Psychological Alchemy, The Hermes Archetype and Carl Jung

what if we have the Gods all wrong let me explain if we think about them in a modern sense we tend to do so pretty reductively we grow up being taught that our ancient ancestors had primitive minds they used this idea of these super beings they called Gods to explain natural phenomena disasters and other circumstances they couldn't understand because they didn't have access to science and I'll admit perhaps some of our ancient ancestors did think in such simplistic terms I mean if you look at a lot of modern spirituality and modern religion uh I'm not sure it's gotten a whole lot better but if you dive into the work of Socrates and Plato or heraclitus or really any ancient philosopher of note you'll find very quickly that these were sophisticated minds thinking about spirituality and logical complex Advanced ways so these were mines that believed in a spiritual reality or if you like the gods but they certainly were not thinking about them in such a simplistic way so how did these more sophisticated minds think about the gods well I'm not going to get into their ontologies or spiritual philosophies in particular but as a shorthand way of thinking about it I really like this definition from Professor Leslie Allen Combs Greek gods represent aspects of reality that overarch both the inner worlds of human experience and the external worlds of Nature and Society Zeus for example literally means light or shower of light in the world of nature Zeus is associated with the bright sky and was seen as a source of atmospheric phenomenon as the central figure of homeric Greece however he symbolized the inner experience of light and illumination his illumination Kindles the spirit of Lucidity that permeates the other gods and indeed the entire Greek culture Zeus represents valid aspects of both inner human consciousness and outer atmospheric phenomena both are as real today as they were to the homeric Greeks another more modern thinker that understood the Gods in this way that they were very real and very alive and as relevant today as they were then is mythopoetic psychiatrist Carl Young for young they were still alive in the sense that they were living archetypes in the collective unconscious of humanity meaning they're endemic to the way we think about and make sense of the world now if you aren't initiated into the idea of the collective unconscious you might be thinking what are you talking about well I've got a whole video on the collective unconscious which I highly encourage you to check out but in the interest of not leaving you stranded for this video uh here's a little orientation according to Young the human psyche is not one cohesive object he broke it down into a few different primary pieces the conscious mind which is what you're aware of right now it's the realm of your persona and your ego it's the things in your Consciousness that you're aware of then there's the personal unconscious which is essentially the dark twin of the conscious part of your mind this is where the shadow resides this is where various repressed elements of your psyche reside fears hidden potential elements of ourselves that we haven't discovered yet that we're not aware of and then according to Young underneath all of that is the collective unconscious the ground of psyche that we all come from and in this Collective unconscious there are archetypes these primordial locuses of concept and power that are more or less static more or less Immortal this is also where Universal patterns and symbols that are shared across all of humanity reside so when you combine all of that you begin to get a basic idea of what Young meant by archetypes and you can see why they would be similar to what the Ancients conceived of as gods or what we could still conceive of as Gods now with that Exposition out of the way there is one archetype in particular that young seem to be pretty interested and pretty obsessed with there's a few really but for the purposes of this video I'm talking about who the Greeks called Hermes and who the Romans called Mercury you might know this Hermes Mercury figure vaguely probably as the messenger god this Speedy deity who travels between the realm of Mortals and the Divine but that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface it certainly doesn't explain Young's fascination with the figure it doesn't explain why many jungian thinkers associate this Hermes Mercury figure with the phenomenon of synchronicity or why young himself Associated this figure with his entire process of self-actualization this process that he called individuation it doesn't explain the enduring influence of this figure on the Zeitgeist why there are still numerous books being written about the figure I literally just watched an Instagram reel someone made about this figure this morning I am Hermes messenger of the Gods and Lord of communication in Egypt they knew me as Thoth what is this archetypal figure's wisdom what does it tell us about the nature of reality and meaning making why am I myself a bit obsessed with this archetype this is a deep Rabbit Hole my friends it's going to be difficult to really do this figure Justice uh so let's start exploring with the Mercurial multifaceted nature of this archetype and its cultural and psychological influence it's difficult to know where to start but I figured why not start at the beginning Hermes was the son of Zeus the king of the Gods and a nymph named Maya so he's not an Olympian God in fact he was being raised in secret in a cave by his mother that said Hermes was no regular baby he was was already quite clever and cunning he was able to run around communicate hatch complex plots one day baby Hermes escapes from his hidden home unnoticed and before long he gets hungry and he develops a craving a craving for meat but not just any meat he wants the very best meat and what else could be better than the sacred cattle of Apollo Apollo the prince of all of Olympus his cattle are of course totally off limits due to their holy status but Hermes the little trickster genius that he is doesn't care and he devises a really clever complex cattle Heist plan he'd hide the tracks and use his Divine