The Life of Hercules: A Digression into the Underworld

Fourth of a series. Here are the earlier posts:

The Life of Hercules: Birth and Childhood

The Life of Hercules: The First Six Labors

The Life of Hercules:  The Final Six Labors

      

Map of the Classical Underworld
http://www.maicar.com/GML/Underworldmap.html
Click for larger view

       I want to preface this post with a bit about the springs that Ki'shto'ba and Bu'gan'zei drink from before the Underworld opens to them.  I call them the Pool of Oblivion and the Pool of Memory.  If the supplicant wishes to continue on his quest and come back alive, he must drink from the Pool of Memory.  This episode relates to certain events contained in the mysteries of Orphism.  Here is a quotation from Wikipedia on this subject:  "When the deceased arrives in the underworld, he is ex-pected to confront obstacles. He must take care not to drink of Lethe ('Forgetfulness'), but of the pool of Mnemosyne ('Memory'). He is provided with formulaic expressions with which to present himself to the guardians of the afterlife.  I am a son of Earth and starry sky. I am parched with thirst and am dying; but quickly grant me cold water from the Lake of Memory to drink."

I was also influenced by Robert Graves' poem on this topic (entitled "Instructions to the Orphic Adept").  Here is an excerpt:

After your passage through Hell’s seven floods,
Whose fumes of sulphur will have parched your throat,
The Halls of Judgement shall loom up before you,
A miracle of jasper and of onyx.
To the left hand there bubbles a black spring
Overshadowed with a great white cypress.
Avoid this spring, which is Forgetfulness;
Though all the common rout rush down to drink,
Avoid this spring!

 

To the right hand there lies a secret pool
Alive with speckled trout and fish of gold;
A hazel overshadows it.  Ophion,
Primaeval serpent straggling in the branches,
Darts out his tongue.  This holy pool is fed
By dripping water; guardians stand before it.
Run to this pool, the pool of Memory,
Run to this pool!
      

       I also employ certain elements of the Eleusinian Mysteries.  These rites celebrate the familiar Persephone and Demeter myth, and Wikipedia states the following: "Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from psychedelic agents."  Obviously, in my termite culture the Seers of the plains Shshi utilize a hallucinogenic fungus, while other species use different plant matter or even the secretion of a gland in a sandworm (shades of Dune! -- quite deliberate, I assure you!)  However, the Southern Shshi all use the effluences of volcanic springs to stimulate visions (I took this from the Delphic Oracle, where the Pythia sat over a volcanic vent on a tripod -- watch for something like this in Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear).

       The other element of the Eleusinian Mysteries that I made use of involved the eating of food in the World Beneath.  It is a well-known part of the Persephone myth: "It was a rule of the Fates that whoever consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Before Persephone was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, Hades tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds (six or four according to the telling), which forced her to return to the underworld for some months each year." 

 

       While I'm supposed to be writing about the life of Heracles here, the fact is that Ki'shto'ba's katabasis doesn't have much to do with Heracles' experiences. Heracles meets Meleager in the World Beneath, and that hero appears only later in my series. However, all heroes who engage in such descents meet other deceased heroes there, and Ki'shto'ba is no exception.  Ki'shto'ba's travail incorporates some of Odysseus' experiences in the Underworld.  Odysseus went to seek out the dead Seer Teiresias and learn what fate awaited him in Ithaca, and while he was in Hades' realm, he encountered the ghosts of former comrades, as does Aeneas. For a neat overview of who meets whom, see Map of the Underworld. 
       In my version, it is Hector whom Ki'shto'ba meets first: Viz'ka'cha Bright-Head, from The War of the Stolen Mother, wandering among the gibbering shades on the outer banks of the Styx.  Other characters weren't so lucky -- you'll recognize Sisyphus and his boulder. A Prometheus stand-in appears also, bound on a cliff with his liver being eaten by a scavenger bird.  In Earth myths, this didn't happen in the Underworld, but some stories state that Heracles freed Prometheus.  If you want to know whether Ki'shto'ba freed my version of Prometheus, you'll have to read the book!
      
       You can't have a visit to the Underworld without encountering Charon, the ferryman who transports souls over the river Styx.  I confess to being influenced by Michael Hurst's comic rendition of Charon in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.  I think you'll find Fet'rai'zei the Raft Poler equally amusing in Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear.

