October 26, 2025 • 59 mins
What happens after you reclaim the power you once feared?
In this third step of Theseus’ journey, we follow the young hero as he leaves Epidaurus and travels across the narrow land bridge of the Isthmus — that grey, shimmering strip between two seas. There, he faces two strange and symbolic trials: Sínis, the Pine-Bender, and the Crommyonian Sow.
Each encounter reveals a new challenge in the work of self-transformation. Sínis confronts us with the trap of black-and-white thinking — the urge to divide our inner world into “good” and “bad” and call that judgment virtue. But when Theseus survives that tension, he enters a new and more dangerous terrain: the grey space where discernment can easily dissolve into chaos.
The Crommyonian Sow, raised by the mysterious Phaea (“the Grey One”), becomes the living image of what happens when our psychic energy turns inward and begins to devour itself. Theseus’ slaying of the Sow is not an act of destruction, but of transmutation — the moment we stop being consumed by our own patterns and learn to reclaim their energy for life.
In this episode, we explore: • The Sínis reflex — why judgment feels safe, but keeps us divided • The meaning of the grey path between opposites • The paradoxical symbol of the pig: sacred and profane, nurturing and devouring • How envy, apathy, and repression become our own “Crommyonian Sows” • A reflection on Nelson Mandela as a modern example of the heroic psyche that holds tension and transforms it into compassion
This is an episode about nuance, discernment, and the sacred middle way — the path that asks us to see clearly without condemning, and to act wisely without being swallowed by extremes.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
In our last journey, we learned how to face the parts of ourselves we once rejected.
But the real work begins after the confrontation.
What happens when we pick up the bandit's club only to realize that the power we once feared was ours all along?
When we begin to understand why unhelpful and sometimes potentially harmful beliefs and behavior patterns so often block us when we're trying to grow into better versions of ourselves, the labels of "good" and "bad" no longer seem to hold, and the simple stories that we have told to prop up our identity can begin to feel as though they are ready to collapse.
(00:42):
In their place, a new and more complicated path stretches out before us —no longer a road of black and white thinking, but a shimmering and shifting territory of grey.
In reclaiming the bronze club, the raw psychic energy of emotion from the bandit-like complex we encounter, we also need to learn how to carry it and integrate it.
(01:07):
How can we learn to use this powerful part of ourselves for good without slipping back into the old, familiar story of self-condemnation and shame for everything it once was?
The key here is to understand the process that led us to exile these parts of ourselves in the first place, and to find a new way of understanding them.
(01:29):
In this episode, we'll journey further with Theseus (Θησέας) and meet a bandit whose tying of knots will help us understand how to loosen our own.
My name is Dimitri, and welcome to the Inward Sea.
The Inward Sea Theme Music by Dimitri Roussopoulos (2025)
(02:27):
Hello and welcome to The Inward Sea.
This is a podcast where we explore the intersection of mythology, folklore and modern life.
This is the third episode in our series on the initiatory path of Theseus.
If you're just joining us on our journey here, I'd encourage you to go back and start with part one to get the full context.
For those of you continuing on the path, in our last episode we began our journey with Theseus by facing the very first bandit he meets on the road (02:47):
Periphetes (Περιφήτης).
We explored Periphetis as a symbol for our own limiting beliefs, those powerful unconscious complexes that, like a cyclops, offer only a single, rigid point of view—
(03:10):
one that keeps us from leaving our comfort zone.
We called this process "bandit spotting."
Today, let's explore what follows.
What happens after we've spotted the bandit?
How do we carry the raw untamed energy that we reclaim from complexes when we start to make them conscious?
(03:31):
Today we'll walk with Theseus as he faces two profound challenges that emerge from this very dilemma.
First, on a lonely road he'll meet the bandit Sínis (Σίνις), the pine-bender, a figure who embodies the danger of black-and-white thinking.
Sínis shows us how rigid judgments can tear us apart from within, splitting us from the very parts of ourselves that need healing the most.
(03:56):
Then, as the path winds on to the sandy shores and rocky cliffs of the isthmus, we'll encounter the monstrous Crommyonian Sow (Κρομμυωνία σῦς) a mysterious mythological image embodying the terrifying danger that comes when we allow discernment to dissolve completely.
So, take a deep breath.
(04:16):
Let the noise of the modern world fade for just a moment.
The road ahead narrows as we turn eastward towards the isthmus—
that thin strip of land held between the restless Ionian and Aegean seas.
Listen, you can almost hear the wind whispering through the pines.
Let's join Theseus there.
(04:57):
A cool wind drifted from the north, carrying the scent of turned earth mixed with the salt of the Ionian Sea.
It had been two days since his encounter with Periphetes, two days of climbing out of Epidaurus through the stony folds of the mountainous region, keeping to the high ground where the valleys still held the rain and shadow.
(05:20):
The great bronze club, though heavy, now rested on his shoulder as naturally as if it had always been there.
Now pausing on the lower slopes of Mount Oneion (Ονήιον), Theseus looked down at the road that coiled across the landscape toward a point where the land itself seemed to have been bent eastward and held taut between two seas.
(05:42):
In the distance the path slipped in and out of a pine forest before re emerging beyond it, tracing a narrow line along the pale cliffs that fell towards the distant shimmer of the Saronic Gulf.
beyond that, Megara (Μέγαρα), and the oracle at Elusius (Ελευσίνα) and further still, Attica (Αττική), at whose heart lay Athens (Αθήνα), his father's kingdom—and his destiny.
(06:08):
Shifting the weight of the bronze club, he set out again, picking his way down the rocky slopes.
As Helios (Ήλιος) climbed higher, the sound of gravel beneath his sandals gradually gave way to the dry crunch of pine needles.
The breeze that had carried the familiar scents of soil and surf now brought with it the resin spiced whispers of the forest.
(06:32):
These heard the man before he saw him.
Panting grunts and the scrape of feet slipping over the forest floor were accompanied by the most alarming sounds of creaking wood.
Somebody was working very hard.
As he rounded a bend in the road, Theseus came across a man facing away from him.
(06:53):
He was older, broad shouldered, with weathered skin and arms corded with muscle like twisted roots.
He was grunting and panting as he strained against a long rope tied to the top of a young but already very tall pine.
With great effort the man was pulling the top of the pine downwards toward another tree that stood on the opposite side of the road.
(07:16):
From the top of the bending pine dangled another, shorter length of rope, swinging to and fro as the old man deftly pulled the crown lower towards the road.
"Ah! A moment of your strength, young traveler."
The man grunted through his puffing breaths.
"This tree needs tying down.
Help me hold it while I secure the knot."
(07:38):
Clearly the man needed help, so Theseus quickly set down his club and took hold of the rope.
Even with the man still helping to hold the rope in place he felt the incredible living force of the tree surge against him.
It strained against the two of them, but, summoning all of his strength, he held tight.
(08:00):
Hand over hand the man moved around and then behind him, pulling the slack length of the rope below his grip around the trunk of the tree on the opposite side of the path.
As he was pulling, Theseus couldn't help but notice that the tree to which the man was tying the rope already had ropes of its own secured to its highest branches.
(08:24):
A long one dangled all the way down to the ground, while a shorter length ended about halfway down the trunk.
Theseus tightened his grip and leaned back, pulling harder to give the old man more slack with which to work.
(08:44):
"Sir, who are you?"
"I am a son of a blacksmith, a descendant of Corinthus."
The man offered as he looped and pulled on the knot.
"And what is it you're doing here?"
Theseus asked, his hands burning from the strain.
The man paused and looked at him.
(09:06):
Theseus could feel the gaze rake over him as he strained against the pool of the bent pine.
"Resetting a trap, the man replied.
My lazy apprentice tied it poorly.
It's for... boars."
His voice trailed off, and then, as if finding his train of thought, he added
"There is a vicious beast that has been terrorizing this road."
(09:29):
The man resumed working, but Theseus couldn't shake the feeling that while the old man's hands busied themselves with the knot, his eyes were measuring him.
"You have a strong back,"
the man said after a moment.
"Here, let me show you a trick to take the strain off your hands.
We can tie the rope around your waist and shoulders.
Let's do it that way when we pull down this second tree over here."
(09:52):
The offer hung in the still air, and in that instant Theseus knew this was no boar trap The snare was for him, and the man holding the rope was the infamous outlaw Sínis, the pine-bender himself.
The realization dropped in him like a pebble in deep water.
(10:15):
He didn't move.
He couldn't.
To release the rope now would give him away.
He shifted his weight subtly, carefully, as if testing the strain of the pine, all the while searching for a way to turn the moment to his favor.
The rope quivered in his hands, rough fibers biting into his palms.
(10:38):
Behind him, Sínis exhaled.
A sound thick with satisfaction for his knot or his next kill—or perhaps both...Theseus could not be certain.
There, that should hold it Theseus drew a sharp breath.
Then, pitching his voice just enough to hide the steadiness in his body, he called out,
(11:02):
"It's slipping I can't hold it much longer!"
The old man clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"It will hold, boy.
Now, let go!
We have the other tree to set."
"No!"
Theseus insisted, his voice tight with effort.
"Come see for yourself.
It's... it's not gonna hold.
(11:22):
I can feel it giving way!"
With a sigh, Sínis came over and gripped the rope just above Theseus's hands, tugging hard to prove its strength.
At that exact moment Theseus, with a great roar, jerked the rope violently downward and released it.
The pine groaned as if it would finally give way.
(11:44):
and in the sudden shocking recoil Sinis was thrown off his feet, landing hard on the dusty ground.
The knot held.
Before the bandit could recover, Theseus was on him, taking the shorter rope from the bent tree and expertly winding it around the man's torso, securing it tightly behind Sínis' armpits.
(12:05):
"What is this?!"
Sínis rasped in shocked outrage.
I know who you are,
Theseus said, his voice low and cold.
"You're not the son of just any blacksmith...
but of the outlaw Damastes (Δαμαστής)—the Subduer.
