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Encountering
Hermes an article by David Sheppard Not
many will go it alone in a foreign country, particularly if they can’t speak
the language. Still one day I found myself wrestling with plans for a ten-week
odyssey about Greece, the mainland and islands. The longest I’d ever been on
the road by myself was the week I spent motoring about Ireland a few years
before. But I was pretty much a loner anyway, had been divorced for the past
twelve years, my kids grown and off on their own. After making the decision, I
hired a tutor and studied modern Greek for four months. Had to learn a new
alphabet. I bought a travel pack, combination suitcase and backpack, inside of
which I stuffed clothes, toilet articles. I
was on a spiritual quest, planning to look within myself while at the
mythological sites but not really expecting anything other than a good encounter
with the country, its people and a peek at the archeology. I was particularly
interested in Thebes, the land of Oedipus; Ithaca, the island of Odysseus; and
the religious sites: Delphi, Patmos, whatever. I certainly didn’t anticipate
an encounter with an ancient Greek god. The
first week of October, while recouping from jet lag, I spent in Athens breathing
car exhaust, sweating in the late-summer heat while traipsing about the
Akropolis, the temple of Olympian Zeus and visiting the National Archaeological
Museum. I spent four days in Thebes, which all the guide books told me to avoid,
and fell in love with the little city on the hill where the ancient seven-gated
Kadmia stood in Oedipus’ day and even spent some time staring across the
Aonion plain at the mountain of the Sphinx in the distance. But after a couple
of days in Delphi at Apollo’s temple, I had a problem that threatened to cut
my trip short. Not
only was I lonely but consciously disturbed at having two more months traveling
before me. From the very beginning of my trip I’d had unusually-powerful
dreams where I longed for my family: my daughter who had run away from home
years before but was now well-established in Atlanta, and my son who was a
freelance illustrator in San Francisco. At Delphi, I dreamed of my own death and
argued with God about my divorce, woke crying. Not long before leaving for
Greece, I’d finished five years of psychotherapy and unaccountably lost my job
in aerospace. For the past thirty years I’d been an astronautical engineer,
and getting laid off was a serious blow. But since I was also a writer, I’d
taken the free time as a blessing. Now, seven-thousand miles from home, and
alone, I was in trouble. Late
one afternoon, I sat with my feet dangling off the edge of the cliff at Delphi
overlooking the valley of the Pleistos through which a torrent runs in winter
but was then bone dry. A group of young travelers with packs sat not far from
me, roughhousing perilously close to the edge. An ocean of haze filled the abyss
separating us from the ancient trails zigzagging up Mt. Cirphis. Wind-shaped
trees, stark human-like figures along its ridge, looked for all the world like
old Oedipus trudging the slope, his back bent to the task. From time to time
bumblebees buzzed past, lingering only long enough to determine we weren’t
sufficiently sweet to warrant their attention. While
the kids demonstrated their macho disregard for the precipitous drop before us,
I had a talk with myself. Either I had to overcome my loneliness or return home.
What struck me, sitting there on the edge of Mt. Parnassos, was that back home
in Colorado I was just as alone as I was there in Greece, perhaps even more so.
The past months of unemployment I’d spent writing and reading Homer,
Sophocles, rarely visited friends. For my trip I’d brought a journal, in which
I wrote every day, and a paperback of Sophocles’ plays. So what was the
problem? As the bees buzzed my feet, I realized I was at home on the road. I
chuckled to myself and the loneliness evaporated. The
next morning I left for Ithaca with a new attitude. I still anticipated having
problems from time to time, but when I almost boarded the wrong bus in Patras,
which would have cost me my travel pack, I had a rather curious encounter with a
Greek who questioned me, and I suddenly realized my mistake. I quickly located
my bus just as it was pulling away. From then on things went mostly as planned.
