The Myth of Theseus (Part III): Walking the Grey Road
The Art and Wisdom of Holding Tension
Hello, and thank you so much for stopping by.
Before we begin, I want to let you know that you’re dropping in on what is an expanded transcript for the third episode in my podcast series dealing with the myth of Theseus.
You can listen to this episode on apple podcasts, spotify, amazon music, or, if you prefer, from here.
Introduction and a Brief Recap
In our last journey, we learned how to face the parts of ourselves we once rejected. But the real work begins after the confrontation.
What happens when we pick up the bandit’s club only to realize that the power we once feared was ours all along?
When we begin to understand why unhelpful and sometimes potentially harmful beliefs and behavior patterns so often block us when we’re trying to grow into better versions of ourselves, the labels of “good” and “bad” no longer seem to hold.
At times like these, the simple stories that we have told to prop up our identity can begin to feel as though they are ready to collapse. And in their place, a new and more complicated path stretches out before us —no longer a road of black and white thinking, but a shimmering and shifting territory of grey.
In reclaiming the bronze club—the raw psychic energy of emotion from the bandit-like complex we encounter—we also need to learn how to carry and integrate it.
How can we learn to use this powerful part of ourselves for good without slipping back into the old, familiar story of self-condemnation and shame for everything it once was?
The key here is to understand the process that led us to exile these parts of ourselves in the first place, and to find a new way of understanding them. In this episode, we’ll journey further with Theseus (Θησέας) and meet a bandit whose tying of knots may help us understand how to loosen our own.
So, take a deep breath. Let the noise of the modern world fade for a moment. The road ahead narrows as we turn eastward, toward the Isthmus—that thin strip of land held between the restless Ionian and Aegean seas.
Listen… you can almost hear the wind whispering through the pines.
Let’s join Theseus there (to help you find where “there” is, here is a handy map!).
The Myth: Sínis—The Pine-Bender
A cool wind drifted from the north, carrying the scent of turned earth mixed with the salt of the Ionian Sea.
It had been two days since his encounter with Periphetes (Περιφήτης)—two days of climbing out of Epidaurus (Ἐπίδαυρος) through the stony folds of mountainous region, keeping to the high ground where the valleys still held rain and shadow.
The great bronze club, though heavy, now rested on his shoulder as naturally as if it had always been there.
Now, pausing on the lower slopes of Mount Oneion (Ονήιον), Theseus looked down at the road that coiled across the landscape toward a point where the land itself seemed to have been bent eastward and held taut between two seas. In the distance, the path slipped in and out of a pine forest before reemerging beyond it, tracing a narrow line along the pale cliffs that fell toward the distant shimmer of the Saronic Gulf. Beyond that Megara (Μέγαρα) and the oracle at Eleusis (Ελευσίνα), and even further still, Attica (Αττική) at whose heart lay Athens (Αθήνα)—his father’s kingdom and his destiny.
Shifting the weight of the bronze club, he set out again, picking his way down the rocky slopes. As Helios climbed higher, the sound of gravel beneath his sandals gradually gave way to the dry crunch of pine needles. The breeze that had carried the familiar scents of soil and surf now brought with it the resin-spiced whispers of the forest.
Theseus heard the man before he saw him. Panting grunts and the scrape of feet slipping over the forest floor were accompanied by the most alarming sounds of creaking wood. Somebody was working very hard.
As he rounded a bend in the road, Theseus came across a man facing away from him, he was older, broad-shouldered, with weathered skin and arms corded with muscle like twisted roots. He was grunting and panting as he strained against a long rope tied to the top of a young but already very tall pine. With great effort the man was pulling the top of the pine downwards toward another tree that stood opposite it on the other side of the path. From the top of bending tree dangled another, shorter length of rope, swinging to and fro, as the old man deftly pulled the crown lower towards the road.
“A moment of your strength, young traveller,” the man grunted through puffing breaths. “This tree needs tying down. Help me hold it while I secure the knot.”
Clearly the man needed help, so Theseus quickly set his club down and took hold the rope. Even with the man still helping to hold the rope in place, he felt the incredible, living force of tree surge against him. It strained against the two of them, but, summoning all of this strength, he held tight.
Hand over hand, the man moved around and behind him, pulling the slack length of the rope below his grip around the trunk of the tree on the opposite side of the road, As he was pulling, Theseus couldn’t help but notice that the tree to which the man was tying the rope already had ropes secured to its highest branches. A long one dangled all the way to the ground, while a shorter length ended about half way down its trunk. Theseus tightened his grip and leaned back, pulling harder to give the old man more slack with which to work.
“Sir,” said Theseus, “Who are you?”
“I am a son of a blacksmith, a descendant of Corinthus,” the man offered as he looped and pulled on the knot.
“And what is it you’re doing, here?” Theseus asked, his hands burning from the strain.
The man paused and looked at him. Theseus could feel the gaze rake over him as he strained against the pull of the bent pine.
“Resetting a trap,” the man replied, “my lazy apprentice tied it poorly. It’s for… boars…” He trailed off and then, as if finding his train of thought again, added, “there is a vicious beast that has been terrorising this road.”
