Video Transcript, Annotated in the Simple English by Grok, and Rectified in Audition for Accuracy
Beauty inspires love. Love in turn inspires beauty. Beauty is at once a most rare and exotic flower in the austerity of the desert, and yet it is always waiting for us to perceive it. It stands aside and worlds apart from the common activities of mundane life—a quality somewhat alien from the human since its origins are divine, enervating and coloring all things under the gentle dominance of her gaze. And in its quiet magnificence, she demands our attention and our desirous eyes. She inflames our sense of lack—such πόθος (pothos) that can never be satiated. It is hunger and thirst that wrenches our souls as we seek possession of beauty itself. And that hunger and thirst—those primordial and instinctual needs—themselves speak to the separated nature of the fallen soul.
Existence itself has become the battleground between two warring factions: those of forms and those of matter—two seemingly incommensurable worlds that seek to reduce all reality into either a totalizing spirit or a totalizing flesh.
The Alexandrian Neoplatonist Hermias, born in 410 AD, preserved much of the wisdom of his teacher Syrianus when he studied with him in Athens. Of particular interest is his recording of a hermeneutical tradition that detected an esoteric meaning underlying the Battle of Troy, famously recounted in Homer's Iliad. Later, Proclus was to incorporate this tradition of interpretation into his own work: "The myths want to indicate, I believe, through Helen the whole of that beauty that has to do with the sphere in which things come to be and pass away and that is the product of the Demiurge. It is over this beauty that eternal war rages among souls until the more intellectual are victorious over the less rational forms of life and return hence to the place from which they came."
We first find Helen in Book 3 of the Iliad, with Eris, the messenger of the gods, approaching her: "She found Helen in the hall, where she was weaving a great purple web of double fold, and thereon was broidering many battles of the horse-taming Trojans and the brazen-coated Achaeans, that for her sake they had endured at the hands of Ares. Close to her side then came Iris, swift of foot, and spake to her saying, 'Come hither, dear lady, that thou mayest behold the wondrous doings of the horse-taming Trojans and the brazen-coated Achaeans. They that of old were wont to wage tearful war against one another on the plain, their hearts set on deadly battle—even they abide now in silence, and the battle has ceased, and they lean upon their shields, and beside them their long spears are fixed. But Alexander and Menelaus, dear to Ares, will do battle with their long spears for thee; and whoso shall conquer, his dear wife shalt thou be called.'" So spake the goddess, and put into her heart sweet longing for her former lord and her city and parents; and straightway she veiled herself with shining linen, and went forth from her chamber, letting fall round tears.
Like the three Moirai who weave the destiny and fate of mortals, Helen is engaging in the same craft—this time depicting her own role in the pattern of events and its bloody influence on both the Trojans and Achaeans. The double fold of the garment is suggestive of a duality of two opposing forces that seek total domination of her—of what she is a representation or icon of: beauty itself. In this sense, the crimson color of the garment is symbolic of the bloodletting that has gone on for the sake of her hand, and with that purplish hue, the madness, ardor, fury, and fervor that such coloration suggests. It is a drunken intoxication—the color of blood and the color of wine—both of which suggest unbridled and destructive elements of passion. Such passion as we can see in the opposing yet complementary forces of Eros and Thanatos, displaying hidden sympathies between love and strife.
Proclus notes that Helen represents worldly beauty—a beauty that has fallen from a state of perfection. She is a copy of the form of beauty which had descended into the world of materiality, and due to this imperfect state allowing a mixture to take place between matter and form, she therefore acts as an intermediary figure, or better yet, a symbol which encompasses and yet transforms the simple opposites of pure matter and pure form.
The German polymaths Goethe and Schiller, and later C.G. Jung, will see her as anima mundi. Later in this video, we will describe Schiller's understanding of beauty as a link between these polarities and discuss how this influenced Jung's concept of the transcendent function—the third reconciling principle that overcomes opposition. However, for Proclus, Helen's activity—that is, her alluring beauty—entices the souls of the Achaeans to leave their true homes (that being the Platonic realm of ideas and forms) and to make war with the Trojans, who represent pure substance and materiality. They are the forces of matter.
Prompting the Battle of Troy was Paris's carrying off of Helen. The Neoplatonic etymological rendering of the name Troy is intimately linked to matter—hence "Ilium" being closely associated with "hule." Ultimately, this is a battle of the forces of the spirit against those of matter for sole possession of beauty. This war is necessary because not all strife is evil omen-ed. In a fragment, Heraclitus says: "One must realize that war is shared and conflict is justice, and that all things come to pass in accordance with conflict." In another fragment, he says: "War is father of all and king of all."
Edward Butler reminds us that Homer was understood by the Neoplatonists to be blind not from any actual organic defect of vision, but simply because his vision was turned away from the sensory realm to endlessly gaze upon the super-sensory. For similar hermeneutical reasons, the 10-year duration of the Trojan War was also understood to mirror the millennial cycle of souls that is contained within Plato's Myth of Er, after which the Achaeans returned to their own realm of forms. The number 10, or the decad, in the Iamblichan Theology of Arithmetic is considered a number encompassing the all, since there are no natural numbers greater than it. It is also known to mark a sense of completion and fulfillment. Furthermore, it was considered symbolic of the cosmos and symbolic of eternity—eternity in the sense that it is everlasting, and all numbers revert back to the decad and recur endlessly. It is therefore unsurprising to find in Far Eastern traditions like Daoism a similar echo of the unending and infinite multiplicity of material flux in the expression "the 10,000 things"—a double perfection, hinting at 10 to the power of four, both considered numbers of completion.
The Silver Age Russian poet and novelist Dimitri Merezhkovsky's famous poem entitled "Helen" perfectly encapsulates the amoral nature of beauty through his evocation of Helen: “And the cry of Hecuba's heard in Troy, In the eternal groan of Andromache, gods fought heroes and sacred Ilium fell. But you, Helen—vow of peace and duty broken—you are innocent. You will be glorified in the song of Homer, because all the hope of the world is in the daughter of white Leda: beauty."
