Hermes is the spirit of alchemy because he is a deity of complete being, revealing what many forget in their inhabitation of a half-world: chaos and ocean are the secret grounds of cosmos and city. Actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was paired with Fred Astaire (1899-1987)–who was always searching for the goddess Terpsichore–in the musical romantic comedy Funny Face (1957). Hepburn, who plays Jo Stockton, is both sprite and diva, bashful bookseller and supermodel; in thirty-six seconds of film (Master Therion’s qabalistic number for Mercurius), she performs alchemy, forever turning from mere mortal into everyone’s ideal goddess when she descends the marble staircase in the Louvre, swathed in a red Givenchy gown, signifying the spagyric art’s rubedo, with her crimson scarf flying around the pagan statue The Winged Victory of Samothrace, which in alchemical cinema, transmogrifies her into Nike herself. From Cinema Symbolism 4.
Robert W. Sullivan IV 