,
and we need still to discuss 1.
In che masculine principle per se—as abstracted from indi-
vidual persons— the begetrer and the begorrten are borh present;
indeed, they are identical.''* In che mythologem of Aphrodite*s
birrh, che phallus 15 also the child, jusr as Hermes is both che
Kyllenic monumenrt (the Herm) and che Kpllenic child. This
identity recetves its most tangible expression in the image of
the paternal seed falling to earth in the form of fruic. If we
conceive of the soul as masculine, as the eternal seed har 15
the begetter and procrearor, ir is also always whar 1s begotren,
at once father and son. The irhyphallic pair (as the smallest
number’) in Samorhrace represents the masculine in its mini-
mal unfolding, Of chese two, one must be the Kabezrian farher,
and the various Kabeirian genealogies bear out this assump-
cion. On the often discussed T heban vase-painting we sce father
and son. Granted, the further development—primordial men
and primordial seeds—-1s also indicated here, bur we are nor
now interested in the Kabeirian precursors of the human race,
113Cf, Jung-Kerény1, 56.
132
PART IT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
who follow in the genealogies from che third place onwards.
According to the sacred history thar Herodorus alludes to,
Hermes must be the original begerter. Yer the relevant docu-
mentary witnesses equate hum explicitly with only the young
Kabeiros, the son, named Kasmilos. Ir never became parr of
classical tradition that there are two Hermes figures. We recall
chac the word eriounios (‘luckbringer”), which is otherwise an
epither only for Hermes, appears as the name of a pair of
chthoruc 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.!2°
So Kabeirian is his God that he can even appear
as a
duality.
Tradition has ir that one of the islands on which the
Kabeirot were ar 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 signified a pre-
Greek Hermes, who certainly was one of the original Kabeiroi.
Here, too, according to one inscription,2! chere were “ini-
tiates into the mysteries of Hermes” (tetelesmenoi Hermei). After
the foregoing discussion it is superfluous to ask whether Her-
mes was identical here with Kasmulos; like Hermes, Kasmulos
is named among the Kabeiroi on an inscription, and yet he is
somewhat removed from them.!2? Hermes was both facher and
son ar the same time, The situation is similar in the case of
119Antoninus Liberalis, 25.
120Furcwangler-Reichhold, Talizh-ionisdhe Amphora aus Malci( Munich) Plate
21; Gerhard, Erruskicher Stamnos (Museo Gregoriano) CCAL.It 15 to O.
Frocbe-Kapreyn that we owe our appreciation of the importance
of these
vase paintings.
121Farnell, op. cit., V, 80.
122]bid., 81.
133
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH

