The Eternal Drama: The Inner Meaning of Greek Mythology by Edward Edinger

Author:Edward Edinger [Edinger, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient, Folklore, Greece, History, Jungian, Movements, Mythology, Non-Fiction, Psychology, Social Science
ISBN: 9780834828681
Google: BbJFAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00H2SCMGS
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2001-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Experience shows us that the basic cause of all the difficulties of this transition is to be found in a deep-seated and peculiar change within the psyche. In order to characterize it I must take for comparison the daily course of the sun—but a sun that is endowed with human feeling and man’s limited consciousness. In the morning it rises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament. In this extension of its field of action caused by its own rising, the sun will discover its significance; it will see the attainment of the greatest possible height, and the widest possible dissemination of its blessings, as its goal. In this conviction the sun pursues its course to the unforeseen zenith—unforeseen, because its career is unique and individual, and the culminating point could not be calculated in advance. At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning. The sun falls into contradiction with itself. It is as though it should draw in its rays instead of emitting them. Light and warmth decline, and are at last extinguished.2

As the second half of life proceeds, the ego must accept its own diminishment and its relative unimportance in relation to the Self. We can take this to be the message Odysseus received from his initial exploit as he started on his way home—on his path downward from the zenith.

After weathering a storm, Odysseus and his men landed on the island of the Lotus-eaters. Lotus-eating has peculiar effects, as Homer describes:

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