The values of the 12 labours of Hercules in brief

Eurystheus means: he who vigorously pushes the limits.
So there are 12 ways of vigorously pushing our limits and the first of these ways will be the first of the 12 labours of Hercules, the capture of the lion of Nemea.

The Lion of Nemea, the story

The story begins when Hercules goes to see Eurystheus who tells him that there is a huge lion that devours human flesh and frightens everyone in its path so much that people hide in their houses. This lion is so strange that they can't catch it, because nobody knows where it is. Eurystheus asks Hercules to catch the lion and Hercules agrees, sets off and heads for Mount Tretose. When he arrives around noon, he meets a shepherd named Molorchos who is about to make a sacrifice to the saviour God, Hercules tells him not to make this sacrifice, because he is the one who is going to capture this lion. Hercules says to Molorchos that if in a month I do not come back, make this sacrifice to Zeus and if I come back, you will make this sacrifice in my honour, to me Heracles. Molorchos replies that he will wait for him for 30 days and Heracles sets off.

“Here the author pronounces the first name of Hercules, Heracles, he does not think he is just anyone, he addresses Molorchos saying, you will make this sacrifice in my honour, to me Heracles.

”While searching, Hercules sees houses where people are hiding. There is no trace of the lion on the ground; nature has become wild, because the farmers no longer plough their land. Hercules asks the people where the lion is, some say north, others south, but no one can tell him where the lion is. Farther up the hill, Hercules finally sees the lion devouring its last victim. As Hercules never misses, he approaches and shoots several arrows at the lion, which feels nothing and continues to swallow its victim. Hercules comes closer and takes out the sword he received from Hermes and strikes the lion's back with a loud blow. At this blow, the sword bends as if it were a common tin rod. Hercules does not understand what is happening and approaches again, takes out his club and strikes a big blow behind the lion's ears. The lion's ears become tinted, he shakes his mane a bit wondering what is going on and decides to go back to his cave. Hercules has no choice but to follow him.

The lion's cave has two entrances which are also exits, Hercules enters one entrance while the lion leaves through the other exit and so on, a spiral circle is produced which will last for a long time. Hercules will have to find a solution and will close one of the exits with a fire of twigs in order to return by the other entrance and it is without weapons that Hercules will face the lion. Hercules looks the lion in the face and grabs it by the neck; the fight is hard, because he loses his little finger, but by dint of choking it the lion ends up dying. Hercules is exhausted by the fight and falls asleep. It is probably 30 days later that Hercules wakes up, because he thinks he will miss his appointment with Molorchos. He leaves with the lion in tow and makes himself a crown of parsley while hurrying to join Molorchos. Together they sacrifice a ram to Zeus, and then Hercules returns to Mycenae to Eurystheus. When Eurystheus sees Hercules arriving with the dust, he is moving and his great size, he becomes frightened and hides in a jar he had buried and asks his herald (the one who carries the king's word) to give Hercules his orders, namely to leave the animal's remains at the city gates and not to enter the city. Hercules, knowing Euristheus' reputation for cowardice, is not too surprised. Hercules is more concerned about how he is going to skin the lion. The text tells us that, on a divine inspiration, Hercules grabs a claw of the lion to flay its invulnerable skin, where neither arrow nor weapon could reach or cut it, and thus Hercules builds his first protective weapon.

Symbolically, we see a new birth here, a change of skin, and the real question will be how do we, in this first work, this new birth, change our skin?

How are we going to read the labours of Hercules? We will first try to understand the nature of the prey that Hercules seeks to conquer, and then the process he will use to achieve it.

Genealogy

We are told that the lion has several genealogical possibilities, one of the sources tells us that it was raised by the Moon and on the Moon and that one day in a great Frisian the Moon sent the immense animal to the earth so that Hercules could meet it. In a second version, the lion of Nemea was born from the sea, like the divine Aphrodite. The third version, the most popular, tells us that the famous lion belongs to the family of monsters and that he is the son of Echidna and Phorcis.The latter gave birth to several monsters, of which the author gives us some examples, the lion of Nemea, Chimna, the hydra of Lerna, Cerberus, which are all of the family of monsters. We note in passing that the lion of Nemea is far from the solar ideal of the zodiacal sign of the lion. However, once the Lion of Nemea is killed, it will be catasterized, transformed into the constellation of the lion.

