The Myth of Theseus (Part IV): Skíron & the Risk of Rising
A Mythic Image of Ascent, Authority, and the Dangers of Ego Inflation
The most dangerous moments in any period of growth are not the ones where everything collapses, nor are they the ones in which we find ourselves sliding into a dark patch along the road.
Those moments are clear. We know exactly what they are, and even though they are unpleasant, we recognise them with ease.
The most dangerous moments of growth often come after the crisis has passed.
They arrive quite unexpectedly, when the horizon opens, the path begins to rise, and we feel the unmistakable lift that tells us we are finally moving forward.
In those moments, its so important that we remember that every ascent in consciousness brings a new kind of fall risk.
The ascent: that’s the moment of danger—the bright one—in which we are most likely to sabotage everything we’ve been working and walking towards.
Why?
Why do we stumble at the very edge of meaningful transformation?
Theseus discovered the answer above the waters of Κακιά Σκάλα—the “Bad Bay”.
And whether we want to face it or not, so will we.
My name is Dimitri, and thank you so much for visiting The Inward Sea. I hope you get as much out of this piece as I did while working on it.
To help you make the mythological images from this part of Theseus’ story your own and see how they show up in your own life, there are three journaling prompts at the end of this transcript.
Before we begin…
Before we begin, I want to let you know that you’re dropping in on what is an expanded transcript for the fourth episode in my podcast series dealing with the myth of Theseus.
This is an episode about ascent and grounding, false authority and inner balance—and why every rise in consciousness brings with it a new kind of fall risk.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or, if you prefer, from Podbean.
Introduction
If this is your first time here, welcome. The Inward Sea is a publication about the times and places where myth, psychology, and lived experience meet—and how the old stories can help us navigate the inner waters of our own lives.
Here, we follow a mythic thread and let it shine a light on something real happening inside us.
Today, we’re continuing our journey with Theseus—the young hero walking the long, dangerous road from his home town in Troezen towards his destiny in Athens.
The path, so far…
So far, we’ve seen Theseus begin life in Troezen, learning that his father had left the signs of his destiny beneath a great stone. Again and again, the boy tested his strength—until one day, the rock finally moved, and the road of readiness opened before him.
We’ve travelled with him through the hills around Epidaurus, where he reclaimed the energy bound up in old complexes by confronting Periphetes.
We’ve watched him survive the rending logic of Sínis, the Binder, and followed him into the moral fog of Crommyon, where he met the Sow raised by Phaea. That is where he learned to walk the grey road between judgment and instinct.
All of that was descent: a necessary movement downward into the unconscious, where shadow energy could be met and integrated.
But now the terrain changes.
The land begins to rise.
Theseus feels the first real lift of ascent—and that is precisely when today’s encounter appears.
Ahead of him, a lone figure waits on high ground, feet outstretched, calmly waiting for the young hero to enter his territory.
Today, Theseus will have to face a ritual of respect and hospitality turned upside down—and the very real possibility of being swallowed by an ancient, archetypal agent of dissolution waiting in the waters of the Bad Bay below.
This is the part of the story in which what each of us does with our growth is put to the test.
This is where the danger hiding inside every ascent finally shows its face.
So, without further ado, let’s step onto the Skironian Rocks.
The Myth: Skíron & The Risk of Rising
The gravel path had narrowed as it climbed the limestone cliffs towards the higher ground of the isthmus.
It had carried Theseus up from the seaside village of Crommyon—away from the coast where he’d faced the Sow—into a harsh, ascending landscape of stone and wind. Looking back, he could trace the path he had taken: a thin, pale line coiling down the hillside toward the sea. Crommyon lay far below now, cradled between the deep blue water and the hard rock on which he now stood. From up here, the shoreline looked almost peaceful—nothing like the place where he had just confronted the raw, hungry wildness of the monstrous Sow.
The land that stretched before him was a true in-between place.
Not Corinth.
Not Megara.
A land of borders and thresholds, claimed by no one, known only because it let travellers pass from one kingdom to the next.
Ahead, the path wound upward still, around the headland toward the spine of the isthmus, a place where land and sky pressed tightly together. It was a landscape that offered an invitation to ascent while whispering quiet warnings against it. This was a road meant to be crossed, not lingered on.
As he continued walking, the shoreline curved away like an old sickle, its blade notched by years of the sea’s work. Around the bay, the relentless water had carved hidden coves and inlets that glimmered with an unsettling calm.
Far below, waves exhaled against the cliffs in long, rhythmic breaths. The water nearest the rocks was almost black, gnawing at the limestone in slow, patient mouthfuls. Here and there, where the land had lost its grip, whole sections had already collapsed and were dissolving into the surf.
He forced himself not to look down.
Walking a narrow road suspended between rising heights and churning depths is no time for doubt. He lifted his face into the breeze from the sea. Farther out, the water softened into a deep, impossible blue. Perspective helped.
To his left, the cliffs rose sharply—pale limestone, sun-bleached and fractured, held together only by the dark pines that clung to them like pins fastening a fraying garment. Those pines didn’t cling out of desperation—they simply held fast because that is what pines do in high places. A living insistence. A way of being.
