Hermes
Blessed Messenger, who travels the worlds both high and low.
Guide of souls into the world beyond death.
Hear my prayers and carry them to the Gods.
Bless me with your skill and light humor.
Be with me as I walk this earth.
Guide me in the right direction.
Bless me that I may know which road to take on the crossroads of life.
Give me strength and certainty.
Bring laughter and a mischievous spirit to my life.
Bring the pleasures of being a man into my heart.
Let me never embrace death, but fight against it until my time has come.
The time when you will lead me away from pain and into silence.
Hermes
Of Hermes, there is much said. That he is the god of thieves, of communication, of commerce. That he is a trickster and a charmer. That he is a god of youth and sexuality, a divine view of the perfect youth, desirable and long lusted after. Of Hermes it can be said that he is all of these things, and none of these things if not a God of playful life and the sheer joy of being.
When envisioned, Hermes is envisioned as a flying youth of perfected beauty, and it is in this vision of him that we see him for what he is, a free spirit, flying free like a bird looking up into the sky and relishing the fact that he is god, immanent, transcendent, divine.
But what is it we worship in this? What makes this God, divine or not, worthy of our respect and worship? What is it we honor in his gifts to nature and humanity?
The Trickster
The trickster is an archetype. It is not really an aspect or epithet as one would find in ancient myth. Rather, it is the sum of certain characteristics that label his personality one that is playful, tricky, neither moral nor immoral, acting as a catalyst in systems that demand a thought for the unexpected. The trickster may suddenly appear and put his foot in your way, causing you to fall, but the trick is not that you fell, but that you found something on the ground you were not expecting, thus is his work done.
His tricks can, however, seem very cruel to us, for we are limited in how we see the world, and the infinite possibilities and probabilities he sees in the world are beyond us to consider in full. He is a god of blessings and curses, for in the unexpected trick there may be a gift awaiting he who is willing to see. There is lemonade for the traveler who finds only lemons at the end of the road.
Sometimes we see Hermes in places that surprise us, and this too is to be expected. Sometimes those moments of clumsiness in the middle of a busy day, when the last thing you need is to become disorganized turns out to be his influence. And sometimes it is just the kick in the head one needs to remember to smile and laugh at those silly things that happen to all of us. A reminder to take a breath and stop taking everything so seriously.
God of Commerce and Communication
As god of commerce and communication, Hermes takes great pleasure in the abilities of man to communicate and establish trade. He takes special interest in man’s ability to sell and buy from each other in ways that allow for equitable value on both sides. He is the patron of these arts that so many of us take for granted. We live in a commercial culture where buying and selling have become common practice for even the lowest classes and in this way we honor him, but so too, by taking it so much for granted, do we dishonor him, for commerce has become soulless and anonymous.
Our culture is one of great communicative capability as well, and in this too do we honor him. But, there is something to be said for personal one on one communication, and this is something that we are beginning to loose in this culture. Something that will eventually cause a severe breakdown in our ability to remain a cohesive people. I think Religion must play an important role in this. In the establishment of temples and sanctuaries for the immortals, we as human beings must remember that part of our relationship to the gods stems from our relationships to each other, and we must not forget to make room for the small needs, the simple gestures of outreach and communication that are so important for social creatures such as us. And in so doing, we will honor him.
God of Thieves
There is an aspect of this god that is mystifying to me. Stealing is wrong, but many use the idea of Hermes as a god of thieves to justify their thievery. Allow me then to make a distinction between Hermes as god of thieves, and Hermes, god worshipped by thieves.
Myth tells us that Hermes stole the Cattle of Apollo as an infant, and that the myth seems to symbolize his role as thief is often taken as obvious, but in truth, Hermes is caught and made to make amends for what he has done. This story tells us that thievery is wrong and punishable, so how can a god be a patron to such things? The answer, to me at least, is that he is not. He is a patron of quick wit, of quick hands, and of silent travel. He is not a patron of thieves, but they do make good use of his gifts. That thieves may ask for his gifts, and thus honor him, is irrelevant in as much as the general character of the God is concerned. He is a god worshipped by thieves, but not the god of thieves. That is to say, Hermes does not hold thieves in any special esteem, but like any human, they are free to make use of his gifts if they so desire.
Punishment for such things as thievery, however, may very well fall to him, for thievery stands as a counter to fair trade and commerce. To this end, man has justice, and we as a culture look down on thievery, but I, personally, make clear distinctions in what I condemn as thievery. A man who steal food to feed a child is not evil or immoral, he is desperate, and thus forgiven. The man that steals simply out of want, is in my opinion selfish and criminal as well as immoral.
God of Sexuality
Hermes is beautiful, his image is erotic and phallic, and thus sexual. He is not a god of sex and love as Aphrodite is, but he is a god of extreme erotic appeal, and thus a god of sexuality. It can be said, of course, that the ancient anthropomorphic view of the gods left little by way of doubt as to the erotic nature of the gods, especially the males, who were often depicted nude and perfectly beautiful.
There is to Hermes, however, a certain connection with Aphrodite that lends itself to speculation about his role in her domain. According to myth, Aphrodite and Hermes are the parents of Hermaphroditos, a being both male and female from which whose name we draw the term Hermaphrodite today. What does the existence of such a mythological figure mean to the worship of these two deities, and to Hermes in particular, today?
It means, to me at least, that Hermes is a god of transitions. It means that male and female are both extremely different and not so separate as we would like to think, and that perhaps Hermes is a god of the transitions between male and female. We know today that the female is the source of the male, even though without the male, she could never produce one to begin with. We all start out as female. Perhaps Hermes is a god of gender as well as a god of male sexuality, or sex appeal. Meaning that these are things he pays special attention to in the cosmos.
As a partner to Aphrodite in this, Hermaphroditos may very well have simply been the way the Greeks saw the power these two gods exercised in concert. The way the gods seem to sometimes merge is one of the things that makes them Gods. They work their wonders, alone and in concert, and perhaps even the monotheistic view of the world is nothing more than the way those people saw the works of all the gods in concert and interpreted it as being one god when it was many working together.
Hermes, the God
As I said at the beginning of this page, Hermes is all and none of these things. Gods are like that, they are and aren’t the things we believe them to be. They exist both within and without our universe, both part of and completely separate from it, just as you and I are part of yet completely separate from our parents. The God, Hermes, goes far beyond anything I could ever explain or seek to articulate, but in this form, as Hermes of the Greeks, he has a specific set of attributes or “personality traits” that I worship and give thanks for. In the context of Hellenic Polytheism, he is the messenger, the bringer of the word of the king, yet always a distinct and divine god in his own right.
Myth tells that he is the son of Zeus and Maia, and because both of his parents are immortals, he too is a divine God who, unlike Dionysos, was divine from the moment of his birth. Of his relationship with other Gods, it can only be said that he has a great many connections. With Zeus and Hades, Athena and Aphrodite, and of course with Dionysos. As divine messenger, he is connected to all the divine Gods, and is perhaps their intermediary as Hekate too is said to be. Unlike the idea that all who pray to god must do so through the son, as in many Christian sects, the relationship of a man to the Gods is a personal and direct one. We pray to the gods directly, and what results we may expect from them come from our relationship to them, not through an intermediary, and so this function of Hermes must not be confused with that one. He is an intermediary, yes, but he does not stand between me and the Gods i worship, he is simply one of them.