You’re no hunter, but a ravager—a destroyer of those who trust you.
(12:27):
You are Sínis (Σίνις).”
As he spoke, he hauled down the second pine, his words punctuated by short, sharp breaths.
"This... is no... trap for boars,"
he panted, drawing the great trunk lower and lower.
It's for the ones kind enough to lend you a hand—a snare for all who mistake your deceit for guidance! He fastened the long rope to the base of the first tree where Sinis already strained against his own bindings.
(13:04):
The bandit froze, aware that even one reckless move could tear the cords apart and catapult him to his death.
He began protesting.
No, please, please.
His voice cracking with panic.
Do not do this thing.
But Theseus ignored him.
Without a word, the young hero took up the short length of rope that hung from the now secured second tree.
(13:29):
Grabbing Sínis' feet, he tied his ankles fast.
All was set.
The two pines strained against their bonds, with Sínis strung, begging and pleading between them.
These looked at the older man, whose face was now a mask of terror and rage.
(13:50):
You did not set this trap for beasts, he said calmly, but one will surely die in it to day.
No, please, I beg you.
He drew the sword his father had left him under the great rock in Troezen (Τροιζήνα), and with two swift, clean cuts he severed the ropes that held the great trees down.
(14:11):
With a terrifying, splintering roar, the pines sprang back to their full height.
Sinis's shoulders followed one while his ankles went with the other, and in a moment all the tension that had been held in their great wooden trunks was released in a spray of pine needles and gore.
(14:32):
For a long moment there was silence.
Then, slowly, the sounds of the forest returned.
and the wind began to whisper through the pines once more.
The road continued down and to the right.
Towards the shores of the Sauronic Gulf and onward towards the town of Crommyon.
(15:11):
So now we've met Sínis, the pine-bender.
What images from this part of the story resonated with you?
and... how are they different from the ones we encountered with Periphytis?
Perhaps you noticed how the rigidity of the singular point of view and the crushing weight of the bronze club have, in this second image, been replaced with the sinuous flexibility of growing wood.
(15:37):
Periphetis confronts us with brute resistance, Sínis with dynamic tension.
Sínis is the second bandit Theseus encounters on his journey to Athens.
He is the picture of what happens when we begin facing the complexes and limiting beliefs in the shadow.
(15:57):
To understand where on our path we meet this force, we need to find the place where opposing forces are bent towards one another and held in tension for a moment, and then suddenly released.
A great example of this, and perhaps this is because it's where I most often see it happening for myself, is in decisions based on value judgments—
(16:18):
the split second decisions we make on how to respond to things that happen to or inside of us.
You may have seen a quote floating around the Internet, often attributed to the psychiatrist Victor Frankl.
It goes something like this.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response."
(16:39):
While that phrasing is not actually in Frankl's work, the idea is central to existential psychology.
The psychologist Rollo May put it beautifully when he wrote, "Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response, and, in that pause, to choose the one response towards which we wish to throw our weight."
(17:02):
That pause, that space, is where our real power lies.
It's the gap where we can stop an old unconscious reaction and choose something new.
And it's right there, in that charged and often uncomfortable space, that Sínis waits for us.
He is the embodiment of the pull of our old patterns straining against the push of new possibilities.
(17:27):
He's what happens when the energies that should be held in creative tension instead rebound violently towards their opposites.
In archetypal terms, we can see Sínis as a corrupted Senex, or a negative elder figure.
Where a healthy elder guides the hero, the corrupted Senex fears renewal.
(17:49):
He demands conformity.
He bends new life towards his old will and tears apart whatever resists him.
Like J.M. Barrie's Captain Hook to Peter Pan, he is the authoritative figure who blocks the path of transformation instead of guiding the hero across the threshold.
And this is where the genius of the myth really shines:
(18:12):
The story of Sínis is so powerful because the story itself models the very tension it describes.
It strains against itself.
Pulling in two directions at once.
Let me show you what I mean.
The ancient sources can't even agree on how Sínis kills his victims.
According to Apollodorus and Hyginus, he would ask a traveller to help him hold down a single bent pine tree.
(18:38):
Then he'd let go.
The victim, unable to hold the tension alone, would be flung into the air and crash back down to the earth, going from one extreme to the other.
But according to Diodorus and Pausanias he would bend two pine trees down, tie a person's limbs to each, and then release the trees.
The two trees would spring up in opposite directions, ripping the victim in two.
(19:03):
But the contradictions don't end there.
Even in the timeline, there are disagreements:
The Parian Chronicle, an ancient marble inscription claims that Theseus defeated Sínis after he was already the king of Athens, establishing the Isthmian Games in his honor.
And here we are pulled between some opposites.
(19:26):
You see, which version of the story is right?
Which one is the real story?
Surely one of them is correct and the other is incorrect, right?
Ah... but mythology has always been comfortable with contradiction.
Myths can hold multiplicity without collapsing, but we on the other hand usually can't.
(19:52):
Rather than holding the tension between opposites within us, like a drawn bowstring alive with potential but requiring effort and a bit of discomfort to maintain, we rush to release it.
We hurry to decide what's right, what's wrong, who we are, who we are not...and all of this happens mostly beneath our awareness, where our complexes steer the wheel.
(20:17):
And this is the inner work of Sínis.
Each of us carries a form of that corrupted Senex archetype within ourselves. It is the impulse to resolve those inner conflicts in a way that often sabotages our own growth.
So, what does this inner saboteur, this corrupted mentor, sound or feel like?
(20:40):
How might we begin to identify it?
Well, it's different for all of us.
For some, it's a voice of impatience.
"Just pick one and get it over with."
For others, it's the voice of conformity.
"Don't rock the boat, just do what's expected."
But if you listen closely, you might notice a common strategy:
(21:02):
the goal of these voices is often the same.
It urges us to choose what is socially acceptable over what feels personally authentic.
What does that pressure feel like for you?
And where do you most often feel it?
Wherever it is, that is the voice of Sínis.
(21:23):
It is the Sínis-pattern.
Like Sínis with his pine trees, it binds our experiences to opposing poles—good and bad, success or failure—
and in that sudden premature resolution, our attempts to grow are torn apart.
We find ourselves flung from who we're trying to become back to who we once were.
(21:48):
Now that we understand a bit more about the image from the story, what can we begin to do with it?
In the myth, Theseus defeats Sínis by turning the bandit's own method against him.
The very energy that once trapped him becomes his means of liberation.
Transformation here doesn't come from compromise, it comes from creativity.
(22:10):
It's about discovering a third way that dissolves the old conflict that appears between the two opposites.
Remember, the hero is not a role model to imitate, but a pattern of consciousness that we should try and apply.
The Theseus-like move in this context is about learning to stand in that living tension between the opposites without being torn apart.
(22:37):
Think of a moment when you feel torn between acting and waiting.
The Sínis reflex is immediately to pick one and to relieve that tension, to resolve the conflict inside.
The Theseus move in that moment is to pause and to let both choices inform you:
Can action contain non-action?
(22:59):
Could non action be a form of action?
Considering questions like this is where we begin to discover the third way.
Theseus meets his bandits one by one as he travels from Troezen to Athens, but in our own inner work we will often have to apply strategies from a few of these mythical encounters at the same time.
(23:21):
It's more helpful to view the bandits in the story less like a step-by-step set of instructions and more like facets of the same process.
Each presents a different strategy for navigating the inner obstacles that arise along our path of growth.
In real life, we apply the wisdom from all of these encounters simultaneously, learning to hold the tensions between the various approaches taken by the hero archetype, rather than relying on any one strategy to bring that which is unconscious into the light of consciousness.
(23:53):
You see, when we begin this work, and first recognize a bandit-like pattern within ourselves, the Sínis-like impulse is to label it as "bad".
That act of judgment gives us a quick way to release the tension.
It lets us feel momentarily "right" in the face of what might otherwise make us feel ashamed.
Even if we can't be perfect, at least we can judge perfectly.
(24:16):
That's the hidden bargain behind this reflex.
It feels good, in a grim sort of way, to chastise what we deem "wrong".
But the moment we do, we bind a part of ourselves to that label.
The declaration, "This is bad," immediately calls forth its opposite, "I should be good".
(24:38):
Instead of sitting with the discomfort and learning from it, we push the rejected part away and try to cover it with something more acceptable.
What follows is a cycle of denial and defensiveness—a desperate effort to look whole without actually becoming whole.
And that's where Sínis gets us.
(24:59):
By doing this we've already stepped into his trap.
The moment we bind one part of ourselves to "bad" and the other to "good" the rope tightens and we're stretched between them, mistaking the judgment we've cast for actual virtue, while the deeper work of integration remains undone.
We take the opposing pines of "good" and "bad" and bind the complex to them and release the tension by condemning ourselves This is how repression begins.
(25:29):
We banish the energy of whatever uncomfortable aspect of the psyche we encounter right back into the unconscious, often using judgments we've absorbed from parents, teachers, or society.
And in that moment our growth is once again undone.
But this part of the story doesn't end here.
(25:49):
There's another danger waiting on the far side of this work.
Sínis tears us apart when we try to resolve the opposites too quickly.
But if we go too far the other way, dissolving every boundary and every tension, we drift towards another kind of undoing.
(26:10):
The road narrows now, carrying a kind of tension of its own as it bends towards the isthmus, the narrow strip of land connecting the Peloponnese to the mainland.
(26:38):
For the next leg of our journey, I want to do something a little different.
Rather than retelling a story, I'd like to walk with you through the imagery that survives from this strange and fragmentary part of the myth.
The reason is simple:
here the record falters.
No two ancient sources agree on what exactly happens next, or even who or what the next confrontation Theseus must face is.
(27:05):
What the sources do agree on is that as Theseus was crossing the isthmus, he approached the town of Crommyon, which lay between Corinth and Mergara, where he faced and killed the Crommyonian Sow.
