Hermetic Intoxication
Excerpt-James Hillman-Mythic Figures
From the perspective of an archetypal psychology, the fascination with exchange between peoples everywhere, the hyper-communication of globalism, the emphasis on trade and finance, the instantaneity offered by electronics, the compulsion to travel—all this indicates the mythical cosmos of Hermes-Mercurius, the fleet-footed god with wings on his feet, cap of invisibility, and winged thoughts.
Globalism feels like an overdose of Hermes, just as the age of reason suffered from an overdose of Apollonic sunlight and an excess of the normalizing rationality of Minerva. Or, for another example of divine hypertrophy, the madnesses of Mars that so seizes a people that any common man and woman can become an enraged killer.
As the century turns, a monotheism of Hermes holds us in thrall. Not only his new instrumentarium, but the acceleration with which each new generation of these tools and devices is developed—obsolescence within eight months, each device surpassed by increasingly expanding improvements, ever wider reach, ever quicker connections.
A second area where Hermes rules is the marketplace—the stock-market place. Mutual funds, speculations in currencies, commodities, futures, options, derivatives, hedges. The markets of the world connect today by instantaneous communications, allowing for giant shifts of money from one place to another, one currency to another, one market to another. What once was chronic long-term investment is now quick Hermetic turnover.
The market as a game; as we say “playing the market.” These giant shifts of money are shadowed by giant scams and thefts, by laundering and deceptions. Accounting systems can no longer keep up with the fast moves of the bankers who handle millions and billions of dollars per transaction. Governments cannot control the multinational corporations or govern the fluctuations of currency, the price of gold, and basic commodities, or the value and amount of their own money supply.
Once Saturn ruled money. In the old books of symbolism, Saturn was called a moneybags. He was depicted with a tightly closed purse and declared god of the mint. Now, with this hypertrophy of Hermes, money is no longer solid coin nor backed by gold, only words and numbers, mere messages sent by electronic data processing and represented by a little oblong of embossed plastic.
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