You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Email Address:. Sign me up! Philosophy for change Ideas that make a difference. Odysseus and the Cyclops: mastery, humility, and fate June 11, by timrayner 3 Comments. An Odyssean fate awaits anyone who tries to navigate change without sufficient self-control. This lesson resounds throughout Greek literature: You are not a god. Do not forget it — or else. You must be the master of your own house before you are in a position to conquer the world.
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Hang that over his entire body of work. A necessary corrective to the… twitter. Thank me afterwards. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
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Does this description begin to sound familiar? The image of the cyclops may thus serve as something of a warning to anyone aspiring to cultivate their symbolic intuition; to those striving hard to open their third eye. The cyclops provides an eerie illustration of what can happen when this eye is opened too hastily and without the proper guidance. Straining to open wide their third eye, to the point where this becomes entirely round that is, cyclopean , some unfortunate seekers end up losing their native, dual, perspectival vision.
Their normal eyesight becomes shriveled, and their eye-sockets fall in, making them brutes, charlatans, barbarians, and monsters. I met with a mild and I mean very mild compared to the list of names above version of such a person the other day, whose symbolic intuition at first struck me as remarkably astute. She was an elderly lady who spoke insightfully about the problems with facemasks, lockdowns, and vaccines, in terms that made me question whether she had ever been schooled in symbolic thinking.
After paying her this compliment, she soon summoned the courage to confess to me — in a suddenly hushed voice — that she was secretly communicating with aliens, trying hard to attune her inner frequencies so as to pick up the faint signals of some spiritual beacon located in some distant galaxy, being herself the disciple of some new-age yogi — the reincarnation of an ancient prophet. She gave me a pamphlet and offered to lend me some DVDs. Figure 5. The modern cyclops. This last point strikes me as important.
By blinding them, you make them frenzied and unpredictable, hurling rough boulders literal or argumentative at your rebukes. Better then, to focus on softening their ossified eyelids. In symbolic language, this means kneeling down, spitting on the ground between them and you, massaging the clay in your hands, applying it carefully to their skin, thus making them come back in touch with the world — its solid and liquid aspects, not just its immaterial.
Neither Man nor Cyclops can live by the words of God alone, needing both bread and water to survive. Ideally, we humans are three-eyed creatures, capable of opening and closing each window of the soul depending on what wonder stands before us.
Their minds were attuned to His mind, their ears open to His words, their mouths voiced His will. Their vision was unadulterated and their souls capable of sustaining themselves on the word of God alone. Having not yet tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge, their works were wholly spiritual. What then happened when they tasted the fruit? In other words, Adam and Eve went from enjoying perpetual Beatific vision — which is to say, perfect third-eye vision, directed perpetually heavenward, while their bodily eyes remained mercifully veiled, as if in a state of blissful sleep — to having that veil abruptly cut open, flooding their heads with visions that did not shine down from heaven, but rather bubbled up from the waters below.
Prior to this, they had been able to walk around the garden with their bodily eyes shut, guided by a flawless inner compass, forever pointing them towards true north. Suddenly, the needle of that inner compass was set frantically spinning. Unlike before, they now had to look before they walked and think before they spoke. Sure enough, they had become like gods, aware of the lower rungs on the great ladder of being, not just the higher.
They knew potentiality, not just actuality; matter, not just form; and death, and not just life. Only they were not gods, and therefore divine knowledge overwhelmed them. Unaccustomed to 3D vision, as it were, their former, spiritual vision became diluted, their third eye slipping ever deeper into their foreheads, behind an ever more doubtful, ever more thickening skull.
The previously uniform attention of our primordial parents had become abruptly divided into three, making their minds reel in consequence. All too suddenly, they had become mindful not just of the recipe i. Presently, the right eye, Adam, looked at the left eye, Eve, and the left eye looked back at the right, and they immediately sensed their nakedness, in the eyes of the other, and in the eyes of God. And so they hid from God, and from each other. However, he does not show this through his actions.
He sleeps with countless amount of women on his journey. Another more positive way in which Odysseus is different to other Greek heroes is the way in which he gains his victories. Odysseus is a hero of wit and logic; his battles are won through deceit and quick thinking. Odysseus fulfills all of the requirements for an epic hero and more. He demonstrates his ability to be an articulate speaker, and his poise aids him on his journey.
His endless curiosity has gotten him into dilemmas, while his superb displays of strength and cunningness have helped both him and his crew escape danger.
One of the significant ways the Odyssey is relevant to the modern day is through its examination of mortality, as through this we can see how the text teaches us to respect the dead, but also how in turn the text suggests we live our lives. This is achieved mainly through the use of spirits of the dead in Book The Odyssey shows that the people of ancient Greece thought deities were anthropomorphic. The gods had human emotions and even argued during meetings.
Homer wrote about the Greeks in a way that is consistent with other written history because he was describing a story that happened during his time period. The Greeks valued beauty, art, intellect, honor, and truth; the list is long.
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