The Corpse of Sound: Mercury Psychopomp & Writing as Necromancy

In a state of ecstatic trance the other day, I started to wonder if the figure of Mercury/Hermes is a metaphor for the transition from oral to written culture in the ancient world. Metaphor is the wrong word, something more like a mythical dramatization of that cultural shift, the way that the Persephone myth isn’t a metaphor for winter, but the cosmological grounds for its existence. Both also express a cultural attitude about the specific phenomenon outside their sphere of influence. Hermes is the messenger god, the god of writing and communication, and he’s also the god of liars and thieves, whose first act after being born was a playful robbery. Language’s ability to deceive, misrepresent, and transform meaning is always slippery, all the more so when it’s no longer tied to our bodies and speech, when a message can be written down and take on a body of its own. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me describe the way the god Hermes in myth performs the function of alphabetical language and the linear sentence. 

In his book Orality and Literacy: Some Psychodynamics of Orality, the Jesuit scholar Walter J Ong, describes how transitioning from orality (spoken language) to literacy (written language) reshapes human consciousness and culture. To understand oral cultures, Ong asks us to consider the ephemerality of sound itself. Unlike an image, which can be paused and held in suspended motion, sound is movement; when you pause sound, you don’t have sound anymore, you have silence. As Ong puts it “sound only exists when it is going out of existence.” 

Sound then is itself evidence of action, movement, and life. Ong ties this to the divine power ascribed to language and the word and its association with magic across oral cultures. He gives the Hebrew word dabar as an example, which means both “word” and “event” (Hebrew was a spoken language for so long before it was written that Ong considers it to have the “residue of orality”). Contrast this with the Greek word Logos which also literally means “word,” but in Greek philosophy is defined as the “divine reason” that instantiates and orders the cosmos. The idea that the word should necessarily contain reason reflects the privilege placed on analytical modes of thought in non-oral cultures, and the anthropocentrism at its root. This dynamic is literalized in The New Testament, where the same word, Logos, is used as a name for Jesus Christ (the English translation is usually “the Word of God”); God is immaterial spoken language while Jesus is his physical body: the written word. 

Because of the core ephemerality of sound, oral cultures rely on repetition to preserve knowledge; if stories aren’t repeated, remembered, and retold, literally all of the group’s traditions could be forgotten. The repetitive, cyclical language that characterizes oral cultures is a technology of memory for storing material and spiritual wisdom that is vital for survival. 

You can hear some of the cadence and syntax of oral language in texts that originated in an oral tradition before later being set down in writing: in Homer and Hesiod, in parts of the Old Testament. There’s a reason that there are long, dry lists of names, origins, and family ties in these texts, written in a repetitive formula:

“When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died…

“Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him…

“Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and became the father of a son…Then Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after he became the father of Noah, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died.”

The formula of rhythm and repetition is a chant, designed to be recited and remembered, the only way of recording history without writing it down. 

When knowledge becomes less fragile and dependent on human memory, we see a proliferation of inventive and unconventional uses of language, along with analytical modes of thought and inquiry that become possible with written records. But as opposed to the cyclical quality of spoken language, the written sentence carries with it the illusion of linear time and progress. We begin to see the path of our lives reflected in the line of the sentence. The idea that each generation has “more” knowledge than the one before it seems only natural when you can see the collected evidence of hundreds, thousands of lives that have spent themselves writing their thoughts down on paper, generations of minds which are now collected together in a stack. The sentence moves left to right, developing linearly, so our own minds, and the arc of history itself, must too. 

Ironically, this move towards “progressive” rather than conventional use of language, also makes possible the rise of the state, individual surveillance, and other forms of magic that exert control through documents and naming. David Graeber half-jokingly pointed out that bureaucracy is essentially rule by desk. If we consider that constitutions and laws are mostly the words of the dead, all bureaucratic governance could be considered a kind of necrocracy. 

This brings us to one more face of Mercury: the psychopompos, or guide of the dead. When we write a thought down, it is no longer bound to the world of the living and the ephemerality of speech. To write something down is like sending a message from your (eventually dead) self to the future. In this light, all writing (and reading) is a kind of necromancy. 

The mythological and astrological Mercury contains this duality: a sense of invention, flexibility, and liberation from convention through the calcification of living language and the preservation of dead speech. Being a trickster is “joint work”—operating at the hinges between conventions, occupying multiple positions in order to allow the possibility of movement—but joints have no purpose if there are no bones for them to connect. Mercury’s tricks and transgressions are only subversive within the context of a system that has standards to break. Without Saturn (the skeleton) we would all just be a heap of squirmy skin and gore. 

