In the beginning
Psyche was a mortal, but not an ordinary one, even by mythical
standards. She was literally the most beautiful woman in the
world, so beautiful that people came from all over to visit the
place of her home, hoping just to catch a glimpse of her and
her legendary beauty. With Psyche's draw, after a while visitors
stopped coming to the various temples of Aphrodite (Venus), and
they fell into disuse and even disrepair as pilgrims and worshipers
of the feminine beauty turned their attention to the mortal Psyche
as the new standard of beauty.
Simply put, Venus became jealous. She was furious, and vowed
revenge on Psyche for stealing the attention Venus believed to
be rightly hers. She sent her son, Eros to Earth to put a spell
on Psyche that would make her fall in love with the ugliest man
in the world. Instead, Eros fell in love with Psyche. He was
captured by her light and beauty, and courted her to be his lover,
but only at night.
Eros forbid Psyche from looking at him, he did not want her
to know him as an immortal god. However, one night Psyche lit
a lamp to satisfy her curiosity and Eros awoke to find Psyche
staring at him in all his splendor and beauty as a god. Eros
was hurt by Psyche's betrayal and he disappeared, returning to
his home in the heavens.
Psyche was grief-stricken, but nevertheless set out to find
Eros to apologize, and beg him to return to her bed. Venus, however
had other ideas. She wanted Psyche to perish in a most horrible
way for what she'd done to Venus' reputation as the paragon of
beauty. Venus gave Psyche four tasks or labors to perform, each
one more difficult, and each one designed to be the end of Psyche.
The beautiful mortal perservered through the first three labors,
and completed each of them in turn.
For her final task she had to go to the depths of Hell to
meet Hades himself, and bring back to Venus a golden box of Beauty.
Psyche was severely challenged by this task, and in the end was
rescued by Eros from the sleep of death that escaped the golden
box when she opened it. With his help she completed the final
task and won the hand of Eros in a fabulous celestial wedding.
Zeus called all of the immortals together on Mount Olympus, and
in a ceremony of recognition and acceptance made Psyche an immortal,
so that she and Eros could play together forever.
Psyche has been in the process of renewing herself in the
collective unconscious and is now becoming more present in the
hearts of humans who are atuning to their inner experiences.
Just like the original Psyche, she is the delicate feeling parts
of each of us. For Psyche means consciousness, she is the mythic
metaphor for the human soul. Originally part of an earlier dispensation,
she gradually faded from human experience and had become nearly
forgotten by the global culture that focused on the values of
mentalism and technology.
There is now at hand, however... a new dispensation, a new
covenant between the Universal and Humanity. And the coming paradigm
is very different from everything that has happened before between
deity and humanity. Humanity is beginning to experience first
hand the inner presence of the divine. In the words of Jungian
psychotherapist and author Jeremiah Abrams, "The new dispensation
is the path of direct experience."
New Psyche Network
PO Box 633, San Anselmo, CA 94979
414-924-8800 ~ 800-
449-4422