       How do I adapt Hades himself?  How else but as one of the Highest Mother's Kings who began to bore her and so was set as King over the Dead?  He bears the knobbed horns that I have conferred on all beings suspected of being associated with the nether realms (see the black demon Warrior Sho'choi'ji'ka in The Valley of Thorns).  He also has a helmet of invisibility, although in this case it's a basket that he flops over his head when he wants to disappear.  Re this helmet, I first learned about it from Xena, but now I find in the Wikipedia article on the subject that attributing this to Hades was a later addition.  However, it makes a great story point!

       Many heroes have a guide who conducts them through the Underworld.  Aeneas has the Cumaean Sybil and Hercules meets Teiresias.  I used Teiresias, whom the reader has already encountered in v.1, but I also added Orpheus in that role.  Orpheus's story will  be discussed in a later post. 

Gustave Dore's Rendition of Lake Cocytus in Dante
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DVinfernoLuciferKingOfHell_m.jpg

       There is one other great descent: that of Dante in that poet's Inferno.  Vergil, who wrote the Aeneid, is Dante's guide.  So, did I use any elements from the Inferno in my adaptation?  You bet!  I won't talk about that much, but I will quote a passage from the Dorothy Sayers translation.  This is from Canto XXII, lines 124-129, laid in the 9th Circle of Hell, where the traitors are imprisoned in the frozen lake Cocytus.  We see the punishment of Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri, who mutually betrayed each other:

"And when we'd left him, in that icy bed,
I saw two frozen together in one hole
So that the one head capped the other head;

And as starved men tear bread, this tore the poll
Of the one beneath, chewing with ravenous jaw,
Where brain meets marrow, just beneath the skull."

       This horrific image has stuck with me down through the years, ever since I first read Dante at age 20.  If you want to know who suffers a similar fate in Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear, you'll have to read the book.

       Now, being the rationalistic creature that I am, and having endowed some of my characters with similar skeptical qualities (namely, Di'fa'kro'mi, Wei'tu, and Za'dut), I have to say that what happens to Ki'shto'ba and Bu'gan'zei after they drink from the Pool of Memory could be just a "bir'zha|" dream -- a hallucination induced by the properties of the water.  After all, they never saw an entrance open up into the Place Beneath -- they were simply transported into it.  The characters argue this matter at some length.  However, both Ki'shto'ba and Bu'gan'zei stoutly maintain that they really journeyed through Mik Na'wei'tei'zi (the Place of No Seeing) and we modern scientific types will just have suspend our disbelief and enjoy the adventures and all that they imply ...

 

Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear

   

 

The Life of Hercules: The Final Six Labors



Hercules and Antaeus (1690),
by Gregorio de Ferrari
Wikipedia (public domain)
See Labor No. 10

Third of a series.  Here are the first and second posts:
The Life of Hercules: Birth and Childhood
The Life of Hercules: The First Six Labors

     In the previous post, I discussed how Heracles was forced to perform twelve labors as a kind of penance for killing his own children under the influence of madness.  My Heracles stand-in, the Shshi (intelligent termite) Champion Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, also suffers an episode of madness, but the onus of performing Twelve Wonders comes to it for a different reason, which you can learn about if you read v.1 of the Ki'shto'ba series, The War of the Stolen Mother.

       Following up on the previous post, I'll list the final six Labors of Heracles and comment on whether and how I used them in my series.  Not all of them are suitable for adaptation to a termite culture.

 

       7.  The Cretan Bull.  A fire-breathing bull was ravaging Crete (possibly the one which sired the Minotaur) and Heracles was constrained to capture it.  He took it back to Eurystheus, who set it free because Hera wouldn't accept it as a sacrifice (gave too much glory to Heracles).

       I didn't use this Labor at all.

 

       8.  The Mares of Diomedes.  Possibly based on a coronation rite in which women in horse masks killed and consumed the sacred king at the end of his reign (see Robert Graves, Greek Myths, under The Eighth Labor).  The savage mares of Diomedes were carnivores and Hercules fed Diomedes himself to them, then captured them while their appetite was sated.  Prettty gruesome tale.

       I didn't use this one, either.

 

       9.  Hippolyte's Girdle.  This is a story of the Amazons; Heracles had to bring back the girdle of Ares, which was worn by the Amazon Queen Hippolyte, as a gift to Eurystheus's daughter. 

