Supplemental Essay: The Odyssey as
Great Mother Fight

The Odyssey: Introduction

In this essay I intend to summarize Homer's epic poem The Odyssey as a Great Mother fight incorporating elements of the traditional "Hero's journey." Viewed in this manner, the poem depicts the hero's personal development and serves as "Cultural canon" for audiences in Homer's time. I expect that most readers won't be familiar with the plot of the epic poem, so I will walk the reader through the main events of the story at the risk of running the essay a bit long. 

 

The Odyssey is an epic poem written by Homer around 700 BC. It describes events passed down by oral tradition from 500 years prior, that is, events that occurred in 1200 BC at the time of the original Trojan War.

 

The Odyssey does not present events in chronological order; many of the initial events are related late in the poem using flashbacks.  But in my summary of the epic poem I will present events in chronological order for the sake of continuity, and I'll fill in details that are part of established mythology on the subject and were known to the audiences of the time but go unmentioned in the poem itself.

 

Origin of the Great Mother fight

Back in the main essay I argued that Odysseus, the hero of The Odyssey, appears to be an Se Champion who finds himself entangled with Great Mother figures. In other words, the story of Odysseus is very much associated with the feminine influence, threatening females, and themes of sexuality and love.

 

Odysseus' Great Mother fight actually originates prior to the start of The Odyssey. The Trojan War has just ended. After 10 years of fighting, a coalition of Greek armies has finally captured the Turkish city of Troy and won the war. The victorious Greek forces are in a hurry to pack up their ships and return home after 10 years of absence.

 

Some Greek forces are still pillaging and plundering Troy. One Greek officer called Ajax the Lesser rapes a Trojan priestess named Cassandra in a temple devoted to the goddess Athena. This is deemed sacrilege. Ajax's commander is Odysseus (also known by the Latin variant Ulysses), king of the Greek island of Ithaca. Odysseus wants to call a meeting of the commanders and have Ajax punished, but the other commanders are in a hurry to sail home and Odysseus drops the matter.

 

The goddess Athena is incensed at the sacrilege committed in her temple and at the absence of punishment for the offender. Since the Greeks are sailing away, she resorts to the god of the seas, Poseidon, and asks him to exact revenge on her behalf. Poseidon causes a great storm to come up. All the Greek forces are affected by the storm to one degree or another; Ajax the Lesser is drowned in the storm; and Odysseus and all of the ships under his command are blown off-course to wander helplessly for an additional 10 years.

 

None of this introductory material actually appears in The Odyssey. However the story of the rape of Cassandra and Athena's resulting anger was part of canon Greek mythology and would have been very familiar to the audiences back in Homer's time. Also, there are passing references in The Odyssey to the initial storm upon leaving Troy, and they all attribute the storm to Athena. For example, in Book 1 a bard at a party sings a song called "The Achaeans' Journey Home from Troy: all the blows Athena doomed them to endure."[1]

 

Thus, for much of the book Athena plays the role of punishing "Great Mother." She acts through Poseidon and his storm; in other words, Poseidon plays the role of "daemonic father" and serves as deadly companion and "dragon" for the Great Mother. (For more on the daemonic father, see the supplemental essay entitled "The Great Mother Fight.")

 

This is a typical set-up for a Great Mother Fight in literature following the model I mentioned in the main essay: We can abuse that same Feminine influence through ignorance or spite, like a callous lover; but in doing so we risk incurring the wrath of the Terrible Mother who is always lurking in our unconscious. In short, Odysseus awakens the Terrible Mother by neglecting the sensibilities and pride of the goddess Athena.

 

The initial encounters

In Book 9 Odysseus and his ships are blown to various strange lands and encounter a number of adventures: The Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus, and the Laestrygonians. These encounters are mostly hostile, and Odysseus loses a number of ships and crewmen due to attacks.

