Capture of Cerberus - Interpretation

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THE CAPTURE OF CERBERUS

The last labour of Heracles is the Capture of Cerberus in the kingdom of Hades which
symbolizes the acquisition of the knowledge of what prevents from a premature
transformation.

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Heracles and Cerberus – Louvre Museum

Eurystheus ordered Heracles to go to Hades and bring back Cerberus.

According to Hesiod, it was a monstrous dog with fifty heads (he had only two or three in
other traditions). He welcomed the arriving shadows but prevented them from going back
towards the light, devouring those which tried to cross the threshold of the underground
kingdom.
Hermes and Athena helped the hero achieve this task.
According to Apollodorus, when the hero arrived at Hades’ doors, the shadows fled except
for two, that of the Gorgo Medusa and that of the hero Meleagros. Heracles drew his sword
at Medusa, but Hermes warned him that it was an «empty shadow».
Penetrating further into the underground kingdom, he met Theseus and his friend Pirithoos
who were still «alive» but chained for trying to kidnap Persephone. Some say that he freed
Theseus but could not free Pirithoos.
In order to give some blood back to the shadows, the hero killed one of Hades’ bulls. The
herdsman Menoetes got irritated and defied the hero to fight. During the fight, Heracles
broke one of Menoetes’ ribs and his life was safe only thanks to Persephone’s intervention.

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Finally, the hero found Cerberus on the banks of the Acheron (or, according to others, of the
Styx).
Besides his monstrous heads, Cerberus had a tail made of a snake and a multitude of
snakes’ heads covered his back.
Hades having forbidden Heracles to use weapons, the latter fought the monster with his bare
hands. In spite of being bitten by the tail, he controlled him (or persuaded him to obey) and
took him to Eurystheus’ house. The latter, terrorised, ordered Heracles to bring him back to
Hades.

See Family tree 1

If the goal of the first Ten Labours was universalization of mind and vital, thus the abolition of
the limits in those planes, the goal of the last Labour is to initiate the body’s transformation in
order to ultimately obtain its divinisation and then its universalisation. According to Sri
Aurobindo’s usage of words for the different phases of the yoga, the «perfection» of nature or
“supramental transformation” must come after the «spiritual transformation» and «psychic
transformation», and must lead to the realisation of a divine nature in a divinised body. It is
no longer the work in order to obtain the personal liberation of the adventurer of
consciousness, but the work of the Divine in a nature purified fully and receptive to the work
and influence of the forces put into action.
This work leads to the depths of corporal matter where the union of the Spirit with the
involuted Divine ultimately has to happen. This occurs in Hades’ kingdom which, let us recall,
represents the force that watches over the union in matter’s unconscious. This god is
simultaneously «he who is not visible» (who resides in the human unconscious) and the
principle of a future integral union with full consciousness (ΙΔ).
The first stage is the awareness of what is opposing this process, Cerberus’ capture being
the image of it.

Unlike the elements chased from the conscious which found refuge in the subconscious
(from where they can always come back to consciousness through Poseidon’s action), it is
impossible for those that have been rejected from the subconscious into the unconscious to
cross the barrier in the opposite direction. Realisations which are no more necessary for
evolution will not come back again to the conscious.
This can also indicate that once a victory has been achieved in the body, it is permanent,
which is not the case in the mind or in the vital where the same work has to be done again
and again until the obstacle is «worn out».
Besides Heracles, the rare exceptions in which heroes could come back from Hades could
indicate a work-in-progress or the resumption of a process at a higher level. But it could be a
confusion between unconscious and subconscious by late authors. To mention but a few, the
legends of Theseus’ liberation do not appear before Euripides in the Vth century. The myth of
Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld is still subsequent.

