What is this difficulty in connecting? Thoughts on the Minotaur myth

The Minotaur - London by Terence Stevens, on Flickr​

I used to try to write poetry about the inherent difficulties of communication, but more often than not it turned out to be really more about connection, which also contains an element of bonding or relating.

These days I live a pretty isolated life—my communication that isn’t through the sterilizing medium of the internet being mostly over counters and through windows.

There are days when I can connect (to the internet), and many when I can’t, try as I might. And when I can there’s no telling how long my window will last (there it is again, another tenuous connection only made through windows. Hah! In more than one sense. The symbolism just piles itself up).

It becomes unbearably frustrating sometimes, especially if I have something I really wanted to post or check on. So often I end up shouting “Fuck! Why can’t I CONNECT??!!”

The irony definitely was not lost on me. I understood after a few times that there’s a deeper subtext which resounds all throughout my life. And I see my mother’s face—that tranquil smile that hides the viper’s teeth. The face of a casually cruel God etched invisibly on the sky.

And then I understand the meaning of the Biblical phrase about the sins of the father being visited on the children, unto the seventh son of the seventh son. Take out the patriarchy and de-gender the pronouns—it’s the sins of the parent, and they’re visited on the children. No discrimination here.

The relationship with the mother forms the template for all future relationships they say. And it would seem to be true in my humble estimation.

In a way it gets better, but in a way worse when you realize it isn’t their fault, they’re damaged probably because of their parents, and so on and so on. It’s the endless chain we drag through life like the ghost of Scrooge’s dead business partner Jacob Marley.

I was the neglected child. More than that, I was the scapegoat—burdened with all blame and sacrificed in order to try to bring peace to my mother’s fucked up inner world. Sacrificed in a way that keeps on giving, not just one quick swipe of the knife.

These things dawned on me very gradually as I was growing up, and it took a ridiculously long time to begin to see it. I think there’s a component of built-in naiveté involved, a self-imposed blindness to soften the blow, so at least you can enjoy childhood in ignorant bliss.

It took until somewhere between sixth and eighth grade before I realized most people’s moms aren’t like mine. Oh, some are worse, I could see that clearly, but many are much better. But then my mom knew how to put on the show for others, so maybe I was seeing an illusion. Or maybe I just imagined it all. Maybe she was right and it’s all my fault. It’s so damnably hard to tell what’s real, and it changes depending on my mood.

This still isn’t solipsism by the way. I know there’s an objectively real world and it doesn’t change because of our feelings or beliefs. It’s the inner world that’s so responsive to perceptions beliefs and attitudes. And unfortunately that’s the world we live in inescapably. The outer world, the world of objects, is always there, but the inner world is always HERE.

Let me revise that—the physical world is very changeable, but it responds to physical means while the inner one responds to emotional or psychological stimuli.

I think this is the point of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where people are punished by the Gods by being transformed into various half-animal beasts or sometimes into total animals. Gods transform them directly, or get more ‘creative’ and take the form of creatures and impregnate mortal women so their offspring must bear the lifelong shame and punishment for the sins of the parent.

One of the most telling examples is the Minotaur. King Minos was given a magnificent white bull that was intended as a sacrifice to some god, I don’t know which one but I’m writing this as if it’s Zeus. [I see now it was Poseidon. I don't know what the god of the Sea represents psychologically, but my first thought it the deep unconscious. Not sure how that would affect the analysis though, so I'm leaving it as is. Consider it my thoughts at a given point in time on the issue.] He decided he liked the bull and wanted to keep it. As punishment the god in question showed up in the form of the white bull and impregnated the king’s wife, and the offspring had a human torso with the head of a bull. Talk about punishment fitting the crime!!

Here’s my take on it.

First a sacrifice is intended to demonstrate that you love the god more than material possessions, even if they’re living things. But when you understand what it really means it does make a certain harsh sense, because keeping Jung in mind, the gods are aspects of your psyche. Even in the Greek pantheon there was an Allfather, the king of all the gods, which represents psychological Wholeness. That’s the thing to be loved above all else, even if it’s more an ideal than a reality. The more you stray from it the more fucked up your life becomes, as well as your loved ones’ lives. So as cautionary morality tales it makes sense to place psychological health and a good rapport with the inner God of it above everything else.

