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While i do not actually buy into the theory that the Kalasha are descendants of Alexander, we do know that their language and culture appear to run along the same continuum as the tribes of people who are often referred to as Indo-European, and as such they offer up clues to some of the core concepts and forms that tend to run through all of the cultures that have been influenced by the peoples of this continuum.

More to it than that

Since I seem to have come by Hermes as a god of sexuality, I think I may stick with this aspect of him and explore it a bit. Aphrodite gave me some insight into why I choose to behave as I do as a sexual being, and I am hoping Hermes will give me some insight into what it means to be q sexual man, not just a sexual being. I am making a distinction here because I believe that we often are very distinct beings in our lives. Not that we are suffering from multiple personalities, but that our motivations for behaving or acting out sexually differ from context to context, and one of those contexts is in being a man and what it means to have the sexual drive and desire that all men do, and how to manage that in my life so as to make of myself a better person.

So, before I continue, allow me to make clear that I do not consider sex, be it part of a relationship or some wild sex orgy at a bathhouse, to be immoral. Immorality to me is about harmful or willfully deceitful behavior, so if you are having sex and are doing so in q consensual situation, you are doing nothing wrong in my opinion. What I mean by making myself a better person by examining my sexuality I mean that because I want to enjoy a healthy and dare I say it prolific sex life, I want to know that I am doing it with the proper motivation in mind. I do not want to engage in sex out of a sense of desperation or depression. I want to do it because I simply enjoy it. Because I want to, not because I need it to improve my self image.

So, the god of communication is also a god of sexuality, and yes, I do have to give a shout out to the girls, who have been telling us guys ghat for ages now. But in this case, it is about internal communication. It is about the way we tell ourselves how to handle our own inner turmoils. And we men are really bad a acting out sexually when we are hurting on the inside. Sex can be like q drug to us, and if we're not careful we. An lose sight of what it is we really need out of our connections with others, and just as importantly, lose sight of the needs and humanity of the people we are sexually engaging with, making them into a collection of body parts rather that real people.

This isn't to say that anonymous hot sex is a bad thing, but that to acknowledge the humanity of your partners, no matter the situation, will make you a better lover. A better man, and it will remove from you the guilt we sometimes feel when we have basically used another human being as a masturbatory aid. Even if you have no emotional tie there, treating him or her with due respect will make the experience a good one. And, on the other hand, we must be willing to demand to be treated with respect. If not, we are debasing ourselves in ways we are asked never to do even before the gods, who ask us not to lower ourselves before them, but to stand proud.

Here Hermes comes in to remind us of who we are, and what we are as sexual beings. We are men, capable of thought and communication that can elevate us, use the gift he has given us to raise the bar and make he acceptance of his aspect as a god of energetic sexuality into something divine.

Sexy Hermes

Hermes is the god of pastures and the divisions between them marked with stones of erected boundary markers that bear his name. Along with this, the god also bears a form that is often attributed to other gods, thy of a god of fertility, and no doubt he was often seen this way among the ancients, for whom the fertility of the earth was of paramount importance. But to see Hermes as a god of fertility is to also, by necessity, see him as a god of sexuality.

The imagery of the god is one that would not make this hard to believe, since the Greeks did imagine him as a beautiful, youthful, and dare I say, hot young man. One could even make the argument that our modern image of the hot dude is inspired by these very images that the Greeks left for us so beautifully molded from stone. And the image of Hermes, his naked body so beautiful in it's recent manhood, is one that captures the imagination, the heart, and the loins.

Not many people in the modern Hellenistic community view Hermes this way, the more typical notions of him as Psychopomp, Herald, and even Thief, are looked at, but the idea of Hermes as a god of male sexuality is more often than not overlooked. Perhaps because of our modern taboos about sex, especially here in America where violence and murder is ok on TV, but a bared tit causes congressional investigations.

But think about who Hermes is in the context of a culture that elevated male beauty to amazing heights of adoration, and which did indeed have a long and proud tradition of homosexuality (I am not going to argue with you about it should you choose to challenge me on this, your desire to make the Greeks more Macho by minimizing their love of hot young guys will not impress me) and that he was made father, in myth, to a male/female hybrid with Aphrodite. A melding of two deities whose beauty cannot be questioned, and whose appeal on a visceral sexual level is not to be challenged, is telling.

