Initially, Hercules was required to complete ten labors, not twelve. King Eurystheus decided Hercules' first task would be to bring him the skin of an invulnerable lion which terrorized the hills around Nemea. Setting out on such a seemingly impossible labor, Hercules came to a town called Cleonae, where he stayed at the house of a poor workman-for-hire, Molorchus. When his host offered to sacrifice an animal to pray for a safe lion hunt, Hercules asked him to wait 30 days. If the hero returned with the lion's skin, they would sacrifice to Zeus, king of the gods. If Hercules died trying to kill the lion, Molorchus agreed to sacrifice instead to Hercules, as a hero. When Hercules got to Nemea and began tracking the terrible lion, he soon discovered his arrows were useless against the beast. Hercules picked up his club and went after the lion. Following it to a cave which had two entrances, Hercules blocked one of the doorways, then approached the fierce lion through the other. Grasping the lion in his mighty arms, and ignoring its powerful claws, he held it tightly until he'd choked it to death. Hercules returned to Cleonae, carrying the dead lion, and found Molorchus on the 30th day after he'd left for the hunt. Instead of sacrificing to Hercules as a dead man, Molorchus and Hercules were able to sacrifice together, to Zeus.
When Hercules made it back to Mycenae, Eurystheus was amazed that the hero had managed such an impossible task. The king became afraid of Hercules, and forbade him from entering through the gates of the city. Furthermore, Eurystheus had a large bronze jar made and buried partway in the earth, where he could hide from Hercules if need be. After that, Eurystheus sent his commands to Hercules through a herald, refusing to see the powerful hero face to face. Many times we can identify Hercules in ancient Greek vase paintings or sculptures simply because he is depicted wearing a lion skin. Ancient writers disagreed as to whether the skin Hercules wore was that of the Nemean lion, or one from a different lion, which Hercules was said to have killed when he was 18 years old. The playwright Euripides wrote that Hercules' lion skin came from the grove of Zeus, the sanctuary at Nemea:
"First he cleared the grove of Zeus of a lion, and put its skin upon his back, hiding his yellow hair in its fearful tawny gaping jaws." Euripides, Hercules, 359
Fear lurks in every soul, and it roams freest in the heart that denies its existence. The hero is summoned in the mind that knows of that lion lurking in the fields of his subconscious, and once killed the hero puts it on, as a armor, as his public face, to hide his blonde hair, his private spirit. And when others see him wearing his thymos, his primitive soul, they recoil, and accuse him of duplicity.
Such is the nature of the "civilized", spirit, the modern "cultured" soul. Instead of lion skins he adorns himself with finery, and paints his face with bright colors, and this public face he adopts, burying the coward that it covers, and claims he is honest, because he recognizes no other part.
The erotic is their garb, and when they see the hero wearing his thymos they, taking their own pretenses as an example, mistake him for a lamb pretending to be a lion.
A clever beast, passions dominate the psyche and avoid trappers; eating them rather than the bait they set. The Hero must confront the beast directly - Will against passion, reason against anxiety.
Into the cave he enters, where the monster slumbers. It must confront it where it hides.
Once killed the pelt is not discarded. Reason wears it over the head, to see through its eyes - reason peering through passion. Reason expressing itself via passion, not passion through reason. The hero is not assimilated into the beast - he is not consumed.
Facing his passions, the hero faces the mother of them all: fear. Golden haired, both beautiful and ferocious. Every tooth in tis jaws a different passion, arranged in an upper and lower jaw, separating the Platonic black/white metaphor as passive, upper, and more dynamic lower: as negative/positive.
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Last edited by Satyr on Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:07 pm; edited 8 times in total
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
The second labor of Hercules was to kill the Lernean Hydra. From the murky waters of the swamps near a place called Lerna, the hydra would rise up and terrorize the countryside. A monstrous serpent with nine heads, the hydra attacked with poisonous venom. Nor was this beast easy prey, for one of the nine heads was immortal and therefore indestructible. Hercules set off to hunt the nine-headed menace, but he did not go alone. His trusty nephew, Iolaus, was by his side. Iolaus, who shared many adventures with Hercules, accompanied him on many of the twelve labors. Legend has it that Iolaus won a victory in chariot racing at the Olympics and he is often depicted as Hercules' charioteer. So, the pair drove to Lerna and by the springs of Amymone, they discovered the lair of the loathsome hydra.
