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In searching for the inner meaning of the Western tradition stemming from its Indo-European roots, it is necessary to take another important step. We cannot completely understand dynamic clinging unless we appreciate its conjunction with its opposite. Until now, the opposite of dynamic clinging has not appeared. It appears only as we search for a myth among the Greek corpus that ties together all the elements which have been successively uncovered in the progress of this study. That myth complex which ties together all of these elements concerns Perseus and Medusa. The Gorgon Medusa's gaze turns men to stone. Turning to stone is the opposite of dynamic clinging.

Let's look for a moment at an example of the relation between dynamic clinging and frozen terror. The example is the rodeo in which so many of the values of Western culture are encapsulated. At the rodeo, there is a clear distinction between the rodeo cowboy and the rodeo clown. The rodeo cowboy risks his life to participate in an event of overt dynamic clinging to the wild animal. The animal is made wild by a form of torture, and the cowboys compete to see who can stay on the longest as the creature (horse or bull) goes wild. It is of interest to note that the animals are not truly wild, but are "made wild" by the artificial means. Torture brings out the "true nature" of animals -- their wildness -- which is necessary for Western man to express this extreme form of dynamic clinging. For Western man to conquer nature, it must be transformed, even by torture, into a fitting opponent. Here Western man revisits the original scene in which he conquered the truly wild horses in order to show he could do it again if he had not blotted out all the wilderness and rendered everything tame. It is pathetic that Western man can only revisit the wild by torturing the tame animals to drive them wild.

But the rodeo does not just contain cowboys -- it also contains the rodeo clown his nihilistic opposite. The rodeo clown stands as a marker for the opposite of the courage of the dynamically clinging rodeo cowboy. The rodeo clown signifies frozen terror. The rodeo clown runs from the wild beast performing the role of distracting it from the fallen cowboy. The rodeo clown jumps in a barrel which is butted by the bull. The rodeo clown signifies the fear of the audience and all those who shrink from the encounter of the dynamically clinging to the wild. But as the cowboy is riding the wild beast, the rodeo clown stands by watching. Thus, between the cowboy and the rodeo clown, there is a complementary relationship between the participant and the observer. When the cowboy is bucked off, the clown runs toward and then away, distracting the wild animal. Thus, the clown's mock cowardice is useful in saving the life of the cowboy. It is the animal that is caught and manipulated in the tension between these two opposite roles. The truth is that Western man oscillates between these two roles because dynamic clinging and frozen terror entail each other. Both are responses to wildness. It is because of implicit terror that wild things are converted to tame. They are transformed from wild to tame through dynamic clinging as the Western man breaks the wild horse, but they are converted because of the terror that the wild inspires. The one who does the dynamic clinging hides within himself the teleology of frozen terror. The one who exhibits frozen terror outwardly hides within himself the necessity of dynamic clinging. The city folk hire the cowboy, or his likes, to tame the wild. The ability to tame the wild is a rank of distinction that separated the men from the boys. It is the touchstone that proves bravery and distinguishes the true man.

Yet when there is no true wilderness left, then the whole dialectic turns around. The animal must be tortured to be driven wild. The true man who can dynamically cling becomes the torturer of the tame beast, and the audience becomes the passive "non-involved" observer of this crime whose fear is signified by the clown.

In myth, frozen terror is represented by turning to stone. Thewileit calls this the White Terror in his study of Male Fantasies:

As we have seen above, the soldier male's activity is constantly directed toward the attainment of three perceptions: the "empty space," the "bloody miasma," and the inundation of consciousness in "blackout." Through hallucination, and by muscular activity of his body, he traces the same route that is described by Mahler in terms of the maintenance of dedifferentiation and devivification: and his goal seems to me, as it does to Mahler to be self-preservation.

In Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, the attainment of "perceptual identities" -- the desired goal of the primary process -- is distinguished from "thought identities," which are the means by which the secondary process attempts to achieve satisfaction. Perceptual identities are presented as a "lower" means of achieving satisfactions, as routes that bypass all detours, deferrals, inhibitions, diversions, thought, word-presentations, or concepts. In the primary process, desire shoots out compulsively toward the production of an image that is either hallucinated or produced by changing the status of the real objects. The image produced corresponds to an earlier situation in which the individual has experienced security and satisfaction.