 

The main stand-out among these initial encounters occurs when Odysseus and his ships blunder into one of Poseidon's sons, the Cyclops, in the course of their travels. The sea isn't treating Odysseus well, and he knows that he isn't currently on the best of terms with Poseidon. So he conceals his identity from the Cyclops and simply demands that the Cyclops honor the sacred hospitality laws, known as "Xenia," and treat himself and the sailors as guests. The Xenia hospitality laws are considered one of the highest duties of mankind, and the rules are enforced by Zeus himself. (See the footnote at the end of this essay for an explanation of the significance of Xenia at greater length.) However, the Cyclops responds that he is a divinity himself and doesn't fear Zeus, and he captures Odysseus and the sailors and begins killing and eating them over the next couple days. Odysseus and his sailors escape by getting the Cyclops drunk and then blinding him.

 

The sailors run for their ships with the blinded Cyclops in pursuit. As they sail away, Odysseus and the Cyclops get into a shouting match. Odysseus again berates the Cyclops for not honoring Xenia, and the Cyclops taunts Odysseus back: He says that he and his father Poseidon are gods, and the blinded eye can be replaced; and in the future he will continue to kill when and whom he pleases. Finally in a fit of rage Odysseus reveals his identity as Odysseus, King of Ithaca. With that information in hand, Cyclops delightedly calls upon his father Poseidon to exact revenge; Odysseus' crew members, meanwhile, are horrified at this turn of events because as sailors they know their fate is dependent upon the goodwill of the god of the seas.

 

Enraged at the injury done to his son, Poseidon subsequently becomes the implacable enemy of Odysseus and his crew. Normally Poseidon had no problem with the Greeks: They were a sea-faring race, and as long as they showed deference and showered him with prayer and tributes before their sea journeys he usually favored them. In stirring up the initial storm he had merely been assuaging the grief and rage of his niece Athena. If Odysseus had left without revealing his identity, there wouldn't have been any problem. But that final quarrel with the Cyclops and the revelation of his identity represented heroic hubris; Odysseus was trying to shame the Cyclops by citing Cultural canon (Xenia), but in doing so he enraged a Great Father figure and cemented Poseidon's role as daemonic father in Odysseus' Great Mother fight with Athena.

 

To sum up: Odysseus is infuriated at a divinity such as the Cyclops flouting Xenia, and Odysseus takes it upon himself to castigate Cyclops repeatedly about it. But it's hubris for mortals to reproach the gods with lapses in manners, and Odysseus must pay.

 

Reciprocal altruism

Another feature that emerges from these initial encounters is that Odysseus isn't a very good leader of men. After he and his crew are blown off-course, Odysseus tries to demonstrate good leadership by treating his crew fairly and humanely at every turn. But the crewmen of his ships take advantage of his good nature: His crew is constantly disobeying his orders or committing outright mutiny. In turn, Odysseus tries to ignore all the bad behavior of the sailors rather than address it and punish it, and that only allows the bad behavior to continue.

 

As I said in the main essay, this problem represents reciprocal altruism taken to the point of extreme one-sidedness. When reciprocation, trade-offs, and teamwork are taken to excess it is possible to find oneself "captured" by the agendas of others. In the introduction to her translation of The Odyssey, Emily Wilson notes that "When Odysseus addresses the men who row his ship, he repeatedly calls them 'friends,' philoi, a word that suggests a close tie of kinship or love."[2] Odysseus likely considers his crew kinsmen of his. But when reciprocal altruism is taken to point of extreme one-sidedness, leadership is undermined; reciprocal altruism is more suitable to the realm of equals, not leaders and followers. 

 

This is why the military enforces a system of ranks and discourages fraternization between commanders and troops: A commander who becomes too close to his troops may find himself increasingly at their mercy. Odysseus likely fears that taking a hard line with his crew and countrymen will cause him to lose their loyalty, which can be dangerous for a commander living in close quarters with the men he commands. So Odysseus tries to buy off the loyalty of his crew by being their friend rather than enforcing rules, but in the process he loses their respect.