First, Hercules lured the coily creature from the safety of its den by shooting flaming arrows at it. Once the hydra emerged, Hercules seized it. The monster was not so easily overcome, though, for it wound one of its coils around Hercules' foot and made it impossible for the hero to escape. With his club, Hercules attacked the many heads of the hydra, but as soon as he smashed one head, two more would burst forth in its place! To make matters worse, the hydra had a friend of its own: a huge crab began biting the trapped foot of Hercules. Quickly disposing of this nuisance, most likely with a swift bash of his club, Hercules called on Iolaus to help him out of this tricky situation. Each time Hercules bashed one of the hydra's heads, Iolaus held a torch to the headless tendons of the neck. The flames prevented the growth of replacement heads, and finally, Hercules had the better of the beast. Once he had removed and destroyed the eight mortal heads, Hercules chopped off the ninth, immortal head. This he buried at the side of the road leading from Lerna to Elaeus, and for good measure, he covered it with a heavy rock. As for the rest of the hapless hydra, Hercules slit open the corpse and dipped his arrows in the venomous blood. Eurystheus was not impressed with Hercules' feat, however. He said that since Iolaus had helped his uncle, this labor should not count as one of the ten. This technicality didn't seem to matter much to anyone else: the ancient authors still give Hercules all of the credit. Even so, Pausanias did not think that this labor was as fantastic as the myths made it out to be: to him, the fearsome hydra was just, well, a big water snake.
One stomach, a void, expressing its emptiness with its multiple heads, each with its own tongue (taste), its own eyes (perspective), its own mind (will). The monster can only see the other heads, and experiences itself through them. It follows its neck down to their shared source and discovered itself as part of a whole - it is oneness.
One of the nine heads is immortal, indestructible. It is the absolute one, the noumenon. It multiplies eternally. You chop off one head and two grow in its place. Nihilism is multifarious, multicultural, multi-sexual, it is many as one.
One head for every numerical value 1-9, with the stomach the eternal nil, the lack. The monster is lacking, eternally hungry - a void eating, assimilating, pleasuring itself. This is the monster of Nihilism. The nil, the body, the "place holder", and the nine multipliers of the eternal one. Voracious, unsatisfied appetite: hedonistic. It identifies with its own pleasures, its tastes. It is what gratifies it.
The Hero will need help - a blood relative, one of his own kind. This menace must be burned, and the eternal head severed from its hunger, from the nil.
Without it the one loses meaning - ti is part of the dualism, the binary logic of noetic symbolization.
The multi-headed monster is wearing the face of a unicorn; magical, inspiring, mystical. It's added a new method to its defensive panoply.
The hero adapts as well. No longer a hero, but a angel of Darkness, a Black Knight. His hero status modernized for a more cynical audience.
You can't kill this beast one head at a time, you must attack its common ground, its body, its huge, bulging stomach. The heads appear detached from each other; each with a will of its own: its own teeth, its own tongue, its own eyes. But follow the head to the neck and then way down, to where it is hiding, the shared stomach, that gaping anus, that vagina. Orifice upon orifice it is. In its belly many heroes have been digested. Pieces cut away, the rest defecated, expelled as noxious fumes.
The void, the nil, the absence, binds the heads to its cause - they are its care, its positive expression. They are attached and dominated by the nil, and they come as multiple ones.
Multiplicity of being, each with a tiny brain, attached to one big empty stomach, in constant need for fulfillment. Head eats head, and thinks it is eating an other - a cannibal who is ignorant of itself. The shared need, streaming up from the stomach, through neural networks, create an internal, subjective, universe of its own. There is nothing outside this need, and the desire to satisfy it. The entire cosmos is this. But the Hero stands outside of this organic universe of one - distinct, separate, at a distance. He is ordering himself, towards a different object/objective, and approaches the monstrosity of many as one, because he has been given a task, and not because he cares what this monster thinks, or does. He accepts the task to prove himself as being other than this monstrosity with many perspectives and one need.
For the third labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the Hind of Ceryneia. Now, before we go any further, we'll have to answer two questions: What is a hind? and, Where is Ceryneia?
Ceryneia is a town in Greece, about fifty miles from Eurystheus' palace in Mycenae. A hind is simply a female red deer.
You'd think it would have been easy for a hero like Hercules to go shoot a deer and bring it back to Eurystheus, but a few problems made things complicated. This was a special deer, because it had golden horns and hoofs of bronze. Not only that, the deer was sacred to the goddess of hunting and the moon, Diana; she was Diana's special pet. That meant that Hercules could neither kill the deer nor hurt her. He couldn't risk getting Diana angry at him; he was already in enough trouble with Hera. Hercules set out on this adventure, and he hunted the deer for a whole year. At last, when the deer had become weary with the chase, she looked for a place to rest on a mountain called Artemisius, and then made her way to the river Ladon. Realizing that the deer was about to get away, Hercules shot her just as she was about to cross the stream. He caught the deer, put her on his shoulders and turned back to Mycenae. As Hercules hurried on his way, he was met by Diana and Apollo.
