Meaning is a very powerful thing. The meaning of something is intimately connected with the nature of the thing itself, whether that thing be an actual “thing” or an idea. The meaning of something is central to its appearance, identity, and significance. When you change the meaning of something, you change the truth of it.
You change the context. You may change the “rules.” Something brand new may come into the world. Changes in meaning = world creation, my friend!
I think this is a useful lens to apply to the painful divisions and amazing developments taking place right now. People are consciously attempting to manipulate or change the meanings of things. This is causing a lot of disagreement, discomfort, and excitement.
The mythological figure that is most closely associated with these activities is the trickster. In this episode we take a look at Hermes, the Greek trickster god, to see how an expert uses the magic of meaning to recreate the world.
Transcript of Meaning is magic: the trickster Hermes and radical change
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
In the last podcast I talked about magic and fairies, the central point being that we live in a world that is much more mysterious than we are often inclined to believe, or taught to imagine. And the only way to really discover the truth of what is around us is through open minded curiosity, making room for magic. In that podcast, the possible existence of fairies was one of the things that we entertained.
Today, I want to talk to you about another form of magic, something that happens all the time that we can choose to do, or that happens through a combination of forces that may or may not be within our conscious control. And that is what happens when the meaning of something changes.
Meaning is a very powerful thing. The meaning of something is intimately connected with the nature of the thing itself, whether that thing be an actual “thing” or an idea. The meaning of something is central to its appearance, identity, and significance. And in many ways, the divisions and the conflicts that we’re experiencing here in American society and in many other places around the world, are arguments about meaning and shifting meaning. The meanings of things are changing. People are consciously attempting to manipulate or change the meanings of things and this is causing a lot of disagreement and discomfort. When you change the meaning of something, you change the truth of it.
When we talk about changing meanings, redefinitions of terms, truth and belief, and the concepts, ideologies, and structures that are built on all of that, we are well into mythological territory. The mythological figure that is most closely associated in my mind with these activities is the trickster. Tricksters wander the edge of experience and meaning. They cross boundaries, social boundaries and moral boundaries. The existence of trickster figures in mythologies all around the world reflects the dynamism of the world and remind us that creation is ongoing. It’s ongoing in the material sense and also, for us as human beings, it’s very much ongoing in terms of the conceptual and imaginal world that we have built, and maintain, and occupy.
Tricksters often commit crimes, and the trespasses they commit, and the gifts and the troubles that they bring into the world, may be welcomed or resisted depending on your perspective at a given place or time. So, they are often associated with various forms of struggle or arguing between different groups. They offer challenges, as well as opportunities. They are the personification of the flexibility of truth and meaning. And this is their connection to culture, and so world creation for us, and the world of ideas and language that we inhabit, as well as our moral universe.
I want to explore this trickster energy as it relates to this power of shifting meanings and the implications of that, for the way that something appears, and therefore then what we think is true about it, by turning to Hermes, the trickster God in Greek mythology. Like tricksters that you encounter in other mythologies, Hermes is the messenger of the gods, the one who is most capable and most comfortable with travel into all of the realms: the realm of the gods, often imagined as the sky or the heavens, our earthly realm, and the underworld, the place of death and rebirth. Because Hermes travels between these realms, he brings us into contact with these places, and with the energies or personages in these places. He is associated with travel, and then with communication of all types.
The Romans, called Hermes “Mercury,” and if you are familiar with the astrology and the significance attached to Mercury Retrograde, you have a good sense of his attributes. If you are familiar with the element mercury, also called “quicksilver,” you find another image of Hermes– bright and shiny and nearly impossible to pin down.
Hermes, like other tricksters, is also a storyteller, a liar, and a cheat. There’s that quicksilver nature revealing itself. The great traveler and communicator, he is the god of language, which brings us to his role in culture creation and this powerful magic of shifting meaning, and therefore appearance, significance, and truth.
Now, for all of these reasons, I see tricksters like Hermes, as personifications of our mythmaking process. They travel the edges of experience, carry messages between the realms of existence, and are bound up in the acts of interpretation and articulation of life experience. In fact through their stories, they often show us how this is done, and remind us that we do it. The art and study of the act of interpretation is called “hermeneutics,” after the god Hermes.
Right now, I think it’s very important to recognize the trickster energy at work and respect its power, and develop your own trickster cunning, and flexibility. So, you don’t fall for the tricks, so you don’t get duped and don’t find yourself in a losing battle against the creative energies of change.
