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Alchemy of the Soul
The Eros and Psyche Myth as a Guide to Transformation
By Martin Lowenthal NICOLAS-HAYS, INC.
Copyright © 2004 Martin Lowenthal
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89254-590-2
CHAPTER 1
ANCIENT ROOTS, SACRED MESSAGE
At first Chaos was, and Night, and dark Erebus, and wide Tartarus; there was no earth, nor air, nor heaven; but first of all black-winged Night laid a wind-egg in the boundless bosom of Erebus, from which in revolving time sprang the much-desired Eros, his back glittering with golden wings, like the swift whirlwinds.
ARISTOPHANES
The ancient roots and sacred message of the story of Eros and psyche come to the surface through an examination of much older Greek images of Eros that center around the creation of the universe and the origination of differentiation from a primal unity. In the ancient texts, Eros was androgyne, having the qualities of both genders and thus containing the potential for generating all phenomena. These early stories were part of the mythological heritage that resonated with informed listeners and practitioners of the mystery schools at the time.
The cultural and spiritual atmosphere out of which the original myth grew plays an essential part in the shaping of the story. In this spiritual landscape, in a realm beyond time and causality (for the true beginning is not to be found in the cosmos), distinct impressions appear as the First Cause, even though, in time, each seems to contain within itself a still prior condition. Each moment, cycle, and era arises from the residue of the prior time, its blossoms withering and providing the ground for something new. Yet the new is really the old that has defied dissolution — perhaps a residue of some prior universe.
The making of the myth of Eros and psyche begins at some level in original Chaos — primordial, formless matter in formless space. Beyond qualities, Chaos exists eternally and uncreated, boundlessly vast, as pure openness. It is neither dark nor light, moist nor dry, hot nor cold, but all things together and undifferentiated.
From original Chaos came Great Night (Nox) and Darkness (Erebus). This sister and brother and their parent, not realizing they were all family, ignored each other for aeons. Being boundless and not bonded to or by anything, each believed itself to be everything.
Whether out of an excess of being or some sudden impulse, Great Night felt stirrings. She sensed the movement filling her body, if you can call it a body. The movement was wind. The motility of wind excited her and she felt something emerging from her body. Until then, she had not realized that she even had the potential for differentiation, for manifesting anything less than her whole being.
Suddenly, Night planted a spirit-egg in the bosom of Darkness/Silence. In the time before time, in the cycle that preceded cycles, Eros, whom some call phanes, was hatched from this egg, emerging double-sexed, four-headed, and golden-winged. Through his birth, he set the universe in motion.
Eros (the primordial love god) as Phanes ("revealer") created Earth, sky, Heaven, Sun, and Moon. Great Night also named him Ericepaius ("feeder on heather"), a buzzing celestial bee, carrier and dispenser of the nectar of divinity. From Eros issued all the gods and goddesses. The very act of creation was an act of love. The vibration of love echoed through all existence as relationship — relationship to the primal parent, relationship of siblings, and relationship of lovers as they mated and expanded the universe and web of creation. Every one of them carried a seed, a genetic pattern of Eros, that connected them to each other and to their original source, and this seed was passed on to their issue.
So the union of indeterminate Night (the formless capacity to take form) and pervasive Darkness (the formative power) gave rise to Eros, from whom all else was created, by whom all things are related, and through whom all relationships derive their attraction and their bonding quality. In turn, from relationship arose time and place. Indeed, all form issued from this phenomenon of Eros.
Eros brought desire to the universe. Before Eros established desire as a base for relating and creating, however, the seed of desire must have been latent in all that gave rise to Eros. Or perhaps everything arose simultaneously. In fact, the logic of sequence in time may not apply to these dimensions, which are beyond our mental understanding and verbal description.
Great Night also named golden-winged Eros Protogenus Phaëthon ("first-born shiner"), the primal radiance or luminosity represented by the sun. Eros' four heads correspond to the symbolic animals of the four seasons: the ram (Zeus/spring), the lion (Helius/summer), the serpent (Hades/winter), and the bull (Dionysus/new year).
Under the influence of Eros, the formless, the formative, and form itself came to know each other and distinctions appeared. Forms had to arise from the primal state of being, because a frame was needed to see and hear and touch any and all of the potential qualities implicit in the formless state, in pure being.
The heat of Eros ignited the furnace in the universe and the hearths in all the smaller universes. This heat is at once cosmic and innermost. It is the charged atmosphere we breathe and in which we move. It is the warm breath we bring forth from the core of our body and pass to the world.
With Eros came existence and Reality, a dimension of being that must have always been there, but only now became evident. Reality gave rise to concepts like "now" and "here," and from Reality issued Presence.