Diana was very angry because Hercules tried to kill her sacred animal. She was about to take the deer away from Hercules, and surely she would have punished him, but Hercules told her the truth. He said that he had to obey the oracle and do the labors Eurystheus had given him. Diana let go of her anger and healed the deer's wound. Hercules carried it alive to Mycenae.
Relentless hero you must match the stags endurance and continue the hunt. The phenomenon is elusive....like wild nature. The Hero cannot kill it, for he is noble, and a pagan. He enjoys knowing that it roams free. Apollo's sister is his to admire, under her twin brother's light.
What appears, flees, as you approach it. The Hero binds it by its four legs - the four dimensions, the cross of geometric matrices.: east/west/north/south. He cannot despoil its chastity, nor ruin its purity.
The stags legs are its roots; its antlers tree branches; its thoughts leaves. It reflects the world it occupies. It is more mobile than the trees it roams amongst. It runs upon the earth (the middle-earth, grounded upon the soil), and it feeds on the trees, and on the grass, that draw sustenance from the subterranean world (the past/nature). It is a conduit between Under-World and Over-World, never losing touch with the earth. This is the essence of its nobility.
For the fourth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the Erymanthian boar alive. Now, a boar is a huge, wild pig with a bad temper, and tusks growing out of its mouth. This one was called the Erymanthian boar, because it lived on a mountain called Erymanthus. Every day the boar would come crashing down from his lair on the mountain, attacking men and animals all over the countryside, gouging them with its tusks, and destroying everything in its path. On his way to hunt the boar, Hercules stopped to visit his friend Pholus, who was a centaur and lived in a cave near Mount Erymanthus. Everyone knows that centaur is a human from his head to his waist, and a horse for the rest of his body and his legs. Hercules was hungry and thirsty, so the kindly centaur cooked Hercules some meat in the fireplace, while he himself ate his meat raw. When Hercules asked for wine, Pholus said that he was afraid to open the wine jar, because it belonged to all the centaurs in common. But Hercules said not to worry, and opened it himself.
Soon afterwards, the rest of the centaurs smelled the wine and came to Pholus's cave. They were angry that someone was drinking all of their wine. The first two who dared to enter were armed with rocks and fir trees. Hercules grabbed burning sticks from the fireplace and threw them at the centaurs, then went after them with his club. He shot arrows at the rest of them and chased after them for about twenty miles. The rest of the centaurs fled in different directions. One of the centaurs, Chiron, received a wound that no amount of medicine would heal...but what happened to Chiron is another story.
While Hercules was gone, Pholus pulled an arrow from the body of one of the dead centaurs. He wondered that so little a thing could kill such a big creature. Suddenly, the arrow slipped from his hand. It fell onto his foot and killed him on the spot. So when Hercules returned, he found Pholus dead. He buried his centaur friend, and proceeded to hunt the boar.
It wasn't too hard for Hercules to find the boar. He could hear the beast snorting and stomping as it rooted around for something to eat. Hercules chased the boar round and round the mountain, shouting as loud as he could. The boar, frightened and out of breath, hid in a thicket. Hercules poked his spear into the thicket and drove the exhausted animal into a deep patch of snow. Then he trapped the boar in a net, and carried it all the way to Mycenae. Eurystheus, again amazed and frightened by the hero's powers, hid in his partly buried bronze jar.
The unpredictability of the rejuvenating boar, the code, is confronted by the Hero. It must be packed in snow and chained - frozen in its tracks. The noumenon frozen into a code - a self-generating, unpredictable code, then domesticated and turned into a pig, a swine, before which pearls are wasted.
The boar becomes a swine. The rejuvenating transforms to accumulating. The swine wallows in its own excrement. It consumes phenomenon and produces noumena, and there it bathes and settles. It swindles itself and others.
Feces is gold (money), and the swindler, the pig, is a master of money - the miser.
Philosophically, the swine is the priestly, consuming and defecating gold....words, numbers, symbols.
The rejuvenating wildness of the boar is domesticated, brought down to the mud it creates with its own urine, its own shit.
The swine, the swindler, fights for him place in the mud, not in the sun. He helps the cesspool grow, defecating, urinating, expelling refuse, pollutants, adding to the size of the shit-hole where it feels at home: paradise.
