The story of Hercules has had a hold on the collective imagination ever since he burst onto the mythic scene by the name of Heracles some 2,500 or so years ago. He's considered by mythologists to be an amalgamation of many heroes, both actual and mythic, from ancient Greece and beyond. Beyond, his story follows the archetypal pattern of the solar hero, something that Joseph Campbell spent a big chunk of his career working on seeing common patterns in hero stories all over the world and compiling them in his book, the Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this series on the soul's terms, I'll be exploring the many chapters of Hercules' story, from his birth into his childhood, through his 12 labours and his eventual death and resurrection as a constellation. Along the way, we'll be taking some time to dream into the images and letting them speak to us in our own heroic quest of individuation in this lifetime. Now, as I mentioned, his name in Greekreek is heracles, meaning glory of hera. Throughout this series, I'll flip back and forth between the names hercules and heracles, as I consider them to be essentially the same name. Hercules was just the name given to him by the romans. I'm not sure yet how many episodes I'll spend on hercules, but for this we'll go from his birth, through his childhood and into his 12 labours. Just looking at the first three for today, the first three are a fascinating set as it gives us his solar task of wrestling the lion, who became the constellation of Leo, the lunar task of struggling against the hydra, the water snake with many heads, who was accompanied by a giant crab, who became cancer, and the hermetic task associated with Virgo that involves a deer with golden antlers.
Speaker 1:Hercules has been reimagined countless times over the ages, including many over the last 60 years. The Italians, suitably, were the first to have a triad in the 60s, with a TV show and a series of movies. It sparked the Italian craze of the peplum or sword and sandal genre. In the 70s and 80s he was played by the bodybuilders Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. And if you were around in the 90s, you'd remember him from the less muscle-bound Kevin Sorbo in the Legendary Journeys series, as well as a string of B-grade movies. He was animated by Disney, with a severe Christian overlay, in 1997, played by a young Ryan Gosling in 1998. And in 2014, the Rock gave it a go, this time with a rational, materialist take on the character, complete with explaining away every moment of magic and monsters with a sensible and logical reveal. At some point I'll definitely get into the Disney and the Rock versions, as I have a lot to say on those movies, as you can imagine, but for now I want to explore Hercules from within his own context as the great solar hero of ancient Greece, from the archetypal and astrological perspective.
Speaker 1:These stories help us identify the challenges associated with our own heroic quest in this life. The challenges associated with our own heroic quest in this life, our wrestling match with our own angel or daemon or destiny, our sense of a greater calling in this lifetime, the tension between who we are and who we are meant to become. Astrologically, it's good to keep in mind the sun in your chart, your planets in Leo and, more technically, any houses with Leo on the cusp, if you know those. Every protagonist needs an equal opposite antagonist too, and the hero wouldn't be much of a hero if he didn't come across a series of worthy foes along the way. So also keep Saturn in mind as we go, and planets in Capricorn and Aquarius, as well as the houses that have those signs on the cusp. Essentially, the relationship between Saturn and the Sun in astrology is best described through alchemy, the main task within alchemy was to turn lead into gold. Lead, in astrology, is the mineral associated with Saturn, and gold is associated with the Sun, and so, within our own alchemical experience, we're looking to get these two parts of our charts talking with each other. Saturn, our blocks, limits, inner critics, heavy dross, energy, challenging times, our shut down places, our feelings of being stuck, and the Sun, our genius, the spirit, our resilience, self-belief, our gifts, the high dream, the ultimate vision and purpose for our lives. This is laid out in the myth of Hercules by his Greek name, heracles, which, as I've said before on the podcast, means glory of Hera. The fact that his name refers to the mother goddess, hera, tells us that the two are forever linked to each other. They are two sides of the same coin. Hera's name in Latin was Juno and, interestingly, juno was the female equivalent of the word genius. Whenever the Roman poet Ovid, who published his classic Metamorphoses in the year 8 CE, refers to Juno, he mentions Saturn in the same breath.
