Mercurial, I knew about, and the tricksterishness. But I hadn’t encompassed Mercury’s full spectrum – the god of culture, but also the ‘humanizing force’. I will light a candle to any humanizing force. And as an ‘irrepressible trickster and joker’, he probably qualifies as the god of court fools and jesters.
Humorless is the last thing Mercury is. Mercury is an irrepressible trickster and joker, who even brings a laugh out of the solemn Apollo when he pulls off the amazing trick of stealing the sun god’s cattle.
Source: Harry Eyres, Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), p. 174
Image credit: drawing of Mercury, public domain
Have you read Trickster Makes The World by Lewis Hyde? Highly recommended…
Thank you Parsifal, you’ve put it back on my radar and so I just took it from the shelf. I read it many years ago, but having now launched the FoolsAreEverywhere website, I’m going back to the beginning to re-read these materials, a lovely exercise in re-visiting things at a different stage of life, through a different lens. Many thanks too for signing up to the website, it really helps to know there are people out there interested in these splendid beings.