The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread
The ancient Greek story of ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’ speaks metaphorically of what Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, called the ‘integration of the shadow.’ At the zenith of its power and influence, so the story goes, there was at the center of the old Minoan empire in Crete, a proud king named Minos. He was, in fact, the offspring of Zeus himself who had abducted his mother, Europa, in the form of a great bull.
Minos’ authority is signified by a magnificent white bull, sent by Poseidon from the sea. He is asked, after a time, to return the animal to the source of his power in sacrifice. This Minos cannot or will not do. He offers a substitute instead, and his undoing is set in motion.
In a strange parody of his own origins, his queen, Pasiphae, is possessed by a bizarre desire to mate with the supernatural beast. The result is a monster-child, half bull, half man. Being of divine origin however, the creature can’t simply be killed. Permitted to exist, but unwanted, he is shut away to rage and starve in the passageways of a cleverly constructed maze. Every nine years the subject state of Athens is forced to send fourteen youths, male and female, to be sent into this labyrinth to be devoured by the cannibal Minotaur (Minos’ Bull). One year the son of King Aegeus of Athens offers to go with them. Although the venture is considered completely suicidal, as often happens in these tales, assistance has already been prepared by the gods. The young warrior, Theseus, is aided by the Cretan king’s daughter, Ariadne, who is stricken with love the moment he steps from the black sailed vessel. She arranges to give him a ball of golden thread with which to find his way back once the monster has been met and overcome.
There in the depths he must confront the ‘dark twin,’ the brutal, alien other, which waits to devour him. In metaphorical language, he makes the night journey into the soul’s fearful, unmapped places to grapple with hidden terrors.
Ariadne becomes a mediator between pairs of opposites, the ‘guide into the labyrinth’ that enables the seeker to face the dark secret and return to daylight.