Heat shimmered off the stone. Resin, dust, and salt hung thick in the air.
And always, to his right, the world simply… fell away.
Theseus pressed on, letting the crunch of his sandals and the slow pulse of the waves carry him forward.
Then—across the bay—something drew his attention.
A flicker of movement halfway up the cliff as a gust of wind caught the hem of a cloak. The lone figure was too far away to see clearly, but Theseus could just make out the shape of a man standing where the cliff jutted out over the dark water, looking out over the bay.
Theseus followed the sweep of the bay, tracing the line of the path around the notched arc of the limestone cliffs..
His path would take him there.
For a moment, relief lifted lightly in his chest at the sight of another traveller on this lonely stretch of coast.
But then the sea below him changed.
The surface, moments ago steady in its rhythm, began to swell in slow, deliberate waves—small at first, then larger, as though something vast was shifting beneath the water.
A shadow rolled across the bay, sliding just under the surface.
Instinctively, he glanced upward.
But the sky was empty—clear, bright, utterly still.
There were no clouds.
When he looked down again, the shadow had dissolved into the blue as if it had never been there.
All that remained were wide, heavy ripples spreading outward, lifting themselves toward the shore where the darkness had passed.
There was something alive down there.
Something big.
He kept walking.
The path skirted the cliffs, curving around the bay. With every step toward the distant figure, the relief he’d felt began to evaporate—thinning into a long, sharp line of caution stretched tight inside his chest.
The path levelled out as he rounded the curve of the bay. The figure he’d glimpsed earlier was now plainly in view—an older man seated on a low, three-legged stool that looked as weathered as the cliffs themselves.
He wasn’t hunched the way most elders were on the road. There he sat, looking out over the sea—tall, long-limbed, with the patient austerity of rock. His cloak, though bleached by the sun and carrying its share of dust, was finely woven, the border marked with delicate geometric patterns. He didn’t look like a wanderer; he looked like one of the dark pines clinging to the rock above him—gaunt, rooted, and older than he first appeared.
As Theseus approached, the man didn’t startle. He didn’t even turn at first—only lifted his chin a fraction, as if acknowledging someone he had expected.
Then, as if greeting an old companion, he glanced over his shoulder.
“Ah,” he said with a faint smile. “There you are.”
Theseus hesitated. “Have we met?”
The old man gave a soft laugh. “We have now, my friend.”
He gestured toward the sea with one long arm.
“Come. Look at her. Isn’t she breath-taking?”
He was seated no more than three paces from the cliff’s edge, his stool perched so close to the drop that to stand beside him, Theseus would have to step nearer to the precipice than he liked. Below him, the waves continued chewing at the cliffs—steady and patient.
“It…she is,” he admitted. “The view is… extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary,” echoed the old man, his voice dipping into a dark reverence.
“Vast. Savage. So terribly alive.”
As he spoke, it felt to Theseus as though the horizon itself became a living creature. He could almost see it breathing.
“These waters,” the old man murmured, “are older than any of us. They take whatever they want. Stones… ships… men…”
He paused.
“They are always hungry.”
Theseus glanced out over the bay. The waves looked calm enough now, glittering in the sun—but the memory of the shadow stirred beneath his ribs.
Was this old man a sailor? No sailor wore a cloak of that quality. A local lord? A priest? Theseus realised he didn’t even know the man’s name.
The old man still didn’t look at him. His eyes remained fixed on the water, unblinking, as though he could see something moving out there beneath the blue.
After a moment, he sighed gently. “It is good to have company on this road. Not many make the crossing alone.”
Theseus wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a warning.
The old man shifted on his stool, slowly and theatrically, with the stiffness of age but none of its fragility.
“I would offer you my seat,” he said, “but these old legs…” He patted his thigh with a fond, weary gesture. “They’ve walked far today.”
He let the sentence trail off, inviting sympathy without asking for it.
Stepping forward, Theseus nodded politely. “No, no,… please…The road is long.”
“Long,” the old man repeated, almost to himself.
The hush between them filled with the slow grind of the sea below.
Then he turned toward Theseus fully, something sly and searching in his gaze.
“Since you are so young,” he said, “and respectful… perhaps you would grant an old man a small courtesy?”
Theseus felt a many-legged warning skitter up his spine.
“What courtesy?”
The old man extended a dusty foot toward him, angled so that Theseus would have to step even closer to the edge to reach it. He kept his gaze on the sea, as though the boy’s place in the arrangement was obvious—kneel here, between me and the drop.
“Only this,” he said softly.
“As a sign of respect for age, and for the gods who watch these roads… would you wash the dust of the journey from my feet?”
The words hung between them—gentle, reasonable, perfectly polite.
And wrong.
Wrong in the way a calm sea can hide a monster beneath its glistening skin.
Theseus didn’t move.
For a heartbeat, he simply stood there, looking at the old man’s outstretched foot. The wind caught the heavy cloak, billowing it toward the drop and sending a scatter of pebbles skittering off the edge into the empty air yawning beneath them both. The old man hadn’t looked at him once since making the request. He expected obedience the way the ocean below expect falling stones.