Reality resembles a globe one half of which is land and the other water. The land always surrounds the water, making it a lake, and the water surrounds the land, making it an island. The paradoxical nature of Reality — as boundless and bound, totally open and totally manifest, empty and filled by Presence, terminal and eternal — lies hidden within all that flowed from that primal creation.
Until the arrival of Eros, each quality in the universe did not even know whether it existed or not. As distinctions became manifest, the gods thought: "If this relates to that yet is not that, and that relates to all these other things, then the entire universe must be my relations, my family." Each knowing contained the thought that it was the world. Yet it was still a world without meaning. So Eros — known as Phanes, Ericepaius, Protogenus Phaëthon, Zeus, Amor, and later as Cupid — took on many additional qualities that gave order to the chaos and significance to form.
The reverberations of love, relationship, desire, and passion gave rise to all that troubles all beings, gods included, and all that radiates with beauty. Suddenly, certainty and uncertainty arose to compete for the minds of all who seek to live a meaningful life. For with creation came time, and with time, causality and death. Whatever has a beginning in time has an end in time. Every child of Eros is haunted by this impending end. Each of us thinks: "If only I could harness the great powers of Eros, this enemy could be conquered."
With the creation of causal relationships, time arose, and with time, death emerged to keep the cycles going and give new possibilities a chance. But if all things die, what is beyond deterioration? What is immortal? The openness from which love arose, the relationships of things as manifestations of that primal love, the fullness of space to include all that arises, including tensions and conflicts, and the cycle of their birth and death and rebirth — these do not change and are not subject to the temporal world.
Those who came to realize that death was a blessing saw that it made further creation possible and reminded them that all they could count on was open Presence. These enlightened ones found the key to eternity beyond time and to freedom in their original nature. These realized beings became the gods, while those who could not transcend the haunting sense of death remained in the shadow of eternity.
These haunted ones must have felt that Eros had a mischievous and wicked nature to have given them death along with life — a life, moreover, aggravated by an awareness of death. This is our dilemma as human beings seeking to make our way in a paradoxical world filled with the love that makes life possible, and the treacherous dangers that surround us all the time.
With the emergence of time and space, of gods, of Heaven and Earth, of water and air and fire, things took on shapes and stories. There were endless shapes and countless stories, many of them variations on the same subject. Gods overlapped and merged and swapped places, but always within the frame of the fundamental relationships that had been laid out in the original design of the universe. Indeed, the names and stories of the gods change with the times — father becomes son, mother becomes daughter, daughter becomes mother, sister becomes wife, and brother becomes husband. The fact that the gods simply exist beyond time does not make them invulnerable. They are subject to the same cycles and reformations that afflict any species born on Earth that evolves and must regenerate. For the gods, this occurs in the ebb and flow of consciousness.
With time, the gods and goddesses needed to assert their own autonomy and primacy. As they recognized the spark of Eros in themselves, they conceived that they had created it and could cultivate it in their own ways. So double-sexed Eros, the father/mother, was first split into father Eros and mother Aphrodite/Isis. In later times, Eros became the son, the child to be raised by Zeus, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. And as the works of creation expanded, as Heaven and Earth arose, as all the elements and all creatures, all the vast universes and all the small universes came into being, each carried this flame of Eros, this unstoppable impulse to generate and to relate. And each was a parent of this fire and a weaver of the nets of connections, developing its potential in its own way, thereby infinitely elaborating the possibilities of manifestation and the threads of connection.
Eros as father/son and Aphrodite as mother/daughter wove between all creation — gods, elements, seasons, worlds, creatures, and humans — threads of emotion, desire, and connection that hold together the fabric of relationships for the universe.
The myth of Eros and Psyche is one of many stories about the same gods and goddesses, all seeking to reveal something of the deeper nature of the relationships and dynamics that guide us in our own journey through the everlasting cycles. It portrays our service to the sacred qualities that make our efforts worthy. The truth that resides in every moment and is pointed to in every authentic sacred gesture hides beneath the surface of each part of this tale. Listen carefully as it unfolds and release all your assumptions about heroes, villains, and victims.
In the time of our story, Aphrodite plays the role of a great goddess who can and does govern birth, life, love, death, time, and fate. She is the force that reconciles humans to all forces through the senses, wisdom, and sexual mysticism. The Greek Aphrodite, who was worshipped in Egypt as Isis, in Sumeria as Inanna, in Babylonia as Ishtar, in the Near East as Ashtoreth, and was known in Roman times as Venus, reveals the mysteries of the gods, of life, of death, and of spiritual realization. Invoking her name gives life. Under her direction, disciples realize great bliss and achieve immortality.
When did all this happen? Is it still happening? A moment ago, or now, or in a future aeon? Is it always happening, again and again, because it is the nature of being, of life, and of the sacred context in which we live? And what was it that hosted and witnessed all these arisings? Whose eye caught all these things in the net of its sight and gathered them so we could speak of them and be nourished by their flesh? The answers to these and other questions will emerge as we explore the myth itself.
