Hermes Weaves the Mythic
Hermes Runs the Game part 2
Many, many thanks to everyone who subscribed. May this be worth your attention. excerpts from Chapter One, and part of the dedication:
Make these lines worthy to share a shelf with the renowned tattered pages of the past,
Bringing the tail of this storied age into the mouth that birthed it,
Spawning another, that needs these words no longer.
Those Happiest Are Lost In Apotheosis
Mosaic from the ancient city of Zeugma, eastern Turkey, 200 BC.
Hermes Weaves the Mythic
On the 5th of May, 2020, the North Node moved into the sign of Gemini, to traverse that astrological sign until January of 2022. That entrance occurred a few weeks after the lockdowns and shutdowns of a supposed viral pandemic which proceeded with express simultaneity globally. “For just two weeks,” we were told. “Until we flatten the covid-191 curve.” That began the onslaught of terminology Gemini, the lord of language, brought us to dominate the news-scape, and dominate us through it.
Everybody from Elizabethan alchemist John Dee to marketing supervillain Edward Bernays knows that you cast a spell with language. Few comprehend the depth of language itself generating what we deem consensus reality. And reality does not consist of things, but of narratives engendered within us. Most think that there is a preexisting world out there waiting for them to have more or less accurate thoughts about, a world of inviable physical structure. The idea that you can apprehend reality through thoughts fuels the vehicle of all narratives of control. So nobody blinked to clear their eyes when a mudslide of new terminology buried them from the blindside, concocting a world as real as corporate news. Social distancing, contact tracing, PCR testing, comorbidity, coronavirus, antigen, asymptomatic, herd immunity, shelter in place, medical lockdown, viral shedding, carbon graphene, immunity passport, droplet transmission, krait venom, bipap ventilators, N95 respirator, swab test, self-isolation, quarantine (for healthy), anal swab test, pre-symptomatic, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, ivermectin, toscilzumab, azithromycin, dexamethasone,2 mRNA, SARS, PPE, PUI, CPAP, WFH, WHO, WEF, CDC, NIH, AMA, APHA, NIAID . . . WTF?!
The looming issue has people thinking that this terminology is merely descriptive of a world they already inhabit, never probing the linguistic fabric wrapped so tightly that they mistake it for skin. This language is their world, the universe (‘one chant’), echoed through the same corporate media that profits from medical tyranny, mirrored in nodding agreement through grimaces sequestered behind masks, and expressed in imperious anger at anyone questioning the validity of this fictive web. That somehow it makes perfect sense to stop a disease by keeping healthy people separated, isolated and oxygen-deprived.
The Covid-19 hoax leaves no doubt that the cure is worse than the disease. The narrative of the virus is the virus.
—John Lamb Lash3
This is one of the endless fundamental Gemini splits to observe. It feels irreconcilable. The fear holding together the narrative of pandemic is not merely fear of disease, or supposed care of one’s grandparents at the cost of isolating them into suicidal ideation, or even the fear of physical death. The real fear lies deeper. It is the fear of looking at the source of one’s carefully constructed reality and realizing that it is all a sham, and we have been manipulated from rocking cradle throughout every waking moment. The abject fear of unshakably realizing how the media has convinced us that they are reporting facts about the ‘world’, but that world does not exist anywhere; the fear of knowing that a medical system we thought was there altruistically to help cure us of diseases, is in reality only interested in perpetuating illness, an illness they created just for us; a fear of knowing that we have been miseducated ‘objectively’ about that same world, and further brainwashed into a self-abusive agenda; the fear of realizing that we don’t own anything, that we have no free speech, that we have no free will; knowing that we do not matter even the most minuscule iota (except as a commodity of profit and control) to Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Jeff Bezos, Nanci Pelosi, Susan Rice, Jeff Zuckerberg, Kamala Harris, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, James Comey, Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, Sundar Pichai, Klaus Schwab, Yuval Harari, Ray Kurzweil; our governors, congress, county commissioners, city councils, mayors; BLM, AntiFa, WEF, FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, SCOTUS, the DoJ, the judge presiding over your Kafka-esque trial, or the space aliens singeing the White House lawn. The quicker we can disabuse ourselves of not only any salvation from without, but come to the wisdom that the world we see as ‘out there’ is no more than a program run through our craniums by the above-mentioned marginally-human technocratic intentionalities—maybe egregores is more accurate—the quicker we perceive that the thoughts we have about this ‘world’ are not our own—follow the strings right up to the Geppetto archon making us jig, if you are brave enough—and that these thoughts refer to nothing but themselves. Then, the sooner we can take our first wobbling steps on a path to freedom, a freedom not merely from, and to, but freedom within: freedom within your experience that not one of these cheap carnival hawkers peddling fear wants us to realize.
