Introduction to the Icare Myth, A Passion for the Sun: Part 2

As described in Part 1, if we go back to the body, we have three labyrinths, the labyrinth of knowledge, which is the brain and the mind, which is the reflection of the intestine. Intestus in Latin means in the head and today we know that we have neurons around the intestine, around the brain and around the heart. The labyrinth represents imprisonment in the mother's womb, so what creates this feeling of confinement?

In the myth of Icarus, it is not the identification with the mother that is attributed to the Moon and the myth of Narcissus, but the confinement in a heavy, oppressive family atmosphere, with a lot of things left unsaid, which in the case of pathology will cause the deafness of the labyrinth of the ear. The first labyrinth is therefore the intellectual labyrinth, the second the womb labyrinth and the third the ear labyrinth. In the latter case, we are trapped by all the information we receive and listen to, creating intellectual confusion and imbalance.

Until one day, saturated with seminars, information and complexity, all we want to do is get out of the labyrinth.

Daedalus, the engineer, invented the wings. Icarus is Daedalus' son and he will use the wings that his father gave him, but that he did not create himself. When Daedalus tells Icarus not to fly too high or too low, not to go north or south, he knows that he has created something that has limits, so he tells Icarus to be careful. So far we've gone from Taurus to Gemini, and now we're going to move on to the Gemini-Sagittarius axis and Sagittarius' desire for elevation. Icarus is someone who has a profound desire to rise, to move towards a new sun, to change his ontological dimension, to change his nature, but who is going to experience disillusionment and disappointment: who is going to fall. For those of you who are Icarians, you will regularly experience states of exaltation and trivialisation. In other words, an ascension force for extraordinary, magnificent projects, to create a new world, with this deep enthusiasm to go towards something brighter like a new sun, a new world, but which is followed by a fall, why? Because Icarus does not have wings attached to his own body, he has wings built by previous generations (built by Daedalus) and which are there to get out of the labyrinth, in other words to get out of a complex situation and not because he is propelled by his inner sun. If Icarus had wings without wax, he could have waited for this new sun. But the Latin word for "without wax" means (cincerat), i.e. sincere. If Icarus had been sincere, he could have reached this new sun. One of the dimensions of the sign of Gemini is the question of truth and lies. The author invites us not to question this from a moral point of view, because truth and lies form an archetype, a reality that is both light and shadow.

For example, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had a myth about Icarus. At the age of 10, he was walking through an airport and met a pilot who said to him: "Would you like to go for a first flight? Little Antoine's eyes lit up and he replied: "Oh yes, I'd love to! And the pilot added: "Do your parents agree? Antoine's mother had told him never to go up in an aeroplane, but Antoine only replied that his mother agreed and he went for a first flight, which is one of the reasons why he became an aviator. We see that it was because he lied and did not listen to his mother's advice that he was able to realise his founding myth, and we also see that he died in the manner of the myth, that is to say that he was lowered above the Mediterranean and, like Icarus, plunged into the sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry experienced the myth of Icarus almost literally. At the beginning of his life, he started out as an engineer, repairing aeroplanes. Life scenarios are re-enactments of mythological structures.

The question that arises, how to have wings pegged to the body? Like Pegasus, like the Gorgons, like the angels

One day, a beautiful young woman called Medusa tries to escape Poseidon, who wants to rape her, and enters Athena's temple. Poseidon, who knows no boundaries, makes a mockery of Athena's temple. The author reminds us that the absence of limits is an advantage when we seek to merge with the cosmos, but that we can just as easily merge with the deepest shadows. Knowing no imites, there is something amoral about Neptune - for example, Landru, the famous French serial killer and criminal, denied his crimes right up to the end of his trial and execution. Poseidon represents the Neptune of the myth of Proteus.

Poseidon raped Medusa in the temple of Athena.

As a result of this rape, Medusa took on the form you know her by, i.e. long teeth, snakes above her head, bulging eyes that strike out at everyone she looks at, etc. Medusa is the embodiment of hatred for having been violated. Medusa therefore represents our deepest and most ancestral resentments, as well as the violence we have suffered because we were forced to go through an experience we didn't ask for. This forced experience can also be a mystical experience, for example a person meeting God without having been prepared for it and being filled with fear and terror as a result, and this is the face of Medusa. With her snakes circling above her head, she has vital thoughts that constantly feed fear, terror, violence and hatred. Medusa is that part of us that feeds on our thoughts of hatred, violence and anguish and goes round in circles, preventing any process of evolution. In astrology, Medusa represents the corrected black moon. She has been called Lilith, but could also be called Medusa.

How would Perseus go about transforming her?