Speaker 1:Juno, daughter of Saturn. She therefore represents Saturn. After the clash of the Titans, she attempts to bring order and sense into the world. She wants people to follow traditions, to uphold the sanctity of marriage and the institutions of society. She believes that the way forward in society is to honour the traditions of the past. In a cruel irony, therefore, hera is married to none other than Zeus, whose name in Latin is Jupiter. Zeus also believes in the institutions of the past, but only in so much as it gets him his offerings from the humans.
Speaker 1:The main topic in which Zeus and Hera differ is the sanctity of marriage. Hera believes that once two people are married, then they are with each other till death. Do they part, which, in the case of immortals like Zeus and Hera, is never? Zeus, however, is perpetually taken in by the beauty of the world.
Speaker 1:Although he is considered to be the most powerful of the gods, it's very clear that Eros and Aphrodite have his measure, whether it's a beautiful maiden or a young man or some other kind of creature altogether, once someone takes his attraction, he just can't help himself but to act on it, much to the ire of his faithful, devoted, rule-following wife. On one such occasion, it was the beautiful Alcmene that caught his attention. With her husband away at war, alcmene had agreed to remain chaste until he returned, and so, as he was returning from war, zeus disguised himself as her husband, coming home triumphantly and ready to celebrate. He really wanted to make the most of this encounter, so he sent Hermes to tell Helios, the son, to stay down in the river Oceanus for three times as long as a normal night 36 hours of love-filled night. Like I said, eros and Aphrodite are more powerful forces than Zeus could ever be, to quote Robert Graves. Here I quote, for Hermes, at Zeus's command, had ordered Helios to quench the solar fires, have the hours on Yoki's team and spend the following day at home, because the procreation of so great a champion, as Zeus had in mind, could not be accomplished in haste. Helios obeyed, grumbling about the good old times when the day was day and the night was night, and when Cronus, the then almighty god, did not leave his lawful wife to go off to Thebes on love adventures, almighty God did not leave his lawful wife to go off to Thebes on love adventures. Hermes then ordered the moon to go slowly and sleep, to make mankind so drowsy that no one would notice what was happening. Nine months later, zeus began boasting that he had fathered a son who would be called Heracles, glory of Hera, and who would be a great king and rule the house of Perseus. Hera then made him promise that any prince born before nightfall to the house of Perseus should be high king. And when Zeus swore this oath, she sped up the birth pangs of a woman named Nysipe and rushed back to Alcmene's door and sat cross-legged with her clothing tied in knots and her fingers locked together, delaying the birth of Heracles. Eurystheus was born after only seven months in the womb, with Hercules making his way into the world just an hour later, and so it would be Eurystheus who would effectively steal Hercules' birthright as the new king, with the meddling assistance of Hera to thank.
Speaker 1:Now there's a little side story here that explains how the galaxy itself got its name. Little Hercules, as a baby, was left in a field by his mother on a day where Hera was walking by with Athena. Athena, always on the side of the hero and therefore in on the ruse, encouraged Hera to pick the little guy up and share with him her milk, given that he was out here so alone and vulnerable to the elements. Hera obliged, but when Hercules latched onto the nipple, he sucked so hard that Hera had to yank him off. Milk then flew from Hera's breast up and out into space, forming what we now know as the Milky Way. The ancient Greek word for milk is gala, and so this was their story of the forming of the galaxy. Remember that next time you use the word galaxy, that you're referring to the milk of Hera sprayed by Hercules into deep space, that you're referring to the milk of Hera sprayed by Hercules into deep space.
Speaker 1:This was probably the sweetest of the interactions between Hera and her namesake, heracles. Besides this, hera was consistently out to get him by sending all manner of monsters his way to take him out, such was her rage and frustration at her husband and his infidelity. The first such incident was when Hercules was still in his crib, just an infant, with his mortal twin brother by his side. Hera sent two fierce, venomous snakes in the dead of night, slithering their way in as the children's parents were fast asleep, alcmene sensed something was off and woke up her husband. They rushed into the room of the infants, lighting a torch on the need to reveal Hercules with two strangled snakes in his fists. This image of baby Hercules holding two dead snakes is a good one for describing his character. On the one hand, we see this as a great display of Hercules' strength and courage, his ability to face danger head-on and destroy that which is trying to destroy him, even in his most vulnerable state. His instinct for facing adversity is online, something essential to the archetypal solar hero that he represents. On the other hand, we have this complex symbol of the two snakes that allows us to imagine what else gets strangled when he takes them out.
