Twelve Labors Of Heracles

We can consider the labors to represent a series of encounters with the unconscious in its different aspects, and they are quite pertinent images to meditate on:

LABOR 1

KILL THE NEMEAN LION

The first task was to kill and flay the Nemean lion, which was ravaging the country. The lion is an image expressive of belligerent, masculine, instinctual energy. So Heracles' initial task was to come to grips with the very energy that caused him to become a criminal in the first place. Not only did he have to kill the lion, he had to flay it, to skin it. But the hide of this beast was so tough it was impervious to all blades; nothing would cut it. Heracles managed to kill the lion by strangling it and then flayed it with its own claws ED ¶ 0

REFERENCE TO AN ALCHEMICAL THEME

This is an early reference to a theme repeated in alchemy advising that a substance be dissolved in its own water, or calcined in its own fire. Such a prescription is nonsensical by all ordinary criteria, but psychologically we know that it refers to the fact that a complex, the psychic content that one has to deal with, contains its own potentiality for transformation if one can locate and relate to it; only by using its own energies can the work be done, since the ego does not have the necessary power. So it was with the Nemean lionit could be flayed only by its own claws ED ¶ 0

HERACLES HAS MASTERED CERTAIN

PRIMORDIAL INSTINCTUAL ENERGY

Heracles clothed himself with the skin and wore it ever afterward, with the jaws of the lion sticking up over his head; it became a kind of cloak of invulnerability similar to a dream image in which one is wearing a fur coat; the lion's skin is Heracles' fur coat. He has mastered or come to terms with a certain primordial instinctual energy, and now it no longer threatens to overwhelm him. Now it protects him and belongs to him. We could say that this formerly wild aggressive energy is now in the service of the ego ED ¶ 0

This passage from Nietzsche's essay “Homer's Contest” illustrates what the lion might have symbolized and what Heracles' task would have signified for the Greeks: ED ¶ 0

“CRUELTY THAT MUST STRIKE

FEAR INTO OUR HEARTS”

[The Greeks have a trait of cruelty that really must strike fear into our hearts.] When the victor in a fight among the cities executes the entire male citizenry in accordance with the laws of war, and sells all the women and children into slavery, we see in the sanction of such a law that the Greeks considered it an earnest necessity to let their hatred flow forth fully; in such moments crowded and swollen feeling relieved itself: the tiger [read lion] leaped out, voluptuous cruelty in his terrible eyes. Why must the Greek sculptor give forth again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions: distended human bodies, their sinews tense with hatred or with the arrogance of triumph; writhing bodies, wounded; dying bodies, expiring? Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes of The Iliad? ( Nietzsche, “Homer's Contest,” in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 33 )

This cruelty is the Nemean lion that Heracles has to conquer; this is what the lion referred to for the ancient Greeks, and although we no longer have a Nemean lion today, we are not so remote from what it stands for ED ¶ 0

EURYSTHEUS' FEAR CORRESPONDS

TO THAT OF THE EGO

After this first and all the subsequent labors, Eurystheus, the man who gave Heracles his orders, was terrified by the sight of the hero returning in triumph after overcoming these great monsters. Heracles had taken into himself the power of the creature he had overcome, and Eurystheus could not face him directly. He would only meet Heracles protected by a great urn, a scene represented on a good many Greek vases: Eurystheus peeking out of a huge urn as Heracles returns with one of his trophies. Eurystheus' fear corresponds to that of the ego, which stands in awe of the heroic energy, and is well advised to be afraid of it; if it is not, it may identify with it ED ¶ 0

