Sitting here, the laundry machines doing their thing, I am made both hopeful and hopeless by the mundane qualities of my life. Don't mistake this with a sense of futility, rather with a realization that my life is in desperate need of something new. What, of course is the question.

It is appropriate that I am currently in the Hermes phase of my meditations, because he is bound to put some interesting choices in my path, but I need to be careful, because I do often find myself falling into things that often end up hurting me instead of helping me move forward.

I have recently found myself bringing some old feelings to the surface. This is not odd when dealing with hermes. I have, after all, invited the god of communications into my life, and emotions, like thoughts, need to be expressed, communicated, whether it be to another or to yourself.

Things are not always what they seem.

It is a common enough theme in the way people converse with each other. People are always hiding a part of themselves, it is natural, right? But there is the hiding of private parts of oneself from the general public, and then there is the purposeful putting forth of a false image in order to maniple people, or resent to them what the want to see rather than what you actually are, and that becomes something else, it becomes a lie.

Hermes is the god of lies, and it is important that we try to remember that this does not mean that he is by nature a liar, but rather that he, as the god of communication, is also the god of false communication, of manipulation, of subversion, and of trickery through words.

We all do it. We all lie, and when we present ourselves to others as purely honest, that is in itself a lie.

But can a lie be a good thing. Note that I am not talking about lying to a criminal to protect someone, or keeping the secrets of a friend or loved one to preserve their dignity, rather, can the act of manipulation, or presenting a false image, be part of a healthy life?

The answer, of course, is yes, but let me explore that a little bit.

Hermes the Liar

According to the myth of his birth, Hermes, even as a small child, stole the cattle of Apollo (or Helios, the translations sometimes infer him) and then sacrificed them to the Gods in a fitting way. The theft was designed in such a way as to hide it utterly from the God, and when caught, his story was beguiling and made the Apollo laugh so merrily that he took the boy to Zeus, who then claims him as his son. (Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia)

In this theft, it is often inferred that Hermes is hat God of thieves and liars, and it is not untrue from a mythological perspective, but lying, cheating, and theft were no less looked down upon by the ancient Greeks than they are to us. Theft and lying are not now nor have they ever been things that the Gods have encouraged, yet when people do these things, for ill or for good, they often seek the aid of the Gods, and it seems, Hermes is the God that hears and answers that prayer.

But what exactly is it that the God gives us when he answers such a prayer? Does he make us liars, or does he simply instill in us the capacity to embellish, to tell tales, and yes, to completely make up a story. In other words, he gives us creativity. An amazing gift. And a lie is, in a sense, a misuse of the gift of creativity. The gift without which Homer would never have written his epics.

But what I am trying to get to here, to explore here, is whether a more overarching lie, one in which we create a whole new image of ourselves in order to be perceived as that thing. So, let me take this into a different arena, the arena of adults and the games they play.

Men and women, when engaged in flirting, the merry chase, sex play, etc., often create elaborate images of themselves that are intended to win over, titillate, or even subvert the other's ability to make an informed decision. But, the question is, can a lie, an image created of oneself, be a good thing?

It can when the reason that image is created is to enhance life, love, and the over all experience of both for everyone involved. Putting on leather and creating an image of domination, even though deep inside you are a sweet heart, is a form of this, and it is created to enhance sex. It is a lie that hurts no one, unless they want it to hurt a little, and it is in a situation like this that we find the creativity of Hermes living and breathing in us.

But it also lives in the lie of art, of writing works of fiction, and in the protecting of the self from the world around us.

In the darkness of night, when you can’t seem to get to sleep, what is it that is happening in the air around you? What are you putting out in your frustration, and what are you getting back?

It is an interesting question, and one that came to me as I lay myself down to sleep and thought of Hermes for a second. Interchange, between you and the universe around you, it is at the core of what we are s thinking creatures. What the non thinking creatures, and what our carnal, physical natures give unto the world is something physical, something necessary to the maintenance to the biosphere, but as thinking creatures, as spiritual beings, we provide the cosmos with something else. Creativity, thought, and even evil, and it is up to us to do what we can to make sure we communicate the right things. That we do not release into the world the most horrible of aspects into the aether, but the best of us.