“No reason to get excited”, the Thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late . . .”
—“All Along the Watchtower”, Robert Zimmerman
Hermes at the Crossroads
This realization drops us off at a particular intersection the ancient Greeks4 called the trehodos, a Y-intersection that in the West we call the crossroads. The paradox is that the state we are left in at this intersection is called aporea, ‘pathlessness’.5 And when we near paradox, the sacred quivers there in resonance.
Interestingly enough, the crossroads are not just the venue for selling your soul to a slick-suited sales rep of the devil for eternal blues riffs.6 The planetary ruler of this Gemini construction is Mercury, the winged messenger, who is Hermes for the Greeks. For simplicity, we will use their names somewhat interchangeably. Hermes also rules crossroads, like the one we sit at, across from that devil holding a contract in its hand.7 Only this blood offer for our souls is not fame, fortune or creative juice: we now literally trade our soul and body for a ‘normal’ life. Just one more vaccine and you can travel, or see live music or a play. And then a booster RNA-altering device. It will not end, and there is no normal to return to. Maybe via understanding Hermes, we can negotiate a better deal for ourselves while singing these crossroader blues.
For some reason many mythologists consider Hermes a minor deity. In fact, as psychopomp, he traverses all three realms—Olympus, Hades and Earth—either as messenger from god to god, or god to human, or as chaperone for interdimensional travel (one of his names, psychopompós literally means the ‘guide of souls’). Since he thus has a vast knowledge of geography, he rules over borders. Borders were originally marked by a herma, a stone cairn that later became a phallic post with Hermes’ head atop. Hephaestus, the god of the smithy and the finest fashioner in Olympus, created for Hermes winged sandals (talaria), or a winged woolen cap that resembles a pith helmet (petasus), enhancing his frequent flyer mileage.
Priapic herm, Roman copy of 5th century BC original, Istanbul Museums.
He was born præternaturally precocious: by noon of his first day of life he had already invented the seven-stringed lyre (an offering to his mother Maia, leader of the Pleaides septad) from a turtle shell “just as a swift thought can fly through the heart of a person haunted with care, just as bright glances spin from the eyes, so, in one instant, Hermes knew what to do and did it . . . stretched seven sheep-gut strings to sound in harmony,” and then by evening he stealthily absconds with Apollo’s divine cattle, and “drives them cunningly, he thought to drive them backward, too, another crafty trick, mixing up their footprints, the front behind and the hind before while he himself walked straight ahead.” Note that Hermes’ wisdom is innate. He leads them through the night, and invents fire “chewing fresh lotus and sweet ginger, he gathered a pile of wood and set himself to seek the art of fire, for Hermes, you should know, is responsible for fire-sticks and fire,”8 offers sacrifice of two [twin?] oxen, covers up his deeds, and returns to his cradle, sucking his innocent thumb while denying all by the next day. For his trouble, Hermes eventually becomes the ruler over shepherds. Hermes, in fashioning this incipient sacrifice, initiates commerce between gods and humans. He divides the meat of this first offering in twelve equally, honoring the twelve Olympian deities, presumably including himself. This is the template for a sacrifice that substantiates the contract between the divine and mortal: as long as humans sacrifice to the gods, the gods will take care of them. Replace gods with the state and we find the underpinnings of socialism or fascism.