What does the lion of Nemea represent?

The Nemean lion means the lion of the clearing.

The lion represents the archaic and primitive product of the psyche. As long as the lion is not killed or integrated by consciousness, it retains a function of destructuring the self and/or destroying others in the environment.

He was born from the Moon who sent him to earth in a great Friesian, the Friesian represents fear and the lion represents the depths of the psyche, so the myth says to Hercules, look at yourself in the intimacy of your interiority in the heart of your cave.

Let's imagine the scene.

Hercules dressed in the skin of the lion of Cithero staring at the lion of Nemea, two lions looking each other in the face, in fact Hercules is looking at himself. And what does he see? He sees his monstrosity and sees that he has built a pseudo-identity of light on his deepest fears and anxieties. The story tells us that the work of the lion of Nemea represents a metamorphosis for the hero when he thinks he has reached the peak of his achievement. Before facing the 12 labours, Hercules had reached a form of completion as he had become king of Thebes. He had been with 50 wives and had 50 children. He enjoyed an unshakeable, invulnerable reputation, where nothing touched him. He had reached the maximum of what one can develop in terms of personality. Hercules represented the sun, but to tell the truth, he was a false sun, built on a Persona, built on anxieties, on the fear of devouring and dismembering, built on the anguish of existential emptiness.

Hercules' work is no small task; it is to change himself when he thought he had reached the pinnacle of his achievement. Yet his first task will be to look himself in the face, without cheating, in the eyes, and see that he has strangled the lion and that he is in fact choking on the sight of himself as he has become.

This story touches us deeply in our identity, how to look ourselves in the face without cheating to shake this false invulnerability that we have built... ?

The lion's skin is invulnerable, because for a very long time, Hercules has confused invulnerability with insensitivity, he no longer feels the weapons that reach him, nothing can touch him and in fact, he feels invulnerable when in reality, he has become insensitive.

While we have confused the desire for seduction with the freedom to love which, represent the version of Aphrodite. While we thought we were a radiant sun when we were just a pale moon, the ego develops strategies to protect us from the fears within us or the abyss of fears beneath our shell that must now be faced and opened so that the true identity of the self, the subject, can be revealed. This is why he represents the lion of the clearing, the lion of Nemea. The clearing being the ability to clear a space of light in the jungle of our representations. To move from a false invulnerability based on insensitivity where nothing can reach us anymore to a true invulnerability based on the fact of having deposited our consciousness in this space of light in the heart of our heart. This invulnerability is in the sense that Luc Bigé defined it above, i.e. the fact of no longer being dependent on the gaze of others or the need to be loved in order to exist. It is a real Herculean task and we will see that all this work represents real work.

The next question is how to get rid of the false self that we all have in our human relationships to enter the clearing of absolute peace that dwells in us somewhere.

We can see how the story is constructed.

It's around noon when Hercules arrives at Mount Tretose where he asks Molorchos to wait for 30 days. So, at the beginning, everything happens in the light; noon represents the middle of a day and 30 days are the whole of a solar month. And yet, the great metamorphosis is going to take place in the cave, that is to say in the darkness, the intimacy out of the limelight that the old self was constantly seeking.We are going to proceed step by step to realise the difficult thing of changing oneself when everything is going well and not when everything is going badly.The question is how to change ourselves when everything is going well, how to get around this paradox that says: we want to be more spiritual, more loving, when it is constantly a part of the old identity that wants to become more spiritual, more loving, etc. How can the pointing finger point at itself? Every time we say we want to acquire a quality or change ourselves, it is again that which needs to be changed that says it and it cannot work, it can at most enhance the Old World by refining the Persona and the false self.