 

In fact, the same problem goes back to the rape of Cassandra: A junior officer ran amok and Odysseus did nothing to punish him, leading to the destruction of everyone involved.

 

Odysseus' sailors know that they won't be held to account for bad behavior, and as a result many of the defeats and losses of ships during these initial encounters are due to the crew ignoring orders. Odysseus' excessive reciprocal altruism will continue to be a problem right up to the end of the poem.

 

The encounter with Circe

Finally Odysseus and his remaining ships and crew end up at the island of Aeaea, which is ruled by the powerful sorceress Circe. Circe is a divinity and is far too powerful for mere mortals; she spells certain death for Odysseus and his crew. Fortuitously, on the way to Circe's house Odysseus runs into the god Hermes, who gives Odysseus a magic potion and tells him how to vanquish Circe. Odysseus does as instructed and Circe yields gracefully. And in fact Odysseus and Circe get along so well that Odysseus spends a year on the island of Aeaea as Circe's consort and parties with her. In fact, Odysseus becomes so comfortable on Aeaea that he simply forgets about returning home.

 

The reader is never explicitly told why Hermes favors Odysseus with the secret for defeating Circe. But Hermes is the messenger of the gods, and earlier in the book we see Athena using Hermes to run errands for her in matters concerning Odysseus. Ultimately Odysseus' sojourn on Aeaea threatens to turn into a permanent arrangement: Leisure, hedonism, and the love of a sorceress cause Odysseus to regress to infancy. He becomes the N-level Son-lover immersed in the Great Mother, who treats him as a consort or toy. So it seems that Circe wins after all. In other words, she is another Great Mother figure--a proxy for the enraged Athena--who traps Odysseus in a "bower of bliss" and castrates him (see the main "Sensing" essay for that reference).

 

Fortunately Odysseus' crew reminds him of his kingdom in Ithaca and prevails upon him to set sail for home. Having had her fun with him, Circe doesn't oppose Odysseus; in fact she advises Odysseus to first descend to Hades and speak to the dead prophet Tiresias of Thebes and learn from him how to return home to Ithaca and, eventually, to propitiate the sea-god Poseidon. In the world of Jungian symbology this adventure into the underworld represents, of course, a symbolic confrontation with the Great Mother. (See my explanation of the significance of the journey to Hades in the main essay in the section entitled "The Se Champion.")

 

The journey to Hades

So Odysseus does indeed travel to Hades and meets with Tiresias. But while in Hades Odysseus also encounters the ghost of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander of all the Greek forces in the Trojan War. They talk about what Odysseus can expect upon his return home: Has Odysseus' wife Penelope remained faithful to him?

 

Agamemnon himself had survived the Trojan War, but upon his return home he was murdered by his wife who had taken a lover in his absence. A king's return home after a long absence had the potential to be problematic because it's easy for court intrigues to arise while he is away. So in Hades, as one homebound king to another, Agamemnon talks about his own experience with his wife as a cautionary tale and advises Odysseus as follows:

 

"So you must never treat your wife too well. 

Do not let her know everything you know. 

Tell her some things, hide others. [...]

I have a final piece of sound advice for you--take heed of it. 

When you arrive in your own land, do not 

anchor your ship in full view; move in secret. 

There is no trusting women any longer."[3]

 

To modern readers this may sound like the bitter misogyny of a betrayed husband, but it's important to remember that Homer was writing at a time when the culture was largely at the S level, which equates in personal terms to the stage at which children learn about sexual dichotomies and engage in a certain degree of devaluation of the opposite sex in the process of affirming their own sex (see my supplemental essay "Devaluation and Objectification," linked in the "Sexuality Versus Spirituality" section). 

 

So I would suggest that this is the "treasure" that Odysseus brings back from his journey to Hades as part of the Great Mother fight: Advice to tread carefully around the feminine element and recognize its power to do good or evil--to create or to destroy.

 

Agamemnon represents the castrated male, the victim of the punishing Great Mother. Agamemnon's story is told or mentioned in passing multiple times in different settings in the course of The Odyssey, making it a central theme of the epic. In order to return home safely and reclaim his kingdom, Odysseus needs at a minimum the confidence that he can spot the difference between dangerous love and safe love. Thus Agamemnon's advice on detecting infidelity in women is central to the story. By the time Odysseus finally returns to his own kingdom in Ithaca and reclaims his throne after 20 years away (10 years at war and 10 years of wandering and shipwrecks), much will depend on whether Penelope as Queen of Ithaca can still be trusted.

 

Up until his journey to Hades and meeting with Agamemnon, Odysseus hasn't seemed in a great hurry to return home to his wife and kingdom; receiving a warm welcome from Circe was enough to cause him to remain a year with her until his own crew had to beg him to leave. But after talking to Agamemnon in Hades Odysseus seems to be more eager for a return to Ithaca as soon as possible. Such knowledge helps to "depotentiate" the Great Mother by making her less threatening. Knowledge of the workings and deeds of the opposite sex leads to confidence, mutual respect, and eventually trust. 

 

The female monsters

But increased awareness also makes the dangers of the opposite sex more apparent. Female monsters predominate on the way home. Sailing from Aeaea to Ithaca, Odysseus and his crew must first navigate the trap of the beautiful Sirens and their deadly songs. Then they must sail through the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, two female nymphs that were transformed into sea monsters in the past. In other words, manifested in the form of the female monsters the Terrible Mother side of the Great Mother comes out into the open and menaces Odysseus directly. After the journey to Hades, the Great Mother is better understood but also more openly dangerous in her Terrible Mother form.

 

The enmity of Poseidon as daemonic father also leads to more storms, wanderings, adventures, and disasters. The storms plaguing the ships become more devastating and shipwrecks ensue. Finally Odysseus' remaining ships and crew are destroyed entirely, and Odysseus alone winds up shipwrecked for seven years on the island of Ogygia in the company of the sea-nymph Calypso.

 

Calypso is a beautiful goddess and she wants Odysseus to become her consort; she showers Odysseus with gifts and love and sensual pleasures and even promises to make Odysseus immortal if he will remain with her. But Odysseus refuses her entreaties at every turn and spends the seven years weeping for home and trying to leave the island.

 

Odysseus' entrapment on Calypsos's island is basically a variation on the sojourn with Circe on Aeaea. Circe and Calypso are both powerful Great Mother figures who seek to capture Odysseus with their allure, sap his will, and turn him into an obedient Son-lover. But after his stay with Circe and journey to Hades, Odysseus is more aware of the dangers of the Great Mother. He knows that Calypso's attractions have the power to trap him there forever, and he no longer has his crew to rescue him. So for seven years Odysseus keeps as much distance from Calypso as the small island allows and pines for his palace and family in Ithaca.

 

Athena as helpful sister

One of the rules of the Great Mother fight is that the hero fights the Terrible Mother in order to separate out and rescue the Good Mother; see the section in the main essay on the Anima fight. Calypso serves as a proxy for the Great Mother in her threatening Terrible Mother form. When Odysseus denies and opposes Calypso, Athena is then freed up to emerge as a Good Mother figure. And in fact, by the seventh year of his imprisonment with Calypso, Athena comes to respect Odysseus' fidelity toward his wife and home. 

 

Thus the journey to Hades becomes a turning point in the Great Mother fight: Agamemnon's advice to test women and distinguish between love and danger provides Odysseus with a tool for distinguishing between the Terrible Mother and the Good Mother and fragmenting the one off from the other. Thereafter, Athena becomes a "Helpful sister." In his book The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann says that after a "princess" is rescued by a hero, she may become a "helpful sister" and assist him in further fights and conflicts against other enemies.[4] As I said in the supplemental essay entitled "The Great Father Fight": Such "helpful sisters" are Anima figures representing restoration of the connection between ego and the Feminine influence within.