Now let me tell you the myth of Hermes taken from the Homeric Hymns. Hermes is an important player in many Greek myths and yet this is his story, which begins with his birth. This story offers some interesting ideas about meaning and truth and the emergence of something new into the world. I invite you to sit back and relax and let the story take you where you need to go right now. Note the moments or the details that catch your attention, as they are worthy of some private reflection.
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Hermes was the child of Zeus and Maia, a nymph known as the youngest of the Pleiades. Maia was shy and Hera, Zeus’s wife, was quite jealous. So, Maia lived in a cave on Mount Cyllene in southern Arcadia, which is where Hermes was born. He was a very precocious child. They say that he was born early in the morning. At noon, he invented the lyre. In the evening, he stole the sacred cattle of Apollo. And here is how that came to pass.
After his birth, his dear mother fell into a deep sleep. Hermes, smiling, only minutes old, climbed out of his cradle. He wandered to the threshold of the cave and left the darkness to step into the sunlight. At the mouth of the cave he discovered a tortoise, which he killed, and then taking the shell, some ox hide and reeds, invented the lyre. On this new instrument, the first of its kind, he composed a lovely melody and sang a song of his mother and the glorious tale of his own begetting.
Then Hermes was filled with a tremendous desire for meat. He set off at once for the meadows where the eternal cattle most precious to the god Apollo, were grazing. After a long journey, he found the herd of eternal cattle and selected 50 of them, and drove them off together through the sandy soil. The cattle were left unattended because the shepherd who was in charge of them was busy with a love affair, and Hermes slipped into this little moment of opportunity. He rounded up 50 of the cattle and headed off. He stopped them and tied a branch of tamarisk to each tail and then he provided each cow with little clogs that disguised their hoof tracks, so that they appeared to be walking backwards. That is, in the direction opposite from the one in which they were actually moving. So, the tracks that they left, pointed in the opposite direction of where they were, in fact, led
Now, Hermes committed his theft with great cleverness and stealth. But an old man who was out tending his vineyards saw him in the midst of all of these preparations and thought it was pretty strange, a small baby, doing what exactly? Hermes saw him and said, “Old man, keep what you’ve witnessed a secret and when these vines come to fruit, you will have marvelous quantities of the best wine. So, wink, wink, stay out of trouble.”
Hermes drove the cattle across Greece. This took all night. In the morning, he crossed the river Alpheus and found a cave in the hills, where he hid the herd. Then he went out and rubbed two sticks together, thereby inventing fire. He took two of the big steers and with the strength of 10 men subdued and killed them. Then he divided the meat into 12 portions, and invented the rite of sacrifice to the gods. Now, do you remember that Hermes began with an intense desire for meat? Although he was very hungry he did not eat any, for the immortal gods of Mount Olympus eat only ambrosia.
When he was done with his sacrifice, Hermes concealed the rest of the herd in the cave and he went back home. He climbed back into his crib, pulled the little blanket up under his chin. But his mother heard him come back in and she said, “Where have you been in the middle of the night, you rogue? I do believe that you’ve already created trouble for yourself.” “Oh, don’t worry, mother” Hermes replied, “I know what I’m up to and soon we will leave this drafty cave for a much better place among the other immortal gods. I have ambitions for us both. I intend to get us both a place on Mount Olympus and if my father won’t give me that honor, I’ll contrive to take it.”
About this time, Apollo went to the place where he had left his precious sacred, eternal cattle to graze and found to his dismay, that 50 of them were gone. He was outraged and amazed that anyone would have the audacity to commit this crime against him. Apollo looked around and he couldn’t make any sense of the signs and the tracks that he saw in the dirt. Then he came upon the old man out tending his vineyard. “Tell me, sir” he said, “I am looking for a herd of cattle. Have you seen anything?” “Oh, I’m old” replied the man, “and my eyes aren’t so good, but I think I saw an infant, it was quite strange, walking with some cattle last night.” When Apollo heard this, he knew right away that it was Hermes, and he sped straight to mount Cyllene to confront the child.
