Of Juniper and Quicksilver
It’s been a busy few weeks. It seems like as you get older, time really does fly by. Last weekend we drove from North Florida to Elkmont campground in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and then from there over to Nashville. It was a long eight and a half hours back home, especially with two large dogs and three humans crammed into our Outback. The hectic days after coming back from vacation were mostly filled with the backlog of freelance that had built up while I was gone and a few errands.
On one of these errands, I ended up sitting outside a fairly popular ice cream store.1 It’s August in Florida, so as you might expect, the place was solidly packed. I had forgotten my mask and so was exiled to wait outside while the family ordered for me. Sitting outside by yourself with no phone bored leads to rabbit hole thoughts, and mine today was Mercury. It was a nice reprieve from the normally information-saturated way the rest of my day is normally spent. I think we all need to be alone with our thoughts every now and again.
The god Mercury rules stores, shops, and commerce in general. Etymologically, the world Mercury stems from the Latin word merx which means merchandise and the word mercari which means to trade. That’s where we get the words mercantile and merchant, along with other merc- words. The origin is probably the Proto-Indo-European2 root word merĝ, meaning boundary or border. This gives us an interesting perspective on Mercury’s other domain of rulership: Magick.
Mercury is the Roman form of the Greek god Hermes.3 The son of Zeus and Maia, Hermes was the herald of the Olympian gods, among a myriad of other duties. Hermes was said to be born in a sacred cave on the rocky slopes of Mount Kyllene in Arcadia. The seven Pleiades were also said to have been born on Mount Kyllene, the eldest of which was Hermes’s mother Maia. Greek travel writer (yes, that was a thing even then!) Pausanias wrote the following about Mount Kyllene in his second century C.E. Description of Greece:
The highest mountain in Arkadia is Kyllene, on the top of which is a dilapidated temple of Hermes Kyllenios (of Mt Kyllene). It is clear that Kyllenos, the son of Elatos, gave the mountain its name and the god his surname. In days of old, men made wooden images, so far as I have been able to discover, from the following trees ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, yew, lotus. But the image of Hermes Kyllenios is made of none of these, but of juniper wood. Its height, I conjecture, is about eight feet.
It is interesting here that he specifically mentions that the image of Hermes Kyllenios is made of juniper wood. Usually, we don’t see juniper as one of the plants attributed to Hermes, but clearly it held significance in ancient times. The Greek juniper was probably Juniperus oxycedrus, prized for its wood, and fragrant smoke. Keep that in mind for future Hermes workings. For a historical ritual that features Hermes and juniper, see the PGM4, spell IV. 2373-2440, a spell for attracting customers to your business.
Scholars are unsure of the etymological origin of the word Hermes but do agree that it is pre-Greek in origin. His cult seems to have been first established in remote areas and as such seemed to be more shamanic in nature. Perhaps this is where the chthonic aspect of Hermes comes to us from, along with his rulership of sacrificial animals and transmitter of dreams.
Much of Hermes’s rulership seems to stem from the idea of transition. Commerce is just a transition of goods and money from one party to another. Magick is a transition from one state to another. Many of Hermes’s epithets5 indicate that he stands between two places:
Hermes Pylaios: Hermes as doorkeeper
Hermes Strophaios: standing at the door post
Hermes Psychopompos: conveyor or conductor of souls
Hermes Oneiropompus: conductor of dreams
As a psychopomp, Hermes guides the soul in the transition from life to death. As transmitter of dreams, Hermes epithet was Oneiropompus. Both psychopomp and Oneiropompus share the Greek word pompḗ, which means a sending. In both cases, part of the role Hermes is playing is to send something, either dreams or souls. Because of this, you can invoke Hermes when you would like something sent. This is a simple, yet deceptively versatile mode to invoke for magical work. In addition to dreams and souls, you can ask for Hermes to send you clear information in divinatory work, or clear communication if you are about to deliver a speech. Going back to the PGM, we see that even during the harvesting of herbs, the magician invokes and takes on the aspect of Hermes while cutting the herb itself. In PGM IV. 2967-3006 we see the following part of the invocation to be said while cutting of herbs for magical purposes:
I am Hermes. I am acquiring you with Good Fortune and Good Daimon both at a propitious hour and on a propitious day that is effective for all things.
Cutting an herb or gathering a resource is transitioning it from a mundane state to a magical one, thus the reason for invoking Hermes. By embodying Hermes, our herbalist gains the authority to transfer the physical material of the plant from one state to another.
Praxis
Here is a simple charm from the PGM that gives “victory” to the wearer. You are to use a gold tablet shaped like the sun and inscribe on it the words, and then either keep it in your shoe, or put it on something in which you wish to have victory.
PGM VII. 919-24
Hermes wonderous victory charm which you are to keep in your sandals: Take a tablet gold like the sun (literally, shaped like the sun) and inscribe on it with a bronze stylus and put it on whatever you want and see what it does on a boat, on a horse, and you will be amazed.
These are the characters:
THŌOUTH, give victory, strength, influence to the wearer.
This place is somewhat famous among people who are really into old-timey soda fountains and custom candy making. Check out their YouTube here, it’s pretty interesting how they make candy on vintage equipment by hand. I can also attest that the Green River float is absolutely amazing.
Proto-Indo-European is the ancestor of many modern languages and was theorized to be an actual spoken language in the Late Neolithic era from 4500 B.C.E to 2500 B.C.E.
It’s actually more complicated than that, but for narrative sake, we’ll simplify a bit. Mercury was a syncretized version of pre-existing Etruscan and Latin gods with similar traits that were folded into the Hellenized Roman pantheon.
The PGM stands for Papyri Graecae Magicae in Latin. The PGM collects a large number of Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish spells from 100 BCE-400 CE.
An epithet is a sort of title given that describes a specific function and accompanies the main name. Using an epithet lets you call upon a very narrow band of whatever the deity generally rules over.