How Storytelling Helps us to become Conscious
Here’s a story from Greek Mythology about the relationship between lovers and why it is often so very tricky.
Lovers – Image by Alessio – Pixabay
The Story of Psyche and Eros
Part One: The Wedding
Once there was a Kingdom with a king, a queen and their three daughters. The two eldest daughters were ordinary but the youngest was worshipped for her beauty. Nevertheless, it was the elder two daughters who found happy marriages while no-one asked for the hand of the youngest daughter who was called Psyche.
The king went to an oracle which happened to be ruled by the goddess Aphrodite. The goddess became jealous of Psyche’s beauty and prophesied that the girl was to be taken to the top of a mountain, chained to a rock and left to be ravished by Death who would then marry her.
No-one disobeys a goddess so Psyche’s parents made a wedding procession which was also a funeral cortege, mixing together floods of tears, wedding finery and funerary darkness. Then the parents left, extinguishing their lights and leaving Psyche alone in the dark, chained to a rock.
Determined to destroy Psyche, Aphrodite engaged the assistance of her son, Eros, who was the god of Love. She instructed him to shoot Psyche in the heart with one of his arrows so that she would fall in love with the ugly beast, Death, which would come to ravish her.
Eros was about to do his mother’s bidding when, on seeing Psyche, he accidently pricked his finger on one of his arrows and fell in love with her himself.
Instantly, he decided to take Psyche as his own bride and asked his friend, West Wind, to carry her down gently from the rock and the top of the mountain into the Valley of Paradise.
Psyche thus found herself in a heaven rather than a hell. She did not ask Eros any questions but luxuriated in her good fortune instead.
Eros came to her every night only asking that she would not look at him or enquire into any of his ways, telling her that, as long as she abided by these rules, she would be able to stay in paradise.
It was not long before she became pregnant. Eros told her that if she continued to be unquestioning, that the child would be a god and immortal. However, if she did question him then child would be mortal and a girl and he would leave her.
Part Two: Falling Out of Paradise
Image by Wilfrido – Pixabay
Psyche’s two sisters became very jealous that Psyche was in paradise and living with a god so they went to the rock where Psyche had been chained and called down to her, pretending to be concerned for her welfare.
Psyche naively reported this to Eros who warned her that she was in great danger and that if she paid attention to her sisters that there would be a disaster. However, Psyche extracted permission from Eros to allow the sisters to visit.
When West Wind brought the two sisters to paradise, they appeared to admire everything while, underneath, they were seething with jealousy and envy.
It was only when the two sisters came for a second visit, that they realised Psyche had never actually seen her husband. On returning home, they concocted a venomous plan to visit a third time and tell Psyche that Eros was in fact a serpent and loathsome and that when her baby was born he would devour them both.
They advised Psyche to get a lamp, put it in a covered vessel and take it to the bedchamber along with a sharp knife which she was to keep beside her on the couch. In the middle of the light, when her husband was fast asleep, Psyche was to expose the lamp, look at his face and cut off his head with the knife.
When night came, Psyche followed the instructions but, instead of seeing a loathsome serpent, she discovered that Eros was a handsome god. She was about to kill herself for her treachery when she accidently pricked her fingers on one of Eros’s arrows and fell in love with him for the first time.
In the same moment, she accidently spilled oil from the lamp onto his shoulder. Woken by the pain, Eros realised what she had done. He opened his wings and flew off off with Psyche clinging to him but she wasn’t able to hold on for long and soon fell to earth, exhausted and desolate. Eros told her that, as she had broken her promise, the child she bore would be mortal and a girl. Then he flew off back to his mother Aphrodite.
Image by Richard Mc – Pixabay
Part Three: Restitution
Psyche was desperate; her beloved had gone and she was alone. On deciding to commit suicide, she went to the river to drown herself and saw Pan, the cloven-footed god, with Echo in his lap.
Pan dissuaded her from killing herself, telling her that she must pray to the god of love. However, in order to find Eros she would have to confront his mother.
When she reached the altar of Aphrodite, the goddess gave her a severe dressing down. Then she gave her four tasks to complete.
The First Task
Image by DX 21 – Pixabay
The first task was to sort out a huge pile of seeds of many different kinds into their own types before midnight. Failure would mean death.
Aphrodite swept off to attend a grand wedding festival leaving Psyche to weep about an impossible situation.
With no way out, Psyche decided once again on suicide but an army of ants came to her rescue, sorting the seeds and accomplishing the task by nightfall.
When Aphrodite returned, she begrudgingly admitted that the useless Psyche had done reasonably well.