Some say that this monstrous sow was raised by an old woman named Phaea (Φαία), others that the sow was named Phaea still others claim that there was no beast at all, only a woman— whose name was... Phaea,—so savage and unhygienic that she was called a sow.
(27:38):
But you see, I think that uncertainty is the point here.
This part of the road, at least viewed through the lens I'm adopting, is supposed to be hard to see clearly.
After facing the violent clarity of Sínis, the bandit urge within each of us that splits the world into opposites and then tears us apart between them, Theseus enters a different kind of trial.
(28:07):
The pines no longer threaten to tear him apart instead, after abandoning the need to polarize the world, the path itself begins to blur.
At this point, our hero steps into the grey country between black and white where boundaries soften and certainty dissolves.
(28:27):
And the seeming lack of definition and contrast that arises when we let go of dualistic thinking and enter the grey space of the third way is appropriate,
because one way of interpreting the name fair is as The Grey One.
Psychologically This is the territory we enter after we stop forcing our inner world into rigid boxes of good and bad.
(28:52):
It can feel like a seemingly directionless, mist-washed region of moral ambiguity.
This is a space that asks us to exercise deeper discernment, in which we learn to navigate by a more nuanced moral compass
and take personal responsibility for our choices and their consequences rather than chalking them up to external or inherited definitions.
(29:16):
This uncertain and liminal space holds a profound danger.
In letting go of the certainties prescribed by external authorities, we risk letting go of discernment altogether.
We risk dissolving into a mess of undifferentiated amoral chaos in which every impulse feels valid and every boundary disappears.
(29:38):
Symbolically speaking, this is the danger of being consumed by the Crommyonian Sow.
Almost as far back as we can remember, the pig has been a creature of paradox,
both sacred and profane; fertile and gluttonous, nurturing and devouring.
In many ancient myths, the pig stands at the threshold between creation and decay.
(30:02):
For example, the Egyptian sky goddess Nut was said to swallow her piglets, the stars, each night and then birth them again every morning,
while in Greece, Demeter (Δημήτηρ) received piglets as sacrificial offerings for the renewal of the earth.
The same animal that symbolized divine fruitfulness also came to embody sloth, lust, purity, and filth.
(30:26):
Because it feeds indiscriminately, seemingly devouring everything, including its own young, and yet is capable of giving birth to large numbers,
the pig has long mirrored the amoral cycles of nature itself, where creation and destruction are not opposites, but phases of one eternal process.
From a Western perspective, a cultural lens that has been heavily influenced by Christianity, the pig also has a strong association with the image of possession.
(30:54):
From a symbolic perspective, we can understand the idea of such possession as being a state in which the conscious ego is swallowed by unconscious drives and behaviors,
causing a person to behave more like an animal or a beast rather than a human being.
Even today, the pig remains a complex and seemingly contradictory symbolic image.
(31:17):
Its near-human skin and unsettling blend of intelligence, appetite, and emotion draw both disgust and affection.
We call someone a pig when they've surrendered to greed or corruption, when the appetite devours the soul.
But we also hold gentler opinions of this amazing animal:
(31:39):
In Winnie the Pooh, we see Piglet's anxious innocence,
the talking pig Babe's pure hearted courage, or the trusting character of Wilbur from Charlotte's Webb.
The image of the pig in both mythology and pop culture exposes what we'd rather not see or acknowledge in ourselves the uneasy union of tenderness and gluttony, empathy and indulgence, innocence and appetite.
(32:07):
It's this volatility, this oscillation between devotion and devouring, that makes the Crommyonian Sow such a haunting image.
And so as this myth fades into fog here, we find that the Crommyonian Sow isn't only a monster on the road, it's an image of a force within us.
The unconscious is powerful and vast, and it holds the raw material for our growth, but it's also important to remember that the unconscious is not your friend.
(32:38):
It's not a benevolent guide to be followed blindly.
Shadow work is not about surrendering to the impulses of amoral forces of instinct and urge,
but it's a conscious alchemical craft of engaging with them to transmute their contents into resources for a better life.
(32:59):
In this part of the story, waiting for Theseus in that grey, misty place on the isthmus is the perfect image for this amoral, undifferentiated power, the Crommyonian Sow.
an untamed creature of instinct that is as capable of giving birth to multitudes as she is of devouring them.
According to Apollodorus, this frightening creature was raised by an old woman, named, as we've already said, Phaea (33:20):
The Grey One.
The name Phaea is another symbolic layer to this image, and we should consider it carefully.
It invites us to pause and consider what grey or greyness means to us.
Or, what it may have meant to the ancient Greeks who have lent us this story.
(33:45):
Luckily, Greyness appears in another place in this mythology as well.
One of the most famous epithets of the goddess Athena is Glaucopis (γλαυκῶπις).
We often translate this as Grey-eyed.
But it also means so much more.
It can mean bright eyed or even blue eyed.
It evokes the shimmering silvery blue quality of the sea, a colour that is alive, full of hidden depth, and unimaginable power.
(34:11):
The point again is for us modern readers to learn to accept the ambiguity rather than rushing to resolve it.
Because despite our very best efforts there's simply no way that any of us can ever claim to know exactly how the person sitting next to us sees or perceives colour, let alone how it might have been perceived by people who are long gone.
(34:34):
A lot has been said about ancient people and colors.
There's a misconception, for example, that ancient cultures didn't see or have a word for the colour blue.
While the historical debate about ancient colour perception is a fascinating topic, it's best left to those more informed than myself.
And what we can say for certain is that our experience of color is deeply personal and cultural.
(35:00):
In this myth grey isn't a flat, neutral color.
It's a dynamic quality full of light and mystery.
It's a powerful reminder that we can never truly know another's experience of color, just as we can never pin down a single simple meaning for our own inner states or experiences.
(35:20):
To remember this is to understand the importance of the grey space that opens when we hold the tension between opposites.
Allowing multiple truths to exist at once.
That space is shimmering with potential.
So when we hear that this monster of the isthmus, the Crommyonian Sow, is connected to Phaea, The Grey One.
(35:41):
We're being told that we're in a place of deep symbolic ambiguity.
The lines between the nurturer and the monster she creates and the predator all dissolve into one.
This confusion is the point.
It's a perfect portrait of that inner state where we can no longer distinguish a raw impulse from a part of our soul or psyche that gives it life.
(36:06):
This image, the Crommyonian Sow and Phaea, is the devouring mother archetype, the all-consuming force that erases identity and consciousness.
So how does our hero handle this confrontation?
He doesn't negotiate with this force.
He doesn't surrender to it.
(36:27):
He slays the Sow.
Just like with the other bandits we've encountered so far along this road, slaying the sow is a profound act of alchemical transmutation.
It is the conscious ego stepping in to set firm ethical boundaries with a destructive and all consuming inner force.
It is the moment we stop being devoured by a pattern and instead find the sacred energy trapped within it, liberating that energy for a new purpose.
(36:54):
In this way it's a lot like claiming that bronze club from the first bandit, Periphetes.
What does slaying the Sow look like in our own lives?
To start with, we need to identify and name whatever force threatens to consume our energy.
It'll often be something wild and unbridled, an impulse we would usually judge as "bad" and try to repress.
(37:19):
But now that we've moved beyond the Sínis-trap We know better than to string ourselves up by those old value judgments.
Now we can choose to stay with the tension instead.
That's the grey path, the confrontation with what lies beneath.
Here I'm going to reach for the low hanging fruit of envy as an example.
(37:42):
In our current age of social media and the perpetual curation of our lives and exploits on the Internet, envy and its eager bedfeller self loathing are some of the easiest of these consuming aspects of the unconscious to drag out into the light.
The devouring pattern is that endless scroll, either literally through social media posts or figuratively through the thoughts of everything others have or have achieved that we feel is missing in our own lives—
(38:10):
and the resulting bitterness that eats away at our sense of self-worth.
The alchemical act, the slaying of the sow, is to address the root of the bitterness, not to suppress the desire.
It's to consciously ask, what is this envy telling me that I want for my own life?
And then to channel that intense energy into building it for ourselves.
(38:35):
Another example that might easily be applied to a large swathe of the population is the way many of us are paralyzed by apathy.
Here potential is devoured by a fog of inaction.
Today, we're perpetually bombarded by so much information that it's far easier to give up trying to locate our own inner compass among the mess of what the entire world seems to be telling us we should be doing.
(39:01):
Inaction may look like laziness, but there's often something deeper going on.
When the world around us seems to be pushing us in directions that lie at odds with the deepest core of who we are inaction can often be a quiet act of resistance.
Slaying the Sow here is to honor the message in that resistance, that the soul is protesting a false path, refusing to walk it.
(39:27):
Naming that resistance is the act that frees the energy to move again, to search for a truer, more authentic path, even if the first step is small and uncertain.
Whether it appears as envy or apathy, or anything else that drains our vitality and robs us of potential in any given moment, the principle remains the same.
(39:49):
That which threatens to devour us most often carries the key to our transformation.
As with the confrontation with Sinis Theseus's interaction with the Crommyonian Sow and or Phaea is an extension of the work he began by claiming the sword and sandals from the rock back in Troezen and then facing the cyclopean Periphetes
(40:11):
and claiming the bronze club.
In fact, all the bandits along Theseus' path to Athens are images of the same process of growth that takes place as we go through our own initiatory phases in life.
When Theseus kills the Sow, he gets no treasure.
There is no golden fleece, no magical prize, and this is the key (40:30):
the reward is not external it is the forging of a new capacity within the soul.
The confrontation and bringing that which is unconscious into consciousness is the prize.
It is the establishment of discernment, of self-regulation, and of the equal, respectful relationship between the ego consciousness and the powerful forces of the unconscious.
(41:02):
As you reflect on this, perhaps you can begin to notice the truth in it for your own life.
The quiet work of facing your own rigidity, holding your inner conflicts and drawing a line with your own devouring impulses.
This isn't self-indulgence.