 

The gods are aware that Odysseus is trapped by Calypso and most of them side with him by this point. But Poseidon is so angry with Odysseus over the injury and insult to his son the Cyclops that even Zeus doesn't dare cross Poseidon. However, when Poseidon travels to Ethiopia for a tribute there, Athena works with Zeus to free Odysseus in Poseidon's absence. 

 

Leaning in on the daemonic father

However, there is still the problem of Odysseus' poor leadership due to excessive reciprocal altruism, as I described above. In Book 12, even before Odysseus was shipwrecked on Calypso's island, there had been a stunning piece of treachery on the part of Odysseus' crew. The ships had to pass by the island of Thrinacia where Helios the sun god lived. Circe and Tiresias had both warned Odysseus in the strongest terms not to slaughter and eat any of the cattle belonging to the god, and Odysseus passed the warning along to the crew. But the ships were becalmed there for some days, the sailors became hungry, and they ate some of the cattle. 

 

Helios became so angry that he complained to Zeus, and Zeus himself destroyed the ship and killed all the crew, leaving Odysseus to drift alone until he washed up on Calypso's island. And given all the trouble he had had with the crew, Odysseus didn't seem overly upset at the death of the last of his crew. But again, this last incident of mutinous behavior by the crew pointed to a deficit of leadership skills on the part of Odysseus. He simply didn't have the respect of his crew.

 

It was impossible for Odysseus to return home and resume his rule of Ithaca in this state of extreme reciprocal altruism. He had been away 20 years away (10 years at war and 10 years of wandering and shipwrecks), and his kingdom was in a state of disarray and chaos; the nobility were practically rebelling, and it was going to be difficult for Odysseus to reclaim the throne of Ithaca. Odysseus still needed to "lean in on the daemonic father" in order to learn to temper his excessive reciprocal altruism and become a more effective leader.

 

So when Poseidon returns from Ethiopia to Olympus and finds Odysseus escaping from Calypso's island with Athena's help, Poseidon is furious and causes one more storm that again blows Odysseus off-course. This time Odysseus unexpectedly washes up on the island of Scheria, where he encounters the kingdom of the Phaeacians. The Phaeacians are followers of both Poseidon and Athena: The Phaeacian men are dedicated to Poseidon as ship-builders and sailors, and the women are dedicated to Athena for their skill at the loom. 

 

Odysseus and Nausicaa, the princess of the Phaeacians, are instantly attracted to one another. But after his journey to Hades and captivity by Calypso, Odysseus understands that women aren't toys to be played with and keeps a very respectful distance from the princess and subsequently from the queen as well. Meanwhile, he studies King Alcinous for the purpose of learning to be a better leader. King Alcinous monitors his nobles closely, is quick to punish violations of the Xenia hospitality rules by the noblemen underneath him, but is also forgiving and generous when he encounters true repentance and contrition. He represents a model of the "tough but fair" leader.

 

The sojourn in the kingdom of the Phaeacians is intended as a centerpiece of The Odyssey. Phaeacia is depicted as a utopian society, and it represents Homer's ideas on proper leadership, structure, and hierarchy. Because the Phaeacians are devotees of Poseidon, the sojourn confirms Poseidon's role as not only a punishing "daemonic father" but also as a representative of order, hierarchy, and good government. In other words, the Cyclops and all the shipwrecks represent the "Terrible Father" side of Poseidon in one manner or another, and the Phaeacians represent Poseidon's "Good Father" side as teacher and civilization-builder.