Hephaistos as father of che Kabeiroi: under his sign, all the Camillus, the divine boy and the son of a divine father, seems
Kabeiroi are Hephistoi.!?* The most important evidence, there- to be the prototype for the sons of holy Roman families, espe-
fore, is to be judged in thus lighr.'*" Following this line of cially for those of the flamen Dialis(“hugh priesr of Jupiter”).!??
thought, the triad char is narrowly described as Kabeirian would This unique identificacion of Hermes with the young
be equivalent to Demeter and Persephone (char is, the primal Kabeiros corresponds to the classical viewpoint, which already
Goddess under two aspects) and Hades; the fourth figure, who in che Lliad has him appear in the form of a youth. Sculprors of
is set apart, Kasmilos, would be equivalent to Hermes. More- archaic tunes present him somertimes as bearded, sometimes as
over, in the vase paintings where two Hermes figures show up, youthful; this pouthfulness always remains characteristic of him.
one thinks automatically that the elder is Hades, the more Ïe 15 connected originally with Hermes’ Kabeirian nature, just
paternal spouse of Persephone, and that only the younger one as it is also connected to his close relarionshup ro the pourhs
1s Hermes. of the palaestra. His youthful image was the only classical-
The ancient Italian testimonies concerning Mercurius cor- Hellenistic form char was suicable for borh che “divine child”
respond extensively ro the non-classical tradition concerning and the “son," for the first-born and the first-begotten.!** His
Hermes,'2* and they would support whar here has been worked protection of the palaestra is also Kabeuric. He stands there,
out as the God's phallic nature. To go into his would lead us whether yourthful or bearded, as a Kabeician Eros who strikes
too far astray from our intention of leruing the Greek marerial us as curious: as the active and manifest original source and at
tell its story. However, one may observe in passing that on the same time as che prototype of a playfully and nimbly un-
Ecruscan mirrors Hermes is called turms aitas, “Hermes of folding masculinity.
Hades.” This expresses, in the ancient Iralian manner, Her- 129Cf. Kerényt, Greeks & Romans, op. cit, 21 9f.
mes’ chthonic aspecr,?* as well as the Hades-Hermes pair, 130CÉ, Jung-Kerényi, 66.
Kabeirian father and son. In Italy the latter was also named
Mercurius Camillus,!2? after Kasmilos, whose role in the
Samorthracian mysteries is compared by Varro to that of the
Roman boy, the camillus, at the wedding celebracion.'** Kasmilos-
123Cf, Phorius s.v.
124Schol. in Apoll. Rhod., Arg. I, 917, following Mnaseas and
Dionysodoros.
125As expected from Alcheim's research. Cf. his Griech, Góter im Álten Rom,
on Mercunus.
39ff.
e Mat. dí Storia delle Rel. 9, 1933, I7FE
126Kerényi, Studi
127 Alcheim, op. cil, 82.
128De lingua Las. VII 34.

134 135
 4

Hermes and the Rant

Have we wich Hermes reached right inro the mysterious

abyss of the active seed? Whether taken literally or spmboli-
cally, only these words can define the point from which the
world of Hermes opens itself and comes into actual being.
Here che question, which we pur asíde ar the beginning of our
inquiry, crops up: “How could jusr thus appear to che 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 licerally
of something abysmal, of somethung char 15 active from the
pre-historic depths, whose spmbolization as given by nature
inself—every bodily organ also expresses ies meaning—s this
so-called fertility sprmbol. If this 1s indeed the way these things
are related, then the question proves to be unnecessary, and
whar remains for us is to show the depths char open for us

HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
with Hermes wherever they make themselves noticeable in the
MONUMENTS.
A unique report has come down to us thar relares co an
area which lies in closest proximity to the mysteries: che family
cult,:?! or in any case a cult thar was practiced in che inner-
mosc part of the Greek home. Here occurs the first mention
of the hermaphrodire in the literacure. T heophrasrus charac-
terizes the superstitious person, among others, in the following
sketch:
“On the fourth and seventh day of che month he has wine
cooked ar home, goes out and buys myrtle branches, incense,
and offering cakes, and returns home where he crowns che
hermaphrodires with garlands the whole day through.""”?
Does the exaggerarion consist only in saying that the su-
perstirious person did this every fourth and sevench day of the
monch and for che whole day, or does ir also lie in saying that
in the innermost part of his house stood not only one bur
several stacues of the hermaphrodite? Was the presence of ar
least one hermaphroditic stacue within the house just as com-
mon as a Hermes and a Hecare out in front of the house, in
che yard, or at the gateway to the road? Unfortunately we know
too lirtle about the Greek house-culr to be able to answer this
with certainty, either affirmatively or negatively. This much,
though, seems to be certain, char all three kinds of divine statue
belonged among the relics of the house that were inherited
from the ancestors; they belonged to the “paternal,’ and pos-
131Cf, Kerényi, Der grosse Daimon, 28; Werkaug, vol. 1, 303.
132Theophrasrus, Charact. 16, IO.
138
PART II: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
sibhy also the “marernal,’ Gods.!?? These were, in any case,
related ro the origins of the family: they represented the inex-
haustible source of life and souls from which the family
continued to originate over and over again. And, indeed, the
hermaphrodite withun the house represents so to speak the
origin of the source: he represents the primal condition re-
stored in marriage, the one who precedes even the genes1s of
the firsr Herm and the generation of souls. Ir is nor without
good reason that a widow is found imploring the hermaphro-
dite in a small Arric remple dedicated ro him:'** she is expecting
from him restoracion of that condition which 1s far more han
transient happiness in love or mere amorous union. Even to-
day the Greeks call che married couple to androgyno, “the
androgene."
The position of the Herm ar the entrance—whether 1n
the yard or on the road '**—is that of che mediator. Hermes’
connection to the center of he house, to the Goddess of the
hearcth, is atcested by a Homeric Hymn to Hestia (XXIX).
Every now and hen he appears in his “innermost nook”:
Kallimachos tells how, blackened by smoke, he bounds up from
there to frighten divine maidens (Hymn. 3, 69). Those “inner-
mosr nooks" include the bridal chamber and bedroom, and
there, according to a tradition from Euboia, Hermes rules as
Epitha lamites.!?* The Kabeirian guide of souls 1s ar work both
133H, Bolkenstein, “Theophrasros' Characrer der Deisidaimonia als
religionsgeschichtliche Urkunde,' Religionggesed. Hersuche und bérarbeiten XXI,
2, Giessen, 1929, 45ff. His further inferences rest upon a misunder-
standing of the mythological character of the hermaphrodite,
134Alciphr., Epist, 3, 37,
135Cf, Eicrem in Pauly-Wissowas, Realenc.VIL 701, $ $ 4 & 6.
136Hesych. 5.1
139
ll
IT
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
within the house and without. He guides souls out of his
realm—the world of paths and roads—back into the warm
life of che household, which in Greek sigrufies the “family.” In
his official capaciry as mediacor between the worlds of night
and day, spirits and men, and (standing before the temple)
between the worlds of Gods and mankind, he 1s called Proopylaios
(‘before che gate”) and Pylaios(“before or at the gate”).'*” This
is not only because a thief is the best doorkeeper!!?® One in-
scription names him Pylaïos (‘the one ar the entrance”) and
Iwo other epithers—srrophaios
Harmateus (“driver of the charior”).
(‘“standing at the door-post;" also “cunning,' “versatile”’) and
stropbeus'®? (che “socket” in which the pivor of the door moves)—
show him closely related to door hunges and therefore to the
entrance, but also to a middle point, to the socket, about which
revolves the most decisive issue, namely the alternation life-
death-life.
So lictle abour che Hermes festivals has been handed down
in the tradition because they have to do with the most secret
source and pivot-point of human existence. There were few
temples of Hermes,'*° moreover, just because thar crucial is-
sue was felt wherever people lived and died. Through Hermes,
every house became an opening and a point of departure to
the parhs chat come from far off and lead away into the dis-
137CÉ. Farnell, op, cít., V, 66, and especially the Pythagorean interpretation
of Diogenes Laerrius VIII I, 31, which explicithy connecrs this attribute
of Hermes to his leadership of souls. According to Pyrhagoras he is
tamias psyebon, ‘steward und Orpbeus, 12.
of souls.” Cf. Kerényi, Pythagoras
138As in the conception of late anriquiry (Suidas, “strophaion"”). The
same with Aristoph. Plur. 1153, and the related “stropheus” (Phorius).
139From Erychrai in Asía Minor, Farnell, op. cit.