cunning to confuse any pursuer that might try to come after him he had the cattle walk backwards and in circles and used Arcane tricks to conceal the theft and then eventually once he feels like he's well hidden enough Hermes does the deed he sacrifices the cattle to The Olympian gods including himself which is total sacrilege because remember he's an illegitimate son of Zeus at this point meanwhile Hermes also encounters a turtle and immediately in his Mind's Eye he sees this instrument the liar so he kills the turtle and makes the first liar out of the turtle's shell this is going to be an important detail for later in the story remember who the victim of this crime is this is Apollo the prince of Olympus a figure known for his illuminative wisdom the deity that sees all things that is directly plugged into the mind of Zeus in fact the famous Oracle of Delphi is actually a priestess of Apollo so it's his mind that she is supposedly accessing when she gives her prophecies so this is really the last being you ever want to steal from but as soon as Apollo began investigating he was confused he knew he must be being deceived by another Divine being because he could not initially make sense of Hermes plan and all of these Arcane tricks that he was playing eventually though Apollo did pick up his Trail he did solve all of Hermes ciphers and he found his way back to Hermes hidden home of course by this point Hermes had snuck in unnoticed and appeared to be just an innocent little infant sleeping in his bed Hermes mother Maya argued with Apollo saying this is just a little innocent Baby how could he possibly be guilty of what you're accusing him of and Apollo really couldn't answer he simply said I don't know how he did it exactly but I do know that he did it in some versions of the myth at this point Apollo brings him before Zeus for judgment and it doesn't go so well Zeus kind of laughs it off of course knowing that this is his son so kind of a chip off the old block he's secretly a little bit proud of how cunning and Brilliant his baby already is in other versions Apollo and Hermes settle it themselves but in every version the thing that ends up bringing them both together is this liar that Hermes invented because Apollo himself is an expert musician and he was absolutely enthralled by this liar the moment he saw it he knew he had to have it so he agreed to forgive Hermes if he would give him the liar and not only did he forgive him he eventually gives Hermes the caduceus and allows him to become a fully recognized member of Olympus with Zeus's blessing so I love this story for several reasons and and not just the narrative if you look at the archetype of the this story it's essentially how disruptive external energy violates overturns and becomes the status quo think for instance about political revolution or technological innovation these tend to start small just like our divine baby but then eventually they become a big deal they disrupt they overturn The Establishment become recognized as part of the establishment and then this Mercurial cycle plays all over again over and over again across varying strata of reality but also it starts to show some of the depth of this Hermes archetype he's so much more than just a messenger or even a trickster he violates and transcends boundaries he's an innovator a herdsman a magician a slick speaker a thief he invents on the Fly he confuses and now we're beginning to get a little bit of a clearer picture of this archetype's function he is a boundary transcending disrupter trickster who moves information from one plane of reality to another and no this doesn't even cover all of this deity's functions he was also for instance known as the Divine psychopomp the deity who guided the deceased to the underworld but how do we connect this story and the mythology of Hermes with our own minds and how does that help us make sense of the world Jung himself was deeply interested in mythology and symbolism because he saw them as outgrowths of what he called the collective unconscious as I mentioned before again this realm that we're all unconsciously connected to that we really spring up from this ocean of psyche and symbol and archetypes that influences all of us through dreams and synchronicities precognitive occurrences Etc so this is the connecting principle this Collective unconscious notion connects the realm of myth with the human psyche and to understand this connection better we should look to the work of young specifically psychology and Alchemy we will not have time to go down the psychology and Alchemy Rabbit Hole fully in this video but young was struck by the numerous parallels between Alchemy this process of turning Prima Materia a primary material a inert Stone into the lapis philosophorum the Philosopher's Stone and his own framework for the transformative journey of the psyche what he called individuation and who is at the center of all of the iconography all of the strange Arcane art that has to do with Alchemy of course it's Hermes mercurius so young explored this archetype of Hermes mercurius specifically in his work psychology and Alchemy Jung considered the Hermes archetype to be a guide that assists in the alchemical process of individual psyches that is he AIDS in the transformation of the psyche from unconscious to conscious but young goes even further than that characterizing this Hermes Mercury archetype as not just a guide but the keeper of the entire process as this absolutely brain melting quote illustrates the multiple aspects of mercurius may be summarized as follows one mercurius consists of all conceivable opposites he is thus quite obviously a duality but is named a unity in spite of the fact that his innumerable inner contradictions can dramatically fly apart into an equal number of disparate and apparently independent figures two he is both material and spiritual three he is the process by which the lower and material is transformed into the higher and spiritual and vice versa 4. he is the devil a redeeming psychopomp an evasive trickster and God's reflection in physical nature he is also the reflection of a mystical experience of the artifacts that coincides with the Opus alchemicium as such he