For the fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean up King Augeas' stables. Hercules knew this job would mean getting dirty and smelly, but sometimes even a hero has to do these things. Then Eurystheus made Hercules' task even harder: he had to clean up after the cattle of Augeas in a single day.
Now King Augeas owned more cattle than anyone in Greece. Some say that he was a son of one of the great gods, and others that he was a son of a mortal; whosever son he was, Augeas was very rich, and he had many herds of cows, bulls, goats, sheep and horses. Every night the cowherds, goatherds and shepherds drove the thousands of animals to the stables. Hercules went to King Augeas, and without telling anything about Eurystheus, said that he would clean out the stables in one day, if Augeas would give him a tenth of his fine cattle. Augeas couldn't believe his ears, but promised. Hercules brought Augeas's son along to watch. First the hero tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard where the stables were. Then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.
Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard. When Augeas learned that Eurystheus was behind all this, he would not pay Hercules his reward. Not only that, he denied that he had even promised to pay a reward. Augeas said that if Hercules didn't like it, he could take the matter to a judge to decide.
The judge took his seat. Hercules called the son of Augeas to testify. The boy swore that his father had agreed to give Hercules a reward. The judge ruled that Hercules would have to be paid. In a rage, Augeas ordered both his own son and Hercules to leave his kingdom at once. So the boy went to the north country to live with his aunts, and Hercules headed back to Mycenae. But Eurystheus said that this labour didn't count, because Hercules was paid for having done the work.
Stagnant pools accumulate as man constructs his civilization, with codes. The hero becomes a swine asking for payment for work he should have taken pleasure in performing: to wash away the filth of human ingenuity, flush them out like toxins. He fails in his labor. He becomes a mercenary, doing deeds for reward not for the ideal but for the recompense. The hero succumbs to the swine in him, and wants his labor to be acknowledged.
Eternal humanity, the cow, and bull, regurgitating, in time. Flatulence producing, cow-cake after cow-cake falls from its anus, piling high into cathedrals of crap, they call sublime.
Tearing, pulling, uprooting, munching, swallowing the pulp, vomiting up, then more pulverizing and taking it back in. From the first orifice to the last, the grass is processed. Day after day, week, after week, year after year, the shit piles up. Who, but a god, a demi-god, could clean it away?
Human waste, dis-eased memes, producing feces, waste, pollution. The cancer cell kills the host, and then dies. The parasite destroys itself while destroying other. It dies without realizing it was the cause.
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Last edited by Satyr on Tue Apr 28, 2015 2:58 pm; edited 6 times in total
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
After Hercules returned from his success in the Augean stables, Eurystheus came up with an even more difficult task. For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos.
Arriving at the lake, which was deep in the woods, Hercules had no idea how to drive the huge gathering of birds away. The goddess Athena came to his aid, providing a pair of bronze krotala, noisemaking clappers similar to castanets. These were no ordinary noisemakers. They had been made by an immortal craftsman, Hephaistos, the god of the forge. Climbing a nearby mountain, Hercules clashed the krotala loudly, scaring the birds out of the trees, then shot them with bow and arrow, or possibly with a slingshot, as they took flight. Some versions of the legend say that these Stymphalian birds were vicious man-eaters. The 2nd century A.D. travel writer, Pausanias, trying to discover what kind of birds they might have been, wrote that during his time a type of bird from the Arabian desert was called "Stymphalian," describing them as equal to lions or leopards in their fierceness. He speculated that the birds Hercules encountered in the legend were similar to these Arabian birds.
"These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armor of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment... These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.-Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.22.5"
Pausanias also saw and described the religious sanctuary built by the Greeks of Stymphalos and dedicated to the goddess Artemis. He reported that the temple had carvings of the Stymphalian birds up near its roof. Standing behind the temple, he saw marble statues of maidens with the legs of birds.
Subconscious remnants of (inter)activity, settling upon the marshy ground of the dream world They emerge in sleep to harass the dreamer.
The birds come out in dream, when reason slumbers, and in distress, when excited, when shocked, when angered, when surprised. The Narcissist reveals himself only then. Sensationalism, vivid hyperbole, Bernays excites the neurological system and the secret creatures flutter into the air - anxiety increases and the dreamer seeks refuge from his own subconscious manifestations. Hysterics....exaggerations, loud noise, music, pornography reaching the extreme to excite those birds and make them fly up from the marshy ground. The birds cannibalize the mind. Memetic fluttering consuming man's psyche, agitated by the fantastic, the extreme, the sudden, the unexpected.
