Sublime

Ananke derives from a root that spreads through Old Egyptian, Akkadian, Chaldean, and Hebrew terms for “narrow,” “throat,” “strangle,” “constrict,” and the yokes and rings laid on the necks of captives.18 Ananke takes you by the throat, holds you prisoner, and drives you like a slave.

Hermes means “he of the stone heap.” In Greece, mounds of stones served as landmarks and property boundaries. Somewhat paradoxically, Hermes is also a boundary-crosser. The themes of boundaries and boundary-crossing arise again and again in interpretations of Hermes, and tricksters generally.

“The way this works is we copyright every conceivable combination of words, Greek words, Latin, English, what-have-you. We get the legal rights to every conceivable word a pharmaceutical company might use to name a new product. For diabetes alone, we have an inventory of one hundred forty names,”