"
Eros
first emerges in the writings of eighth century BCE Greek
poet Hesiod as one of four original deities.
They include Chaos, the dark and silent abyss from which all
things are born, Gaea or mother earth, Tartarus, the lowest
regions of the underworld and Eros, the god of love.
"In
truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth,
the ever-sure foundation of al the deathless ones who hold the
peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the
wide-pathed Earth, [120] and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless
gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise
counsels of all gods and all men within them." (1)
As the son of Chaos hatched from the egg
of night, Eros creates the manifest world. Amorphous and ineffable, he fathers the
Olympians and all winged creatures. Hesiod’s Eros has
no body and little resembles images found in later accounts. Although
his form emerges more distinctly in subsequent history, the power
to cause things to mingle remains his initial and fundamental domain. This
is not achieved without disruption.
…(Eros)…breaks the limb’s
strength: who, in all gods, in all human beings, overpowers
the intelligence in the breast and all their shrewd planning…” (2)
In other writings, Eros takes shape. He is portrayed
as the powerful igniter of union that eventually brought forth
the race of immortal Olympians. All winged creatures, from geese
to falcons, proudly claim him as the father of their race.
Firstly,
blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the
infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution
of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering
golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated
in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and
thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the
light… Thus our
origin is very much older than that of the dwellers in Olympus.
We are the offspring of Eros; there are a thousand proofs
to show it. We have wings and we lend assistance to lovers.(3)
As Eros’ physical attributes in later Greek myth develop,
little agreement is found on his parentage. Some say he is
born to Uranus, the starry heavens, and Gaea, mother earth. He
is also portrayed as the son of Artemis, the moon goddess, and
Hermes, the trickster. He claims Iris, guardian of the rainbow
and Zephyrs, god of the north wind, as parents. In Phoenician
Mythology of the first millennium BC, he is the son of Chronas
and Ashtart. The simple face that he now has tangible parents,
even if there is no agreement on who they are, makes him more accessible.
Although unrecorded in Homeric times, the Greek writer
Euripides (480?-406 BCE) describes Eros in detail. Now he appears as
Aphrodite’s son, manifesting as a youthful winged deity,
the lithe and gorgeous god of love. Carrying a bow and quiver
of arrows, he selectively shoots the hearts of the unsuspecting.
You
carry along the unyielding hearts of the immortals, Aphrodite,
and the hearts of men, and with you is he of the many-colored
wings, surrounding them with his swift pinions. Eros flies over
the earth and over the loud-roaring salt sea and bewitches the
one on whose frenzied mind he darts, winged and gold-gleaming,
he bewitches the whelps of the mountain and those of the sea,
what the earth brings forth and what the blazing sun looks down
upon, and likewise mortal men. (4)
In this form he has seemingly abandoned the title “creator
of harmony” for the mischievous “animator of love”. The
experience of love that Eros injects into man and gods alike, and,
according to Euripides, all creatures of the land and sea, is anything
but harmonious. It is the obsessive, heady, adrenaline driven
intensity of falling in love, often with the completely wrong person.
In some accounts, Eros is equipped with two distinct
kinds of arrows. The
ones dipped in gold cause the victim to fall madly in love and the ones dipped
in lead cause a vial repulsion. Either way, it seems it is Eros who now
creates chaos!
The mixed parenthood of Eros, as well as his transforming
images, (some version of myth have him assisting Aphrodite at
her birth and in others he is her offspring), may illustrates
ongoing changes in the collective awareness of the concept of
love and creativity. As the son of chaos, he has no tangible form. He
is the power of attraction that co-ordinates the elements of the universe bringing
harmony to all creation. In this image, Eros is more a cosmic force than
an actual god of passionate or personal love. Portrayed as the son of Aphrodite,
goddess of love, he embodies a humanoid form and eventually experiences the power
and passion of love himself in his relationship to the mortal woman Psyche.
Eventually, Eros manifests as the Roman god Cupid, the
son of Mars, the god of war and Venus, goddess of love. Here
he no longer is the dangerously attractive youth capable of succumbing
to the same fate of his victims. In his child-like
state, he is prepubescent and immune to his own arts.