Each bird, with a brain the size of a pea, gives birth to an egg, already fertilized and ready to hatch. In time bird-brains are scattered across the marshy ground, and if started, stimulated, their unified flight can blot out the sun, and like arrows pierce the Hero's essence. Thousands of little birds with little brains, and sharp beaks pecking him to death.
Thoughts scatter and fly upon the winds of fancy. The earth is left behind. They forget from whence they came from. But they grow tired, in time, and must land in the marshes – soft and muddy, where pigs enjoy to wallow.
Hercules kills these creatures, one by one. Futile. .
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Last edited by Satyr on Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:42 pm; edited 4 times in total
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
After the complicated business with the Stymphalian Birds, Hercules easily disposed of the Cretan Bull.
At that time, Minos, King of Crete, controlled many of the islands in the seas around Greece, and was such a powerful ruler that the Athenians sent him tribute every year. There are many bull stories about Crete. Zeus, in the shape of a bull, had carried Minos' mother Europa to Crete, and the Cretans were fond of the sport of bull-leaping, in which contestants grabbed the horns of a bull and were thrown over its back. Minos himself, in order to prove his claim to the throne, had promised the sea-god Poseidon that he would sacrifice whatever the god sent him from the sea. Poseidon sent a bull, but Minos thought it was too beautiful to kill, and so he sacrificed another bull. Poseidon was furious with Minos for breaking his promise. In his anger, he made the bull rampage all over Crete, and caused Minos' wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the animal. As a result, Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Minos had to shut up this beast in the Labyrinth, a huge maze underneath the palace, and every year he fed it prisoners from Athens.
When Hercules got to Crete, he easily wrestled the bull to the ground and drove it back to King Eurystheus. Eurystheus let the bull go free. It wandered around Greece, terrorizing the people, and ended up in Marathon, a city near Athens. The Athenian hero Theseus tied up some loose ends of this story. He killed the Cretan Bull at Marathon. Later, he sailed to Crete, found his way to the center of the Labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur.
Civilized man Theseus kills the Minotaur, the monster trapped in human contrivances, the wild spirit contained with word-games. Six labors, this Civilized Hercules, accomplished, each one ridding the world of human evilness.
Known for his greatest feat, the slaying of the Cretan bull Hercules had freed, with the aid of Ariadne, the snake-goddess, later to marry Dionysus. At the end what a terrible fate you faced at the hands of those you saved from themselves.
After Hercules had captured the Cretan Bull, Eurystheus sent him to get the man-eating mares of Diomedes, the king of a Thracian tribe called the Bistones, and bring them back to him in Mycenae. According to Apollodorus, Hercules sailed with a band of volunteers across the Aegean to Bistonia. There he and his companions overpowered the grooms who were tending the horses, and drove them to the sea. But by the time he got there, the Bistones had realized what had happened, and they sent a band of soldiers to recapture the animals. To free himself to fight, Hercules entrusted the mares to a youth named Abderos. Unfortunately, the mares got the better of young Abderos and dragged him around until he was killed. Meanwhile Hercules fought the Bistones, killed Diomedes, and made the rest flee. In honor of the slain Abderos, Hercules founded the city of Abdera. The hero took the mares back to Eurystheus, but Eurystheus set them free. The mares wandered around until eventually they came to Mount Olympos, the home of the gods, where they were eaten by wild beasts.
Euripides gives two different versions of the story, but both of them differ from Apollodorus's in that Hercules seems to be performing the labor alone, rather than with a band of followers. In one, Diomedes has the four horses harnessed to a chariot, and Hercules has to bring back the chariot as well as the horses. In the other, Hercules tames the horses from his own chariot:
"He mounted on a chariot and tamed with the bit the horses of Diomedes, that greedily champed their bloody food at gory mangers with unbridled jaws, devouring with hideous joy the flesh of men." - Euripides, Hercules, 380"
Night-Mares of nightmares, the domesticated herbivore becomes a carnivorous predator. The genteel utility of the beast, hides a contradiction. The mares remain docile, easily controlled, civilized, until the waters wash away human lies. Neurosis hiding behind benevolence. The kindness of the positive Nihilist, the kindly priest, the hope-giver.
For the ninth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the belt of Hippolyte [Hip-POLLY-tee]. This was no ordinary belt and no ordinary warrior. Hippolyte was queen of the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors. These Amazons had nothing to do with the Amazon river in South America. Their name comes from a Greek word meaning "missing one breast." This is because an Amazon's right breast got in the way when she threw a spear.
The Amazons lived apart from men, and if they ever gave birth to children, they kept only the females and reared them to be warriors like themselves.
