Introduction to the Myth of Icarus, the Passion for the Sun

The story in brief

The myth of Icarus was unfashionable in Greece; it has become so in our world because our world has this incessant and pressing question: how do we get out of the labyrinth? The labyrinth of our representations, the administrative labyrinth, how do we get out of all the complexity we have created? To understand Icarus, you have to understand Daedalus. The myth of Daedalus was more fashionable in ancient Greece. Daedalus is the son of Europe, the son of the white bull, Zeus metamorphosed into a white bull and mooed so harmoniously that Europe climbed on his back and the two of them crossed the sea to land on the island of Crete where they had several children, including Minos, which means the son of the bull. Minos married a woman called Pasiphae, and they had children, including the famous Minotaur. How was the Minotaur born? Minos, the bull, was given a magnificent white bull by Poseidon (Neptune), the god of the sea, to assert his power. However, once enthroned, he refused the bull and sought to return it, but in exchange he gave any bull in his herd. Poseidon realised that Minos was mocking him and said to himself that it would not be like that. Some time later, Minos' wife Pasiphae tries to have sex with Poseidon's famous white bull, which Minos has kept in his herd. She asks Daedalus, Daedalus meaning ingenious, the very type of modern engineer, to make her something that will give her what she wants. Daedalus will make a wooden cow on wheels, so that Pasiphae can enter the wooden cow by placing her legs in the toy's hind legs. Daedalus takes the wooden cow to the meadow where the white bull is grazing so that the bull can mount the toy, i.e. Pasiphae, and from this strange sexual relationship, the famous Minotaur with the body of a man and the bust of a bull is born. Here we see the myth invented the first GMO in history. Minos was ashamed of his offspring and asked Daedalus to create a labyrinth to hide the Minotaur at its centre.

It is at this point in the myth that Icarus, Daedalus' son, appears. It turns out that Minos is going to imprison the father and son in the labyrinth that Daedalus has built. Daedalus, who was never short of ideas and inventions, built wings from eagle feathers to try and escape from the labyrinth. The smaller feathers are attached with fine wax points and the larger ones with linen thread. Here we have a very technological and precise description of how to build his wings. When the wings are ready, Daedalus tells his son: don't fly too high or too low, don't go north or south, stay at the right height to get out of the labyrinth and follow me. Fascinated by the sunlight, Icarus did not listen to his father and flew towards the sun until the wax melted and fell into the Mediterranean. As Icarus was drowning, a partridge came up to him and clapped its hands. From then on, an island was named in his honour, Icarius. Daedalus continued on his way, offering his wings to the temple of Apollo and heading for the Cyclades. Minos pursued him to the island of King Kokkalos, which means shell. Here again we find the idea of the labyrinth. Minos asks a stupid question often asked in TV games these days. How do you get a thread through a shell? Of course, only Dedale is clever and stupid enough to answer this stupid question. Thus, Minos knows that Daedalus is on the island, but the latter is not at the end of his inventions and tampers with the water inlets by reversing the hot and cold water. When Minos arrives on the island of Kokkalos, the king tells Minos to go and take a bath and that he will deliver Daedalus to him afterwards. As the water inlets have been switched, King Minos dies of scalding.

The symbolism

As we can see, the central theme in the history of the myth is the labyrinth, which appears again and again. It appears in the labyrinth of Knossos, then in the Cyclades which is itself a labyrinthine site and it appears on the island of kokkalos which means shell and refers to the three labyrinths of the body, the intestinal labyrinth, the labyrinth of the neocortex and that of the ear. We have a myth in which listening is transgressed twice, because we have a listener who is pierced by the thread, who passes through the cochlea of the ear, the shell. We also have an ear that is transgressed by the fact that Icarus does not listen to his father, Daedalus.