The European Symbolists and Decadents were quick to add Helen to their list of femmes fatales or poisonous women who used their alluring charms and beauty to lead others to their own demise and destruction. Setting aside any modern critique of the male gaze, this philosophical and artistic period highlighted the dual nature of beauty. She is neither wholly evil nor wholly good—perhaps more dangerously, she's a mixture of both and indifferent to them. This vilification of Helen is by no means a modern sentiment. Clearly, there was ample commentary and oral tradition to denounce her as a fateful cause of the evil that befell Troy—even so that the famous father of sophistry, Gorgias, wrote an entire encomium to Helen defending her innocence. He uses a number of arguments, but one of his most critical ones is the notion that Helen herself was overmastered by the persuasive speech and sight of "Alexander's body" (this is an alternate name for Paris, who we will come to shortly). Therefore, she had no choice, it seems, but to act in the way that she did. As a representation of beauty in the visible realm, her command over sensory impressions can work on the observer's soul by engraving on the mind images of the things one sees. But at the same time, as being the active agent provoking the logos of Eros—desire or pain—she's also the passive recipient of those same logoi, not being immune herself to her own charms. In a sense, what Gorgias is persuasively arguing is that the truth of the real can never be attained by escaping the logos that emerges from the icons (eikones) of phenomena that we experience through our sensation. Not even Helen, the personification of beauty made manifest on earth, can evade the power she embodies to the persuasive impression of souls.
Other defenders of Helen have emerged over the course of centuries. The early 17th-century author Robert Burton spoke of the war for Helen approvingly in "The Anatomy of Melancholy." He writes: "Many will condemn these men that are so enamored for fools, but some again commend them for it. Many reject Paris's judgment, and yet Lucian approves of it, admiring Paris for his choice—he would have done as much himself, and by good desert in his mind. Beauty is to be preferred before wealth or wisdom. Atheneaus Deipnosophist holds it not such indignity for the Trojans and Greeks to contend 10 years, to spend so much labor, lose so many men's lives for Helen's sake—for so fair a lady's sake. He also exclaims: 'The one woman was worth a kingdom, a 100,000 other women, a world itself.'" And at last, Burton remarks: "The same testimony gives Homer of the old men of Troy that were spectators of that single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Seian gate: when Helen stood in presence, they said all the war worthily prolonged and undertaken for her sake. The very gods themselves, as Homer and Isocrates record, fought more for Helen than they did against the giants." Clearly, there is much more to this Helen than simply charming looks. As a half-divine creature, she is the child of Leda and Zeus, who came to her in the form of a swan. We will hold off on speaking of the eternal conflict between the eagle and the swan for now and save that for a later video. Presently, let us look closer at the meaning of Helen's name, which may provide us with some insights into her nature and activity.
I have come across approximately nine etymological interpretations of the name Helen, but of course, as primarily encountered as a personality, Helen is much more than simply the sum of her parts. And each part should not be taken to contradict the presence of other parts—each meaningful attribute can coalesce to form a diverse and dynamic whole. In summary, we can strongly assert that her name signifies "the shining or blazing one." Her name in Greek, "elene," means torch, and it has been noted by the linguist G.E. Smut that her name is etymologically derived from Sanskrit "svarati" (shines). This word in Sanskrit relates the shining of a light to beauty, very much evoking Helen's power. Furthermore, there is a Homeric formula "Argive Helen" (ar gei e lene) that has connotations of a radiance. In some myths, she is the sister of Phoebe, whose name translates to "pure and radiant." Because torches were used frequently in wedding rituals, she came to be associated with brides and transformed over time into the archetypal bride—later to be incorporated by Goethe in his "Faust" play in Jung's alchemical psychology. In early archaic cultures, it was common also to speak of mythical pairs—sometimes male and female twins—who had similarly derived names. Such an example can be found in Helen and Helenos, or Alexandros and Alexandra. There is also a linguistic connection between Helen and the Trojan prince Helenos. It would seem that light and radiance run in the family, as brother and sister tend to be associated with this light glimmering in the darkness. Helenos was a seer of Apollo, and therefore one can also say that of Helen—that she is directly or indirectly associated with the Apollonian cult to which her brother belonged. When we discuss the symbol of the swan, we will delve into this more deeply.
It is believed that earlier versions of the Trojan War had Helenos not in the role of Helen's brother but as her husband, and that it was Helenos who was to engage with Menelaus on the field of battle with a bow and arrow—thus replacing Paris. Helenos was also considered the twin brother of the seer Cassandra, who was considered the most beautiful Trojan woman, in whose fateful curse by Apollo was hauntingly depicted in Aeschylus's tragedy "Agamemnon." In a sense, Paris, Helenos, Alexandros—all referred at one point to the same person, and his sister Cassandra was earlier known as Alexandra, the sister of Helen.
I want to suggest that Helen's radiant beauty—and more specifically, her radiance symbolizing the radiance of beauty itself, of which she is a representation—is an implication of her role in the Platonic forms or eide. Some scholars suggest that it is a common error to see a duality of a "here versus there" in the theory of the forms—the argument suggesting that there is a realm of forms somewhere else, out there, other than where the material world exists, and that all materiality is simply an illusion and that true reality resides in some other place with the forms. This conception is at the heart of the notion of Platonic dualism. Others take a more non-dual approach and suggest that the forms are present in the material world and in a sense vibrate or shimmer through the objects that we perceive, perceiving through our senses—but most strongly implying the sense of vision, since "eidos" derives from "idein," which is the act of seeing. We can briefly see here in Suhrawardi's "Science of Lights" (al-anwar) that the object must be lit up to be seen and therefore to be knowable. On a larger cosmo-theological dimension, Proclus speaks of the nature of Kronos being the intelligible itself as well as having the intelligible, whereas the realm closest to us—that being Zeus's realm—incorporates both the higher principles of his father Kronos (being and having) but adding a third dimension of seeing the intelligible. This, again, we believe is the shimmering quality of objects that illuminate our knowledge and stir our soul. The forms are present in the here and now and are not as abstract and distant from our day-to-day experience as we imagine them to be. Helen radiates beauty as the sun radiates light—there is a shimmering quality to her beauty, like a torch burning in the dark grotto of an underground chamber.
