The Seba library treats Psychopompos in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including Hillman, James, Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C. G.).
As he leads souls (psychopompos) to the underworld, perhaps he makes use of the underworld to lead our souls from the legal identity we hold in our wallets. As psychopompos he is also a psychogogos, a teacher of the psyche, a psychologist, whose main instruction is ambiguity
Hillman identifies the psychopompos function of Hermes with a psychological pedagogy of ambiguity and soul-leading through loss of ego-identity.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
Anima as relationship means that configuration which mediates between personal and collective, between actualities and beyond, between the individual conscious horizon and the primordial realm of the imaginal, its images, ideas, figures, and emotions. Here anima functions as mediatrix and psychopompos
Hillman extends the psychopompos function beyond Hermes to the anima, designating it as the mediating configuration that guides the psyche between the personal and the imaginal realms.
, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis
the sage or master, in order to be the psychopompos who guides souls through the confusion of creation where there is a fault in every rock and the paths are not straight, shows hermetic cunning and a coldness that is as i
Hillman characterizes the psychopompos role as requiring hermetic cunning and a nature-like coldness, linking soul-guidance to amoral, serpentine wisdom rather than moral authority.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
Psychopompos, 80 three-headed, 221, 224; tetracephalus, 224; tree of, 309n; underworldly, 231; vine of the wise, 314; wind god, 212
Jung's index entry for Hermes in Alchemical Studies places Psychopompos within a dense cluster of attributes — chthonic, triadic, underworldly — that define Mercurius as the alchemical soul-guide.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
Psychopompos, 80; three-headed, 221, 224; tetracephalus, 224; tree of, 309n; underworldly, 231
The parallel index entry in the Collected Works confirms that for Jung the Psychopompos attribute of Hermes-Mercurius is consistently positioned among the god's underworldly and multi-headed aspects.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
The spirit of Night itself, the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment, its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom. She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care, and she causes dreams to play about their souls.
Kerényi's mythopoetic account of the nocturnal genius that guides, protects, and enchants travelers establishes the phenomenological ground for understanding Hermes as psychopompos of the night-road.
, Hermes Guide of Souls, 1944supporting
they belonged to the 'paternal,' and possibly also the 'maternal,' gods. These were, in any case, related to the origins of the family: they represented the inexhaustible source of life and souls from which the family continued to originate over and over again.
Kerényi traces the household cult figures of Hermes, Hecate, and the hermaphrodite to an ancestral source of souls, situating the psychopompos within the domestic and generational transmission of psychic life.
, Hermes Guide of Souls, 1944supporting
The daimon of a place in antiquity supposedly revealed what the place was good for, its special quality and dangers. The daimon was thought to be a serpent, a familiaris of the place. To know a situation one needs to sense what lurks in it.
Hillman's discussion of the situational daimon as serpentine guide provides a lateral amplification of the psychopompos motif, associating soul-guidance with chthonic, place-bound intelligence.
, Senex & Puer, 2015aside