Cupid, often depicted blindfolded to emphasize the indiscriminate
nature of love, now takes the form of a laughing, naughty infant
who delightfully shoots arrows into the hearts of the unaware. His
victims respond depending on the temper of their feelings. The
cold, hard heart dies, the gentle but perhaps broken heart heals
in ecstasy. It is the nature of erotic love to transform
the participants in accordance with their own disposition.
The metamorphosis from ineffable creator of harmony to
mischievous baby god is quite a leap. It suggests an attempt to convert the unfathomable, impersonal
and all mighty deity to an accessible humanized figure representing very personal
needs and feelings. Jung speaks of Eros in this way:
"In
Classical times, when such things were properly understood,
Eros was considered a god whose divinity transcended
our human limits, and who therefore could neither be
comprehended nor represented in any way. I might, as
many before me have attempted to do, venture an approach
to this daimon, whose range of activity extends from
the endless spaces of the heavens to the dark abysses
of hell; but I falter before the task of finding the
language which might adequately express the incalculable
paradoxes of love." (5)
Some of these incalculable paradoxes are portrayed in the love
story of Psyche and Eros.
The
myth of Eros & Psyche
"Myths
evoke feelings and imagination and touch on themes that are part
of the human collective inheritance. The myths…remain current
and personally relevant because there is a ring of truth in them
about shared human experience." -Jean
Shinoda Bolen, MD
The story of Psyche and Eros offers a great deal of insight
into the archetype of Eros and his significance in the astrological
chart. The most recent detailed mythology regarding Eros
comes from The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius
in 170 AD and portrays the love story of Psyche and Eros.
This
myth is no less relevant for its extensive study, analysis and
use as models for relationship, the emergence of consciousness,
and the path of erotic love.
The story opens with a description of Psyche’s two older sisters. They
were extremely beautiful, yet when Psyche grew into womanhood, it was said of
her:
“ Yet the singular passing beauty
and maidenly majesty of the youngest daughter did so far surmount
and excel them two (sisters), as no earthly creature could
by any means sufficiently express or set out the same.”(6)
Psyche
is a beauty. She
enchants her father’s modest kingdom with an unobtainable
and virginal loveliness that sets the inhabitants to worshiping. In
only a short time, word of Psyche’s beauty has spread throughout
the countryside and people swarm to see her. Meanwhile, Aphrodite’s
temples are neglected.
Predictably,
Aphrodite is insulted by this delinquency and filled with more
than a little angst. In a jealous rage, she elicits the help
of her son Eros to punish the usurping Psyche and the mortals that
adore her. She instructs Eros
to pierce Psyche with one of his golden tipped arrows causing her
to fall in love with a worthless, wretched and vial being. While
Eros and Aphrodite plot her demise, Psyche pines.
Psyche,
although exceedingly beautiful, feels lonely and miserable. The
known world may worship her, but no real man comes courting. She
is like an object of art, a rare painting or precious vase. Apuleius
goes on:
“Psyche…lamented her solitary life, and being disquieted
both in mind and body, although she pleased all the world, yet
hated she in her self her own beauty.”(7)
Concerned by his youngest daughter’s despair, Psyche’s father seeks
the advice of the Oracle of Apollo. He is shocked by what he hears for
it seems the King’s precious daughter must be sacrificed to a demon god,
or terrible ruin would befall the kingdom. Apuleius’ quotes
the oracle:
“Let Psyches corps be clad in
mourning weed
And
set on rock of yonder hill aloft:
Her
husband is no wight of humane seed,
But
Serpent dire and fierce as might be thought.
Who
flies with wings above in starry skies,
And
doth subdue each thing with firie flight.
The
gods themselves, and powers that seem so wise,
With
mighty Jove, be subject to his might,
The
rivers black, and deadly floods of pain,
And
darkness eke, as thrall to him remain.” (8)
Psyche
accepted her fate as the entire kingdom despondently joined the
funeral procession to the lonely rock where she is to meet her “death” and
marry the “serpent dire”. Psyche then questions her parent’s
belated remorse.