Mahler's work has modified this conception of the primary process as necessarily divested toward the perception of a state of primary pleasure. From here observation of the "psychotic" child, she concludes that the activation of the primary process is equally likely to reproduce a key situation of displeasure. In such instances, the not-yet-fully-born child may well be attempting to indicate its sense of entrapment within, and inability to transcend, a particularly destructive phase of its development. Aggressive acts of self maintenance thus appear as intimations on the part of the child of a crucial lack within itself.

In the soldier male, both pleasurable and unpleasurable activities seem to be in evidence; the question of which is the goal of the primary process -- pleasure or unpleasure -- is resolved according to the degree to which his body-ego fragments in the course of activity. The degree of fragmentation varies in him according to the intensity of threats to which he feels exposed at a given moment.¹

Theweleit's study of the Frekopf (pre-nazi) materials of German mercenary soldiers are revealing about the deep-seated fears of Western man as he faces the situation of confronting in which dynamic clinging is necessary. We will stick with the metaphor of the rodeo, but the same might be said of many other arenas of human activity. Theweleit's major insight is that the motivation of the Frekopf is essentially one of self-preservation against the perceived onslaughts of the world which threatens to inundate him. In the rodeo, this shows up in the transformation in the behavior of the rodeo cowboy from the frenzied activity of riding to the stiff calmness with which he walks away from the encounter of dynamic clinging. It is amazing to see the rodeo cowboy strut calmly away after a successful ride as if to say that the frenzied activity of the ride had no effect on him internally. Many times the cowboy will turn his back on the still raging animal as he walks away, as if to court danger openly, showing disdain for the conquered animal. The stiff stride of the cowboy and the quick transformation show an abnormal degree of boundary maintenance. As the cowboy rides, he yells and waves his cap, but as soon as the ordeal is over and his ride successful, he struts away calmly, showing no emotion. The opposite of this situation is the unsuccessful ride where the cowboy is thrown and gets under the feet of the enraged animal. In this scenario's worst case, the cowboy is trampled to death, turned into a bloody pulp. Theweleit calls this the "bloody miasma." The cowboy watches as his peers are trampled occasionally and must constantly imagine it happening to himself. This constant possibility is thus a displeasureable image constantly presented to the cowboy, and is what makes the rodeo pageant exciting for the audience.

The production of the perception of the second perceptual identity, the "bloody miasma," involves devivification and the differentiation working simultaneously. In this process, the man seems to experience the reactivation of the central situation of unpleasure; he is stripped of boundaries, left undifferentiated and trapped in a symbiosis that engulfs him. He perceives flesh-and-blood exclusively as a blood-sodden mass in which he will perish; or, more extremely, he sees himself as inescapably immersed in the blood of his own childbirth. Characteristically, the bloody miasma brings the man into physical proximity with threatening elements which he both actively seeks (despite the immense danger of engulfment) and against which he differentiates himself as survivor, by smashing them to pieces (with his rifle butt, for instance) or shooting at point blank range. He escapes by mashing others to the pulp he himself threatens to become.²

Thus, the rodeo cowboy maintains his self on the edge of total destruction with the constant destruction of others as a reminder of what could happen to him.

The bloody miasma is the central image between two nihilistic opposite images of "empty space" and the "blackout." Empty space results from the anti-production of working death and destruction that results in the purity which the Western man seeks. A world in which every thing is annihilated is a pure world, as Morris Berman reminds us in his study of this syndrome in Coming To Our Senses. This anti-production of annihilation can also engulf the perpetrator which results in the "blackout" in which consciousness is lost. However, engulfment normally refers to sensory overload which leads to temporary blackout. For the cowboy the time of sensory overload is during the frenzy of riding, while the time of sensitivity is immediately after the ride as he regains his composure to strut away. In order to regain his composure quickly, he must shut himself off from his own bodily feelings which are replaced by over calmness of his strutting. Thus the cowboy moves from an experience of sensory overload which could result in consciousness if he were unlucky, to an artificial calmness in which he shuts himself off from his bodily feelings in order to show that the ordeal did not effect him. He undergoes this transformation in the face of the constant danger that could transform him into a bloody mass.

Notice that this trinity of images corresponds to the conceptual triangles of Loy and Tiemersa explored previously.

