Romancing Our Minotaur

Once upon an ancient time in the beautiful land of Crete was a mighty King. King Minos. Ascending to power was not an easy task as he had two rival siblings.

To become a king he asked God’s help. He prayed to Poseidon for a proof and Poseidon gave birth from the depths of the sea of a Bull, a snow – white – magnificent bull. Minos vowed to heaven that he would sacrifice the bull to Poseidon. Eventually he won the throne because the divine appearance of the Bull was taken as a sign. And the Bull became the symbol of his power and his kingdom. But he defied his promise to God Poseidon; he kept the majestic bull for himself and sacrificed a different one.

Angered by King Minos’ disrespect, Poseidon plotted to punish him for his arrogance and hubris. So he instilled a passion within his wife, Pasiphae, for the Bull. From this unlike union of Pasiphae and the Bull a creature never before seen on earth was born; the Asterion or as most commonly known, the Minotaur.

Although he had human parts, the body, and animal parts, the head and tail, he was neither a human nor an animal. He was called the Beast! Over the years he grew and became ferocious and monstrous and was unable to find a suitable source of food. So, to sustain himself he devoured …. people, alive people.

King Minos desperately wanted to hide him and on the advice of an Oracle, he commanded Daedalus and Icarus to build a grand maze, the Labyrinth, to house him.

The Labyrinth was endless, and with mirrors everywhere making it look more complex and creating the impression of infinite inferno. If you entered it was almost certain that you could not find your way out. To enter was to die.

While the construction of the Labyrinth was underway, King Minos’s only human son had been killed in Athens. King Minos blamed the Athenians of murdering him. He sailed against them and harassed them until they agreed to pay for his son’s death. He demanded that Athens pay every year a tribute to Crete of seven vestal virgins, men and women, to feed the Minotaur. Then Athens suffered a cruel plague and the Oracle instructed Athenians to obey to King Minos’ demands in order to save the city. Reluctantly, they sent their youth to be devoured by the Minotaur.

Upon the third tribute of youths, Theseus, the son of Athens’s King, volunteered to go. He wanted to slay the Minotaur, to exterminate the beastly bull. At Crete, when the daughter of King Minos, Ariadne, saw this beautiful, tall, handsome, fearless man, she fell deeply in love with him (not a difficult thing to do !!). Being a woman in love, she could not bear the idea that he was to be eaten by her half-brother, the Minotaur, so he begged one of the craftsmen of the Labyrinth, Daedalus, for help, to tell her how one could escape from the Labyrinth.

Following his instructions, she handed Theseus a thread to help him find his way out of the Labyrinth. Upon entering the daunting maze, Theseus tied one end of the string to the door and continued attentively inside. He found the Minotaur in the furthest corner of the Labyrinth. He killed him. Unlike the Labyrinth’s previous victims, he followed the thread back through the maze to find the way to the door. He found and led the other Athenians youths out of the maze too and quickly sailed off to Athens with Ariadne.

It all starts with the Bull.

The first Bull was pure, majestic, and divine. It came directly from the depths of Mother Sea, the aquatic matrix of all earth beings. He was a perfect divine gift. But the owner of the Bull did not respect the promise he gave to the Divine, dishonoring that way his own self. The bull was no longer pure. Minos false actions devoured his original innocence. The derivative form of him, the new Bull, the Minotaur, was also meant to be a bright star, as his name, Asterion (in Greek it means star), reveals. But once more, he was not treated as a divine gift but as a divine curse and was condemned to be hidden away into the perplexity of the maze of darkness.

For a little while, there was peace, since the bull was not seen every day. And his owner, and his family, conveniently forgot that he was living on live flesh and blood. But the price became higher, heavier, unbearable. The best of the human youth, the best and the most sacred and creative part of human self, was to be eaten.

Dishonoring our integrity shutters the beauty and the integrity of our Bull Soul. If not faced on time, it gives birth to creatures of our personality that we do not appreciate and want to hide away. But hiding away our least wanted offspring is a sacrifice of our Inner Star, Our Asterion, which is an immanent side of the Minotaur. And the pain builds up due to our condemnation of the Minotaur Soul, as an aspect of Our Soul.

As we continue this way, we are steadily losing the most virgin, sacred, beautiful and young part of our self.

To claim it back we need to become the Theseus of our self and using suitable threads to make the inner journey to safely find our Minotaur.

Not to kill him. Just to carefully bring him out of the darkness, to befriend and romance him to grow to our Asterion Bull, a Star Bull.

* based on Greek Mythology and an interpretation by Ron Young