10M. P Nilsson, Griec. Este von rebgiser Bedeutung mit Ausschluss der Artischen,
Leipzig, 1906, 388.
140
PART IT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
tance. Standing at the doorway, he indicates har here 1s 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 festival
on Crete,!*! che “low ones, ' the slaves, were elevared and served
by cheir masters. At another festival on Samos'**—the feast of
Hermes Charidores—the populace was allowed to steal and
to commit highway robbery. Everywhere thac 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 1n several forms. The inversion of the master-slave
relacionship has its nearest parallel in the Roman Sacurnalia, a
winter solstice festival, whose meaning was the strengthening
of the weakest in that wonderful growth thar one re-experi-
ences with the sun afrer having already experienced it as seed
and embryo. That which hovers between being and non-being,
seemingly powerless, repressed in servitude, reduced to the life
in the nocturnal darkness of the seed, finds its way upward.
Hermes, the psychopomp, also called Harmateus, the “soul-
carrier, ' guides ir, brings ir back , ..
An ancient marufestation of Hermes points particularly to
the parallelism berween the sun and of the leading upward of
the soul. Ar the festival of Tanagra, the only festival of Hermes
whose sacred rirual»—they were dedicated to eliciting the God's
presence—are intimarely familiar to us, the handsomest youth
carried a ram on his shoulders around che city’s walls, He did
chis in imitacion of the God who is said to have driven off a
t41Achen. VI, 263F and XIV, 639B.
142Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 55.
141
 PART IT: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS
good reason that the golden rarns of saga are gifts of Hermes.
pestilential illness in this manner.'*? The image of ram-bearer
As is well known, he gives such sun-like animals to the house
(Kriophoros), as Hermes is 50 often portrayed,'** 1s a highly sig-
of Atreus and to Phrixos.!*°
nificanr manifestation. The story thar Hermes had performed
We did nor wish to consider the depths of Hermes, and yer
rhis act for exactly chis purpose may be a later addition to the
they have themselves led us, on a truly Hermetic parh, far in
mythologem; this becomes plainthy apparent in its basic fea-
this direction. Erom a purely hustorical investigation, our 1n-
cures—the epiphany with che ram and the circum-
quiry has led to the pre-historical ram-God, whose form was
ambulation—and is hardly ro be segregared from che further
raken nor only by Hermes but also by his brother Apollo, who
connections of Hermes to the ram.!**5 As a sacrificial anumal
as a primal child was also a small sun.'*! Granted,
this figure is
and cheriomorphic expression, the ram belongs generally with-
nor in the classical Greek manner. Irs lack of refinemenrt can
in the Kabeirean context.!** When Hermes begot Saos, the
perhaps be best adduced in a crude ram-headed Herm that
founding hero of Samorthrace, with Rhene (rhe “sheep”),'"’ he
was found in the neighborhood of Gythion.!'*? In this city, lo-
certainly did so in the guise of a ram. A whole series of gem
cated in southern Peloponnesus, there was at the end of the
pictures shows him as a ram with one or more—in one case
second century A.D. a temple for the ram-headed sun-God of
even with four-—other rams.!** Unmistakable, too, 15 the sa-
the Egyptians, Ammon (Pausaruas ITI, 21, 8). In addition, a
cred history of the mother-mysteries, to which Pausanias alludes
cule stacue of Apollo Karneios testifies char this God was for-
(17, 3,4); what is said chere about Hermes and the ram Pausa-
merly worshupped mn this same place. His epither stems from
nias knows, but will nor reveal. As a ram, Hermes begers the
karnos, a pre-Greek word for livestock,!* which in Greece al-
divine child of the mysteries, who though he is nor merely the
ways meant primarily sheep. Here the larer Apollo is preceded
sun!? yet does resemble the new-born sun, and as son of the
by a ram-God, whose former, old-Mediterranean importance
ram-facther is also presumably the lamb (or the ram) which
is verified by the fact thar Ammon—most likely an ancienr
Hermes brings and carries around the neighborhood, thereby
making him a sun-bearer of the new sun. It is nor without 150Euripides, Oresies, 1.997; Apollod. Bibl. 1 9, 1
15IBesides Eitrem, op. cit, cf. O. Wide and Hófer in Roscher, op. cit, 11,
143Pausanias IN 22, 1; W. E Otro, Dionysus, Bloomingron, Ind., 1965,
42f. SABES dl, Canibiadis; IOTA AS:
144CÉ, Hófers arcicle, in Roscher, Ausfabrl. Lex. der griech. u. róm. Myibologie 153T his follows P Krecschmer's
remarks in Glotta 21, 88. le is also pos-
TI, 1431, sible thar the Greek word is of Ilyrian origin and relates to the old Insh
145CÉ Eitrem, Beitráge z. griech. Religionggeshudhte l: “Der vor-dornische Widder- can (“pie of stones"). Thus the cult of the ram and the Stone monument
gorr/" Christiania Videnskabs-Selskabs Forhandl., 1910, 4, Sff, could be intimatehy connected to the pre-indogermanic religious hert-
146CE,V Fritze, Zeitschbrf: Numim., 24, [11 If, of several indogermanic peoples. Cf. Etruscan carna-names hinted at
tage
147Schol. in Apoll. Rhod., 1, 917; Diod. \, 48. by R. Pertazoni, Sndi Etrusbi [4, 172.
148Eicrem, op. cit., 4.
149For this principle, cf. Jung-Kerényi, 45.