It's the necessary foundational work we do on ourselves before we can be of genuine healthy service to our communities and the external world.
(41:31):
We have to first build the self before we can bring it to society.
So before we move on, take a moment to consider.
What might the Sow be devouring in you?
What energy, if reclaimed, could become a strength that carries you forward?
Before I share some ideas that you can use to connect more deeply with this part of the myth, let's trace the path we've walked with Theseus so far.
(42:01):
First, we must be grounded enough to know when we have outgrown our world and when we're ready to move on.
Then, on that path, we face the narrow-minded, single eyed beliefs that block the way.
This is the start of shadow work, reclaiming the raw energy we once rejected.
(42:22):
Doing this demands that we let go of the Sínis-like need to strap parts of ourselves to opposing poles by making harsh value judgments, and instead enter that grey, nuanced space between them.
And there we face the sow, a symbol of both rich fertility and indiscriminate appetite.
(42:44):
We are not here to embrace amorality, but to transmute the raw energy into personal responsibility, discernment, and compassion.
Because if we can recognize this complexity in ourselves, we must know for certain that it is equally present in others.
(43:13):
As we bring the myth of Theseus into our own lives, the real work begins.
As always, I want to leave you with a few ideas to help you explore this part of the myth for yourself.
The following questions are designed as a starting point for you and your own journaling or quiet reflection.
They invite you to look not at mythic figures, but at the universal human patterns the images in this myth help us recognize.
(43:41):
These questions are way marks along the same narrow road Theseus walked that grey road between the two restless seas on the isthmus, where one tide pulls towards what we've been and the other towards what we are becoming.
There are no right or wrong answers here, only avenues to explore and associations to uncover.
(44:05):
Each question invites you a little further along that grey stretch between knowing and not knowing.
HOLDING THE TENSION (44:14):
When you notice you've had a strong emotional reaction to a situation or perhaps a person
Can you pause and roll it back for a moment just to look at it without the label you've attached to it?
(44:36):
Notice the story that you've begun to craft around it, the label that some part of you reached for without even asking.
Now listen to the tone of the inner judge.
Does it feel grounded and wise, or anxious, demanding?
Maybe trying to please what you feel is socially acceptable rather than what's truly authentic to yourself.
(45:03):
What happens when you loosen that story's grip by consciously trying to tell it in a different way?
What kind of tension pushed you toward that quick resolution through judgment?
What opposites were pulling on you?
Was it the tension of feeling afraid and wanting security?
Or perhaps the anticipation of rejection and the desire for belonging?
(45:28):
Try on a few pairs of these opposites, as many as you can think of, even if they don't immediately seem to fit.
Don't worry about finding the perfect words, just stay with the process until something clicks.
This is how we begin to turn the work of Sínis back on the corrupted Senex, by bringing awareness to the uncomfortable tensions that drive our snap judgments and unnoticed acts of repression.
THE UNSEEN COST OF A REPEATING PATTERN (46:07):
As I mentioned earlier, the unconscious is a vast source of wisdom and strength.
It holds all the psychic energy we need to live fully.
But it is not our friend.
It is wild, ancient, and not adapted to the world we live in today.
(46:27):
It needs the mediation of the conscious ego for its impulses to find healthy, fulfilling expression in life.
We all have habitual loops in which raw, untamed impulses drain our energy instead of nourishing us.
Think of an area in your life, your work, your relationships, your creative practice, where you feel that quiet depletion, as if something deep within you is feeding on your vitality.
(46:55):
Where in your life does something that once felt alive now feed on your energy instead?
Can you name a habit, a pattern of thinking, or perhaps a project that leaves you feeling emptier each time you return to it?
If you listen closely, what denied longing might be hiding inside that emptiness?
(47:16):
What sacred aim of the soul has turned inward, devouring rather than nourishing?
When you feel like you've identified an area like this in your life, no matter what it is, try listing whatever small, honest actions could begin to give that energy back its rightful direction.
Just write whatever comes to mind and engage in some free association with the imagery and how you feel about it without looking for precise or concrete answers and definitions.
(47:44):
You might like to picture the Crommyonian Sow and explore what you imagine it might be eating.
Practice some free association with the pictures you imagine.
Explore what symbols emerge until you feel something click into place.
THE SACRED MESSAGE IN THE STRUGGLE (48:12):
The deepest shift in inner work comes when we stop treating a difficult pattern as an enemy to destroy and begin to approach it as a messenger to understand.
In the myth, Theseus kills the devouring archetype, but as we've seen, that slaying is symbolic.
(48:33):
it shows him transforming the raw, consuming energy of that obstacle into something of value on his path of initiation.
This final question invites you to practice that same shift.
Imagine for a moment the draining pattern you've just identified isn't a flaw at all,
but a desperate, if misguided, attempt to meet a deep, life affirming need.
(48:59):
If you were to listen to that struggle with compassionate curiosity, What sacred message, what deep or unacknowledged desire, might you hear expressed?
What part of you is trying in its own clumsy way to protect or to champion on behalf of your well-being?
(49:29):
Before we close, I want to leave you with one final thought.
The inner work we've explored today, learning to hold the tension of the opposites and walk the grey road of discernment, is not just a private psychological exercise.
It's a vital practice for navigating the world in which we live.
Our conscious mind, the part of us that depth psychology calls the ego, loves to organize, define, categorize, and create clear logical structures.
(49:58):
This is a necessary and beautiful human capacity, but our soul, our unconscious, speaks the language of mythos, a language of story, of image, and of paradox.
Mythos can hold three different versions of the same story, crown a deity with a garland of a dozen contradictory names, and see truth in multiple overlapping layers.
(50:23):
The world around us, however, relentlessly pressures us to abandon Mythos for a weaponized and oversimplified Logos.
Why?
Because when we buy into somebody else's definitions of where the poles in black-and-white thinking lie, we become easier to steer.
(50:43):
We become easier to control.
Political campaigns, advertising, and even religious ideologies often work by creating false dichotomies that demand we pick aside.
You're either for us or against us.
It's good or it's evil.
It's pure or it's tainted.
They flatten the complex, soulful, grey areas of life into a battlefield of black and white.
(51:10):
They present us with their story, and, as the great thinkers on myth remind us, the moment anyone insists that their myth must be taken as the one and only literal fact, we are no longer in the realm of soul, but in the realm of control. To consciously walk the grey road To pick a third and more nuanced way through this world, then, is an act of courageous heroism.
(51:39):
It is the conscious refusal to be polarized.
It is to insist on the dignity of the multifaceted experience of life.
It allows for the practice of compassion and empathy even when disagreements are present.
And it honours the sacred mythic truth that the most important things in life can never be reduced to simple, easy answers.
(52:11):
So far, Theseus has faced three bandits on his road, Periphytes the club-bearer, Sínis the Pine Bender, and the Crommyonian Sow.
In working with this myth and teaching it in classes, I found it very helpful to ask people to look at how the hero archetype has showed up consciously or unconsciously in the lives of others.
(52:31):
Sometimes seeing how other people have grown through the challenges they faced along their initiatory journeys can be really helpful.
It's not a very deep or taxing exercise, but it can really be quite instructive to look at how the archetype of the hero shows up in other people's stories so that we can become more sensitive to where and how it might show up in our own.
(52:54):
Being a South African, one of my go-to figures is, of course, the political activist, freedom fighter, turned president and father of the nation, Nelson Mandela.
Of course, Nelson Mandela is someone that most people today, especially in the South African context, consider to be a hero.
But that's not what we're talking about here.
(53:16):
The hero in mythology is not a whole person.
It's a part of the psyche, a spark of consciousness that, when the time is right, when it discovers within itself the readiness and a sense of potential, quests into the unknown depths within, in search of renewal.
The hero is the offspring of the king, the ego that has ruled for a period of life through actions that have become comfortable and habitual.
(53:44):
But it's also the offspring of a deeper power, an archetypal force in the unconscious that is pushing towards integration.
This is why heroes in myth must also have some kind of divine lineage.
And so this nascent flicker of consciousness and potential begins to confront unconscious forces that have become accustomed to the habitual patterns of the ego.
(54:09):
These are the bandit like beliefs and complexes that hinder and oppose the renewal, not because they're evil or bad, but simply because they have for the longest time been successful in helping us survive in our old milieu.
To grow, however, their energy must now be reclaimed and put to better use.
(54:31):
Out there in the shadows of the path through the wilderness, the hero-spark confronts these unconscious elements and by bringing awareness to them begins to liberate the energy once devoted to those purposes, making it available for more useful undertakings, turning it into something that can be held in our conscious toolbox,
(54:51):
ready to be applied at the proper time when needed as an extension of our willpower rather than as an unconscious reflexive complex to which we might fall victim.
If you'd like to try something like this, pick a person who you know or perhaps know of.
Historical and even fictional characters work very well for this.
See how the pattern we've explored so far is reflected in that person or character's inward development.
(55:18):
When faced with the brutality and oppression of the racist apartheid regime, did Nelson Mandela emerge from his incarceration bent on vengeance, seeking to subject his oppressors to the same wickedness he had been forced to endure?
What had to happen within him to turn his entirely valid hatred for the system and people who supported it
(55:41):
into the power and compassion he had, enough to lead an entire nation towards reconciliation?
This is just an example that has been useful and pertinent to my situation, but if you look around you, I'm sure you'll be able to find any number of examples of people whose path will provide you with incredibly insightful meditations when considered through the lens of the three bandit confrontations we've already discussed.
(56:07):
I do want to stress, however, that we're not yet considering outward actions of these people or characters.
We're focusing on their inward shifts, nor are we considering only people who we would count as heroic in the modern sense of the word.
The hero in myth is a facet of the psyche, not a whole person.
(56:29):
And it's very important that we keep this foremost in our minds as we do this kind of exercise.
We're only considering the inward shifts made by these people and characters, because for now, the challenges Theseus has faced on his road have been inward challenges.
