Hermes, in Greek mythology, embodies a paradoxical blend of qualities: he is the fleet-footed messenger of the gods and a divine trickster. As an infant, Hermes famously stole Apollo’s cattle – an audacious prank that announced him as patron of thieves, liars, and mischief-makers . Yet Hermes is also the herald and translator of the gods, the deity of communication (speech, writing, even magic) who moves freely between Olympus, earth, and the underworld. This liminal role as psychopomp (soul-guide) lets Hermes cross boundaries that other gods cannot, delivering messages and guiding souls on their journeys . In him, thievery, trickery, and deceit are uniquely combined with the gift of eloquence and invention . Hermes’ charisma lies in this mercurial ability to shape-shift and charm: he dissolves opposites, upends rules, and provokes new perspectives – all with a winking, playful grace. He is the god of jokes and journeys, thieves and magicians, a tricky Guide of Souls who “disdains regulation” and brings surprise and transformation wherever he goes . In short, Hermes represents the archetype of the creative trickster – the cunning, charismatic boundary-crosser who mediates between worlds (divine and mortal, conscious and unconscious) and delights in breaking the rules only to reveal some deeper insight.
Ascetic or æsthetic truth ?
One philosopher argued that art’s highest value lies in its creative illusions rather than literal truth. Art makes deception life-affirming – a holy lie that nourishes the human spirit more than any ascetic truth. Art is a celebration of appearance, masks, and playful falsenesses. To live artistically is to embrace illusion.
The term “Protean” (from the shape-shifting sea-god Proteus) denotes the ability to change form continually, and being protean can mean to be theatrical flexibility. Just as Proteus would evade capture by turning into various beasts or elements, we can evades the grasp of a fixed identity by constantly reinventing ourselves.
This elusive multiplicity was admired in pre-christian cultures and romantic literature (Goethe included subtle shape-shifters and disguises in his works). These earlier figures included gods, devils, jesters, and shapeshifters.
Psychological and shamanic aspects
Hermes is a classic trickster-archetype and psychopomp (soul-guide). In Jungian psychology, the trickster represents the unconscious – chaotic, creative, ambivalent – breaking into consciousness. Hermes, who alone traverses from the heights of Olympus to the depths of Hades, perfectly symbolizes this bridging function. Jungian scholar Karl Kerényi described Hermes as representing “a third way of living life, besides the Apollonian rational and the Dionysian irrational” – a mediating force of playful intelligence that upsets order only to reconnect us with hidden truths . He is “the tricky Guide of Souls,” the one who “arrives as a surprise” on “winged sandals”, bringing insight from beyond the ego’s confines . Importantly, Jung saw Hermes/Mercurius as an agent of transformation: he “seeks conscious acknowledgment” for the living realities of the psyche and moves between unconscious and conscious realms as a messenger. In this view, Hermes is an archetype of the liminal self – part shadow, part enlightenment – who provokes growth by dissolving opposites (the chiastic principle) and prompting ego to integrate new material. Society holds unconscious desires and avoids those with sets of rules. One can break those rules with a journey of the self: through misadventures. One’s capacity for change, humor, and transgression is part of individuation – a path to wholeness in the modern soul.
The trickster’s antics reveal the psyche’s hidden agility: identity is not unitary or static, but comprised of many potential selves.
Art cannot help being deceit, because there is no absolute truth —Thomas Mann
Hermes is the quintessential boundary-crosser, and modern life is characterized by crossed boundaries – between nations and cultures, between social classes, and above all between reality and appearance. Identity becomes mercurial, “mercurial” in the true sense of Hermes/Mercury. The modern man prefigures this with his chameleon-like existence. He or she can choose to live a life of a man as an artist – not necessarily a painter or writer, but an artist of the self, crafting persona as a work of art. Morality is flexible and truth is multi-faceted is the aesthetic existence. The condition of modern man may be one of ironic detachment and continual self-reinvention, but it can be approached creatively rather than despairingly.
Read more : Thomas Mann, Confessions of Felix Krull (1954); Egon Schwarz in A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann ; Henry Hatfield and Donald Nelson on Mann’s use of Hermes ; Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals ; Goethe’s Faust (Mephistopheles) ; C. G. Jung & K. Kerényi on the trickster archetype ; Herbert Lehnert on Mann’s aesthetic irony .