I posit the fifth century BCE Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the myth of day-old Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle, as a significant mythological base for Jungian ecopsychology. The Greeks joined the opposing forces of Hermes, associated with nature, animals and the somatic unconscious, with his brother Apollo, god of purity, far-sightedness and knowledge of the structure of the universe. Hermes essential nature is displayed in his wand, a figure 8 with a gap at the top. Hermes is what happens in the gap as opposites of any nature interact, including between the opposites of stability and chaos, the domain of chaos theory with Hermes as its mythic base. Hermes’ bee oracle and his association with transitional spaces can be associated to the Taoist link between the “dark enigma” originating source and the yin-yang symbol as the first to emerge towards the “ten thousand things” of existence in space-time.
Hermes, the Bees, and the Tao—with Dennis Merritt