The only thing I want to highlight in this interpretation is the focus on alchemy. This isn't your hackneyed "lead into gold" alchemy that's always depicted in cartoons. Alchemy has a couple of meanings, and the one we care about is a spiritual alchemy. It is a process of transforming energies in various ways. Typically, then ends up in a discussion of the use of sex energy, basically, you engage in intercourse, but don't allow yourself to finish. This creates an energy that can be harnessed and redirected, giving a man more power. When you hear about Gandhi sleeping with his neices, this is what he was doing. He had no intention of completing the act. It was an act of self-restraint, not exploitation.

Ultimately, these discussions always end up in a discussion of transcendence, the idea of using alchemical methods to transform a man into a "god" who can impose his will upon others as he chooses and get the things he wants. When they speak about Hermes in specific contexts, it is this practice over which he is a god. This is what TPTB believe he represents.

There's a long, and rather salacious history of the founding of modern medicine. The men who first studied surgery were regarded as ghouls and graverobbers, because that's how they got the bodies to dissect and learn from. They would bribe gravediggers to give them bodies to dissect, and then again to bury the remains when they were done. Lots of the initial experiments on drugs and some of the most basic treatments we have today were morally bankrupt in the way they came about. Thievery, trickery, etc were all very prominently associated with doctors at the time. And make no mistake, this included the rich men from noble families who engaged as well. They brought this idea of "magic" and transforming of sickness to health to the profession, and within this milieu of a culture, we ended up with the ideas of alchemy finding their ways subtly into medicine, including Hermes as a symbol instead of Aesclepius.