He stormed past the startled mother to find Hermes lying in his crib in a nest of blankets. Hermes coed and gurgled and looked up at him. “I know that you stole my cattle” Apollo said, “despite your tender age and innocent demeanor, and I demand that you return them.” “I don’t know what you mean” Hermes replied, “why, I was just born yesterday.” The two gods argued but Hermes stuck to his story. “You insult me deeply” he said, “I bet you wouldn’t say such things in front of the other gods.” “Well, then let us go up to Zeus and take up this debate,” said Apollo. He picked up the baby Hermes and prepared to carry him away to Mount Olympus. Just then Hermes let out a tremendous fart, and then he sneezed in Apollo’s face, and Apollo dropped him and laughed, and chuckling he went to Zeus without him.
Apollo went to Mount Olympus to report the theft of his cattle to Zeus. At first, Zeus admonished Apollo for taking up his time with such a tale. It sounded ludicrous, an infant thief. But when Apollo finished his account Zeus, the king of the gods, ordered that Hermes and Maia be brought to Mount Olympus. When the message came, Hermes turned to his mother and said, “Now see mother, we will eat ambrosia and sit amongst the other gods in our rightful place, and leave this drafty, shadowy cave.” Mother and son went up to Mount Olympus and Zeus said gravely “Now Hermes, you have been accused of stealing your brother Apollo’s sacred cattle. These animals are sacred and this is a serious crime. Did you do it? Tell the truth, and it will be chalked up as youthful folly, since you are still an infant.”
“Apollo came to our cave this morning without proof and has disturbed me and my mother greatly. Of course, I didn’t steal the cattle,” Hermes. said. “I was just born yesterday.” And then Zeus understood the character of this young god and he laughed. “You must give back the cattle or make amends” he told him, and Hermes agreed to obey, for the will of Zeus persuades without effort. Hermes thought for a moment, and he pulled out the lyre, his brand new, newly invented musical instrument, and he started to play a beautiful tune. He sang a new song of the gods, of the birth and the proper place of each of them, and he did each of them honor, including himself.
Apollo, who is now the god of music, was entranced. “Trickster” he told him,”that song of yours is worth 50 cattle. I’ve never heard anything like it. I believe that we can settle our quarrel in peace.” Hermes offered Apollo the lyre. “Here brother” he said, “you will make better poetry with this than I.” And Apollo agreed to accept the lyre in exchange for the cattle and both were happy with their deal. Zeus then made Hermes messenger of the gods and gave him some other powers as well. And Maia, Herme’s mother, was given a place on Mount Olympus too.
So now, let’s take a look at the way that Hermes changes the meaning and significance of things to create something completely new in the world. I am following the insights into the trickster and into the story in particular, unpacked by Lewis Hyde, in his brilliant book “Trickster Makes the World: Mischief, Myth and Art. So, if this is interesting to you, these concepts and this conversation and story, I recommend that you check out Hyde’s book.
I’m going to walk back through the story and I may very well miss some examples, I will leave that to you to discover for yourself. But we see, first of all, Hermes makes a lyre out of a tortoise shell, so it’s no longer a turtle. It’s a musical instrument, a musical instrument that did not exist before. Then he makes new meaning from the eternal cattle. First of all, they are private property, and then he steals them. But in the killing of some of the cattle, he brings death to them so they are no longer eternal, right? And in the theft there is another example because the cattle have hooves, but then in manipulating the marks that they make, putting on the little clogs, Hermes moves around in the territory of hooves-that-are-tracks-that-are-marks; marks to interpret, marks that you could read correctly, or incorrectly. This is one of the connections to language and to writing. He takes these hooves and he turns them into makers of symbols, things that signify something.
And then he makes fire. He takes two sticks, which would previously have been understood as “two sticks” and by rubbing them together, makes fire and brings this new thing into the world.
Then he makes sacrifice. In the story, we’re told that he invents sacrifice. Now, this transforms the meat from “food” into an offering. And sacrifices are very interesting. Symbolically, they represent the exchange between realms, between beings. You make sacrifices, we give something up to something else. And there is the idea of apportioning here, who gets a share, and what share do they get.
That takes us to the last example that I want to give. In inventing sacrifice first of all, Hermes transforms the cattle into meat, and then transforms the meat that would be food into a symbol of relationship and apportionment. And he cuts himself in, you know, that’s the significance of the 12 portions. The 12 portions means that he has created a portion for himself. So, he has put himself into the position of the gods although he’s the illegitimate son living in the cave. And then he doesn’t eat the meat. He doesn’t eat the meat because the immortal Gods on Mount Olympus– and we know it is his objective to become one of these– don’t eat the meat. They only observe the fire and smell the meat. They only eat ambrosia. So, by not eating the meat, Hermes becomes one of those immortals up on Mount Olympus.
