Let us travel again
into the wonderful world of myths. This is a poem (translated from Greek into
English) that will transport you to another time. However, to understand it, I
must point out that, according to many scholars as we see above, the Trojan
War, apart from the fact that it took place in real time in ancient times, is also a
raging philosophical lesson for our souls. The battle for
Helen, who is the beauty of our sensory world,
the world we live in, and according to
Euripides[1] our world is a copy of
another Helen, who is a copy of another World, the Perceived one. Similar
to the myths many researchers believe that
significant mythological episodes take place
in our own souls…
The beginning of the world, if ever there was a beginning[2],
Two huge snakes seem to have coiled together.
Snakes in their tails. They took on a human form.
They were eternal Time and Ananke, who rules everything.
Chaos, Night, and Ether[3]
were born from their coitus.
Then, the thick light-coloured scales took on an oval shape.
The egg breaks and lo and behold! The primitive Phanes[4]
is already born.
The heads of a ram, a bull, a lion, and a snake together
Scattered in a young androgynous body,
They mate with Night, and beget Uranus and the Earth,
by whom, Cronus and other children are born,
And a new cycle of life has been realized[5].
Zeus comes to life, born by Cronus and Rea,
Growing up in a cave, with Curetes[6]
to keep him company.
Hanted by his
father Cronus
Since only one
of them must win.
They made
Cronus drunk, on Nyx’s advice.
Then, Zeus
devoured everything that had been born at that time.
Trees, rivers,
stars - they all ended up in his stomach.
They returned
to the light, but now in a different way.
A golden chain
connects them all and every form[7].
Zeus is now the
first creator,
He rules over
the whole universe, the most powerful of all.
Once, in a
battle with the Titans, as a mighty force,
He hurled them
into the underworld, away from the light of the sun.
Like the Silver
Tribe[8] they wait chained
For the end of
Zeus’ kingdom, so that they can come to the surface.
Even the
darkness in our soul
will not die.
It only waits and comes up with ease
if Zeus’
justice is not powerful,
and the logical
part[9] of our soul cannot gain the
upper hand.
In order for
there to be balance in the soul and matter,
Harmony[10]should prevail between the
pairs of gods,
Venus and Mars’
fated daughter
Because all
important things arise from opposites.
Zeus without
Hera cannot create
for she is the
mediator so that he can move towards the Golden Ratio.
Hestia without
Hermes cannot function
because a womb
without a seed cannot bring life.
Demetra and
Poseidon complement each other,
like the
elements that constantly separate and unite.
But Demetra
also mates with Zeus,
And gives birth
to her daughter Persephone.
Pluto envies
her and snatches her away to Hades,
And she undergoes
the torments of the flesh in darkness.
He deceives her
with a pomegranate as she goes up to her mother,
And she is
forced to walk up and down forever.
Zeus splits and
mates,
divides and
unites.
He has no end, no
middle, amd no beginning.
He always hide
himself in all forms.
Like the Unit
that manifests itself as the Golden ratio in Creation,
Like Thetis,
who leaves her mark on history, together with Porus and Tekmor[11].
With the help
of Metis, whom he had swallowed,
He transformed
himself into a bull to mate with Europa.
And into a
hunted swan to hide in the embrace of Nemesis[12].
From their
union emerged Helen,
the most
beautiful daughter of God, famous throughout the world.
She was
abducted by Paris and found she herself in Troy,
But she went to
Egypt, and there her image was sent.
The Achaeans
set out to conquer Troy,
They did not
know that it was only an idol that they wanted to conquer.
Together with
the Trojans, they were deluding themselves,
Because real
Helen[13] was not in Troy.
Like the bright
beauty of Truth
It does not
dwell in the tangible phenomena of the night.
It has its
realm in the spiritual world
And, if you
lead a wise life, the light will shine before you.
The goal of
every soul may be
to seek the light,
once it has entered the darkness.
Like Jason and
the other Argonauts,
Who set out for
Colchis.
On their way
they ran into traps
But when they met
Circe, she was like a shining Sun[14].
And Odysseus to
get to Ithaca,
to meet his own
truth,
went through
trials, deceived himself,
until he found
the way to his salvation.
In the Golden
Race, may we all go,
the hardships
of the body, so that we may leave them forever.
Areti Georgakopoulou
[1] Euripides, Helen 31-46
[2] Check at the chapter with
the egg and Empedocles. They say that it all started with an explosion, the Big
Bang. As if energy was condensed and suddenly got spread around in an endless
void and filled it. But, before that, what was there? Was there no universe?
The philosopher Empedocles tells us that there is Traction (union and
attraction) and Repulsion (conflict and disruption), two forces that eternally
rule the World. They are like inhaling and exhaling; it all contracts and expands
and that’s a constant. So, is there an End and a Beginning or is it all a
constant?
[3] Check the chapter of the
birth of Venus.
[4] Check the hymn to the
Protogone.
[5] Orphic excerpts, 82, Kern
[6] Curetes or Korybantes made
noise with their armors so Saturn could not hear the cry of Zeus.
[7] Roberto Calasso: The
Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, p. 228
[8] About Hesiod, Golden and
Silver Ages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_and_Days
Plato
mentions in “Republic 469 a” that Hesiod’s Golden Race are the Guardians
(Angels) who protect us. But the Silver one, fell into Tartarus.
[9] Check above about Logistikon
on Plato, the three parts of the soul.
[10] Check at the chapter about
the Golden Ratio 1,618
[11] About Alcman, Poros and
Tekmor check the chapter on Thetis.
When
the Achaeans gathered in Aulis to set off to Troy, the winds had let up, they
were not propitious and ships couldn’t move. According to a Calchas’ prophecy,
they had to sacrifice Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia. Artemis took her and
left a deer in her place. In the end, Agamemnon sacrificed a lamb… And the
winds had now become propitious. There had to be a sacrifice for the Soul to
find a Pore (passage) to pass from the Spiritual World to the Material World.
The Pore is the passage and Tekmor is the point, the Pythagorean Unit. Through
those, Chaos develops three dimensions and becomes our world, what we perceive
with our senses. The Tekmor – point – unit becomes a line, the line becomes a
rectangle and the rectangle becomes a cube (Plato Republic 546). Our world is a
cube.
[12] Cypriot epics, extracts 3,
5, 6, 10
[13] Euripides, “Helen,” verses
31-46, 570-588, 702-708.
According
to Euripides’ tragedy “Helen,” Beautiful Helen never got to Troy, she went to
Egypt… Homer’s Helen symbolizes the Beauty of the World. Since everything
around us is but an idol, it wasn’t Helen herself that went to Troy (the world
of the Perceptible), but her idol. The real beauty is hidden behind idols in
the Conceivable world… This is where Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Republic
(1,175) comes in: “The myths want to indicate, I believe, through Helen, the
whole of that beauty that has to do with the sphere in which things come to be
and pass away and that is the product of the demiurge. It is over this beauty
that eternal war rages among souls, until the more intellectual [the Greeks]
are victorious over the less rational forms of life [the Trojans] and return
hence to the [Conceivable] place from which they came.”
[14] Orphic Argonautica, verses 1218 – 1246.
The
ship Argo embarks on her journey as a Vehicle of the Soul. She is pushed off
the land by fifty Argonauts, who constitute the necessary elements for the
commencement of her existence. Step by step, she puts on her bodies and her
chitons, until she gets to the material body, that is the beginning of Life, in
Colchis, in the sacred grove of the war god Ares. Once Jason has taken hold of
the Golden Fleece, he begins along with Medea the journey back home, back to the Creator. The
ordeals they go through are our lives in this World until we come to full
Circle.
