As Psyche lay in her deathlike sleep, Eros was recovering from his wound. Now healed, he was unable to endure the separation from his bride; and so he slipped through the window of his chamber, and flew to Psyche to rise her from her sleep. He then flew to Zeus and pleaded with the God to have mercy on Psyche, to make her immortal, and to let her come live with him in the heavens. Zeus had pity on Eros, and turning to Aphrodite, he said: “Do not be downcast, for this marriage will be worthy of your son.” He then ordered Hermes to bring Psyche to Olympus. When Psyche arrived, he told her: “Psyche, drink of this ambrosia and be immortal. Then Eros shall never leave your arms, and your marriage shall endure forever.”

So it happened that Psyche became Eros' bride, and soon a daughter was born to them: she was given the name of Pleasure.

A DIVINE UNION

The myth concludes with Psyche's travails being rewarded when Zeus admits her to Mount Olympus, where she is raised to the status of a goddess and joins her divine husband in a sacred marriage. In ancient times, the sacred or divine marriage (Greek: hieros gamos) was a powerful symbol, enacted in story, art, and ritual. It indicated to individuals that the events were based on a proper balance of elements. In Egypt, for example, male royal authority was recognized only if it was properly empowered by a feminine principle in the form of a goddess, as in the marriage of Isis and Osiris.

Finally, Eros surrendered to Psyche's passionate pleas and told Zephyr to carry her sisters down the crag. The sisters, beholding the marvels that surrounded Psyche, felt anger rising in their heart, jealousy burned like afire inside them, and – though secretly and to themselves – they began to bewail their own fortunes. “Why should she live here as a Goddess, while I, poor wretch, have a husband older than my father, balder than a pumpkin, and feebler than a child, and who keeps the whole house under lock and key? ” They left to plot evil, and returning, they said to their young sister:

“Psyche, dear sister, we are torn with anguish for your misfortune. He that lies by your side in the night is a huge serpent, a fierce and ugly beast who only has lured you to devour you. You must act quickly to save yourself. Here, take this two-edged blade and hide it in your bed, and when night falls, light a lantern and hew off the serpent's head.”

The sisters departed again. Night fell and trembling, Psyche rose and lit the lamp. But as soon as the light fell on the bed, Psyche beheld the fairest, most beautiful youth, Eros himself. The blade slid from her hand as, trembling, she watched the glorious sight. She took an arrow from Eros' quiver, but her hand shook and the arrow's point pricked her skin. Soon ecstasy filled her heart and she bowed down to kiss him on his lips.

Psyche, meanwhile, felt no joy in her beauty. Men marveled at her as at a lovely statue finely wrought, but none came to ask for her hand. Her sisters had long been married happily to kings who came to claim them, but Psyche grew increasingly broken in spirit. And so it came that her father the king, suspecting that something divine had gone awry, consulted the oracle of Apollo. To his horror, he was given this advice:

But though they mourned and wept, the oracle must be followed. In her ghastly bridal dress of funeral robes, and with the mournful wailing of the procession that led her, Psyche walked to her doom.

THE SURRENDER OF THE FEMININE

Here, the story takes a precipitous turn. Aphrodite's warning that Psyche is to be united with a vile and monstrous being turns into reality as Apollo's oracle ordains that she is to be married in a funeral ceremony to a terrible dragon. But even before this terrifying oracle, we learn that Psyche's extraordinary fame and beauty are not entirely positive gifts. Not only have they enraged Aphrodite, they also have alienated her from other humans. So beyond the reach of mortals is her loveliness that she cannot find the ordinary creature comforts of life – home, husband, and family – that come naturally to her less beautiful sisters.

Achilles: A major figure of the Iliad and a major warrior of the Trojan War.

Agamemnon: One of the principal warriors of the Trojan War, and a figure of The Oresteia. As king of Argos, he led the Achean fleet to Troy; but when the fleet had been assembled at Argos, there was no favorable wind and Agamemnon, who had offended Artemis by bragging he was a better hunter than the goddess, learned that he was to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so as to secure a favorable wind. Agamemnon tricked his wife, Clytemnestra, into letting her daughter go to her death. When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War, Clytemnestra avenged Iphigenia's death by murdering her husband. Her son Orestes, in turn, killed both his mother and her lover. The Odyssey and later Greek drama raised the issue of which crime was worse, Clytemnestra's murder of her husband or her son's matricide of Clytemnestra, and concluded that the former was a more hateful crime.

Amor: Roman version of the Greek god of love, Eros. Although in Greek mythology Eros was one of the most powerful original divinities, he later appeared in the disempowered version of the boy-god Cupid.

Aphrodite: The Greek goddess of beauty, love, and fertility, Aphrodite is a later development of more ancient goddesses who unite in themselves such diverse powers as knowledge, authority, wisdom, love, and fertility. Examples are the goddesses Astarte, Inanna, or Isis. In Greek mythology, these powers have become split and appear as different goddesses.

