The last feats of Theseus concern the period between the realization of equality and the descent into body consciousness.
Theseus leading Helen to a chariot arranged by Peirithoos – National Archaeological Museum of Athens https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/NAMA_18063_Helene_Ph%C5%93be.JPG
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Theseus and the Amazons
With the assistance of his friend Pirithoos, Theseus abducted the Amazon Antiope, who according to some authors was their queen. Other sources name her Hippolyte. To avenge this rape, or to punish the insult inflicted upon Antiope when Theseus abandoned her to wed Phaedra, or else because Antiope had fallen in love with him and had thus disrespected the rules of her people, the Amazons opened an attack on Athens. Antiope perished in the ensuing battle.
As the king of Athens, Theseus is the representative of the main actions induced by the inner guide in the structuring of inner growth which follows the first great experience of inner contact (Athena, the master of yoga, is the patron goddess of Athens, of which Theseus is the tenth king).
Theseus therefore naturally participates in all the Panhellenic adventures which follow the quest of the Golden Fleece till the psychic being come to the front, not only in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, but also, in the same fashion as Heracles, in a battle against the Amazons. Let us remember that Bellerophon, who was the one to achieve a victory over Chimera (illusion), had also fought against these warrior women.
Diodorus includes Theseus in the group accompanying Heracles, even though in the most ancient accounts by Pindar and Pherecydes the expeditions of the two heroes were held separately. Whether they were held separately or together is of little importance for the purpose of this study, as they simply describe the same realisation from two different points of view represented by the two different genealogical lineages.
This battle of Theseus against the Amazons allows to specify an important point in the effort of mastering the primary vital energies symbolised by the boar hunt. It is a detachment which must arise naturally rather than as a result of the will acting by principle through either rejection or constraints, as noble as may seem the action of this will. For it is not the death of Melanippe, an heroin who illustrates a constraint applied to a certain energy which then deviates in the seeker (she is mentioned only in a reconstituted portion of the Library of Apollodorus, in which Theseus takes part in Heracles’ expedition). Rather, it is a question of the death of Hippolyte, which is to say of the very principle of dissociation through which the seeker attains sainthood, for Hippolyte in fact represent ‘vital energy from which one separates oneself’.
In this study we will not take up in detail the symbolism of the Amazons, which was developed during the study of the ninth labour of Heracles and explores the themes of the culmination of the psychic fire at the mouth of the river Thermodon, ‘the fire of union’.
This group of female warriors did in fact dwell beyond the Propontis (the sea of Marmara), ‘an advanced work on the vital’ (Pro-Pontos), on the shores of Pont-Euxin, ‘a very strange and inhospitable vital’. Their capital was situated at the mouth of the river Thermodon, ‘the heat or ardour of union’, which marks the ultimate phase of progression towards a union with the Divine (often known as ‘uniting life’), the culminating point of the growth of the inner fire. As the Amazons were all women, they represent a realisation rather than an effort at work. Some authors describe them as accomplished horsewomen, which demonstrates a perfected vital mastery; the seeker is not only ‘a master within his own domain’, but is also an accomplished wise man and saint. This realisation opens the doors to the powers of life which will be entirely acquired in the following labour of Heracles, that of the Cattle of Geryon. It is in this region of spiritual progression that Heracles will erect the famous pillars marking the limits which the initiates of that period believed to be impassab