Writing gives language a body of its own. It’s possible that Mercury the messenger came to be known as a thief, not because language itself is deceptive, but because language divorced from the body is. Afterall, the messenger carries someone else’s words, either keeping it alive with their own breath, memory, and attention, or carrying the body of the words written or inscribed, to act on behalf of their originator. Or not.  There’s something uncanny about it, like seeing a ghost. 

In a strange way, just writing something down is a kind of necromantic magic, sacrificing our formless thoughts and transubstantiating them into flesh. They lose something, yes. But we also gain something by not needing to keep them alive with our own body for them to persist. 

By putting your thoughts into words and writing them on paper, you no longer have to keep that thought in your head in order to preserve it. I like to imagine that whenever we write something down, it’s like giving that thought to Mercury; no matter how important it is, you no longer need to repeat it in your head to make sure it’s not lost. 

Maybe, in the instant we write a message down, Mercury has the power to deliver it to whatever god, daimon, or metaphysical being needs to receive it. This train of thought aligns with Hermetic practices in which human writing is the microcosmic act of creation which corresponds to the macrocosmic divine creation of the cosmos. 

Maybe it’s just because I’m cultishly devoted to the planets, but I’ve started to think about meditation through this lens too. If we’re clinging to a thought then Mercury can’t have it, in which case it can’t traverse the boundaries of the other realms to make its way to a divinity, or align us with any particular destiny, in short it’s just thrashing around in our heads. 

Instead, when I sit for meditation, I intend to let Mercury take each of the thoughts that drift into my head and carry them into the void, like he’s carrying the souls of the dead to Hades. The more urgent a thought feels in your head, the more potent the sacrifice when you let it go. Try to practice this with “good” thoughts too, not just anxious ones. I find it especially hard when I think I’ve had a good idea, and I don’t want to lose it (I’m usually wrong anyway, but I digress). Instead of trying to remember it, I let it drift away and trust that Mercury will carry it to the gods, and if any good can come from my thinking about it more, I trust that Mercury will deliver it back to me when its fate has ripened. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an astrologer, it’s that trying to control the flow of fate with the sheer force of your thoughts is (thankfully) completely futile. Try sacrificing them to the void instead and see how they like that.

If you want to try to invoke Mercury in a more active way, automatic writing is a tool that explicitly connects writing and necromancy. Though it was popularized in the 19th century as a means of communicating with the spirits of the dead specifically, it can just as well be used to channel deities, daimons, or spirits of any kind; it’s your choice what to call in. 

Here are some simplified instructions for automatic writing, directed towards channeling the planetary god Mercury. The ritual aspect of this could be way more elaborate; this is more of an outline, so feel free to build on anything here, or change it in any way that helps you feel more absorbed in the experience and capable of connecting with a force beyond your self. If you’re looking for ideas for rituals, check out this template for designing planetary rituals or book a reading and we can make one together based on your needs right now and the all the nuances of your chart.

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Instructions for Automatic Writing (to Channel Mercury)

1. Sit in a relaxing place or someplace that feels charged for you or relevant to the energy you’re trying to connect with.

2. Breathe deeply and focus on the sensations in your body. Use any of the practices you have for entering a trance-like state (meditation, hypnosis, sound, invocations to a god, chanting, humming, whatever works for you). If you’re trying to channel a particular deity, daimon, or spirit, you’ll want to appeal to them or connect with them now. 

3. Use your non-dominant hand to hold the pen or pencil. (Optional but cool to try. If you’re on a computer, try only typing with your ring fingers.) 

4. Blink continuously while you draw the symbol for Mercury and continue blinking while you write the first 6 words that come into your head. (Choose another symbol or word as you like.) 

5. Let Mercury speak through your hand. Keep writing continuously, without stopping, even if it’s nonsense, the idea is to keep writing and writing. Instead of focusing on the words you’re writing down, focus only on the physical sensation of your pen or pencil lightly carving into the paper. (Or on a computer, focus on the sensation of the key against the pad of your finger.) 

6. Forget about what “you” would say. You’re not expressing your self. This isn’t about you. 

When you notice that you’re no longer absorbed in the trance, stop writing.