"When Pallas sprang forth from the brain of Jove [Jupiter], / Gold fell from its vessel like a shower of water."
Atalanta fugiens, hoc est Emblemata nova de secretis naturae chymica by Michel Maier (1568?-1622)
Evrart de Conty, Livre des échecs amoureux moralisés; Jacques Legrand, Archiloge Sophie, c. 1496-1498, BnF
The myth begins with Io, a mortal princess loved by Zeus. To hide her from his jealous wife Hera, Zeus turns Io into a white heifer. Hera, seeing through the deception, demands the heifer and places her under the guard of Argus Panoptes, a giant with a hundred watchful eyes who never fully sleeps. Zeus then sends his son Mercury (Hermes) to rescue Io. Mercury approaches Argus disguised as a shepherd, plays music to lull the guardian’s eyes into sleep, and when Argus finally slumbers, Mercury beheads him and frees Io. Hera had Argus' hundred eyes preserved forever in a peacock's tail so as to immortalise her faithful watchman.
In an deep interpretation, Argus’s hundred eyes symbolize the rigid, over‑observing ego, constantly monitoring and fragmenting consciousness, while Mercury represents the mediator between conscious and unconscious, the trickster who uses subtle influence, speech, and music to transcend fixed patterns. Through this act, the psyche moves beyond narrow ego‑bound vigilance toward a more integrated state.
Carl Gustav Jung described Mercury’s deeper symbolic role in alchemy and psychology, portraying him as the living principle that links inner opposites and transforms consciousness. Jung wrote that Mercury is not only the low principle and the highest goal… but [is] the process and means of its realization… the mediator, servator and salvator.