The first three bandits in this interpretation are confrontations that allow Theseus to reframe his relationship with himself, the forces that have defined him to this point and kept him from moving forward along his road.
(57:01):
But his journey is not over yet.
There are still three confrontations waiting for him on the road ahead encounters that will allow us to consider how to bring this inner work, this work of integration,
to our outward lives in society.
In the next episode we'll be venturing closer to the sea again, where we'll encounter another older man with a strange pet.
(57:26):
One who will help us recognize the danger of false humility.
Until then, if this episode resonated with you,
I'd love to hear your reflections.
You can leave a comment, write a review, or leave a rating, either on Substack or on the podcast episode.
It's entirely free and it really helps me to know that this work is landing with you.
(57:49):
You can also read the transcript and reflection prompts on my website under the Essays and Transcripts tab at www.theinwardsea.com
That's W W W dot T H E I N W A R D S E A dot C O M
(58:11):
Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
Until next time, may you find peace in the tension and beauty in the shimmering grey space of life.
My name is Dimitri, and you've been listening to The Inward Sea.
In our last journey, we learned how to face the parts of ourselves we once rejected.
But the real work begins after the confrontation.
What happens when we pick up the bandit's club only to realize that the power we once feared was ours all along?
When we begin to understand why unhelpful and sometimes potentially harmful beliefs and behavior patterns so often block us when we're trying to grow into better versions of ourselves, the labels of "good" and "bad" no longer seem to hold, and the simple stories that we have told to prop up our identity can begin to feel as though they are ready to collapse.
(00:42):
In their place, a new and more complicated path stretches out before us —no longer a road of black and white thinking, but a shimmering and shifting territory of grey.
In reclaiming the bronze club, the raw psychic energy of emotion from the bandit-like complex we encounter, we also need to learn how to carry it and integrate it.
(01:07):
How can we learn to use this powerful part of ourselves for good without slipping back into the old, familiar story of self-condemnation and shame for everything it once was?
The key here is to understand the process that led us to exile these parts of ourselves in the first place, and to find a new way of understanding them.
(01:29):
In this episode, we'll journey further with Theseus (Θησέας) and meet a bandit whose tying of knots will help us understand how to loosen our own.
My name is Dimitri, and welcome to the Inward Sea.
The Inward Sea Theme Music by Dimitri Roussopoulos (2025)
(02:27):
Hello and welcome to The Inward Sea.
This is a podcast where we explore the intersection of mythology, folklore and modern life.
This is the third episode in our series on the initiatory path of Theseus.
If you're just joining us on our journey here, I'd encourage you to go back and start with part one to get the full context.
For those of you continuing on the path, in our last episode we began our journey with Theseus by facing the very first bandit he meets on the road (02:47):
Periphetes (Περιφήτης).
We explored Periphetis as a symbol for our own limiting beliefs, those powerful unconscious complexes that, like a cyclops, offer only a single, rigid point of view—
(03:10):
one that keeps us from leaving our comfort zone.
We called this process "bandit spotting."
Today, let's explore what follows.
What happens after we've spotted the bandit?
How do we carry the raw untamed energy that we reclaim from complexes when we start to make them conscious?
(03:31):
Today we'll walk with Theseus as he faces two profound challenges that emerge from this very dilemma.
First, on a lonely road he'll meet the bandit Sínis (Σίνις), the pine-bender, a figure who embodies the danger of black-and-white thinking.
Sínis shows us how rigid judgments can tear us apart from within, splitting us from the very parts of ourselves that need healing the most.
(03:56):
Then, as the path winds on to the sandy shores and rocky cliffs of the isthmus, we'll encounter the monstrous Crommyonian Sow (Κρομμυωνία σῦς) a mysterious mythological image embodying the terrifying danger that comes when we allow discernment to dissolve completely.
So, take a deep breath.
(04:16):
Let the noise of the modern world fade for just a moment.
The road ahead narrows as we turn eastward towards the isthmus—
that thin strip of land held between the restless Ionian and Aegean seas.
Listen, you can almost hear the wind whispering through the pines.
Let's join Theseus there.
(04:57):
A cool wind drifted from the north, carrying the scent of turned earth mixed with the salt of the Ionian Sea.
It had been two days since his encounter with Periphetes, two days of climbing out of Epidaurus through the stony folds of the mountainous region, keeping to the high ground where the valleys still held the rain and shadow.
(05:20):
The great bronze club, though heavy, now rested on his shoulder as naturally as if it had always been there.
Now pausing on the lower slopes of Mount Oneion (Ονήιον), Theseus looked down at the road that coiled across the landscape toward a point where the land itself seemed to have been bent eastward and held taut between two seas.
(05:42):
In the distance the path slipped in and out of a pine forest before re emerging beyond it, tracing a narrow line along the pale cliffs that fell towards the distant shimmer of the Saronic Gulf.
beyond that, Megara (Μέγαρα), and the oracle at Elusius (Ελευσίνα) and further still, Attica (Αττική), at whose heart lay Athens (Αθήνα), his father's kingdom—and his destiny.
(06:08):
Shifting the weight of the bronze club, he set out again, picking his way down the rocky slopes.
As Helios (Ήλιος) climbed higher, the sound of gravel beneath his sandals gradually gave way to the dry crunch of pine needles.
The breeze that had carried the familiar scents of soil and surf now brought with it the resin spiced whispers of the forest.
(06:32):
These heard the man before he saw him.
Panting grunts and the scrape of feet slipping over the forest floor were accompanied by the most alarming sounds of creaking wood.
Somebody was working very hard.
As he rounded a bend in the road, Theseus came across a man facing away from him.
(06:53):
He was older, broad shouldered, with weathered skin and arms corded with muscle like twisted roots.
He was grunting and panting as he strained against a long rope tied to the top of a young but already very tall pine.
With great effort the man was pulling the top of the pine downwards toward another tree that stood on the opposite side of the road.
(07:16):
From the top of the bending pine dangled another, shorter length of rope, swinging to and fro as the old man deftly pulled the crown lower towards the road.
"Ah! A moment of your strength, young traveler."
The man grunted through his puffing breaths.
"This tree needs tying down.
Help me hold it while I secure the knot."
(07:38):
Clearly the man needed help, so Theseus quickly set down his club and took hold of the rope.
Even with the man still helping to hold the rope in place he felt the incredible living force of the tree surge against him.
It strained against the two of them, but, summoning all of his strength, he held tight.
(08:00):
Hand over hand the man moved around and then behind him, pulling the slack length of the rope below his grip around the trunk of the tree on the opposite side of the path.
As he was pulling, Theseus couldn't help but notice that the tree to which the man was tying the rope already had ropes of its own secured to its highest branches.
(08:24):
A long one dangled all the way down to the ground, while a shorter length ended about halfway down the trunk.
Theseus tightened his grip and leaned back, pulling harder to give the old man more slack with which to work.
(08:44):
"Sir, who are you?"
"I am a son of a blacksmith, a descendant of Corinthus."
The man offered as he looped and pulled on the knot.
"And what is it you're doing here?"
Theseus asked, his hands burning from the strain.
The man paused and looked at him.
(09:06):
Theseus could feel the gaze rake over him as he strained against the pool of the bent pine.
"Resetting a trap, the man replied.
My lazy apprentice tied it poorly.
It's for... boars."
His voice trailed off, and then, as if finding his train of thought, he added
"There is a vicious beast that has been terrorizing this road."
(09:29):
The man resumed working, but Theseus couldn't shake the feeling that while the old man's hands busied themselves with the knot, his eyes were measuring him.
"You have a strong back,"
the man said after a moment.
"Here, let me show you a trick to take the strain off your hands.
We can tie the rope around your waist and shoulders.
Let's do it that way when we pull down this second tree over here."
(09:52):
The offer hung in the still air, and in that instant Theseus knew this was no boar trap The snare was for him, and the man holding the rope was the infamous outlaw Sínis, the pine-bender himself.
The realization dropped in him like a pebble in deep water.
(10:15):
He didn't move.
He couldn't.
To release the rope now would give him away.
He shifted his weight subtly, carefully, as if testing the strain of the pine, all the while searching for a way to turn the moment to his favor.
The rope quivered in his hands, rough fibers biting into his palms.
(10:38):
Behind him, Sínis exhaled.
A sound thick with satisfaction for his knot or his next kill—or perhaps both...Theseus could not be certain.
There, that should hold it Theseus drew a sharp breath.
Then, pitching his voice just enough to hide the steadiness in his body, he called out,
(11:02):
"It's slipping I can't hold it much longer!"
The old man clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"It will hold, boy.
Now, let go!
We have the other tree to set."
"No!"
Theseus insisted, his voice tight with effort.
"Come see for yourself.
It's... it's not gonna hold.
(11:22):
I can feel it giving way!"
With a sigh, Sínis came over and gripped the rope just above Theseus's hands, tugging hard to prove its strength.
At that exact moment Theseus, with a great roar, jerked the rope violently downward and released it.
The pine groaned as if it would finally give way.
(11:44):
and in the sudden shocking recoil Sinis was thrown off his feet, landing hard on the dusty ground.
The knot held.
Before the bandit could recover, Theseus was on him, taking the shorter rope from the bent tree and expertly winding it around the man's torso, securing it tightly behind Sínis' armpits.
(12:05):
"What is this?!"
Sínis rasped in shocked outrage.
I know who you are,
Theseus said, his voice low and cold.
"You're not the son of just any blacksmith...
but of the outlaw Damastes (Δαμαστής)—the Subduer.
You’re no hunter, but a ravager—a destroyer of those who trust you.
(12:27):
You are Sínis (Σίνις).”
As he spoke, he hauled down the second pine, his words punctuated by short, sharp breaths.
"This... is no... trap for boars,"
he panted, drawing the great trunk lower and lower.
It's for the ones kind enough to lend you a hand—a snare for all who mistake your deceit for guidance! He fastened the long rope to the base of the first tree where Sinis already strained against his own bindings.