This whole story is the result of an original sin, the sin of Minos, the sin of the bull. Here we find the astrological taurus, which is the act of refusing to return what one has received. When Minos refuses to return the magnificent white bull given to him by Poseidon as a sign of his royalty, in other words what was given to him by virtue of his function, he confuses function and person. In other words, what has been given to him by virtue of his function, he will keep out of a desire for his person, which signifies an abuse of the social good. This brings us back to the idea of the difficulty of freeing oneself from the possession of the astrological taurus. The myth illustrates some of the conditions under which possession is not legitimate. It is not legitimate when we confuse what is given to us by virtue of our position with what belongs to the person. For example, if we take our company car to go on holiday, we are in the "sin" of Minos, as is the case if we telephone from our office for personal reasons, and so on. In another way, we can also want to possess beauty, but the myth tells us that this is also illegitimate. It is Pasiphae who finds the beauty of the white bull so marvellous that she wants to be ridden by him. Beauty possesses her. Whereas the natural position would be for the woman to ride the bull rather than allow herself to be ridden by the bull. The author is trying telling us that when the white bull mounts Pasiphae, she becomes a wooden cow, she is considered an object, in other words, she allows herself to be commodified in the name of pleasure. This is also a pathology of the sign of taurus, meaning that by accepting all the desires of the other in the name of her own pleasure, she has become a female object. The position that the myth presents us with at the beginning is the opposite: it is Europe, a magnificent woman who rides the white bull that is Zeus. The system is reversed. In reading the bull, the idea is to learn to ride our creative potential instead of allowing ourselves to be suffocated by it and to become, by surrounding ourselves with possessions, similar to the possessions we have, in other words, a thing.

In mythology, two symbols explain what it means to ride: the Cretan bull in the labours of Hercules and the horse. The bull and the horse are the two symbols of Poseidon, the god of the sea. They are also the two great symbols still found in Neolithic caves. In fact, they are inseparable. What are their functions? The bull represents a person's creative potential, their ontological or psychological wealth, their gifts, their productive power.The horse represents the ability to release he's impulses. They are inseparable because we need power to release our creative power. If there were only the horse, it would represent a person who communicates and advertises without having anything to say, and if there were only the bull, the person would have incredible wealth, but he or she would gain weight because he or she can't express it. The bull is inhibited by his own heaviness, and the horse is inhibited by social harnesses.The horse (Sagittarius) is held back by the acceptance of social consensus, by social harnesses, by external things that will limit his impulses. The Bull (Taurus) is held back by the fact that he doesn't know how to express his potential and his wealth, and as a result, he will put on weight, while the Horse will feel shackled.

So,through the myth of Icarus, we are in the world of the bull (Taurus), which is the creative power that can be inhibited or that can make people love a thing and turn them into a thing, because they are incapable of using it or because they are in pure enjoyment of themselves, Pasiphaé.

Thus, the first illegitimate condition of possession is attachment to things.The second illegitimate condition of possession is the desire to appropriate beauty out of pure enjoyment, which is in fact universal and belongs to everyone. This will give birth to a monster, the Minotaur, which means the son of the bull. Minos is ashamed of his offspring, ashamed of the son of the bull, of the Minotaur. Shame is linked to Venus in an astrological chart and several times in the myth; Venus withdraws to her island, Cyprus, because she is ashamed of what has happened. Here we see this both flighty goddess and seem free in her desires and at the same time expresses shame.

Daedalus built the labyrinth to hide the shame.

What does the myth tell us about this story?

As we saw above, the labyrinth is located on the island of Crete, in the labyrinthine palace of Knossos, which is a historical monument that has been rediscovered, and Knossos means Gnosis and gnosis means knowledge. So, to protect these original faults linked to possession, to hide the shame, knowledge was developed. The myth tells us that the knowledge developed by Gemini is there to hide the original fault of Taurus. In other words, the labyrinthine intellectuality developed by Gemini is there to hide the fault developed in Taurus, i.e. linked to possession, or more precisely linked to monopolisation. A normally constituted bull must be straddled by the conscience. What does straddling mean? It means accepting to be out of balance and, by means of a few mental impulses, being able to direct the force within us towards a work, a construction, a manifestation. For a very long time, it's been the other way round: we want to possess beauty rather than create it; we want sensation and sensuality rather than allowing ourselves to be carried away by it, to rise towards the light, towards the sky. We find this inversion between Europe and Pasiphae. Because we have allowed ourselves to be possessed by sensuality and things, to the point where we have become things, a feeling of ontological shame will emerge and we will build the labyrinth of the mind so that we can no longer see the shame.

Shame is the last veil preventing us from entering into direct contact with the Self. Shame is being black in a white world, being gay in a macho world, being fat in a fashion world, and so on. In other words, it's the rejection of one's difference; it's not daring to express one's difference. Shame is not daring to express your ontological dimension, what you are deep down in a world that rejects it. It's a feeling of exile, and exile is omnipresent in the story.

First of all, the shell is the symbol of exile in Greek tradition, and Daedalus was a great exile. Initially, the feeling of one's own difference, of one's own light, of one's power to create that is like no other, remains a kind of shame, because we don't dare express it in the social world in which we live. So we go to school and do what everyone else does to be good children. We build the labyrinth of Knossos, of gnosis, of knowledge. So the myth warns us that knowledge, even spiritual knowledge, can be an obstacle to realising the Self.

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