Theseus felt the pull—not just of the old man’s voice, but of the cliff itself, the hungry blue far below, the slow, silent invitation to surrender; to kneel. A younger boy, the child from Troezen, might have bent without thinking.
But he was not that boy now.
He drew a sharp breath and stepped back—just far enough to be sure of the ground beneath his heels, to sense the firm weight of the cliff behind him standing in steadfast defiance of the ever-hungry sea.
The pines did not tremble when the wind pushed at them; they simply held. Theseus felt something of that steadiness rising through his legs.
“No,” he said quietly.
His voice was steady.
No anger.
Just certainty.
The old man’s head turned toward him at last, just a fraction, as though he had heard something impossible.
The sea below went very still.
The old man blinked at Theseus’ refusal.
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, then smoothed into something gracious, almost indulgent.
“Oh… my apologies,” he said with hollow warmth. “I forget myself. A man can grow accustomed to heights like these after so many days in this blessed place. But I expect it may be unnerving for”—his eyes swept Theseus—“a traveller used to… lower ground.”
The condescension in his voice was thinly masked.
Still seated, he grabbed the stool with both his hands and made a show of shuffling it around, rotating it so Theseus would no longer need to kneel with his back to the drop. Theseus noticed that he had also moved it a few finger-lengths closer to the edge.
“There,” he said lightly. “Better, yes? No danger at all.”
He tilted his head, fixing Theseus with a look that was practiced, paternal, calculating.
“But I must ask again—surely you wouldn’t disrespect an elder in your own city? Among my people, and in this land of Mégara, respect is expected. And deserved.”
He paused, his eyes narrowing.
“I am Skíron,” he said, as though revealing a truth Theseus should honour. “Husband of Chariclo1 the daughter of Cychreus2 the dragon-slayer, ruler of Salamis3. My name carries weight here. You would do well to honour it.”
Theseus stepped forward.
Skíron’s mouth softened into a pleased smile.
He rolled his ankle against the dry ground, beckoning.
But Theseus did not kneel.
He kept moving—calm, deliberate—and lowered his body as though preparing to honour the request. His hands extended—not toward Skíron’s foot, but toward the legs of the three-legged stool beneath him.
Before Skíron understood, Theseus had gripped the stool.
One sharp wrench.
The stool came free.
Skíron, his face flicking between expressions of surprise, confusion, and outrage sprang upright quickly, arms pinwheeling as he tried to regain balance.
And Theseus moved again.
He pivoted, braced, and drove the stool forward like a battering ram—wood against skin, grounded force striking false authority. The blow caught Skíron square in the chest. The old man staggered back, heels sliding on gravel, cloak flaring like the wings of a wounded bird—
—and then he went over.
There was no scream.
Only the sound of wind tearing past heavy cloth.
Theseus didn’t watch him fall.
He stood motionless, chest heaving, fingers tight around the stool—uncertain whether he had escaped murder or committed it. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
And then the sea changed.
The calm surface broke into a violent boil. A deep, resonant thrum rose from below, as though the seabed itself were lifting. Theseus stepped back at the rising roar.
A shape breached the surface.
For an instant, it looked like an island heaving upward—dark, barnacled, vast.
Sunlight glinted across the geometric patterning of its curved back: hexagonal plates, ancient and monstrous, glistening like wet stone.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it sank again.
The water swallowed it in one smooth motion. The sea heaved, shuddered, then stilled as the shadow slid back into the black depths of the bay.
Theseus stood frozen, the stool trembling faintly in his hands.
Something down there had been waiting.
And whatever it was, it had taken Skíron whole.
The bay stilled, the last heave of water smoothing itself against the rock.
Theseus loosened his grip on the stool. A moment ago he had been on the brink of losing his footing—now he could feel the stone beneath him, solid and unmoving, as though he too had begun to grow roots like the black pines—holding fast, not out of panic, but because this was simply how one lived on high ground.
The path ahead rose in a long, pale line.
And for the first time since leaving Crommyon, he understood something—not in words, but in that strange silence that follows danger: that moving upward would demand more of him than strength alone.
He set the stool back where it had been.
Then, fixing his eyes on the point where the path climbed out of sight around the headland, Theseus stepped forward again.
Amplification
And that is where we’ll leave Theseus for now.
Take a moment and cast your mind’s eye back over what we’ve just witnessed. What image or moments in the story stand out most strongly for you? Which ones can you still see clearly, and why do you think they linger when others fade?
The story of Theseus’ journey to Athens has survived for centuries. It has meant different things to different people, in different ages, and it keeps pulling us back to retell it again and again.
Why is that?
Back in our episode with Sínis among the pines, we touched on a crucial point: we don’t need to pin this story down to one meaning at the cost of all the others. In fact, we can’t. There are as many ways of understanding a myth as there are people who tell it and hear it.
What stays remarkably consistent, though, is the way myths, folktales, and even our own dreams can become meaningful. To bring wisdom from these stories into our everyday lives, we have to let their images and symbols speak on their own terms. We have to build a personal relationship with them.
Depth psychology calls this process amplification.
When we amplify a symbol—from a story, a dream, or a sudden inner image—we explore how it has appeared for other people, in other times and places. It’s a kind of shared exploration that helps us see how a single image can connect us to countless other human beings across time.