“Why torment you your unhappy age with continual
dolou? …Now you see the reward of my excellent beauty:
now, now you perceive, but too late, the plague of envy. When
the people did honor me, and call me the new Venus, then ye should
have wept, then you should have sorrowed as though I had been
dead: for now I see and perceive that I am come to this misery
by the only name of Venus, bring me, and as fortune hath appointed,
place me on the top of the rock, I greatly desire to end my marriage,
I greatly covet to see my husband. Why doe I delay? Why should
I refuse him that is appointed to destroy all the world.” (9)
No one suspects that Eros, the son of Aphrodite, the golden god
of love, has accidentally pricked himself on one of his own arrows
and fallen madly in love with the mortal Psyche. None of
Psyche’s distraught family members could guess that Eros
plans to abduct her for himself. Although at this point,
we might examine the oracle of Apollo more closely and ask if it
may actually be Eros the augury is referring to.
Eros then
sends Zephyrs, god of the North wind, to retrieve Psyche from the
rock and bring her to his palace. There Psyche’s wishes are tended by invisible
servants who anticipate her every need. She rests,
bathes and eats surrounded by gold, ivory and jeweled mosaics that
adorn the enchanted home of the god of love.
With unseen
musicians playing a heavenly symphony, Eros comes to Psyche by
night and makes “perfect
consummation” of their marriage. Night after night he keeps her
company, stealing away only just before dawn. He has made Psyche promise
to never look upon his face and initially she agrees. She is enchanted
by the palace, her new husband and the magical servants who cater to her every
need. Only the tiniest bit of loneliness befalls her in the
day.
However, her loneliness and desire for human contact
grows until she passes both the days and nights with tears of
distress and longing. Eros, concerned by her condition, finally agrees
to allow Psyche’s sisters to visit, but he
warns her again not to gaze upon his face. Her curiosity,
he said, would bring about the end of their life together and cause
the child growing inside her to be mortal, not divine.
The visit from Psyche’s sisters turns out to be as destructive
as Eros feared. Feigning joy at their reunion, Psyche’s
siblings are actually stricken with fierce jealousy. They
suggest her husband is an evil serpent who needs destroying before
he devours Psyche and her unborn child whole. They press
her to hide a razor and a lamp near the bed. When he falls
asleep, she is to light the lamp and cut off his head. Psyche
is flooded with anxiety mixed with the fear that they may speak
the truth!
Torn between loyalty to her sisters and loyalty to her
husband, she eventually gets up, lights the lamp and approaches
the bed with the razor. When Psyche discovers that her husband
is the stunning and resplendent god Eros, she is overwhelmed
by the vision. In
rapture she accidentally pricks herself on one of his arrows and
adds “love upon love” to what she already feels for
him. She covers him with kisses and in doing so a splash
of hot oil burns the beautiful god and he jumps up, looks at her
with astonishment and bolts. Psyche grabs his leg and holds
on as he leaps into the air until she finally drops to the ground
in exhaustion. He lands near her saying:
“O simple Psyches,
consider with thy self how I, little regarding the commandment
of my mother (who willed me that thou shouldst be married to
a man of base and miserable condition) did come my self from
heaven to love thee, and wounded mine own body with my proper
weapons, to have thee to my Spouse: And did I seem a beast
unto thee, that thou shouldst go about to cut off my head with
a razor, who loved thee so well? Did not I always give thee a charge?
Did not I gently will thee to beware? But those cursed adlers and
Counselors of thine shalt be sufficiently punished by my absence."(10)
Shocked,
overwhelmed, and suffering greatly, Psyche experienced a crucial point in her
relationship with Eros. At last, she discovers the inheritance of her
unborn child. She also finally understands who it is she has fallen in
love with. For Psyche, there is no turning back. She
must reunited with Eros or die.
This point in the myth is not suggesting we never look
at the face of Eros. or that by never questioning him will guarantee
his presence forever. It is more an account of discovering what we really
want and the steps necessary to obtain it. Until now, Psyche
didn’t know who she loved. This knowledge, however,
does not make Psyche any less despairing. As she watches
his figure recede into the distance, she throws herself into a
river in hopes of drowning.