To me, Hermes is indeed a god of sexuality, male sexuality. A sexuality that is open, free, and ever shifting, ever seeking, ever longing. A sexuality that is not simply youthful and energetic, which it most certainly is, but also lustful and full of power and the expression of emotion through physical contact, not words. An interesting dichotomy for the god of communications. But is it? I mean, physical expression is still expression, is it not? And it is, I think, an aspect of male sexuality and male psychology that our culture, with its often feminizing influences, fails to recognize.

The night

As I sit on this bus and look at the dark sky outside I am reminded of movies and books in which the world becomes over run by dark forces from the underworld. The night scares us, it Always has, and the light of the sun as it begins to light the world in the morning has always been a sacred time. Humanity has always given the light of day special properties, properties that include cleansing the world of the terrors and evils of the night.

It only makes sense that man fears the night and darkness the way he does, for most of our time as a species we have hunted and been hunted by the other animals of the world, and a certain reticence about it is only logical. But as beings capable of logical and abstract thought, where do we place this fear in our relationships with the Gods, especially those Gods that bring to bear the power of the night?

Hellenismos is a religion, like most Pagan religions, in which the Gods, and the aspects they present to us, bear both light and dark aspects. That means that they carry in them, and present to us, aspects that are both bright with the power of hope and love and dark with the reminder of death and the darker emotions we carry with us every day.

Mortal man struggles with these, the Gods are in perfect balance between the two. The dark Gods, like Hades, Nyx, and Dionysos are joined by Gods like Hermes and Hekate who not only straddle both, but travel the roads between these with ease as they bring the light into the dark and the dark into the light.

But the dark Gods are not dark, they are not wholly of that dark world, for they too bear hope and light in their being. The God of the Underworld, the Lord of the Dead, is also the God of Wealth. The Goddess Persephone, Destroyer of Light, Queen of the Underworld, is also the Goddess of Springtime and with her return to the upper world the world is refreshed with new life.

The Bright Lord Apollo, who shines from afar and who heals the sick, can also bring plague and destroy with his mighty arrows. The Lady of Wisdom, who delights in knowledge and who protects cities, is also a Goddess of war, who delights in battle and whose battle cry could send fear through the hearts of man and god alike.

So as I sit and wonder at the way we fear the darkness for all the things it hides from us, do we also fear the daylight for all the horrors it shows us in too glorious an amount of detail?

Is it better to trust that they know better, that they show us what we can handle, or do we do better to walk the lines between their visions, to travel as Hermes does, from one extreme to the other, seeing the things he does in brief flashes, understanding, but never standing still long enough to be dragged down by any of them. Is this the lesson Hermes teaches? Is this what he steals, a chance at hope from the snatched glimpses of everything?

Annoying

I am questioning a lot about Hermes and his in involvement in my life. On my way to work on Saturday my bike decided it had had enough, though it got me there. I knew, of course that it would be a rough ride back to Vandalia, where the bus stops, since in this gods forsaken land called Dayton the busses don't actually go to the airport where I work. But I had no idea it would be such a comical yet exasperating adventure.

I managed to get the gear system unmangled enough that I could pedal the bitch slowly out to the bus stop, but halfway there the rear tire decided to lose its axle. Allow me to explain what I mean by "lose" because this axle did not break, no, of course not. You see, he axle lost its content. Yes, the axle itself was fine, but everything around it decided to exit and fly across the road.

Now, riddle me this, what is fat, Latin, and desperately pedaling a bile with a rear tire that was wobbling like a weeble? If your answer is Héctor, you win.

You may wonder why I didn't just walk it, well, the answer is that the next bus would have had me waiting two hours, and I was not having that.

But, and this is part of why I do this whole blog, I did not go postal on the bike. I did not curse the day I was born. I. Simply went with the flow. You would have no idea how much progress that is for me, since you don't really know me, but I assure you, it is momentous. I have grown. I have accepted that things go wrong and to accept them when they do, and that makes me happy.

I just want to ask Hermes something. Must you always point things out to me in the most annoying way possible?

So...

So, since I have moved into this phase in which I am making realizations about what my life needs rather than just what my life is, and since Hermes seems to be the Patron of this part of my life, at least in so much as my own focus is now on him, where am I willing to let Hermes take me?

