The Annals of Hermes
For three thousand years Hermes has been the god of roads, messengers and divine mischief. For one week in 2026 he was an art car, crossing Black Rock City mostly at night, mostly out past the streets. People could send for it — a ride home, or a set off the deck at four in the morning. This is what it did, day by day.
Before
Juplaya in July, and the build days before the log starts
The track begins on the twenty-eighth of August, so none of this is a day below. Hermes was out on the playa in July, two months early — at Spanky's after dark, and on open ground at golden hour — and the same propeller and rope-wound lamps turn up in the build days at the end of August, when the car stood unlit and the first sets were played off the deck before there was a week to play them in.
Sun 5 Jul
Wed 26 Aug
Thu 27 Aug
Friday, August 28
The first two hours, spent standing still
Every story about Hermes begins with him already in motion, so this is a strange first page: the god of the road spent his opening afternoon standing still. From four until six on Friday it stood at 8:45 and F, and in two hours covered seventy metres, about the width of its own parking spot. The camp sat more than a kilometre from the Man. Nobody had asked it for a ride. Nobody knew it was there. It waited in the heat with its lights off, which is the one thing a messenger cannot do for himself.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Stops
- 8:45 & F — 31 minutes from 3:59 PM
Shoots
Saturday, August 29
Out before dawn, home before the heat
Saturday began at twenty to four in the morning, the hour that would own the week. Two outings, about two kilometres, done by early afternoon — then twelve hours nobody wrote down. It came back to 8:45 and F and stayed forty minutes, the corner already a home. Half the day was outside the city and half on the streets. Most of Saturday belongs to the people who were inside it. The god of crossings spent his second day learning where his doorstep was.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered. A blue mark is a photograph or clip, set down at the minute it was taken.
Stops
- 8:45 & F — 42 minutes from 3:38 AM
Shoots
Comments
Sunday, August 30
The DPW party, then Spanky's opening night
On Sunday evening Hermes finally went out, with somewhere to be: the DPW party first, the people who build the city, and then Spanky's opening night. DJ Metavillan was aboard, the first night he would see through to the end of the week. It left at a quarter to six and did not come back until nearly midnight, almost all of those six hours beyond the edge of the city. Close to eight kilometres, a kilometre and a half from the Man at the farthest — the distance between glimpses, not a route. One pause: nine minutes back at 8:45 and F around half past ten, and then it was gone into the dark, which is where this story starts.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Stops
- 8:45 & F — 9 minutes from 10:35 PM
Shoots
Comments
Monday, August 31
Twenty-six kilometres, and Mundara
Monday is the farthest Hermes travelled in a day: twenty-six kilometres, four outings, twenty-two hours between ten past midnight and ten at night. It opened at the Deep-Playa Music Zone just after one and stayed twenty-three minutes, about as long as it takes to decide a party is not yours. Somewhere after that sits Mundara, where Human Experience — David Block — and Playa Riders both played. The rest of the day, unusually, was inside the city. Much of those twenty-two hours went unwatched. The distance is only what was witnessed.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered. A blue mark is a photograph or clip, set down at the minute it was taken.
Stops
- near Deep-Playa Music Zone (DMZ) — 23 minutes from 1:02 AM
Shoots
Comments
Tuesday, September 1
The night the box opened, and nobody knocked
Six outings on Tuesday, twelve kilometres, from two in the morning until nearly eleven, most of it beyond the streets — and for the first time two of them were aboard, Coral Daddy out with it now. It gave the Deep-Playa Music Zone seventeen minutes at ten past two, then twelve more at 8:45 and F. It went by the Gaian Airship at 3:30 and D, the one thing all week that happened when the programme said it would. This was the day Hermes started taking requests. Exactly one message came through, from itself: a test pickup at Center Camp, filed to prove the thing worked. It did. It sat there all day with nobody on the other end.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Stops
