Daily Meditation: Monday, August 16, 2010

Power - of the human being lies in their possession of the two principles; Plato’s Symposium

08/16/2010

Plato, in his dialogue entitled Symposium, recalls the myth of the original androgyne. In very early times, there would have been human creatures living on the earth which were both male and female: they were spherical in shape and had two faces, four arms, four legs, two sets of genital organs, and so on. These beings were exceptionally vigorous and, being aware of their power, they took on the gods. Greatly worried, the gods sought a way of making them weak, and it was Zeus who found the solution: they must be cut in two! And that is what happened, which is why, ever since, these two separate halves of the same being have roamed endlessly through the world in search of each other, in order to be reunited and returned to their former wholeness. In this myth recounted by Plato, there is one particularly significant element: in order to weaken the creatures who are threatening the power of the gods, Zeus decides to cut them in two. The idea that emerges from this fact is clear: the power of human beings lies in their possessing both principles. It is this union of the masculine and feminine principles within them that makes them godlike.