The man resumed working, but Theseus couldn’t shake the feeling that while the old man’s hands busied themselves with the knot, his eyes were measuring him.
“You have a strong back,” the man said after a moment. “Here—let me show you a trick to take the strain off your hands. We can tie the rope around your waist and shoulders. Let’s do it that way when we pull down this second tree over here…”
The offer hung in the still air. And in that instant, Theseus knew. This was no boar trap. The snare was for him—and the man holding the rope was the infamous outlaw Sínis (Σίνις), the Pine-Bender himself.
The realisation dropped in him like a pebble in deep water. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. To release the rope now would give him away. Instead, he shifted his weight—subtly, carefully—as if testing the strain of the pine, all the while searching for a way to turn the moment in his favour.
The rope quivered in his hands, rough fibres biting into his palms. Behind him, Sínis exhaled—a sound thick with satisfaction… for his knot or his next kill, or perhaps both. Theseus couldn’t be certain.
“There. That should hold it,” the bandit said.
Theseus drew a sharp breath. Then, pitching his voice just enough to hide the steadiness in his body, he called out, “It’s slipping! I can’t hold it much longer!”
The older man clicked his tongue in annoyance. “It will hold, boy. Now let go—we have the other tree to set.”
“No,” Theseus insisted, his voice tight with effort. “Come, see for yourself. It’s not going to hold. I can feel it giving way!”
With a sigh, Sínis came over and gripped the rope just above Theseus’ hands, tugging hard to prove its strength. At that exact moment, Theseus, with a great roar, jerked the rope violently downward and released the rope. The pine groaned as if it would finally give way, and in the sudden, shocking recoil, Sínis was thrown off his feet, landing hard on the dusty ground. The knot held.
Before the bandit could recover, Theseus was on him, taking the shorter rope from the bent tree and expertly winding it around the man’s torso, securing it tightly beneath Sínis’ armpits
“What is this!” Sínis rasped, in stunned outrage.
I know who you are,” Theseus said, his voice low and cold. “Not a son of just any blacksmith, but of the outlaw Damastes (Δαμαστής)—the Subduer. You’re no hunter, but a ravager—a destroyer of those who trust you. You are Sínis.”
As he spoke, he hauled down the second pine, his words punctuated by short, sharp breaths. “This is no trap for boars,” he panted, drawing the great trunk lower and lower. “It’s for the ones… kind enough… to lend you a hand. A snare for all who mistake your deceit for guidance.”
He fastened the long rope to the base of the first tree, where Sínis already strained against his own bindings. The bandit froze, aware that even one reckless move could tear the cords apart and catapult him to his death. He began protesting, his voice cracking with panic, but Theseus ignored him.
Without a word, the young hero took up the short length of rope that hung from the now secured second tree and, grabbing Sínis’s feet, tied his ankles fast.
All was set. The two pines strained against their bonds, with Sínis strung, begging and pleading between them. Theseus looked at the older man, whose face was now a mask of terror and rage. “You did not set this trap for beasts,” he said calmly, “but one will surely die in it today.”
He drew the sword his father had left him under the great rock in Troezen (Τροιζήνα). With two swift, clean cuts, he severed the ropes that held the great trees down.
With a terrifying, splintering roar, the pines sprang back to their full height. Sínis’ shoulders followed the one, while his ankles went with the other. And in a moment, all the tension that had been held in their wooden trunks released in a spray of pine needles and gore.
For a long moment, there was silence. Then, slowly, the sounds of the forest returned, and the wind began to whisper through the pines once more.
The road continued down and to the right, towards the shores of the Saronic Gulf, and onwards to the town of Crommyon (Κρομμυών).
Amplification: The Pine-Bender
So now we’ve met Sínis—the pine bender. What images from his story resonated with you, and how is he different from Periphetes?
Perhaps you noticed how the pictures rigidity of the singular point of view and the crushing weight of the bronze club have, in the image of this second bandit, been replaced with the sinuous flexibility of growing wood. Periphetes confronts us with brute resistance; Sínis, with dynamic tension.
Sínis is the second bandit Theseus encounters on his journey to Athens. He is a picture of what happens when we begin facing the complexes and limiting beliefs in the shadow.
To understand where on our path we meet this force, we need to find the place where opposing forces are bent towards one another, held in tension for a moment, and then suddenly released. A great example of this, and perhaps this is because it is where I most often see it happening for myself, is in decisions based on value-judgments—the split second decisions we make on how to respond to things that happen to or inside us.
You may have seen a quote floating around, often attributed to the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”
While that exact phrasing is not actually in Frankl’s work, the idea is central to existential psychology. The psychologist Rollo May put it beautifully when he wrote: “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.”1
That pause... that space... is where our real power lies. It’s the gap where we can stop an old, unconscious reaction and choose something new. And it is right there, in that charged and often uncomfortable space, that Sínis waits for us. He is the embodiment of the pull of our old patterns straining against the push of new possibilities. He is what happens when the energies that should be held in creative tension instead rebound violently towards their opposites.
