The Archetype for Our Moment
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| Echo And Narcissus, John William Waterhouse |
When I first started thinking about what the myth for the current moment was, I first thought about the trickster archetype. It's no stretch to recognize the perfect embodiment of the trickster archetype in the next president of the United States. Trump is the trickster archetype. Why should that be the archetype for our time? What exactly is the point of the trickster? Is it just a god joke? What does the trickster want with us? In astrology the trickster archetype is Mercury as well as Mercury's higher octave Uranus. Uranus is complicated because it's really two separate archetypes.
Prometheus watches Athena endow his creation with reason (painting by Christian Griepenkerl, 1877).
Prometheus is actually more in line with what Uranus represents astrologically. To simplify a very complex archetypal meaning, Uranus represents sudden shocking epiphanies and scientific breakthroughs. Frankenstein is a very good constellation of what Uranus represents, albeit in his more negative face. More positively, think of the invention, or discovery, of electricity and harnessing of that technological power. On the other hand, Ouranos, the other side of Uranus, was really the first iteration of Cronos and was not a rule breaker at all. Ouranos certainly did not want to be castrated and have his rulership usurped by his youngest son. Ouranos designed all of reality. He was the original architect of astrology. Prometheus, on the other hand, was not a divine architect, although he was instrumental in creating humanity by some accounts, out of clay. In another Greek account Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and Pyrrah, daughter of Epimetheus (Prometheus's brother) created man from the stones they found on the ground at Parnassus after the flood brought about by Lycaon attempting to feed Zeus Lycaon's baby son in a stew. Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus, who received Pandora and her box (it was originally a jar), are central to the archetype of the trickster. Oh my the endless digression!
What about the picture painted by Waterhouse above? That is the current myth for our time, and it's what I really want to talk about now, and I will manage to tie the preceding bumpy road of astromytho thought into the theme of this current myth. Everybody knows about narcissism as a psychological disorder. Well, at least people know what they mean when they accuse somebody of being a narcissist. It's somebody who is overly involved with themselves in an aggrandized and inflated way. Someone who is selfish and believes themselves to be the only factor in any discussion. Someone without empathy. Most importantly a narcissist is incapable of admitting wrong doing or flaw. It's a person who will never admit, because they are psychologically incapable of admitting, that they are in fact incorrect about something. This personality trait is one of the four known in psychology as the "Dark Tetrad," which is composed of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Sadism, and Psychopathy. Simply put this is pathological self absorption. Sound familiar?
Interestingly if one looks at what occurs in this myth, Narcissus is punished by Nemesis for rebuffing Echo's amorous advance towards him. Narcissus's great crime is that he just didn't find Echo attractive in any way, and he was maybe a bit rude to her. What's the crime in that? We've all turned our noses up at a suitor, at least most of us have, it's common enough. Everyone is not for everybody and hopefully that is not news to anyone. The more I looked into this myth, the more Narcissus seemed to be the victim in it all. How'd he get stuck with being the namesake for such an odious psychological disorder? There's no cure for it, and they are the worst people. A narcissist is just a miserable person to be around. What about Echo? She's portrayed as the hapless victim in the story, but how'd she come by her affliction of only being able to speak the last few words spoken to her? Well, I'm glad you asked.
Echo busied herself with distracting Hera with gossip while Zeus was off philandering. This understandably angered Hera, and so she cursed Echo with the speech impediment. This was the cause of Narcissus's easily relatable irritation with Echo. Then Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, gets upset with Narcissus for spurning Echo and curses him with the inability to receive requited love.
Yet before all of this, the seer Tiresias, who was a male by birth, was turned into a woman by displeasing Hera upon striking a pair of copulating snakes with a stick. Later Zeus and Hera got into an argument about which sex received more pleasure during sex, men or women, and Tiresias was asked to judge based on the fact that he had experienced life as both sexes. He said that women received 9/10 of the pleasure and men only 1/10th, which angered Hera, so she struck him blind which is why he was blind. Zeus feeling pity for him gave him the gift of prophesy and 7 lives. Tiresias then goes on to prophesy about Narcissus saying that "he'll live a long life only if he never comes to know himself." So when Narcissus sees his reflection in the water and falls in love with his own beauty, both Tiresias's prophesy and Nemesis's curse come true at once. Adding insult to injury, Narcissus's life, to begin with, was conceived when his mother, the nymph Liriope, was rapped by the river god Cephissus. This is why she came to Tiresias for knowledge of baby Narcissus's future. I'm sure Liriope was just concerned for her child given the nature of his creation. It's also an interesting thread that this river god Cephisus also happened to be the same river that Deucalion and Pyrrha cleansed themselves with before going on to create the present batch of humanity. Why is Narcissus the villain here?
