Worship and Cult
Prior to being known as Hermes,Frothingham thought the god to have existed as a snake-god. Angelo (1997) thinks Hermes to be based on the Thoth archetype. The absorbing ("combining") of the attributes of Hermes to Thoth developed after the time of Homer amongst Greek and Roman; Herodotus was the first to identify the Greek god with the Egyptian (Hermopolis), Plutarch and Diodorus also, although Plato thought the gods to be dis-similar (Friedlander 1992).
A cult was established in Greece in remote regions, likely making him a god of nature, farmers and shepherds. It is also possible that since the beginning he has been a deity with shamanic attributes linked to divination, reconciliation, magic, sacrifices, and initiation and contact with other planes of existence, a role of mediator between the worlds of the visible and invisible.
During the third century BC a communication between Petosiris (a priest) to King Nechopso, probably written in Alexandria c.150 BC, states Hermes is the teacher of all secret wisdoms available to knowing by the experience of religious ecstasy.
Due to his constant mobility, he was considered the god of commerce and social intercourse, the wealth brought in business, especially sudden or unexpected enrichment, travel, roads and crossroads, borders and boundary conditions or transient, the changes from the threshold, agreements and contracts, friendship, hospitality, sexual intercourse, games, data, the draw, good luck, the sacrifices and the sacrificial animals, flocks and shepherds and the fertility of land and cattle. In addition to serving as messenger to Zeus, Hermes carried the souls of the dead to Hades, and directed the dreams sent by Zeus to mortals.
Read more about this topic: Hermes
Famous quotes containing the words worship and, worship and/or cult:
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the “genius” of the personage, the greater the profit.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)