Working with Spirit Guides

Hermes: A Case Study

As a working shaman and Spiritual Transformation coach, I get a LOT of questions about Spirit Guides: who are they? How do I find out my guides? How do I meet them? How do communicate with them? Why should I work with them? What are the benefits of having a Spirit Guide?

In the last decade of doing this work, I’ve found that the best way to explain Spirit Guide work is to give an example. And, while every Spirit Guide and every individual is different, there are consistent threads that offer a basic blueprint for everyone’s use and reference.

The backstory

Several weeks ago, I encountered a new Spirit Guide during a client Channeling Session (shout out to Kristen!). It was the ancient Greek god Hermes, or as he presented himself during that session: Hermes Trismegistus, which translates to “Hermes the thrice great”. Nothing like a little healthy ego;) As I researched this new character alongside my client in real time, I was stunned to discover his origins, written works, and even modern role as what’s known as an Ascended Master.

Terminology and taxonomy

Before digging into this case study in any more detail, it’s crucial to level set on some foundational terms, concepts and definitions we throw around in the woo-verse:

• Ascended Master: An Ascended Master is defined as a spiritually enlightened being who, in past incarnations, were ordinary humans, but who have undergone a series of spiritual transformations originally called initiations. Many similar beings, like Jesus and the Buddha and several of the ancient, pagan gods of antiquity, are considered to be Ascended Masters in addition to being deities. In other words, the Venn diagram between gods and Ascended Masters is basically a circle.

• Upper World: Within the practice of shamanism, deities and Ascended Masters are thought to exist in what we refer to as the Upper World. In my Shamanic Journeying Meditation workshops, I define the Upper World as the realm of the gods, goddesses, angels, devas, fairies, and Ascended Masters. In shamanism, we “travel” to the Upper World for “big information”: guidance on our life’s purpose, clarity around matters of true love, our spiritual development, and the pursuit of our soul’s purpose. This is the metaphysical realm of the inspirational and aspirational. It uplifts and energizes us, infusing our lives with a crucial touch of magic in the midst of the day-to-day drudgery. The “heaven” depicted in monotheistic religions and pop culture is a parallel to the shamanic Upper World.

• Shamanic Journeying: Shamanic Journeying is an ancient meditative technique designed to empower individuals to travel inward and into three figurative/ representative places: the Upper World, the Middle World, and the Lower World. Shamanic drumming music, played during a Shamanic Journey, stimulates theta brain waves that stimulate a shamanic state of consciousness (SSC) unique to this form of meditation. Journeys are as varied and unique as the individuals undertaking them. Some journeys are incredibly visual while others are more based in smells and kinetic feelings.

Reverse engineering

Over the last decade as a working shaman, I have embraced a process of spiritual experimentation and discovery that I refer to as “reverse engineering”. This is the mechanism we leverage in the TOTEM Spiritual Transformation Coaching Program, and is also the cornerstone of my own, private spiritual practice. I have initially learned about more than 95% of Spirit Guides from direct contact, either in client sessions or during my own meditations or dreams.

I make contact and get an initial set of attributes: they could be colors, symbols, messages, or other indicators. I then look up and research the being based on subtle attributes, symbols or other clues, generally shocked to learn that this character is real, and perfectly fits into the impression I gleaned intuitively. I call this process “reverse engineering” the shamanic experience, stress-testing what comes through in a psychic session and validating it with research and documentation from previous shamans, faith systems and cultures.

When you least expect it

So, back to our example with Hermes. After that client Channeling Session- and my initial intro to this character- I did what I usually do: I forgot about him. It was a client’s Spirit Guide at the time and, while I’m very curious and always interested to learn about a new character, I don’t always latch onto an experience from a client session as a personal project. To do so would make this more than a full-time job…and likely cause a bit of a psychotic break;)

But, in this particular case, Hermes decided to pop back in. And I’m grateful he did.

The Hermes Bar

Last week, my husband and I took a short trip to New Orleans, one of our absolute favorite places on planet earth. If you haven’t been to New Orleans, trust me: it’s much, much more than women showing their breasts for beads on Bourbon Street. It’s a thriving spiritual crossroads littered with incredible French and Creole restaurants and literally the nicest people on planet earth.