The Second Task
Ram – Image by Public Domain Pictures – Pixabay
Aphrodite was arrogant and insulting as she gave Psyche the second task. She was to go to a certain field across the river and gather some of the golden fleece of the rams pastured there. Again, she was to be back before nightfall on pain of death.
The ferocity of the rams made this another impossible task so once again, Psyche collapsed and contemplated suicide.
She went to the river which separated her from the rams and prepared to jump in but this time she was saved by the reeds at the river’s edge which advised her not to go near the rams during the daylight hours to gather the wool but to go at dusk and only take some of the wool that had been brushed off by the brambles and low hanging branches of trees. That way she would get enough of the wool to satisfy Aphrodite without annoying the rams.
When Aphrodite discovered that Psyche had been able to complete the second task, she was furious.
The Third Task
Image by Raman Spirydonau – Pixabay
Determined to destroy Psyche and devise a third task which would bring certain defeat to her adversary, she instructed the pregnant girl to fill a crystal goblet with water from the river Styx, a river that not only went down to the depths of hell and back again but was also guarded by fierce monsters who would let no-one get anywhere near the water.
Too numbed with defeat even to cry, Psyche collapsed again but this time she was rescued by an eagle that belonged to Zeus, Eros’s father.
The eagle asked Psyche for the crystal goblet, flew into the centre of the stream, lowered it into the dangerous waters, filled it and brought it back to Psyche.
The Fourth Task
Image by ELG 21 – Pixabay
Now incandescent with rage, Aphrodite had one final chance to destroy Psyche. She instructed her to go to the underworld and ask Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld, for a cask of her beauty ointment which Psyche was then to bring back to her.
Yet again, Psyche crumbled, this time going to a high tower so that she could throw herself off it and escape her terrible fate.
However, the tower came to her rescue and gave her the necessary instructions.
She must begin her journey down into hell by finding the secret, pathless way which would lead to the Palace of Pluto, the god of the Underworld.
She would need to earn her passage by carrying two pieces of barley cake in her hands and two halfpenny coins in her teeth.
She would also need sufficient courage to pass any tests and to be careful not squander her energy on helping anyone else.
Once she was on the pathless path, Psyche descended to the River Styx and found a lame man driving a lame donkey laden with sticks of wood. When some of the sticks fell to the ground, Psyche stopped herself from retrieving them knowing that the effort would exhaust her energies.
Next she came to the ferryman and gave him one of her two coins for her passage. During the passage, a drowning man begged for her help but she refused him so that she could to save herself for the challenges ahead.
As she reached Hades, she was confronted by three old women weaving the strands of fate on a loom but when they also asked Psyche for help, she refused to give them one of the barley cakes.
Next, Psyche confronted Cerberes, a monstrous dog with three heads. She threw one of the barley cakes to him and escaped while the three heads fought over it.
At last she found the Hall of Persephone. As the tower had warned her to do, she refused the lavish hospitality offered and accepted only the simple food, sitting on the ground to eat it.
Eventually, she plucked up the courage to ask Persephone for a jar of her ointment. Persephone gave it to her without any questions and Psyche began to retrace her steps back up to the world of light.
The tower had warned her not to open the cask containing the ointment but, just as Psyche was within sight of light and the human world, curiosity got the better of her and she opened the jar.
Instead of an ointment that she could use to beautify herself, she found nothing but immediately fell into an infernal and deadly sleep.
Hearing her distress, Eros escaped from his mother’s imprisonment and flew to Psyche’s rescue. He wiped the deadly sleep from Psyche’s face and put it back in the casket. Then he awakened her with a prick from one of his arrows and admonished her for having given into her curiosity.
While Psyche finished her task and took the pot of ointment to Aphrodite, Eros flew to his father, Zeus, and pleaded for her.
Zeus told him off for his poor behaviour but promised his support, calling all the gods together and instructing Hermes the Messenger to bring Psyche to court.
Zeus announced that Eros’s tyranny of love had gone on for long enough and that it was time that he should be put in the fetters of wedlock.
To overcome the difficulty of uniting a mortal with a god, Zeus oversaw the ceremony himself and gave Psyche a pot of immortality, promising her that Eros would never leave her again but would always remain her husband.
In a wedding festival that had never before been rivalled, Zeus presided, Hermes served, Ganymede poured the wine of the gods, and Apollo played his harp. Even Aphrodite was happy with her son and daughter in law.
Sometime after, Psyche bore a daughter whose name was Pleasure.
Image by Mayur Gala – Unsplash
How does this story help you to understand relationships?
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