143
142
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS

relacive—serrled finally 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 Romans'** rightly knew a
sun-God and whom they equared 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
relacion to che ram—as father and as bearer—does not indi-
cate a simple identity with the sun. He is nor the source of
light, as rhe sun is, bur rather the source of this source. He also
begot the moon-like and dark Pan. His world originates before
sunrise, and as the source of his world he can only be he one
who himself allows a source of illumination to originate in the Silenos and Hermes
outpouring of souls. Is not, then, the sun re-born in every soul
char is newly guided upward, just as it is in every drop of water
chac mirrors ie? Under the aspect of Hermes, however, the sun
Tr is nor without good reason thar Hermes was supposed
belongs to the soul more essentially than it does to a mirror,
to be che inventor of language.'*" It belongs to the Hermetic
where it is accidental. In che prehistoric depths of the life-
wisdom of the Greek language irself, to one of irs most inge-
source, light and its mirror are begotten simultaneously; there,
nious chance hits, chac the word for the sumplest mure stone
as great Greek philosophers also knew, the source of light and
monumenrt, herma, from which the name of the God stems,
the source of soul are one and the same.
corresponds phonerically to the Latin sermo, “speech” or any
154R. Perrazzoni, Studi Etruicdhi 14, 163Éf. verbal “exposition.’'** The word herma, which in the Greek
155[bid., 171; Murbach's article in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenc. II, A, 902;
O. Hurh, Janus, Bonn, 1932; Alcheim, “Die Sonne in Kule und Myrhos," does nor have this meaning, does however form the basic ver-
Weérter und Saden, N. E. 1. bal root for hermeneia, “explanation.” Hermes 1s hermeneus
156CE Bórtzler, “Janus und seine Deuter;” Sebr. 4. Bremer Mis, Gasellsch,, (‘‘interpreter”), a linguistic mediator, and this nor merely on
1930.
verbal grounds. By nature he is the begetter and bringer of
somerthing lighr-like, a clarifier, God of ex-position and inter-
157Sermonis dator according to an inscription on a statue n che Villa Alban,
CIG. $953, Farnell, op. cir, 62.
E E. Boisacq, Dictionn. erym. de la langue grecque, Heidelberg/Paris, 1923,

