After reading and pondering certain myths, of which Hercules or Heracles seems the classic examples I had an insight into the ‘fault’ or ‘lesson’ of this type of mythic ‘hero’ and they seem not to be following the mythic formula, i.e. notacting, in a typical ‘mythic’ or ‘other-worldly’ heroic way.
Their behaviour seems more ‘normal’, more resistant to the process of initiation, ego-centred, logical, literalist (meaning they interpret symbols, signals and directions in the mythic realm in a type of rationalist, materialist, superficial way). At times they seem to attack, neglect and deny the symbolic / initiatic opportunity being offered to them.
The true Mythic Hero’s journey, internally and psychologically seems to be to unite with the Anima/us (the ‘subjective soul’), externally; to encounter and understand one’s part in the ‘Anima Mundi’, the World Soul ( the ‘objective soul’ ) and to gain skills associated with or ways to access the ‘otherworld’ ( the mythological landscape, the Fairy Realm, ‘daimonic reality’) that the hero or shaman, after the initiatic experience (taking his ‘material world consciousness’ into the otherworld) can then bring things related to or from the otherworld back into the material world.\
The first stage of initiations or mythic experiences involves instilling the culture into the uncultured or ‘natural’ person (usually a child but not always) it can replicate a ‘curing’ process, similar to curing food (cooking, drying, and smoking, etc. – according to Levi-Strauss). Patrick Harpur . cites; African boys – buried in earth, Pueblo women giving birth over hot sand, sweat lodges in America and central Asia, Turkish baths, the Japanese custom of hot baths ( not for washing as one is washed first), smoking ceremonies, etc. The same happens with the hero, they are made ‘immortal’ so they can accomplish their ‘task’ (whatever that is!) but there is always a small part where they vulnerable , so they can never win in the end , this is how they are eventually defeated.
But WHY are they treated this way, way are they given licence to cause havoc in the mythic realm and fight against their initiation and development? I will get back to this below because it seems to be some central key?
The second stage changes the cultural person into a supernatural person, it can be challenging, confronting, fearful, painful, mutilations both physical and symbolic, parts of the body can be removed and replaced or transformed, substances and objects inserted (the inserted crystals in the Aboriginal ‘Shaman’, the replaced iron bones in the Siberian Shaman, the diamond body in Buddhism, the Chod Rite, etc.)
Any hint of this in the mythic realm and Hercules smashes it with his club! Well, not quiet but he seems to be avoiding and fighting the process. It is as if an energy has intruded into the otherworld that should not be there and is causing havoc. The Hero does come with his ego and from the material world but the process strips him of it. Not Hercules, he seems to refuse to give anything up.
Usually, when we are approached by the daimonic world and fend the process off we stay in this material world and ignore, justify, ridicule or ‘explain away’ the strange things that can happen to us when our safe material world intersects with the other world, or we go with the process and journey into the otherworld where we are called upon to act and behave in a different way. Hercules seems to take the journey but at the same time be fending off the process.
When do we hear of an intrusion of daimonic reality into the material world where this happens? One doesn’t hear of a UFO abductee running around inside the UFO and punching out the aliens (they are usually compelled, trance-like or ‘blacked out’ in some way if not compliant), that only happens in the movies (where we seem to have the same dynamic mirrored; UFO ‘invasion’ … there is always the mythic hero that thinks ‘they’ come in peace or for some special reason and the Herculean Army that wants to fire missiles and smash the UFO and aliens).
Faust has been identified as a ‘modern’ mythic hero but his reign seems over, he is more of a mediaeval character. James Hillman identifies Hercules as the archetype background for our modern western ego. But where did Hercules spring up from BEFORE the modern western ego was developed? Harpur states that Hercules; cannot bear daimons or images, cannot think about death, his 12 labours are “largely taken up with slaughtering or enslaving the fabulous beats that embody the otherworldly powers of the imagination”, he FORCES Charon to carry him across the Styx, drags Cerberus up into the daylight, instead of dying metaphorically he even attacks death and wounds Hades in the shoulder, and he ended up being refused permission to become an initiate of the mysteries (only having access to the ‘lesser mysteries’). Perhaps this is the reason? To show us what NOT to do? Hercules seems forever to be stuck in the pattern of the rational ego.
Sigurd in the Norse myth does similar; he slays a dragon and bathes in its blood and then (or because of this) Brynhild appears, a beautiful Valkyrie, with who he immediately falls in love. After releasing her from a tower girt by flames he leaves her to accomplish the heroic tasks to be worthy of her, but what does he do? He marries a rather unexciting Gudrun. Later he realises what he has done and when Brynhild begs him to flee the mundane world and run off with her he stays due to family ‘duty’. Before he ‘forgot’ her, but now he wilfully refuses her. So he is FORCED into the otherworld by Brynhild engineering his death (via a sword through the invulnerable spot on his back).
Here, the woman is the one that forces the hero to undergo the mythic initiation.
In the other cases it appears, not just a woman, but the mother, in some act of overprotection (?) tries to make the child invulnerable to the forces of the mythic initiation.
Which gets me to the ‘reason’ (aside from a myth showing us how NOT to approach the otherworld) why these type of heroes turned out this way in the first place.
With Achilles, his mother, the goddess Thetis, roasted him to burn away his mortal parts (note; the first stage ‘cooking’ / cultural integration process with an intent relating to the second stage, replacement of human with supernatural components), this process had already killed his six younger brothers. His father Peleus snatched him from the fire and replaced his charred ankle bone with one from a giant - which seems to indicate it is the fathers responsibility to insert the magical parts of the anatomy (in tribal initiations it is the fathers and uncles that dress up as the otherworld spirits that abduct or lead away the boy – this is not women’s business). [Another version says his mother dipped him in the Styx to make him in vulnerable and it was the place where she held him on his ankle that was not magically protected.]
What about Hercules / Heracles, how did his strange ‘Dharma’ come about? The only significant unusual things in his childhood were; he had a god for his father and one time he got to drink Hera’s milk. Next thing you know Heracles is wringing a snake’s neck that was sent to get him by jealous Hera while his brother cowered in the corner (oh yes, another unusual thing is he gestated as a twin with different fathers, but I can’t see the significance of that?). From then on he becomes a monster basher. No significant interference from the mother … and pretty much ignored by the father. Maybe that is significant?
Finally he is forced into a variant behaviour, as punishment for going on a murder spree he is forced to become Omphale’s slave, being forced to wear women’s clothes and do women’s work, while she wore his lion skin and carried his club.
Perhaps these types of myths are there to show us that if we consistently deny the daimonic realm and otherworld with our modern version of the literalist rationalist ego it will eventually break out and force us into the experience in some other way? Perhaps that is the ‘lesson’; it seems to be occurring in the modern world’s most ‘rational’ of sciences, physics, where sub-atomic particles and multiple universes existing within each other and at the same time are described as things behaving exactly as if they were daimonic entities?
and collate some info ... I will make a post soon with a fuller answer (need to do more research first).