As
chance would have it, the river, being a friend of Eros, places
Psyche back safely on the bank. As she looked up from the muddy
shore, she saw Pan,
instructing, or perhaps seducing, a young woman. He looked upon
the disheveled Psyche and said:
“O faire maid, I am a rusticke and rude
heardsman, howbeit by reason of my old age expert in many things,
for as far as I can learn by conjecture (which according as wise
men do term is called divination) I perceive by your uncertain
gate, your pale hew, your sobbing sighs, and your watery eyes,
that you are greatly in love.” (11)
Pan goes on to suggest to Psyche that she forgo suicide and focus
on devoting herself to winning Eros back. It seems his advice
is taken to heart.
Psyche’s
first action is to confront her jealous sisters. Upon entering her older
sister’s city Psyche explains that it was the son of Aphrodite that was
her husband but when he saw she had betrayed him, he sent her away and said
he’d have her sister instead. Excited by this news, her sister
raced to the mountain and beseeched Zephyrs to carry her to Eros, but as she
leapt off the rock, no wind lifted her and she crashed to her death in the
fall. The same happened to the second sister and thus Psyche
was revenged.
Meanwhile, Eros fled to his mother’s house to have his burn
tended. Empathetic at first, Aphrodite became enraged when
she discovered Eros’s disloyalty in taking Psyche as his
own. She admonishes Eros for betraying her wishes and removes his
bow and arrows, cuts his hair and clips his wings. She probably
slammed the door as she stormed out as well.
Aphrodite then solicits the aid of Hera and Ceres to help her find
Psyche, but they, fearing Eros’s darts at some point in the
future, try to reconcile the mother to her son. Aphrodite
will not be soothed.
By now Psyche realizes her only course of action is to
seek out the forgiveness of Aphrodite. She approaches the palace of
the goddess of love to pray for redemption although that is not
what she receives. Aphrodite humiliates Psyche, has her wiped
and beaten and then presents her with a series of impossible tasks.
Psyche’s first task in regaining Eros is to sort an enormous
pile of mixed grains. She must separate them by evening.
As Aphrodite smugly shuts the door behind her, Psyche goes into
a catatonic state of despair. She can not even attempt to
sort the grains. The task is that impossible. As she
lays crumpled on the ground sobbing, a tiny ant comforts her. Calling
to his friends, more and
more ants come and by evening the grains are sorted neatly into
their individual piles by the tiny insects.
It is important to notice that the help offered to psyche
is completely unconscious. She neither actively requests aid or contributes
any effort in the sorting of the grains. This image may suggest
the myriad mixed feeling and emotions that course through the mind
and body of one “stricken with love”. It also
may imply the innate ability of the body to sort those feelings
out, one by one, although not with the aid of consciousness, but
by its acquiescence.
When Aphrodite returns and sees the labor complete, she assigns
Psyche
a more difficult task. She instructs the girl to go out into
a field in the burning sun and collect golden wool from the fleece
of man-eating rams.
Psyches gets up, not to do as Aphrodite commanded but to throw
herself headlong into the water again to drown. Then a green reed
speaks to her saying:
“O Psyches I pray thee not to trouble
or pollute my water by the death of thee, and yet beware that
thou go not towards the terrible sheep of this coast, until such
time as the heat of the sun be past, for when the sun is in his
force, then seem they most dreadful and furious, with their sharp
horns, their stony foreheads and their gaping throats,
wherewith they arm themselves to the destruction of mankind. But
until they have refreshed themselves in the river, thou maist
hide thy self here by me, under this great plain
tree, and as soon as their great fury is past, thou
maist go among the thickets and bushes under the
wood side and gather the locks their golden Fleeces,
which thou shalt find hanging up on the briers.” (12)
It seems
the dangerous and passionate rams were unapproachable in their wild state. Direct
confrontation would mean certain death, just as anger and hatred, although
they can erupt along side of love, can also be love’s death.
Having contained the burning passion of the wild rams,
Psyche presents handfuls of golden wool to Aphrodite by morning.
Without pause, Psyche immediately receives another labor.
Now she
must gather water from the deadly waters of the river Styx. She
receives only a crystal bottle to contain the black liquid, the
sight of which brings fear even to the hearts’ of the gods.