Speaker 1:In ancient Greece, the snake was linked to the great mysteries, perhaps due to its ability to shed its skin and become reborn. Snakes were sacred to the healing god, asclepius. Those who went into the deep healing chamber of Epidaurus, called the Abboton, would be met with a room full of non-venomous snakes. In this room, the seeker of healing would have to sleep or hallucinate so they could be met with the healing dreams of the god. Two snakes wrapped themselves around the caduceus, hermes' magic wand that could put people to sleep, wake people up and open doorways For Hermes. These two snakes allowed him passage amongst the realms of consciousness, from the underworld to Olympus. The great seer Tiresias once saw two snakes entangled with each other and immediately changed from a man into a woman. Seven years later, he saw those same two snakes and was transformed back into a man. Healing, magic metamorphosis are symbols associated with the snake. It represents the feminine mysteries and elements of life that are beyond conscious awareness.
Speaker 1:Of course, then it's fitting that our solar hero sees only a threat to be strangled out. It brings to us one of the key elements of the hero's MO control. Nature is less of a mystery and more of a threat, and therefore it needs to be always under the control or the mastery of the heroic. Compare this solar hero mentality to the three mentioned above Asclepius moves with nature to find healing. Hermes, with his caduceus, embraces the weird and wonderful things that chance brings forward and turns them into his stories. And Tiresias encounters nature's essential inexplicability in his interactions with it inexplicability in his interactions with it. In fact, for Tiresias, who would later become the blind seer, it was through trusting nature that he would gain deep insights into the truth of reality as it is.
Speaker 1:Hercules is not so subtle. He sees the enemy, he strangles the enemy. Like all of Greek mythology, it allows us to see that there's something right about that and there's also something wrong about it. I think we all have had that feeling of watching a movie and feeling satisfied when the solar hero vanquishes the evil enemy. They got what they deserved. And yet if we try to apply this to our inner world, we often find that the force we use to vanquish those inner villains just ends up injuring ourselves further. How many times have we overcome the inner critic, only for it to come back bigger, louder and meaner another time?
Speaker 1:As a son of Zeus, hercules' guardians consider it very important that he attain some level of wisdom, despite that being not exactly his strong suit, and so he has a series of teachers, one of whom is Linus, the brother of the music god, orpheus. Linus is tasked with teaching Hercules literature. However, one day Hercules' music teacher goes away on a trip, and so Linus was tasked with the role of the substitute teacher for his music class. This is obviously something simple enough for Linus being the brother of Orpheus, but Hercules was quite stuck in his ways. From his other tutor, linus wanted to help Hercules to learn a different way of working with music, but Hercules just kept reverting back to the way he knew. Like the Zen master, linus gave him a tap with a stick to let him know he'd done the wrong thing, at which point Hercules, frustrated, took the instrument the lyre and smashed it over Linus's head, not fully aware of his strength at this time. The blow killed Linus. Instantly After this incident, his tutors were no longer so keen to be Hercules' teachers, and so the decision was made to send him away to spend the rest of his youth with the cows as a cowherder until he had come of age.
Speaker 1:I discussed this moment in more length last year in the episode with James Mattingly. We talked about the musical component of the masculine and how it can balance out the side that is more about brute strength and overpowering. It's a worthy thought experiment to imagine Hercules' life if he'd been able to go ahead with his lessons from culture, if he'd learnt a more subtle way of being in the world and to think of the differences in his life's journey, if he'd been able to discover these things with the help of mentors. There are many heroes that did receive such tutelage and led very different lives. Theseus, for example, had much strength but was able to think things through, as symbolized by his movement in and out of the labyrinth. Achilles and Jason received guidance from the wise centaur Chiron, which meant they were able to contemplate the complexity of their existence as heroes, but Hercules was always out there on his own.