So Hercules obeys Eurystheus and once again shows humility. All work begins with an act of humility and obedience to the will of the gods, that is, to the impulse of transcendence that runs through our hearts.

Tretos means to break through in the sense of a breakthrough or a breach, we have here the idea of a door or a passage. Molorchos means tree planter. The first thing to succeed in this work is that Molorchos wants to sacrifice a ram; the ram (Aries) represents the sign of the hero. You remember Hercules says to Molorchos if I don't come back sacrifice a ram to Zeus the saviour, so the first quality to do this work is to accept the risk of dying, if we are ready to die we can undertake the quest, because the truth is we will have to die, the lion of the Self will slaughter the lion of the I. This is so true that at the end of the journey Hercules weaves a crown of parsley as a sign of victory over the lion of Nemea. Parsley is the sign of death in Greek tradition, it grows where a character called the precursor of death has lost his blood. Victory over death parsley wreath, to acquire victory over death, one must be able to accept to die, it is a fundamental condition. It means being able to lose everything, that is, to lose the false self. Now, this is a difficult task, why? Because in the beginning, Hercules does not see the lion devouring human flesh, he sees the peasants holed up in their houses, the wasteland left to the wild grasses and he does not even see the lion's tracks on the ground. Put differently, it is infinitely difficult for us to detect our false self, we believe ourselves to be good, generous and charismatic, etc. It is undeniable that Hercules does not see the lion and that it is extremely difficult to outwit what we have in front of us, i.e. ourselves. In the story of the myth, the lion is not aggressive with Hercules; it eats human flesh, but does not attack Hercules, it is difficult for Hercules to detect the lion, however, the presence of the lion is manifested by the fact that it prevents the peasants from cultivating the land since they are returned to the wild grass. In other words, the mere presence of ourselves (of this lion) prevents others from fulfilling their destiny, from doing what they are supposed to do, and this we do not see at first sight. And of course we devour human flesh, that is, we crush the destiny of others.

How do we dislodge this ego-centred attitude, which says I, navel-centred?

Hercules tries with the sword of discrimination and misses the target, i.e. it is not self-analysis, reflection, self-understanding that will enable us to lift this insensitive invulnerability that prevents us from going outside ourselves. Hercules tries with arrows, it's not the dazzling intuitions that will work either, certainly, we can get some ideas with the sword of Hermes that something is wrong, but that's not going to change us, we can also do the psychoanalysis, but that's not going to change us either. The process in the myth is the blow behind the ears, and what is a blow behind the ears? It's a catastrophic, painful, incomprehensible event that doesn't fit into our thought patterns. This event will allow us to begin to listen, because the ears of the lion have become tinted, the ears being the auricles of the heart. It may represent the loss of a loved one, an accident, a long hospitalization. In essence, it is a traumatic moment that affects and connects our state of false invulnerability. So many things no longer affect and touch us that it takes a decisive blow for us to start being affected. However, this will only encourage the lion to go into his cave, into his privacy, his private night

It is so difficult to face each other that Hercules will enter one entrance and the lion will exit through the other. What does this image represent for Hercules following the lion in a spiral? It is simply the mechanisms we put in place to avoid facing ourselves...We call a girlfriend or go surfing on the Internet, we go to the cinema, we sleep, we chat, we take the car to go to somewhere, etc. There is no shortage of escape systems and the author invites us to identify them. All these escape systems that bring us out of our intimate cave when we are about to look ourselves in the face without cheating. One day, we will have to interrupt this spiral of escape and block one of the doors of the cave to enter through the other door without escaping. The text tells us something fundamental, namely that Hercules will enter the lion's cave without weapons. Why does the text say unarmed? All efforts and wills to change are doomed to failure. It is without a warrior spirit and without the will to conquer that we will enter the cave. Any will change oneself will re-energise the false self and stimulate it further to build its shell. To enter without weapons is to enter one's vulnerability, into one's fragility. By looking oneself in the face without cheating, like when Hercules stands before the lion and looks him in the eye. And then what happens? There is a deadly fight, because he loses his little finger, the little finger gets lodged in the ear, "in the auricularis of the ear," and finally, Hercules manages to choke the lion.