As Psyche climbed up the path towards the headwaters
of Styx, she intended again to end her life. She could glean no hope
of ever accomplishing her task. When
she arrived at the crest she stopped stone still and gazed at the
two giant and bloody necked dragons guarding the precipice which
marked, hundreds of feet below, the caustic rive Styx.
Psyche faints
again. She felt nothing in her body or her heart, neither
could she take action of any kind. At this point, Zeus’s
eagle offers to help. (It
is not clear whether Zeus sent him or he came of his own accord,
yet there is implication that Zeus felt indebted to Eros for the
affair with Ganimedes, the young boy made cup bearer to the gods.)
The great Eagle spoke to Psyche and offered to take the bottle
and collect the deadly black water himself. This
he does and Psyche, not of her own accord, completes yet another
task.
Unlike the
fierce and wild nature of the passionate rams, the waters of the
river Styx may represent the cold cruel hatred of frozen feelings. It
seems these too must be sought and contained if Eros is to be won
back. Like
the wool and the sorting of the grain, Psyche must step aside,
stand still, or even sleep, allowing the unconscious to complete
the task. Readers
who find it frustrating that Psyche never seems to gain any overt
courage, resolve or strength from her subsequent tasks probably
view this “stepping aside” as
weak or degrading. On the contrary, in this case it is the
necessary and only way to accomplish the labor. At times, to acquiesce
takes more courage than to fight.
Aphrodite
then gives Psyche a final task, requiring her to descend into the
underworld. She
has to borrow some of Persephone’s beauty and place it in
a box. She must deliver the box to Aphrodite, unopened and untouched.
Again,
psyche’s
first and foremost response is suicide. What quicker way
to get to Hades than to die? She climbs to the top of a tower
and attempts to throw herself off. The tower, however, is inspired,
(it is unclear by whom), and speaks to Psyche. He instructs
her on how to enter the underworld without dying, how to avoid
the distractions that will play upon her virtue and humanity, how
to behave with Persephone and how to get out alive, with the box
of beauty intact. Finally, Psyche gets to perform a task
herself!
She follows
the tower’s instructions to the letter. She ignores
the lame man, the floating corpses, and the desperate weaving women. She
ignores her ego drives to aid and assist. She allows Charon
to extract a coin from her mouth and she tosses honey cakes to
the terrifying three headed dog, Cerberus, who guards the gates
of Hell. She is careful to accept no nourishment
while in the underworld. She humbly procures the box of beauty
from Persephone and retraces her steps back past Cerberus, across
the river Styx and into the light of day.
It is then,
her final task completed with full consciousness, that she causes
her own death.
“When Psyches was
returned from hell, to the light of the world, she
was ravished with great desire, saying, Am not I a fool, that
knowing that I carry here the divine beauty, will not take
a little thereof to garnish my face, to please my love with
all? And by and by she opened
the box where she could perceive no beauty nor any thing else,
save only an infernal and deadly sleep, which immediately invaded
all her members as soon as the box was uncovered, in such sort
that she fell down upon the ground, and lay there as a sleeping
corps.”(13)
As Psyche
slips into a deadly coma, Eros finally rises from his brooding. He
sneaks out of the tower room in his mother’s palace, finds
his wings and flies straight to Psyche.
It appears
that the labors of Psyche have simultaneously transformed Eros
as well.
“Eros, the fiery
flighty spirit who came and went secretly and refused to be
seen in the light, has acquired at least the substance of a
healed wound. The
Eros she knows now is…produced by the Soul’s contemplation
of the Divine Mind; it is the medium through which she can
finally be present to “that other loveliness”. He
is the carrier of divine beauty which must, to become united
with psyche and soma, be touched by the pain of earthly life.(14)
Eros awakens Psyche with a prick from one of his arrows,
returns the
beauty to its box and says.
“O wretched captive, behold thou
were well-nigh perished again, with the overmuch curiosity:
well, go thou, and do thy message to my Mother, and in the
mean season, I will provide for all things accordingly."(15)
Obviously, his anger with Psyche has lost its edge. What
Eros provided for was Psyche’s immortality, bestowed by Zeus
and blessed, finally, by Aphrodite. The banquet on Mt. Olympus
was attended by all the gods and goddesses, greater and lesser,
demonstrating their universal admiration and acknowledgement of
the union.