Not only does Hermes rule boundaries, but the transgression of them, thus he’s the patron of thieves, tricksters and gamblers.
And what of Mercury’s winged sandals, and those of Theseus and Perseus? Mercury, or Hermes, is commonly represented as standing on tiptoe: was this because he could not put his heel to the ground? It is likely that the eagle wings on his sandals were not originally a symbol of swiftness but a sign of the holiness of the heel, and so, paradoxically, a symbol of lameness . . . In Latin those sandals were called talaria from the word talus, meaning a heel: and dice were called tali because they were made from the heel-bones of the sheep or goats sacred to Hermes or Mercury . . . Mercury was not only patron of dice players but prophesied from dice. He used five dice with four markings on each, in honour of his Mother . . . And if, as I suppose, he used them for alphabetic divination, he had his own alphabet of fifteen consonants and five vowels.9
More than this, Hermes is deeply connected to the goddess Mêtis, she who rules over navigational cunning, a type of wisdom classically expressed in Homer’s Odyssey through Odysseus, the apotheosis of stealth. Also Kṛṣṇa, as he appears in the Mahabharata,10 needs to traverse the minefield of this realm, employing sly deceit to save the dharma. Anyone who dives down any of the infinite ‘rabbit holes’—more like worm holes—of corporate, alternative, or independent media to try to come away with ‘what actually happened’, needs an ample storehouse of Mêtis’ gifts.11
Hermes appeases Apollo’s wrath for cow-napping his divine herd by playing a tune for him on his new lyre, and then giving it to him. Eventually that lyre is gifted to Orpheus, who later plays it to win back his bride Eurydice from Persephone and Hades. (Recall Hermes is he who guides Persephone out of Hades to reunite with her mother Demeter. Some blue highways are only known to Hermes.) Apollo returns the favor, gives Hermes a caduceus, and they pledge to be eternal friends. This is the onset of commerce, an archetypal transaction. As the overseer of roads and crossroads, Hermes’ domain is markets (often found at crossroad towns; Mercury comes from latin merc, ‘markets’), contracts, speech (logos), good luck, highwaymen, and now, electronic communication and computers. All of these aspects are counseled against performing during times when planet Mercury moves retrograde as viewed from Earth.
L-R, Persephone, led from the underworld by Hermes and Hékaté to her mother Demeter, terracotta krater, c 440 BC.
____________________________________________________________________________
Scattershot Digressions
Although it seems we are proceeding, like Homer’s Iliad, by ‘infinite digression’, there is a reason for this scattershot mythic front-loading. We have lost so much through our contemporary education and its prostitution of language, especially: symbolic, mythologic and analogical thought. Mythological thought, as experienced by the ancient Greeks, the founders of our particular civilization—even as we observe its capitulation—involved living with an even more vast constellation of connective threads than expressed above. Stories weave the whole cloth of all traditional societies—the more intricate the pattern, the richer and more poetic the world they inhabit. And these myths are fraught with symbols—torches, caps, clothing, colors, particular animals, numbers, flowers, body positions, certain weapons and instruments—that are gnostic jewels in this tapestry we often think of as a ‘world out there’. To understand, as all indigenous people did and hopefully still do (though we are all indigenous), how one’s cultural mythos is not simply uttered once and complete: but ever-occurring, ever-impinging on the lived moment, is to know what and how cultures are held together. Analogical thought traverses these lines of connective correspondence, especially so during the Renaissance, when above and below and within and without all could be experienced alchemically as resonating within a harmonic whole. Alchemy flourishes then—John Dee was Elizabeth I’s court astrologer—and the zenith of the English language sang daily from stages of memory theaters, where the entire human experience was brought to expressive apotheosis through the compositions of the still-unsubstantiated person or persons (OK, Edward DeVere) penning plays under the name of Shakespeare.