(13:04):
The bandit froze, aware that even one reckless move could tear the cords apart and catapult him to his death.
He began protesting.
No, please, please.
His voice cracking with panic.
Do not do this thing.
But Theseus ignored him.
Without a word, the young hero took up the short length of rope that hung from the now secured second tree.
(13:29):
Grabbing Sínis' feet, he tied his ankles fast.
All was set.
The two pines strained against their bonds, with Sínis strung, begging and pleading between them.
These looked at the older man, whose face was now a mask of terror and rage.
(13:50):
You did not set this trap for beasts, he said calmly, but one will surely die in it to day.
No, please, I beg you.
He drew the sword his father had left him under the great rock in Troezen (Τροιζήνα), and with two swift, clean cuts he severed the ropes that held the great trees down.
(14:11):
With a terrifying, splintering roar, the pines sprang back to their full height.
Sinis's shoulders followed one while his ankles went with the other, and in a moment all the tension that had been held in their great wooden trunks was released in a spray of pine needles and gore.
(14:32):
For a long moment there was silence.
Then, slowly, the sounds of the forest returned.
and the wind began to whisper through the pines once more.
The road continued down and to the right.
Towards the shores of the Sauronic Gulf and onward towards the town of Crommyon.
(15:11):
So now we've met Sínis, the pine-bender.
What images from this part of the story resonated with you?
and... how are they different from the ones we encountered with Periphytis?
Perhaps you noticed how the rigidity of the singular point of view and the crushing weight of the bronze club have, in this second image, been replaced with the sinuous flexibility of growing wood.
(15:37):
Periphetis confronts us with brute resistance, Sínis with dynamic tension.
Sínis is the second bandit Theseus encounters on his journey to Athens.
He is the picture of what happens when we begin facing the complexes and limiting beliefs in the shadow.
(15:57):
To understand where on our path we meet this force, we need to find the place where opposing forces are bent towards one another and held in tension for a moment, and then suddenly released.
A great example of this, and perhaps this is because it's where I most often see it happening for myself, is in decisions based on value judgments—
(16:18):
the split second decisions we make on how to respond to things that happen to or inside of us.
You may have seen a quote floating around the Internet, often attributed to the psychiatrist Victor Frankl.
It goes something like this.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response."
(16:39):
While that phrasing is not actually in Frankl's work, the idea is central to existential psychology.
The psychologist Rollo May put it beautifully when he wrote, "Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response, and, in that pause, to choose the one response towards which we wish to throw our weight."
(17:02):
That pause, that space, is where our real power lies.
It's the gap where we can stop an old unconscious reaction and choose something new.
And it's right there, in that charged and often uncomfortable space, that Sínis waits for us.
He is the embodiment of the pull of our old patterns straining against the push of new possibilities.
(17:27):
He's what happens when the energies that should be held in creative tension instead rebound violently towards their opposites.
In archetypal terms, we can see Sínis as a corrupted Senex, or a negative elder figure.
Where a healthy elder guides the hero, the corrupted Senex fears renewal.
(17:49):
He demands conformity.
He bends new life towards his old will and tears apart whatever resists him.
Like J.M. Barrie's Captain Hook to Peter Pan, he is the authoritative figure who blocks the path of transformation instead of guiding the hero across the threshold.
And this is where the genius of the myth really shines:
(18:12):
The story of Sínis is so powerful because the story itself models the very tension it describes.
It strains against itself.
Pulling in two directions at once.
Let me show you what I mean.
The ancient sources can't even agree on how Sínis kills his victims.
According to Apollodorus and Hyginus, he would ask a traveller to help him hold down a single bent pine tree.
(18:38):
Then he'd let go.
The victim, unable to hold the tension alone, would be flung into the air and crash back down to the earth, going from one extreme to the other.
But according to Diodorus and Pausanias he would bend two pine trees down, tie a person's limbs to each, and then release the trees.
The two trees would spring up in opposite directions, ripping the victim in two.
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But the contradictions don't end there.
Even in the timeline, there are disagreements:
The Parian Chronicle, an ancient marble inscription claims that Theseus defeated Sínis after he was already the king of Athens, establishing the Isthmian Games in his honor.
And here we are pulled between some opposites.
(19:26):
You see, which version of the story is right?
Which one is the real story?
Surely one of them is correct and the other is incorrect, right?
Ah... but mythology has always been comfortable with contradiction.
Myths can hold multiplicity without collapsing, but we on the other hand usually can't.
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Rather than holding the tension between opposites within us, like a drawn bowstring alive with potential but requiring effort and a bit of discomfort to maintain, we rush to release it.
We hurry to decide what's right, what's wrong, who we are, who we are not...and all of this happens mostly beneath our awareness, where our complexes steer the wheel.
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And this is the inner work of Sínis.
Each of us carries a form of that corrupted Senex archetype within ourselves. It is the impulse to resolve those inner conflicts in a way that often sabotages our own growth.
So, what does this inner saboteur, this corrupted mentor, sound or feel like?
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How might we begin to identify it?
Well, it's different for all of us.
For some, it's a voice of impatience.
"Just pick one and get it over with."
For others, it's the voice of conformity.
"Don't rock the boat, just do what's expected."
But if you listen closely, you might notice a common strategy:
(21:02):
the goal of these voices is often the same.
It urges us to choose what is socially acceptable over what feels personally authentic.
What does that pressure feel like for you?
And where do you most often feel it?
Wherever it is, that is the voice of Sínis.
(21:23):
It is the Sínis-pattern.
Like Sínis with his pine trees, it binds our experiences to opposing poles—good and bad, success or failure—
and in that sudden premature resolution, our attempts to grow are torn apart.
We find ourselves flung from who we're trying to become back to who we once were.
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Now that we understand a bit more about the image from the story, what can we begin to do with it?
In the myth, Theseus defeats Sínis by turning the bandit's own method against him.
The very energy that once trapped him becomes his means of liberation.
Transformation here doesn't come from compromise, it comes from creativity.
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It's about discovering a third way that dissolves the old conflict that appears between the two opposites.
Remember, the hero is not a role model to imitate, but a pattern of consciousness that we should try and apply.
The Theseus-like move in this context is about learning to stand in that living tension between the opposites without being torn apart.
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Think of a moment when you feel torn between acting and waiting.
The Sínis reflex is immediately to pick one and to relieve that tension, to resolve the conflict inside.
The Theseus move in that moment is to pause and to let both choices inform you:
Can action contain non-action?
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Could non action be a form of action?
Considering questions like this is where we begin to discover the third way.
Theseus meets his bandits one by one as he travels from Troezen to Athens, but in our own inner work we will often have to apply strategies from a few of these mythical encounters at the same time.
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It's more helpful to view the bandits in the story less like a step-by-step set of instructions and more like facets of the same process.
Each presents a different strategy for navigating the inner obstacles that arise along our path of growth.
In real life, we apply the wisdom from all of these encounters simultaneously, learning to hold the tensions between the various approaches taken by the hero archetype, rather than relying on any one strategy to bring that which is unconscious into the light of consciousness.
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You see, when we begin this work, and first recognize a bandit-like pattern within ourselves, the Sínis-like impulse is to label it as "bad".
That act of judgment gives us a quick way to release the tension.
It lets us feel momentarily "right" in the face of what might otherwise make us feel ashamed.
Even if we can't be perfect, at least we can judge perfectly.
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That's the hidden bargain behind this reflex.
It feels good, in a grim sort of way, to chastise what we deem "wrong".
But the moment we do, we bind a part of ourselves to that label.
The declaration, "This is bad," immediately calls forth its opposite, "I should be good".
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Instead of sitting with the discomfort and learning from it, we push the rejected part away and try to cover it with something more acceptable.
What follows is a cycle of denial and defensiveness—a desperate effort to look whole without actually becoming whole.
And that's where Sínis gets us.
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By doing this we've already stepped into his trap.
The moment we bind one part of ourselves to "bad" and the other to "good" the rope tightens and we're stretched between them, mistaking the judgment we've cast for actual virtue, while the deeper work of integration remains undone.
We take the opposing pines of "good" and "bad" and bind the complex to them and release the tension by condemning ourselves This is how repression begins.
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We banish the energy of whatever uncomfortable aspect of the psyche we encounter right back into the unconscious, often using judgments we've absorbed from parents, teachers, or society.
And in that moment our growth is once again undone.
But this part of the story doesn't end here.
(25:49):
There's another danger waiting on the far side of this work.
Sínis tears us apart when we try to resolve the opposites too quickly.
But if we go too far the other way, dissolving every boundary and every tension, we drift towards another kind of undoing.
(26:10):
The road narrows now, carrying a kind of tension of its own as it bends towards the isthmus, the narrow strip of land connecting the Peloponnese to the mainland.
(26:38):
For the next leg of our journey, I want to do something a little different.
Rather than retelling a story, I'd like to walk with you through the imagery that survives from this strange and fragmentary part of the myth.
The reason is simple:
here the record falters.
No two ancient sources agree on what exactly happens next, or even who or what the next confrontation Theseus must face is.
(27:05):
What the sources do agree on is that as Theseus was crossing the isthmus, he approached the town of Crommyon, which lay between Corinth and Mergara, where he faced and killed the Crommyonian Sow.
Some say that this monstrous sow was raised by an old woman named Phaea (Φαία), others that the sow was named Phaea still others claim that there was no beast at all, only a woman— whose name was... Phaea,—so savage and unhygienic that she was called a sow.
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But you see, I think that uncertainty is the point here.
This part of the road, at least viewed through the lens I'm adopting, is supposed to be hard to see clearly.
After facing the violent clarity of Sínis, the bandit urge within each of us that splits the world into opposites and then tears us apart between them, Theseus enters a different kind of trial.
(28:07):
The pines no longer threaten to tear him apart instead, after abandoning the need to polarize the world, the path itself begins to blur.
At this point, our hero steps into the grey country between black and white where boundaries soften and certainty dissolves.