LABOR 2

OVERCOME THE HYDRA OF LERNA

Heracles' second labor was to overcome the hydra of Lerna, a monster with poisonous breath that would generate two heads any time one was cut off. This is an apt image of a certain aspect of the unconscious that cannot be dealt with by ordinary means. One sees it represented in dreams in which the dreamer, encountering some small creature, perhaps an insect or reptile, tries furiously to stamp it to death, only to watch it grow bigger. The hydra has something of that same nature: one head is cut off and two emerge. Some new method had to be devised to deal with the hydra, so Heracles persuaded his nephew Iolaus to assist him, and as soon as one head was cut off, Iolaus immediately cauterized it, which prevented it from regrowing. This seems to refer to the application of affect: not only is there a discriminating operation, signified by the clean cut of the blade, but there is also an application of affective intensityfirethat produces the cauterizing effect ED ¶ 0

PROBLEM OF THE HYDRA PROBABLY

RELATED TO REPRESSION

The problem of the hydra is probably related to repression, since another of its attributes was that one of its heads was immortal; even when it was cut off it remained invulnerable and it had to be buried under a big rock, a repressive operation. We can say that Heracles dealt with the hydra of Lerna by repressive measures, a stratagem that led in the long run to his undoing. After he had disposed of the hydra, he took its poison and used it thereafter to tip his arrows. As we shall see, the poison of the hydra finally destroyed Heracles himself ED ¶ 0

LABOR 3

CAPTURING THE CERYNEIAN HIND

The third labor required capturing the Ceryneian hind, a female deer sacred to Artemis, which nevertheless had brazen hooves and golden horns. The image of this deer suggests that a masculine value (the golden horns) was being carried by a feminine principle. The Artemis principle had to be encountered, then tamed and brought back as a part of masculine consciousness ED ¶ 0

LABOR 4

CAPTURE THE ERYMANTHIAN BOAR

As his fourth labor Heracles had to capture the Erymanthian boar, the creature that killed Adonis and also Attis, the son and lover of the Great Mother Cybele. The boar can be thought of as the crude phallic power of the Great Mother that is still under control of the matriarchal psyche. To overcome the Erymanthian boar would involve the hero's coming into contact with a certain aspect of primordial feminine power and mastering it ED ¶ 0

LABOR 5

CLEANING THE AUGEAN STABLES

Cleaning the Augean stables came next on Heracles' agenda and was accomplished by diverting a river through them. They had accumulated vast quantities of manure, an image that has parallels in dreams of overflowing toilets with feces spilling out, and of long-neglected outhouses. Those are modern, individual versions of the Augean stables, indicating long neglect of the instinctive processes, and requiring Heraclean effort in attending to them and giving them their due ED ¶ 0

LABOR 6

DISPOSE OF THE STYMPHALIAN BIRDS

The sixth task was to dispose of the Stymphalian birds, huge creatures with brazen beaks and feathers and poisonous excrement who lived in a swamp that was neither land nor water. They were scattered by the use of noisemakers like rattles and we can think of them as evil spirits, negative autonomous complexes that were exorcised by raising a counter-spirit against them. The image of the Stymphalian birds and the way Heracles dealt with them might come to mind when one encounters people who, unable to stand normal silence, chatter perpetually. Perhaps they are compelled to make noise in order to frighten their Stymphalian birds away ED ¶ 0

LABOR 7

CAPTURE OF THE CRETAN BULL

The hero's seventh labor, the capture of the Cretan bull that was ravaging the island, involves symbolism taken up again in the myth of Theseus. The bull, along with the lion, represents an aspect of masculine, instinctual energy and is one of the manifestations of Zeus, who carried away Europa as a bull. It has a lengthy symbolism. The basic image of Mithraism was the sacrifice of the bull, and the bullfight ritual that still exists in Spanish cultures belongs to this same symbolism. In dreams the bull generally expresses the dangerous chthonic aspect of masculine power, the quality that Heracles is obliged to encounter and deal with. An example of this was a patient's dream following a psychotic episode: the dream consisted of the simple statement, “The bull is loose” ED ¶ 0

LABOR 8

GET RID OF THE MAN-EATING MARES

The next episode concerns the man-eating mares of Diomedes, who would feed his guests to them. The imagery here refers to coming to grips with the devouring aspects of the unconscious, which is not always hospitable ED ¶ 0