Speaker 1:He received help from the gods in critical moments, but was never really able to think deeply about what was happening around him as he grew up. His favourite weapon by far was the club that was shaped out of cedar wood. He was offered, and indeed used, other, more sophisticated weapons, such as swords and bow and arrow, but in the end he would always come back to his trusty club. Thick, blunt and good for whacking things, that was more his style. Hera continued to send monsters at him and Hercules continued to dispatch them without much trouble. His strength was beyond any hero or demigod and at times would even rival the strength of the gods themselves, but Hera never stopped imagining ways to get to him. Eventually, she realized that each and every monster she sent from the world was truly no match for the great hero, so she decided instead to unleash a monster from the inside. She put him into a trance state and, quite tragically, in that state he ruthlessly murdered his wife, magara, and their six boys.
Speaker 1:When he came to his senses and saw what had happened, his immediate thought, as an Avenger, was to get his revenge on whoever had done this to those he loved the most. In his grief, agony and anger, he wanted answers, but then looked down and saw the blood on his own club, realising that the one he needed to avenge was in fact himself, and so he made his way towards the cliffs in order to throw himself off. On the way, however, he encountered Theseus, the thinking man's hero. Theseus saw the look in his eyes and could see that something was off in his consciousness. He asked him what he was doing, and Hercules responded telling him that he was heading to the cliffs to give himself to the rocks and the sea. Theseus argued the point that, because Hercules was not in his right mind, he couldn't be held responsible for what had happened. But Hercules didn't understand this at all. My club, my crime, that's all he could comprehend.
Speaker 1:So the two heroes went back and forth around this for quite some time, and it might be worth us entering their debate as well. Whose side of the argument are you on as the listener? The blood is on Hercules' hands, and so he should be condemned. Or is it, as Theseus states, the fault of Hera, who sent down the curse on his mind? The two heroes reach a stalemate, and so they decide together to go seek counsel. Wiser than them both, they head to Apollo's oracle at Delphi, the Pythia. There was the keeper of the deepest wisdom in the land, she would know what to do. When the Pythia received the question, she sat silently and pondered for some time. Eventually, when she spoke again, she ordered Hercules into the service of none other than Eurystheus, the king that had been granted Hercules' birthright. He must do whatever Eurystheus orders him to do in order that he might find redemption for what had happened.
Speaker 1:This is the beginning of the famous 12 labours, or tasks, of Hercules. Originally, eurystheus gave him only 10 labours, but as two of them had disqualified, they became 12. This number has obvious connotations to astrologers, as it can be aligned with the 12 signs of the zodiac. There are some astrologers who have associated each task with each of the 12 signs. I recommend reading Dana Gerdhart's articles on astrocom if you'd like to go deeper into that. For me, however, as much as I'd love the tasks to be divided up so neatly as that, they don't quite fit that patterning. Nonetheless, it's clear that each task has a deep astrological, archetypal and psychological value, and we will be exploring them here on the podcast over the next few episodes. For this episode, I'd like to look at the first three tasks. I see them as Leo or the solar task, cancer or the lunar task, and Virgo or the hermetic task.
Speaker 1:The first labor given to Hercules is to kill the Nemean lion, an enormous, monstrous creature, three times the size of a regular lion. Some say it was the offspring of Typhon, the greatest of the Greek monsters. Others claim that it was the son of Selina the moon, who, after not receiving adequate sacrifice, birthed it with a fearful shudder on a mountain with a two-mouthed cave near Nemea, so that it could prey upon the people for their insolence. Still others say that, at Hera's desire, selina created the lion from sea foam, enclosed in a large ark, and that Iris carried it in her girdle to the Nemean mountains. As a side note here, iris was a goddess who served Hera and was associated with rainbows. Like a feminine version of Hermes, she carried a caduceus or a picture of water from the river Styx. As a rainbow goddess, she was the link between the sea and the sky.