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Like in the cattle of Geryon’s Labour and prior to approaching Hades, the hero faces two
obstacles, both represented by a dog and a herdsman, Cerberus and Menoetes.
But here, it is only a matter of becoming aware of the obstacles: Heracles must kill neither
the dog, nor the herdsman. Hades does not even allow him to use any weapon to control
Cerberus.
It is thus only a very first approach of the yoga’s work in the body.
Before being able to move further, a number of realisations need to be effective. They will be
detailed in the Praxeis, the hero’s «free acts» which we shall study in a next chapter.
If this work could begin in ancient Greece or even in ancient Egypt, it was doubtlessly limited
to a small number of individual realisations. Nevertheless, let us note that in the Third
Nemean mentioned earlier, Pindar seems to say that there was a time when this work was
more easily realisable at the individual level (the time of «intuition»).

We are not going to discuss in detail this yoga of the body which is greatly described in Sri
Aurobindo’s, Mother’s and Satprem’s works. We shall limit ourselves to the examination of
the elements mentioned in the myth.

We must bear in mind that it is possible to descend into the archaic layers of the body
consciousness to confront the forces that structured it only to the extent in which we realised
the corresponding ascent in the worlds of the Spirit (the permanent union or realisation of the
Self and the «psychisation» which brings a sense of Divine «presence»).
Demeter and her daughter Persephone work together to prepare this descent.
The authors who mention in this first stage the help of Hermes and Athena suggest that the
seeker is not yet completely installed in the overmind.

The dog Cerberus is the first «guardian of the threshold» of body transformation.
Let us recall that he is the fourth child of Typhon and Echidna, «the ignorance» and «the halt
of the evolution in the union». He is the brother of Orthros «falsehood», of the Lernaean
Hydra «desire» and of Chimera «illusion».
According to the ascendants attributed to Typhon and Echidna, the victory in this work can
only be considered by going back to the roots of life, at the level of Phorcys and Ceto, where
the emergence of the animal ‘I’ occurs, according to Hesiod, and to the Tartarus, the primitive
Nescience, for Apollodorus.

If Cerberus is a consequence of mental ignorance and of an evolutionary “halt” in the union,

it must be defeated by the transcendence of the mind during the installation of humanity into
the supramental. Thus, it is the first guardian of the secret the ancients were seeking, «the
immortality» or integral non-duality, not only in the spirit but also in the vital and in the body
(the victory over death does not necessarily mean an eternal body but a matter submitted to
consciousness). We can then associate this to the «feeling of separation» in the body (the
spiritual root of the mental-vital ego has been eliminated during the labour of Geryon’s
cattle). Ultimately each of the three big stages corresponds to an universalisation: that of the
mind, then of the vital and finally of the body. In the current mentality, if it is already very

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difficult to conceive the universalisation of the vital, it is even more for that of the body, which
implies loosing the sensations of one’s own corporeal limits. The Mother’s Agenda and
Satprem’s Notebooks of an Apocalypse suggest some characteristics of this transformation.

In the chapter about «the Origins of Life», we have assumed that the name Cerberus could
mean «the principle that causes the process of death (of cutting)» or even, with the
structuring letters, «the right movement that reverses the process of incarnation». The latter
meaning explains the attitude of Cerberus towards the shadows. If he welcomes the ones
entering Hades, he is known to devour those wanting to exit: that is to say that the elements
or forces which finished their work or were chased from conscious and subconscious
evolution, personal or collective, cannot go back.

According to the authors, he is endowed with a variable number of heads of which we can
only imagine the meaning: two to express the fundamental duality, three to indicate the
planes where it is active (physical, vital and mental), or fifty as a sign of totality in the world of
forms.

According to Apollodorus, when Heracles went down to Hades, he was at first confronted
with Medusa, the source of fear and of the processes of response to aggression, but he
learnt from Hermes that she was only an empty shadow (the overmind informs the seeker
that fear is only a lure). Satprem’s writings (Notebooks of an Apocalypse) show nevertheless
that one has to dive deep into the body, beyond instinctive fears of dissolution or of the body
itself bursting, in order to reach a state free of all fear.