(28:27):
And the seeming lack of definition and contrast that arises when we let go of dualistic thinking and enter the grey space of the third way is appropriate,
because one way of interpreting the name fair is as The Grey One.
Psychologically This is the territory we enter after we stop forcing our inner world into rigid boxes of good and bad.
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It can feel like a seemingly directionless, mist-washed region of moral ambiguity.
This is a space that asks us to exercise deeper discernment, in which we learn to navigate by a more nuanced moral compass
and take personal responsibility for our choices and their consequences rather than chalking them up to external or inherited definitions.
(29:16):
This uncertain and liminal space holds a profound danger.
In letting go of the certainties prescribed by external authorities, we risk letting go of discernment altogether.
We risk dissolving into a mess of undifferentiated amoral chaos in which every impulse feels valid and every boundary disappears.
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Symbolically speaking, this is the danger of being consumed by the Crommyonian Sow.
Almost as far back as we can remember, the pig has been a creature of paradox,
both sacred and profane; fertile and gluttonous, nurturing and devouring.
In many ancient myths, the pig stands at the threshold between creation and decay.
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For example, the Egyptian sky goddess Nut was said to swallow her piglets, the stars, each night and then birth them again every morning,
while in Greece, Demeter (Δημήτηρ) received piglets as sacrificial offerings for the renewal of the earth.
The same animal that symbolized divine fruitfulness also came to embody sloth, lust, purity, and filth.
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Because it feeds indiscriminately, seemingly devouring everything, including its own young, and yet is capable of giving birth to large numbers,
the pig has long mirrored the amoral cycles of nature itself, where creation and destruction are not opposites, but phases of one eternal process.
From a Western perspective, a cultural lens that has been heavily influenced by Christianity, the pig also has a strong association with the image of possession.
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From a symbolic perspective, we can understand the idea of such possession as being a state in which the conscious ego is swallowed by unconscious drives and behaviors,
causing a person to behave more like an animal or a beast rather than a human being.
Even today, the pig remains a complex and seemingly contradictory symbolic image.
(31:17):
Its near-human skin and unsettling blend of intelligence, appetite, and emotion draw both disgust and affection.
We call someone a pig when they've surrendered to greed or corruption, when the appetite devours the soul.
But we also hold gentler opinions of this amazing animal:
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In Winnie the Pooh, we see Piglet's anxious innocence,
the talking pig Babe's pure hearted courage, or the trusting character of Wilbur from Charlotte's Webb.
The image of the pig in both mythology and pop culture exposes what we'd rather not see or acknowledge in ourselves the uneasy union of tenderness and gluttony, empathy and indulgence, innocence and appetite.
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It's this volatility, this oscillation between devotion and devouring, that makes the Crommyonian Sow such a haunting image.
And so as this myth fades into fog here, we find that the Crommyonian Sow isn't only a monster on the road, it's an image of a force within us.
The unconscious is powerful and vast, and it holds the raw material for our growth, but it's also important to remember that the unconscious is not your friend.
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It's not a benevolent guide to be followed blindly.
Shadow work is not about surrendering to the impulses of amoral forces of instinct and urge,
but it's a conscious alchemical craft of engaging with them to transmute their contents into resources for a better life.
(32:59):
In this part of the story, waiting for Theseus in that grey, misty place on the isthmus is the perfect image for this amoral, undifferentiated power, the Crommyonian Sow.
an untamed creature of instinct that is as capable of giving birth to multitudes as she is of devouring them.
According to Apollodorus, this frightening creature was raised by an old woman, named, as we've already said, Phaea (33:20):
The Grey One.
The name Phaea is another symbolic layer to this image, and we should consider it carefully.
It invites us to pause and consider what grey or greyness means to us.
Or, what it may have meant to the ancient Greeks who have lent us this story.
(33:45):
Luckily, Greyness appears in another place in this mythology as well.
One of the most famous epithets of the goddess Athena is Glaucopis (γλαυκῶπις).
We often translate this as Grey-eyed.
But it also means so much more.
It can mean bright eyed or even blue eyed.
It evokes the shimmering silvery blue quality of the sea, a colour that is alive, full of hidden depth, and unimaginable power.
(34:11):
The point again is for us modern readers to learn to accept the ambiguity rather than rushing to resolve it.
Because despite our very best efforts there's simply no way that any of us can ever claim to know exactly how the person sitting next to us sees or perceives colour, let alone how it might have been perceived by people who are long gone.
(34:34):
A lot has been said about ancient people and colors.
There's a misconception, for example, that ancient cultures didn't see or have a word for the colour blue.
While the historical debate about ancient colour perception is a fascinating topic, it's best left to those more informed than myself.
And what we can say for certain is that our experience of color is deeply personal and cultural.
(35:00):
In this myth grey isn't a flat, neutral color.
It's a dynamic quality full of light and mystery.
It's a powerful reminder that we can never truly know another's experience of color, just as we can never pin down a single simple meaning for our own inner states or experiences.
(35:20):
To remember this is to understand the importance of the grey space that opens when we hold the tension between opposites.
Allowing multiple truths to exist at once.
That space is shimmering with potential.
So when we hear that this monster of the isthmus, the Crommyonian Sow, is connected to Phaea, The Grey One.
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We're being told that we're in a place of deep symbolic ambiguity.
The lines between the nurturer and the monster she creates and the predator all dissolve into one.
This confusion is the point.
It's a perfect portrait of that inner state where we can no longer distinguish a raw impulse from a part of our soul or psyche that gives it life.
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This image, the Crommyonian Sow and Phaea, is the devouring mother archetype, the all-consuming force that erases identity and consciousness.
So how does our hero handle this confrontation?
He doesn't negotiate with this force.
He doesn't surrender to it.
(36:27):
He slays the Sow.
Just like with the other bandits we've encountered so far along this road, slaying the sow is a profound act of alchemical transmutation.
It is the conscious ego stepping in to set firm ethical boundaries with a destructive and all consuming inner force.
It is the moment we stop being devoured by a pattern and instead find the sacred energy trapped within it, liberating that energy for a new purpose.
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In this way it's a lot like claiming that bronze club from the first bandit, Periphetes.
What does slaying the Sow look like in our own lives?
To start with, we need to identify and name whatever force threatens to consume our energy.
It'll often be something wild and unbridled, an impulse we would usually judge as "bad" and try to repress.
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But now that we've moved beyond the Sínis-trap We know better than to string ourselves up by those old value judgments.
Now we can choose to stay with the tension instead.
That's the grey path, the confrontation with what lies beneath.
Here I'm going to reach for the low hanging fruit of envy as an example.
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In our current age of social media and the perpetual curation of our lives and exploits on the Internet, envy and its eager bedfeller self loathing are some of the easiest of these consuming aspects of the unconscious to drag out into the light.
The devouring pattern is that endless scroll, either literally through social media posts or figuratively through the thoughts of everything others have or have achieved that we feel is missing in our own lives—
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and the resulting bitterness that eats away at our sense of self-worth.
The alchemical act, the slaying of the sow, is to address the root of the bitterness, not to suppress the desire.
It's to consciously ask, what is this envy telling me that I want for my own life?
And then to channel that intense energy into building it for ourselves.
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Another example that might easily be applied to a large swathe of the population is the way many of us are paralyzed by apathy.
Here potential is devoured by a fog of inaction.
Today, we're perpetually bombarded by so much information that it's far easier to give up trying to locate our own inner compass among the mess of what the entire world seems to be telling us we should be doing.
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Inaction may look like laziness, but there's often something deeper going on.
When the world around us seems to be pushing us in directions that lie at odds with the deepest core of who we are inaction can often be a quiet act of resistance.
Slaying the Sow here is to honor the message in that resistance, that the soul is protesting a false path, refusing to walk it.
(39:27):
Naming that resistance is the act that frees the energy to move again, to search for a truer, more authentic path, even if the first step is small and uncertain.
Whether it appears as envy or apathy, or anything else that drains our vitality and robs us of potential in any given moment, the principle remains the same.
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That which threatens to devour us most often carries the key to our transformation.
As with the confrontation with Sinis Theseus's interaction with the Crommyonian Sow and or Phaea is an extension of the work he began by claiming the sword and sandals from the rock back in Troezen and then facing the cyclopean Periphetes
(40:11):
and claiming the bronze club.
In fact, all the bandits along Theseus' path to Athens are images of the same process of growth that takes place as we go through our own initiatory phases in life.
When Theseus kills the Sow, he gets no treasure.
There is no golden fleece, no magical prize, and this is the key (40:30):
the reward is not external it is the forging of a new capacity within the soul.
The confrontation and bringing that which is unconscious into consciousness is the prize.
It is the establishment of discernment, of self-regulation, and of the equal, respectful relationship between the ego consciousness and the powerful forces of the unconscious.
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As you reflect on this, perhaps you can begin to notice the truth in it for your own life.
The quiet work of facing your own rigidity, holding your inner conflicts and drawing a line with your own devouring impulses.
This isn't self-indulgence.
It's the necessary foundational work we do on ourselves before we can be of genuine healthy service to our communities and the external world.
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We have to first build the self before we can bring it to society.
So before we move on, take a moment to consider.
What might the Sow be devouring in you?
What energy, if reclaimed, could become a strength that carries you forward?
Before I share some ideas that you can use to connect more deeply with this part of the myth, let's trace the path we've walked with Theseus so far.
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First, we must be grounded enough to know when we have outgrown our world and when we're ready to move on.
Then, on that path, we face the narrow-minded, single eyed beliefs that block the way.
This is the start of shadow work, reclaiming the raw energy we once rejected.
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Doing this demands that we let go of the Sínis-like need to strap parts of ourselves to opposing poles by making harsh value judgments, and instead enter that grey, nuanced space between them.
And there we face the sow, a symbol of both rich fertility and indiscriminate appetite.
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We are not here to embrace amorality, but to transmute the raw energy into personal responsibility, discernment, and compassion.