Speaker 1:On the way to Nemea, Hercules stopped in at the house of a shepherd named Malorcus, whose son had been killed by the lion. Malorcus was about to offer up a ram as sacrifice to the gods, but Hercules stopped him. He told him to wait 30 days. If Hercules returned, he could sacrifice the ram to Zeus the saviour, as a celebration of the banishing of the monstrous lion. If he did not return, he should offer the ram to Hercules, the hero who died trying to save the land. 30 days is a lunar cycle. Given that the lion, a solar symbol, is the son of Selene the moon, we get the sense that our story is exploring this solar-lunar tension.
Speaker 1:Hercules is required to have a certain amount of patience for his task to watch and wait and observe before he acts. When Hercules first saw the lion, it had blood splattered around its mane. Returning from a day of feasting on the locals of the land, hercules drew back an arrow and fired at the lion, but it was met with a mighty yawn as it bounced off his impenetrable skin. So Hercules got closer and took his club, striking him a fierce blow to the head. The club, however, smashed into a thousand pieces and the lion took refuge in the double-mouthed cave, not because of pain but from the ringing in his ears. So Hercules used a boulder to block one side of the cave and made his way around the mountain to enter from the other side. In the darkness underneath the great mountain. He wrestled with the beast. The lion bit off one of Hercules' fingers and took it as part of the bargain. And then Hercules found a stronger position, putting it in a chokehold and squeezing hard until he took the lion's life. He dragged the giant carcass back to Malorcus on the 30th day, just as he was about to sacrifice the ram to Hercules. Instead, together they sacrificed it to Zeus the saviour, and a shrine was set up there in Nemea, with games held every four years to honour Hercules.
Speaker 1:Hercules then took the journey back to the kingdom of Eurytheus with the enormous carcass of the lion on his back, entered the castle and plonked it down in front of the king. Euryceus was disgusted by the sight of it and clearly terrified of the strength of this demigod who he had expected would perish by the lion. He ordered him out of the castle immediately and to take the lion's body with him From now on. He said bring what you have only so far as the city walls and stay there. His servants would collect the prizes there. Euryceus then had a giant bronze jar made for himself underground, and whenever he heard word that Hercules was coming back to the palace, he would hide himself in the safety of this jar and wait until the danger had passed. And so Hercules dragged the beast back outside the walls and stared back off into the forest.
Speaker 1:This was not the reception he had hoped for after such an epic quest. In a moment of divine inspiration, he used the lion's own claws to remove its pelt and placed it upon his own head. The lion itself was sent up into the sky to be immortalized as a constellation of Leo. The combination of sacrificing a finger to the lion and wearing its pelt on his own head symbolized his exchange with the archetypal hero. I find it significant that the man who stole his inheritance as the greatest of kings was then terrified of the lion, symbolic of king energy. By placing the lion on his own head, it becomes his new crown and he fully inhabits the archetype of the hero. But now he's fully engulfed by that archetype and is no longer connected to the human element of his consciousness. Now hercules himself is impenetrable. Nothing enters, nothing gets out. Perhaps it's like this with our own solar journey, as represented by our sun in our astrological charts and those planets and placements in Leo. It is our quest to become divine, but the risk along the way is the sacrifice of our own humanity. This inner gold is glorious to discover and to become If we accept the of labor, we accept the sacrifices that come with it. We suffer the losses and we learn to wear our lion crowns, but we must also learn how to remove the crown as well, how to remain human on our journey, how to live the regular life alongside the heroic one, unlike Hercules who, engulfed in the lion's jaw, has become nothing but a hero For his second labour, hercules was sent to Lerna and ordered to destroy the monstrous Hydra.
Speaker 1:This many-headed snake monster with the body of a dog was said to be the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and was reared by Hera as a menace to Hercules. Lerna had strong ties to the underworld and was connected to Dionysus, demeter and Hecate. It was where Dionysus descended to rescue his mother, semele, from the underworld, and is said also to be the place where Persephone and Hades descended. Aeolus, hercules' nephew, escorted his uncle there in a chariot. Athena, goddess of strategic warfare, instructed Hercules to fire flaming arrows into Hydra's cave so that the monster would reveal itself.