Not long
after, a divine child was born to Psyche and Eros. The name they
gave her was Pleasure.
The
full translated version of the Tale of Psyche and Eros from The
Golden Ass may
be found in the appendix. One can gain much insight and
meaning from its reading and contemplation in full. As Harriet
Eisman shares in her closing paragraph of That other Loveliness:
In pursuing (Eros), we pursue our greatest
desire. Yet,
after all, we live in ignorance of how it will approach. We
can only listen, and pray, for the sounds of Eros’ soft,
quivering wings.” (16)
TOP
Eros & the Zodiac
The
ties that bind Eros to Aphrodite resemble the umbilical ties of
the first of the water signs, Cancer. This is the life giving
and life destroying link that connects the participants in an eternal
cycle of creative inspiration, production and withdrawal reminiscent
of the Moon, of Mother and of the realm of feelings and creative
expression. Joseph Campbell elaborates:
“(Eros) is linked definitely and firmly
to Aphrodite as her child…but as our whole survey of the
prehistory of the Aegan has shown, the goddess Aphrodite and
her son are exactly the great cosmic mother and her son, the
ever dying, ever-living god.”(17)
Campbell
points out that the variety of myths of Eros’s parentage
confirm this background. From Chaos to Aphrodite, they represent
transformations of the same mythology, pointing unanimously to
the mother goddesses and their lover-sons: Atargatis and Ichthys,
Ishtar and Tammuz, Kybele and Attis. The
young
male deities were indestructibly tied to their mothers as servants-lovers-sons.
Inevitably, they were destroyed by the mother goddess
in a cycle of birth, fruition, death and rebirth. Thus
they are worshipped as eternally dying and resuscitate gods.
Eros,
in association with Aphrodite, takes the role of zealous servant
and attentive companion. He travels with her, and assists
her in various tasks, from brushing her hair to making the arrangements
necessary for Helen to fall in love with Paris, precipitating the
Trojan War. His intended
part in the tale of Psyche and Eros was to assist his
mother’s craving for
revenge:
“I pray thee my dear child, by
motherly bond of love, by the sweet wounds of thy piercing
darts, by the pleasant heat of thy fire, revenge the injury
which is done to thy mother by the false and disobedient beauty
of a mortal maiden, and I pray thee, that without delay she
may fall in love with the most miserable creature living,
the most poor, the most crooked, and the most vile, that there
may be.”(18)
Aphrodite, mistress or not, had no immunity to the darts
of Eros herself however. She complains bitterly to him
in The
Golden Ass about this and other transgressions.
“Is this an honest thing…is
this reason, that thou hast violated and broken the commandment
of thy mother and sovereign mistress: and whereas thou shouldst
have vexed my enemy with loathsome love, thou hast done otherwise?… Thou
has often offended thy ancients, and especially me that am
thy mother, thou hast pierced me with thy darts…”(19)
Aphrodite then points out that she is not to old to have another
son, and he would certainly turn out better than the first one,
whose upbringing has been a complete disaster.
Eros is also associated with the creative aspect of the sign of
Cancer. To experience the passion of Eros is in part a poetic
revelation that may translate into a masterpiece of dance, art,
literature or music. However, to experience the erotic transformation
symbolized by Scorpio, this tie with mother, this umbilical link,
must be cut.
The separation from the mother, although painful
and agonizing, leads to the awakening of the individual and the
capacity to experience the erotic. Richard Idemon makes clear
the importance of this separation as prerequisite to union.(19)
The desires for transformation, sexual intensity,
and the power to create change through merging, all have erotic
and Scorpio-like overtones. The fully awakened Eros might
be difficult to distinguish from an activated Pluto in this
context. If, on the other hand, Eros is denied or repressed,
he becomes the
uninvited god, like the thirteenth fairy in Briar Rose.
The consequences to such a rejection can be harsh. The
refusal of a god, or archetype, equates with the refusal of a part
of the unconscious life. This paves the way for fate to come
and drag us down into the underworld where we are forced into experiencing
passion, although probably in an unpleasant way. Here again
Eros feels like Pluto, and may be exhibiting his relationship to
the Erinyes as dispenser of fate.