At some point in that process, something clicks. There’s a moment of recognition where we suddenly “see” what the story is saying to us, and we feel, in some strange way, “seen” by the story in return.
When that happens, the same narrative arc we thought we already knew can suddenly open a window onto a part of ourselves we’ve never explored. It can reveal a doorway into an undiscovered room in the soul.
So, with that in mind, let’s begin our own amplification of this part of Theseus’ story. I’llm going to share things that have clicked for me. Some of these ideas and images I have gathered myself; others have emerged through shared reflection in classes and workshops. I want you to stay open to the wild associations that may leap out at you from your own inner-world. If you suddenly find yourself putting pieces of your own experience and this story together in ways that feel insightful and exciting, I’d love to know about it!
These old stories, while they may facilitate wonderful personal exploration, are all about community and our connection to one another. So please reach out through the comment section and let me know how and where these images speak to you.
We’ll begin, not by looking at the characters or creatures appearing in this encounter, but by looking at the living earth over which our hero is moving. Because, when you really take a moment to think about it, though often overlooked, the path is defined by the terrain as much as it is by the walker. The environment forms the Self, and the Self forms the environment, because each is the other in disguise.
In this part of the myth, the ground begins to rise. We’re lifted out of the descent we followed from the mountainous regions of Argolis and Corinth, through the pine forests to the Crommyonian coast, as Theseus draws closer to Mégara.
Image 1: Ascent & Descent
Every great story reminds us that before we rise, we descend. Before the acorn grows up into the mighty oak, it must first grow down, and indeed, the height it will eventually achieve is dependent on the depths to which it has been rooted. And yet—even after seeing this patterns play out around us all our lives—most of us still resist descent when it arrives. We don’t want the forest, the darkness, the greyness of uncertainty. But myth keeps insisting: descent is not a detour. It’s the first necessary leg of the journey; the riveting first act in the drama of renewal and growth.
This pattern isn’t unique to Greek myth. Scholars have been mapping it for more than a century. Early mythologists like von Hahn, Lord Raglan, and Otto Rank noticed that the hero’s life usually begins with loss, exile, or danger—some kind of downward movement—before any ascent or recognition can take place (O’Connor, 2001, pp. 118–121).
Later, Joseph Campbell and writers like Christopher Vogler carried that pattern forward into modern storytelling. Whether we prefer psychological, literary, or anthropological lenses, the same truth keeps surfacing: any genuine ascent requires a descent first.
And that brings us to a story that sits in fascinating contrast to Theseus: the story of Icarus.
Two Images of Ascent: Theseus & Icarus
In a nutshell4, Theseus and Icarus are both young men, both standing in the long shadows of their fathers, and both reaching toward a future that hasn’t fully formed yet. If we look at them through the lens of YinYang symbolism, whatever their physical sex, both occupy a receptive, or yin-dominant, position—they’re learning from elders, taking in guidance, not yet fully individuated.
And this is where their paths diverge.
Theseus begins by choosing a path of descent first. Instead of taking the quick, easy route across the Saronic Gulf to Athens, he deliberately enters the dangerous land-route—knowing he’ll face trials and uncertainty. He descends so he can rise properly.
Icarus does not.
Daedalus—the great inventor and father of Icarus is a man who has already walked his own path of descent and ascent. In this tragic story, Daedalus is the uncorrupted Senex counterpart to the Puer Aeternus archetype we see in Icarus. To facilitate their escape from imprisonment on Crete, Daedalus gives his young son wings and a set of careful instructions:
“Do not fly too low, where the sea’s spray will weigh the wings down; Do not fly too high, where the sun’s heat will melt the wax.”
He offers Icarus the two poles of human experience: the descent that drags us under, and the ascent that burns us up.
But Icarus never undergoes a true descent. The moment he feels the power of the wings, he leaps into ascent prematurely, without the inner structure required to hold the tension between the opposites. He rises before he’s ready—and his ascent turns into a fast and fatal descent.
It’s almost as if the old saying, what goes up must come down, applies just as much to psychological development as it does to physics.
In Theseus’ story, the descent came first: the discipline and patience of moving the rock in Troezen; the reclaiming of projected energy through Periphetes; the balance learned through Sínis; and the encounter with the ambivalent instinctual depths at the nadir of his journey through the Crommyonian Sow. That slow movement downward prepared him for the beginnings of ascent we’re now witnessing.
In Icarus’ story, ascent happens before wisdom, before grounding, before any meaningful contact with the depths—and so ascent becomes collapse.
Myth reminds us: f we skip the descent, the ascent won’t last.
Yin-Yang (陰陽) and Enantiodromia
This pattern of descent and ascent becomes even clearer when we look at it through the lens of Yin (陰) and Yang (陽), and through a principle the Greeks called enantiodromia5.
In Taoist cosmology, Yin and Yang aren’t moral forces. They’re not “good” and “bad,” and they’re not locked in battle in the way we imagine the forces of light and dark or good and evil to be in popular modern thought. They describe the natural alternation of energies we see everywhere: night turning into day, heat rising then giving way to cold, activity cresting then slipping into rest. When one force reaches its fullness, the other begins to grow within it.