It never occurred to me before that part of what Hermes does is transmit our inner turmoil, our inner thoughts, and our inner emotional states outward into the cosmos. I’m not talking about witchy new agey stuff here, I am talking about exploring the nature of what we thinking creatures are from a standpoint of how much we are part of the universe around us and how thought and emotion are part of the universe as well, for if it was not, could it exist at all?

So, in Hermes we must learn to see something of what it is to be human, thinking, philosophizing, not in its detail, but in the ability to be so, which all starts with the ability to communicate. Hermes’ domain. Will is the true gift of the Gods, but not to us, it is a gift to the cosmos itself, and we partake of it through our ability to communicate, the gift to us from Hermes.

Hermes. The very name seems almost flimsy. Almost sounds like something you hear in the wind as you walk through the woods, like a conversation between the trees and the breeze. Yet Hermes, the God, is one of the most pervasive of all the powers of the cosmos from our mortal perspective.

The ever-moving son of the high king. The ever vigilant, all seeing, all hearing, all experiencing lord of communication and the mysteries of music. He is not the lord of music, but the force that causes that music comes from within us. He does not play the music, but creates the instrument that allows it to be played. A fine distinction? Not really.

You see, Hermes is the doer. He who brings about the means to accomplish something, yet is not the thing accomplished itself. He is not thievery, but with his help a thief might succeed. He is not the sheep-herder, but with his help the sheep-herder is successful. He is the messenger of ideas, bringing them forth and allowing us that beautiful gift of communication, but what we communicate, what we create from those ideas, how we succeed or fail with them is up to us.

But all ideas come with something else. Boundaries. What are boundaries, and are boundaries merely to be respected in his honor, or are they to be examined and the means to surpass them explored and exploited?

Hermes himself is a god of boundaries. His posts, the Herms, are set up as a means of marking boundaries, yet he is also the God who crashes through those boundaries, or to say it in a better way, the God who cleverly makes the boundaries meaningless by easily getting through them. This makes Hermes not just a God of communication and boundaries, but a god of excellence, and by that I mean a God who wishes us to excel at all things. To see the boundaries and jump over them rather then letting us stop us.

But is the boundaries are not to be respected in this way, how are they to be respected, since he is the God of those boundaries?

The answer, it seems, is quite simple. The boundaries are not walls to stop us, they are the walls that show us what others have accomplished and then taunt us to do them one better. They are our expectations and, yes, sometimes they are our own self limitations, labels, and laziness, all taunting us to do one better and follow the God of Boundaries across that boundary into new and wonderful things.

Strangely, once I started to see these things that Hermes seems to have been doing to me, the misfortunes that were hitting me in the face every day, as Hermes' own boundaries, I was forced to see them as things to get over in order to move to a better place, and they stopped.

Never been a superstitious type, but maybe this time I have to just accept that maybe the traveller was sticking his foot out as I ran for a reason, and it wasn't to break my leg, it was to teach me to fall without breaking it.

Bursting forth
Like light through the clouds
The divine souls of the Primal Gods emanate into the cosmos.

Mingling
The blessed Gods merge
More divine light emanating into the dark universe.

Stirring
The Titans shake and rattle the firmament
And the chaos of the universe is divided and given form.

Joining
The king and queen bring forth life
The father of time grows jealous of his powerful offspring.

Battling
Father and son rage against one another
The children of the King shake the cosmos in revolt

Settling
Olympus is claimed
And Zeus lays claim to the heavenly realm.

Watching
From on high the Gods do work
Their holy miracles refining the form of the universe.

Evolving
The form of man emerges
And the light of thought is stolen by an ally of the Gods.

Learning
Man reaches for the sky
His life of misery the doctrine by which he strives forward.

Building
The Gods are brought in
Their images created by man that they may be part of mortal life.

Forgetting
The world moves on
And the rites of the Gods give way to a false faith.

Assimilating
Man is made to bend
Bend to the will of politics at the hands of flawed sovereigns.

Remembering
The Light of Olympus returns
And in small numbers they remember the divine light that will set them free.

Still here, but am having a hard time grasping what it is Hermes wants of me right now.