LABOR 9

FETCH THE GOLDEN GIRDLE OF ARES

The ninth labor is a little different. The hero was required to fetch the golden girdle of Ares worn by Hippolyte, the queen of the Amazons, a race of warlike females. The word amazon means “without breasts,” and the story relates that these women would amputate the right breast in order to be better archers. At the same time, to be born male in the world of the Amazons was a disaster, because a male child's leg was broken at birth to ensure that it would grow up crippled. Here we have a picture of the matriarchal psyche, and to take the girdle of Ares from the queen of the Amazons meant redeeming the masculine principle, which was under subjection to the matriarchal aspect of the psyche ED ¶ 0

LABOR 10

RETURN OF THE CATTLE OF THE GIANT GERYON

The account of the tenth labor, the return of the cattle of the giant Geryon, who was located somewhere at the limits of the known world, takes us on a long, meandering journey in which Heracles travels all the way out beyond the Rock of Gibraltar and back, his main activity consisting of civilizing whatever he comes to. He tames wild beasts, founds cities, and colonizes various places he passes throughthis is a portrait of Heracles as a culture hero civilizing the barbarians, foreshadowing what the Greeks in fact would eventually carry out in the Mediterranean basin ED ¶ 0

LABOR 11

FETCH THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE HESPERIDES

As his penultimate task Heracles was to fetch the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides, which were protected by a dragon that lay coiled around the treea setting, of course, reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. Heracles had to call upon the Titan Atlas to locate the garden and agreed to hold up the world while Atlas plucked the golden apples for him. Atlas saw a chance to get rid of his heavy burden, and would have left Heracles holding the world, but Heracles tricked him into reassuming the burden by asking him to take it back for just a minute while he placed a pad on his shoulder ED ¶ 0

HESPERIDES AND IMAGE OF PARADISE

ARE EXPRESSIONS OF WHOLENESS

There is something analogous here to the story of Saint Christopher, the giant ferryman who carried across a stream an infant who got heavier and heavier until finally he was struggling under the weight of the whole world, after which he learned he had been bearing the infant Jesus. Here we have a similar idea. It tells us that the apples of the Hesperides and the whole image of paradise are expressions of wholeness, which cannot be reached unless one can carry the weight of wholeness, the weight of the world, on one's shoulders. This is not a permanent taskit should not be thatbut it has to be taken on for a moment. Then there is the problem of getting it off again ED ¶ 0

HERACLES KILLED THE GIANT

WHILE HOLDING HIM ALOFT

On Heracles' return with the golden apples, he met the giant Alcyoneus, who forced him into a wrestling match. The giant was constantly rejuvenated by contact with the earth, so that every time in the wrestling match that he suffered a fall, he was reinvigorated. Things went badly for Heracles until he realized what to do; he killed the giant while holding him aloft and not allowing him to touch the earth. Here again is the image of bearing a weight rather than letting it fall, which corresponds psychologically to what is required at a certain point in coming to terms with an unconscious complex. Such a pocket of energy and affect from the unconscious, which tends to take the ego by surprise and trigger an emotional outburst, must be held in awareness until it has exhausted its quantity of unconscious energy, until it has “cooled off.” If it is let go too soon, it is reinforced by its contact with the depths ED ¶ 0

LABOR 12

CAPTURE OF CERBERUS, THE DOG OF HELL

At last Heracles ended his servitude with the capture of Cerberus, the dog of hell. This seems to be the negative version of a previous task. The paradisal garden of the Hesperides represents the positive aspect of contact with the center, the Self, but here we have a descent into hell instead of an ascent into paradise. Heracles brought Cerberus up to earth, exposing him to consciousness, so that the horror of the dark side of the Self was seen and could no longer be doubted. By contrast, the apples of the Hesperides were a powerful token of the beatific aspect of the Self ED ¶ 0