 

This is Odysseus' opportunity to "lean in on the daemonic father," and Odysseus uses his stay in Phaeacia to learn leadership lessons from the positive example set by King Alcinous. King Alcinous practices sacralization, that is, separating out the good from the bad and favoring or rewarding the first while punishing the second. Sacralization is the dichotomous opposite of reciprocal altruism, and it involves a more black-and-white view of the world than the latter. Agamemnon's instruction to test for loyalty, communicated to Odysseus in Hades, also represents a type of sacralization, that is, a process of distinguishing the loyal from the disloyal.

 

Eventually Odysseus' sojourn in Phaeacia comes to an end and the Phaeacians bring Odysseus home to Ithaca and drop him off at a beach unseen by anyone. Later Poseidon learns that his own devotees on Phaeacia have aided Odysseus and delivered him back home; Poseidon punishes them and the Phaeacians vow to turn away castaways thereafter. As they say: No good deed goes unpunished. But the damage is done--Odysseus is finally back home in Ithaca.

 

Back in Ithaca, trouble has been brewing. Odysseus has been away for 20 years at this point and is presumed dead. All the young noblemen of the island are courting the widowed queen Penelope with the intent of marrying her and assuming the throne of Ithaca. The young suitors have physically moved into the palace and have been throwing lavish parties at the queen's expense for years while they await her decision. Penelope has been putting them off in the hope that Odysseus might still return home and reclaim the throne.

 

Upon Odysseus' arrival in Ithaca, Athena herself appears to Odysseus for the first time in her role as "helpful sister" and advises him to disguise himself as a beggar while he scouts the situation. After 20 years away he can't count on the loyalty of anyone, even his wife Penelope. So Odysseus disguises himself and eventually ends up in his own palace, watching the debauchery of the noble suitors of the kingdom, and begging scraps from the plates of the noblemen courting his wife while he surveys the situation.

 

The partying and impertinence of the suitors is an affront to the sacred Xenia hospitality rules of the Greeks. Odysseus' son Telemachus had previously gone to court to have the suitors evicted; but the suitors perverted the court process and are even plotting to murder Telemachus. This reference to the Xenia hospitality rules thematically ties the suitors back to the Cyclops and Poseidon: Odysseus' complaint against Poseidon's son was also over the issue of Xenia. 

 

So the suitors represent a test: The suitors are clearly in violation of the Xenia hospitality rules; furthermore, the fact that they plotted to kill Odysseus' son means that they will certainly oppose Odysseus himself when he reveals himself as the returned king of Ithaca. Thus Odysseus is faced with a choice: Will he revert to his natural habit of reciprocal altruism, or will he apply the lessons on sacralization he learned on the island of Scheria from King Alcinous? If he tries to negotiate with the rebellious nobility he risks being overthrown and murdered by them; but to impose order and punish them means slaughtering his own kinsmen and probably initiating a civil war. The situation ties together all the lessons Odysseus has learned about leadership, testing for loyalty, and punishing disloyalty.

 

However, Odysseus is having trouble moving forward. The suitors are his own subjects and kinsmen, and he is dreading having to wage war against them. As an Se Champion, his natural instinct is to negotiate with them and work out some kind of arrangement under the rules of reciprocal altruism. Also, he has only been able to locate two or three allies in the household whom he can trust. Athena pops up occasionally to urge Odysseus to take action and restore order to the kingdom, and Odysseus complains to Athena that he needs more people on his side. Odysseus has friends among the kings in neighboring kingdoms to whom he could appeal for help. But Athena wants to keep the situation in-house, refuses him additional forces, and promises that she will aid him herself in combat when the time comes.

 

But even with the promise of Athena's help the situation seems impossible. Odysseus languishes for a time as a beggar in his own palace, living off crumbs discarded by the suitors. The turning point comes when another beggar present in the household argues with Odysseus. The noble suitors, amused at the sight of the beggars arguing over scraps, convince the beggars to fight each other for a monetary prize. It's a horrible abuse of Xenia that dishonors everybody involved, but at the same time it finally gets Odysseus' blood running. He finds that he welcomes the fight, and he flattens the other beggar with a single blow. It wakes Odysseus up to the need to address the chaos afflicting his kingdom, and he completes his preparations for the slaughter of the suitors.