Yang is the energy that rises, defines, acts, and pushes outward. It seeks altitude, clarity, achievement.
Yin is the energy that sinks, receives, dissolves, and pulls inward. It seeks depth, stillness, and incubation.
When Yang reaches its peak, Yin slips in. When Yin reaches its depth, Yang begins again. Neither wins. They turn into one another.
The Greeks noticed this too. Heraclitus6, writing more than two thousand years ago, observed that anything pushed far enough will eventually transform into its opposite. Later, Carl Jung borrowed the term enantiodromia from Heraclitus to describe what happens in the psyche when we push one attitude, one pattern, or one psychological stance too far.
He wrote:
The only person who escapes the grim law of enantiodromia is the one who knows how to separate himself from the unconscious—not by repressing it, for then it simply attacks him from the rear, but by putting it clearly before him as that which he is not. (CW7 §§ 111–113)
By placing the unconscious clearly before us, we, like Theseus, are saying “no” to the impulse to kneel to a false authority that may seem like it is able to grant us some kind of status on the new high ground we’re in the process of attaining.
That’s exactly what Theseus has been doing.
He chose the path of descent first, knowing he would face difficulty. That downward movement—into uncertainty, into confusion, into danger—meant that when ascent finally began, it could rest on something real.
We’ve watched this pattern unfold from the very beginning:
Periphetes meets him first: the limping man with the bronze club. The club symbolises the blunt emotional force of a complex—something that once protected us but now stops us from growing. By confronting Periphetes and taking his club, Theseus learns to reclaim the emotional energy that had been hijacked by old narratives.
Sínis appears next: the figure who pulls things apart, binding travellers to two bending trees. This is the moment when the old judge within us tries to divide whatever new is emerging into opposites—right and wrong, all-or-nothing thinking, rigid categories. Theseus survives by turning judgment back on the judge: liberating himself from the voice that insists everything must be either/or.
And then comes the Crommyonian Sow, the ambivalent instinctual force at the lowest point of his descent, on the shore of the sea. Here, the hero meets raw animal energy that doesn’t care about morality at all—only hunger, impulse, survival, and dissolution. This is the devouring mother archetype in her instinctual form: terrifying, but also the source of nourishment and life. Theseus’s task is not to destroy instinct but to subdue it—to bring its energy into consciousness so it can be lived in a useful way.
This is the point where the descent completes its work.
The unconscious has been met. Shadow energy has been integrated. Something new has taken shape. And now the psyche begins to move upward again.
Each time we integrate something from the unconscious, we enter a new phase of ascent. Sometimes it feels like a dramatic “ah-ha!” moment—almost like a conversion experience. Other times it’s subtle, almost imperceptible. Either way, the energy shifts. We begin to feel momentum. We re-centre ourselves. We re-order our lives around what we’ve learned.
And of course, this feels great. Like Theseus at the beginning of today’s story, it’s a moment at which we often turn around and marvel at just how far we’ve come. And that, too, is good. We should feel proud. We are doing the work, after all.
But here’s the danger: When we are feeling good about ourselves, we tend to lose sight of the shadows we’ve just finished confronting. It’s really easy to forget them in the excitement of the moment. And that’s when, as Carl Jung warned us, they can attack us from the rear.
Every ascent carries within it the seed of the next fall. Yin grows from within Yang when Yang reaches its fullness. Ascent, when taken past its natural limit, becomes collapse.
That’s the law of enantiodromia.
This is why the trickiest part of any upward movement—whether psychological, spiritual, creative, or emotional—is staying grounded enough not to be carried past the point of balance by our own momentum. This is the tension we have to hold: moving upward without being inflated; progressing without behaving as if we’ve “arrived.”
And this is precisely the moment where Theseus encounters his next trial.
Image 2: Skíron
In this encounter, Theseus meets enantiodromia personified. Remember, this initiatory path that Theseus is walking is presented as a once-off journey in the story, but in real life it happens to us over and over again. If we look at our lives carefully, we may even begin to notice that we are at different stages on this path in a variety of areas in life. Somewhere, we are just confronting a complex that blocks our path, while in another area, we may be, like Theseus in our story today, beginning to rise out of the shadow. Perhaps, in some areas, we’ve already arrived.
I mention this now because it’s important to remember that the descent arc we’ve been discussing up to now is something that will and must happen again and again. In meeting Skíron at the this point in the journey our goal is not to try avoid any all future descents, but rather to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to lose the progress we have made in this (or any) specific area of growth by allowing the upward momentum of progress to lead to inflation.
After his encounters with bandits that represent shadowy, repressed, or unconscious parts of his psyche, he has begun to rise.
He’s carried forward by the momentum that always follows integration. Just like we do when we’ve discovered or learned something—perhaps even overcome some obstacle we always thought was always going to stop us—we can imagine him feeling lighter, clearer, feeling the first warmth of recognition. And that’s exactly when the most subtle danger appears: the danger of being carried too far by our own ascent.
That danger takes the shape of Skíron.