- near Deep-Playa Music Zone (DMZ) — 17 minutes from 2:09 AM
- 8:45 & F — 12 minutes from 8:55 PM
Shoots
Comments
Wednesday, September 2
A badge for best sunrise, and the night strangers started asking
Wednesday is the day it came together, and in the right order. At ten to one in the morning two strangers asked to be collected, one from 2 and E and one from 12 and D. Hermes won its badge for best sunrise, standing on the line between the night and the day. By late afternoon three more people wanted the deck: Unitone, two until four out of Bisou, with a ride into deep playa; Justin for the sunrise; Anton for house, bright major tones. At nine the car passed within six metres of Small Beginnings, and in the same few minutes went by I Have Dust In Curious Places and The Future Mirror. It stopped being a thing people saw and became a thing people sent for. It took five days.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Stops
- 8:45 & F — 8 minutes from 4:44 PM
Art within reach
Small Beginningswithin 6 metres · Conor Murphy - The Snarchitect, Reno, IL
I Have Dust In Curious Placeswithin 109 metres · Scott Copernicus, Another Place, Another Time
The Future Mirrorwithin 266 metres · Kyle Ruddick, Topanga, CA
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Comments
Thursday, September 3
A late-night opera, and never once back in the city
On Thursday night Hermes did not set foot in the city. The whole night was out past the fence, two kilometres from the Man at the farthest, deeper than it ever went again. Nine outings adding up to under two kilometres, because it was coming back rather than going anywhere: an hour and a half at 8:45 and F across four visits. Late in the night there was an opera. The hours worth having were between three and six, out among Altar of Awen, A Quiet Place to Scream and Polio Rodeo, with Puzzling Evidence and Trash Fence Souvenirs somewhere in the dark. Coral Daddy was aboard, and so was DJ Metavillan. Nobody asked it for anything. It went anyway.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Stops
- 8:45 & F — 1h 36m from 1:16 AM across 4 visits
- near Deep-Playa Music Zone (DMZ) — 9 minutes from 5:55 AM
Art within reach
As Above, So Cee Lowithin 49 metres · Zachary Caruso, Black Rock City, NV
Altar of Awenwithin 51 metres · Kristin Wesley and Roosevelt Artworks, Phoenix, AZ
A Quiet Place to Screamwithin 85 metres · Teri Bevelacqua, Olympia, WA, Earth
Polio Rodeowithin 153 metres · Elizabeth Lieb, Urbano Maher, Graham Clarke, Fairfield, NJ
OVO Igniswithin 308 metres · Cjay Roughgarden, Element 26 Studio, Oakland, CA
Puzzling Evidencewithin 315 metres · Sharon Goldin & Lee Preimesberger, San Diego, CA & Houston, TX- Trash Fence Souvenirswithin 331 metres · New Jersey
Nova Heavenwithin 333 metres · Omri Sasi and Sarel Botavia, Israel- Hex-Pandwithin 337 metres · Sparks, NV
VitalLinkwithin 662 metres · Nebula Collective, Austin, TX- The Future Mirrorwithin 778 metres · Kyle Ruddick, Topanga, CA
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Comments
Friday, September 4
Rain, Shabbat aboard, and the Titanic at eleven
It rained on Friday, and rain on the playa stops everything: the dust turns to mud no wheel will turn in. So Friday does not begin until ten past six — and when it did, Hermes went straight out past the fence and stayed. It had been asked to be a stage. The BRC Shabbat dinner needed one, and David Block played it as Human Experience: from seven until quarter past nine the car stood within sixty metres of The Lightning Tower. Then forty minutes near G String, and on to the TITANIC — nine thousand hours of building, two hundred people, a fire about eleven. Every request that day came from Minerva, four times over: from 8:45 and G, from the helicopter at BRC Metro Chop, once for a set for herself and Digital. Roaming around, party hopping, anytime you want to pick us up. For that night the crew came away playa heroes.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered. A blue mark is a photograph or clip, set down at the minute it was taken.