Queen Hippolyte had a special piece of armor. It was a leather belt that had been given to her by Ares, the war god, because she was the best warrior of all the Amazons. She wore this belt across her chest and used it to carry her sword and spear. Eurystheus wanted Hippolyte's belt as a present to give to his daughter, and he sent Hercules to bring it back.
Hercules' friends realized that the hero could not fight against the whole Amazon army by himself, so they joined with him and set sail in a single ship. After a long journey, they reached the land of the Amazons and put in at the harbor. When Hercules and the Greeks got off the boat, Hippolyte came down to visit them. She asked Hercules why he had come, and when he told her, she promised to give him the belt. But the goddess Hera knew that the arrival of Hercules meant nothing but trouble for the Amazons. Disguised as an Amazon warrior, Hera went up and down the army saying to each woman that the strangers who had arrived were going to carry off the queen. So the Amazons put on their armor. The women warriors charged on horseback down to the ship. But when Hercules saw that they were wearing their armor and were carrying their weapons, he knew that he was under attack. Thinking fast, he drew his sword and killed Hippolyte. Then he undid her belt and took it away from her.
Hercules and the Greeks fought the rest of the Amazons in a great battle. When the enemy had been driven off, Hercules sailed away. After a stopover at the city of Troy, Hercules returned to Mycenae, and he gave the belt to Eurystheus.
The Hero comes into contact with his feminine side.
Hannibal finds his Clarice. They are in conflict, and yet two sides of the same coin. She works for the ones that keep a girdle around her. The Hero wants to take it away from her, and free her from its constraints. He wants to take away her virginity, her self-repression, and return the girdle to the ones that imposed it upon her.
Cynical amazon queen, she fights against the one who is there to free her, who is to take the girdle away. She feels betrayed by him, based on conventions, and rumors.
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Last edited by Satyr on Fri Apr 03, 2015 12:18 pm; edited 3 times in total
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
To accomplish his tenth labor, Hercules had to journey to the end of the world. Eurystheus ordered the hero to bring him the cattle of the monster Geryon. Geryon was the son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe. Chrysaor had sprung from the body of the Gorgon Medusa after Perseus beheaded her, and Callirrhoe was the daughter of two Titans, Oceanus and Tethys. With such distinguished lineage, it is no surprise that Geryon himself was quite unique. It seems that Geryon had three heads and three sets of legs all joined at the waist.
"And the daughter of Ocean, Callirrhoe... bore a son who was the strongest of all men, Geryones, whom mighty Heracles killed in sea-girt Erythea for the sake of his shambling oxen. Hesiod, Theogony, 980"
Geryon lived on an island called Erythia, which was near the boundary of Europe and Libya. On this island, Geryon kept a herd of red cattle guarded by Cerberus's brother, Orthus, a two-headed hound, and the herdsman Eurytion. Hercules set off on for Erythia, encountering and promptly killing many wild beasts along the way, and he came to the place where Libya met Europe. Here, Apollodorus tells us, Hercules built two massive mountains, one in Europe and one in Libya, to commemorate his extensive journey. Other accounts say that Hercules split one mountain into two. Either way, these mountains became known as the Gates or Pillars of Hercules. The strait Hercules made when he broke the mountain apart is now called the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco, the gateway from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
Sailing in a goblet which the Sun gave him in admiration, Hercules reached the island of Erythia. Not long after he arrived, Orthus, the two-headed dog, attacked Hercules, so Hercules bashed him with his club. Eurytion followed, with the same result. Another herdsman in the area reported these events to Geryon. Just as Hercules was escaping with the cattle, Geryon attacked him. Hercules fought with him and shot him dead with his arrows. The stealing of the cattle was not such a difficult task, compared to the trouble Hercules had bringing the herd back to Greece. In Liguria, two sons of Poseidon, the god of the sea, tried to steal the cattle, so he killed them. At Rhegium, a bull got loose and jumped into the sea. The bull swam to Sicily and then made its way to the neighboring country. The native word for bull was "italus," and so the country came to be named after the bull, and was called Italy.
The escaped bull was found by a ruler named Eryx, another of Poseidon's sons, and Eryx put this bull into his own herd. Meanwhile, Hercules was searching for the runaway animal. He temporarily entrusted the rest of the herd to the god Hephaestus, and went after the bull. He found it in Eryx's herd, but the king would return it only if the hero could beat him in a wrestling contest. Never one to shy away from competition, Hercules beat Eryx three times in wrestling, killed the king, took back the bull, and returned it to the herd. Hercules made it to the edge of the Ionian Sea, with the end of his journey finally in sight. Hera, however, was not about to let the hero accomplish this labor. She sent a gadfly to attack the cattle, and the herd scattered far and wide. Now, Hercules had to run around Thrace gathering the escaped cows. Finally, he regrouped the herd and, blaming his troubles on the river Strymon in Thrace, he filled the river with rocks, making it unnavigable. Then, he brought the cattle of Geryon to Eurystheus, who sacrificed the herd to Hera. The ancients don't tell us how long either Hercules or Europe took to recover from this eventful jaunt.