In archetypal terms, we can see Sínis as a corrupted Senex, or a negative elder figure. Where a healthy elder guides the hero, the corrupted Senex fears renewal. He demands conformity. He bends new life towards his old will and tears apart whatever resists him. Like J. M. Barrie’s Captain Hook to Peter Pan, he is the authoritative figure who blocks the path of transformation instead of guiding the hero across the threshold.
And this is where the genius of the myth really shines. The story of Sínis is so powerful because the story itself models the very tension it describes. It strains against itself, pulling in two directions at once. Let me show you what I mean.
The ancient sources can’t even agree on how Sínis killed his victims.
According to Apollodorus2 and Hyginus3, he would ask a traveller to help him hold down a single, bent pine tree. Then he’d let go. The victim, unable to hold the tension alone, would be flung into the air and crash back to earth. One extreme to the other.
But according to Diodorus4 and Pausanias5, he would bend two pine trees down, tie a person’s limbs to each, and then release the trees. They would spring up in opposite directions, ripping the victim in two.
Even the timeline is contradictory. The Parian Chronicle6, an ancient marble inscription, claims that Theseus defeated Sínis after he was already king of Athens, establishing the Isthmian Games7[7] in his honour.
So which version is right? Which is the real story?
You see, here again, the opposites appear. Surely one version must be correct and the other incorrect, right?
Mythology has always been comfortable with contradiction. Myths can hold multiplicity without collapsing; we, on the other hand, usually can’t.
Rather than holding the tension between opposites within us—like a drawn bowstring, alive with potential but requiring effort and a bit of discomfort to maintain—we rush to release it. We hurry to decide what’s right, what’s wrong, who we are, what we are not. This happens mostly beneath our awareness, where our complexes steer the wheel. This is the inner work of Sínis.
Each of us carries a form of that corrupted Senex archetype within ourselves. It’s the impulse to resolve inner conflict in a way that sabotages our own growth.
So what does this inner saboteur, this corrupted mentor, sound or feel like? How might we begin to identify it? It’s different for all of us. For some, it’s a voice of impatience: ‘Just pick one and get it over with.’ For others, it’s a voice of conformity: ‘Don’t rock the boat; just do what’s expected.’
But listen closely, and you might notice a common strategy. The goal is often the same: it urges us to choose what is socially acceptable over what feels personally authentic. What does that pressure feel like for you? Where do you feel it?
That is the Sínis pattern. As with the pine trees, it binds our experiences to opposing poles—good and bad, success and failure—and in that sudden, premature resolution, our attempts to grow are torn apart. We find ourselves flung between who we are becoming and who we once were.
So, now that we understand more about the image from the story, what can we do with it? In the myth, Theseus defeats Sínis by turning the bandit’s own method against him. The very energy that once trapped becomes the means of liberation. Transformation here doesn’t come from compromise; it comes from creativity. It’s the discovery of a third way that dissolves the old conflict.
Remember, the hero is not a role model to imitate, but a pattern of consciousness we can apply. The “Theseus move” is about learning to stand in that living tension without being torn apart.
Think of a moment when you feel torn between acting and waiting. The Sínis reflex is to pick one—to relieve the tension. The Theseus move is to pause and let both choices inform you. Can action contain non-action? Could non-action be a form of action? Considering questions like this is where we begin to discover the third way.
Theseus meets his bandits one by one as he travels from Troezen to Athens. But in our own inner work, we will often have to apply the strategies from a few of these mythical encounters at the same time.
It is more helpful to view the bandits in the story less like a step-by-step set of instructions and more like facets of the same process. Each presents a different strategy for navigating the inner obstacles that arise along our path of growth.
In real life, we apply the wisdom of all these encounters simultaneously, learning to hold the tensions between the various approaches taken by the hero archetype rather than relying on any one strategy to bring that which is unconscious into the light of consciousness.
You see, when we begin this work and first recognise a bandit-like pattern within ourselves, the Sínis-like impulse is to label it as “bad.” That act of judgment gives us a quick way to release the tension. It lets us feel momentarily “right” in the face of what might otherwise make us feel ashamed. Even if we can’t be perfect, at least we can judge perfectly—that’s the hidden bargain behind this reflex. It feels good, in a grim sort of way, to chastise what we deem “wrong.” But the moment we do, we bind part of ourselves to that label. The declaration “this is bad” immediately calls forth its opposite: “I should be good.” Instead of sitting with the discomfort and learning from it, we push the rejected part away and try to cover it with something more acceptable. What follows is a cycle of denial and defensiveness—a desperate effort to look whole without actually becoming whole.
And that’s when Sínis gets us. By doing this, we’ve already stepped into his trap. The moment we bind one part of ourselves to “bad” and another to “good,” the rope tightens, and we’re stretched between them, mistaking the judgment we’ve cast for actual virtue while the deeper work of integration remains undone.
We take the opposing pines of “good” and “bad,” bind the complex to them, and release the tension by condemning ourselves. This is how repression works. We banish the energy of whatever uncomfortable aspect of the psyche we encounter right back into the unconscious, often using judgments we’ve absorbed from parents, teachers, or society. And our growth is, once again, undone.
