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Hermes can be thought of as the God voice in bicameralism. Hermes (who is also variously known as Atlantiades, Thoth, Enoch, Mercury), the messenger of the gods or “god of travelers/boundaries”, literally means “heap of stones, boundary marker.” The duality from which this reference stems is life and death – the heap of stones at a gravesite that stands at the threshold between the material and spiritual. Similarly, the word hermaphrodite, which shares the same root, is characterized by having attributes of both sexes – a literal manifestation of a higher level integration of the anima/animus.
Similarly, Shiva and counterpart Parvati/Kali/Shakti were originally a merged entity known as Ardhanarishvara. When rejoined and reconcile, they reside back in the heart center.
The spiritual journey is symbolically represented on Hermes’ staff, the caduceus – the two snakes of the kundalini (representing the male and female -Shakti- energies of earth) wind their way up the spine, activating each chakra, until they ultimately bootstrap the soul and set it free into the heavens (represented by the wings at the top of the staff).
Spiritual liberation can thus be seen as a four step, sequential, duality-bridging process. The female aspect first liberates the male spiritually (integration of the anima), the male liberates the female materially (the slaying of the dragon), the female liberates the male materially (the holy marriage), the male liberates the female spiritually (the integration of the animus) – this final step is hinted at by Andromeda’s very name, which means “to be mindful of man.” In Jungian terms, the result is a quaternio hieros gamos – a holy marriage between the four aspects of the two individuals.