TABLE 39
Empty Space	Bloody Miasma	Blackout
THOUGHT	PERCEPTION	ACTION
Mental Lived Body	Body Conscious Subject	Physical Lived Body
Mental Objectifying Body	Objectifying Conscious Subject	Physical Objectifying Body

Here the conception is that the extraordinary situation which necessitates dynamic clinging to survive produces the triadic structure of consciousness (or the triadic structure of the sign). While riding the animal, the rider is immersed in sensory overload lost in his actions. Immediately after dismounting, he transitions the nihilisticly opposite condition of artificial serenity to prove he was unaffected. This artificial serenity has affinities with the cold world of pure thought which is artificially separated from the perceptual world by the mind/body dichotomy. Thus, the extreme situation of dynamic clinging produces two equally out-of-balance states of too much action -- too little action. In both cases, the natural flow of consciousness and behavior are disrupted. The transformation between frenzy and stilted action takes place across a chasm of the possibility of being turned into a bloody pulp. This perception of others smashed by the raging animal is both the chasm and the point of unification. Because I have not been smashed, I have unified the two artificially out of balance states and preserved myself, producing a subjectivity that hovers above the world triumphant. The perception of the destruction of others separates the subject from those others as an uninvolved observer who has undergone the ordeal and survived. This objectified subject that unifies the two artificially out-of-balance states is the persona of Western man. He enters the realm of white terror, of frozen terror, without cowardice, temporarily unifying frenzy and serenity. Thus, the audience and the cowboy share something in common. They are both observers immersed in the frozen terror implicit in the dangerous situation. The successful cowboy has entered the realm of frozen terror by transcending it, whereas the audience has entered by remaining uninvolved. The clown is the marker which at once unifies and differentiates the brave cowboy and the uninvolved audience.

TABLE 40
VARUNA
>>>>>>>>>	ENGULFED
MITHRA	>>>>>>>>>	BLACKOUT
>>>>>>>>>	BEARING	>>>>>>>>>	FROZEN TERROR
INDRA	>>>>>>>>>	BLOODY MIASMA	>>>>>>>>> (Perseus Subject)	GORGON MEDUSA (Object)
>>>>>>>>>	GRASPING	>>>>>>>>>	DYNAMIC CLINGING
FREYA/TWINS	>>>>>>>>>	EMPTY SPACE
>>>>>>>>>	POINTING
OUTSIDERS				< Mirror

This leads us to understand the reduction by which the primal Indo-European pattern is distilled to reveal its inner meaning. The pattern of the gods delimit, via their interfaces, the four types of Being whose modalities represent intensifications of clinging. But just as the interfaces between the gods can be represented, so too can the interfaces between the modalities of clinging. So empty space becomes the interface between pointing and grasping. Bloody miasma is the interface between grasping and bearing. Finally, blackout is the interface between bearing and engulfing. At the next level of precipitation, dynamic clinging is the interface between empty space and bloody miasma, while frozen terror is the interface between bloody miasma and blackout. The final level of precipitation is where the Gorgon appears, which is the ultimate image which may be distilled from the Western miasm. The Gorgon is the monster -- the wild beast itself that is the object of white terror and dynamic clinging. The monstrosity projected into nature is merely the reflection of the subject which confronts the monster. The monster does not exist in nature, but is a figment of the imagination of the one with the wish to confront and conquer the artificial wild. Nature is transformed into a monster so that it may be slain by the subject caught in the oscillation between the states of dynamic clinging and white terror. Western man wreaks terror because he is terrified. He clings to the beast he has driven wild. When Perseus looks into the mirror at the Gorgon Medusa, he sees his own reflection.

When we explore the myth of Perseus and the Medusa, it is necessary to keep in mind Peleus and Thetis who represent the primordial instance of dynamic clinging which is reflected in various ways in other myths. When Thetis transforms, she turns to fire and then to water. Then she turns to a snake and then to a lion. She moves between extremes in order to shake Peleus' grip on her. The images of lion and snakes are crucial. Belephron, who is the opposite of Perseus, destroys the Chimera which was "a fire-breathing she-monster with a lion's head, goat's body and serpent's tail."³ The Medusa has snakes emanating from her head. Thus, it becomes clear that the Medusa and Chimera are both derivative images of Thetis in transformation. They are the objects of dynamic clinging, and thus the goals of heroic deeds. So Thetis, Chimaera, and Medusa are all reflections of the same archetype -- the object of dynamic clinging and white terror. They are reflections of the subject caught oscillating between these two opposites who can only preserve himself by destroying the object he himself has created.