But this part of the story doesn’t end there. There’s another danger waiting on the far side of this work. Sínis tears us apart when we try to resolve the opposites too quickly—but if we go too far the other way, dissolving every boundary, every tension, we drift towards another kind of undoing. The road narrows now, carrying a kind of tension of its own as it bends towards the Isthmus, the narrow strip of land connecting the Peloponnese to the mainland.
Mythological Images from the Grey Road: Phaea and the Crommyonian Sow
Here, as if the tension of Sínis’ pines were the force holding this part of the myth together, the story seems to dissolve. So, for the next part of our journey together, I’d like to do something a little different.
Rather than retelling a story, I’d like to walk with you through the imagery that survives from this strange and fragmentary part of the myth.
The reason is simple: here, the record falters. No two ancient sources agree on what exactly happens next, or even who—or what—the next confrontation Theseus must face is.
What the sources do agree on is that, as Theseus was crossing the isthmus, he approached the town of Crommyon which lay between Corinth and Megara, where he faced and killed the Crommyonian Sow (I’ve updated the map to help you plan your next trip to Greece).
Some say that this monstrous sow was raised by an old woman named Phaea (Φαία). Others say that the sow was named Phaea. Still others claim there was no beast at all—only a woman name Phaea so savage (and unhygienic) that she was called a sow.
But you see, I think that uncertainty is the point. This part of the road—at least, viewed through the lens I’m adopting here—is supposed to be hard to see clearly.
After facing the violent clarity of Sínis—the bandit-urge within each of us that splits the world into opposites and tears us apart between them—Theseus enters a different kind of trial.
The pines no longer threaten to tear him apart; instead, after abandoning the need to polarise the world, the path itself begins to blur. At this point, our hero steps into the grey country between black and white, where boundaries soften and certainty dissolves. And the seeming lack of definition and contrast that arises when we let go of dualistic thinking and enter the grey space of a third way, is appropriate because one way of interpreting the name Phaea is as “the Grey One”8.
Psychologically, this is the territory we enter after we stop forcing our inner world into rigid boxes of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It can feel like a seemingly directionless mist-washed region of moral ambiguity. This is a space in that asks us to exercise deeper discernment, in which we learn to navigate by a more nuanced compass moral compass, and take personal responsibility for our choices and their consequences rather than chalking them up to external or inherited definitions.
This uncertain, and liminal space holds a profound danger. In letting go of the certainties prescribed by external authorities, we risk letting go of discernment altogether. We risk dissolving into a mess of undifferentiated amoral chaos, in which every impulse feels valid and every boundary disappears. Symbolically speaking, this is the danger of being consumed by the Crommyonian Sow.
Almost as far back as we can remember, the pig has been a creature of paradox—sacred and profane, fertile and gluttonous, nurturing and devouring.In many ancient myths, the pig stands at the threshold between creation and decay. For example, the Egyptian sky goddess Nut was said to swallow her piglets—the stars—each night and then birth them again each morning, while in Greece, Demeter (Δημήτηρ) received piglets as sacrificial offerings for the renewal of the earth. The same animal that symbolized divine fruitfulness also came to embody sloth and lust, purity and filth.
Because it feeds on indiscriminately, seemingly devouring everything—including its own young— and yet is capable of giving birth to large numbers of young, the pig has long mirrored the amoral cycles of nature itself—where creation and destruction are not opposites, but phases of one eternal appetite.
From a western perspective, a cultural lens heavily influenced by Christianity, the pig also has strong associations with the image of possession9. From a symbolic perspective, we can understand the idea of such possession as being a state in which the conscious ego is swallowed by unconscious drives and behaviours, causing a person to behave more like an animal or a beast rather than a human being.
Even today, the pig remains a complex and seemingly contradictory symbolic image. Its near-human skin and unsettling blend of intelligence, appetite, and emotion draw both disgust and affection. We call someone a “pig” when they’ve surrendered to greed or corruption—when the appetite devours the soul—but we also hold gentler opinions of this amazing animal: in Winni-the-Pooh we see Piglet’s anxious innocence, the talking pig, Babe’s pure-hearted courage, or the character’s like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web.
The image of the pig in both mythology and pop culture exposes what we’d rather not see, or acknowledge, in ourselves: the uneasy union of tenderness and gluttony, empathy and indulgence, innocence and appetite. It is this volatility—this oscillation between devotion and devouring—that makes the Crommyonian Sow such a haunting image.
And so, as the myth fades into fog, we find that the Crommyonian Sow isn’t only a monster on the road—it’s the image of a force within us. The unconscious is powerful, it is vast, and it holds the raw material for our growth. But the unconscious is not your friend. It is not a benevolent guide to be blindly followed. Shadow work is not about surrendering to the impulse of the amoral forces of instinct and urge within; it is a conscious, alchemical craft of engaging with them to transmute their contents into resources for a better life.
In the story, waiting for Theseus in that grey, misty place is the perfect image of this amoral, undifferentiated power: the Crommyonian Sow. An untamed creature of instinct, as capable of giving birth to multitudes as she is of devouring them.