We can also trace Helen's name to "selena," which means to seize or to abduct, which has a cognate with the Greek "helein." Therefore, it is appropriate to call Helen "the abducted one." Regarding the physical aspect of Helen's name, we have derivations of "welena" in Attic, Troy, and in Egypt as "the plucked one" or "detained one," "iloio" in Greek meaning "to shut in," and in Gothic "wilwan" means "to rob." In an intermediate position, we have the Greek verb "aliskomai," which translates to "to be captured," with "helenos" possibly meaning "the one who shuts in" or "the abductor." Helen's eternal fate is to have been and to continually be abducted—taken away, plundered like a prize—for this is how the human soul in its baser qualities of greed, hunger, and uncontrolled rash desire seeks to possess beauty.
In the article entitled "Faust's Violence Against the Mothers" by Muhammad an-Nadim Nyazi, he perfectly describes this imprudent grasping of Goethe's Faust: "Helen dissipates into a cloud of dust after the death of her son Euphorion. Faust's sexual desire and his desire for transcendent perception are inscribed and regulated. His violence against the Mutter emerged from this bid for subjective control. Faust is surely the emblem of the human soul and its most avaricious and power-hungry." In his "Psychological Types," C.G. Jung speaks of the alchemical marriage—this should come as no surprise given Helen's name being associated with the archetypal bride. Jung says: "Goethe makes the divine images of Paris and Helen float up from the tripod of the mothers—on the one hand the rejuvenated pair, on the other the symbol of a process of inner union, which is precisely what Faust passionately craves for himself as a supreme inner atonement." As in older myths—for example, Theseus, who had once kidnapped a young Helen to be his future bride—it would seem that abduction is something Helen is not unfamiliar with. Faust is yet another soul who has fallen into this trap. There is also an appropriate etymological interpretation that sees "welena" as "to want to choose" or "to woo," which is related to the Greek "eldomi" "to long for." Clearly, this is an attribute that Helen inspires in others. On the physical plane, such beauty is grasped after by the soul in order to possess it. Such unreflective and impulsive actions are reminiscent of Epimetheus rather than Prometheus, who acts first and reflects later—hence his name "afterthought" or "hindsight." As Jung notes, such a split can also be found between Faust and Mephisto respectively—hence Jung argues they both speak to the same individual. Faust and Mephisto are the same entity.
In "Psychology and Alchemy," Jung writes: "The essential Faustian drama is expressed most graphically in the scene between Paris and Helen. To the medieval alchemist, this episode would have represented the mysterious coniunctio of Sol and Luna in the retort. But modern man, disguised in the figure of Faust, recognizes the projection and, putting himself in the place of Paris or Sol, takes possession of Helen or Luna—his own inner feminine counterpart. The objective process of the union thus becomes the subjective experience of the artifix. Instead of watching the drama, he has become one of the actors. Faust's personal intervention has the disadvantage that the real goal of the entire process—the production of the incorruptible substance—is missed. Instead, Euphorion, who is supposed to be the filius philosophorum (imperishable and incombustible), goes up in flames and disappears—a calamity for the alchemist and an occasion for the psychologist to criticize Faust. Although the phenomenon is by no means uncommon, for every archetype at its first appearance—and so long as it remains unconscious—takes possession of the whole man and impels him to play a corresponding role. Consequently, Faust cannot resist supplanting Paris in Helen's affections, and the other births and rejuvenations—such as the boy charioteer and the homunculus—are destroyed by the same greed. This is probably the deeper reason why Faust's final rejuvenation takes place only in the post-mortal state, i.e., is projected into the future. By identifying with Paris. Faust brings the coniunctio back from its projected state into the sphere of personal psychological experience and thus into consciousness. This crucial step means nothing less than the solution of the alchemical riddle and at the same time the redemption of a previously unconscious part of the personality. But every increase in consciousness harbors the danger of inflation, as is shown very clearly in Faust's superhuman powers. His death, although necessary in his day and generation, is hardly a satisfactory answer. The rebirth and transformation that follow the coniunctio take place in the hereafter, i.e., in the unconscious—which leaves the problem hanging in the air. The divine Promethean character he had preserved all his life, fell away from him, only at death, with his rebirth. Psychologically this means that the Faustian attitude must be abandoned before the individual can become an integrated whole. The figure that first appeared as Gretchen and then on a higher level as Helen and was finally exalted as the Mater Gloriosa is a symbol whose many meanings cannot be discussed here. Suffice it to say that it is the same primordial image that lies at the heart of Gnosticism: the
Beauty inspires love. Love in turn inspires beauty. Beauty is at once a most rare and exotic flower in the austerity of the desert, and yet it is always waiting for us to perceive it. It stands aside and worlds apart from the common activities of mundane life—a quality somewhat alien from the human since its origins are divine, enervating and coloring all things under the gentle dominance of her gaze. And in its quiet magnificence, she demands our attention and our desirous eyes. She inflames our sense of lack—such πόθος (pothos) that can never be satiated. It is hunger and thirst that wrenches our souls as we seek possession of beauty itself. And that hunger and thirst—those primordial and instinctual needs—themselves speak to the separated nature of the fallen soul.
Existence itself has become the battleground between two warring factions: those of forms and those of matter—two seemingly incommensurable worlds that seek to reduce all reality into either a totalizing spirit or a totalizing flesh.
The Alexandrian Neoplatonist Hermias, born in 410 AD, preserved much of the wisdom of his teacher Syrianus when he studied with him in Athens. Of particular interest is his recording of a hermeneutical tradition that detected an esoteric meaning underlying the Battle of Troy, famously recounted in Homer's Iliad. Later, Proclus was to incorporate this tradition of interpretation into his own work: "The myths want to indicate, I believe, through Helen the whole of that beauty that has to do with the sphere in which things come to be and pass away and that is the product of the Demiurge. It is over this beauty that eternal war rages among souls until the more intellectual are victorious over the less rational forms of life and return hence to the place from which they came."
We first find Helen in Book 3 of the Iliad, with Eris, the messenger of the gods, approaching her: "She found Helen in the hall, where she was weaving a great purple web of double fold, and thereon was broidering many battles of the horse-taming Trojans and the brazen-coated Achaeans, that for her sake they had endured at the hands of Ares. Close to her side then came Iris, swift of foot, and spake to her saying, 'Come hither, dear lady, that thou mayest behold the wondrous doings of the horse-taming Trojans and the brazen-coated Achaeans. They that of old were wont to wage tearful war against one another on the plain, their hearts set on deadly battle—even they abide now in silence, and the battle has ceased, and they lean upon their shields, and beside them their long spears are fixed. But Alexander and Menelaus, dear to Ares, will do battle with their long spears for thee; and whoso shall conquer, his dear wife shalt thou be called.'" So spake the goddess, and put into her heart sweet longing for her former lord and her city and parents; and straightway she veiled herself with shining linen, and went forth from her chamber, letting fall round tears.