144
 HERMES GUIDE OF SQULS
pretation (of the kind also that we are engaged in) which seeks
and in his spirit—the spiric of the shameless ex-position of his
parents’ love affair—1s led forward to the deepest mystery.
For che grear mystery, which remains a mystery even after
all our discussing and explaining, is this: the appearance of a
speaking figure, the very embodumenr as it were in a human-
divine form of clear, articulated, play-relared and therefore
enchanting, language—its appearance in thar deep primordial
darkness where one expects only animal muteness, wordless
silence, or cries of pleasure and pain. Hermes the “Whisperer”
(psitbyristes)' inspirits the warmest animal darkness. His
epiphany supplemenrts the Silenos aspecr of the life-source, in
which the animalistic factor within the Greek pantheon shows
its presence, and within it forms a fundamental harmony and
totality.
Hermes and Silenos—or the Silenoi (plural)—harmonize
in their phallic nature more than just superficially. The bril-
Liant messenger of the Gods, whom Praxiteles represented in
the famous statue of Olympia, carried the child Dionysos on
his arm, a cask ordinarily left to the “teacher of Dionysos,' the
old Silenos.'® Just why Hermes can appear in this role was
made comprehensible to us through the meaning of Kriophoros.
He is the designared bearer of all divine children,'*! since he is
the bringer of souls and of sun-children. His relation to
Dionysos again comes to light in his designation as a God of
the vineyards on the island of Lesbos. Silenos, or Hermes, with
the little Dionysos form a kind of variation on the same theme,
159Hlarpocrar. s.v
160At least sínce Sophocles. Cf. E. Kuhnert in Roscher, op. cit., IV, 476.
I6IOn a vase painting, Hermes brings the child Dionysos to the old
Silenos: Museo Gregoriano ]I, 26 in Roscher, op. ci, 472.
146
PART II: THE HERMES OP LIFE AND DEATH
and are the two sides of the same reality, ‘he mupremo kn
edge of the Greeks, notot however ‘E as ] 1ce tual
without the artist ceeading ic,ie Nevertheless, it wil ilUb ]
summarize our reflections.
We recall chat the Homeric Hymn co Aphrodite mentions
Hermes with the Silenoi as lovers of the nymphs. Ie is another
thing altogerher when a London vase, a so-called Psykrer of
the painter Duris, dating from che first quarter of the fifth
century!®? shows a whole troop of frisky Silenoz, some of them
ithyphallic, whose leader—the eldest of a Satyr chotr, as it
were—appears with the emblems of Hermes: che rraveler's
manrel and the herald's staff. We must linger at this picture
before moving on to another more comprehensive one. Here
no nymphs are apparent. Drunkenness and wine goblets, with
which the figures playfully move about, indicate the half-bes-
tial, half-divine devotees of Dionysos. But why the presence
here of Hermes in the leading Silenos? Ir is believed thar this
picture reflects the choir of a Satyr drama performing some
specific role, similar to the ambassadorial role of Hermes in
whose place che saryr choir was commissioned, as for instance
to lead Hephaistos back up to Olympus. This is one possibil-
icy, but there is another. The appearance of Silenoz, as devotees
of Dionysos, would be in itself mosr natural during the
Dionysian soul-festival in the month of Anthesterion [the eighth
month of the Artic year, corresponding to end of February
beginning of March. -Tr.]. A noted scholar of religion held che
162E, Buschor, Griechische Vasen, Munich, 1940, 164, illus. 183f.
147
 PART 11: THE HERMES OF LIFE AND DEATH
HERMES GUIDE OF SOULS

Silenoi and Satyrs ro be the spirirs themselves, the souls of the
dead.!'® He erred perhaps only in thar the identification of
Saryrs and Sulenoz with the souls of the dead has no evidence
to back ir up and goes agamst the pictorial imagination. Bur
from this point of departure, we recognize what these figures
represent: the source of life which is opened up and is dis-
rhythm, the spirals.!* So far as we can surmuse, this is not a
scene from a Satyr drama. Even if ir were 5so, the facial features
would tell everything—the bestial yet grave face of the one
and the superhumanly intelligent head of the other, and de-
spite this difference the interfusion of their essential forms,
Silenos has the Iyre and lyre-pick of Hermes, while Hermes,
yet clearly marked by his
behund him almosr like a Doppelgánger