According Apollodorus10, this frightening creature was raised by an old woman named Phaea—The Grey One.
This name, Phaea, is another symbolic image to consider. It invites us to pause and consider what grey or greyness means to us—or what it might have meant to the ancient Greeks who have leant us this story.
Luckily, greyness appears in another place in this mythology as well: One of the most famous epithets of the Goddess Athena is Glaucopis (γλαυκῶπις). We often translate this as ‘grey-eyed,’ but it also means so much more. It can mean bright-eyed, or even blue-eyed. It evokes the shimmering, silvery-blue quality of the sea—a colour that is alive, full of hidden depth, and unimaginable power.
The point, again is for us modern readers to learn accept ambiguity rather than rushing to resolve it because despite our very best efforts, there is simply no way that any of us can ever claim to know exactly how the person sitting next to us sees or perceives colour, let alone how it might have been perceived by people who are long gone.
A lot has been said about ancient people and colours. There is a misconception, for example that ancient cultures didn’t have a word for or perhaps didn’t see the colour “blue.” While the historical debate about ancient colour perception is a fascinating topic, it is best left to those more informed than myself. What we can say for certain is that our experience of colour is deeply personal and cultural.
In this myth, ‘grey’ isn’t a flat, neutral colour; it is a dynamic quality, full of light and mystery. It’s a powerful reminder that we can never truly know another’s experience of colour, just as we can never pin down a single, simple meaning for our own inner states. To remember this is to understand the importance of the grey space that opens when we hold the tension between opposites, allowing multiple truths to exist at once, shimmering with potential.
So when we hear that the monster of the Isthmus is connected to Phaea, ‘the grey one,’ we’re being told that we are in a place of deep symbolic ambiguity. The lines between the nurturer, the monster she creates, and the predator all dissolve into one. This confusion is the point. It’s a perfect portrait of that inner state where we can no longer distinguish a raw impulse from the part of our soul or psyche that gives it life. This is the Devouring Mother archetype11—the all-consuming force that erases identity and consciousness.
So what does our hero do? He doesn’t negotiate with this force, and he doesn’t surrender to it. He slays the Sow.
But this is not a simple act of destruction. In the language of the psyche, “slaying the Sow” is a profound act of alchemical transmutation. It is the conscious ego stepping in to set a firm, ethical boundary with a destructive, all-consuming inner force. It is the moment we stop being devoured by a pattern and instead find the sacred energy trapped within it, liberating that energy for a new purpose.
What does “Slaying the Sow” look like in our own lives?
To start with, we need to identify and name whatever force threatens to consume our energy. It will often be something wild and unbridled—an impulse we would usually judge as “bad” and try to repress. But now that we’ve moved beyond the Sínis-trap, we know better than to string ourselves up on those old value judgments. Now, we can choose to stay with the tension instead. That’s the grey path—the confrontation with what lies beneath.
Here I’m going to reach for the low-hanging fruit of envy as an example. In our current age of social media and the perpetual curation of our lives and exploits on the internet, envy and its eager bedfellow, self-loathing, are some of the easiest of these consuming aspects of the unconscious to drag out into the light. The devouring pattern is that endless scroll—either literally through social media posts, or figuratively through thoughts of everything others have or have achieved that we feel is missing in our own lives—and the resulting bitterness that eats away at our sense of worth. The alchemical act, the slaying of the Sow, is to address the root of the bitterness, not to suppress the desire. It is to consciously ask, “What is this envy telling me that I want for my own life?” and then to channel that intense energy into building it for ourselves.
Another example that might easily be applied to a large swathe of the population is the way many of us are paralyzed by apathy. Here, potential is devoured by a fog of inaction. Today, we are perpetually bombarded by so much information that it is far easier to give up trying to locate our own inner compass among the mess of what the entire world seems to be telling us we should be doing.
Inaction may look like laziness, but there’s often something deeper going on. When the world around us seems to be pushing us in directions that lie at odds with the deepest core of who we are, inaction can often be a subtle act of resistance. “Slaying the Sow” here is to honour the message in that resistance—that the soul is protesting a false path, refusing to walk it. Naming that resistance is the act that frees the energy to move again—to search for a truer, more authentic path, even if the first step is small and uncertain.
Whether it appears as envy or apathy—or anything else that drains our vitality and robs us of our potential in any given moment—the principle is the same: that which threatens to devour us most often carries the key to our transformation.
As with the confrontation with Sínis, Theseus’ interaction with the Crommyonian Sow and/or Phaea is an extension of the work he began by claiming the sword and sandals from the rock back in Troezen and then facing the cyclopean Periphetes and claiming the bronze club. In fact, all the bandits along Theseus’ path to Athens are images of the same process of growth that takes place as we go through our own initiatory phases in life.
When Theseus kills the Sow, he gets no treasure. There’s no golden fleece, no magical prize. And this is key. The reward is not external; it is the forging of a new capacity within the soul. The confrontation and bringing that which is unconscious into consciousness is the prize. It is the establishment of discernment, of self-regulation, and of an equal, respectful relationship between the conscious ego and the powerful forces of the unconscious.