Speaker 1:Hydra sprang forth from its hiding place with its nine heads, one of which being the immortal head. It wrapped its tail around Hercules' ankle so he couldn't get away, and breathed poisonous fumes into his face. Hercules held his breath and began smashing away at the heads with his club, but each time a head was removed, two more would grow back in its place. Into this chaotic scene, hera sent a giant crab who nipped away at Hercules' heels. He crushed it immediately and Hera sent it up to the stars to become the constellation of Cancer. Overwhelmed, hercules called his nephew over, who set fire to a nearby forest. He took flaming pieces of wood. As each head was removed, he cauterized the wound so none would grow back. Eventually, the immortal head was revealed and Hercules used a sword gifted to him by Hermes to remove it and bury it still hissing under a rock. He then opened up the body of the Hydra and dipped his arrows in the blood, making the slightest graze lethal to mortals. From then on, eurystheus disqualifies this labour due to Hercules receiving help from his nephew, and later in this series we will see that the decision to dip his arrows in the blood of the Hydra would spark off a series of events that would lead to the wounding of Chiron, the death of two other centaurs and eventually to Hercules' own death.
Speaker 1:To me, this labour is very much the Cancerian lunar labour, not just because of the presence of the giant crab, who would become the constellation itself. It's the issue of using giant crab, who would become the constellation itself. It's the issue of using solar tools for lunar problems. The club, the sword, the flaming tree are all used with varying degrees of success, but ultimately the immortal head ends up like the ostrich buried in the sand. We couldn't truly call it a successful labour, which is perhaps the deeper layer of why it's not counted amongst the ten that Hercules is given.
Speaker 1:The lunar world, corresponding to the night world, doesn't operate in the same way that the day world does. The lunar world is the deep, interior, introspective world. The monsters we find there are not so easily vanquished as the ones we find in the day world. They are often complex and many-headed and cling to us despite, or maybe even because of our desire to get rid of them. Think of the looping mind, the haunting feelings of low self-worth, the low-level anxiety that doesn't fully go away. These elements of the human experience can sometimes be mitigated with solar strategies such as positive thinking, taking on good advice or using pharmaceutical drugs to push them down. But if we want to get to that immortal head and truly vanquish that demon, there's not much that our heroic egos can do.
Speaker 1:It's instructive here that Hercules is at the entrance to the underworld and that the Hydra has its home here, in a dark cave of the unconscious. Perhaps, like Dionysus and Persephone, hercules is being asked to descend here, to drop down into the cave itself and to feel the grief, the loss, the pain often passed down through multiple generations, and come to terms with his interior monsters. In Hercules' case, the blood of his family is on his hands and we get the sense that he hasn't known what to do with such pain. He was also born into the conflict of Zeus and Hera, which is a dilemma that stretches back to the clash of the Titans and, through their ancestors, right back to the tension between the sky, father uranus, and the earth, mother gaia. Hercules, however, with the lion's pelt on his head, can't see this far into the depth of the soul and thus does whatever he can as a hero.
Speaker 1:And still, despite not being able to get to the immortal side of this monster, he does leave us with some helpful hints of how to handle these dark, emotional places from the surface of the cave. Rather than get overwhelmed by the heads pulling him in multiple directions, we need to slow down and pay attention to one head at a time. By focusing in on each of these heads and calling on the help of another, in this case his nephew, he can manage each emotion before moving on to the next. This is helpful for the sensitive cancerian soul, who can easily go into a state of freeze when faced with two or more conflicting emotional states. From our shamanic standpoint, taking the poison with him is symbolic of integrating this monstrous side of himself and no longer operating out of the fear of these destructive emotions. In this way, he carries a reminder of how dark it can get and that he is capable of handling himself in states of shock and freeze. And by burying the head he returns it to its place in the underworld, an acknowledgement of the long-term nature of some of these deeper inner processes. Knowing where it is can be a reminder that it would do him good to come back here someday or perhaps set up some kind of a temple to the hydra as he slowly works through those intense inner states of consciousness that are both from his own life and those of his ancestors.
