Psychopompos

The god who leads souls. From Greek ψυχοπομπός — psychē, soul; pompos, leader, conductor. The epithet belongs properly to hermes, though Kerényi reads it as naming a configuration broader than any single function: “‘Guide of Souls’ is the usual translation given to the Hermes epithet ‘Psychopompos’ and it refers to his role as the god who leads souls into the underworld when they die. But πομπός… is more than guide, and even more than guide to the underworld. It means to lead, but Hermes as leader is not quite right either. It means something more like to lead on” (Kerényi 1944).

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes names Hermes “herald appointed to Hades” — οἶον δ’ εἰς Ἀίδην τετελεσμένον ἄγγελον εἶναι (572) — and Kerényi reads the τετελεσμένον as marking a formal preparation and appointment, an ordination to the office. This is what the mysteries call “not the worst gift” (γέρας οὐκ ἐλάχιστον, 573): death itself, figured as an ambassadorial office.

The psychopompos is the figure who mediates between the world of the living and the world of the dead, but also, more widely, between any two “no’s” that stand against one another — conscious and unconscious, upper world and lower, the absolute yes and the absolute no. Kerényi: “the primordial mediator and messenger moves between the absolute ‘no’ and the absolute ‘yes,’ or, more correctly, between two ‘no’s’ that are lined up against each other… In this he stands on ground that is no ground, and there he creates the way” (Kerényi 1944).

The depth tradition inherits the psychopompos as the figure of the dream-guide, the analyst-as-mediator, and the soul’s own capacity to cross its own thresholds.

Relationships

Primary sources

kernyi-hermes-guide-souls (Kerényi 1944)
homeric-hymn-to-hermes