Memory theaters pose a viable introduction into comprehending the heinous inversion of the sacred pervading all aspects of our lives. We are certainly not the first to open this discussion—dozens of books and podcasts cover the transmutation of venerable symbols like the pyramid, pentagram, the eye, and swastika, repurposing them from supernal archetypal carrier waves into foci for various systems of abuse and control. One of these reversals little talked about connects memory theater and MK-Ultra programming in its various guises. Our predecessors enjoyed far better memories than contemporary people. Frances Yates’ brilliant The Art of Memory and Theatre of the World are the go-to masterpieces explaining the history and operation of memory theaters. To vastly oversimplify, one creates a mnemonic device within one’s imaginarium, taking the form of a cathedral, a palace, or a theater. Viewing its numerous rooms and alcoves, or the ascending tiers of an amphitheater, individual compartments place-hold what wisdom or text is to be recalled later. In the physical city, exterior to the mind, seven-sectioned memory theaters were constructed in Greece, and in Rome designed by Vitruvius—each section governed by one of the visible planetary spheres. Later, theaters like London’s Globe were constructed on harmonic sacred geometry principles and fitted with mnemonic filigree to aid players who had to perform multiple shows in succession. Into each compartment or step is inserted one of the mythological hymns, plays, or arcana previously memorized, with a label or a sigil over the door that triggers the full recall of what is within.
Rather than our ancestors compartmentalizing their own minds for the purpose of having full access to the wisdom of one’s age, a patently unholy alliance of the CIA and psychiatry now have other intentions. They induce vicious trauma in unwilling victims—often beginning with innocent pre-school children—to fracture and then compartmentalize their psyches into various co-existing ‘alters’—separate personalities—who may or may not communicate with each other. The trauma consists of rape, torture, and drugs, reinforced though psychologically abusive programming and deprivations. Numerous books by survivors have painfully detailed this rogue governmental tax-funded depravity.12 This programming then expanded from enslaving the individual, to controlling society en masse by creating and reinforcing public trauma13 (assassinations, 9/11 event, ‘mass shootings’, and now a plan-demic global lockdown and forced vaccination farce), abetted through fawning media complicity. America is lost until this breaks into mainstream awareness.14
Section of Guilio Camillo’s Teatro della Memoria, from L’Idea del Teatro, 1550. (Courtesy of Francis Yates’ The Art of Memory.)
The scattershot approach is an old Sufi teaching technique. Through it we hope to offer an antidote to this mass myopic mind manipulation by reinstituting myth, symbol and image to their rightful place as venues to the jewels within us. If form, function and content align in resonance, a certain type of remembrance can be possible just by reading this book.
Circle generated via tangents. (The Plant Between Sun and Earth, p. 53.)
To say it through projective geometry, one can draw a circle by describing a curve equidistant from a central point, as is normally done, or, one can generate a circle comprising nothing but tangents, as seen above. Thus the circle is born of the infinite lines of force grazing its surface, connecting it to everything.
Another name for analogical or alchemical thinking, using symbols, analogy, cryptographic language and allegorical myth, is hermetic. We can even steal a term from the fictional world of vaccines and call it polyvalent: that is, it is effective against different strains of coercive and corrosive propagandist mind control on all levels. As said in the Bhagavad Gītā, “A little of this knowledge relieves one of great suffering.” All it takes is the soft magic-eye focus of reading great literature, meditating on traditional art, and letting insight come through when it sees us ready.
Thought, as it gets bandied about, isn’t even the right word. We don’t have thoughts: we are thoughts, when ‘thinking’. And any deep observation of your experience clearly demonstrates that there is no thinker of your thoughts. They just emerge in experience, fully forged. And when there is an overlay of anger or desire or frustration or fear, that colors the form they take. But, when one is immersed in the polyvalent expressions of the numinous, they come through us like a well-conceived, perfectly-seasoned meal prepared with the best ingredients, at a dinner party with lively uplifting conversation, what the Irish call good craic. Yes, there will be manure to compost later, but the meal is memorable. And that meal is the logos. We will discuss meals and sacrifice anon.