CHAPTER 2
EROS AND PSYCHE
The glory of God is man fully alive.
Saint Iraneaus
Our story, which began in the stirrings before time, now begins anew in time on Earth in a certain city where a king and queen had three daughters, all quite pleasing to the eye. While the beauty and charms of the two eldest were praised, words, gestures, and music could not be found adequate to describe the awe-inspiring beauty and wondrous qualities of the youngest daughter, Psyche. It was rumored that Psyche had been born when a dewdrop from Heaven fell upon the land.
So great was Psyche's beauty that people from far and wide came to gaze upon her. They marveled at her and claimed her as the great goddess, Aphrodite, sprung from the depth of the sea and born of a foamy wave. Or perhaps Heaven had rained a fresh procreative dew and the Earth, not the sea, had given birth to a second Aphrodite in all the splendor of flowering maidenhood.
Psyche's fame increased daily. Mortals flocked to see the wonder and glory of the maid, abandoning the temples of Aphrodite, leaving her rites undone, her altars in disrepair and soiled, her contributions disregarded, her images uncrowned, and her ceremonies neglected. Their hearts and minds, captivated by the mortal beauty of the young girl, left the true power of the great goddess untapped and disrespected. Young Psyche was greeted on her morning walks with food and flower offerings, as if she contained within her person the energies, wisdom, and power of the goddess.
Aphrodite herself grew angry with the divine honors and worship bestowed on Psyche. With divine rage, she said to no one in particular: "For the sake of Heaven, whoever thought I would be treated like this? I, Aphrodite, the source of all the elements, the womb of created things, the loving mother of all the world, am I expected to share my sovereignty and place with a pretentious mortal maid while my name is reduced from its heavenly height? Am I to be content with the reflected glory of the worship paid to this imposter? Shall a girl that is fated for death parade in my stead, receiving the attention that was meant for timeless beings? Was it in vain that the shepherd, Paris, with the approval of Zeus, chose me above other goddesses for my beauty and splendor? No! No! No! This is absurd! I cannot let this silly, naïve, and confused creature, whoever she may be, usurp my glory any longer. Soon enough she will be sorry for her fine looks and sick at heart for the beauty that will be her curse."
Aphrodite immediately called her winged son, Eros — that untamed youth feared in Heaven and on Earth, who, armed with arrows and torch aflame, knowing no boundaries and holding no respect for the rules, infects all with unquenchable desires. Knowing his inclination for mischief and sport, she drew him to the city where Psyche lived and told him the whole story of the misguided cult that had grown up around her. Groaning with indignation, she entreated: "I implore you, darling, by all thebonds of love that bind you to me who bore you, use the sweet wounds of your arrows and the honeyed burns of your fires to afflict this pretentious and feckless beauty. If you have any respect for me, you will set this right. This one thing I would have you do with unfaltering determination. See that the maiden falls desperately in love with some perfect outcast — someone with no health, rank, or fortune, someone so wounded that there is none in the world to rival his misery."
Having spoken, she kissed him long and fervently with parted lips. Then she, like the flowing of the tide, returned to her original home of the sea where the waves calmed at the touch of her rosy feet. The very depths greeted her and the sea gods did her bidding as if given instructions ahead of time. The daughters of Nereus sang in harmony. Poseidon with bristling blue-green beard, came with his wife, Amphitrite, and their son, Palaemon, riding a dolphin. From far and wide came hosts of Tritons, one blowing softly on his conch-shell, another protecting Aphrodite from the heat of the sun with a silken parasol, a third holding a mirror before her mistress's eyes, while others, harnessed to her carriage, carried her onward. Such was the host that escorted Aphrodite as she traveled to the halls of the ocean.
Over time, Psyche found no real satisfaction in all the honors paid her and began to rue her loveliness. Everyone gazed at her from a distance; no king, prince, or commoner ever came forward and dared to make love to her. All wondered at her beauty as they would an exquisite statue. Both of her less beautiful sisters were courted and married to kings, but Psyche remained unwed. Her body grew ill and her spirit broken. She hated her loneliness and her solitude, loathing in her heart the beauty that charmed so many.
Her father was beset by great grief for his daughter and a fear that the gods might be angry that his subjects had made so much of her, since drought had befallen the land. He decided to consult the ancient oracle of Apollo at Miletus. He offered the customary prayers and burnt offerings, and asked where he could find a husband for his daughter, whom nobody would marry.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Alchemy of the Soul by Martin Lowenthal. Copyright © 2004 Martin Lowenthal. Excerpted by permission of NICOLAS-HAYS, INC..
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