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mythical characters

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.

Lamb – Not Your Usual Animal

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What’s in there for me: An eye-opening fact that would make us think twice before making “religiously discriminating” statements. Here it goes – To our consciousness Lamb maybe only a household animal, but not for the unconscious. Just to scratch the surface, Lamb, at least for the descendants of Abrahamic religions, is a symbol of humility, willingness to surrender to higher power or higher order. It symbolizes acceptance of and repentance for shortcomings and malevolent deeds. The sacrifice of Lamb means to symbolically exterminate the aspects of human nature that have tendency to inflate to the point that may hurt others. For example, our anger, ego, jealousy, self-importance, among others. It is a mechanism of our psyche to keep our worldly attachments in control.

This post makes part of the post “The Secret Stories for Symbols“. Click the link to read more about the wonderfully secretive nature of the symbols. 

Full post starts here

Me and the Lamb

These days, when one talks about Lamb as sacrifice, automatically our mind associates it with Islam. Does this symbol really belong to Islam only? From what I found out, absolutely NO.

While in Argentina when I started these studies, one of the things I was surprised to find out was that one of the names of Christ was also The Lamb. He himself represents sacrifice in this case.

Lamb in religious symbolism together with symbols of Evangelists. Group of four elements is typical in religious depictions. Photo: Internet
The Lamb together with symbols of Evangelists. In general, group of four elements is typical in religious depictions. Photo: Internet

Currently I live in Rome and this place is just heaven for those interested in evolution of thought. Just by walking down the street one can learn so much by carefully observing monuments. This city is also home to the oldest catholic churches, which still carry old facade paintings. This is what I love about Rome. History is live here. Cut to the chase, about 4 blocks from my home there is an old church. Over the façade of this church there is an image of the Lamb right at Christ’s foot. After seeing this I started to inspect the facades of other churches. Interestingly, I found a handful of them with similar illustrations. So this has been a recurrent symbol.

The Secret Story of Lamb

True, The Lamb is almost a forgotten image in Christianity these days. However, I guess, everybody knows that it is a very living symbol in Islam. It is a symbol of Muslim holiday Eid-Mubarak. Again, it is a symbol of sacrifice. Also, Torah mandates Jews perform sacrificial ritual of Paschal Lamb on the eve of Pass Over (Pasqua).

To sum up, to our consciousness Lamb maybe only a household animal, but not for unconscious. Just to scratch the surface, Lamb, at least for the descendants of Abrahamic religions, is a symbol of humility, willingness to surrender to higher power or higher order. It symbolizes acceptance of and repentance for shortcomings and malevolent deeds. Sacrifice of Lamb means to symbolically exterminate the aspects of human nature that have tendency to inflate to the point that may hurt others. For example, our anger, ego, jealousy, self-importance, among others. It is a mechanism of our psyche to keep our worldly attachments in control.

Why such a bloody ritual? Pain in body makes soul suffer and suffering is fundamental for spiritual growth. Just like a famous expression goes: Light enters through wound.  That’s why normally religious rituals are violent and harsh.

This post makes part of the post “The Secret Stories for Symbols“. Click the link to read more about the nature of the symbols.

1. That wasn’t technically fire…what was it?…

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“The light was lit to illuminate the temple of soul”
“Prometheus stole fire from Gods and Zeus condemned him to a life of perpetual torture”.

The above examples do sound like total absurdity when we try to analyze them literally, don’t they? Talk about tricky and allegoric language of the unconscious!

This is the very first post and I am still not sure how to enter the topic. I’ve changed it million times already. Especially after second birth and months of breastfeeding, I think, some part of my brain has really shrunk. I think, before talking about unconscious, I should probably, talk about definitions ascribed to conscious. After all, that is the realm where we function in general. So, simplicity in mind, I’ll try my best.

Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that's why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com
Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that’s why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com

 

Evolution….Not a Joke

We humans, obviously, are the product of long, tedious journey of evolution. Nature has been polishing functionality of our body to meet our physical needs and capacity (which itself kept evolving along the way). That means the same evolution process has taken place in our psyche as well. It is a part that we do not see, however it is the very part that has been honed and shaped the most by the evolution process. Just like how a huge tree grows from a single seed, the consciousness has grown into its current state over countless years… Does it make sense? If it does, we’ve started on the right foot!

