The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is an ancient one and often referenced. Do you know it? Here’s a short recap of the Greek myth. King Minos was the King of Crete, his wife Pasiphae was enchanted by a special bull the King had and arranged for Dedalus, the Kings engineer, to create a disguise so she could have a son with the bull. The King was ashamed of the son she bore. He looked monstrous to him and arranged to have Dedalus create a prison inside a labyrinth. He then arranged for neighbouring Greece to send young men and women as sacrifices to his son, the Minotaur, imprisoned in the Labyrinth. In the third year of the sacrifices the son of the King of Greece choose to be one of the sacrifices. Theseus landed on Crete and one of King Minos’s daughters, Ariadne, fell in love with Theseus and helped him to defeat the monster in the Labyrinth. Theseus wins, he’s the hero. He exits the labyrinth alive and leaves Crete with Ariadne.
That’s the very short version. Most versions skim some key detail and focus on The monster in Labyrinth, Theseus the hero and Ariadne the beautiful daughter who tells Theseus the secret to the Labyrinth.
But what if we got the whole point to this myth all wrong? This myth appears to be about the hero entering a dark and confusing prison to face a monster, kill that monster and come out alive and a hero. It is one of the classical Hero’s Journey myths referred to by Joseph Campbell. It is recognized for its metaphor of the inner journey and the hero’s defeat of the inner demons that haunt one’s shadow self. But what if we have it all wrong? What if we have missed the true meaning of this myth.
Really if this is about the inner journey each of us is called to embark on and that monster in the labyrinth is not a demon but in fact our shadow self, do we really want to be fighting ourselves with a sword?
Let’s take a new look at the myth, this time from Asterion’s point of view, from the perspective of the shadow. In most telling’s of this myth. We never hear the Minotaur’s name, which makes it all the easier to see the shadow self as a separate monster that requires slaying. The Minotaur’s name is Asterion, after his grandfather.
That prize bull is an important part of the story. King Minos cheats the sea god Poseidon to get the bull. Minos’s father the previous King had just died and the crown was up for grabs between three sons. Minos prays to Poseidon to send him a white bull which he will then sacrifice in order to prove he is worthy and will become King. Poseidon agrees but Minos cheats. He decides to keep the special white bull and sacrifices a different one instead. Poseidon is not happy and gets revenge by making Minos’s Queen Pasiphae desire the white bull and have a son by him.
So, this myth begins with a man who cheats a God. This deceit causes a woman and her son to be victims of his ego.
Asterion is born. According to the myth he has the torso of a bull and the lower body of a man. As a young boy the Queen Pasiphae loves him and cares for him but at some point Minos can’t stand the shame and decides to lock him away in a prison inside a labyrinth that he has specially built for this purpose. So Asterion is taken from his mother and abandoned by his father. Is it any wonder he becomes a monster? The one thing any child needs to grow up healthy is ripped from him at an early age.
Asterion, the Minotaur represents the shame of King Minos. Just as the Labyrinth is an archetype of the inner journey, the minotaur is the archetypal monster named shame, one of the main demons all humans have in their shadow selves. So, when Theseus enters the labyrinth to face the minotaur he is in fact facing his own shadow just as much as it is King Minos shadow in that prison. In other words, he enters the labyrinth to face himself, which he faces with a sword. By this point we should realize that the shadow in this story is shame born of the wounded inner child. What does Theseus need to do to heal? What does Minos need? Surely not to fight themselves with swords drawn but rather to have the even greater courage to acknowledge their shame and face themselves with kindness, compassion and love.
This is not just the myth of the Hero’s Journey, it is the archetypal cartography of the soul. The call to travel into our deepest darkest parts of ourselves, to recognize, acknowledge and accept the hurt, the wounds and the trauma we all have and embrace them with kindness. Not to point fingers lay blame and seek revenge. We are called to stop fighting and rejecting the demons that lurk in the shadows of all of our selves, for these are nothing more than parts of ourselves that we have rejected and turned away from. We are all being called to give our wounds the healing power of kindness, acceptance and love, not the sword.
When Theseus drove his sword through Asterion he failed the inner journey. He didn’t emerge a hero. In fact, his return trip to Greece is marred with tragedy. One version tells us he loses Ariadne on an island and all versions tell us that he gets his signals wrong. His father is waiting to hear the news of his son’s survival or not as a sacrifice. He sees the signal that his son died in the labyrinth and the King of Greece takes his own life out of grief.
For the twenty-five hundred years since we have all missed the point when we celebrate Theseus as a hero. It’s time to rethink this story from Asterion’s perspective. Theseus perpetuated the anger, shame and violence that haunts us all today.
This tragic cycle will only end when we learn the truth which has been handed down by most of the major spiritual and religious traditions of the world, that love and compassion heal. That love and compassion must begin with ourselves. That we must all travel the twisting and turning labyrinth of the dark inner path and face our shadow selves with kindness and love.
Image: Edward Burne-Jones, Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, courtesy of The Google Art Project