The Seventy Greek Scholars Struck Dead by the Curse of Hermes, 16th century manuscript, Walters Art Museum. Illustration of 12th century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi’s Romance of Alexander.
1 In public usage this has been capitalized in order to enhance the false alarm surrounding it. We will capitalize it here as soon as someone isolates it and proves it exists as anything other than influenza A or B.
2 There must be a manipulative reason for all drugs to include a v, x, y and/or z in their name. Thus, the ultimate panacean drug should be called “vyzyzyx”. The end of the alphabet = the end of health.
3 Lash, Not in His Image (15th Anniversary Edition). Italics mine.
4 Standard historians loosely time ancient Greece from the end of the Mycenaean Age (1200 BC, around the time of the Trojan War); followed by a ‘Dark Age’ (1100-800 BC); the Archaic Age, which is the ritual focus of this book, running from Homer and Hesiod through Pythagoras and the pre-Socratic philosophers (800-480 BC); then the Classical Age, with the rise of Athens and notables Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, ending with Alexander’s conquests and and death in 323 BC; then the Hellenistic Period from then until to the death of Cleopatra (30 BC). Elements of ancient Greek culture lasted until the brutal murder of the brilliant Hypathia by ‘St’ Cyril of Alexandria in 415 AD.
5 See Peter Kingsley’s Reality, pages 149-56 for a full discussion.
6 A possible antecedent for this motif goes back to the Irish tradition of musicians crossing the liminal to learn tunes and embellishments from the faerie folk. You may not lose your soul, but certainly some sort of exchange takes place, especially if you partake of faerie food. A day or two in the realms of the fey might last decades when one returns to this side, or the inverse.
7 The ingredient and side effect list that comes with each injectable mRNA device that supposedly provides ‘informed consent’ is blank.
8 Homeric Hymn to Hermes, translated by Lewis Hyde in Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. The Vedic god of fire, Agni, is also the messenger to the gods, transmuting the smoky altar offerings into the etheric, always moving upwards.
9 Robert Graves, The White Goddess, p. 331.
10 See the author’s Katabatic Wind, p 97-101, for an exposition of the trickster Kṛṣṇa.
11 Not often remembered is Mêtis as the mother of Athena. The (false) concept of male parthenogenesis in the Abrahamic traditions found succor in limiting the tale of Athena emerging from Zeus’ headache. The full tale has Zeus—fearing prophesy that a powerful son would do to him what he did in usurping the rule of his father Kronos—tricking an already pregnant Mêtis into turning herself into a fly, and swallowing her. Mêtis births Athena in Zeus’ belly, and in her cunning is able somehow to fashion a helmet and armor for her daughter in gastronominos. Athena drives Zeus batty with a mal de tête until he asks Hephaistos to split his head open with an axe. Mêtis, however, stays behind, and must still have a soft spot for Zeus, for she continues to wisely advise him.
12 The most well-known are Cathy O’Brien, Trance Formation of America, (possibly the most difficult of all to get through); Donald Bain, The CIA’s Control of Candy Jones; less well known, but the closest in conveying the actual experience of living as an assemblage of alters, is Elisa E, Our Life Beyond MKUltra: Then and Now; on the mind control of Sirhan Sirhan and his non-assassination of RFK, Ed Sanders, Broken Glory: The Final Years of Robert F. Kennedy.
13 Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, is a good starting place.
14 In fact, the rogue deeds of the miasma of mind-control programs run by the CIA—basically since inviting NAZI scientists into their fold at its inception in 1947 through Project Paperclip—are mostly in public domain. The initial revelation came through 1977’s congressional hearing “Project MKUltra, The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification”, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/95mkultra.pdf, which assured us that this program no longer existed. A look at the committee members tells us that this is damage control revealing only a sliver of the forest of programs: Joseph Biden, Daniel Moynihan, Robert Byrd, Alan Cranston, Orrin Hatch, Edward Kennedy, Jacob Javits, for a few.