Fashion Symbols with Aynura Maye

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The Untold Story of Hermès

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Sky-rocketing price and unaffordability aside who doesn’t love the sight of the Hermès Birkin bag and the stories revolving around it? Even my Google news feed sometimes pops up articles about the celebrities who were seen with it. The enigma of this House is not only about its products, but also its name. The general story is that the Fashion House took its name from the namesake Messenger God. Obviously Hermès was born as a brand specialized in travel accessories (back in times when travel accessories meant horse tack and supplies). So the name of The God who is believed to travel all the time seems to be the right fit. But what kind of messages he used to deliver?

Hermès as a symbol of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to paradise.
Photo: the Internet

The God Hermès that everybody knows

The typical description of the God Hermès goes like this: Hermès is a “psycho-pomp” – that is to say soul-guide. Its statue is a piece of stone – Herm that has Twined Snake around a staff on one side and an Erect Phallus on the other. Next to him there is a sort of tree in a very simple form. Let’s call this composition statue. This statue used to be placed in crossroads alluding to its capacity to travel between worlds. Because like a shaman, Hermès used to guide the dead to the underworld and bring messages from there (bizarre huh?)

Let’s leave behind the logical reasoning and dive into a dimension where concepts transcend the rational and limited meaning we ascribe to them. Then we’ll see what Hermès really represents for us.

Design detail – winged feet of Hermès. Photo: the Internet

If I have to sum up in simple words, Hermès symbolizes the transmutation of soul through the history of evolution.

Not Messenger Only God Hermès

This myth talks us about times when an early man started to rise from the darkness of instinctual life (symbolized as the underground world) towards his/her way to acquire rational thinking (terrestrial life). This young Hermès has a metamorphose nature. He is not a underground force only (meaning, the purely instinctual element of the unconscious). He is also connected to the conscious life. However with capacity to still descend into the dark layers. He symbolizes the process of transcendence. While having a foot in the underground he travels from one dimension to another. How? This part is really funny.

Herm – the initial and simple version of the God Hermès. Photo: Man and His Symbols, C.G.Jung

He penetrates thru darkness of the unconscious into the light of terrestrial life (a.k.a light of reasoning) with his Erect Phallus. I know you are laughing now. But it turns out this is how our mind works at very deep levels. That childish and archaic mode of thinking is still there. Erect phallus is overly sexual of course. But in that dimension, phallus translates into fertility and not physical fertility only, but creative power of the psyche, fecundating, life giving power as well. The twined serpents are in sexual union. Again, sexual not taken literally, but equal union of the opposites that is transcendental, wholesomeness.

Almost as a rule, terrestrial and water animals symbolize our instinctual drives, forces of the “underground”. Reptiles being intermediate creatures with a capacity to live in two different environments, allude to this transcendence – arising from the depth of dark uncontrolled mass towards the world of light – the conscious reasoning.

Hermès – the symbol of full transcendence

Hermès is a living symbol that has been subject to elaboration. In middle ages, it acquired wings which denotes to rising from terrestrial life towards spiritual transcendence.  Wings symbolize this transformation. Even the caduceus in his hand that is a symbol of healing got wings at the top of the serpents. Thus our little fellow acquired a power of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to the paradise.

Not by chance, in the chain of living things we are the only ones who come from darkness of instinctual world of animals with aspirations to mature into spirituality of paradise. We are the terrestrial beings just between underground compulsive forces and heavenly angles.

To close, the soul each of us carry is Hermès destined to evolve through these stages. So, every time, you see an Hermès item, remember, there is a small Hermès inside you too and is way more valuable than anything money can buy.

Gucci’s Ark of Noah. Why are we all Noah?

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Now that I am on water symbol, I’ll have one more post to dig a bit deeper on water. Gucci just released its new theme for #GothicCampaign recreating the Ark of Noah and this is perfect one to pick on.

Gucci #GothicCampaign - recreation of Noah's Ark. Photo: Internet
Gucci re-created the Ark of Noah Ark for #GothicCampaign
Photo: Internet

Now Alessandro Michele takes on Deluge and the Ark of Noah, one of the early stories of Genesis. It is one of those themes that we know can’t be true, yet some part of us secretly believes that it may be true. And surprisingly it is, but in a symbolic way. Because it talks about some parts of our existence that is unknown to us obscured in the dark abyss of our psyche. We are well aware that the myths are not history, or biography or some sort of historical record. Then what is it about that touches us so deeply? In a nutshell, they are about the psychic processes happening inside us expressed through symbols in an exaggerated fashion. We sense that they tell us something, but can’t discern what it is. It is that dreamy symbolic language that puzzles us.

The Deluge and the Ark of Noah Ark is the story of our consciousness (or Ego) taking control over the unconscious content narrated in the highly symbolic language of the unconscious. Every object in the myth is purely symbolic and holds certain meaning. Let’s try to “translate” this myth.

Deluge

In psychoanalysis and dream analysis water is symbol of the unconscious – the dark abyss which is house to uncontrollable and powerful instinctual urges. The darker and the more turbulent the water, the more unease in the unconscious. So we know what Deluge stands for – the unc­ontrollable and wild nature of our unconscious.

Noah

One of the earliest prophets of the mankind is very symbolic of the very process of the birth of the consciousness. This is the element of our psyche that is in power to take control over the unconscious urges and impulses and give direction – make decisions. By the way, we’ve laboriously developed this precious “skill” over millions of years and with it we’ve distinguished ourselves from the rest of the living things and the dark totality of our unconscious. This is the reason why “prophets taking control of waters in ark or over some sort of fish” is a recurrent storyline in many religions. It is kind of the way our unconscious has registered the evolutionary process in its peculiar symbolic language.

Animals and the perfect harmony

The next question is of course, what about the animals and the perfect peace between animals and humans? Again, let’s have a look at recurring image of prophets – a good shepherd. Do we remember Orpheus? Who created perfect harmony when he played his lyre? Or Jesus? Yes, he was Shepherd too. Noah himself is kind of good shepherd who created perfect harmony among living things. Animals notoriously stand for our biological or instinctual impulses, in other words our low animalistic drives. Good shepherd is the one who through the virtue of the consciousness and wisdom has tamed his animalistic impulses and created harmony in his soul.

Translation into our common language

The myth of Noah is the story of how we gradually “woke up” from the pure instinctual life and separated ourselves from the animal kingdom and developed the consciousness (Ego). He is symbol of mankind, who has learned to navigate on the dark waters of the unconscious without being absorbed by back by it. And even give direction to his/her life.

What Noah means for each of us

We all pass this “Ark of Noah” period when we start to develop consciousness when we are babies at early toddler age. So he is a living symbol inside us. Also, as long as we tend “to lose our mind”, in other words, fall victim to our impulses and feelings, the Deluge will be an ever-present danger for us. Because those emotions are rooted at powerful forces deep inside. In the background we always live with the peril of our consciousness being devoured by the Deluge, in other words, literally lose our minds.

I wonder who will bring so much mysticism with hippy twist to Gucci besides Michele Alessandro. Who will touch so gracefully to this ever-present stories of our soul in fashion industry. I found the video just brilliant. Very much looking forwards to his creations on this theme.