On the island of Patmos where St. John wrote Revelations in the Cave of
the Apocalypse, I was fortunate enough to see the sacred grotto the day it
closed for the season. I was the sole visitor and felt curiously privileged to
be alone in that heavily-touristed church, perhaps even blessed. If
something did go wrong, it seemed to be for a reason. When the weather trapped
me on Patmos for nine days instead of the planned four, I befriended two wild
dogs, and when the female gave birth to six puppies it seemed to have been the
event prolonging my stay and triggering my release. The next morning when I
arrived on Samos I expected a long wait to get into Turkey. I’d even been
warned it wasn’t possible that late in the season. But just before noon a
travel agent I’d talked to earlier called the hotel where I was staying to say
that, due to an unexpected change in Turkish ferry schedules, one would leave
for Kusadasi in two hours. The others boarding the ferry with me had been
waiting a week. The amazing thing was that the travel agent who called my hotel
didn’t know where I was staying or that I even had a hotel room anywhere. I
had talked with him before I decided to get one. How he found me, I still
don’t know. My
excursion onto the western coast of Turkey to visit Ephesus and the ancient
battlefield of the Trojan War ended without mishap. But I did have one
frightening nighttime sea voyage after reentering Greece aboard a small
rain-whipped ferry to Lesbos during which the sea churned so badly the only
other passengers, a Greek couple, vomited up their dinner. Being similarly
inclined, I knew I had only one chance to avoid terminal seasickness. I spent
four hours leaning back in my seat with my eyes closed, securely wrapped in that
center of myself which was my newly-found “home on the road.” I have never
felt so centered, so self-contained as I did during those hours. It was a
profound experience, and I’ve not lost that center since. I
certainly felt as though I was leading a charmed life during those seventy days
in Greece; however, the really curious part of it was my traveling companion.
You wouldn’t have known he was there even if you’d been with me. He showed
up in that non-literal reality, my dreams. He
was a troubling guy, one who, while I slept on the volcanic island of Santorini,
coerced me into murdering two people and robbing a bank. I didn’t like him,
didn’t trust him, and during one dream even caught him plotting my own murder.
He and I were always on the run, once imprisoned only to escape by a daring plot
he engineered. But this was the dream world, and I didn’t let it affect me. I
didn’t learn his identity until I returned home. As
soon as I arrived back in Colorado, while searching for a new job in aerospace,
I went over my journal to see if I could make something of it. I wanted to write
a travel book and started researching the ancient Greek gods of whom I knew
little other than what I had learned from reading Homer and Sophocles. Then I
ran across a book by the classicist Karl Kerenyi titled, Hermes, Guide of
Souls. What
first interested me about Hermes was his role as protector of travelers. His
name originated from the term herma, a mound of stones ancient travelers
left to mark a trail. A herma is also a phallic display and a sign of power.
Hermes exists at boundaries and is thus the transgressor, breaker of taboos. The
real clinker came when I read that the traveler experienced Hermes as “home on
the road,” the words coming as if lifted from the pages of my journal. Hermes
wasn’t just the protector of travelers, he was the complete existential
experience. This was me in Delphi with my feet dangling off the edge of the
cliff wondering if I should return to the States because I couldn’t handle the
loneliness. After
reading Kerenyi, I went to the source of most of our information about this
troublesome god, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. I read that he was a thief,
as I already knew because I had dreamed of robbing a bank with him, a murderer,
we committed two murders during the robbery, and a liar. I
digested this skeptically but somewhat unnerved by the connection. I talked to
friends about it, quickly realizing what a mistake that was. After all, anyone
who’d spent five years in psychotherapy would have a propensity for magnify
trivial coincidences. I set it aside for a while, suspecting that talking about
encountering Hermes might not be the way to find a job putting satellites and
space shuttles in orbit. But
it wouldn’t leave me alone. I drifted back to the Homeric Hymn. After
Hermes was born, he stole his brother Apollo’s cattle and when caught lied
