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Hermes as Odyssean Psychopomp

Hermes as Odyssean Psychopomp

Kerényi’s Hermes Guide of Souls frames the thread the Seba graph preserves: “the heroic world of the Iliad is much less the world of Hermes than is that of the journey epic, the Odyssey, and his world becomes more apparent still in the hymn” to Hermes (Kerényi 1944). The god of thresholds, roads, deceptions, and transitions is the presiding deity of the return, and in the Odyssey he appears at the decisive moments: warning Odysseus on Calypso’s island; guiding the suitor-souls into the underworld in Book 24; giving Odysseus the moly herb that protects him from Circe’s transformations.

Kerényi’s theological point is important: Homer depicts Hermes “in his divine substantiality, as distinguished from the insubstantial swarms that plunge into the other world. Gentle, his golden staff gleaming, Hermes appears even among the musty paths of ghosts. Here, too, he is named ἀκάκητα (‘painless’) since he does no harm even to these unfortunate souls” (Kerényi 1944). The psychopomp does not take the soul; he accompanies it.

For the depth tradition, this is the pattern of the hermetic transit: what moves between conscious and unconscious is not taken but accompanied. The Jungian analyst, the Hillmanian soul-worker, and the reader of dreams all perform some version of the Hermes-function.

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