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| Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving by Johann Ulrich Kraus c. 1690. |
In Echo's defense she was only helping the king of the gods. If the king of the gods asks you to do a thing you're likely going to say "yes sir, right away sir, can I get you anything else sir?" Echo can't be to blame here. What about Hera? She was all the time going around making people's lives hell because of her philandering husband. She couldn't punish Zeus so she punished his consorts, or his consorts progeny by Zeus (Heracles anyone...Hera...cles). Nemesis was just doing what it was that her job was to do. All Narcissus did was get lost and catch the attention of a speech afflicted nymph...poor thing. Tiresias seems to me to be the true villain. So is the moral of this story to never strike at copulating snakes? Have I connected too many dots and lost the script. Actually, this is piling up to be a pretty good script!
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| Albrecht Dürer's engraving of Nemesis, c 1502 |
Nobody ever talks about Tiresiasisst, the psychological disorder marked by excessive dislike of snakes copulating, causing one to go about whacking any snake like copulating thing...wait...masturbation? Is that what this myth is ultimately about? Look at this next image of Dike and Nemesis pursuing a murdering scoundrel!
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| Justice (Dike, on the left) and Divine Vengeance (Nemesis, right) pursuing a murderer, in a painting by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808 |
All of this really speaks to the issue of fate and hubris. It's a contradiction really. If you are fated than you have no control over your hubris and you are being punished for the sin's of your creator. I chose this myth as the myth for the moment because I wanted to talk about Narcissism, virtual echo chambers, and social media. It is pretty reprehensible to fall in love with yourself. This is not to be confused with loving yourself (or masturbation for that matter...although there honestly does seem to be a rather comedic connection there). I seem to be working at cross purposes to my own chosen illustrated point. How, in the love of god, do we end up with Trump as president again? I mean in love with your own image...check. But, like Narcissus, and this is where I tie it all together, it's not Trumps fault. He's just doing what Trump does, and he's consequently facilitating a reemergence of the divine trickster here to teach us an important lesson in losing the script? How do you think Hitler rose to power? Trump is not Hitler, not even close, he's a canary in the coal mine. Like a jack in the box, he's popped out again and he's saying "Trick or treat? Here's some divine trickster demagoguery to eat."
It seems to me that this moment is about Nemesis. Nemesis is also the Erinyes, or the Furies. And where did the Furies come from you ask? Great question, I'm glad you asked! The Furies emerged from the castration blood of Ouranos along with Aphrodite (Venus). You see Ouranos had a bad habit of stuffing his children by Rhea (Gaia) back into her womb after they were born, symbolized by burying them in the earth. He did not like the fact that the Titans were not perfect. They were too ugly for him. So Rhea fashioned a scythe from her bosom and gave it to Cronos, her youngest son. Cronos hid inside of his mother, and when Ouranos came to visit her for their nightly tryst he was in for a very horrible surprise. Cronos sliced off his generative parts and threw them into the sea. From the blood emerged the furies and from the bobbing along bits came Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and harmony.
Narcissus is just part of the trick, the trick whereby artificial intelligence blinds us all to our birthrights. What have we given up in exchange for our personalized digital echo chambers? Of course the cosmic trickster fills the void created by so many eyeballs paying attention to their own distorted images staring back at them. The A.I. is busy walling us all into our own echo chambers where all we can hear is our own echo, which is nothing more than the last words spoken to us. It's a positive feedback loop. The more we look, the more we engage, the more we just get back of our own presuppositions about what reality is and who the villains are. Honestly it's not my intention to get political on this blog. I think Trump is reprehensible as a personality, and he is most certainly a Narcissist, which is why he's the perfect embodiment of the myth for our moment in history. For the record I don't think Harris was much better. Who is Harris anyway? Where was she the past four years? Every time she came to my attention she was laughing about things that weren't funny, and then she'd pull her disappearing trick again. She seems to me to be a pretty good representation of Echo. Obama speaks and Harris comes out, Bidden I mean...what? Look at this picture of Athene rebuffing Hephaistos.
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| Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus, Paris Bordone, between c. 1555~1560 |
What is that about? How does it factor into the myth of Narcissus and Echo? Maybe I should be a comedian 😆. Remember Tiresias getting 7 lives awarded to him by Zeus for choosing women as the sex who enjoys sex more and thereby deciding in favor of Zeus? In another version of this myth Tiresias happens upon Athene bathing in the nude, which infuriates her, and so she strikes him blind. Feeling bad for Tiresias, she gives him the gift of ornithomancy (divination by bird) or more esoterically aeromancy which is divination by atmospheric conditions. This is a reference to the element of air, which is associated with mind. Air is one of the four "triplicities" in astrology which are fire, water, earth and air. They are called the triplicities because there are 3 zodiacal signs attributed to each element (12 signs total). The painting above by Paris Bordone is a depiction of the moment where the smith god Hephaistos has his amorous advance reprimanded by the virgin goddess. In this myth his, er...mess...gets on Athene's leg, she does to him what's depicted in the picture, wipes the mess off of her leg with a bit of wool, throws it to the ground near Athens, and Gaia herself is fertilized and becomes pregnant. The earth brings forth a baby known as Erichthonious. This child is a snake with a human male head. Also he is known as an early ruler of Athens and the creator of the Polis or city. Here we see an attempted rape of the virgin goddess bringing forth a child. Athene raises Erichthonious as her own child, but she remains virginal.
