:: 2012 :: 100cm x 100cm in four 50cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::
We arrive at the Telesterion to be greeted by Hermes, the Guide of Souls, trickster, shapeshifter extraordinaire, wayfarer and Master of esoteric knowledge. His role in the Mysteries is profound, and counter-intuitive: we have already seen how Dionysos as the Lord of Death turns the world upside down, now we find deathly psychopompic Hermes in the role of bringer of life and light, in that he returns Persephone back to Earth bearing the Divine Child. There are profound resonances in this image with Hermes’ own story and there are deep links between him and Dionysos: like Dionysos, he is a conduit to other Mysteries.
The presence here of Kadmos remembers Hermes’ patronage of the Samothracian Mysteries, and in later years he became Trismegistos, an obscure joke to both enlighten and fool the medieval alchemists. As patron of boundaries, it is appropriate that he should stand before the Telesterion: we are soon to leave the realm in which a vow of silence presides and move ever-further into the Ineffable, and it is through the medium of vision, that sudden ecstatic transcension from one mode of perception to another, that the Ineffable shall be beheld. As patron of healing, Hermes’ presence in a world-healing act of Mystery is essential too. And so he is shown here wearing nothing but the deceptive smile of the trickster-thief: he is to steal us away into the Ineffable, flanked by Kadmos to the left, the Master of letters and the art of knowledge, and by the Psychopompos on the right, guiding a Divine Child figure (who might be Triptolemos or indeed Hermes himself!) into the final Mystery. He stands before us not with a mask of terror but something much more unsettling - a dead-eyed playful wink - for we have passed any point of return.
