I’ve been reading Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Two Wheels over the past few weeks. It’s fun, dense, and filled with really cool stories (but, at least in the ebook, not enough pictures). While reading, I have been looking up terms like safety bicycle and some of the people named, particularly the American women. The ads and images I saw reawakened my memories of a search that I did online after starting up bike commuting again over the summer when I was looking to see, in our world full of Gods, which deities people are now associating with bicycles.
That search had turned up some interesting things, but not much for me — I ended up shifting more of my prayers towards Hermes, as I don’t have a routine practice for Hephaistos, and to a less extreme degree, Athene. Hermes has been there for me a lot during my utility cycling, such as earlier today while I was going back from the train station on a bikeshare bike, and a driver who did not seem to realize the road was two lanes and I had an intersection conflict that could’ve killed me had I not had space to move over. It was a badly-designed intersection: The street I was on goes from two-way to one-way through downtown and back to two-way, and whoever I was in conflict with was clearly having issues figuring out that they’d just switched back to a two-way. So, a nearly head-on collision at an intersection so uselessly big that it wasn’t easy to notice they were in the wrong spot before we were both in the intersection. The stars aligned, so it wasn’t a disaster. I murmured prayers to Hermes after that encounter for some blocks and hit green lights almost all the way to the drop point where I needed to leave the bike. I also resolved to take a different route back next time.
In both search dives, I found evidence of similar kinds of sacred yearnings at the dawn of cycling, which I will share with you now because we all love a good collection, don’t we?
The two images above are by Jean de Paleogu (also de Paleologue), a Romanian poster artist who did a lot of early work with bicycle companies. The image on the left shows a Northern-style shieldmaiden (ish?), and the one on the right has the French word for Goddess in the upper left-hand corner. The image is of a woman with small wings presenting the bicycle to a crowd below, with Paris in the background. She is clearly meant to be a daimon of some kind.
The next image is from a piece by Peter Alfred Gross, and it shows a woman riding a step-through bicycle with the words “The Goddess” below it. So, clearly there was this instinct towards bicycles.
Of course, Hermes also appeared in some ads, as did a few other deities. There’s a vintage ad claiming that bikes are faster than Mercury. I imagine that a thorough look at early bicycle ads would show scores of Greek, Roman, and Northern deities, daimons, and nature spirits either bestowing blessings on — or being “rivaled by” — the bicycle.
During my previous searches over the summer, I found a few more things that are a bit closer to the present — namely, South Asian ads that advertise bicycles during a holiday sacred to Durga. The first and third image below are for step-through bicycles, and the second is for a hardtail mountain bike — perfect to ride into the wild to find the Mountain Goddess.
The thing I find most interesting in the last ad is the light etching of the Goddess’ arms and the items that she holds symbolically, as if the woman in the foreground is bringing forth the Goddess by engaging in cycling.
One of the most hilarious things that I’ve come across since my first searches is the following brief comedy sketch.
🙏
This summer was the first I’d ridden a bike in years, both for safety reasons (we’re putting in lots of bike lanes now! they’re so much cheaper to maintain than car roads because big cars break roads faster!) and because I didn’t know the social protocols for getting my bike fixed or what to expect in a bike shop conversation. I had no excuse to be in the bike shop to observe how people interacted with the mechanics until a friend decided to go to one in my town to claim her ebike voucher. Along the same lines, the bikeshare has been in town for a few years, but I needed to be walked through how it worked a few weeks ago so I’d know what to expect when I checked out a bike, especially since my use case for the bikeshare is avoiding a 45-minute walk to and from the train station because I don’t have the mental fortitude for dealing with rideshare’s timing uncertainties, and the buses are not synced with the train schedule. The bicycle is, as the research says, the most efficient form of human transportation, and I believe it.
Hermes definitely has his hands in the luck and safety of utility cycling. Clearly, from both what I found and from the images I’ve presented, there’s a lot of fertile spring water fresh from the high summits of divine providence for uncovering the spirits and daimons and motes-of-blessing of the transportation we take every day — for commutes, for errands, for recreation, for travel — and there is a way in which each of the Gods could be depicted with bikes. Athene, with her fierce practicality, and Artemis, with the wildness in her like the early women who went bike touring. Gna running her errands. Hermes and the Lords of the Winds bringing tailwinds and green lights our way. Hermes, Athene, and the Loud-Clanging Gods shielding us from harm.
The bike I commute on is a bike I’ve owned for about 13 years. It was my first big adult purchase, and it suits me well. While I do need a second bike for other use cases (multimodal travel, avoiding thunder- and ice storms), I’m fine at least for now letting my muscles drive me, and in this age of consumption, the only new bikes I’d ever buy would be folders … or my Dream Cargo eBike, which is not sold in the USA right now due to tariffs, not that I could carry it into my walk-up apartment anyway. “Giddy with mobility” is probably a good way to describe how it feels to, for the first time in years, not have to fight with inconvenient bus schedules, haul groceries on foot, &c. I’m trying not to overdo it even though I love worldbuilding so much that it’s kind of hard to not love bicycle infrastructure development.
The world is full of Gods, and so the Gods may be noticed everywhere.
KALLISTI 
Slight clarification with the last ad:
In the Hindu tradition, every woman in the world is seen as an embodiment of Durga Maa. So the women riding the bikes aren’t merely bringing forth Mother Durga’s energy but are embodying it (through cycling).
Jai Ambe!
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Yes, totally true! Was not thinking about that when I was diving into images. 😅
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My immediate impression is that a bicycle is like a mechanical horse, and so bicycle riding would be a kind of horsemanship but expressed through Hephaistos’ technical perspective. Somewhat surprisingly, horsemanship is not that clearly symbolically articulated in Hellenic theology. One would have expected this to perhaps eventually fall under the purview of Artemis, but it never did. The experience of bicycling, the combination of speed, exhilaration and unpredictability, definitely makes me think of Hermes. (Full disclosure, I haven’t been on a bicycle in decades!)
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I was (sort of?) thinking that, except horses are a partnership with another animal (or multiple, in the case of carriages), and bikes don’t have that mediating relationship (barring antiques that have become tsukumogami if we want to be expansive here). Bicycles are a sort of mechanical marvel and a perfection, if we take the scientific research on travel efficiency at face value, of movement? So I could see that with Hermes. But there are also, again, so many Gods depicted on chariots, riding, &c. &c.
If you’re curious about getting a bike, you could always go here next year: https://www.nybikejumble.com/
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Lol, there’s no way that I’m riding a bike at my age.
I suppose that the closest analogy from antiquity is simply a chariot, but it’s more like riding a horse because of the autonomy of it. Of course it’s not an animal, nor an automaton like Hephaistos’ automotive tripods. One could simply consider it an instrument; there’s no God of the chariot, just of the horses. The activity could thus simply be considered a mode of travel (Hermes), and of athleticism. But there’s an elaborate social imaginary around it, as you’ve noted, with themes of liberation being especially prominent.
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There was a woman who was possibly in her 80s walking out of the local bike shop with an e-trike when I was in there a few weeks ago figuring out cold-weather gear. She looked really happy about it. (However, our public transit is significantly worse than yours. 😝)
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