represents on one hand the self and on the other the individuation process and because of the Limitless number of his names also the collective unconscious I have read and thought about that quote so many times and it still is like mind alt it makes me feel high every time I read it but this connection between Hermes Alchemy and the individuation process isn't the whole story not even close to the whole story but even just sticking from a jungian perspective there there's more here young and jungian analysts equate Hermes Mercury with the phenomenon of synchronicity something you've probably heard of again we don't have time to fully explore the concept of synchronicity in this video and again I have a whole video on the topic I encourage you to check out as jungian analyst and author Murray Stein puts it with considerable Justice it can be said that the Greeks named the experience of synchronicity Hermes Hermes personifies the synchronistic moment but it must be added that when he appears his Epiphany takes place classically in the shadows or in the night I'll Riff on that quote a little further in a moment but first a little bit of orientation in case you're not familiar with synchronicity so what is it it's a meaningful coincidence without any kind of logical physical connecting mechanism it's a significance that seems to transcend the boundary of mind and matter let's say you're thinking about a friend you haven't seen in a long time maybe you haven't spoken to them in years and suddenly your phone rings and who is it it's your long-lost friend so you may already sense where this is going why is Hermes the sort of Patron deity the personification of this synchronicity phenomenon because as I said he is the connector so he connects the world of the psychical the psyche with the physical and he does it as that quote alludes to earlier in some kind of unseen shadowy way with some kind of invisible connecting mechanism that doesn't make sense from our Dimension with our rules of physics in another quote from Murray Stein wherever Human Experience breaks through Frontiers to the unexpected or undergoes transitions there we may find the Hermes archetype as I've said so many times already this is just scratching the surface if you want to dive into Jung's musings about Hermes and Alchemy yourself self check out psychology and Alchemy and these quotes from Murray Stein come from his book in midlife and I definitely also want to point you toward a really amazing essay by Professor Leslie Allen Combs on Hermes and synchronicity um I'll leave a link to that in the description though I do find all of this incredibly interesting I admit that this is all pretty mythopoetic and Abstract so how do we make it practical and moreover why do we need to think mythologically why do we need to think archetypally well there are a few reasons and to start I want to quote one of my favorite mythopoetic psychologists who also does a really great job of bringing things down to earth James Hillman as he puts it psychology is ultimately mythology the study of the stories of the Soul now again I want to clarify as I have before that when he says mythology or I say mythology or young or any of these mythopoetic thinkers use that word they're not referring to just made up stories they're talking about archetypal narratives that speak to something endemic to the nature of reality or The Human Condition about elements of reality so entrenched that we can only talk about them through narrative because they elude measurement they elude science but we all sense them we all feel them intuitively and psychically and even somatically sometimes how else can we talk about these elusive but powerful human experiences but through myth without myth we have no way to talk about these things and this is what Drew Young to myth as well as he says in man and his symbols and many other places he turned to myth because there were elements of reality in his own psychic experiences that he couldn't explain as a scientist he couldn't explain his own synchronicities and personally significant dreams and Visions in strictly empirical terms but he knew they were meaningful I mean if you look at the red book for instance just this profound achievement of Art and poetry and psychology that young put together over the course of years I mean this is the height of what I'm talking about you can see it behind me I'm absolutely obsessed with it I don't know how else to put it other than to say this mythopoetic way of seeing is like nutrition for your soul it's fuel for your own individuation process your own curiosity your own wonder it makes the world a bigger more magical place than we can understand it re-insoles our lives in a non-dogmatic way which is something I believe we badly need we need spirituality if we want life to make sense if we want life to feel meaningful uh this is something I discuss at length in another video on what I call Soul sickness which you can check out here and with that my friends we've covered a lot of ground on a very esoteric topic but on the other hand I'm torn because as I alluded to at the top this is an incredibly deep stochastic fractal ever morphing Mercurial rabbit hole we could go so many other places with this we haven't even discussed the Egyptian angle we haven't discussed how this figure is also equated with the Egyptian God Thoth or the mysterious figure that comes out of the Greco Egyptian lore Hermes Trice Magistas but that is going to conclude this transmission do tickle the algorithms with a like and a sub it is of vital importance so much love for watching and I will see you in the next transmission

Channel: THIRD EYE DROPS

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Keywords: collective unconscious, carl jung, carl jung archetypes, jungian archetypes, carl jung synchronicity, carl jung quotes, hermes trismegistus, mythology, mythology explained, carl jung alchemy, Alchemy of psychology, Psychology of alchemy, carl jung dreams, collective unconscious carl jung, collective unconscious explained, carl jung archetypes and the collective unconscious audiobook, psychology and alchemy carl jung

Id: T6yxdpO8uNU

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023