While waiting for our private dining moment at Antoine’s, one of the oldest restaurants in this country, we went to have a drink in their Hermes Bar. This bar is named after the Hermes “Crewe”, a term applied to the local neighborhood groups that build floats for Mardi Gras and celebrate ancient spiritual rituals with one another.

The bar was littered with images of Hermes, both from Greek mythology and taken from previous years’ Mardi Gras floats and paraphernalia. We were there early, the bar was quiet, and it didn’t take much time before I found myself in a deep discussion with our bartender, barbacks, and other employees about the Greek god Hermes.

Verbal manifestation

Now, I really should know at this point in the game that when I’m relaxed, in a good mood, and sitting in a magic place, I can manifest these beings when I speak of them. I had a previous interaction with the god Odin after telling a client “I would really like to have a beer and conversation with him one day.” Long story short: Odin was my cab driver later that very evening, and it’s an experience that still blows my mind to this day. (I’ll share this Spirit Guide case study in another upcoming Substack!).

So, forgetting this decades-long pattern (typical), I sat at the Hermes Bar and relayed to everyone the many hilarious stories of Hermes in the ancient Greek myths. I gestured to a painting of a lyre in the corner, explaining that Hermes made the first lyre as a little mischievous toddler-god. As the story goes, he literally crawled out of his crib and stole all of Apollo’s sacred cows, killing some of them to make the instrument out of their intestines. Apollo was incensed that someone stole his most prized possession, and went apeshit trying to find the guilty party.

Then, he entered a cave…and found that a hilarious baby had done it. And not only was it a baby, but the baby was playing the most gorgeous music he had ever heard. Hermes, right on cue, explained that he only committed this profane, blasphemous crime against a powerful god to provide him with an instrument, one that Apollo would, in time, become known for playing.

Apollo, in spite of himself, was charmed. And this, I explained to the employees of the bar, is Herme’s gift. He’s a trickster deity, causing problems and creating chaos, but is so inherently likable and charming and clever that he never really seems to get into trouble for his misdeeds.

I then explained that his winged shoes- featured prominently on a gorgeous bronze statue at the back of the bar- were a gift from the goddess Athena. He used them to navigate the multiverse at warp speed, even going into the forbidden realm of the Underworld.

I wrapped up our weird little shamanic fireside chat by stating, in no uncertain terms, that I had a deep affection for Hermes and all of the trickster deities, explaining to my conversational companions that these were the most interesting and human-oriented of the gods. And, if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the ancient gods are SUCKERS for a little flattery;)

God of music…and luck

And this is how it always starts. A few throwaway comments. Sharing some Greek myths. And the next thing you know, the owner of literally my favorite restaurant on earth is sitting next to us explaining that she’s looking for a French-trained Executive Chef. My husband is literally exactly that thing, so we all exchanged info and went to our private dining room. I joked with my husband something to the effect of, “I think Hermes might also be a god of luck, so this evening is going to get interesting.”

Turns out: He is. It did. And it was awesome.

After a magical meal, we walked over to the single coolest place in all of New Orleans- and, arguably, the United States: Fritzel’s Jazz Club. Founded a bajillion years ago by Austrian jazz lovers, this wood-panelled throwback is a New Orleans staple, featuring a house band that has played there for more than 30 years.

At Fritzel’s, I instantly noticed another strange phenomenon: my clap had become supersonic. We had been watching live music all week, and many times within the very same Fritzel’s jazz club, so I had a good baseline for what my clap should sound like. On this particular evening, I was blessed with something akin to a loudspeaker for my hands. Every time I would go to clap, my husband and I would look at each other, laughing, and then look at my strange little hands for explanation. I joked, “Maybe Hermes gave me magic clappy hands!” and we cracked up.

