“Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a strange harvest or insult an old woman or fritter away their name as though there’s no power in it. They’ll never underestimate the youngest son or touch anyone’s hairpin or rosebush or bed without asking, and their steps through the woods will be light and unpresumptuous. Little ones who seek out fairy tales are taught to be shrewd and courteous citizens of the seen world, just in case the unseen one ever bleeds over.”
from Late Latin Theophania “Theophany,” another name for the Epiphany, from Greek theophania “the manifestation of a god” (see theophany). Also popular in Old French and Middle English as a name given to girls born on Epiphany Day.
“As is the inner, so is the outer;
as is the the great, so is the small;
as it is above, so it is below;
there is but one life and law:
and he that worketh it is one.
Nothing is inner, nothing is outer;
nothing is great, nothing is small;
nothing is high , nothing is low,
in the the Divine economy…”
King Gudea’s libation vase dedicated to Ningishzidda, Sumerian vegetation god of the underworld (made out of steatite and currently in the Louvre)
Like Hermes, Ningishzidda’s symbol was the caduceus, however I’d really advise against identifying them as the same god. There are a couple of similarities (Hermes was also a god of the underworld of sorts, called a psychopomp, as he’d lead the dead to Hades) but Ningishzidda is not a trickster god nor a god of merchants, and the aspects of a scribal god given to the Graeco-Egyptian syncretized version of Hermes/Thoth has more to do with Mesopotamian Nabû or Sumerian Nisaba.
So far I have yet to read a good analysis of what the Mesopotamian caduceus meant for Sumerians and Babylonians, but we could safely suppose there’s something to do with life and death, given Ningishzidda’s cthonic vibes, his role as the guardian of heaven’s gates (together with Tammuz/Dumuzid) and the serpent’s symbolic association with eternal life (see the epic of Gilgamesh).
Hermes 