Hermes changes the meaning of things you see, and so he also changes the way they appear, that tortoise which becomes a musical instrument, for example. And then there is a change in perspective and significance. And because he does all of this, he creates the possibility that the rules and the context that have been established on the old meanings and appearances might change. This is one of the functions of the disruption that tricksters create. They commit crimes. They cross our moral, geographic and social boundaries and when we hear those stories, and review their actions and the effects of those actions, it provides an opportunity to reflect on the boundaries. Now that reflection might lead to a reaffirmation of the value of the boundaries and the current order, or it may reveal a need for change.
Now, if we go back to our story and Hermes, one of the old truth is that he is subverting is the truth about property and ownership. Who gave the cattle to Apollo in the first place? Why are they his? You see, through tricks like theft and lies, a trickster can tell a higher truth. In this case you might think, right, you know, when we really reflect on questions of property and ownership than we realize that there’s often little difference between those who claim ownership and those who are labeled as thieves. And it’s very useful to be reminded of this, in terms of our social order.
And yet Hermes takes this a little bit further, and reminds us that our ideas about property and theft depend on a set of assumptions. This goes back to this idea of the sacrifice and the way that things are apportioned. Who gets what portion? Who decides who should get more or less? On what value system? On what basis and what authority are such assignments made? I love this example that Lewis Hyde gives in his book, he says, for example, who gave all of Pennsylvania to William Penn?
I don’t have to elaborate I don’t think, on the implications of these property questions, and the authority behind their assignment, for you to make connections with our current situation.
So now, how does Hermes do this? How does he push the rule changing part of this? Well, one way that we keep boundaries in place is through shame. But Hermes is shameless. He’s an illegitimate son who insists on being recognized, and he is, through the manipulation of meaning and then the change in significance. He makes 12 portions for the sacrifice and one is for him, and he cuts himself in. And then he later sings a new song with a new story of the gods, and places himself in it. He gives them a better story, one that also includes him. Changing meaning, changing appearance, changing significance, changes the thing itself, and then the context and the rules around it.
When outsiders, then this story tells us, when an outsider brings their story to Zeus, when they find a way to Mount Olympus, the possibility for change in the established order appears. The links between meaning, appearance, significance, truth, and the ever-enlarging context can be understood through a concept called the “web of signification.”
The web of signification and what it means. We have meanings and ideas that constellate around each other, that are associated. And in accumulating these associations and these commonly agreed upon links, you see, we create our culture, based on this web. Now, as Hyde observes, our webs of signification are usually built, their cornerstones are usually, pairs of opposites like up and down, dark and light, true and false. So, we take these pairs that we use to organize our experience and meaning, and then we layer and layer and layer on top of them.
Myths are based upon this web, and so then our theories, ideologies, social forms, and institutions, entire cultures, basically. You see that if you start changing the meaning of an item in a web of signification, it can have really tremendous impact. Tremendous impact. This is a very interesting way, my friend, if you live in the United States or in a culture where debates are going on about monuments, for example, you might think about the arguments around the taking down of monuments to the Confederacy and renaming buildings and streets and other public places, from this perspective. Changing the meaning. Who are these people now, as we have folks who are skillfully showing us the need to change the meanings? That’s a trickster move.
So, when outsiders bring their stories to Zeus, when they make it onto Mount Olympus, there’s a possibility for some radical changes in the rules. Now, what happens with Hermes? Hermes goes from being an illegitimate son, living with his ignored mother in a dark and shadowy cave, to becoming an incredibly important player on Mount Olympus. And he has brought his mother with him. And I think this is an interesting dimension to this story, in the context of the web of signification, pairs of opposites, etc. Let me tell you a little bit about this. In the Homeric Hymns, Maia is described as a nymph but she has a more complex backstory than that. She is the daughter of the Titan Atlas. The Titan Atlas, who is given the job or the punishment of bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, after the Titans lose their war with the Olympians.
Maia and her sisters were associated with Artemis, the goddess of the wilderness and the hunt. This was a virgin cult. So many of the stories about the goddesses and mortals who followed Artemis involve men, males trying to you know, break that vow of chastity. And that is what happens to Maia and her sisters. According to one myth, they are pursued by the hunter Orion and in response to their pleas for help, Zeus turns them all into stars. He creates the constellation Orion the Hunter, and he turns Maia and her sisters into the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades.