What does choking represent?

The first level represents a lack of air, we run out of air. When we run out of air, we can no longer speak or justify ourselves. Thus, the myth puts in scene the stop of all justification and explanation which are in fact only defense systems which prevent us from changing. The lion loses his voice and is often heard to say "j'étouffais" in French means "I was choking" which will be written, j’ai tout fais, I did everything.”That is to say, through the will to control through action and the fact of wanting to do everything, we will not succeed in surrendering to our vulnerability.

The most effective mantra we can use to enter the lion's cave is written in three letters, "YES". Being unarmed, saying yes to everything that comes our way, ceasing justifications, to interrupt the will to do and to open unconditionally to all that appears in our life will be the path that will allow the false self to dissolve and the lion to die. Finally, we will put on this new lion skin which will become both invulnerable and sensitive, invulnerable and loving.

So, to open up unarmed and unconditionally to everything that arises by looking the lion in the face, in the intimacy and in the darkness of its cave, because this is not work that is done in the sunlight by telling others about it.

Hercules is exhausted and falls asleep, the struggle is terrible, because every time we are shaken in our identity, an urge to sleep appears. There is a necessary need to reintegrate the experience in order to rebuild ourselves. This is obviously a symbolic death, but above all this phenomenon occurs when we have lived through a trying and potentially deeply transforming experience. The psyche needs to reorganise itself through sleep.

When he wakes up, Hercules makes himself a crown of parsley, because he has indeed been victorious over death, and goes to see Molorchos and tells him that he has indeed defeated the lion and that he can make a sacrifice to Zeus the saviour. Following the meeting with Hercules, Molorchos goes to plant the forest of Nemea and becomes a tree planter. Do you see what is so beautiful here? He who has defeated his second lion, the lion of Nemea, in other words, he who has entered his clearing, his truth, will allow others to fulfil their destiny. Because Molorchos means tree planter and we don't see why a tree planter would be a shepherd, originally Molorchos was a shepherd? So, by the mere presence of Hercules, Molorchos will be able to fulfil his name, i.e. his destiny, whereas before the false self, the lion, prevented the peasants from cultivating the land, in fact, prevented the peasants from fulfilling their function, their destiny.

It is at this very change that we can know whether we have defeated our first lion or not? Does our presence give others enough space to go their own way, or are they so impressed that they only want to be like us or throw us out, "ignore" us, etc ?

There is still a problem for Hercules to solve, how will he skin the lion? He arrives at the foot of the city, Eurystheus tells him through his herald not to enter the city.

Why does Eurystheus tell him this? Because once one has become someone else in the eyes of others and truly represents becoming oneself, the Self begins to take its place within the psyche. One no longer really belongs to the human world, one can no longer enter the city. One can periodically come into the world of men to bring a work, a production, a particular presence, one is in this world, but one is no longer of this world. The fact that Eurystheus hides more and more in his jar, work after work, symbolises the fact that the exoteric personality of the little I of Hercules will die more and more with each of the 12 labours so that the true self of the sun can express itself more and more. This is so true that in the end Hercules will command the Sun, he will command Apollo, and in the final labours Hercules will embark on Apollo's boat and become the Sun.

For now we are not there, Hercules has just touched a space of light in his clearing where the presence of the Self is conscious.

The last problem to be solved, how to skin the lion?

By divine inspiration, the text tells us, Hercules will take a claw from the lion with which to skin it.

What does this claw represent?

The claw represents a signature; the claw represents the hand, the finger which is the part of the body that allows the signature. Thus, the signature of Hercules will be the claw of the lion, that is to say that from now on all his works will be signed by the Self. Thus everything he sets in motion and creates from that moment on will be on the impulse of the Self, on a divine impulse, the text tells us. His works will be the signature of life and not his own signature; he exchanges the lost little finger for the lion's claw. It is certainly on this condition that he will be able to adorn himself with the invulnerable skin of the lion of Nemea.

