Everybody knows, more or less, what the ‘Caduceus of Hermes’ is -a rod with two twisting snakes of different sexes who aggressively look at each other, in the hand of the winged messenger Hermes. It is an ancient symbol of the East, found with the Phoenicians at Carthage, with the Hittites, the Hebrews, the Egyptians.

 

In the ‘Homeric Hymns’ (III,529), the Hermetic Caduceus is called “golden”, with the power to charm the eyes of mortals and put them to sleep, to draw the dead from the infernals, to change any objects touched into gold. It is the symbol of prosperity and peace, also for the Romans. In Greek it means ‘herald of peace’.

 

Even today, the pastoral staff of the archimandrite, which is T-shaped, ends with two serpents facing each other, sometimes surmounted by a cross; the rod or staff has six knots and rests on a point to designate the spur with which the pastor punishes and urges his flock towards the good.

 

Father Pavel Florensky explains more about this episcopal symbol when commenting on an icon of the Sophia: “The Caduceus (but not a rod with a cross nor with Christ’s monogram, at least in most cases) indicates the theurgical psychopompia, the mysterious power which works on souls. The rolled scroll in the left is held closely to the heart, the organ of higher knowledge, indicating knowledge of the hidden mysteries”.

 

It is clear that something esoteric, even if a little, survives in the Orthodox, however, the Roman Church, once Byzantine, in time has lost the ancient symbolism of the great Initiations and has chosen the pedum (the Roman pastoral staff), curved at the top in the way of the shepherd- it would have been better to adopt the two serpents surmounted by the cross to indicate episcopal prudence.

In his Le Symbolisme Hermétique, Oswald Wirth identifies the two twisting serpents on the golden rod with the currents of opposing polarity of the great magic agent, known to the occultists under the name of Astral Light.

 

The initiate must understand how to win this force, Wirth writes, with the aim of using it, at the proper time and place, to dominate Nature and obtain those effects which are considered miraculous by the masses.

 

In Masonic and esoteric Christian rites, the forces (Ether, Mercury of the Philosophers) diffused in the Temple, are attracted with the left hand, and with the right hand we concentrate them in us (the coagulation and fixation of the Mercury).

 

Concerning the Caduceus, the esoteric Dr. Rolt-Wheeler says: "This Symbol is purely Hellenic; it is Orphic, Eleusian and Pythagorean at the same time. The Orphic Symbol is partially phallic, with the staff topped by thyrsus or fir cone, emblems of fertility. The Caduceus, in the strict sense of the word, is the magic staff of Hermes, the winged messenger of the gods. The two snakes are Dionysian, symbolizing the two polarities, male and female; also the two forms of magic, as well as, the conscious and subconscious mentality. The cross is Orphic, being that Orpheus was crucified on a tree.

 

The symbol is divided into seven planes. So, the lower part of the hexagon is the third plane, the Pythagorean rectangle is the fourth plane,  the upper part of the hexagon and the heads of the snakes are the fifth plane. The intertwining of the snakes means the Law of the Alternation of Polarity. What is masculine on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th plane is feminine on the 2nd, 4th and 6th plane. So, a woman is of masculine influence on the even-numbered planes. The planes are called: 1st Material ; 2nd Astral ; 3rd Mental ; 4th Emotive; 5th Causal ; 6th Spiritual and 7th Divine."

 

In the East, the symbol of the two serpents twisting on the rod corresponds to the two currents Pingala and Ida which coil around the Merudanda: the first is red, hot and dry, likened to the Sun and the Alchemic Sulphur; the second, Ida, is cold and wet, like the Alchemic Mercury and is correlated with the Moon for its silver pallor. If you want more details you can find them in our previous works, still valid from the initiatic technique point of view even though our present task is Archeosophical, therefore, more advanced.

 

The meditative exercises on the Caduceus lead to important discoveries about the Tree of Life and the awakening of Kundalini , the Serpentine Fire; but the experiences of meditating on symbols are made easier by integrating the symbols in a human form, thus linking the conscience of the meditator to other archetypes of the symbols which are connected to each other by the laws of synergy. An excellent training is carried out with the use of a colored icon of the created Sophia.

 

Ascesis is greatly helped by this type of meditation and for this it was used by Jacob Boehme, Soloviev, Pavel Florensky- the last two followers of the Russian gnosis. A detailed explanation on how to meditate on the Sophia, in accordance with the Bible, has been written in a work which we hope to make available to those interested in the Sophian question – the most profound and least known aspects of the initiatic way.

Tommaso Palamidessi

excerpt from "THE CADUCEUS OF HERMES"

of the 14th Booklet