As you reflect on this, perhaps you can begin to notice the truth in it for your own life. The inner-work of facing your rigidity, holding your inner conflicts, and drawing a line with your own devouring impulses… that isn’t self-indulgence. It’s the necessary, foundational work we do on ourselves before we can be of genuine, healthy service to our communities and the external world. We have to build the self before we can bring that self to society.
So before we move on, take a moment to consider: what might the Sow be devouring in you? What energy, if reclaimed, could become the strength that carries you forward?
Before I share some ideas you can use to connect more deeply with this part of the myth, let’s trace the path we’ve walked with Theseus so far: First, we must be grounded enough to know when we have outgrown our world and are ready to grow. Then, on that path, we face the narrow-minded, single-eyed beliefs that block the way. This is the start of shadow work—reclaiming the raw energy we once rejected. Doing this demands that we let go of the Sínis-like need to strap parts of ourselves to opposing poles by making harsh value judgments, and instead enter that grey, nuanced space. And there, we face the Sow, a symbol of both rich fertility and indiscriminate appetite. We are not here to embrace amorality, but to transmute that raw energy into personal responsibility, discernment, and compassion. Because if we can recognise this complexity in ourselves, we must know for certain that it is equally present in others.
Questions for Walking the Grey Road
As we bring the myth of Theseus into our own lives, the real work begins. As always, I want to leave you with a few ideas to help you explore this part of the myth for yourself.
The following reflection prompts are designed as a starting point for your own journaling or quiet reflection. They invite you to look not for mythic figures, but for the universal human patterns they help us recognise.
Consider these prompts are way-marks along the same narrow road Theseus walked—the isthmus between two restless seas, where one tide pulls towards what we’ve been, and the other towards what we’re becoming.
There are no right or wrong answers here, only avenues to explore and associations to uncover. Each question invites you a little further along that grey stretch between knowing and not-knowing.
Holding the Tension
When you notice you’ve had a strong emotional reaction to a situation or perhaps a person—irritation, envy, a snap judgment that feels almost automatic—can you pause and roll it back for a moment, just to look at it without the label you’ve attached to it?
Notice the story you’ve already attached to it—the label some part of you reached for without even asking. Now listen to the tone of that inner judge. Does it feel grounded and wise—or anxious, demanding, maybe trying to please what’s socially acceptable rather than what’s truly authentic to you?
What happens when you loosen the story’s grip by consciously trying to tell it in a different way? What kind of tension pushed you toward that quick resolution? What opposites were pulling on you? Was it the tension between feeling afraid and wanting security, or perhaps the anticipation of rejection and the desire for belonging? Try on a few pairs of opposites—as many as you can think of, even if they don’t immediately seem to fit. Don’t worry about finding the perfect words; just stay with the feeling until something clicks.
This is how we begin to turn the work of Sínis (Σίνις) back on the corrupted Senex—by bringing awareness to the uncomfortable tensions that drive our snap judgments and unnoticed acts of repression.
The Unseen Cost of a Repeating Pattern
As I mentioned earlier, the unconscious is a vast source of wisdom and strength. It holds all the psychic energy we need to live fully—but it is not our friend. It is wild, ancient, and not adapted to the world we live in. It needs the mediation of the conscious ego for its impulses to find healthy, fulfilling expression in life.
We all have habitual loops in which raw, untamed impulses drain our energy instead of nourishing us. Think of an area of your life—your work, your relationships, your creative practice—where you feel that emptiness, as if something deep within is feeding on your vitality.
Where in your life does something that once felt alive now feed on your energy instead—can you name a habit, a pattern of thinking, or perhaps a project that leaves you feeling emptier each time you return to it?
If you listen closely, what denied longing might be hiding inside that emptiness—what sacred aim of the soul has turned inward, devouring rather than nourishing?
When you feel like you’ve identified an area like this, no matter what it is, try listing whatever what small, honest actions could begin to give that energy back its rightful direction? Just write whatever comes to mind and engage in some free association with the imagery and how you feel about it without looking for precise, concrete answers and definitions.
You like to picture the Crommyonian Sow and see what explore what you imagine it eating. Practice some free association with the images you imagine. Explore what symbols emerge until you feel something click into place.
The Sacred Message in the Struggle
The deepest shift in inner work comes when we stop treating a difficult pattern as an enemy to destroy, and begin to approach it as a messenger to understand.
In the myth, Theseus kills the devouring archetype—but as we’ve seen, that “slaying” is symbolic. It shows him transforming the raw, consuming energy of that obstacle into something of value on his path of initiation.
This final question invites you to practice that same shift. Imagine, for a moment, that the draining pattern you just identified isn’t a flaw at all, but a desperate—if misguided—attempt to meet a deep, life-affirming need.
If you were to listen to that struggle with compassionate curiosity, what sacred message, what deep or unacknowledged desire, might you hear?
What part of you is it trying, in its own clumsy way, to protect… or to champion on behalf of your well-being?