According to Plutarch, many storytellers describe Skíron as a bandit who forces travellers to wash his feet on a narrow cliff-face. As they kneel, he kicks them over the edge into the sea below—into the jaws of the great turtle that waits there. But the writers of Mégara tell a very different story. They insist Skíron was a righteous man, a chastiser of robbers, and a companion of the just. They point to his family ties: son-in-law of Cychreus (Κυχρεύς), father-in-law to Aeacus (Αἰακός)7, grandfather of Peleus and Telamon. “It is not likely,” they argue, “that the best of men made family alliances with the basest.”
So which version is true?
Myth doesn’t force us to choose.
Instead, it asks a more interesting question: Why do some people see a tyrant where others insist on a sage? What does that ambiguity reveal about the way authority works—not only in the world, but inside us?
Skíron sits on high ground, above the road, above the traveller, above the sea. That elevation is more than simply topographical—it’s psychological. He occupies the place we reserve for temples or shrines; structures designed to facilitate conscious relationship with the archetypal forces of the unconscious. There we expect to find the elder or the guide—a voice that proclaims wisdom. But something in Skíron has hardened. The external shape of wisdom remains—he appears to be a wise old man—but the spirit is gone. Hospitality has become entitlement. Humility has become humiliation. The sacred gesture of foot-washing has been inverted to serve the corruption of the one who demands it.
You and I meet Skíron whenever something new rising within us kneels before a false authority, either internal or external. Sometimes that authority is a person. Sometimes it is a belief, a role, a spiritual identity, or even a shiny new insight that we’ve mistaken for the whole truth.
This moment always comes after a period of descent. And if we’re not careful, it may precede a more violent one .
It arrives precisely when we feel like we’ve finally “figured it all out,” when the hard work of shadow-integration has given us a sense of clarity or strength. And look, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that feeling. It’s natural. It’s good. But when the ego identifies with that energy—when it says to itself, “Ah, now I’m the hero of my own story; now I’m above the old patterns”—that’s when Skíron extends his feet.
Ego inflation begins the moment we start acting as if our recent growth grants us special status, or moral advantage, or a shortcut past the next layer of uncertainty. It’s the moment humility gives way to superiority. And we rarely notice it happening. We mistake the feeling of “upward movement” for elevation of the self.
Depth psychologist Robert Johnson describes the mechanism clearly:
The ego gets inflated when we are caught up in a power system; when we are lost in an ideal or abstraction at the expense of ordinary humanness; when the ego has been puffed up by identifying with an archetype and has lost all sense of its limits. (Johnson, 2009, p. 56)
And that’s exactly what Skíron symbolises: the moment the hero inside us stops being a servant to growth and the ego beings posing as a ruler. That is the moment ascent flips into its opposite; the moment enantiodromia begins.
To map this story onto what happens inside us: the Skíron-pattern is the one that forces the hero-aspect within us to kneel—not in reverence, but in misplaced surrender. The emerging, conscious part of the psyche lowers itself before an archetypal image of authority—and in doing so, loses its footing.
And once that happens, the fall is inevitable.
Skíron’s real threat is not the kick. It’s the posture he demands.
When we kneel before the wrong inner ruler—before the inflated ideal, the rigid belief, the superior persona—we move ourselves to the cliff’s edge. And the moment we identify with that false authority, we are no longer ascending. We are already falling.
And that is exactly where Theseus now stands: at the threshold between ascent and collapse.
The turtle waits below.
Image 3: The Turtle
And now we come to the creature waiting at the bottom of Skíron’s cliff.
The turtle—chelōna (χελώνα)—is one of the oldest images in world mythology. Slow, silent, patient, ancient. It doesn’t charge. It doesn’t chase. It waits. It belongs to the deep places: the underworld, the waters, the long memory of the earth.
For me, this part of the myth has always hit very close to home.
When I was little, growing up in South Africa, one of my favourite places to play was on the veranda of the block of flats we lived in. I would sit out there and push my toy cars around on the tiled floor making all the sounds. At some point—much like Skíron himself—I discovered the joyful thrill of sending objects over the edge under the safety railing.
I’d look at my parents with both hands raised, innocent as only a toddler can pretend to be, and announce “πάει!”
“Gone!”
One day, someone—probably my father—brought a tortoise home. It wasn’t a pet. I may be giving away my age, but when I was a kid, I remember finding a few wild tortoises on the slopes of Table Mountain…
Anyway, if you’ve read this far. You deserve a treat and you’re probably my best friend. So here’s some photographic evidence for you. It is the only picture of Little Me and the tortoise.
I don’t remember this, it would have been before I was two years old (yes, I was a big baby), but I’ve heard my parents tell the story. It comes up every time my love for animals is a topic of conversation…
Apparently, I was pushing the poor little guy around, again, making all the sounds, pretending he was one of my cars. And out of respect for the dignity of that little tortoise, I’ll let you imagine what happened shortly afterwards.
And here I’ll make a promise: when I get back to South Africa, I have some volunteering or donating to do at a tortoise sanctuary.
This story has nothing to do with today’s episode. It’s just something that I think of every time a tortoise or a turtle appears in a story. And they actually crop up quite a lot. Turtles and tortoises have been stepping across mythic thresholds for a very long time.