Prometheus is representation of acquisition of consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn't be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia
Prometheus is representation of acquisition of the consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn’t be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia

Here Came that Light – Conscious

Let’s dig a bit deeper. Way back in times of our ancestors some big change took place. Extremely slowly, yet surely – our grannies acquired a new skill – The Consciousness! In language of the unconscious he learned “a well-concealed secret of revengeful Gods”.  Thus “The Light illuminated the darkness of abyss”. In other words, reasoning shed light over the bottomless unconscious… Prometheus thus stole fire. Jung calls this painful and slow process “the Battle for Deliverance”. Just like how difficult it is to totally separate oneself from mother, separating itself from Great Mother (the unconscious) was the “mission impossible” for consciousness. It separated itself through a painful process. To make it worse, it had to fight hard against violent and compulsive impulses of the unconscious not to relapse. Or not fall into possession of one of them. In other words, He had to fight against “revengeful Gods” to keep this fire.

Now, let’s see why consciousness is symbolized this way and who are those revengeful gods? Once differentiated, The Conscoius – the New Hero became aware of himself just like a baby recognizes herself in the mirror for the first time. He was different and he became aware of this.

With it came a different mode of seeing and understanding things. His mode of thinking wasn’t vague and could control the train of thoughts. Also, his judgement was causal. For him everything had a cause and effect in a way that he understood. Thus, his mode of thinking was deductive, mathematical and calculated. He reasoned for the first time. Unlike predecessors, he rose above the free rein of instincts and felt, still very dimly, the capacity to control them. This new realm of psyche had its own small center, which we call Ego today. He was the intellect illuminating the dark mass of unconscious, the Great Mother.

Revengeful Underground Gods?…Seriously?

Here comes another question, who are those revengeful gods that condemned Prometheus to a life of eternal torture? They are our own instincts, urges, impulses, all the impetuous animalistic tendencies. They are our desires and fears that inhabit in the depth of our psyche. In the unconscious landscape they get personified just like in fairly tales and myths. They are living realities that are out of conscious control. They are capable of full manipulation of our mind. In a sense, they are creative powers of cosmos such as sexual desire, hunger drive, survival instincts etc.  But if experienced in destructive form, they turn into obsessive impulses chasing one to insanity. These are the cases they are experienced as wrathful Gods and underground frightful creatures. This battle has been one of the major themes of fairy tales, myths, monuments (Rome is full of it), paintings etc.

Here the Hero is the consciousness fighting against primordial Semi-Gods in shape of half snake-half human monsters, flame-breathing, many-headed dragons, wrathful and scary creatures, ogres, treacherous trolls, deceitful sirens etc. These dark forces persecute this new Hero each trying to assume total control. It would take this New Hero a very long time to learn how to tame and subdue dark aspects of these forces of psyche. Once subdued, Hero experiences the illuminating, spiritual and celestial aspects of those same Gods. Interestingly, during our lifetime, our consciousness repeats – in a fast pace – the evolution of conscious development.  That explains why toddlers up until five to six years can not tell difference between imagination and reality. At those ages the level of conscious development is still incipient and fragile.

Proportion of The Conscious – To be or not to be…

But this differentiation doesn’t mean that the “job” of Ego is over. Like any other acquired skill, there is always a danger to lose it. Relapsing back into the unconscious or “being swallowed by devouring monsters” is looming danger for each of us. However, too much separation of the consciousness is not good either as it will strip off that irrational, intuitional, “feeling” foundation upon which the Conscious has built its small kingdom and on which still nourishes and keeps its balance. The more separation, the greater the danger to be “possessed by daemon”. Meaning, the more danger to be associated with certain psychic forces that are already out of conscious control. So this Ego it is a bittersweet affair of mankind, which is too sweet to give up and too costly to keep in right proportion.