about it. Apollo saw through him, and Hermes, in recompense, gave Apollo the
lyre which he, Hermes, had just invented. Apollo accepted the musical
instrument, was delighted by it, and offered Hermes an oracle in return. As
you might expect from a god as illusive as Hermes, his oracle has never been
found. It resides somewhere on Mt. Parnassos, the same mountain where the ruins
of ancient Delphi lie and where I dangled my feet off the cliff while
contemplating my problem with the lengthy journey I’d planned. I rather
uneasily realized that was the reason my epiphany of being at home on the road
occurred there. The
nature of Hermes’ oracle is also curious. Apollo’s prophecies were
pronounced by a priestess, the Pythia, but Hermes’ were spoken by three
awesome sisters who lived on Parnassos and buzzed about all day eating yellow
honey, eagerly speaking truth to those who would listen. If they didn’t get
their honey though, they zipped about in confusion and lied. The awesome sisters
were bees, in my case, the bumblebees who buzzed my feet as I contemplated
cutting my trip short. In
the coming days, I learned Hermes was the light-hearted bringer of dreams, guide
of souls in the Underworld, and that he occupied the space of liminality, the
boundary between the conscious and subconscious, the seat of the soul. That he
had brought my dreams was no surprise, nor that I had dreamed of my own death
since he was guide of souls. Talking to God in his presence also made more
sense; after all, he did bridge the gulf between mortals and immortals. But him
being the “seat of the soul” came to me as a revelation, providing insight
into the experience late that night at sea, centered within myself while the
churning surf tossed the small ferry about and my only companions threw up their
socks. Through his influence, I had learned to no longer look for my reference
in the external world, but internally. I had found my true self. For
the first time, I wondered seriously about the existence of the Greek gods. I
had only known them as pagan deities denigrated during the early days of
Christianity by St. Paul, who was born and raised in the Greek city of Tarsus on
the southern coast of what is now Turkey, and St. John, who lived his later
years at Ephesus and spent eighteen months in exile on Patmos. But even if the
gods did exist, I told myself, they are now dead. Plutarch,
in the 1st century AD, provided a vivid description of the
announcement of the death of fun-loving Pan, the most beloved of all immortals.
According to Plutarch [1], a boat traveling the western coast of Greece north to
Italy came upon the island of Paxi and as it did, a voice called out, “When
you reach Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead.” Those onboard were amazed
at this and, not wanting to offend the gods either way, wondered what to do.
Finally they decided to continue their course without doing anything unless
something caused them to come close to the island, in which case they would obey
the request. So
it was that when they came abreast of Palodes the wind died and they drifted
close thereto, and taking it as a favorable sign, one of them called into the
darkness, “Great Pan is dead.” The words were barely out of the man’s
mouth when a cry of many voices raised in lamentation issued from shore. All
aboard realized it must certainly be true, one of the immortals had passed on.
In the ancient Greek “pan” means “all” and his fate has been taken as
emblematic of all the gods. Pan was said to have died on the day Christ was
crucified. I
now live in the aftermath of my Greek experience, watching as it ripples though
my life. Recently I moved from Colorado to New Mexico where I now write in an
old home built by my grandfather, much of which he constructed from discarded
bomb boxes from World War II. I live in isolation more than ever, and I’m
drawn deeper into a world two thousand years gone. I feel as if while in Delphi
I fell into that abyss. Perhaps
my problem all along was not one of loneliness due to separation from worldly
companions, as I had thought, but a spiritual one born of the barren internal
landscape defining godless modern man. [3] The ancient Greek experienced his gods
within himself. Is it any wonder one came to me that day at the edge of the
cliff when I needed him? The
End 1. Plutarch, Moralia Vol. V, tr. Frank Cole Babbitt, Harvard University Press, LCL, 1936,pp. 401,3. 2. Palmer, Robert B., in the Introduction to Dionysus, Myth and Cult, by Walter F. Otto, 1965, Spring Publications, pg. x, xi. 3. Ibid, xi.
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