Also remember that Thetis gave refuge to Dionysus when he fled into the sea pursued by Lycurgus. For saving him, Dionysus gave Thetis a golden urn in which the bones of Achilles, son of Peleus, will later rest (Odyssey 24.74; Otto p55). So there is a deep underlying connection between Thetis and Dionysus that must be explored in order to appreciate the full ramifications of the ordeals of Preseus and Belephron. In the progress of this study, Dionysus has been identified with fate as the signifier of the mortality of the immortals (the impossible moment). Dionysus embodies the emergence out of the dialectic of dynamic clinging and white terror. Dionysus is the god who emerges. His epiphany is always a momentous and startling event. As startling and incongruous as seeing a ship on wheels which was the vehicle for his appearance in Greece. Dionysus is the one who appears from the sea and returns to the sea. In this, he is related to Aphrodite, which is shown in his affinity for women and his effeminate nature. In fact, Dionysus combines the natures of the three elements which the warrior receives in his initiation outside the city. Dionysus is wild and drives others wild, and as such, he is like the wild horses that the young warrior learns to ride. Dionysus is effeminate and has the nature of woman in the form of a man. Dionysus is a conqueror, who destroys his enemies. Dionysus is the master of mysteries. As Otto points out, Dionysus and Athena are opposites. One sprang from the head of Zeus, while the other sprang from his thigh. As such, they represent the masculine woman and the effeminate man which are the nihilistic opposite associated with human sexual roles. They respectively represent closed yin and yang splendor. Athena is a woman (yin) who looks and acts like a man (yang). Dionysus is a man (yang) who looks and acts like a woman (yin). Thus, the nihilistic opposites are represented as the tension between the reason and order of Athena as opposed to the chaos and madness of Dionysus. It is really this opposition which should be emphasized instead of the opposition with Apollo. The yang splendor is signified by the lightening bolt that smote his mother, annihilating her in his conception so he had to be incubated in the thigh of Zeus.

Right at his birth gods arise as his enemies. Terrible disturbances are engendered in his vicinity. The destruction of his mother is followed by suffering, bitter distress, and violent death for all who interest themselves in the little boy, beginning with his mother's sister, Ino, who plunges into the sea, out of her mind, with her own child in her arms. And in this way, even the revelation of the god who became a man creates wild emotion, anger, and opposition among mankind. The daughters of Minyus refuse to follow his call and with good reason, for he rips the ones he has affected out of their wifely decency and morality and mates with the mysteries and madness of the chaos of night. They, however, wish to remain true to their duties as housewives and attend their husbands -- until Dionysus incites them with the sharpest goad of his madness. King Pentheus becomes aroused and does not wish to let the women tear their bonds of modesty asunder and dance with the frenzied deity. Persues in Argos rushes out to meet Dionysus with an armed might. In shifting forms, the myth repeats the same image over and over again.⁴

Dionysus is the god who embodies not just the secret of mortality of the immortals, but also the turmoil of emergence. The women who follow him leave the city and become the mates of the initiated warriors. In terms that the Frekopf would understand, they are changed from white maidens who are pure and chaste into red whores who epitomize the enemy. Yet, it is the rape and destruction of the women of the enemy that gives the greatest pleasure. Women are split into either sources of fertility which are kept pure and protected, or sources of pleasure which are to be used and destroyed. Dionysus is the one who forces women to be transformed between these two categories. This is the ambivalent position of women in Indo-European society, as either hoarded object or object of exchange, which is built in from the beginning. Dionysus takes women out of the city and transforms them into the embodiments of Aprhodite with which the young initiated warrior learns of sex as separate from family responsibilities. This ambivalent position of women as either holy and untouchable, or whore, is a necessary complement to the split in the oscillating subject between the white terror and dynamic clinging. Once a woman leaves the city she can no longer enter again. However, the man leaves the city (his family) to become initiated (sow wild oats) before he returns to the city to settle down after the male rite of passage. Thus, the woman becomes the field which is sown, as Page Dubois studies in her book The Sowing Of The Body. The nihilistic opposites of Centars And Amazons has also been studied by her as images of the Other in Greek society. Men go to the Centaurs for initiation. Women are abducted from the city to serve as objects of this initiation. So the fundamental Indo-European myth of the abducting of the woman plays itself out because of the basic structures inherent in the primal Indo-European mythos and world patterning. Thetis is given a golden urn by Dionysus. Thetis represents the initiation into the realm of Aphrodite (sexual pleasure outside the bounds of marriage). The golden urn signifies the well of fate -- the wells are the sources from which all things take their form. Thus, not only is the urn (chalice) the female essence, it also embodies the workings of fate which is given by Dionysus, the master of fate. Dionysus is the effeminate embodiment of Yang splendor which gives the golden urn to Aphrodite -- the equivalent of Paris giving the Golden apple to Aphrodite -- the woman torn out of the social nexus and raped in the initiation beyond the city's protective walls.