A Final Note on The Pressures of Polarisation and Embracing the Grey Road
Before we close, I want to leave you with one final thought. The inner work we’ve explored today—learning to hold the tension of opposites and walk the grey road of discernment—is not just a private, psychological exercise. It is a vital practice for navigating the world we live in.
Our conscious mind, the part of us that depth psychology calls the ego, loves to organise, define, categorise, and create clear, logical structures. This is a necessary and beautiful human capacity. But our soul, our unconscious, speaks the language of mythos—a language of story, of image, of paradox.
Mythos can hold three different versions of the same story, crown a deity with a garland of a dozen contradictory names, and see truth in multiple, overlapping layers.
The world around us, however, relentlessly pressures us to abandon mythos for a weaponised and oversimplified logos. Why? Because when we buy into somebody else’s definitions of where the poles in black-and-white thinking lie, we become easier to steer.
Political campaigns, advertising, and even religious ideologies often work by creating false dichotomies that demands we pick a side—for us or against us, good or evil, pure or tainted. They flatten the complex, soulful grey areas of life into a battlefield of black and white.
They present us with their story and, as the great thinkers on myth remind us, the moment anyone insists that their story must be taken as the one and only literal fact, we are no longer in the realm of soul, but in the realm of control.
To consciously walk the grey road—to pick a third and more nuanced way through this world, then, is an act of courageous heroism. It is the conscious refusal to be polarised. It is to insist on the dignity of the multifaceted experience of life.
It allows for the practice of compassion and empathy even when disagreements are are present. And it honours the sacred, mythic truth that the most important things in life can never be reduced to a simple, easy answer.
Seeing the Hero in Action
So far, Theseus has faced three bandits on his road: Periphetes, the club-bearer, Sínis, the Pine-bender, and the Crommyonian Sow.
In working with this myth and teaching it in classes, I’ve found it very helpful to ask people to look at how the hero archetype has showed up in consciously or unconsciously in the lives of others. Sometimes, seeing how other real people have grown through the challenges they faced along their initiatory journeys.
It’s not a very deep or taxing exercise, but it really can be quite instructive to look at how the archetype of the hero shows up in other people’s stories so that we can become more sensitive to where and how it might show up in our own.
Being a South African, one of my go-to figures is, of course, the political activist, freedom fighter, turned president and father of the nation, Nelson Mandela.
Of course, Nelson Mandela is someone that most people today—especially in the South African context—consider to be a hero. But that is not what we are talking about here.
The hero in mythology is not a person. It is a part of the psyche; a spark of consciousness that, when the time is right—when it discovers within itself the readiness and a sense of potential, quests into the unknown depths within in search of renewal. It is the offspring of a king—the ego that has ruled for a period of life through actions that have become comfortable and habitual. But it is also the offspring of a deeper power, an archetypal force in the unconscious that is pushing towards integration. This is why heroes in myth must also have some kind of divine lineage.
And so, this nascent flicker of consciousness and potential begins to confront unconscious forces that have become accustomed to the habitual patterns of the ego. These are the bandit like beliefs and complexes that hinder and oppose the renewal, not because they are evil or bad, but simply because they have, for the longest time been successful in helping us survive in our old milieu. To grow, their energy must be reclaimed and put to better use.
There, in the shadow of the path through the wilderness, the hero-spark confronts these unconscious elements and by bringing awareness to them, begins to liberate the energy once devoted to those purposes, making it available for more useful undertakings—turning it it into something that can be held in our conscious toolbox, ready to be applied at the proper time and when needed, an extension of our will power rather than an unconscious reflexive complex to which we might otherwise fall victim.
If you’d like to try something like this, pick a person who you know or perhaps know of—historical and even fictional characters work well for this—and see how the pattern we’ve explored so far is reflected in that person or character’s inward development.
When faced with the brutality and oppression of the racist apartheid regime, did Nelson Mandela emerge from his incarceration bent on vengeance, seeking to subject his oppressors to the same wickedness he had been forced to endure? What had to happen within him to turn his entirely valid hatred for the system and people who supported into the power and compassion to lead the entire nation toward reconciliation?
This is just an example that has been useful and pertinent to my situation. If you look around you, I’m sure you will be able to find any number of examples of people whose path will provide you with incredibly insightful meditations when considered through the lens of the three bandit confrontations we have already discussed.
I do want to stress, however, that here we are not yet considering outward actions of these people or characters. We are focussing on their inward shifts. Nor are we considering only people who we would count as “heroic” in the modern sense of the word. The hero in myth is a facet of the psyche, not a whole person and it is very important that we keep that thought foremost in our minds as we do this kind of exercise.
We’re only considering the inward shifts made by these people and characters because, for now, the challenges Theseus has faced on his round have been inward challenges. The first three bandits, in this interpretation, are confrontations that allow Theseus to reframe his relationship with himself—the forces that have defined him to this point and kept him from moving forward along his road.
But the journey is not over. There are still three confrontations waiting for him on the road ahead—encounters that will allow us to consider how to bring this inner work, this work of integration, to our outer lives and society.