Like the three Moirai who weave the destiny and fate of mortals, Helen is engaging in the same craft—this time depicting her own role in the pattern of events and its bloody influence on both the Trojans and Achaeans. The double fold of the garment is suggestive of a duality of two opposing forces that seek total domination of her—of what she is a representation or icon of: beauty itself. In this sense, the crimson color of the garment is symbolic of the bloodletting that has gone on for the sake of her hand, and with that purplish hue, the madness, ardor, fury, and fervor that such coloration suggests. It is a drunken intoxication—the color of blood and the color of wine—both of which suggest unbridled and destructive elements of passion. Such passion as we can see in the opposing yet complementary forces of Eros and Thanatos, displaying hidden sympathies between love and strife.
Proclus notes that Helen represents worldly beauty—a beauty that has fallen from a state of perfection. She is a copy of the form of beauty which had descended into the world of materiality, and due to this imperfect state allowing a mixture to take place between matter and form, she therefore acts as an intermediary figure, or better yet, a symbol which encompasses and yet transforms the simple opposites of pure matter and pure form.
The German polymaths Goethe and Schiller, and later C.G. Jung, will see her as anima mundi. Later in this video, we will describe Schiller's understanding of beauty as a link between these polarities and discuss how this influenced Jung's concept of the transcendent function—the third reconciling principle that overcomes opposition. However, for Proclus, Helen's activity—that is, her alluring beauty—entices the souls of the Achaeans to leave their true homes (that being the Platonic realm of ideas and forms) and to make war with the Trojans, who represent pure substance and materiality. They are the forces of matter.
Prompting the Battle of Troy was Paris's carrying off of Helen. The Neoplatonic etymological rendering of the name Troy is intimately linked to matter—hence "Ilium" being closely associated with "hule." Ultimately, this is a battle of the forces of the spirit against those of matter for sole possession of beauty. This war is necessary because not all strife is evil omen-ed. In a fragment, Heraclitus says: "One must realize that war is shared and conflict is justice, and that all things come to pass in accordance with conflict." In another fragment, he says: "War is father of all and king of all."
Edward Butler reminds us that Homer was understood by the Neoplatonists to be blind not from any actual organic defect of vision, but simply because his vision was turned away from the sensory realm to endlessly gaze upon the super-sensory. For similar hermeneutical reasons, the 10-year duration of the Trojan War was also understood to mirror the millennial cycle of souls that is contained within Plato's Myth of Er, after which the Achaeans returned to their own realm of forms. The number 10, or the decad, in the Iamblichan Theology of Arithmetic is considered a number encompassing the all, since there are no natural numbers greater than it. It is also known to mark a sense of completion and fulfillment. Furthermore, it was considered symbolic of the cosmos and symbolic of eternity—eternity in the sense that it is everlasting, and all numbers revert back to the decad and recur endlessly. It is therefore unsurprising to find in Far Eastern traditions like Daoism a similar echo of the unending and infinite multiplicity of material flux in the expression "the 10,000 things"—a double perfection, hinting at 10 to the power of four, both considered numbers of completion.
The Silver Age Russian poet and novelist Dimitri Merezhkovsky's famous poem entitled "Helen" perfectly encapsulates the amoral nature of beauty through his evocation of Helen: “And the cry of Hecuba's heard in Troy, In the eternal groan of Andromache, gods fought heroes and sacred Ilium fell. But you, Helen—vow of peace and duty broken—you are innocent. You will be glorified in the song of Homer, because all the hope of the world is in the daughter of white Leda: beauty."
The European Symbolists and Decadents were quick to add Helen to their list of femmes fatales or poisonous women who used their alluring charms and beauty to lead others to their own demise and destruction. Setting aside any modern critique of the male gaze, this philosophical and artistic period highlighted the dual nature of beauty. She is neither wholly evil nor wholly good—perhaps more dangerously, she's a mixture of both and indifferent to them. This vilification of Helen is by no means a modern sentiment. Clearly, there was ample commentary and oral tradition to denounce her as a fateful cause of the evil that befell Troy—even so that the famous father of sophistry, Gorgias, wrote an entire encomium to Helen defending her innocence. He uses a number of arguments, but one of his most critical ones is the notion that Helen herself was overmastered by the persuasive speech and sight of "Alexander's body" (this is an alternate name for Paris, who we will come to shortly). Therefore, she had no choice, it seems, but to act in the way that she did. As a representation of beauty in the visible realm, her command over sensory impressions can work on the observer's soul by engraving on the mind images of the things one sees. But at the same time, as being the active agent provoking the logos of Eros—desire or pain—she's also the passive recipient of those same logoi, not being immune herself to her own charms. In a sense, what Gorgias is persuasively arguing is that the truth of the real can never be attained by escaping the logos that emerges from the icons (eikones) of phenomena that we experience through our sensation. Not even Helen, the personification of beauty made manifest on earth, can evade the power she embodies to the persuasive impression of souls.
Other defenders of Helen have emerged over the course of centuries. The early 17th-century author Robert Burton spoke of the war for Helen approvingly in "The Anatomy of Melancholy." He writes: "Many will condemn these men that are so enamored for fools, but some again commend them for it. Many reject Paris's judgment, and yet Lucian approves of it, admiring Paris for his choice—he would have done as much himself, and by good desert in his mind. Beauty is to be preferred before wealth or wisdom. Atheneaus Deipnosophist holds it not such indignity for the Trojans and Greeks to contend 10 years, to spend so much labor, lose so many men's lives for Helen's sake—for so fair a lady's sake. He also exclaims: 'The one woman was worth a kingdom, a 100,000 other women, a world itself.'" And at last, Burton remarks: "The same testimony gives Homer of the old men of Troy that were spectators of that single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Seian gate: when Helen stood in presence, they said all the war worthily prolonged and undertaken for her sake. The very gods themselves, as Homer and Isocrates record, fought more for Helen than they did against the giants." Clearly, there is much more to this Helen than simply charming looks. As a half-divine creature, she is the child of Leda and Zeus, who came to her in the form of a swan. We will hold off on speaking of the eternal conflict between the eagle and the swan for now and save that for a later video. Presently, let us look closer at the meaning of Helen's name, which may provide us with some insights into her nature and activity.