101
charging itself. The days of the Anthesreria (“Feast of the
Elowers"’} were open days for the souls, and the fifrh and lasr winged hat and shoes, holds the Dionysian vessel of Silenos in

MON INN
of them, chytroi(‘‘feast of the pots”), was a Hermes day.'*’ On his hand. They have exchanged roles, and this was allowed be-

11

l
Alla
this day che identical meaning of the Silenic nacure and the cause at bottom, where Hermes is merely a Kabeiros, they have

]| INPFFNIDA
office of soul-leader may have manifested itself through the one and the same function: the conjuring of luminous life out

OBNIAIIIDDIS
$0044141 11187
Hermes costume , of the dark abyss that each in his own way is.

paga INN
ULA |]4 SU
Concerrung the actual picture we are here dealing with, it is [t was the Hermetic tune, an unforgertable melody of Greek
mythology, that with all its variacions from the Kabeiror-Silenoi

|
nor merely a matter of conjectural possibilities. We are speak-
aspects to the role of the speech-gifted mediator and

MUN
ing of a Berlin amphora, dating from the same period as the
Pspkter of Duris, whose craftsman is usually named afrer this
psychogogue was to resound in these reflections. Whoever does
not shy away from the dangers of the most profound depths

10001
piece. A connoisseur of Greek vase-painting characterizes the
artist in the following way: “The slender elegance of his dy- and the newest pathways, which Hermes is always prepared to

MONOS
namic figures thar embellish rather than narrate a tale never
actained in its quiet poetry such a pure form as in the figures of
the Berlin vase.”!*5 Here the choir disappears completely from
che observer’s vantage point; whether or not it remains in the
background is unimportant. Before us stands a unique pair:
Silenos and Hermes. The delicare figure of a deer berween them
hinrs ar the untamed world which has been rendered tractable
open, may follow him and reach, whether as scholar, commen-
cator, or philosopher, a greater find and a more certain
possession. For all to whom life is an adventure —whether an
adventure of love or of spiri-—he is the common guide. Koinos
Hermes!
166Cf, Kerényi, Labyrioth-Studien, Alb, Vigüiac XV, Amsterdam, 1941;
Héerkauy,, vol. 1, 226-273.

NNETIIIAASAAAADIAAADDDAA III
by Dionysian magic, and thus highly significant divine playing

RIDN
takes place on a surface rhat 1s etched with the lines of eternal
163A. Dietrich, Kleine Schrifien, Lepzig, 1911, 421,
164CÉ. L. Deubner, Artische Fstz, Berlin, 1932, 112,
165Buschor, op. cit, L6S, Ulus. 166f.

149
148

MANIAD00erAOOAAA)
 Other Works on Gods and Goddesses

The Homeric Hymns TRANSLATED BY CHARLES BOER

This translation, nominated for the National Book Award, has established
itself like none other. Here are the earliest depictions of the divinities as the
individuals who people the Greek mythic imagination. William Arrowsmith
writes: ‘[though] there were translations in plenty, there was nothing like this
remarkable work in which Greek gods appear not as abstract presences bul as
moving and radiant irruptions of the sacred.' (182 pp.)

Pan and the Nightmare JAMES HILLMAN

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Chapters on nightmare panic, on masturbation, rape and nympholepsy, on
instinct and synchronicity, and on Pan’s female loves show the goat-gud u l
work and play in the dark drives and creative passions of cur lives. Include
a full translation of Wilhelm Roscher’s masterful 19th-century mythological
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Goddesses of Sun and Moon KARL KERÉNYVI

Restoring passlonate feminine
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of Girce the enchantress, Medea
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to some of our most puzzling and
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psyche, these four papers explore the myt
the murderess, Aphrodite the golden ]
they lend a deep psychological oric
controversial issues: feminism, the acucul
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Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion KARL KFEH NY

Provides profound appreciation of the Awesome Goddess as an archo
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