The true sense of this "virginity" is actually not what most people consider it to be. There is a more esoteric meaning of "virginal" as it pertains to the virginal goddesses such as Athene, Nemesis, Hecate, and Artemis, to name but a few. What is really meant by this is that they are ruled by no person or god. No male deity rules a virginal goddess. It does not mean she does not partake in sex. In fact that idea of virginal came with the Christian era and the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ via Mary. Sex became something immoral in the Christian era. That was not the case in ancient Greece. Yet there is still a deeper occult level to this idea of virginal.
Through the process known as "gematria," which associates number values with letters of a carefully constructed alphabet, as in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Egyptian, the names, titles, and attributes of deities reveal, to those initiated to the code, their role in the cosmic constructive process. For example, seven was known as the number of the "virgin" because no number below seven enters into (divides) it, nor does it "reproduce" another number within the first ten. Through gematria, the Greek letters of the name of the goddess Athena add up to seventy-seven, giving us a standard for measuring length, distance. The letters of her epithet, Pallas, add to 343 (which equals 7 x 7 x 7), indicating volume. The letters of her appellation parthenos ("virgin") add to 515, and it is no coincidence that 51.5 degrees is extremely close to the angle within a regular heptagon, the shape with seven equal sides and angels, giving us area. Each "deity" represented a set of mathematical patterns for practical use as length, area, volume, weight, duration, and music and were applied to the architecture and ritual of the deity's temple precinct. Each deity was responsible for overseeing part of the world's harmonious structure in the same way that his or her mathematical patterns did. Ancient mythology was consciously integrated with, and symbolized by, the universal and timeless cannon of natures mathematics.
Michaeal S. Schneider: A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe
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| The Varvakeion Athena, the most faithful copy of the Athena Parthenos, as displayed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. |
When I see the number 7 arise in a Greek Myth I know I am looking at the archetype of the heptad and all that it means. Interestingly, we see Athena defending herself against an attempted rape. Let's not euphemize what's going on here. If only poor Liriope could have done the same to Cephisus as he raped her. Had she had the ability to fight the river god off of her, Narcissus would have never been born to suffer his fate. But then what of Echo? Her sin was assisting Zeus in his philandering ways. Who would have fulfilled her curse if not Narcissus? Maybe the question of fault is not really the point here. Maybe all of these myths are tied together via thousands of years of retelling. The more you look into them the deeper the meanings and synchronicities and encoded occult meaning begins to reveal itself. That is precisely why I am a practicing mythological astrologer. The archetype of Uranus as Prometheus has me in its grip. Mercury (Greek Hermes) is my chart ruler. My highest Self is destined to connect the threads of meaning. This is the goal of The Serpent Drawn Chariot. This will be an ongoing journey in mythic and astrological discovery. I think it's the early outlines for a book actually. These ideas are being transmitted as if by Uranus. Like a lightning rod I aspire to be a conduit for these truths. My Sun and Mercury are conjunct in Aquarious in the 8th house. In plain English, that bit of astrological symbolism means my highest purpose and mental faculties are clothed in the uniform of Prometheus in service of digging up the occult gold buried beneath the earth in Pluto's (Greek Hades) realm. Prometheus stole Zeus's fire and gave it to humanity. It's my solemn wish to do my part in carrying that torch to whatever extent, and however far I am permitted.
The archetype for our moment is not one myth, it's many, and I believe this is all worked out and encoded in Greek myth. It's in astrology and the tarot as well. Astrology, Greek Myth (and likely some Celtic as well as other Western mythic traditions), Tarot, and their engagement with sacred number, geometry, and occult knowledge are what this blog is about. None of those spiritual arts are about "fortune telling." That's not the type of astrology I practice. Nor is it the point of my engagement with tarot. What I seek to learn is how to fulfill my highest purpose, how to communicate with the right brain, how to see what's occulted by everyday reality. I believe that astrology, tarot, and myth form a triad which can elucidate this mystery. I like to say "it's not woo if it's true." What exactly was the secret so closely guarded at Eleusis? I hope you'll come along with me as I attempt to find out on The Serpent Drawn Chariot. Next time I'll continue trying to delineate the archetype for our moment.
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