The Road Ahead
In the next instalment, we’ll move closer to the sea once more, where Theseus meets another old man—one with a strange pet—who will help us explore the danger of false humility.
Until then, if content resonates with you (and if you’ve stuck around all the way to down here, you’re definitely one of my favourite people now), I’d love to hear what the symbols in this part of the myth mean to you. You can leave a comment here or perhaps you wouldn’t mind writing a review and/or a rating on my podcast page,—it’s entirely free, and it helps me know the work is landing with people.
Thank you so much for sharing this time with me.
Until next time—may you find peace in the tension, and beauty in the shimmering grey space of life.
References & Further Reading
Apollodorus, & Hyginus. (2007). Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two handbooks of Greek mythology (R. S. Smith & S. M. Trzaskoma, Trans. & Eds.). Hackett Publishing Company.
Covey, S. R. (2020). 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE : powerful lessons in personal change. Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1989)
Diodorus Siculus. (1939). Diodorus of Sicily: In twelve volumes, Vol. III (Books IV [continued] 59–VIII) (C. H. Oldfather, Trans.). William Heinemann Ltd; Harvard University Press.
Kapach, A. (2023, January 14). Crommyonian Sow. Mythopedia. https://mythopedia.com/topics/crommyonian-sow/
Marmor Parium (trans. by Gillian Newing), 2001, ToposText. Topostext.org. https://doi.org/epigraphy.packhum.org/text/77668
May, R. (1994). The Courage to Create (The Delphic Oracle as Therapist). W. W. Norton & Company. [“The Delphic Oracle as Therapist” was first published in The Reach of Mind: Essays inMemory of Kurt Goldstein, Marianne L. Simmel, ed. (New York, 1968).]
Pausanias. (1918). Description of Greece (W. H. S. Jones & H. A. Ormerod, Trans.). Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.
Ronnberg, A. (2021). The Book of Symbols. Taschen
Stephen Jay Gould. (1990). Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. W. W. Norton & Company.
May, 1994/1968, The Delphic Oracle as Therapist, Section 1
Apollodorus (trans. Trzaskoma), 2007, pp. 71–72, §§ 216–218 [3.16]
Hyginus (trans. Smith), 2007, pp. 112, § 38.2
Diodorus Siculus, 1939, 4.59.3
Pausanias, 1918, 2.1.4
Marmor Parium (trans. by Gillian Newing), 2001, § 21
The Isthmian Games were ancient Greek athletic and musical competitions held in honour of the sea god Poseidon, taking place on the Isthmus of Corinth. They were part of the Panhellenic Games and included events like wrestling, boxing, and horse racing, with victors originally receiving a crown of celery, later changed to a pine wreath.
No less appropriately, but rather more confusingly before detailed and deep reflection, Phaea might equally mean “The Bright One”.
Here is the story of how Jesus sent the demons from a possessed man into a herd of pigs. Whose pigs were they? Did insurance cover the damages? Nobody knows.
Jesus Sends Demons into Pigs
28 And when He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men confronted Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. 29 And they cried out, saying, “ What business do You have with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” 30 Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding at a distance from them. 31 And the demons begged Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” 32 And He said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the pigs; and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. 33 And the herdsmen ran away, and went to the city and reported everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they pleaded with Him to leave their region. (Matthew 8:28–34, NASB)
Apollodorus, 1921, E.1.1 (p. 129)
“There are numerous representations of these [Great Mother] goddesses… Her attribute is the pig, a highly prolific animal; and upon it, or upon a basket—a female symbol like the cornucopia… The pig, as a primitive emblem of the Great Mother, occurs not only as a fertility symbol, but is also to be found in the very earliest phase as a cosmic projection… like Nut, the Kore Kosmu, she appears as a ‘white sow.’” (Neumann, 2015, pp. 84–88)
And the passage goes on — richly, symbolically, and at times, with an undertow that’s harder to name.
As deeply insightful as Neumann’s work is, this section also stands as one of the most compelling arguments for why analytic psychology needs a new symbolic language — one less tethered to gendered binaries and more attuned to energetic patterns that transcend them.
The masculine/feminine lens helped open the door. But it can also trap us in a hall of mirrors — where symbols meant to liberate are subtly clipped by the very culture they rise from. When we equate ‘feminine’ too narrowly with matter, passivity, chaos, or emotionality — even in poetic or sacred terms — we risk flattening the archetype instead of opening to it.
The pig, in this case, is not just a “female symbol.” She’s a threshold creature — earthy, rooted, dangerously fertile, and cosmically radiant. A being that belongs to the liminal: between wildness and ritual, nourishment and sacrifice, shadow and star.
If we let her — she might show us not what it means to be “feminine,” but what it means to be near the source of life.
If you’re curious about how I reframe these energies in my own work, I’ve written more about this here:
Firstly that artwork is incredible! I haven’t even began to read this but so excited already with the artwork introducing visually the concept
This is great, Dimitri—how many times we feel like we’re trading the fog and have not let go of the tension that bound us—past tensions following us inside our psyche. I feel like no matter what I write, these themes make themselves into my narratives. So I really appreciate you pointing them out and giving them a mythic reality.