HERACLES BECOMES A SLAVE

OF OMPHALE

There is another episode in which Heracles, thinking he had been accused of stealing cattle by an old man named Iphitus, murdered him in a fit of rage. To redeem himself for that crime he became a slave of Omphale, an Anatolian queen, who dressed him in skirts and made him weave and amuse her. He succumbed totally to feminine domination. Once again we come upon a theme that is almost unheard of in a hero myth, but its true-to-life quality is striking. It implies that after living out of and serving the masculine principle so extremely, the hero must submit himself to the service of the feminine, a notion that we see again in medieval chivalry, where the knight would commit himself to the service of his mistress. It indicates the extent to which the male ego is obliged to strip itself of its masculine identity in the course of the individuation process ED ¶ 0

THEME OF THE MONSTER THAT

MUST BE OVERCOME

Heracles is associated with various other feats, and one other important episode brings the hydra back into the picture. The story has it that Heracles wanted to marry Deianeira, but in order to do so he had to wrestle with Achelous, the river god, who also sought her hand. Achelous was a strange creature who could take three different forms: that of a bull, a speckled serpent, and a bull-headed mannot unlike Proteus, who was able to transform himself almost indefinitely. This is the theme of the monster that must be overcome in order to rescue the anima, and it tells us that the relationship function in a man has to be won; it is not given automatically but has to be carved out of the whole area of unregenerate concupiscence that he starts out with. This primitive desirousness is symbolized by Achelous, the river god ED ¶ 0

HERACLES CONSUMED BY FLAMES

OF HIS OWN FUNERAL PYRE

Heracles overcame Achelous and won Deianeira as his wife. But at a river crossing, the centaur Nessus, who had offered to take Deianeira across the stream, attempted to rape her in the middle of the crossing. Heracles immediately responded by killing him with one of his arrows tipped in the poisonous gall of the hydra. As Nessus was dying, he said to Deianeira, “Take some of my blood. It is a love charm and if ever you're in danger of losing the love of Heracles to another, you can apply this charm and it will regain his love for you.” What he gave her was his blood containing the hydra poison. Later, when Heracles became enamored of another, Iole, Deianeira made use of what Nessus had given her. She dipped a shirt in the poisoned blood and sent it to Heracles, thinking she would thereby win him back. But as Heracles put on the shirt it burst into flame and he could not tear it off. His only release was to lie down and be consumed by the flames of his own funeral pyre, at which point he ascended to heaven and joined the gods as a divinity ED ¶ 0

POISON OF THE HYDRA

FINALLY DESTROYED HERACLES

There are some weighty implications in this symbolism. Many analogies to the crucifixion and ascension of Christ are present, and the story is worked out by means of naïve images that tell us much about the primitive psyche and the nature of desirousness. The poison of the hydra, which had for so long made Heracles invincible, finally destroyed him. As we noticed previously, his victory over the hydra had been only partial; it seemed to smack of repression rather than of any decisive transformation ED ¶ 0

POISON THAT CANNOT BE DESTROYED

AS PRIMITIVE DESIROUSNESS

The Nessus episode suggests that the poison that cannot be permanently destroyed and finally turns against the hero can be thought of as primitive desirousness. This is what used to be called concupiscence, which seems to be at the very root of all organic life; it does not differ from original sin. The effect of the hydra poison takes place in the context of desirousness, of lustthe attempted rape by Nessus, the later desire of Heracles for a new mistress, and then the possessive desire of Deianeira ED ¶ 0

FIRES OF HERACLES' FUNERAL PYRE

OVERWHELM FLAMES OF HIS DESIRE

The myth is a dramatization of how this concupiscence, this primordial desirousness, finally burns everything that pertains to it, and the culmination only occurs when another fire, the funeral pyre, overwhelms the flames of desire. It represents a kind of ultimate purification in which a fiery purging of everything that is mortal in Heracles takes placea final sublimation that transforms him to the eternal state. Although many of Heracles' labors actually symbolize overcoming primitive desirousness, in the end he succumbed to all that he had been struggling against. Yet at the same time his failure was his final victory ED ¶ 0