I have come across approximately nine etymological interpretations of the name Helen, but of course, as primarily encountered as a personality, Helen is much more than simply the sum of her parts. And each part should not be taken to contradict the presence of other parts—each meaningful attribute can coalesce to form a diverse and dynamic whole. In summary, we can strongly assert that her name signifies "the shining or blazing one." Her name in Greek, "elene," means torch, and it has been noted by the linguist G.E. Smut that her name is etymologically derived from Sanskrit "svarati" (shines). This word in Sanskrit relates the shining of a light to beauty, very much evoking Helen's power. Furthermore, there is a Homeric formula "Argive Helen" (ar gei e lene) that has connotations of a radiance. In some myths, she is the sister of Phoebe, whose name translates to "pure and radiant." Because torches were used frequently in wedding rituals, she came to be associated with brides and transformed over time into the archetypal bride—later to be incorporated by Goethe in his "Faust" play in Jung's alchemical psychology. In early archaic cultures, it was common also to speak of mythical pairs—sometimes male and female twins—who had similarly derived names. Such an example can be found in Helen and Helenos, or Alexandros and Alexandra. There is also a linguistic connection between Helen and the Trojan prince Helenos. It would seem that light and radiance run in the family, as brother and sister tend to be associated with this light glimmering in the darkness. Helenos was a seer of Apollo, and therefore one can also say that of Helen—that she is directly or indirectly associated with the Apollonian cult to which her brother belonged. When we discuss the symbol of the swan, we will delve into this more deeply.
It is believed that earlier versions of the Trojan War had Helenos not in the role of Helen's brother but as her husband, and that it was Helenos who was to engage with Menelaus on the field of battle with a bow and arrow—thus replacing Paris. Helenos was also considered the twin brother of the seer Cassandra, who was considered the most beautiful Trojan woman, in whose fateful curse by Apollo was hauntingly depicted in Aeschylus's tragedy "Agamemnon." In a sense, Paris, Helenos, Alexandros—all referred at one point to the same person, and his sister Cassandra was earlier known as Alexandra, the sister of Helen.
I want to suggest that Helen's radiant beauty—and more specifically, her radiance symbolizing the radiance of beauty itself, of which she is a representation—is an implication of her role in the Platonic forms or eide. Some scholars suggest that it is a common error to see a duality of a "here versus there" in the theory of the forms—the argument suggesting that there is a realm of forms somewhere else, out there, other than where the material world exists, and that all materiality is simply an illusion and that true reality resides in some other place with the forms. This conception is at the heart of the notion of Platonic dualism. Others take a more non-dual approach and suggest that the forms are present in the material world and in a sense vibrate or shimmer through the objects that we perceive, perceiving through our senses—but most strongly implying the sense of vision, since "eidos" derives from "idein," which is the act of seeing. We can briefly see here in Suhrawardi's "Science of Lights" (al-anwar) that the object must be lit up to be seen and therefore to be knowable. On a larger cosmo-theological dimension, Proclus speaks of the nature of Kronos being the intelligible itself as well as having the intelligible, whereas the realm closest to us—that being Zeus's realm—incorporates both the higher principles of his father Kronos (being and having) but adding a third dimension of seeing the intelligible. This, again, we believe is the shimmering quality of objects that illuminate our knowledge and stir our soul. The forms are present in the here and now and are not as abstract and distant from our day-to-day experience as we imagine them to be. Helen radiates beauty as the sun radiates light—there is a shimmering quality to her beauty, like a torch burning in the dark grotto of an underground chamber.
We can also trace Helen's name to "selena," which means to seize or to abduct, which has a cognate with the Greek "helein." Therefore, it is appropriate to call Helen "the abducted one." Regarding the physical aspect of Helen's name, we have derivations of "welena" in Attic, Troy, and in Egypt as "the plucked one" or "detained one," "iloio" in Greek meaning "to shut in," and in Gothic "wilwan" means "to rob." In an intermediate position, we have the Greek verb "aliskomai," which translates to "to be captured," with "helenos" possibly meaning "the one who shuts in" or "the abductor." Helen's eternal fate is to have been and to continually be abducted—taken away, plundered like a prize—for this is how the human soul in its baser qualities of greed, hunger, and uncontrolled rash desire seeks to possess beauty.
In the article entitled "Faust's Violence Against the Mothers" by Muhammad an-Nadim Nyazi, he perfectly describes this imprudent grasping of Goethe's Faust: "Helen dissipates into a cloud of dust after the death of her son Euphorion. Faust's sexual desire and his desire for transcendent perception are inscribed and regulated. His violence against the Mutter emerged from this bid for subjective control. Faust is surely the emblem of the human soul and its most avaricious and power-hungry." In his "Psychological Types," C.G. Jung speaks of the alchemical marriage—this should come as no surprise given Helen's name being associated with the archetypal bride. Jung says: "Goethe makes the divine images of Paris and Helen float up from the tripod of the mothers—on the one hand the rejuvenated pair, on the other the symbol of a process of inner union, which is precisely what Faust passionately craves for himself as a supreme inner atonement." As in older myths—for example, Theseus, who had once kidnapped a young Helen to be his future bride—it would seem that abduction is something Helen is not unfamiliar with. Faust is yet another soul who has fallen into this trap. There is also an appropriate etymological interpretation that sees "welena" as "to want to choose" or "to woo," which is related to the Greek "eldomi" "to long for." Clearly, this is an attribute that Helen inspires in others. On the physical plane, such beauty is grasped after by the soul in order to possess it. Such unreflective and impulsive actions are reminiscent of Epimetheus rather than Prometheus, who acts first and reflects later—hence his name "afterthought" or "hindsight." As Jung notes, such a split can also be found between Faust and Mephisto respectively—hence Jung argues they both speak to the same individual. Faust and Mephisto are the same entity.