Stops
- near Deep-Playa Music Zone (DMZ) — 32 minutes from 7:08 PM across 2 visits
Art within reach
The Lightning Towerwithin 56 metres · Pepemaniak, Rome, Italy
G Stringwithin 72 metres · Precious, Boise, ID
Island of Lost Buoyswithin 99 metres · Lillian Byrne Heyward, Bluffton, SC- Hex-Pandwithin 135 metres · Sparks, NV
- Polio Rodeowithin 247 metres · Elizabeth Lieb, Urbano Maher, Graham Clarke, Fairfield, NJ
Saṃsārawithin 325 metres · Art with Arundo, Nomadic; San Francisco Bay Area, CA- Trash Fence Souvenirswithin 365 metres · New Jersey
- OVO Igniswithin 501 metres · Cjay Roughgarden, Element 26 Studio, Oakland, CA
- VitalLinkwithin 664 metres · Nebula Collective, Austin, TX
- The Future Mirrorwithin 933 metres · Kyle Ruddick, Topanga, CA
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Shoots
Comments
Saturday, September 5
Best burn night, and a set shared with Robot Heart
Saturday was burn night, and Hermes shared a set with Robot Heart — Seth Schwarz on Hermes, Edward Castillo on Robot Heart, two decks run as one, and a badge for best burn night between them. The positions know nothing of it. They give a single minute at seventeen past eight, sixteen metres from As Above So Below, Nora and The Future Mirror a couple of hundred metres off, and then they stop, hours before the part anybody would want described. So the camera does the remembering, and @flowpriestess is in the footage. The night that won the badge is the thinnest in the record. It did not end on Saturday: the cook-off and the link-up with the Serpent Queen ran past midnight, and the record picks the night back up as Sunday.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Art within reach
As Above So Belowwithin 16 metres · Aequus Collective, Charleston, SC
Nora - Nonsense Observation & Reward Automatonwithin 245 metres · Aliona Kuznetsova and Volodymyr Kuznetsov, San Francisco, CA- The Future Mirrorwithin 247 metres · Kyle Ruddick, Topanga, CA
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Shoots
Comments
Sunday, September 6
From the cook-off to the temple burn
Sunday starts where Saturday refused to finish. The three hours after midnight are the only stretch the positions caught, and they hold the cook-off and the link-up with the Serpent Queen, burn night still running. Just after one, Hermes was thirty-seven metres from Plastic Planet. By four it had found OVO Ignis, almost two kilometres from the Man, Enceladus a few hundred metres behind. @myhigherflow played off the deck while it went. Then nothing for sixteen hours. The nude cruise went out in the daytime. The evening was the poop cruise, DJ Metavillan playing Drop It Like It's Hot. And after that the temple burn, the quiet fire the old stories would have sent Hermes to. Three of the four things the last Sunday was for are missing from the record.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered. A blue mark is a photograph or clip, set down at the minute it was taken.
Art within reach
- Plastic Planetwithin 37 metres · Santa Cruz, CA
What Lies Beneath?within 300 metres · Reno Core Project, Reno, NV
Enceladuswithin 303 metres · Art of Sean T French - mechanized metal & fire featuring hand blown glass by Mikey Butzine, Phoenix, AZ- OVO Igniswithin 338 metres · Cjay Roughgarden, Element 26 Studio, Oakland, CA
- The Future Mirrorwithin 455 metres · Kyle Ruddick, Topanga, CA
- Trash Fence Souvenirswithin 892 metres · New Jersey
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Shoots
Comments
Monday, September 7
Where it stopped
It ends at twenty-five to ten on Monday evening, inside the city, three-quarters of a kilometre from the Man. Message to the Parents We Should Have Had stood a few hundred metres away, and Panopticonotopia 3.0! somewhere beyond. Hermes moved about thirty metres and stopped. There is no last journey and no drive home, because nobody was writing by then. Everything after this happened to people who were there, and is not in this book. Gods of the road do not get endings, only the next crossing.
Where it went. Each circle is somewhere Hermes stopped, drawn larger the longer it stayed; green is the first of the day, red the last. The dashed curves are the moves between them — curved because what survives is where it stood, not the route it took to get there. The shaded ground is roughly the territory the day covered.
Art within reach
Message to the Parents We Should Have Hadwithin 383 metres · James Beach, San Francisco, USA, Terra, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Local Group, Laniakea Supercluster, Universe A
Panopticonotopia 3.0!within 615 metres · JJ Holoubek, San Francisco, CA
Photographs and placements from Burning Man's 2025 art archive, the most recent published. These are 2026 nights, so treat a distance as roughly where a piece stood the year before, and a picture as of the piece rather than of that night.
Comments
The seven circles
Before he was a car, Hermes was the fastest of the Greek gods — messenger, psychopomp, the only Olympian free to go anywhere, and a thief by the evening he was born. Fused with Thoth he became Hermes Trismegistus, whose Corpus Hermeticum has the soul rising through seven planetary circles, letting go of one earthly thing at each ring.
Source Library collected seven versions of that gesture — the cosmos as nested rings — from a 1540 volvelle printed for Charles V through Fludd, Boehme, the Rosicrucians, the Bardo Thodol and the crown chakra to a 2012 map of the observable universe. Five centuries, and none of the makers saw each other's work.
The Seven Circles of Hermes PDF, 11 pages, 6.6 MB · assembled from the collection of Source Library · plates public domain except the observable-universe map, © Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA
Next year
Hermes goes out again. If you want to play a set off the deck, host something on it, be collected by it, or help build the thing, you can ask to be part of it. Wherever it goes between now and then gets posted to @hermesartcar.
That form needs the Hermes server, so it works on returnofhermes.com rather than on this copy of the page.
Comments