What was intended to be sacrificed in the name of psychological health the king coveted for his own selfish pleasure—a clear case of hubris. So the god said ok, you love the bull so much, guess what? So does your wife. But he made her love it in a sexual way, which then brought endless grief and shame to the king. I’m not quite sure how to interpret a king in psychological terms. In a sense he would be the mortal version of the father of all the gods, a person of great responsibility who rules over many others. It could represent some executive function of the mind itself, or maybe just a powerful person. But I think the point is to emphasize his responsibility and judgment—he should have known better.

So, not only is the man of great fame (who is subject to constant public scrutiny and expected to live an exemplary life) now cuckolded by his wife, but it isn’t even with another man. She favors an animal over him for lovemaking. And bulls are known for certain attributes. How could he ever be expected to satisfy her after that? Shameful enough already, but it doesn’t end there.

When the child is born it resembles the bull (symbol of his shame). There are several layers of meaning embedded in this. In one sense the bull-child is representative of the King himself, his mistake made manifest as a symbolic caricature of him. Stupid animal head which I’ll cover in a moment. In another sense it’s the king’s progeny, the fruit of his own wickedness, but it forever bears the stamp of his greatest shame. He loves it as a father can’t help loving his son, but it has the head of a bull. What does it mean to be bull-headed? Actually, back up. What do the animal attributes mean in mythology?

For a human to have animal attributes means he’s become less than human. A bit of devolution. But mythology is always associated with religion, so it must be seen in those terms. The human is seen as being midway between animal and god, in the sense of morality or righteousness. Animals have no soul (which originally in the Greek simply meant the mind, the incorporeal part, but religiously also meant morality). And keeping Jung in mind, religion has always been psychology. So it means a person behaving like an animal—unintelligent, rude, uncivilized, morally repugnant etc. Low behavior, while Gods are much higher than Man. So if you’ve been gifted with animal legs or a tail or worst of all a head, you’re fallen in the sense that Satan was, though not to the same extent. Satan and the demons are often depicted with animal attributes. I see Satan as the ultimate depiction of malignant Narcissism—the ultimate hubris—but that’s a different story for another day. Goats are known for being randy, for fucking or eating anything, hence why Pan, the Satyrs, and Satan (possibly derived etymologically from Satyr, not sure) have goat legs.

Bulls are known for being incredibly strong, stubborn and stupid. Which parts of the body are affected is very important. As I understand from my studies into religious esotericism the legs and feet represent the lowest part of the human, the part in touch with the earth— the Earthly or Worldly part. That means the part farthest from the realm of the Gods above, which is why the worldly pleasures are sins. Also known as animal appetites or animal instincts, the desire to just have sex, indulge mindlessly, and pursue immoral pleasures.

The head is the highest part, the part closest to Heaven or Olympus. The part that thinks and makes judgments. Man is said to form a bridge between Earth and Heaven, his feet solidly planted on one and his head in the other. So to have an animal head means you’re stupid and have no connection to the Gods. Quite literally bull-headed. So another fruit of the king’s hubristic desire is that his son is slow and immoral. And stubborn, so probably very rebellious against him. And also incredibly strong. A really bad combination.

The word Minotaur is a conjunction of Minos (the king) and Taurus, meaning bull. Incidentally that got me wondering about Centaurs, which are not half bull, but apparently it does mean bull in that one as well. I forget what the first half means.

This is the only myth I’ve analyzed so far, and I got a lot out of it—far more than I expected to. I suspect if I do more they’ll be largely more of the same with a few surprises now and then or different mostly in particulars. I read somewhere that the Metamorphoses includes 2 different kinds of transformations—punishments for hubris and love stories. I should look into one of those.

This myth doesn’t explicitly include an element of failure to communicate or connect, but it’s implied strongly. I imagine the king and his wife didn’t connect in the same ways anymore after the deed was done. No more sex, love, intimacy, or friendship in the royal marriage. All replaced by endless guilt and shame, probably for both of them.

Incidentally guilt and shame were the tools used most prominently to transform me and many others like me who suffered the same fate.

The king of the Gods in your psyche is your higher self, the part of you that always knows right from wrong and that you should listen to more often. The sins are various ways of ignoring this inner good sense, as are the temptations of Satan (which came out several times in this entry as Stan). They lead you astray from the straight and narrow path and take you into the trackless wilderness where punishment awaits in manifold and varied forms. It’s Dante’s Inferno, and it’s the Biblical wilderness of thorns and thistles. This isn’t moralism in the sense of “Do what I say or I’ll punish you” (even though that’s how it’s depicted), but it’s more along the lines of “We’ve discovered that if you do these things your life will turn to shit, so pay attention and make your choices wisely.” It’s practical life wisdom presented through metaphor.