In "Psychology and Alchemy," Jung writes: "The essential Faustian drama is expressed most graphically in the scene between Paris and Helen. To the medieval alchemist, this episode would have represented the mysterious coniunctio of Sol and Luna in the retort. But modern man, disguised in the figure of Faust, recognizes the projection and, putting himself in the place of Paris or Sol, takes possession of Helen or Luna—his own inner feminine counterpart. The objective process of the union thus becomes the subjective experience of the artifix. Instead of watching the drama, he has become one of the actors. Faust's personal intervention has the disadvantage that the real goal of the entire process—the production of the incorruptible substance—is missed. Instead, Euphorion, who is supposed to be the filius philosophorum (imperishable and incombustible), goes up in flames and disappears—a calamity for the alchemist and an occasion for the psychologist to criticize Faust. Although the phenomenon is by no means uncommon, for every archetype at its first appearance—and so long as it remains unconscious—takes possession of the whole man and impels him to play a corresponding role. Consequently, Faust cannot resist supplanting Paris in Helen's affections, and the other births and rejuvenations—such as the boy charioteer and the homunculus—are destroyed by the same greed. This is probably the deeper reason why Faust's final rejuvenation takes place only in the post-mortal state, i.e., is projected into the future. By identifying with Paris. Faust brings the coniunctio back from its projected state into the sphere of personal psychological experience and thus into consciousness. This crucial step means nothing less than the solution of the alchemical riddle and at the same time the redemption of a previously unconscious part of the personality. But every increase in consciousness harbors the danger of inflation, as is shown very clearly in Faust's superhuman powers. His death, although necessary in his day and generation, is hardly a satisfactory answer. The rebirth and transformation that follow the coniunctio take place in the hereafter, i.e., in the unconscious—which leaves the problem hanging in the air. The divine Promethean character he had preserved all his life, fell away from him, only at death, with his rebirth. Psychologically this means that the Faustian attitude must be abandoned before the individual can become an integrated whole. The figure that first appeared as Gretchen and then on a higher level as Helen and was finally exalted as the Mater Gloriosa is a symbol whose many meanings cannot be discussed here. Suffice it to say that it is the same primordial image that lies at the heart of Gnosticism: the image of the divine harlot—Eve, Helen, Mary, Sophia, Achamoth."
I want to amplify a bit of this passage to make some sense of it—not necessarily through a purely Jungian psychoanalytic lens, but to help add some specificity to his message by discovering parallels in these ancient myths that Jung is incorporating into his psychology. The first clue in deciphering this passage is to understand that most people speak of psychoanalysis without realizing what this word specifically entails. Psychoanalysis is a taken-for-granted concept, but analysis itself is a dividing and dissecting action that seeks to dissemble into parts in order to closer inspect and scrutinize psychological complexes or roadblocks that hinder our healthy or normative psychological functioning. C.G. Jung was also well aware of the subsequent stage after psychoanalysis, which is rarely if ever spoken about—this is called psychosynthesis. This can be found in his insistence on individuation as a process of attaining wholeness of the psyche. But as Jung himself states: "Every increase in consciousness harbors the danger of inflation, and yet this is a risk that must be taken wisely, with full knowledge of the potential dangers.” These "god-almighty powers"—or in Jung's words, Faust's "superhuman powers"—can easily be deemed as narcissistic since the ego is in the driver's seat. Hence, the boy charioteer bursts into flame, echoing the myth of Phaethon's commandeering of Helios's sun chariot with its disastrous consequences, and Plato's "Phaedrus" of the charioteer driver harnessing two opposing horses—one embodying virtue, the other a vice.
There is a strong archetypal relation between beauty and narcissism, and it is no surprise that many have critiqued the vanity of beauty. In the Hermetica, Book One entitled "Poimandres," we hear of the story of the first man who became ensnared into the allurements of nature or matter: "Entering the craftsman's sphere where he was to have all authority, the man observed his brother's craft-works. The governors loved the man, and each gave a share of his own order. Learning well their essence and sharing in their nature, the man wished to break through the circumference of the circles to observe the rule of the one given power over the fire. Having all authority over the cosmos of mortals and unreasoning animals, the man broke through the vault and stooped to look through the cosmic frame, thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of the god. Nature smiled for love when she saw him whose fairness brings no surfeit and who holds in himself all the energy of the governors in the form of god. For in the water, she saw the shape of the man's fairest form, and upon the earth its shadow. When the man saw in the water the form like himself as it was in nature, he loved it and wished to inhabit it. Wish and action came in the same moment, and he inhabited the unreasoning form. Nature took hold of her beloved, hugged him all about, and embraced him, for they were lovers."
In a similar vein, Plotinus in "On Beauty" makes reference to a version of the myth of Narcissus to describe the soul's descent into materiality and away from the realm of forms. As Charles Stang brilliantly summarizes: "On Beauty begins with a question familiar from Plato's two dialogues on beauty, the Symposium and Phaedrus: What makes some beautiful? And it supplies an equally familiar answer: Whatever is beautiful is so by virtue of its participation in the form of beauty. Whatever is fully intelligible is truly beautiful, and vice versa—and only forms are fully intelligible and so really exist. Everything else exists as a derivative participant, including us here. But we can be fully sustained by a vision of beauty there. The goal is 'to win this and only this: ‘the blessed sight’. We come to this by an abandonment or letting go of our senses and 'waking another way of seeing which everyone has but few use."
Plotinus says that Narcissus wanted to catch the beautiful reflection shimmering on the water. Was his error then that he mistook that image for a body? Perhaps—and if so, the lesson is simple enough: We must discern the difference between image or body and reality or soul, as Narcissus failed to do. But most importantly, as Stang also concludes: Perhaps Plotinus's Narcissus erred not so much in admiring his beautiful reflection on the surface of the water and realizing that he is an image of absolute beauty, but in trying to grasp it or will it into his possession. This imprudent act prevents the dissolution of the seer and the seen—or the desirer and the desired—in the Sufi context, that through its union ultimately results in pure vision. But instead, through an act of selfish narcissism, propels the soul into the descent into the material realm that we all inhabit. In this sense, we need to approach beauty without ego inflation—that is, without narcissism—because if narcissistic gestures and impulses impelled us to descend, we must ensure that those same impulses are not present as we make our way back to wholeness.
