Hermes The Greek messenger god, known as Mercury in the Roman pantheon, represents wisdom, cunning, Magic, spiritual illumination, skill with words, and mischief. He is the initiator, the god of beginnings, and the god of travel, commerce, and sales. Wings on Hermes’s feet and helmet sped him on his way as the communicator between the gods or between the gods and mortals. He is messenger to the gods in heaven and psychopomp of the souls of the dead to the underworld. His swiftfootededness makes him the god of speed and running and of athletics.
Hermes is the gatekeeper, the patron of the traveller; his image often appeared at crossroads in ancient times. As a god of healing, Hermes carries a caduceus, the serpent – entwined staff that symbolizes the reconciliation of opposites and is associated with doctors and medicine; he uses it as his magic wand. He is clever, crafty, and sly—the trickster who deceives with eloquent words. He is a consort of Aphrodite, goddess of love, with whom he unites to form the hermaphrodite of alchemy. Wily and playful, he delights in his role as Trickster, bedeviling mortals and immortals alike. The son of Zeus and Maia, one of Atlas’s daughters, Hermes is a thief, a scoundrel, a guide, and a magician.
To protect homes and to ensure that Hermes facilitates access to the other gods, households placed small figurines representing Hermes, called herms, throughout the house and grounds. As communicator, messenger, and jester to the gods, Hermes shares characteristics with gods of other traditions. The Hellenistic Greeks and Romans associated Hermes most closely with Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, magic, music, medicine, surveying, drawing, and writing. Hermes, too, loved music; to apologize to Apollo for stealing his prized heifers, Hermes created the lyre as a present for the god. Hermes also closely resembles the trickster gods of West Africa, the Eshus, and the animal deities of Native American peoples.
Thoth’s association with drawing and writing corresponds with Hermes’s role as a bringer of language. Some myths claimed that Hermes invented the alphabet. Both gods function as arbitrators in disputes between the gods or between the deities and humankind. Thoth works in the underworld as well, acting as the recorder of divine judgments on the souls of the deceased. Besides clerking, Thoth sometimes weighs the souls of the dead himself (a job usually performed by Anubis) in a giant scale that is counterbalanced by a feather of Truth from the goddess Maat, sister to Queen isis. If the soul, heavy from sin and degradation, sinks lower than the feather, it is immediately fed to a slathering monster named Ammit, who waits impatiently under the scales.
Hermes and Thoth together comprise aspects of the legendary Hermes Trismegistus, or “thrice-greatest Hermes,” the greatest of all philosophers, kings, and priests.
FURTHER READING:
- Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. 2d ed. New York: Facts On File Inc., 1999.
- “Thoth: Egyptian Moon God.” Available online at https:// osiris.colorado.edu/LAB/GODS/throth.html. Downloaded August 18, 2004.
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy Written byRosemary Ellen Guiley Copyright © 2006 by Visionary Living, Inc.