This must cause us to ask what the gift of Athena was to man. Athena is perhaps Anatha, the Sumerian goddess of heaven, known also a Inanna. The hymns to her and the Sumarian myths surrounding her are told in the book by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer called Innana: Queen Of Heaven And Earth. She is the source of civilization who steals the "ME" or arts of civilization from Enki the lord of the sea. She travels to the underworld and returns to place her husband, Dumezil, there for his lack of grief. As Robert Bly remarks, both men and woman are associated with heaven and earth. Normally men are associated with heaven, and women with earth. But man can also be associated with earth and become its protector, while woman may be associated with heaven. Innana is the embodiment of the energy of woman associated with the heavens, and Athena is the inheritor of that place in Greek mythology.

When we look back at Peleus' wedding which the gods attended, we see that Athena participated in the gift to him of a spear.

Cheiron gave Peleus a spear; Athena had polished its shaft, which was cut from an ash on the summit of Pelion; and Hephaestus had forged its blade. The gods' joint gift was a magnificent suit of golden armor, to which Poseidon added the two immortal horses -- Balins and Xanthes -- by the West Wind out of the Harby Podarge.⁵

Thus, Athena, with Chieron, gives Peleus a magical phallus-like object, the spear. The entering into the golden urn of Thetis gives Peleus a golden suit of Armor. And the immortal horses signify the achievement of the ability to dynamically cling. Each gift relates to a phase of the initiation of the young warrior in which he gets a magical instrument -- the phallus that has entered the golden urn, his mastery of dynamic clinging to horses and the golden suit of armor that will protect him in battle. Notice that Cheiron's gift is the magical phallus which is made possible because Peleus has entered the possessor of the golden urn.

The wildness of the woman outside the city is the human equivalent to the wildness of the horses. By entering into the arena of both, the young initiate has proved his manhood as signified by the magical spar which is an instrument of aggression needed by the warrior to defend the city. He also earned his golden armor which is the objectifying conscious subject that is forged through the ordeal. The subjectivity of the observer who has risen above the oscillation between dynamic clinging and the white terror is the ultimate refuge of the one who has entered the battle and survived again and again until he is not moved by the battle and remains calm in the midst of chaos.

In all this, it is clearly seen that the urn is given to the woman who has broken out of the city by Dionysus who represents Yang Splendor, while the Spear is given to the male initiate by Athena who represents closed yin. This means both the male and the female are infected by the imbalanced states of too yang and too yin. And how does one become too yin or too yang? It is by clinging to a state, whether yin or yang, after it is the natural time for it to roll over into its opposite. When this clinging occurs, one enters more and more deeply into the abnormal state until one is forced to transition into the opposite in a catastrophic manner. The giving of the urn to the female signifies the transition from Yang Splendor to Yin, and the giving of the spear to Peleus by Athena signifies the transition of closed yin to the yang. In other words, in the initiation the male and female initiates learn to embody the out-of-balance states of Yang Splendor and Closed Yin and ride the forced transition from these extreme imbalanced states back to their opposite. So for the female initiates, the transition is from the protection of the city into the wilderness where they become sexually free. For the male, it is the transition of the first wild ride where he tames the horses and learns to dynamically cling, and the initial experience of free sexuality outside the confines of law and responsibility. At that point, the male is able to transition back into the city to become a warrior. Unfortunately, in this system, the women have nowhere to go; they are discarded unless they are cured and purified, as Melanpus did for Proetus by immersion in a sacred well⁶. They have become the vehicle for the transformation of the men, but they would not make good wives after this experience, they are no longer "pure" -- or so the customs dictate. Yet in this, the transition from closed yin to the male, or from yang splendor to the female, enhance the experience of both given seemingly magical powers. By being able to experience the extreme state and the rapid transition to the opposite, a valuable lesson has been learned which sets these men and women apart. For they know it is possible to hang on to the transforming opposites, and thus knowledge allows them to be more tenacious than all the others. They achieve a kind of balance in spite of extreme imbalances that are continuously negotiated and adapted to. This meta-balance in the midst of multiple extreme imbalances is the harmony of the holon, integra and holoid. It is a balance and harmony which compensates for an artificial state of imbalance that was created as its precursor in order to make possible the meta stability as the artificial opposite of imposed chaos.