The astrological sign obviously represents the lion, the author points out, as this will not always be so obvious in some other works. The traditional ruler of the lion is the sun and the esoteric ruler of the lion is the sun. However, it is not the same sun, in the first case it is the sun of the I and in the second case it is the sun of the Self.

Conclusion

The labours of Hercules are not done all at once, they are done in undulations and not in a straight line. The labours should not be seen as going from the first labour of Leo to the twelfth labour of Cerberus, as this would be a purely intellectual view of the myth. The image is representative of a wave in « 8888 » with the end of each work and the resumption of the previous work. That is to say, in order to advance towards the experience of the second work, we will return at some point to the experience of the first work. Each time we move forward, we will have to revisit all the works. Moreover, a chronological order which is in fact a logical order tells us that if we have not done the first work, the lion of Nemea, we will not be able to do the others; just as if we have not done the second work we will not be able to do the others. On the other hand, if we have done the second job, we can easily return to the first.

Why can't we do the second job if the first has not been done?

If we have this shell of false self that protects us from the world of mystery by saying: I don't believe in anything, and I'll be fine on my own, I'm tired of these stories and I'll succeed in life anyway. So this shell of false invulnerability does not open us up to that dimension of the experience of unity which is the ultimate quest of Hercules.

When we experience the work of the Nemean lion which is done in solitary places in our inner cave; for example, the author promises us, by going away for 5, 10 or 15 days alone in the forest, we will see this holy lion. The experiments that the author has done several times consists of doing as the Amerindians do, going into the forest and making a circle of medicine that delimit a diameter of 7 or 8 metres. The rule is that inside the circle, you do what you want, but under no circumstances do you leave the circle. Leave with a minimum of food and some water, a tent if it rains, no books, no iPads, nothing but you and the circle. Stay 3 days at first, odd numbers work best, then 5, 7, 9, 11 days, and see what happens and what will happen? For women it is usually the fear of rape, that someone will come, and for all of us it is the fear of the monsters coming, the fear of that Nemean lion that is perched on our archaic memories, it is the fear of loneliness, in short, there will be many escape systems that will arise until one day something happens that will take you by surprise and make you realise that something is changing in you.

It is not you who decide to change, but the change that happens within you, it is that magical YES that makes things change without weapons. So look for cave spaces where you can be face to face with yourself and without distraction systems and just see what happens.

This is the lion's clearing, why the author talks about this?

Because again Hercules is in the engagement and not in the theoretical and symbolic discourses of the labours of Hercules. So, to really do them, he has to put himself in the situation of doing them; Hercules is a hero who learns by practical application and not by books.

The astrological keys to the hero myth

For there to be a hero myth in your chart, the Sun and Mars must be in aspect, or more generally in conjunction. Or the Sun must be dominant and Mars must be dominant. For example, a Sun on the Ascendant or in conjunction with the ruler of the Ascendant square to Mars, or Mars in a planetary cluster with a valued Sun will form a hero myth. The hero is associated with the sign Aries, so a planetary cluster with the Sun in Aries in minor aspect to Mars will also be considered a hero myth. A Sun-Mars trine or sextile and a black Moon in Aries will be considered a hero myth. It will however be more foundational, i.e. ontological, metaphysical, linked to essential being, in an innate and fundamental way. If a Sun-Mars conjunction falls in Leo, the person will have a myth correlated with Hercules' first work, THE LION OF NEMEA. If the conjunction falls in Sagittarius, it will be in phase with the 5th work of Hercules, THE BIRDS OF STYMPHALUS. However, the person will have to begin the process of transformation from the first work, THE LION OF NEMEA. Although the author does not place Pluto at the centre of the myth, he emphasises that he plays a role, as Pluto is associated with the power of metamorphosis and courage.

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

To access the sites, click on the underlined links:

To go further, a book in French has been written by Luc Bigé and translated into English by Google, La voie du Héros : Les douze Travaux d'Hercule. https://reenchanterlemonde-com.translate.goog/produit/la-voie-du-heros/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr