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It happens often that two people who are on the road either literally or metaphorically will meet in this liminal space and experience Hermes' presence: an unusually intense atmosphere of intimacy is suddenly created between them. First one will lead, then the other, as the thread of conversation rushes by in a flurry of suggestive but unfinished thoughts and subtle gestures, which taken them all the while deeper and pull them closer. Feelings of immediacy, of connecting, of being joined by common bonds and ties of spiritual kinship spring up, and there appears a surprisingly vital potential for sharing deeply this piece of life's journey. Psyche pours out in the form of stories, secrets, wishes, fantasies, dreams, memories, and the flow of it passes along unhindered by what would otherwise be unbridgeable distances in social class, geographical place or origin, age, educational level, and psychological typology. This communicating can flow through many channels -- by way of mouth, hand, eye. And is it not one of our most persistent hopes and fantasies to find, somewhere out there on the road, a fellow journeyer and soul companion? It must be that we are unconsciously looking for Hermes, for the communion this archetype brings us when we are together in the liminality of the road. The resemblance of what transpires psychologically in this space to what is called transference in psychotherapy is not accidental: Hermes is the god of transference.
The wish for Hermes' companionship has two strands: one is the wish for journeying itself, for being on a journey, and the other is a wish for intense intimacy and communion.
"His companions are the companions of the journey," Kerenyi writes,
"not those he wants to lead home, as Odysseus his comrades, but those he joins...With companions of the journey, one experiences openness to the extent of purest nakedness, as though he who is on the journey had left behind every stitch of clothing or covering." Journeying Hermetically implies this deep form of communion, of the
"purest nakedness." This type of radical and unabashed intimacy is one of the hallmarks of the realm of Hermes. To experience life and the world within the boundaries of this archetype is to experience existence
"on the road" and to discover there the primacy of human companionship and the mutuality that exists between naked souls.
-- Murray Stein
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