Castor and Pollux

“Castor and Pollux were the sons of Leda, queen of Sparta. In the earliest Greek myths they were known as Castor and Polydeuces, but later they were called Castor and Pollux, and I will abide by these names. Helen, so famous in history as the cause of the Trojan War, the woman with the face that launched a thousand ships, was their sister. When Helen was first carried off from Sparta, the youthful heroes Castor and Pollux hastened to her rescue. Castor was famous for taming and managing horses and Pollux for his skill in boxing. They were united by the warmest affection, and they were indivisible in all their enterprises. Though inseparable, Castor was born as a mortal, while Pollux was born immortal. Eventually they grew into adulthood and did what any boys in the ancient world yearned to do; they went through the necessary rites of passage and went off to the wars as a fighting unit. Together they invented the first Greek war dance as a ritual to help carry participants into battle.

Their first big test in the wars came when their beautiful sister Helen was abducted by the Athenian hero Theseus and taken to Attica (southern Greece). Theseus had pledged to marry a daughter of Zeus, and his intent was to hold the twelve-year-old Helen until she was old enough to wed. Theseus, who was fifty years of age, shut Helen away under the care of his mother, Aethra. The twin heroes, however, were furious and promptly set off to rescue their sister. They brought Helen safely home to Sparta, and even set up a rival to Theseus on the throne in Athens. Back in Sparta the two were greeted as conquering heroes, and a great cultural festival was celebrated in their honor. Aethra was made to serve as Helen’s slave.

Successful in war, this pair was less fortunate in the affairs of love. While attending a wedding feast, Castor and Pollux fell in love with two maidens, Phoebe and Hilaeira, and ran off with them. Unfortunately, these two young women were already betrothed to cousins of our protagonists. The cousins were, of course, outraged and set after the two heroes from Sparta. In a fight, Castor was killed, and since he was the mortal one, he was destined for Hades. Pollux, too, was wounded, but he was assisted when his father, Zeus, extinguished the foe with a lightning bolt. Finding Castor’s lifeless body after the battle, Pollux implored Zeus to be allowed to die with his beloved twin, but this was impossible by reason of his immortality. Pollux bid farewell to Castor in a ceremony filled with tears, and his mourning was deep. Pollux had never been separated from his brother, and he found it hard to be alone. This was a desolate time, painful and alienating. It was the period of great emptiness and yearning.

Eventually Pollux could not stand existence without his missing half. He was so full of sorrow over the loss of Castor that he had thoughts of venturing down into the underworld. So our two principal characters, both filled with so much potential and energy, were inconsolable in their separation. One was in the upper world and the other in the underworld. Their cries of unhappiness reverberated throughout all creation. Finally, in anguish, Pollux pled with Zeus to strike a compromise: Could he spend part of his time in the underworld with Castor? Zeus was so moved by their brotherly love and the intensity of their longing that he made a deal with Hades, the god of the underworld, and thus the split pair could be together again, spending half their time in the nether region and the remainder with the gods on Mount Olympus.

In the beginning this appeared to be a reasonable compromise, a workable solution. Castor and Pollux attempted to live with this arrangement, and they seemed to function tolerably well for a time. But eventually they found it too uncomfortable to live in the other’s realm. Castor, the mortal youth, was too uneasy in the abode of the immortals on Olympus, while Pollux, the immortal one, could never find peace in Hades. They were forced to go back to Zeus and tell him that this compromise was not a sufficient solution to the duality of their existence. Zeus was hard pressed to find a better answer, for the laws dividing mortal and immortal were firmly set. But, after a time, Zeus relented. He declared that there was only one solution—a true synthesis—and he gave immortality to the human youth, Castor, sanctifying him with greater consciousness. Then Zeus set them both in the sky as the sign of Gemini, two components of one unity, in eternal embrace as guiding stars.

I hope you can see this story as a prototype, a navigation point or road map to guide your own journey into wholeness, for it is a presentation and possible solution for the ache that every person carries deep within. We moderns also face the contradiction and division experienced by Castor and Pollux. As children we begin life whole, and with the grace of God, we return to unity in our mature years. In between, however, is a painful time of division, struggle, and alienation. Early adulthood is devoted to developing an occupation or profession, improving ours earning capacity, learning the social graces, and cultivating relationships. It is a time of outward expansion, as maturational forces direct our growth and the unfolding of our capacities for dealing with the social world. In this process we develop an identity, which we call the ego.

We must work very hard, until exhaustion, just to get ego awareness working well in contemporary life. It takes the whole educational system and all of our socialization processes to promote this consciousness, and our entire society is highly invested in this struggle. However, in the process of becoming differentiated adults, we inevitably become split. We all have both a lived and an unlived life. Most psychotherapies are designed to patch up wounded people and then throw them back into the battle of oppositions. They guide people in how to become better adapted socially: more adept at making money, more highly disciplined, more dutiful, more economically productive. Even when such therapy is successful and gets an individual back out into the rat race again, you can watch them wither over time under the weight of it all…”

~ Robert A. Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life