But right then, as I made that comment, the singer leaned into the microphone and asked, “Who wants to hear the song ‘My Blue Heaven’?”. The evening before, I had revealed to my husband that I desperately wanted to hear that song because of a bizarre fixation on a terrible movie from my childhood of the same name, starring Steven Martin as a gangster that starts a children’s baseball league. So, when we heard this question, I immediately said, “It’s my favorite!” LOUDER than I could believe. It was as if Hermes had microphoned my hands, mouth and everything else, and within seconds we were listening to my favorite jazz song and enjoying our seemingly overt stroke of luck.

Later that evening, the singer (who was also apparently the club’s music booker) approached us and we ended up talking about how they wanted to create a second location of the club in Austin. They were interested in continuing the conversation and possibly collaborating. There was confluence on top of serendipity on top of “Are you f*cking kidding me?” moments for the rest of the evening.

The next morning, while standing in the unbearable security line at the New Orleans airport, I found myself unusually fixated on people’s t-shirts. Just as I was referencing this new, odd preoccupation of mine to my husband- guessing that it may have been the product of a hangover- a man walked up with a track team t-shirt featuring a winged shoe in full, golden glory. We both cracked up, unable to ignore the obvious “hello” from this very funny Spirit Guide.

So, a few key notes on these experiences I found when researching Hermes:

• Hermes is a god of luck, and would absolutely bless some of his preferred mortals with momentary access to the flow state. Hell, if Hermes sticks around, I might bring him to Vegas for a weekend;)

• Hermes, or as he’s called in Roman mythology, Mercury, governs the sign of Gemini and Gemini’s body part: the hands. The clapping acoustic phenomenon is so funny when viewed through this lense, and totally explains my short-lived (and I’m assuming annoying) superpower.

• Hermes is a god of musical instruments, so my strange desire to hear “My Blue Heaven” was a request right up his alley, as was his interest in exporting a cultural throwback- complete with stringed instruments- to my new home city.

Intentional work

So, after getting back home and tackling the mountain of work that had piled up in the four days I was away, I decided I wanted to dig into working consciously and purposefully with this Spirit Guide. As I recommend to my clients- and despite how crazy it looks, sounds and feels- I asked Hermes out loud what he wanted to communicate to me and what we were supposed to be doing together. I was in a salt bath at the time, which is one of the very few moments in a day when I’m still and quiet, and I suddenly heard music coming from the dining room.

I wrapped a towel around me and meandered out to find my iPhone playing a Kanye West song, “The Glory”. The lyrics. Are. Hilarious. Check it out a selected smattering of this Gemini’s (yes- Kanye is a classic Gemini) lyrics:

“Can I talk my shit again?

Even if I don't hit again?

While y'all was in limbo I raised the bar up

I touched on everything

I did it for the glory

But with my ego

I can stand there in a speedo

And be looked at like a fucking hero

The fur is Hermes, shit that you don't floss

The Goyard so hard man, I'm Hugo's boss

These haters be killing themselves they wanna come and get the glory”

I love this guy. Not only does this Spirit Guide communicate with me via iTunes shuffle (just like another trickster deity, Odin), but he’s a bonafide smartass.

I’ve spent the intervening days digging into his work in the form of Thoth, the Egyptian version of Hermes. This includes an amazing set of metaphysical writings called the Emerald Tablets, considered to be the oldest tome on alchemy and ritual magic in the world. And as is so common with these interactions, I realized that I had been his “student” for some time, reading the Emerald Tablets and other works credited to him for many, many years.

What’s next

So, now that this high strangeness has entered into my life, what’s next? This question then quickly also becomes: how do I leverage this new connection to grow, to manifest, and to better serve all of you lovely people? I’ve included (below) a few key steps that I take in my personal practice and also work with clients to navigate in our TOTEM Spiritual Transformation Coaching Program:

• The “so what”: My first step when working with a new Spirit Guide, particularly one from the Upper World realm, is to frame out possible “so what’s” for their presence in my life at this particular time. What is Hermes a “god” of? As an Ascended Master, what energies does he embody and govern? At first blush, it would appear that Hermes is here to support me in communicating disruptive ideas and concepts, injecting a bit of benevolent chaos into the world. Perhaps he’s here to support my mischief and arm me with more inherent extroversion so that I can play in the public sphere without getting so exhausted and strange. Given that he is also a classic “psychopomp”- i.e. a being that can go to and from the Underworld, the land of the dead- he could be here to bolster my own psychopompic work with clients, specifically Mediumship and Past Life Readings. I’m considering engaging him in practice sessions to see how he supports my client work and how his influence changes my psychic perception, communication,

• Visualize: I work to create a mind’s eye depiction of all of my Spirit Guides as a means of anchoring this energy into my psyche, making them more easily accessible as and when I need them. I sat for roughly ten minutes trying to get a rough order of magnitude “image” of Hermes in a humanoid form. The result? A kind of light-footed version of Jeremy Strong’s character in Succession: Kendall Roy. Wearing a strange hat and linen shirt/ suit jacket, as though dressed formally but for very hot weather. To date, I’ve seen him in corporate-looking lobbies in my focused meditations, as though waiting to be brought up into offices for a meeting. Sure, this part feels a lot like make-believe and seems arbitrary or silly, but I’ve found that the Easter eggs we can collect in these visualizations hold within them vital data points, many of which are intended specifically for us and with inevitable relevance in our lives.

• Anchor the guide: Anchoring your guide in your home or workplace is a great way to maintain consistent- and increasingly valuable- contact with your Spirit Guide. In the case of Hermes, images of wings, winged shoes, lyres, the caduceus, or any of his other symbols are easily featured on an “altar”, which could be as simple as a console, bookcase or cabinet with a candle, incense or sage living on top. When I’ve brought these elements into my home in the past, I have tangibly felt the presence of the being, gaining confidence in their support of my efforts. Occasionally, a Spirit Guide is reflected in the images and symbolism of a Tarot Card- like with our TOTEM Tarot Deck- and this can be used to anchor the guide in your space, too.

• Shamanic journey: When I get a new Spirit Guide, especially an Upper World guide like a pagan deity or an Ascended Master, I undertake a Shamanic Journeying Meditation on a Full Moon- like our upcoming one on August 11th- to connect with them on the astral plane at the month’s peak of psychic energy. I generally prepare standard questions: “Who are you?”; “What are you here to help me with?”; “What do I need to be doing right now?” and set the intention to meet them and receive their insights. I may also undertake a subtle Full Moon ritual to communicate more formally with my new Spirit Guide. I write a message in a classic Wiccan manner- in a spiral with specific wording- and place it into a nice stationary envelope, addressed to my new “invisible friend”. Then, on the next Full Moon, I open the envelope to see if anything manifested…without me perhaps having realized it.

• Journaling: So much of the work we do with Spirit Guides is: a.) subtle and b.) greater than the sum of its parts. Most of the value of this work comes with hindsight, and that can only be cogent and useful when there are detailed notes for reference on an ongoing basis. Journaling also empowers us to simply take notes without making any value judgements of the psychic data that is coming in, freeing us from having to interpret or sense-make in real time. Over time, this practice will reinforce experiences, build a psychic muscle memory, and train our brains to seek out and honor these experiences as they unfold with increasing precision.

Keep it consistent

And, while a lot of this seems simplistic or basic, I can assure you the value comes from consistent, intentional practice. Everyone wants the whiz-bang right from the jump, but this is simply not how Spirit Guides work. To start, our primate brains take so much magic for granted as a baseline that messages from Spirit Guides might seem subtle or made-up. I also happen to believe that Spirit Guides focus their energy and effort on individuals that will generate an ROI for them, meaning we can be relied upon to consistently show up, take guidance, and seek ways to give back.

Want to learn more?

TOTEM is built on working with Spirit Guides, democratizing these tools and resources to our clients for their own personal and professional spiritual practices. Reach out via email anytime to learn more about our Channeling and Akashic Record sessions, or our Spiritual Transformation Coaching program: rachel@totemreadings.com. We are fully booked on the coaching front for the rest of 2022, but we’re already taking clients for 2023 kick-off.