Plotinus is often criticized for holding strongly dualistic views, despite many scholars insisting on his non-dualism. He actively asserts that matter is absolute evil, and you can get a sense of his anti-material stance when he insists on "the abandonment or letting go of our senses," as mentioned by Charles Stang. Contrary to this view, we have the 18th-century German polymath Friedrich Schiller. As a friend of Goethe, he was also known as having been bestowed the gift of genius. He was a poet, playwright, historian, philosopher, physician, and lawyer. But what I would like to mention is his work entitled "On the Aesthetic Education of Man"—a work Jung was partly influenced by to develop his own theory of the transcendent function. Schiller's aesthetic letters are also concerned with human perfection—perhaps it would be better to describe "wholeness" here rather than perfection—but the state he believed is the byproduct of the "harmonious energy of sensuous and spiritual powers." Such wholeness was achieved, according to Schiller, through the aesthetic faculty of the soul: "Only the aesthetic mode of perception makes the individual a whole." But importantly, emphasized by Paul Bishop in his work "Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics," Schiller's view of the aesthetic was not simply a part of the soul's function but the entirety of it. The aesthetic is "a modality of the total psyche, not a function of any one of its faculties." Fundamentally, Schiller argues that by coordinating the synthesis between the faculties of reason and sense without destroying their distinction, a third faculty emerges that links the latter two. This he refers to as a third drive or a ludic drive—this being quite simply beauty. As an example, Schiller describes his devotion and praise of the Roman bust of nature personified, Juno Ludovisi, and he sees in this sculpture a synthesis of the opposing principles of Venus Cytherea (profane love) and Venus Urania (sacred love). What Jung noticed is that beauty acts as a symbol in this respect, and according to Schiller, the ludic drive is the power that creates symbols. For Jung, it made sense that Schiller chose a divine image for this symbolic transcendence of the opposites. For Schiller, this third drive is also referred to as "living form," and it was composed partly by intellect, partly by the senses, and its birthplace was in the faculty of imagination. This living form was "a concept serving to designate all the aesthetic qualities of phenomena and, in a word, what in the sense of the term we call beauty." What Jung noticed was that neither rational function nor the purely sensual function alone was able to create the transcendent symbol—and the symbol in its most simple psychological expression "is a psychic image expressing something unknown." On page 128, Jung writes: "The greatness of Schiller's thought lies in his psychological observation and in his intuitive grasp of the things observed. There is yet another of his trains of thought I would like to mention, as it deserves special emphasis. We have seen that the mediatory condition is characterized as producing something positive, namely the symbol. The symbol unites antithetical elements within its nature; hence it also unites the antithesis between real and unreal—because on the one hand it is a psychic reality on account of its efficacy, while on the other it corresponds to no physical reality. It is reality and appearance at once. Schiller clearly emphasizes this in order to append an apologia for appearance, which in its every response is significant." Paul Bishop observes however that Jung overlooks one aspect of the symbol that Schiller insists upon: that is, the aesthetic nature of the symbol. In fact, Jung actually confuses Schiller's interchanging of "aesthetic" with "symbolic" because, according to Schiller, the most important task of proper education is to lead humanity from a state of nature to a higher moral development through the aesthetic, i.e., the symbolic. Jung, in this sense, would agree with this lofty pursuit. But for Schiller, contemplation of beauty acts to restore harmony to the enervated and tensed soul and is the only way that a soul attains to true freedom. And according to Letter 18, beauty is free contemplation and "freedom evolves once man is a complete being, when both of his basic impulses have developed, and it will therefore be absent so long as man is incomplete and excluded from one of his two impulses, and should be capable of restoration by all that returns him to completeness."
To bring this finally back around to Troy, Schiller remarks: "When the Trojan army storms onto the battlefield with piercing shrieks, for all the world like a flock of cranes, the Greeks approached them silently and with measured pace. In the former, we see only the exuberance of blind forces; in the latter, the triumph of form and the simple majesty of the law." Again, Schiller is bringing us back to the esoteric reading brought about by Syrianus, Hermias, and Proclus of the battle between the two forces: the Greeks and the Trojans—an appropriate analogy of the soul that seeks to attain beauty itself through the symbolic third principle of Helen, who radiates the darkness of the material realm with torchlight brilliance and shines the path and guides the initiate ever higher toward contemplation of the form of beauty itself.
image of the divine harlot—Eve, Helen, Mary, Sophia, Achamoth."
I want to amplify a bit of this passage to make some sense of it—not necessarily through a purely Jungian psychoanalytic lens, but to help add some specificity to his message by discovering parallels in these ancient myths that Jung is incorporating into his psychology. The first clue in deciphering this passage is to understand that most people speak of psychoanalysis without realizing what this word specifically entails. Psychoanalysis is a taken-for-granted concept, but analysis itself is a dividing and dissecting action that seeks to dissemble into parts in order to closer inspect and scrutinize psychological complexes or roadblocks that hinder our healthy or normative psychological functioning. C.G. Jung was also well aware of the subsequent stage after psychoanalysis, which is rarely if ever spoken about—this is called psychosynthesis. This can be found in his insistence on individuation as a process of attaining wholeness of the psyche. But as Jung himself states: "Every increase in consciousness harbors the danger of inflation, and yet this is a risk that must be taken wisely, with full knowledge of the potential dangers.” These "god-almighty powers"—or in Jung's words, Faust's "superhuman powers"—can easily be deemed as narcissistic since the ego is in the driver's seat. Hence, the boy charioteer bursts into flame, echoing the myth of Phaethon's commandeering of Helios's sun chariot with its disastrous consequences, and Plato's "Phaedrus" of the charioteer driver harnessing two opposing horses—one embodying virtue, the other a vice.
There is a strong archetypal relation between beauty and narcissism, and it is no surprise that many have critiqued the vanity of beauty. In the Hermetica, Book One entitled "Poimandres," we hear of the story of the first man who became ensnared into the allurements of nature or matter: "Entering the craftsman's sphere where he was to have all authority, the man observed his brother's craft-works. The governors loved the man, and each gave a share of his own order. Learning well their essence and sharing in their nature, the man wished to break through the circumference of the circles to observe the rule of the one given power over the fire. Having all authority over the cosmos of mortals and unreasoning animals, the man broke through the vault and stooped to look through the cosmic frame, thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of the god. Nature smiled for love when she saw him whose fairness brings no surfeit and who holds in himself all the energy of the governors in the form of god. For in the water, she saw the shape of the man's fairest form, and upon the earth its shadow. When the man saw in the water the form like himself as it was in nature, he loved it and wished to inhabit it. Wish and action came in the same moment, and he inhabited the unreasoning form. Nature took hold of her beloved, hugged him all about, and embraced him, for they were lovers."
