Organizing the festival was a long, arduous process that took almost two years. But thanks to the contribution of colleague Lee Irwin we were able to add a philosophical-Hermetic component and the festival was reborn, like the mythical phoenix, from the ashes of the first edition. It was reborn with a new voice and new artistic forms and enriched with new themes of ancient thought. At the opening, the Jungian analyst William Willeford confirmed still another time, the link between the festival and the archetypal approach of analytical psychology. The poetic performance of Robert Bly opened a rich dialogue with the “mitomodernisti” Italian poets. They all agreed with the mythopoetic function of poetry and with its urgent need in the contemporary world. Following this important exchange were three brilliant lectures by scholars of Hermeticism of the Italian Renaissance – a rigorous excursion of the intellect which meshed the figure of Hermes Trimegistus, the universal genius of the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino and the arcane fascination with Tarot cards. The endeavor was graced by the presence of the muse, Susan Hull, by the syncopated rhythms of the drums of Glen Velez and by the notes wafting from the cello of Eugene Friesen. To wrap up, we must not forget the poetic, ritualistic procession conceived and organized by dramatic maestro Angelo Tonelli and Lee Irwin. This costumed procession elicited the enthusiastic participation of the College of Charleston students and the academic community.
We look forward to inaugurating still another edition of the Festival of the Waters of Hermes in March of 2004. And like the phoenix, the festival will be reborn in its new equinox and will bring new sources of inspiration, new poetry and new speculations. The winged step of Hermes will once again caress the Corinthian columns of Randolph Hall. As it passes, we will offer the rejuvenation of the spirit to the winged god.
Charleston, 21 October 2002.

La preparazione del festival è stata lunga e laboriosa: di ben due anni. Ma grazie al contributo del collega Lee Irwin si è aggiunta una componente filosofico-ermetica e il festival è rinato, come la mitica fenice, dalle ceneri della sua prima edizione. E’ rinato in nuove voci e nuove forme artistiche. E’ rinato arricchito da nuove tematiche di pensiero dall’anima antica. In apertura, l’intervento dell’analista junghiano William Willeford ha confermato ancora una volta il punto di contatto con l’approccio archetipico della psicologia analitica. La performance poetica di Robert Bly ha invece aperto un dialogo fecondo con i poeti mitomodernisti italiani, in esso tutti concordano nella funzione mitopoietica della poesia e nella sua urgente attualità nel mondo contemporaneo. A questo importante scambio, si aggiungano le brillanti conferenze tenute dai tre studiosi dell’ermetismo italiano del Rinascimento, una rigorosa escursione dell’intelletto in cui si recuperano la figura di Ermes Trimegistus, il genio universale del filosofo fiorentino Marsilio Ficino e il fascino arcano dei tarocchi. Il tutto allietato dalla presenza musaica di Susan Hull e dai ritmi sciamanici scanditi dai tamburi di Glen Velez e dalle note insinuanti del violoncello di Eugene Friesen. In gran finale, non possiamo dimenticare la processione poetico-rituale organizzata e progettata dall’istrionico Angelo Tonelli e Lee Irwin e l’entusiasta partecipazione degli studenti e della comunità accademica.
Ci auguriamo di rivedere una nuova edizione del festival delle acque di Ermes nel marzo del 2004. E come la fenice, il festival rinascerà con il suo nuovo equinozio, porterà nuove fonti ispiratrici, nuova poesia e nuove speculazioni. Il passo alato di Ermes sfiorerà ancora una volta le colonne corinzie di Randalph Hall. Al suo passaggio, offriremo al dio alato la gioventù dell’anima.

Charleston 21 ottobre, 2002

Whatever the enigmatic waters of Hermes may be, their god is himself sometimes notably fluid. Present in stone boundary markers, he is also known as their enemy, able to ignore, violate, and in effect dissolve them. His liquidity is especially evident in his incarnation as the alchemical Mercurius, who dissolves substances to the end of their transformation.

The verbal communication the Greek god delights in is similarly ambiguous. Though Hermes fosters clear speech and direct statement, he is not bound to such propriety but is also the god of liars, thieves, and those simply given to verbal play. His water-like capacity to dissolve enriches us by helping to keep us aware of the overtones and background of what is being said. And so he animates and deepens conversation and poetic utterance.

Similarly, he is the patron of travel and of the relationships created and maintained by it, and is hence also a patron of commerce. But in the words of the great poetic student of Greek mythology Karl Kerény, a collaborator of C.G. Jung, Hermes is less a traveler from one specific place to another than a journeyer, engrossed in the process of traveling and the adventure of exploration.
In all these ways Hermes fosters eloquence.

From very early there was a Greek colony in Egypt, and various Greek thinkers traced the wisdom of Socrates and Plato and before them Pythagoras to Egyptian sources. Also from very early, Greeks recognized a kinship and even an identity between Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, connected like Hermes with speech and writing. When the goddess Isis was reuniting the scattered members of her slain husband Osiris, Thoth appeared in order to help with the task. And so, like Hermes who often facilitates and brings good luck, Thoth is integrative and creative.

The relationship that came to obtain between the two gods was influenced by the view that all gods were really human heroes divinized after their deaths. Something partly the reverse happened in this case: as the god Hermes become Thoth, Hermes -- Thoth became a man, who, however, in time took on some of the qualities of a god. This Hermes - Hermes Trismegistus, Thrice - Great Hermes – became associated with various books of occult arts and sciences.

And so began a tradition of hermetic lore that has thrived to the present day. Along the way this stream has been fed by other sources, such as the Jewish Kabbalah and German alchemical philosophy. And it has touched such figures as Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Hegel, Yeats and Jung. Despite their eminence, this tradition is not the mainstream. And though its contents are sometimes clear, the stream – as the word occult implies – tolerates obscurity, which can also, it is important to reflect, serve knowledge and beauty.

I have mentioned Jung as a recent representative of the hermetic tradition, but for me an even better representative of the symbolic Hermes in his many-sidedness would be Jung’s student, colleague, and collaborator Jolande Jacobi. She was unusual among Jung’s early associates in being an extravert and thus thoroughly open to the forum where Hermes moves freely. Determined that Jungian psychology should gain a prominent place in the public domain, she supplied much of the enterprising spirit that led to the creation of the C.G. Jung Insitute in Zurich. And when public debate was called for, she was ready for it. Her apartment in Zurich, though, housed various baroque angels the size of human adults, seeming not so much art objects as inhabitants of an arcane world oddly looming in our midst. And among her publications is an anthology of the writings of Paracelsus.

Though Paracelsus was a scientist in a way that made him a father of modern chemistry, his thinking was also highly esoteric. This strain came more from Northern Europe than from the more strictly hermetic tradition originating in Egypt, but a title page of one of his books bears the figure of Hermes Trismegistus as a spiritual ancestor. And so this diminutive Austro-Hungarian lady, amiably adroit in the marketplace, also had a sensitivity to the dark, ambiguous, and occult. And she would have been delighted to take part in a gathering of Italian poets and scholars of hermetic philosophy.