It is one thing to realize that you need something, want something, yearn for something, it is another to actually open yourself up to all the dangers involved in getting those things, even if you actually figure out what they are. If I find that what I need is to start dating more seriously, maybe establish myself in a new relationship, how open am I willing to be to being hurt gain? If I decide what my life really needs is a move to a new city, how willing am I to leave this city behind, dull as it is, with all the people I have come to know and really like here? If what I need is to make physical changes, how much of my will power am I willing to grant to the effort, and are any of these things really going to help me with my inner self?

I don’t know.

What is interesting is that Hermes, as a force that moves, that forces movement, that causes us to stumble that we might learn, doesn’t care one way or the other. There are paths, and Hermes walks them all, and as a result, should I? Walk all the paths of opportunity that come my way, even if I know they might not be good for me so that I can hopefully find myself at a better place, a new plateau, in the future?

Laundry Day

Sitting here, the laundry machines doing their thing, I am made both hopeful and hopeless by the mundane qualities of my life. Don't mistake this with a sense of futility, rather with a realization that my life is in desperate need of something new. What, of course is the question.

It is appropriate that I am currently in the Hermes phase of my meditations, because he is bound to put some interesting choices in my path, but I need to be careful, because I do often find myself falling into things that often end up hurting me instead of helping me move forward.

I have recently found myself bringing some old feelings to the surface. This is not odd when dealing with hermes. I have, after all, invited the god of communications into my life, and emotions, like thoughts, need to be expressed, communicated, whether it be to another or to yourself.

Liar

Things are not always what they seem.

It is a common enough theme in the way people converse with each other. People are always hiding a part of themselves, it is natural, right? But there is the hiding of private parts of oneself from the general public, and then there is the purposeful putting forth of a false image in order to maniple people, or resent to them what the want to see rather than what you actually are, and that becomes something else, it becomes a lie.

Hermes is the god of lies, and it is important that we try to remember that this does not mean that he is by nature a liar, but rather that he, as the god of communication, is also the god of false communication, of manipulation, of subversion, and of trickery through words.

We all do it. We all lie, and when we present ourselves to others as purely honest, that is in itself a lie.

But can a lie be a good thing. Note that I am not talking about lying to a criminal to protect someone, or keeping the secrets of a friend or loved one to preserve their dignity, rather, can the act of manipulation, or presenting a false image, be part of a healthy life?

The answer, of course, is yes, but let me explore that a little bit.

Hermes the Liar

According to the myth of his birth, Hermes, even as a small child, stole the cattle of Apollo (or Helios, the translations sometimes infer him) and then sacrificed them to the Gods in a fitting way. The theft was designed in such a way as to hide it utterly from the God, and when caught, his story was beguiling and made the Apollo laugh so merrily that he took the boy to Zeus, who then claims him as his son. (Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia)

In this theft, it is often inferred that Hermes is hat God of thieves and liars, and it is not untrue from a mythological perspective, but lying, cheating, and theft were no less looked down upon by the ancient Greeks than they are to us. Theft and lying are not now nor have they ever been things that the Gods have encouraged, yet when people do these things, for ill or for good, they often seek the aid of the Gods, and it seems, Hermes is the God that hears and answers that prayer.

But what exactly is it that the God gives us when he answers such a prayer? Does he make us liars, or does he simply instill in us the capacity to embellish, to tell tales, and yes, to completely make up a story. In other words, he gives us creativity. An amazing gift. And a lie is, in a sense, a misuse of the gift of creativity. The gift without which Homer would never have written his epics.

But what I am trying to get to here, to explore here, is whether a more overarching lie, one in which we create a whole new image of ourselves in order to be perceived as that thing. So, let me take this into a different arena, the arena of adults and the games they play.

Men and women, when engaged in flirting, the merry chase, sex play, etc., often create elaborate images of themselves that are intended to win over, titillate, or even subvert the other's ability to make an informed decision. But, the question is, can a lie, an image created of oneself, be a good thing?

It can when the reason that image is created is to enhance life, love, and the over all experience of both for everyone involved. Putting on leather and creating an image of domination, even though deep inside you are a sweet heart, is a form of this, and it is created to enhance sex. It is a lie that hurts no one, unless they want it to hurt a little, and it is in a situation like this that we find the creativity of Hermes living and breathing in us.

But it also lives in the lie of art, of writing works of fiction, and in the protecting of the self from the world around us.