Typhon symbol of ignorance, united with Echidna “the viper”, the perverted force of evolution, and begot four great monsters: Orthros, Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimera which represent the lie, the guardian of mortality, the desire and the illusion
See Family tree 1
Zeus fighting Typhon -Staatliche Antikensammlungen
To fully understand this web page, it is recommended to follow the progression given in the tab Greek myths interpretation. This progression follows the spiritual journey.
The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.
Hesiod identifies Echidna as a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, which pinpoints the origin of this deviance at the time of the formation of the animal sense of self, animal ego. But she really only becomes a “perverse” force in man when she is united with Typhon, which is to say when the reflective mind of man is forming.
When the evolutionary force is “right or just”, the myths describe a snake rather than specifically a viper.
According to Apollodorus she is a daughter of Tartarus and as such she is like Typhon an outcome of Nescience. However this account of parentage does not indicate the moment in which the opposing forces come into conflict.
We have already come across the children of this terrible couple which brought about the Fall of Life when we discussed the children of Phorcys and Ceto: the dog Orthros, Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimera. They are shown to be increasingly formidable obstacles as the seeker advances on his path.
In the Questions and Answers from the 9th of January 1957, The Mother explained that the arrest of evolution within a state of union is an accident of evolution: “If Delight had remained Delight, conceived as Delight, and everything had come about in Delight and Union instead of in division, there would never have been any need for the divine Consciousness to plunge into the inconscient as Love.”
Orthros
It is the two-headed dog of Geryon. The latter is the son of Chrysaor, “the man of the double-edged golden sword” who appeared, like the horse Pegasus, when Perseus severed the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Geryon is therefore a symbol of the wealth of the “true vital” liberated by the victory over fear. This is why “the cattle of his flocks were crimson”: they are representative of the divine powers of life.
Scribes have made corrections in the manuscripts, interchanging the names Orthros and Orthos so that it is now quite difficult to ascertain which name was originally used by each author.
If we keep the less likely spelling “Orthos”, the name means “upright, not deviated, straight”, which can then mean “truth” (otherwise his murder would evidently not be necessary), but in any case it would only point to a transitory truth which must be surpassed at the right time. In that case this monster stands for the “established truths” which seem unreal or even false to the adventurers of consciousness, particularly the physical laws such as that of the senses, of illness or even of death.
If we consider the other much more probable spelling, Orthros, (with the Rho P used in its inverted sense), this name can mean, according to dictionary definitions, “he who is present since dawn”, or “the opposite of truth; falsehood, fundamental insincerity”, which is to say everything which distances from a unity with Reality.
At a very advanced stage of yoga however, the adventurer realises that a minuscule movement of consciousness is sufficient to take him from the world of Truth to its opposite, which explains the closeness of use of these two names, Orthos and Orthros, as well as perhaps the depiction of Orthros as having two heads.
We will encounter Geryon in the study of the tenth labour