Perseus approaches Medusa, knowing that he must not look her in the face. With his shield polished like a mirror, he looks where she is standing and cuts off her head with one sweep of his sword. From Medusa's decapitated body came the magnificent white horse Pegasus, and another character called Chrysaor, meaning the golden falcon, a hero with a golden sword. Symbolically, we have to cut off our heads to free our impulses towards the light; cutting off our heads means cutting through the labyrinth of the mind. We don't have to look our deepest fears in the face, we only have to look at their reflection in the mirror, because if we take an interest in our deepest fears by looking them in the face, we will be absorbed by them! So it's not a question of being interested in the shadow in Jungian terms, but of letting it pass through us like a dream, like an image, so that it can be transformed. This myth also shows us that the shadow is a resource, that the place of our greatest fears is also the space from which the winged horse can emerge. In other words, by allowing ourselves to be crossed by our deepest fears, we will find the strength to rise towards a new sun. But it's in the mirror, in the events of the outside world, in our dreams and so on. To do this, we have to recognise them, and to recognise them, we have to get out of the mental labyrinth.

The desire for elevation, represented by the Gemini-Sagittarius axis in astrology, can only be realised in sincerity, cincerat, when we dare to confront our deepest fears, i.e. the corrected Black Moon in the astrological chart. What gives rise to the desire for elevation is the feeling of confinement, of being suffocated in a complex world like ours. This is why today we talk more about the myth of Icarus and the Minotaur than that of Daedalus. It's important to understand that Icarus is just one episode in the story of Daedalus. But as always, what we have constructed in its objective reality no longer needs the mythical story to tell itself. In other words, in a technological and ingenious world, we no longer need the story of Daedalus, whereas the Greeks were part of a civilisation that needed architecture and construction, and Daedalus was there. Today, we are saturated with Daedalian structures and our real question is how to get out of them, how to move towards a new world based on complexity, which is the exact reflection of the complexity of our thoughts. The world we live in is the exact mirror of our innermost thoughts and all the knowledge we possess, which ends up stifling our vital impulses and, at the same time, hiding our Minotaurs. The Second World War was in part an expression of the Minotaur, "remember, Hitler was under the sign of Taurus". Icarus is therefore the one who is able to constantly accept his enthusiasm, to go through his disappointments and disillusions in order to be able to start again, until the day when he has real wings of flesh. In other words, he will understand that to move towards the truth that is his, he must overcome his deepest fears and transform flight into elevation. For at first he flees, but he does not understand that he is fleeing the labyrinth. So the mirror here is to see the shadowy traces, to cross them without feeding them our negative thoughts.

So there's a strong need to rediscover meaning. Chronos (Saturn) is the god who becomes pregnant by his children. In the myth, he swallows his children, but in reality, symbolically, we have to be pregnant with our works so that they can be born a second time, i.e. be spat out after a certain time. Chronos is this function that matures things in its womb before spitting them out into the world. The function of Saturn, the function of time, is therefore to metabolise the formation to allow the second birth. With the Internet, which is a Uranian energy without chronos, this means that we have a lot of training and specialisations without having the time to absorb them, metabolise them and make them our own before spitting them out. Cancer's big question will be: "Who am I? Icarus' big question will be what is true, and the question of truth and lies is a complicated one. On the one hand, it is the lie that can make the truth possible, as in Saint-Exupéry's example. In science, only that which can be falsified, only that which can be shown to be an error, is considered scientific; Nietzsche said that all truth is an error in suspension. Science is therefore the only discipline in the world that seeks the truth while knowing that it is lying. In other words, any theory can be called into question at any time and shown to be false, which is why it is scientific. History is not an object of science because it cannot be repeated, so it cannot be shown to be false. Similarly, psychoanalysis is not an object of science because it cannot be shown to be false, and theological and metaphysical systems are not objects of science because they are a priori, whose foundations can never be called into question. When you think about it, it's clear that we are permanently in a world of lies, because we are permanently in a world of representations whose correspondence with the truth can never be measured, and so we are only dealing with the plausible. In reality, we should be very humble, because all we know is the knowledge of the labyrinth, which is only plausible. If you've read Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapience, he explains it very well when he says: "Our whole world is a system of representations, and it works because we believe in it. To come out of the labyrinth is to see that we are only in representations.

Translated and adapted from Luc Bigé'shttps://reenchanterlemonde.com/mythologie/by @SatyamAstro/Nicolas Roessli and supported by DeepL.com

To go further, a book in French has been written by Luc Bigé and translated into English by Google, ICARUS, THE PASSION OF THE SUN. https://reenchanterlemonde-com.translate.goog/produit/icare-la-passion-du-soleil/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr