Odysseus (Ulysses) arrived on the island of Aeaea where Circe with the beautiful hair lived, a fearsome goddess endowed with voice. She was a daughter of Helios and the nymph Perseis, and thus a sister of Aietes, the king of Colchide.
A god led the hero to the end of the anchorage. After two days of recovery, he climbed a hill from where he saw the smoke coming from Circe’s mansion. However, he decided to have a meal with his crew and send scouts before going there. On his way down, he came across a huge deer with magnificent antlers, killed him and brought it back to the ship.
The next day, he addressed the crew with these words: “We do not know where the sun set is, where is dawn rising, or where the sun that shines on mortals goes under the earth, or where it comes back and we cannot make any real plans”. He divided his men into two groups of twenty-two, the first under his command, the second led by Eurylochos, with the face of a god. Fate appointed the latter group to venture to Circe. When they got there, they found lions and mountain wolves all around the manor, which welcomed them. They had been bewitched by the drugs of the magician who sang inside her house and weaved a divine canvas.
Polites, the most sensible of the troupe, invited his companions to show their presence. The goddess then appeared and invited them in, which they did with the exception of Eurylochos, who smelled a trap. She offered them a drink to which she had added her drugs. As soon as they finished drinking, she struck them with her wand and locked them in her pigsty, for they now had the appearance of pigs, though they had kept their spirits.
Eurylochos returned to the ship and reported that he had not seen anyone coming out from the house. At these words, Odysseus (Ulysses) decided to go there too, despite the entreaties of Eurylochos who refused to accompany him.
Along the way, he met Hermes “with the golden wand” who had taken on the traits of a young man to whom the beard grows for the first time. The latter tells him that without the powerful, beneficent drugs he was going to provide him, the hero would not be able to return from Circe’s house. Then he told him what to do: knowing that this drug was making the goddess inoperative, he had to pretend to kill her after she touched him with her wand. And when she offers to share her bed, he had to accept after making her swear that she would not harm him or deprive him of his strength and manhood.
Then Hermes pulled from the ground a herb whose root was black and the flower white like milk, and taught the hero its properties. The gods called it “Molu” and the mortals had great difficulty in pulling it.
The hero went to Circe’s house and everything went according to Hermes.
The goddess guessed that he was the famous Odysseus (Ulysses) whose coming Hermes had told her.
She had four nymphs at her service who prepared the hero’s bath and set the table. But Odysseus (Ulysses) could not eat because his stomach was knotted. So he begged the goddess to free his people, which she did without delay: the pigs became younger, more beautiful and taller men again. Circe then invited the hero and his entire crew to stay at her home.
Odysseus (Ulysses) returned to the ship where the men on board wept with joy to see him again. He sent them the goddess’s invitation, welcoming them to join their fellow companions feasting. All agreed with the exception of Eurylochos, which the hero threatened to kill before he finally decided to follow them.
They stayed at Circe’s home for a whole year. As the desire to return was pressing, the goddess informed the hero that he was to go to Hades’ house to seek advice from the soul of the soothsayer Tiresias, a blind soothsayer, whose intelligence did not falter; though dead, Persephone had given wisdom only to him, for the other souls fluttered like vain shadows. He would teach him the road, the measurements of the path, and tell him how he could return on the fishy sea. She told Odysseus (Ulysses) what he should do for such an expedition.
Circe and Aietes are children of Helios, himself son of Hyperion, and thus manifestations of the power of radiation of the Supramental. We have already mentioned that Homer mentions only these two children, Perses and Pasiphae having been added by later authors. (See Genealogical tree 4)
If Helios-Panoptes “who sees everything” represents the power of Knowledge in Truth of the Supramental, his children Aietes and Circe are two complementary aspects, respectively that of “the vision in Truth of the whole” and that of “the vision in Truth in detail.” Aietes “A higher consciousness” is “oloophronos, with a fearsome spirit,” with a likely pun with “olo” (ολος), total. We have already met him during the study of the Argonauts’ quest.
Circe is therefore the symbol of a manifestation of the supramental consciousness, “the discerning vision of Truth in all details” in matter, whereas Aietes is rather a global vision of Truth from the heights of the Spirit.
It can probably be compared with the “penetrating vision” (Vipassana) of Buddhism, without being able to establish with certainty an identity. The latter is defined as a clear perception of the intrinsic nature of things: knowledge of all things in and through their ultimate depth and spiritual essence, without any distortion, in their oneness and identity.
The “penetrating vision” includes the realization of the Five knowledges: that of the totality of things in and through their essence, that of all things exactly as they are, without any subjectivity (the Knowledge of the Mirror), that of their absolute identity, that of their difference in oneness, that which accomplished in exactitude.
In The Life Divine, Chapter 54, Sri Aurobindo mentions four powers of the Intuition plane that precede that of the overmind and come from the supramental: a power of vision revealing the truth, a power of