In a similar vein, Plotinus in "On Beauty" makes reference to a version of the myth of Narcissus to describe the soul's descent into materiality and away from the realm of forms. As Charles Stang brilliantly summarizes: "On Beauty begins with a question familiar from Plato's two dialogues on beauty, the Symposium and Phaedrus: What makes some beautiful? And it supplies an equally familiar answer: Whatever is beautiful is so by virtue of its participation in the form of beauty. Whatever is fully intelligible is truly beautiful, and vice versa—and only forms are fully intelligible and so really exist. Everything else exists as a derivative participant, including us here. But we can be fully sustained by a vision of beauty there. The goal is 'to win this and only this: ‘the blessed sight’. We come to this by an abandonment or letting go of our senses and 'waking another way of seeing which everyone has but few use."
Plotinus says that Narcissus wanted to catch the beautiful reflection shimmering on the water. Was his error then that he mistook that image for a body? Perhaps—and if so, the lesson is simple enough: We must discern the difference between image or body and reality or soul, as Narcissus failed to do. But most importantly, as Stang also concludes: Perhaps Plotinus's Narcissus erred not so much in admiring his beautiful reflection on the surface of the water and realizing that he is an image of absolute beauty, but in trying to grasp it or will it into his possession. This imprudent act prevents the dissolution of the seer and the seen—or the desirer and the desired—in the Sufi context, that through its union ultimately results in pure vision. But instead, through an act of selfish narcissism, propels the soul into the descent into the material realm that we all inhabit. In this sense, we need to approach beauty without ego inflation—that is, without narcissism—because if narcissistic gestures and impulses impelled us to descend, we must ensure that those same impulses are not present as we make our way back to wholeness.
Plotinus is often criticized for holding strongly dualistic views, despite many scholars insisting on his non-dualism. He actively asserts that matter is absolute evil, and you can get a sense of his anti-material stance when he insists on "the abandonment or letting go of our senses," as mentioned by Charles Stang. Contrary to this view, we have the 18th-century German polymath Friedrich Schiller. As a friend of Goethe, he was also known as having been bestowed the gift of genius. He was a poet, playwright, historian, philosopher, physician, and lawyer. But what I would like to mention is his work entitled "On the Aesthetic Education of Man"—a work Jung was partly influenced by to develop his own theory of the transcendent function. Schiller's aesthetic letters are also concerned with human perfection—perhaps it would be better to describe "wholeness" here rather than perfection—but the state he believed is the byproduct of the "harmonious energy of sensuous and spiritual powers." Such wholeness was achieved, according to Schiller, through the aesthetic faculty of the soul: "Only the aesthetic mode of perception makes the individual a whole." But importantly, emphasized by Paul Bishop in his work "Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics," Schiller's view of the aesthetic was not simply a part of the soul's function but the entirety of it. The aesthetic is "a modality of the total psyche, not a function of any one of its faculties." Fundamentally, Schiller argues that by coordinating the synthesis between the faculties of reason and sense without destroying their distinction, a third faculty emerges that links the latter two. This he refers to as a third drive or a ludic drive—this being quite simply beauty. As an example, Schiller describes his devotion and praise of the Roman bust of nature personified, Juno Ludovisi, and he sees in this sculpture a synthesis of the opposing principles of Venus Cytherea (profane love) and Venus Urania (sacred love). What Jung noticed is that beauty acts as a symbol in this respect, and according to Schiller, the ludic drive is the power that creates symbols. For Jung, it made sense that Schiller chose a divine image for this symbolic transcendence of the opposites. For Schiller, this third drive is also referred to as "living form," and it was composed partly by intellect, partly by the senses, and its birthplace was in the faculty of imagination. This living form was "a concept serving to designate all the aesthetic qualities of phenomena and, in a word, what in the sense of the term we call beauty." What Jung noticed was that neither rational function nor the purely sensual function alone was able to create the transcendent symbol—and the symbol in its most simple psychological expression "is a psychic image expressing something unknown." On page 128, Jung writes: "The greatness of Schiller's thought lies in his psychological observation and in his intuitive grasp of the things observed. There is yet another of his trains of thought I would like to mention, as it deserves special emphasis. We have seen that the mediatory condition is characterized as producing something positive, namely the symbol. The symbol unites antithetical elements within its nature; hence it also unites the antithesis between real and unreal—because on the one hand it is a psychic reality on account of its efficacy, while on the other it corresponds to no physical reality. It is reality and appearance at once. Schiller clearly emphasizes this in order to append an apologia for appearance, which in its every response is significant." Paul Bishop observes however that Jung overlooks one aspect of the symbol that Schiller insists upon: that is, the aesthetic nature of the symbol. In fact, Jung actually confuses Schiller's interchanging of "aesthetic" with "symbolic" because, according to Schiller, the most important task of proper education is to lead humanity from a state of nature to a higher moral development through the aesthetic, i.e., the symbolic. Jung, in this sense, would agree with this lofty pursuit. But for Schiller, contemplation of beauty acts to restore harmony to the enervated and tensed soul and is the only way that a soul attains to true freedom. And according to Letter 18, beauty is free contemplation and "freedom evolves once man is a complete being, when both of his basic impulses have developed, and it will therefore be absent so long as man is incomplete and excluded from one of his two impulses, and should be capable of restoration by all that returns him to completeness."
To bring this finally back around to Troy, Schiller remarks: "When the Trojan army storms onto the battlefield with piercing shrieks, for all the world like a flock of cranes, the Greeks approached them silently and with measured pace. In the former, we see only the exuberance of blind forces; in the latter, the triumph of form and the simple majesty of the law." Again, Schiller is bringing us back to the esoteric reading brought about by Syrianus, Hermias, and Proclus of the battle between the two forces: the Greeks and the Trojans—an appropriate analogy of the soul that seeks to attain beauty itself through the symbolic third principle of Helen, who radiates the darkness of the material realm with torchlight brilliance and shines the path and guides the initiate ever higher toward contemplation of the form of beauty itself.