Triple head of the nihilistic master. It scatters the mind, like cattle, forcing the Hero to gather them back, abolishing the concept of self-sacrifice in the meantime.
Abrahamic triad (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) scattering ideals as Marxism, Transhumanism, secular humanism, modern Buddhism, each one proposing self as the sacrifice - the shattering of self, of ego....schizophrenia.
Mind/Body/Spirit Brain, Body, Neurological network The individual feels divided into two, three, myriad pieces....and he can pick and choose. One bovine or the other?
Poor Hercules! After eight years and one month, after performing ten superhuman labors, he was still not off the hook. Eurystheus demanded two more labors from the hero, since he did not count the hydra or the Augean stables as properly done.
Eurystheus commanded Hercules to bring him golden apples which belonged to Zeus, king of the gods. Hera had given these apples to Zeus as a wedding gift, so surely this task was impossible. Hera, who didn't want to see Hercules succeed, would never permit him to steal one of her prize possessions, would she?
These apples were kept in a garden at the northern edge of the world, and they were guarded not only by a hundred-headed dragon, named Ladon, but also by the Hesperides, nymphs who were daughters of Atlas, the titan who held the sky and the earth upon his shoulders. Hercules' first problem was that he didn't know where the garden was. He journeyed through Libya, Egypt, Arabia, and Asia, having adventures along the way. He was stopped by Kyknos, the son of the war god, Ares, who demanded that Hercules fight him. After the fight was broken up by a thunderbolt, Hercules continued on to Illyria, where he seized the sea-god Nereus, who knew the garden's secret location. Nereus transformed himself into all kinds of shapes,trying to escape, but Hercules held tight and didn't release Nereus until he got the information he needed. Continuing on his quest, Hercules was stopped by Antaeus, the son of the sea god, Poseidon, who also challenged Hercules to fight. Hercules defeated him in a wrestling match, lifting him off the ground and crushing him, because when Antaeus touched the earth he became stronger. After that, Hercules met up with Busiris, another of Poseidon's sons, was captured, and was led to an altar to be a human sacrifice. But Hercules escaped, killing Busiris, and journeyed on. Hercules came to the rock on Mount Caucasus where Prometheus was chained. Prometheus, a trickster who made fun of the gods and stole the secret of fire from them, was sentenced by Zeus to a horrible fate. He was bound to the mountain, and every day a monstrous eagle came and ate his liver, pecking away at Prometheus' tortured body. After the eagle flew off, Prometheus' liver grew back, and the next day he had to endure the eagle's painful visit all over again. This went on for 30 years, until Hercules showed up and killed the eagle. In gratitude, Prometheus told Hercules the secret to getting the apples. He would have to send Atlas after them, instead of going himself. Atlas hated holding up the sky and the earth so much that he would agree to the task of fetching the apples, in order to pass his burden over to Hercules. Everything happened as Prometheus had predicted, and Atlas went to get the apples while Hercules was stuck in Atlas's place, with the weight of the world literally on his shoulders. When Atlas returned with the golden apples, he told Hercules he would take them to Eurystheus himself, and asked Hercules to stay there and hold the heavy load for the rest of time. Hercules slyly agreed, but asked Atlas whether he could take it back again, just for a moment, while the hero put some soft padding on his shoulders to help him bear the weight of the sky and the earth. Atlas put the apples on the ground, and lifted the burden onto his own shoulders. And so Hercules picked up the apples and quickly ran off, carrying them back, uneventfully, to Eurystheus.
There was one final problem: because they belonged to the gods, the apples could not remain with Eurystheus. After all the trouble Hercules went through to get them, he had to return them to Athena, who took them back to the garden at the northern edge of the world.
The weight of the world is refused by the hero. He will not be burdened by others, nor accept their hopes as his own. To do so he must become an ascetic, accepting the world's mass, reality, as a way to cultivate his strength, not to release the others from it.
The most dangerous labor of all was the twelfth and final one. Eurystheus ordered Hercules to go to the Underworld and kidnap the beast called Cerberus (or Kerberos). Eurystheus must have been sure Hercules would never succeed at this impossible task!
