Heck Yeah Hermes

Curated content dedicated to Hermes the Greek god. Oh, and that Mercury guy too. No longer exactly posting daily, but I try to add content from time to time.

[heckyeahhermes]

Found one of the most unusual depictions of Hermes/Mercury in this painting at the Louvre recently. Also never seen his name spelled as Marcuerius before.

Here is the description from the museum (translated with Google):

Le rêve de Pâris Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1530 - 1535) The characters are designated by inscriptions (Paris, Marcuerius, Venus, Kupido, Juno, Pallas). A depiction of the Judgment of Paris, a theme dear to Antiquity and the Renaissance, treated here according to the medieval adaptation by Benoit de Sainte-Maure and then Guido de Columnis (1287), which also inspired Cranach: Paris, as a knight asleep near a fountain, dreams of the famous goddesses appearing before him. Long attributed to the German school, it is typical of Coecke and his sharp, metallic style, forming a transition between the late Gothic Mannerism of the Flemish and Dutch and the Northern Italianism of the 1520s-1540s.

[heckyeahhermes]

Spotted in Vancouver, BC!

[heckyeahhermes]

Hermes pursuing a woman, probably Herse, Lucanian red-figure bell-krater, ca. 390–380 BC

Louvre

[heckyeahhermes]

The Metamorphosis of Aglauros and Mercury’s Departure manufactured by Willem de Pannemaker

Gold, silver, silk and wool thread, 450 x 716 cm

Brussels, ca. 1570

Metropolitan Museum of Art

[heckyeahhermes]

The first problem anyone encounters when trying to understand [Hermes] is directly attributable to the very diversity of his activities. They are so varied that modern scholars have been unable to reach a consensus as to what quality or concept holds them all together, some even arguing that there is no such unifying feature to be found. The closest we can come to identifying any ‘core’ to Hermes, according to Parker, is to group his activities into a triad associated with ‘transition / communication / exchange’. It may well be the case, again as noted by Parker, that the diversity of Hermes’ activities arises ‘not on the basis of the internal logic of a central core’ but rather from what he terms ‘the principle ... of “one thing leads to another”’.

– Arlene Allan, Hermes (from Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World)

[heckyeahhermes]

Hi! What does the Hermes headcannon post mean? The one that goes "Fast talker with a sweet cold voice Hermes is a damn near perfect definition of a peace keeper. Small feet always busy walking somewhere to help someone , the obsidian outlines of tattooed wings on his ankles peeking above worn chestnut colored boots. There’s a nervous hum like a hummingbird is using his ribs as a cage. A wavering smile connected to fidgeting grimy fingers tugging at his tie and at his chest binder; like..."

Hi, the post in question is one person's modern interpretation about Hermes' role as peacekeeper or mediator. As a messenger god, he bridges the worlds of the gods, mortals, and underworld, so it would make sense for him to play a similar part in resolving conflicts of all kinds, including between other gods. He has been featured in several myths doing exactly this, eg. the abduction of Persephone. Hope that helps

[heckyeahhermes]

Is there a picture of the answers to the Where's Waldo Trojan search so we can see how many we got right?

AFAIK the artist has not released an answer key to the Where’s Waldo Trojan War picture, but I gave it my best attempt (click the Read More). Let me know if you found something I missed, or if you disagree with some of my interpretations :-)

[thehandmaidenofcreativity]

Greek Mythology Challenge Day 24: Myth Involving Murder

Hermes and Argos

To avoid Hera’s rage, Zeus transformed the nymph Io into a cow to hide her. Hera, however, was not fooled and demanded the cow be given to her as a gift, and had Argos guard it. Zeus sent Hermes to rescue Io, so he put the giant to sleep and slayed him.

[heckyeahhermes]

oh yeah also this was apparently the first murder ever committed during the age of the Olympians, not something you’d expect from Hermes huh?

[lazyreddd]

Well, let's help this guy one more time.

“那就再帮一次吧。” 他会不会这么想呢？

[heckyeahhermes]

In the cluster of stories involving Hermes passed down in Greek tradition and literature, a distinct type of human character shines through: a young man of ideal physical build, extroverted, swift in physical movement and rhetorically gifted, enchanting and seductive, ready to serve but not to be taken advantage of, friendly but independent, inventive, intelligent, generally benign and having a ready sense of humor, athletic, stealthy. In mythic tales he is not at the center of politics, decision-making or narrative action, but on the periphery. Hermes stands at the edge, an edge-person, located essentially in liminality.

Murray Stein, Hermes and the Creation of Space

[heckyeahhermes]

Photo by  Lanpernas .

[biflit]

In her “entheogen picking” and subsequent entry into the underworld, Persephone thus served as the divine template for human priestesses of virgin birth who entered into the subtle realms to do their work. ... The interpolator of Dioscorides refers to a white flower whose synonyms were leukos (white), “hundred-headed,” and moly. I contend that the magical narcissus of Persephone was understood to be none other than this plant. The “hundred-headed” reference is the first and clearest clue in this regard. Second, the plant was white, like the narcissus. Third, its identification with moly affirms that, as I suggested of the narcissus, it was an entheogenic plant, given that moly was widely understood to be such in antiquity. Fourth, like the narcissus, this plant had remarkable associations with women, sex and conception rituals, and female divinization, some of which strikingly call to mind the Persephone story... For example, we learn that it grew mostly under the earth, but that it popped up to watch if a girl mated nearby. This echoes the very events involving Persephone, for whom the narcissus “popped” up from the earth just before she was about to go “under the earth” and “mate.” Even more remarkable, this flower appears in Martianus Capellas’ The Marriage of Mercury and Philology, a medieval compendium on Roman learning in the seven liberal arts set within a tale of courtship and marriage among the pagan Gods. The beginning of the volume recounts the hieros gamos of Philology with Mercury/Hermes.

Marguerite Rigoglioso, Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity

[heckyeahhermes]

The mystery Hermes sculpture is "Mercure inventant le caducée" by Henri Chapu! It's actually at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

o god... how long has this ask been sitting in my inbox?? i’m so sorry Anon.

thank you SO MUCH for sending over this information, i’ve updated the post with additional tags for the artist and location. (for those wondering, this is the statue in question)

[heckyeahhermes]

Who  was Hermes? The great 19th century German mythographer, W.H. Roscher, identified Hermes as the wind, subsuming under this basic identity all of his other roles and attributes - Hermes as servant and messenger of the sky god Zeus, Hermes as swift and winged, Hermes as thief and bandit, Hermes as inventor of the pipes and lyre, Hermes as guide of souls and as god of dreams and sleep, Hermes as promoter of fertility among plants and animals and as patron of health, Hermes as god of good fortune, Hermes as patron of traffic and business activities on water and land. Ingeniously, Roscher tied all of these functions to the primitive perception of a wind god. Hermes is like the wind.

Murray Stein, Hermes and the Creation of Space

[half-bloodcanons]

Fun Fact

Most of Hermes’ epithets roughly mean “joyous one” or “bringer of joy”. 

Then there’s Eriboas (that isnt the spelling, that’s more of a pronunciation and thought it would be easier to read). It means “loud”

[heckyeahhermes]

[hermes-psychopomp]

― “Your soul is safe in my hands” / Greek Mythology

God Hermes

[clepsiphronn]

uploads a single hermy and RUNS