Bibliotherapy
Anna Kingsford-The Key To The Mythos of Hercules

The introduction of Hercules and the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, in Eleusinian mysteries. Lythographer: Desnoyers, Auguste Gaspard Louis. Engraver: Housselin, Alexis Louis Pierre.THE MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH DIVISION OF ART, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: PICTURE COLLECTION. New York Public Library.
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This sharing from the Blue House of HYGEIA is an excerpt from Anna Kingsford, ‘The Credo of Christendom: and Other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity.’ Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1916. pages 39 and 40.
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August 31 [1881]. – I think I have at last got the clue to the mythos of Hercules. It must be remembered that these astronomical myths were always at least threefold; i.e. they related first to solar and cosmic phenomena; next, to physical; and, lastly, they had an interior meaning applied to the soul. Hercules, then, is the Sun in his twelve signs, but he is also the magnetic Man (Lodestone), and, correspondingly, he is the Christ-soul, the son of God. Hercules is connected in mythos with Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, twin sons of Zeus the lightning God, and with the Dactyls, five of whom were male and five female. The magnetic stone was called the Herculean stone, the magnet, the two poles of which are the Dioscuri; for magnetism and electricity may be comprehended under the image of two inseparable individuals. And as the north pole of a magnet is discoverable only by its attraction to the south pole of another magnet – a fact which may be considered in reference to our globe and to every particle of matter – and as the one electricity is only discovered by means of its opposite, so here we have two Brothers who constantly die and return to life together, one dying that the other may live. These Dioscuri, too, are they not specially connected with the art of Navigation, and is not Hercules named with them as joint-inventor and patron of seafaring? Is not Hercules also named the Astrologer, the Index, the Saviour; and did not the Phoenicians, who were devoted to navigation, use a divining-cup ascribed to Hercules, by means of which they were directed in their voyages? And the two pillars of Hercules, what are they in physical science but the double character of Magnetism and Electricity? And was not Hercules worshipped at Hyettos and elsewhere under the figure of the Stone – a ferruginous Batylus? As for the Dactyls, they are the human fingers, five of which disude positive and five negative magnetism.

These Dioscuri, sons of thunder, sons of heaven, are the James and John of the Christian Zodiac, the Gemini; and their white horses are the lightning on which they ride. All those who smite, and whose mission it is to bring down fire from heaven, are termed – as they are – Cabiri, sons of the thunderbolt. All these myths have a spiritual meaning. Hercules, the lodestone of physical science, is the Christ-soul of religious science. This stone is the head-stone, the corner-stone, the white-stone in which is a new name written. It is that stone of understanding which is the symbol of Hermes, the guardian and conductor of the Soul, that stone hewn without hands – for indeed it fell heaven, as did the Batylus – which shall smite in pieces the kingdoms of the world. And these Dioscuri are the dual powers of the Soul operating in perfect accord and union. These are the navigators of the sea of Mara, by whose aid the ship of the Church may safely arrive at the haven, weathering every storm. And as the Soul herself is born of the sea, so the Dioscuri are the sons of Leda. Begotten in the water by a Swan. And James and John, their counterparts, were the sons of a fisherman.’


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