Speaker 1:The third labour is very much unlike the first two. If the first task aligns with Leo, and therefore the sun, and the second aligns with Cancer and therefore the moon. It would make sense that the third labour aligns with Virgo and therefore the sacred side of Mercury or Hermes. By this I mean the side of Hermes that is linked with Hermeticism and the magic arts, the hermetically sealed container of alchemy and the need to sometimes be still in order for the elements to separate, purify and integrate.
Speaker 1:Hercules is sent to capture the Cyrenian hind and bring her alive to Mycenae. This hind or deer has golden antlers and was therefore often confused. As a stag, when Artemis was still a child, she saw five such deer running wild in the hills. She rounded four of them up with her bare hands and harnessed them to her chariot. The fifth ran free. Apparently, this was as Hera had intended it to be, already having Hercules' labour in mind at the time. Without using any weapons or force of any kind, hercules tracked the hind for an entire year. We can imagine him being as quiet and still as he could be, perhaps covering himself in the moss of the forest and becoming one with nature. Eventually, the deer took refuge in Mount Artemisium and took a drink in the river Laodon. Hercules let fly with a precise arrow that pinned her four legs together, which passed between bone and sinew, drawing no blood. Or it's possible that he just used nets and no force and waited until the creature was finally asleep from exhaustion. He laid it across his shoulders and made his way back to Euryceus the king. On the way he was stopped by Artemis, who chastised him for his treatment of the holy beast. But Hercules explained his situation, pleading necessity and assuring her that he would return the hind to her rightful place as soon as the labour was complete. This calmed Artemis and she allowed him to carry out the task which he did, returning her unharmed to her grove afterwards.
Speaker 1:Here we see the sifting and sorting process between lunar and solar consciousness that perhaps can only be done in quiet contemplation. Hercules causes no chaos in his year in pursuit of the hind. He simply watches and waits as the interior world and the exterior world come into harmony. His focus is just on this majestic animal with the golden horns. After battling heroically with our daimon and having the poison of our interior emotional world breathed into our faces, perhaps this is the critical piece in the journey towards individuation. Life, both interior and exterior, are going to throw challenges at us, no matter how well we live. The separating and integrating of those processes is something that is far beyond the scope of the conscious mind. Perhaps this task gives us the hint that there are times in our lives that we just have to become still silent and calm. Times when it's not right to use our club and heroically battle the monsters of the world. Times when we acknowledge our limits in that Virgoan way and become who we are meant to be, by allowing time and space for our souls to sift and sort, knowing that when the world calls us forth again, we'll be more ourselves and therefore more ready for the challenges that lie ahead, and therefore more ready for the challenges that lie ahead.
Speaker 1:I recommend taking some time with these first three labours within your own life's journey. I see them as complete unto themselves. Astrologically, they align with the second quadrant of the zodiac Cancer, leo and Virgo Images that help us contemplate the interior life, the exterior life and the balancing of the two. Fittingly, we complete this process with the help of the goddess Artemis, who symbolizes self-containment and individuation. With her assistance, we become anchored in who we truly are.
Speaker 1:After Artemis' Vagolan process, we come up over the horizon of the Zodiac constellations and enter Libra, the scales, but also the claws of the scorpion. Fittingly, then, our next labour will be the hunt for a boar. This aligns mythically with Adonis, lover of Aphrodite, who, much to Aphrodite's despair, found his death at the spear of the boar's horn. On the way to this labour, we encounter Follis, a centaur who holds a hermetically sealed jar of Dionysian wine that hasn't been opened for four generations. By convincing him to open the jar, hercules unleashes the chaos of the erotic world, symbolised by the attack of the wild centaurs Confused. Don't worry, we'll get to the bottom of all that next time, on the Soul's Terms.