The Daughters of the Sun
“It is impossible to reach the light at the cost of rejecting darkness” *
My initial post here begins with the founding of its name that came to me as I was exploring and remembering themes from my life and experiences with the nature of folk medicine and how our “medicina popolare” (medicine of the people) is held, carried, and instructed within our folklore, myths, and other once oral transmissions.
The term “Leaving the House of the Night” is inspired by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides of Elea. Elea, now the community of Ascea, was located in Southern Italy and founded around 535 BC by the Phocaean Greeks, of which Parmenides was one. Phocaea was a Greek city in Western Anatolia that the Phocaeans fled due to Persian invasion. Elea itself was founded as a result of displacement as the Phocaeans expelled the Italic Oenotrians (people of the vines) that originated there.
At Elea, Parmenides founded the “Eleatic School of Medicine” and a healing sanctuary that included a dream temple. I will be writing much more about the dream temple and the rites, rituals, and healing practices that were held therein.
Parmenides is best known for his famous poem “On Nature” that describes his journey into the Underworld where he was taken by the “Daughters of the Sun” or the Heliades (daughters of the sun god Helios, also sometimes referred to as the Kourai or The Golden Maidens). These goddesses leave the “House of the Night” to take Parmenides to the “Gates of Night and Day”. The gates are guarded by the goddess “Justice” as described in the poem:
“And the keys—that now open, now lock—-are held fast by Justice: she who always demands exact returns.”
The Daughters of the Sun persuade “Justice” (Greek goddess Dike) to open the pathway for Parmenides to enter. At this point, Parmenides is greeted by an unnamed goddess who teaches him the secrets of the universe from which he develops his philosophy and school.
“The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown. And on I was carried as the mares, aware just where to go, kept carrying me straining at the chariot; and young women led the way. And the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe blazing from the pressure of the two well-rounded wheels at either side, as they rapidly led on: Young women, girls, daughters of the Sun who had left the Mansion of Night for the light and pushed back the veils from their faces with their hands.”
“The House of The Night”, as part of the mythic landscape of this region of the world, was one of the locations or phases along the ecliptic paths of the sun and moon as they were carried by the sun god in a circular arc around the edge of the Earth. The sun, as the light of the world, does not only exist during the day, but in fact rides through night and day, rising in the morning and setting in the evening when it drops into the Underworld.
The House of the Night is at the center of Earth and is the source-depth and darkness from where the sun is actually born and to where it returns each day. The journey described by Parmenides starts as the Daughters of the Sun leave The House of The Night from the Underworld, pick him up as they follow the course of the sun until it comes around the the gates of night and day that bring them once again to the Underworld threshold for which Parmenides enters. Ultimately this journey begins and ends in the same place as the gates are located in front of The House of the Night. This is a patterned mythic motif that describes the journey of the soul as it stands before opposites come together at one point in place and time creating a vortex or threshold to enter into the cycle of creation.
“Following this circular path, the troupe would eventually arrive back in the underworld at the Gates of Night and Day. Not only are these gates traditionally located immediately in front of the House of Night, but the mention of the chasm that lies beyond them is an apt poetical description of the completely dark House of Night.” (Parmenides of Elea (Late 6th cn.—Mid 5th cn. B.C.E.) from “The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy”)
The significance of the timing of this journey is a teaching in and of itself as Parmenides must enter the Underworld at the precise time. The gateway to the Underworld is a place of paradox or a juncture where day and night, and all opposites, meet. The only way for humans to enter and return from the underworld is if they enter at dawn, at the exact time that the sun rises. It is thought that sun actually traverses both the realms of darkness and light, from morning through the night. The sun falls into the underworld as the Earth grows dark and emerges from the dark as daylight comes.
“The underworld isn’t just a place of darkness and death. It only seems like that from a distance. In reality it is the supreme place of paradox where all the opposites meet. Right at the roots of western as well as eastern mythology there’s the idea that the sun comes out of the underworld and goes back to the underworld every night. It belongs to the underworld. That's where it has its home; where its children come from. The source of light is at home in the darkness.” (Peter Kingsley, “The Dark Places of Wisdom”)
The places where paradox meets are liminal places where time becomes eternal and portals open between worlds. It’s a mythic place that takes us outside of, within, and beyond dualism and false binaries to the nexus from where all binaries are created and where the original instructions for our human stories and folklore can be traced not only to their rhizomes and roots beneath the Earth but to their bright, stellar sparks of light from above.
In psychological as well as social terms the concept of embodying paradox and the union of opposites is seen in several traditions. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman spoke in depth about “holding the tension of opposites” as a creation pattern that facilitates the emergence of a third way that contains the integration of both poles. Opposites are always inextricably linked and occur on a polar axis. In our social and political systems we see this take many shapes such as political parties, war, and almost any conflict where there are two opposing positions. From this view the resolution or integration of such oppositions comes from their convergence and symbiosis that would generate a new creative form from the transmutation of the two poles as they come together.
We also see this in “Ego Development Theory” by Susanne Cook-Greuter. According to this framework we see that the integration of opposites or awareness of the implementation of duality as a tool of creation occurs during the “Post-Conventional” stage of ego development. This stage coincides with the deconstruction of internalized conditioning imposed by outside social assumptions. This stage does not deny the tension of opposites but becomes aware of it and able to facilitate polar energies in the service of creation. A major process during this stage of development has been described by Kyle Kowalski from Sloww as:
“Inner conflict around existential paradoxes, the habits of the mind and heart & intrinsic problems with language and meaning making in the discursive mode. The limits of rational thought and language, and living in the tension of the consciously insolvable problem of existence and non-existence, life and death.”
All this leads to the acceptance of paradox which is precisely where Parmenides is brought to at the portal or gates of night and day. In order for Parmenides to enter the Underworld he must be able to stand in the presence of contradictory forces and hold the tension long enough to step into the portal to the Underworld where time, light, and space are unified and from where they emerge.
Below is a poem excerpt from a new book I’m just beginning to dream into about how our “medicina popolare” or folk medicine is woven into our folklore, myth, and oral transmissions.
incubation
We will take him from night to light exclaim the daughters of the sun, released from their veils. They ride.
Their chariot cast through time by the power of many mares,muscles flexing strong
under soft skin, they gallop past the top of the world.
The poet waits with his longing, his desire, hot and burning in his pen.
He leaves the temples and stone roads where the hills have opened and grown around him.
But what did you see, Parmenides?
I saw the darkness and the day as one. I saw that there is only “being”. I saw that there is only “is.”
“Is not”, is not.
Space and zero are true beings or they would not exist. There is only existence.
I saw that time, as well, is non-existent
there is only presence. Only truth.
Even lies are always true.
The past and the future only other versions of the present.
Non-being is being in a different light, a different shadow, a color.
“It’s needs must be that what can be spoken and thought is; for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be”
The underworld can only be entered by the living at the juncture of night and day, and only as the sun rises for the living or they may be trapped there. if they enter at dusk and walk the underworld at night they will never return.
The poet steps in.
from IATROMANTIS ©Lisa Fazio 2023
Links and notes:
*quote beneath title from “The Dark Places of Wisdom”, by Peter Kingsley