#Hermes greek god full#

All of them disappeared through the effects of evolution, of the ego or of an excess or demobilisation of the primitive vital nature (Hyas was stung by a snake or killed by a lion or wild boar in Libya, and his sisters consequently died of grief). In addition to the Pleiades, Ovid and Hyginus mention six other children of Atlas, who through their names seem to indicate an evolutionary series.

Individuals who progress through them become themselves the bridge between Spirit and Matter, creator and created, or in other words ‘Man’. It is their seven children, the Pleiades, who mark the stages that will fill this void. The couple of Atlas and Pleione therefore represents what fills the space between Matter and Spirit and weaves the links between them. It seems more likely that the word was formed around the structuring characters ΤΛ, a splitting on the plane of the Spirit. The origin of the word Atlas proposed by etymological dictionaries seems doubtful (an association of the verb τλαω). This is why Atlas is united with Pleione, which means ‘the evolution of what fills with consciousness’ (from the root Πλε). He represents the path which man must embark on if he wishes to once again reunite what had become divided when he entered into the human mental plane. While Atlas is the image of separation, he is therefore also the symbol of its opposite, that which bridges Spirit and Matter. It is there that all the great heroes will have to go to engage in ‘rediscovering’, for the transformation of memory is the key to evolution. The garden of the Hesperides represents both ‘what was’ in the past and the ‘memories’ which have covered up this origin, making it more obscure, distorted and inaccessible. Hespera, evening, is also the region of the setting sun, the place of the past opposed to the East, which is what is eternally new. Hesiod specifies that Atlas stands at the confines of the West near the garden of the Hesperides, a symbol of the origin of evolution. But in fact it is only in later traditions that Atlas was made guilty and his task interpreted as a punishment for having supposedly taken the part of the Titans in the war against the gods. In Homer’s texts (The Odyssey), Atlas is ‘ he who knows the depths of every sea, and himself holds the tall pillars which keep earth and heaven apart.’ Thanks to these pillars, he maintains the separation between Spirit and Matter and curbs their powerful mutual attraction, but he is also the last step before they are united again.īasing themselves on Hesiod’s text which states that ‘Atlas supports the sky (…) on his head and his tireless shoulders’, other representations of this story have inversed earth and sky, making the former the charge of Atlas by an inversion of meaning, and thus giving not the image of a separation, but of a terrible burden assigned by Zeus. The different stages are defined by the seven Pleiades, children of their son Atlas. This couple holds a very special place, for their descendants illustrate the stages to be surpassed in the progression through the levels of the mind to realise the link between Spirit and Matter, as well as all the human conquests already achieved. His mother Maia’s paternal grandparents are the Titan couple Iapetus and Clymene. The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.Īs the child of Zeus and Maia, he is the expression of a new impulse of the spirit aiming to establish in man a new phase, the overmind, by anchoring it into the body. This progression follows the spiritual journey. To fully understand this web page, it is recommended to follow the progression given in the tab Greek myths interpretation. Hermes and Athena welcoming Heracles in Olympus – Louvre Museum

#Hermes greek god full#

He is always full of goodwill for mortals and maintains a perfect equanimity.

He is the god of occult knowledge which gives access to the overmind. Hermes is a son of Maia and Zeus and the last of the Greek gods arrived on the Olympus.