As an aside, it should be noted that the serenity of the one who masters dynamic clinging which merges it with the white terror may be again transcended so that the karmic oscillation between dynamic clinging and the white terror stops. This is the wisdom of the one who attains the abode of the action of non-action (Wei Wu Wei). Thus, for the actor, there is the possibility of achieving non-attachment by relinquishing the result of the action. This is the way taught in the Bhagavad Gita by Krishna to Arjuna as they stand between the two armies. In this way, the ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of the self. This is the ultimate way of knowledge within the Indo-European way where the karmic oscillation which causes objectifying subjectivity to arise is sacrificed and wholeness achieved, in which the self becomes totally dependent on the self alone. The exposition of this way, which is the ultimate teaching within the Indo-European way is beyond the compass of this essay. Yet it is important to know that the Medusa (object of desire) which is the reflection of the oscillating subject can vanish if the oscillations of the subject is quelled and the subject/object dichotomy unified by a return to undifferentiated Being or the unity of non-dual perception, action, and thought. However, in this essay, we are concerned with the workings of the manifest aspects of the Western worldview so as to avoid its pitfalls. The wisdom within that worldview still relies on the manifestation of its unpleasant aspects, and so undifferentiated Being really only hides the essential flaws within being itself. We wish to escape the conundrum completely, not just not just suppress its effects. The holoid and the excrescence are both distortions of reality. Merges with the holoid by entering into undifferentiated Being allows the Western sage to achieve harmony within the context of a warped view of the world.

Let us also remember that the other wedding attended by the gods was that of Cadamus and Harmonia. Cadamus was the brother of Europa who was carried off and seduced by Zeus. Agenor sent all his sons to search for her, and they were not to return without her. They all searched in vain and ended up dispersing and living in different parts of the world. Cadamus went to Delphi and asked after his sister, and was told to give up. He was told to build a city were a cow stopped. He thus bought a cow and followed it until it stopped. There he proceeded to sacrifice the cow and sent his men to fetch water. His men were killed by a serpent at the spring of Ares. Cadamus killed the serpent, and Athena appeared to him after the sacrifice of the cow and ordered him to sow the serpent's teeth in the soil.

When he obeyed her, armed sparti, or Sown Men, at once sprung up, clashing their weapons together. Cadamus tossed a stone among them, and they began to brawl, each accusing the other of having thrown it, and fought so fiercely that, at last, only five survived:

who unanimously offered Cadamus their services. But Ares demanded vengeance for the death of the serpent, and Cadamus was sentenced by a devine court to being his bondsman for a great year.⁷

Here we see a perfect image of the field of excrescences in the fighting of the Sparti for no reason. The human companions of Cadamus are replaced by these men of earth. They represented the artificial defective creation which replaces the natural creation, making necessary the search for wholeness and harmony. This is also reflected in the dispersion of the sons of Agenor. When Europa was stolen, the outward female unity was lost as the five brother dispersed. Out of the melee of the sparti, five men of earth survived to form a new unity under Cadamus which became the city of Thebes. So natural unity was traded for an artificial unity of a human male, bringing together the non-human or less than human men of Earth. The gift of the Sparti had the price of bondage to the god of war, Ares. Cadamus finally married the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite who is called Harmonia. When the marriage occurred, all the gods attended, giving gifts.

TABLE 41
Aphrodite	Golden necklace of irresistible beauty
Athena	Golden robe of devine dignity and flutes
Cadamus	Rich robe
Electra	Taught the rites of the great goddess
Demeter	Assured her a prosperous barley harvest

All these are gifts to Harmonia. After strife, Cadamus achieved harmony by merging Ares with Aphrodite (they were the lovers that Hephaestus made fun of by binding them in bed). Ultimately, Cadamus and Harmonia left Thebes to rule barbarians, as was foretold by Dionysus. When the barbarians had wreaked enough havoc, they were turned either into snakes or lions by Ares. Thus, in Europa outward female unity leaves and dispersion and strife follow. But out of strife Cadamus somehow achieves harmony by merging Aphrodite and Ares, and the marriage is consecrated by all the gods. But the harmony allows him to rule over barbarians until their being transformed into sharks or lions. Cadamus in the process becomes the inward male unity among the Sparti. Instead of him being killed, all his followers are killed. Five brothers are split, and five men of Earth appear, unified by one of the brothers. This reminds us of the Pandava and, of course, of the five semiotic markers of the primal Indo-European pattern. So Cadamus marriage to Harmonia is the result of the initiation process, while the marriage of Peleus tells us the steps of the initiation itself.