The ancient Greeks believed that after a person died, his or her spirit went to the world below and dwelled for eternity in the depths of the earth. The Underworld was the kingdom of Hades, also called Pluto, and his wife, Persephone. Depending on how a person lived his or her life, they might or might not experience never-ending punishment in Hades. All souls, whether good or bad, were destined for the kingdom of Hades. Cerberus was a vicious beast that guarded the entrance to Hades and kept the living from entering the world of the dead. According to Apollodorus, Cerberus was a strange mixture of creatures: he had three heads of wild dogs, a dragon or serpent for a tail, and heads of snakes all over his back. Hesiod, though, says that Cerberus had fifty heads and devoured raw flesh.
". . . A monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong." - Hesiod, Theogony 310
Cerberus' parents were the monster Echinda (half-woman, half-serpent) and Typhon (a fire-breathing giant covered with dragons and serpents). Even the gods of Olympus were afraid of Typhon.
Among the children attributed to this awful couple were Orthus (or Othros), the Hydra of Lerna, and the Chimaera. Orthus was a two-headed hound which guarded the cattle of Geryon. With the Chimaera, Orthus fathered the Nemean Lion and the Sphinx. The Chimaera was a three-headed fire-breathing monster, part lion, part snake, and part goat. Hercules seemed to have a lot of experience dealing with this family: he killed Orthus, when he stole the cattle of Geryon, and strangled the Nemean Lion. Compared to these unfortunate family members, Cerberus was actually rather lucky.
Before making the trip to the Underworld, Hercules decided that he should take some extra precautions. This was, after all, a journey from which no mortal had ever returned. Hercules knew that once in the kingdom of Hades, he might not be allowed to leave and rejoin the living. The hero went to Eleusis and saw Eumolpus, a priest who began what were known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. The mysteries were sacred religious rites which celebrated the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The ancients believed that those who learned the secrets of the mysteries would have happiness in the Underworld. After the hero met a few conditions of membership, Eumolpus initiated Hercules into the mysteries.
Hercules went to a place called Taenarum in Laconia. Through a deep, rocky cave, Hercules made his way down to the Underworld. He encountered monsters, heroes, and ghosts as he made his way through Hades. He even engaged in a wrestling contest! Then, finally, he found Pluto and asked the god for Cerberus. The lord of the Underworld replied that Hercules could indeed take Cerberus with him, but only if he overpowered the beast with nothing more than his own brute strength.
A weaponless Hercules set off to find Cerberus. Near the gates of Acheron, one of the five rivers of the Underworld, Hercules encountered Cerberus. Undaunted, the hero threw his strong arms around the beast, perhaps grasping all three heads at once, and wrestled Cerberus into submission. The dragon in the tail of the fierce flesh-eating guard dog bit Hercules, but that did not stop him. Cerberus had to submit to the force of the hero, and Hercules brought Cerberus to Eurystheus. Unlike other monsters that crossed the path of the legendary hero, Cerberus was returned safely to Hades, where he resumed guarding the gateway to the Underworld. Presumably, Hercules inflicted no lasting damage on Cerberus, except, of course, the wound to his pride!
Know Thyself...man confronting himself with no weapons, no words, no trickery....honestly. The darkness peered into. The hero's double faced and carried back into the light to become wolf.
Bottom<>Up thinking... One must descend into the lowest part of the soul, to confront self and the real world directly, honestly, slowly ascending upwards.
The essence of a man is not revealed in what labels he uses to describe himself or how he would like to think of himself, because self-knowledge demands a level of honesty, and courage, few are capable of, nor is it revealed in the identifiers he prefers to relate to, because these are object/objectives that may contradict his past, his inheritance, and how this presence has become apparent.
The essence of a man is revealed in the manner by which he relates to the world. In this relationship, juxtaposition, of self with otherness, his spirit is exposed in ways not even he may be aware of.
_________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
The Hero accepts the quest, on behalf of another, for his own sake. He enters the labyrinth where the monster is trapped, either to find it and kill it, or, to set it free – liberation. He does not ask how it got there, or who trapped it, he only knows that he cannot ignore it, once he is told of its existence and how to get to it. Each choice has its own risk and costs. One will result in completion, a reckoning, and the unforeseeable, the other will sacrifice self to support the master’s public face, his civilized character.
Sometimes too strong to release, sometimes too feeble, after years of captivity, to find itself out, the beast will sense the hero coming and will tremble and rejoice. The labyrinth walls will echo with its rage, or with its slumber, only stirring in the dark to whisper its presence.