In the Hymn to Hermes, the newborn god—literally a day old—finds a tortoise on the threshold between his hidden birthplace in a cave (the dark, unconscious realm) and his ascent into the world of the Olympians. From its shell he fashions the first lyre: an instrument of power, beauty, and persuasion. The tortoise becomes the catalyst for his ascent.
But in Theseus’ story, the turtle plays the opposite role. It waits below the cliff as an agent of dissolution. A devourer. A return-to-origin.
This is another face of the archetype depth psychologists call the Devouring Mother or the Terrible Mother8—an image of Yin at its most overwhelming. It is not evil, just an expression of the same indiscriminate appetite we encountered earlier in this journey through the image of the Crommyonian Sow and Phaea. It is the force that dissolves form back into formlessness. The power of the unconscious to swallow the ego when it loses its footing.
And this isn’t just Greek. In East Asian mythology, the creature associated with the North—the direction of winter, water, the end of life—is Hyeonmu (현무), the Black Tortoise or Dragon Turtle. It guards thresholds. It protects the dead on their journey through darkness. Even the name turtle—and its land-dwelling cousin tortoise9—echoes the Latin word Tartarus, the underworld.
The symbolism is surprisingly universal: the turtle or tortoise belongs to the depths, whether they be of the ocean or of the chthonic earth itself.
So, if Theseus had been kicked off that cliff, he wouldn’t simply have died. He would have been dissolved, like Jonah in the belly of the fish, or like Osiris sealed into a coffin and carried away by the Nile. This is an underworld image—not of annihilation, but of dismemberment, reconstitution, and eventual rebirth.
That’s what happens psychologically when the ego becomes inflated.
It isn’t “broken” out of malice or vengeance for some transgression.
It simply loses its ability to stand at the threshold between inner and outer worlds. It collapses back into the unconscious because it can no longer bear the weight of the archetypal energy it has identified with.
From the outside, we recognise this easily.
Inflated egos look immature, chaotic, or terminally self-involved. The person seems strangely unaware of how they’re showing up in front of others. They may have achieved something significant, but the achievement has fused with their identity. They’re no longer relating to others; they’re orbiting around their own expansion.
From the inside, it can be much harder to notice.
It can feel like turbulence, confusion, emotional overwhelm. It often comes with a massive persecution complex in which it feels like the whole world is unjustly positioned against us and our brilliance. In severe cases, it can show up as a complete break with reality. The ego has lost its place as mediator. It has been swept up by energy too large for it to hold.
And that’s what the turtle represents: not punishment, but dissolution. A return to the depths until the psyche can reorganise itself. A symbolic “reset,” painful but necessary, when ascent has gone too far.
Growth really isn’t for the faint of heart and myths repeatedly remind us of this.
When we’re in over our heads, we often need help—not more self-analysis, not more heroic striving, but actual support: a therapist, a spiritual director, a wise friend who can anchor us while we find our footing again. If you’re in a situation in which you feel this kind of dissolution, knowing you need help and reaching out for it is a sign that you’re already beginning to put the pieces back together again.
In the midst of an ascent, if we can hold our ground at the cliff’s edge—if we can resist kneeling before Skíron—then we don’t fall.
We keep growing.
And the turtle remains where it belongs: below, in the depths, waiting for whatever needs dissolving next.
Reflection
How do these symbols speak to you?
In the story, Theseus stands at that cliff-edge moment we all reach sooner or later—the moment after real growth has happened, when things finally feel clearer, lighter, more possible.
That’s when Skíron appears. That’s when inflation whispers to us, tempting to bow to an archetypal image and identify with it rather than maintaining our position on the Grey Road.
And that’s when the turtle waits below.
Warnings in myth aren’t there to frighten us. They’re signposts—reminders that certain dangers appear at particular moments in our development. This story isn’t asking you to fear its images. It’s asking you to recognise them so you can navigate your own ascent with steadiness and awareness.
Every one of us walks this road. And very often, we walk different parts of it at the same time.
You might be entering a descent in a creative project or a new responsibility at work, while rising out of a difficult but necessary conversation with someone you love.
Life doesn’t move in a single direction. It leads us on a spiralling path around the center point of the Self.
Wherever you are right now, I’d like to invite you to imagine yourself standing where Theseus stands—on higher ground, just at the edge of a new territory.
What feels most vulnerable or unsteady for you at this moment?
Where do you sense your own footing might slip? And where, like those pines on the limestone cliffs, might you need less heroics and more simple, steady holding fast?
As we grow and climb toward higher ground within ourselves, the task is not to avoid ascent — but to stay grounded enough to recognise the temptation to kneel before a false authority, and the risk of mistaking momentum for mastery.
All of us need reminders to stay steady when the path begins to rise.
So before we close, let’s turn these symbols inward for a moment.
Not to judge or criticise ourselves—simply to notice where this part of the story echoes something in our own lives.
Noticing is all that’s required.
The rest unfolds from there.
Here are a few journaling prompts to help you explore these images more personally:
Journaling Prompt 1: Where are you rising right now?
Where in your life have you begun to feel a bit of momentum—a lift, a sense of clarity, or the first, gentle incline of an ascending path?
