Today I’m joined by mentor, guide and friend of the podcast, Brian Clark.

It’s time to enter the world of Hermes, guide of souls, the one we meet on the road who can lead us away from home and lead us back when the time is right.

We begin our discussion by talking about mythological Hermes, tracing his origins back to Mycenaean culture where he was known as the ‘herma’ – a pile of rocks that we still have in our language today as the ‘milestone’.

Brian and I discuss moments in our lives, of which there are far more than we could possibly mention, of when we had a plan and Hermes had an alternative. Once off the track of what we thought might happen we are in the hands of Hermes or Mercury and on the pathless path where the mystery, unmistakably, is unfolding at our feet.

From here we go into the more technical realm of Mercury the planet. The numbers that are associated with his relationship to the sun, including Pi – that endless rambling number that seems random but follows an invisible order. And we suggest some ways to work with Mercury and its cycles in order to follow its intrinsic patterns, tend to the mind and thread together ideas so that they might become fruitful projects over time.

I decided to leave the conversation unedited. The moments of wrestling with an idea, or getting things wrong, or taking the apparently wrong path, seem an important part of the contemplation of Hermes Mercurius. Without that tension, that wrestling match, that confusion, those strange crossroads, we’re unlikely to receive that little bag of gold that Hermes holds in his hand, the one that isn’t holding the Caduceus.

Resources Mentioned

Books & Texts

• Lewis Hyde — Trickster Makes This World
• Homer — The Iliad
• Homer — The Odyssey
• Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Authors & Thinkers

• David Abram
• Dane Rudhyar

Mythological References

• Hermes / Mercury
• Perseus and Medusa
• Kairos
• Prometheus and Epimetheus
• Metis
• Mnemosyne
• Snow White / Sleeping Beauty

Astrology & Astronomy

• Mercury's Promethean and Epimethean phases
• Mercury's retrograde cycles
• Mercury's inferior and superior conjunctions
• Mercury's greatest elongation
• The ~116-day Mercury cycle
• The relationship between Mercury's cycles, 22/7, and π

Astrosynthesis

• Brian Clark & Glennys Lawton — Astrosynthesis

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