Besides Medusa, Meleagros is the only shadow that does not flee when Heracles arrives
(Ulysses will meet many others). Meleagros conducted the hunt for Calydon’s boar that will
be discussed later and which deals with the mastery of the primary vital energies. He
symbolises «that which follows the work of accuracy (exactitude, rightness)». He will make
Heracles promise to marry his sister Deianira, the perfect «detachment». If Meleagros does
not flee when the hero arrives, it is because he represents the only method of yoga
conceivable in the body, «the accuracy» or «perfect sincerity».

The episode of Theseus’ liberation appears for the first time with Euripides, and was
repeated by Apollodorus. It probably allows to follow up Theseus’ feats. But it appears as the
right course of action that the greatest king of Athens – among those who lead the evolution
of the inner being – accompanied by Pirithoos «he who experiments swiftly», attempts the
descent into the body consciousness. This episode appeared, it seems, in the oldest
sources.
Nevertheless, this hero does not intervene in the advanced stages of the yoga since, as the
unique sigma of his name indicates, he still belongs to the domain of mental duality. We shall
examine the texts about his liberation in a later chapter.

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Then, still according to Apollodorus, the hero killed one of Hades’ bulls to give back some
blood to the shadows «psychai» (this name is mentioned here as a reminder of the fact that
the «shadows» of Hades’ kingdom are related to the growth of the psychic being and
represent the seeker’s achievements): it seems that this episode indicates that the seeker
has to sacrifice a «power» gained by the beginnings of a union in the body – for example,
that of healing – in order to be able to revive the processes of consciousness which finished
their work in the mind and in the vital and must from then on apply to the body. Indeed, the
work is a spiral-like process which requires to face obstacles at a deeper level every time,
but most often according to apparently similar requirements.
Yet, as was already the case for the growth of the mind which required to renounce many
achievements of the vital, here the seeker must «sacrifice» spiritual realisations.
Since it is an evolution, opposition forces manifest to ensure it is happening «in the right
way»: that is what irritates Hades’ herdsman, Menoetes, «consciousness of the separate
existence» which continues to the level of the cells, the yoga of the body precisely consisting
of giving them back the consciousness of unity. The hero broke the herdsman’s ribs whose
life was saved only thanks to Persephone’s intervention: the broken ribs may hint to a
«stifling» of the process of separation no more sustained by the «breath».

Then the hero found Cerberus on the banks of the Acheron.

According to the Odyssey (X, verse 487 and following), there were several rivers in the
underground world: «at the end of the ocean, the Pyriphlegethon and the Cocytus (Kokytos),
whose waters come from the Styx, flow into the Acheron. Both resounding rivers merge in
front of the Stone. » It was usually admitted that the Cocytus was flowing in the opposite
direction than the Pyriphlegethon.
To understand this passage from Homer, one must refer to the Caduceus symbol with its two
currents of energy flowing in opposite directions.

The Styx «that which rights the Truth» is a current of consciousness the crossing of which
«gives the shivers». It is fed by the tenth of Oceanos’ water, «the currents of consciousness’
indefinite broadening». It is associated to the Sephira Malkuth, one of the ten Sephiroth or

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main energy centers of the subtle body in the Kabbalah.
At the bottom is the Acheron, symbol of «the right movement of the One consciousness (or
gathered consciousness) ». It is this river (or lake) that one must pass to reach Hades’
kingdom, in «the Unity of Consciousness-Existence».
The Cocytus is the current that descends from the Styx towards the Acheron, towards the
worlds of Hades and of unconsciousness: it is then a river of «moaning and whining». As for
the Pyriphlegethon, which flows upwards in the Cocytus’ opposite direction, it is the current
of aspiration or «consuming fire».

The seeker meets the first guardian of unity, Cerberus, only once he reaches «the edges» of
a certain exactitude in the body (the banks of the Acheron). There again is the «stone», the
rock that must be crossed to reach unity.

But since it is still only the beginning of the work in the body for the hero, he had to bring
back Cerberus in Hades after showing it to Eurystheus.

Thus ends the series of the twelve challenges, the «athloi», of which only ten were recorded
by Eurystheus. Yet the hero’s adventures do not stop here since Heracles’ deeds continue
with the praxeis, «the free acts».

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