With all these preliminaries in place, we are ready to deal with the myths of Perseus and Belaphron. I concentrate on these myths because they combine all the elements which have been dealt with up to this point in this series of essays. These myths tie these elements together, and in this way, hopefully gives us a final complete picture. It is the face of the underlying pattern of the Western worldview. Given the approach established in proceeding chapters, it is now possible to see the face from a unique vantage point that ties together the many seemingly unrelated aspects of Greek mythology., The basic principle is the use of myth to understand the relationship of nihilistic opposites to each other and the elucidation of the fundamental pattern of the Indo-European worldview in relation to the initiation process. As this chapter draws to a close, we will discuss the overall structure of the mythic scene which will be explored in detail in the next chapter.

The story of Perseus and Belaphron starts with the two brothers, Proetus (first man) and Acrisisu (ill judgement). They were twin sons of the king Abas, or Argolis, who was the son of Cellus. Cellus was the sun of Danus who was the son of Bellus who was the son of Poseidon. The family tree was as follows:

Normally, the interpreter of myth speaks of a single myth, and not much work has been done on mythic lineages. In fact, no real methods have been developed to deal with mythic lineages. They seem a hodge podge of unrelated stories randomly linked by family relationships. However, the family relationships lend the myths a dimension which needs to be kept in mind. In fact, it is these lineages that give Greek myth its complexity. We know that lineage was very important to the Greeks, and so by ignoring this dimension in our interpretation, we are really looking only at the surface patterns of the myths and not their deep structure expressed as family relations. Here we can only make a few general comments, but it is important for getting the context of Perseus and Belaphron right to keep the context in mind. Generally, we will speak to houses: that of Belus (BAAL) and that of Agenor. We have already dealt with Agenor's house in our remarks on the myth of Cadamus. It is an important myth, we know, because the gods graced his marriage to Harmonia with their presence. All the action regarding the house of Agenor was precipitated by Zeus' carrying away Europe. If we look at the entire lineage, we see that Zeus has "interfered four times with Io, Europe, Lamia and Dane in this lineage. But the lineage had also been participated in by Poseidon. Thus, the lineage is mixed. It begins with a river god, Inachus, who would fall under Posiedon's domain. Zeus ravages Ion (Hera's priestess) and attempts to hide it from Hera. Io is turned into a cow that wanders the earth (remember the cow Cadamus will follow) until she is finally turned back to human form and bears Epaphus, the divine bull Apis, that ruled Egypt. The daughter of Epaphus is Lygia who, via Poseidon, bears the twins Belus and Agenor. Then Zeus again "interferes" with their houses three times. This circulation of the lineage between the influence of Zeus and Poseidon is very significant. Zeus and Poseidon are opposing influences (they are opposed in the Iliad) much like Enlil and Enki in Sumarian mythology. A lineage that links these opposing influences can be expected to be important and also exemplify their interaction.