Because if we can recognize this complexity in ourselves, we must know for certain that it is equally present in others.
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As we bring the myth of Theseus into our own lives, the real work begins.
As always, I want to leave you with a few ideas to help you explore this part of the myth for yourself.
The following questions are designed as a starting point for you and your own journaling or quiet reflection.
They invite you to look not at mythic figures, but at the universal human patterns the images in this myth help us recognize.
(43:41):
These questions are way marks along the same narrow road Theseus walked that grey road between the two restless seas on the isthmus, where one tide pulls towards what we've been and the other towards what we are becoming.
There are no right or wrong answers here, only avenues to explore and associations to uncover.
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Each question invites you a little further along that grey stretch between knowing and not knowing.
HOLDING THE TENSION (44:14):
When you notice you've had a strong emotional reaction to a situation or perhaps a person
Can you pause and roll it back for a moment just to look at it without the label you've attached to it?
(44:36):
Notice the story that you've begun to craft around it, the label that some part of you reached for without even asking.
Now listen to the tone of the inner judge.
Does it feel grounded and wise, or anxious, demanding?
Maybe trying to please what you feel is socially acceptable rather than what's truly authentic to yourself.
(45:03):
What happens when you loosen that story's grip by consciously trying to tell it in a different way?
What kind of tension pushed you toward that quick resolution through judgment?
What opposites were pulling on you?
Was it the tension of feeling afraid and wanting security?
Or perhaps the anticipation of rejection and the desire for belonging?
(45:28):
Try on a few pairs of these opposites, as many as you can think of, even if they don't immediately seem to fit.
Don't worry about finding the perfect words, just stay with the process until something clicks.
This is how we begin to turn the work of Sínis back on the corrupted Senex, by bringing awareness to the uncomfortable tensions that drive our snap judgments and unnoticed acts of repression.
THE UNSEEN COST OF A REPEATING PATTERN (46:07):
As I mentioned earlier, the unconscious is a vast source of wisdom and strength.
It holds all the psychic energy we need to live fully.
But it is not our friend.
It is wild, ancient, and not adapted to the world we live in today.
(46:27):
It needs the mediation of the conscious ego for its impulses to find healthy, fulfilling expression in life.
We all have habitual loops in which raw, untamed impulses drain our energy instead of nourishing us.
Think of an area in your life, your work, your relationships, your creative practice, where you feel that quiet depletion, as if something deep within you is feeding on your vitality.
(46:55):
Where in your life does something that once felt alive now feed on your energy instead?
Can you name a habit, a pattern of thinking, or perhaps a project that leaves you feeling emptier each time you return to it?
If you listen closely, what denied longing might be hiding inside that emptiness?
(47:16):
What sacred aim of the soul has turned inward, devouring rather than nourishing?
When you feel like you've identified an area like this in your life, no matter what it is, try listing whatever small, honest actions could begin to give that energy back its rightful direction.
Just write whatever comes to mind and engage in some free association with the imagery and how you feel about it without looking for precise or concrete answers and definitions.
(47:44):
You might like to picture the Crommyonian Sow and explore what you imagine it might be eating.
Practice some free association with the pictures you imagine.
Explore what symbols emerge until you feel something click into place.
THE SACRED MESSAGE IN THE STRUGGLE (48:12):
The deepest shift in inner work comes when we stop treating a difficult pattern as an enemy to destroy and begin to approach it as a messenger to understand.
In the myth, Theseus kills the devouring archetype, but as we've seen, that slaying is symbolic.
(48:33):
it shows him transforming the raw, consuming energy of that obstacle into something of value on his path of initiation.
This final question invites you to practice that same shift.
Imagine for a moment the draining pattern you've just identified isn't a flaw at all,
but a desperate, if misguided, attempt to meet a deep, life affirming need.
(48:59):
If you were to listen to that struggle with compassionate curiosity, What sacred message, what deep or unacknowledged desire, might you hear expressed?
What part of you is trying in its own clumsy way to protect or to champion on behalf of your well-being?
(49:29):
Before we close, I want to leave you with one final thought.
The inner work we've explored today, learning to hold the tension of the opposites and walk the grey road of discernment, is not just a private psychological exercise.
It's a vital practice for navigating the world in which we live.
Our conscious mind, the part of us that depth psychology calls the ego, loves to organize, define, categorize, and create clear logical structures.
(49:58):
This is a necessary and beautiful human capacity, but our soul, our unconscious, speaks the language of mythos, a language of story, of image, and of paradox.
Mythos can hold three different versions of the same story, crown a deity with a garland of a dozen contradictory names, and see truth in multiple overlapping layers.
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The world around us, however, relentlessly pressures us to abandon Mythos for a weaponized and oversimplified Logos.
Why?
Because when we buy into somebody else's definitions of where the poles in black-and-white thinking lie, we become easier to steer.
(50:43):
We become easier to control.
Political campaigns, advertising, and even religious ideologies often work by creating false dichotomies that demand we pick aside.
You're either for us or against us.
It's good or it's evil.
It's pure or it's tainted.
They flatten the complex, soulful, grey areas of life into a battlefield of black and white.
(51:10):
They present us with their story, and, as the great thinkers on myth remind us, the moment anyone insists that their myth must be taken as the one and only literal fact, we are no longer in the realm of soul, but in the realm of control. To consciously walk the grey road To pick a third and more nuanced way through this world, then, is an act of courageous heroism.
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It is the conscious refusal to be polarized.
It is to insist on the dignity of the multifaceted experience of life.
It allows for the practice of compassion and empathy even when disagreements are present.
And it honours the sacred mythic truth that the most important things in life can never be reduced to simple, easy answers.
(52:11):
So far, Theseus has faced three bandits on his road, Periphytes the club-bearer, Sínis the Pine Bender, and the Crommyonian Sow.
In working with this myth and teaching it in classes, I found it very helpful to ask people to look at how the hero archetype has showed up consciously or unconsciously in the lives of others.
(52:31):
Sometimes seeing how other people have grown through the challenges they faced along their initiatory journeys can be really helpful.
It's not a very deep or taxing exercise, but it can really be quite instructive to look at how the archetype of the hero shows up in other people's stories so that we can become more sensitive to where and how it might show up in our own.
(52:54):
Being a South African, one of my go-to figures is, of course, the political activist, freedom fighter, turned president and father of the nation, Nelson Mandela.
Of course, Nelson Mandela is someone that most people today, especially in the South African context, consider to be a hero.
But that's not what we're talking about here.
(53:16):
The hero in mythology is not a whole person.
It's a part of the psyche, a spark of consciousness that, when the time is right, when it discovers within itself the readiness and a sense of potential, quests into the unknown depths within, in search of renewal.
The hero is the offspring of the king, the ego that has ruled for a period of life through actions that have become comfortable and habitual.
(53:44):
But it's also the offspring of a deeper power, an archetypal force in the unconscious that is pushing towards integration.
This is why heroes in myth must also have some kind of divine lineage.
And so this nascent flicker of consciousness and potential begins to confront unconscious forces that have become accustomed to the habitual patterns of the ego.
(54:09):
These are the bandit like beliefs and complexes that hinder and oppose the renewal, not because they're evil or bad, but simply because they have for the longest time been successful in helping us survive in our old milieu.
To grow, however, their energy must now be reclaimed and put to better use.
(54:31):
Out there in the shadows of the path through the wilderness, the hero-spark confronts these unconscious elements and by bringing awareness to them begins to liberate the energy once devoted to those purposes, making it available for more useful undertakings, turning it into something that can be held in our conscious toolbox,
(54:51):
ready to be applied at the proper time when needed as an extension of our willpower rather than as an unconscious reflexive complex to which we might fall victim.
If you'd like to try something like this, pick a person who you know or perhaps know of.
Historical and even fictional characters work very well for this.
See how the pattern we've explored so far is reflected in that person or character's inward development.
(55:18):
When faced with the brutality and oppression of the racist apartheid regime, did Nelson Mandela emerge from his incarceration bent on vengeance, seeking to subject his oppressors to the same wickedness he had been forced to endure?
What had to happen within him to turn his entirely valid hatred for the system and people who supported it
(55:41):
into the power and compassion he had, enough to lead an entire nation towards reconciliation?
This is just an example that has been useful and pertinent to my situation, but if you look around you, I'm sure you'll be able to find any number of examples of people whose path will provide you with incredibly insightful meditations when considered through the lens of the three bandit confrontations we've already discussed.
(56:07):
I do want to stress, however, that we're not yet considering outward actions of these people or characters.
We're focusing on their inward shifts, nor are we considering only people who we would count as heroic in the modern sense of the word.
The hero in myth is a facet of the psyche, not a whole person.
(56:29):
And it's very important that we keep this foremost in our minds as we do this kind of exercise.
We're only considering the inward shifts made by these people and characters, because for now, the challenges Theseus has faced on his road have been inward challenges.
The first three bandits in this interpretation are confrontations that allow Theseus to reframe his relationship with himself, the forces that have defined him to this point and kept him from moving forward along his road.
(57:01):
But his journey is not over yet.
There are still three confrontations waiting for him on the road ahead encounters that will allow us to consider how to bring this inner work, this work of integration,
to our outward lives in society.
In the next episode we'll be venturing closer to the sea again, where we'll encounter another older man with a strange pet.
(57:26):
One who will help us recognize the danger of false humility.
Until then, if this episode resonated with you,
I'd love to hear your reflections.
You can leave a comment, write a review, or leave a rating, either on Substack or on the podcast episode.
It's entirely free and it really helps me to know that this work is landing with you.
(57:49):
You can also read the transcript and reflection prompts on my website under the Essays and Transcripts tab at www.theinwardsea.com
That's W W W dot T H E I N W A R D S E A dot C O M
(58:11):
Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
Until next time, may you find peace in the tension and beauty in the shimmering grey space of life.
My name is Dimitri, and you've been listening to The Inward Sea.
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