 

Odysseus prepares the fight against the suitors as favorably as possible, but the suitors still badly outnumber Odysseus and his two or three comrades. Athena, however, shows up as promised in her role of "helpful sister" and guides their weapons so that every blow is deadly. Eventually the suitors are all killed off, and the bodies are hidden and burned to buy some time.

 

There is still the question of Penelope's loyalty. Odysseus tests Penelope at length as advised by Agamemnon in Hades, and she proves her loyalty and love. On the other hand, the palace maids who serve Penelope have been partying with the suitors and committing adultery with them; the maids are rounded up, taken out back, and strangled. (In terms of symbolism, the testing of Penelope and the killing of the maids represents another separation of the Great Mother into a Good Mother to be rescued and a Terrible Mother to be battled and killed.)

 

All this killing may seem a bit much, but it's the culmination of the Great Mother fight. In the past Odysseus had erred on the side of reciprocal altruism: He had been too lenient and enabled the bad behavior of those he led, and it caused tremendous death and destruction. With the testing of Penelope, the slaughter of the suitors, and the killing of the maids, Odysseus is putting into practice the lessons he learned in Hades and from the Phaeacians: Sacralization involves holding certain values sacred, testing for loyalty to those values, and moving quickly to punish those who come up short. It's a test of Odysseus' own leadership to see whether he is ready to assume the throne of Ithaca.

 

In the meantime, the noble families of the suitors learn of the slaughter, declare civil war, and raise an army. But Odysseus has passed his leadership test and proved that he is ready to rule as king; he is now able to call upon friendly forces. He and his comrades escape to the hills and make contact with Odysseus' father Laertes. Laertes and his people join their force, and Zeus and Athena make their presence known in support of Odysseus. The leader of the rebellious forces is killed, the rebels sue for peace, and Odysseus assumes the throne of Ithaca. Odysseus makes a vow to present offerings at a nearby temple dedicated to Poseidon. 

 

Summing up

Odysseus represents an Se Champion who practices Se reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism is healthy in moderation: It results in an ability to demonstrate humility, engage in compromise, and practice teamwork. But taken to the point of extreme one-sidedness it turns into enabling of the worst qualities of others and self-abasement. 

• In the company of women, extreme reciprocal altruism threatens to lead to infantilization, regression to infancy, immersion in the Great Mother, and castration. Women have the ability for both loyalty and disloyalty; as the saying goes, "Buyer beware."

• In the company of men, extreme reciprocal altruism threatens to lead to fraternization, capture by the agenda of others, and abandonment of the masculine virtues of order, honor, and leadership. It's not enough to set a good example and treat others fairly; it's also necessary to test people's loyalty and punish violations. A leader isn't just placeholder holding a title; he actually has to carry out the duties and responsibilities of a leader.

In both cases Odysseus has been erring in the past on the side of excessive reciprocal altruism; he must ultimately resolve his problems and achieve balance by leaning in on the daemonic father and learning Si sacralization.

 

Footnote

The so-called "hospitality rules" (Xenia in Greek) become an issue repeatedly in The Odyssey as a litmus test separating good from evil. They were mandatory rules governing the relations between hosts and guests and were supposedly policed by Zeus himself; violations were avenged by the Furies. From Wikipedia: "Xenia was considered to be particularly important in ancient times when people thought that gods mingled among them. If one had poorly played host to a stranger, there was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger."[5] Violations of Xenia turned friends into implacable enemies and even led to wars between countries. 

 

The "hospitality rules" represented a sacred value, and as such they became an object of Si sacralization. Odysseus' trials often involved clashes over the interpretation and application of Xenia and how to respond to violations.

​

Link: Return to Sensing (S)

 

~Originally posted November 14, 2023, revised May 2, 2026

​