In his exploration of Hermes and his mother, Carl Kerenyi notes that “Maia” is connected to the ancient Greek words for midwife and for grandmother, suggesting that she may once have been much more than a nymph. It’s interesting to consider the union of Maia and Zeus as a coming together of a God of Light, Zeus, and a goddess of the Night, if you think about that web of signification. You see Hermes here, blending opposites, but it’s more. Their union both unites and collapses our notion of sun and stars as opposites. I mean, in one sense, from the perspective of day and night, they are very different. And yet, they are both celestial bodies of light. We have here, two different forms of light. Hermes is full of contradictions. His birth, for example. I mean, he’s an infant, and he acts as an adult. And then at the end of the story, he makes a deal with Apollo that he honors absolutely, and he’s trusted to do that, despite his trickster nature.
Now, the last thing I want to consider is, “who” or what is Zeus today? In the ancient Greek pantheon, Zeus was the Sky God, the God of Light, the ruler of the gods and of humankind. And his job was the maintenance of a just order. He was vested with a great amount of authority although he could not reverse fate. Now, I think questions about the identity and authority of Zeus are part of the current cultural conversation also. Is Zeus “God,” for example, the Christian God maybe? Is Zeus our secular governments? Secular governments, and institutions like the establishment of democracy in an ancient Greece, have been a response to the absolutism that typically arises from and within social structures, and communities, and nations that are ruled by a god based order.
In the West, this development, the rise of democracies and secular governments, has been in a fluid exchange with concepts and ideas about the individual, about what it means to be an individual, and about the freedoms and rights of a person who has inner authority. Today, those of us living in cultures influenced by Western individualism grow up with the expectation and the responsibility to develop this inner authority, and personal conscience. It’s part of finding your path, meeting your destiny, self-fulfillment, and being a contributing member of your community.
In other words, there are many more “outsiders,” coming to Mount Olympus. There are also many more tools available to individuals. I mean, this podcast is one example. For most of my life, I didn’t have the means to talk directly to you like this without going through the gatekeepers. The people who controlled communication technologies, publishing, you know, all the various avenues. But now I have the means. We all have the means. And there’s also cultural acceptance of me coming directly to you.
One last thing I want to say is that the meaning of Zeus itself, then, it may be part of the trickster’s tricks right now–who or what has the right and responsibility to define and uphold our social order, and whose voices should be heard by this authority.
The image of Zeus is a bit more complex than what I typically see in popular culture and it changed quite a bit in ancient times, so we’ll take a closer look at Zeus and his myths in the next podcast. I hope that you will tune in next time for that. I have one other little piece for you but I want to pause here and say, welcome to the new subscribers, Leon and Lisa and Gabie and Alex, and tell you that if you are new to Myth Matters, I hope you will head over to the Mythic Mojo website. You’ll find information about the podcast, a variety of ways to subscribe, and also information about the other work that I do with people one on one, to use stories like this one to gain insight into life.
I also want to give a big shout out to the patrons and supporters of this podcast on patreon and Bandcamp whose financial contributions keep it all going. In particular today, a big heartfelt thank you to Fred in Baltimore, and Carolyn in Laguna Beach. If you are finding something of value here in Myth Matters, and you have the means, I hope that you will consider joining me on Patreon. A few dollars from you every month makes a huge difference, my friend.
Here is our concluding note. I’m going back to Lewis Hyde, who offers this quote from Frederick Nietzsche. As Hyde says, this is a wonderful way to think about this web of signification and the magic and the power of changing the meaning of something. About truth, Nietzsche writes:
“It is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation. Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions.”
There’s a lot of possibility for change my friend, there’s a lot of room for each of us to participate in making change, especially those of you who are artists. In this discussion of Hermes, you may have thought about changing meaning and perspectives and who shows us new ways of seeing things, and therefore bring something new into the world. That is a role that the artist plays and one of the reasons that artists in particular, are important in this time.
But whoever you are, wherever we are, the more that we consider role that meaning plays in the transformation of circumstance, whether it be personal or collective, the more skillful we can be. The less likely we are to be taken in and the more we can contribute to the world that we would like to see.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla, and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself. And until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Useful Links:
Check out Lewis Hyde and Trickster Makes this World
Homeric Hymn to Hermes at Tufts University, Greek classics online