A king and a queen had three fair daughters. But by far the most beautiful was Psyche, the youngest. So extraordinary was her loveliness that words could not describe it. Soon people began to worship her as a goddess, and rumors spread around the country that she was no other than a new incarnation of the foam-born Aphrodite, created when “heaven had rained fresh procreative dew, and earth, not sea, had brought forth as a flower a second Aphrodite in all the glory of her maidenhood.”

When Aphrodite heard of those rumors, fury and rage engulfed her, and thus she said to herself: “Behold, I the first parent of created things, the primal source of all the elements; behold, I the kindly mother of all the world, must share my majesty and honor with a mortal maid, and my name that dwells in the heavens is dragged through the earthly muck. Shall I endure the doubt cast by this vicarious adoration, this worship of my godhead that is shared with her?… this girl, whoever she be, that has usurped my honors shall have no joy thereof. I will make her repent of her beauty, even her unlawful loveliness.”

And so she summoned Eros, her son, and cried: “I implore you to avenge and punish this maiden. Strike her heart with your arrow, and cause her to be consumed with passion for the vilest, most horrid of men. She shall have no fortune, no honor, and her misery shall have no peer in all the world.”

As Psyche sat trembling and weeping on the crag, a soft breeze suddenly raised her up. Gently Zephyr, the west wind, carried her down the cliff and lay her in a soft grassy place. A deep sleep came over Psyche but when she woke, she beheld a lovely grove, with a fountain of water and a palace behind a glistening stream. So beautiful a dwelling it was, she knew it must be the abode of a god. Entering it, she found treasures and heard wondrous music. The voices of spirits began to tend to her in the most exquisite manner, offering her refreshments and entertainment. Psyche eventually went to her bed, for the hour was late.

But as she lay on her bed in the dark, a visitor entered, lay down next to her, and made Psyche his bride. Then, before the dawn rose in the east, he departed in haste. Psyche shook with fear at first, but soon what seemed strange became a source of delight to her. Every night her husband clasped her to his body, and every day he flew away before the rise of dawn.

But as time passed, Psyche grew restless in her luxurious setting. She longed for her sisters whom she had not seen in a long time. She fell into mourning, refusing food and drink, and implored her husband to yield to her wishes and let her sisters come visit. But Eros pleaded with her not to yield to her curiosity, for he feared that the sisters would incite Psyche to wonder about his identity.

Eros flew away to his mother's temple, lying in her chamber and groaning from the wound the lamp had dealt him. Psyche, however, began to wander in search of her lover. At length she arrived at the temple of the enraged Goddess, and to satisfy her vengeful spirit, Aphrodite set Psyche several impossible tasks.

In the first task, Psyche was to sort a heap of different grains – corn, barley, millet and poppy seeds, chick peas and lentils and different kinds of beans – and sort it out all before day's end. Next, Aphrodite asked her to gather some fleece from the golden rams. Next, she was to bring some water of life from the holy river Styx.

Now Aphrodite had designed each of those tasks to plot the ruin of Psyche, and the young woman despaired at being able to do the impossible. But first, the ants came and sorted all the grains into different heaps, each after their kind. When she came to the river close to the rams' grazing place, the reeds told her to wait till sundown when the rams go to sleep, then to gather some wool from the bushes. Finally, Zeus himself sent an eagle who filled Psyche's urn with the holy water.

But still the Goddess was not appeased, and invented yet another task. Psyche must descend to the Underworld, there to gather some beauty ointment from Persephone. Now, a tower instructed her to be firm on her way: Psyche should steel her heart to the pitiful cries of the miserable souls who ask for her mercy and help, and thus obtain the box with the ointment from the Goddess of the Underworld.

THE PARADOX OF MATURITY

Western intellectual tradition has brought us a separation of two aspects of mind and self. On one hand, there is the realm of logos – the realm of logic and objectivity, of all that can be stated in terms of rational truths, of our hope that life can be reduced to laws that are mechanical and precise. On the other hand, there is the realm of mythos – the realm of all that is felt and organic, of that which is private and imaginative, of all that appeals to the inner world of emotions, of our tendency to leap out of the constraints of analytical precision and to seize the novel.

Recognizing that basic duality, thinkers throughout the ages asked which one of these two ways of being was better. Which one is more worthy of our trust? Through which one do we gain access to true knowledge? Which one can lead us on the path to wisdom and enlightenment? Which one ought to describe the mature adult – indeed, human nature at its best?

The answer we inherited from the past is logos. And in accordance with that answer, it has been usual to think of human nature and its development over the course of life in terms of one single theme. For the Greek philosophers and many of their descendants, the knife that would clear the forest of ignorance and expose the path to knowledge and enlightenment was sharpened through training in logic and mathematics.