Eros’s
relationship with his Mother also links him firmly to the sign
of Pisces. Here
one myth of the origin of the constellation of Pisces
tells the tale of Eros and Aphrodite turning themselves
into fishes and swimming up the Nile
to escape the monster Typhon.
Typhon was
said to be born from the elder deities Gaia (Mother Earth) and
Tartarus. Although
the youngest of Gaia’s offspring, Typhon was by far the deadliest
and the largest monster ever conceived. He had legs
of coiled serpents and arms that spread across the skies from horizon
to horizon. When he
walked upright, his head touched the stars. Typhon spat giant
boulders and blotted out the sun with his wings.
Sensibly,
the Olympians were reticent to fight him. To avoid conflict, they fled
to Egypt and hid themselves by transforming into animals. Zeus
changed himself into a ram, Dionysus into a goat and Aphrodite
and Eros disguised themselves as fish.
Typhon was eventually defeated by the combined efforts of Athene’s
wisdom, Hermes’ and Pan’s guile and the awesome power
of Zeus’s thunderbolts. Later, the image of two fishes
tied together by their tales was placed in the heavens in honor
of the Olympians escape from the mighty Typhon.
Much of
the romantic longing, ecstatic love and tragic loss associated
with Pisces and Neptune resemble certain aspects of Eros. The state of being in
love, the search for a soul mate and the madness of the divine other all drink
from the same cup. Perhaps it is Eros who pours the elixir while secretly shooting
the odd dart. Pisces, however, is not the only duel sign
linked to Eros.
To complicate
matters, one version of myth associates Eros with a Gemini like twin brother,
Anteros. In this case, Aphrodite is called the mother of the twin loves. Where
Eros is love, Anteros is love avenged or returned.
Anteros symbolizes a returned or opposite love. It is said
that Eros pined with loneliness until Aphrodite gave him Anteros
as a play mate. In this role Anteros is the answer to love’s
longing. He is also depicted as the one who punishes
those who scorn love or do not return the love of others.
The
story of Timagora and Meles reveals this theme of Anteros. The
young Athenian Meles rejects the love of his friend Timagoras. Meles
mockingly tells the spurned lover to climb to the top of a cliff
and throw himself off. Timagoras
does so immediately showing his devotion. He dies instantly
in the decent. When
Meles realizes what he has done, he is filled with guilt and regret. He
then casts himself down the same cliff and dies. Thus in
some areas Anteros is worshipped as the avenging spirit of Timagoras.
This mythic
theme reveals characteristics of the Gemini twins. The two
brothers can represent the heights of divine love to the pits of
guilt, remorse and despair. Perhaps
because these qualities are so divergent, it was necessary to split
them apart and view them as separate entities. As anyone
acquainted with experience of Erotic love, the two are not separate
at all but different expressions on the face of the same god.
Anteros
You ask why I have
so much rage in the heart
And on a flexible neck an untamed head;
It is that I come from
the race of Antée,
I return the darts against the victorious god.
Yes, I am that which inspires the Avenger,
He marked me on the face with his irritated lip;
Under the paleness of Abel, alas! Blood-stained,
Sometimes I have of Cain the relentless redness!
Jehovah! the last, overcome by your engineering,
Who, of the deepest of the hells, shouted: "O tyranny!"
It is my Bélus grandfather or my Dragon father...
They plunged me three times in the water of Cocyte,
And, protecting all alone my Amalecite mother,
I sow again with his feet the teeth of the old dragon.(20)
No attempt is being made to assign Eros with an astrological
sign. A
basic compare and contrast approach simply offers a greater understanding
of the god’s relationship to the mythology of the zodiac.
The affinity with the water signs may suggest, however, significance
when viewed in the astrological chart. It is possible that
the natal Eros increases in ease of expression when found in one
of the water signs, or in aspect to the Moon, Pluto or Neptune.
It also possible that an association with Gemini and
mercury is relevant in light of Anteros the twin brother. Venus,
as mother, and Mars as father in the Roman mythology, must not
be over looked as significant relationships as well.
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2001-2009 