If you can identify something in your life that is starting on an upward path, know that sooner or later, you will encounter the false authority of Skíron. When you imagine your own Skíron—the force that wants you to kneel at the wrong moment—what shape does it take?
Is it a person?
A belief?
A fear?
A perfectionist impulse?
What would it look like, in this season of your life, not to kneel?
Journaling Prompt 2: Where are you vulnerable to kneeling?
Perhaps you can think back and recognise a time when you were walking an ascending road—when things were beginning to move, or when entering a new area or phase of life brought you a sense of exhilaration.
Where, in those moments, have you found yourself kneeling to an inappropriate authority without meaning to? Where have you been swept up, inflated, or carried farther than you intended?
How has that experience shaped your approach to growth now?
Has it made you more cautious? Less trusting of your own excitement?
Or has it helped you recognise when you’re nearing the cliff’s edge?
If you were to walk that path again today, with more awareness, what would staying grounded look like?
And how might that shift the way you move through the world and relate to others?
Journaling Prompt 3: What does it look like to walk the grey road when things start going well?
Through his encounters with Sínis and then Phaea and the Crommyonian Sow, Theseus learned to walk the grey road—the path between black and white, between instinct and judgment.
It’s easier to walk that grey road when life feels confusing or heavy, when we’re already on a descent. In those times, humility and careful attention feel natural and we’re inclined to temper the darkness we sense around us with the light of whatever silver lining presents itself.
But what about when things begin to rise?
When the path brightens, when opportunities open, when momentum builds—what helps you stay aware of the shadow you met in the descent, instead of rushing past it?
What would it look like to remain steady on the grey road—not dimming your ascent, but staying rooted enough that the ascent doesn’t carry you into inflation?
The Ending
As we close this part of the journey, it’s worth holding onto the question that has been shaping this episode: how do we stay grounded when life begins to rise?
This is a thread we’ll follow more closely in the next episode, as Theseus encounters another test—one that challenges not just his strength, but his balance, and his ability to remain balanced and redirect oppositional energy that comes against him.
Its something we could all use a bit of practice with, I think.
If this episode resonated with you, and if you’d like to support the work in a small but meaningful way, please head over to a podcast platform of your choice and leave a rating or review for my podcast or share this post. It genuinely helps. Independent projects like this live or die by whether they’re discoverable, and thoughtful feedback makes it more likely that these stories find the people who need them.
It also helps me know that the work is landing somewhere safely—which, in its own way, is a small ascent. I’ll do my best to stay grounded with it.
Thank you so much for walking this road with me. If you’ve read this far, please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought of this deep-dive into the images and symbols of Theseus’ encounter with Skíron.
Until next time, take good care, walk steadily, and—as the Irish say—may the road rise up to meet you…
and may your toddler-self be kept at a safe distance from any unsuspecting tortoises.
Sources:
Johnson, R. A. (2009). Inner work: Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth. Harperone.
Jung, C. G. (2023). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G., & Douglas, C. (1997). Visions : notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934. Vol. 1. Princeton University Press.
Louis, F. (2003). The genesis of an icon: The “Taiji” diagram’s early history. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 63(1), 145–196. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25066694
Neumann, E. (2015). The Origins And History Of Consciousness. Routledge.
O’Connor, P. (2001). Beyond the Mist. Orion Publishing Company.
Plutarch. (1914). Theseus (B. Perrin, Trans.). In Plutarch’s Lives (Vol. 1). Harvard University Press. Perseus Digital Library. http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg001.perseus-eng2:10.1
Rank, O., Raglan, B., & Dundes, A. (1990). In quest of the hero. Princeton University Press.
Rees, A. D., & Rees, B. R. (1973). Celtic heritage: ancient tradition in Ireland and Wales. London, Thames And Hudson.
Ronnberg, A. (2021). The Book of Symbols. Taschen
Vogler, C. (2007). The writer’s journey: Mythic structure for writers. Michael Wiese Productions.
Χαρικλώ
Κυχρεύς
Σαλαμίνα
I’ve been saying this way too much recently. It began while preparing for the 도(스)토리-Acorn Theory Labyrinth Walk event which I hosted for my students before their final exams… and it even worked its way into my writing and podcast script. I keep it as a nod of appreciation to James Hillman’s wonderful book, The Soul’s Code.
From the Greek ἐναντίος (enantíos) meaning opposite, and δρόμος (drómos) meaning running course. Drómos is a Greek word that appears as part of English words like palindrome (a word or phrase that can be read the same running forwards and backwards), or syndrome.
Heraclitus (Ἡράκλειτος) lived sometime around 500BCE.
See, Plutarch’s Lives: Theseus (Chapter 10, section 2–3). Aeacus would have been the the grandfather of the warriors Achilles and Telemonian Ajax (Ajax the Greater), both famous for their role in the Trojan War.
This is not a comment on parenting skills, Mom.
Added for the benefit of my American readers who, it seems, have trouble distinguishing these two, sometimes.
It seems like Theseus was fighting against the sophomore slump. Maybe Skiron was there to make sure that complacent people never reach greatness. This was such a thought-provoking part of his journey.