It is important to note that Io's wandering, and the searching of her brothers, mirrors the searching of the brothers of Europe. So there is some symmetry in the mythological lineages across the lineage. The theme which occurs again and again is that of the white bull and the white cow. Zeus turns Io into a white cow to hide her from Hera. He appears as a white Bull to Europe. The white bull also appears in the story of Pasiphae and Minos. Minos made an offering to Poseidon and prayed for a white bull to emerge from the ocean, which immediately occurred. Minos did not sacrifice the bull but replaced it with another. As punishment, his wife Pasiphae fell in love with the bull and had intercourse, producing the Minotar. Minos had the labyrinth built to hide them both. Structurally we then move from Io as white cow to Zeus as white bull to a sacrificial white bull from the sea to a bull man. This all gains new significance if we remember that Europe is the name of the Indo-European homeland. The Westerners are called Europeans. Europe is the outward female unity that disappears. This disappearance causes her brothers to disperse in search. It led to the inward male unity of Cadamus among the Sparti and eventually to the marriage of Cadamus with Harmonia. Cadamus had to follow a cow in order to found his city. He followed a cow, and his sister was taken off by a bull across the sea. Minos asks for a bull to arise form the sea. The emergence of the bull leads to the birth of the Minotaur or man-bull. Zeus takes away the outward female unity of Europe and replaces it with inner male unity and harmony. But the result is the Minotaur. Just as the lineage displays the interferences of Poseidon and Zeus it also leads to the production of the bull man who Theseus finally defeats with a thread. We might oversimplify and call the labyrinth the complex thought structures that the West has devised. The Minotaur within the labyrinth is the Western male energy of dominance. The Minotaur is the opposite of the Thetis (medusa / chimera) complex. The inward male unity, when it is forced inward by sacrifice, becomes the Minotaur. The Minotaur is the dark side of the outward seeming harmony produced by the sacrifice of the male. The labyrinth is the artificial inwardness created by the sacrifice -- the inwardness of moving thought rather than stilled thought. The bull and cow appear over and over in this mythic complex. The key point is where the bull appears to Minos from the sea. Zeus, as white bull, takes Europa into the sea, and Poseidon makes a white bull appear from the sea. The bull represented fecundity and power to the Greeks as well as to most Middle Eastern peoples. The disappearance and appearance of the bull represents the power to make things appear and disappear. The Minotaur takes the power into himself. The Minotaur is the man who has disappeared through the sacrifice. It is the man who makes things appear and disappear, as with Being as manifestation. In the labyrinth of thought, men make things appear and disappear. Just as Minos had the hubris to brag, he could get whatever he prayed for. When he got what he asked for, he did not know what to do with it. He didn't sacrifice it, and so was cursed by it. The conceptual Being is an attempt to control manifestation by man. Because he attempts to control what is not his to control, he is transformed into that thing. It blinds him by becoming part of him. Western man is blinded by his power but does not see how it has mutated him.

Theseus kills the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne whom he deserts and becomes the wife of Dionysus. Theseus negotiates the Labyrinth with a golden ball of thread that knows the way into the labyrinth by itself. The Minotaur is like a spider that waits in its web for the Athenian sacrifices. So it is ironic that it is a spinning of a thread by which the minotaur is undone. The golden thread is the truth which the convolutions of the maze cannot hide. Aphrodite was the guardian of Theseus, and when Minos and Theseus contested as songs of the gods, Zeus produced a thunder clap for Minos. Theseus dove for a gold ring and was helped by Thetis who not only found the ring, but also gave him a crown which was her wedding gift from Aphrodite. So Aphrodite figures in the conferring the power to defeat the Minotaur. Theseus is the initiate who is not caught in the Labyrinth, but instead is able to negotiate it and kill the inhabitant. In this way, the artificially produced inward male energy is overcome by the energy of the expelled woman. The initiate is given the crown -- the sign of kingship and the power to overcome brute force with wisdom and discrimination (the weakest of things, a thread, causes the downfall of the Minotaur). The labyrinth is like the city ruled by the warrior without any wisdom. The magical king retakes the city by his wisdom and fine discrimination with the help of Thetis, the object of desire.

This chapter has dealt at length with the house of Agenor in order to prepare for the discussion of Perseus and Belaphron. They have a special relation to the house of Belus. It is important to keep in mind the mythic lineage and the structural relations between the myths about different generations. The overall pattern is not completely clear, but we must begin to understand the context of our myths in relation to other associated myths if we are to understand the deep message that these myth complexes hide for us. It is the secret of who we as Westerners really are. Our ancestors knew. We have forgotten. Knowing one's genealogy is not always pleasant. Sometimes there are murderers and scoundrels. Perhaps a skeleton in the closet. Unfortunately, in our case, there are so many skeletons buried across the Earth's surface we cannot ever count them all -- human and non-human. We are the Minotaur awaiting his sacrificial victims within the maze of conceptualization. Like him we have become mutants. Our perception distorted by the power of the Western worldview which spreads the distortion of Being across the world -- Cadamus and Harmonia were prophesied to rule over barbarians -- those barbarians are ourselves. No longer can the true initiated king such as Theseus or King Arthur save us by bringing a golden age of restored harmony. Unfortunately, things have gone too far for that.