To carry the water of death you must open the spring of the muses

Different elements in myths call to us at different points in our lives; different archetypes turn us on or turn us off. Revisiting the trials set for Psyche by Venus, I am thrilled and chilled by a feature of her assignment to fetch water from the River Styx that I had not dreamed on deeply enough until now. Anyone who knows the Greek myths remembers that even the gods are terrified of the waters of Styx, who is a dark and merciless goddess, older than the Olympians and closely associated with Nemesis. The gods swear oaths on the Styx, whose waters destroy any sentient being and cannot be contained in any normal vessel. If a god breaks a Stygian oath, he will lie dead for one year and be exiled from Olympus for another nine.
     Of course the girl Psyche has no chance of fetching the water of death without the intercession of a greater power. Zeus sends his eagle and the bird catches water from the falls in carved crystal bottle that Psyche was given, so now she can go on to an even more dangerous trial.
    Our source for the story of Psyche and Eros is a comic novel by Apuleius that veers from bawdy farce to astonishing spiritual depth. Rereading Marie-Louise von Franz' excellent monograph The Golden Ass of Apuleius I am thrilled by a story about the waters of Styx that goes to the heart of the creative project.

"The only way to keep some of it, according to myth, is in the hoof of a horse,or the horn of a mythological (in reality nonexisiting) , one-horned Scythian ass. The horn, a phallic symbol, symbolizes the creative force of the Self, and the horse hoof has also, in a simpler form, the same meaning, because it was believed that horses could stamp springs out of the earth and that the kick of a horse fertilized the earth. So it shows that only the principle of creativeness in the human soul can hold its own against the destructiveness of the water of Styx....Creative achievement is the only 'vessel' which can hold the water of Styx." [1]

I am reminded of Pegasus, the magic flying horse born of the blood of nightmares, opens the spring of the muses. I wrote these lines in celebration:

Harder. The hooves drive sparks from the rock.

The great wings beat the air, driving a warm wind

Across the snowy slopes of the mountain.

Again, the hooves come down. And again.

The rock groans and yields, releasing the jets

Of the secret spring. I am down on my knees,

Catching the water in my open mouth. [2]

Dream on this, and you may find yourself approaching the site of your own creative source, your inner spring of the muses. Be prepared to stamp hard.

1. Marie-Louise von Franz, The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1992) 124-5.

2. Robert Moss, "Becoming Caduceus" in Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Stories and Poems (Albany NY: Excelsior Editions, 2013) 76.

Photo of a Styx in the Araonian mountains of the Peloponnese by Artemis Katsadoura