       While this makes a good story, it has absolutely no bearing on Ki'shto'ba's quest.  However, in v.6 of the Ki'shto'ba series you will encounter a strangely aberrant termite society consisting entirely of female Alates.  I'll talk about that in a later post.

 

       10.  The Cattle of Geryon.   This is a vast Quest epic in itself, with Heracles travelling into the world's Far West to steal the cattle of a monstrous creature named Geryon.  Cattle raiding is rampant in the culture of ancient peoples, including the Celts; men bought their brides at the price of so many cattle.  Once Heracles gets the cattle, he ends up herding them all over Africa and Europe, having adventures all the while.  It was during this journey that Heracles is said to have opened up the entrance to the Mediterranean (the Pillars of Hercules, or Gibraltar).  He also encountered Antaeus in Libya.

       I made some use of details from this myth.  First, I endowed the termite planet with a long and narrow inland sea much like the Mediterranean.  Ultimately the Companions will reach the outlet of that sea (in the seventh volume, which I haven't written yet).

       And I made intense use of the myth of Antaeus.  I'm going to quote Wikipedia here: "[Antaeus] would challenge all passers-by to wrestling matches, kill them, and collect their skulls, so that he might one day build out of them a temple to his father Poseidon. He was indefatigably strong as long as he remained in contact with the ground (his mother earth), but once lifted into the air he became as weak as other men."  You'll have to read v.4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear, if you want to know how I applied this. 

 

       11. The Apples of the Hesperides.  Heracles had to go on a second journey to bring back fruit from Hera's golden-apple tree, which was tended by the Hesperides and located either at Mount Atlas or on an island again in the Far West of Earth (undoubtedly the Apple Island of Robert Graves's beautiful poetry).  Atlas lived there as well and the Hesperides were his daughters, conceived before he was set the task of holding the celestial globe on his shoulders.  Hera suspected the Hesperides of stealing some of the apples, so she set a dragon-like creature called Ladon to twine around the Tree and guard it.  Altas also built a great wall around the garden where the tree stood, to protect it from a prophecy that a son of Zeus would steal all the golden apples.  Heracles arrived, and after killing Ladon with an arrow over the wall, he offered to relieve Atlas of his burden for a brief time if he would fetch the apples for him.  Atlas agreed, but upon returning he told Heracles he would take the apples to Eurystheus himself.  Heracles told him he would agree to that if Atlas would allow him one moment to put a pad on his head.  Atlas (apparently not too sharp-witted) complied, resuming the globe, whereupon Heracles scurried off with the plunder.
       It's also said that it was during this journey instead of in the cattle-raiding episode that Heracles encountered Antaeus.
       I used elements of the golden-apple myth, but I twisted them around to my own purposes.  The Quest of Is'a'pai'a of the Gwai'sho'zei (Water People) involves finding the Golden Fungus, which fills the role of the Golden Fleece (the termite planet has no mammals; furthermore fungus is a chief foodstuff of all Shshi, even the woodeaters).  But the Golden Fungus can also stand for the Golden Apples; both are fruit of a type.  And the fungus grows on the root of a primordial tree (the World Tree, in effect) and I set a Ladon-stand-in to guard it: Yak'roit'zei, the Coiling Guardian.  It isn't a dragon and it doesn't have a hundred heads, but it's equally fierce and dangerous.  Think ... giant centipede!  Ki'shto'ba doesn't kill Yak'roit'zei, however, and the Golden Fungus proves elusive.  To find out what does happen, you'll have to wait until v.4 is published.
       I didn't include Atlas in my adaptation.  It's just a little too incredible to conceive of Ki'shto'ba holding up the world!


       12.  The Capture of Cerberus.  The very last Labor contains the requisite visit of the epic hero to the Underworld, the Place of the Dead.  Heracles was charged to bring the dog Cerberus up from Tartarus.  During this daunting task, Heracles met the dead hero Meleager, who agreed to allow Heracles to marry his sisten Deianeira.  I mention this only because of the later repercussions in Heracles's life.  Heracles had many adventures in the Underworld, but ultimately Hades permitted him to capture Cerberus if he could do it without using weapons.  Here is a pertinent quotation from Robert Graves's Greek Myths (Section 134, The Twelfth Labor: The Capture of Cerberus):
       "Heracles ... resolutely gripped him by the throat -- from which rose three heads, each maned with serpents.  The barbed tail flew up to strike, but Heracles, protected by the lion pelt, did not relax his grip until Cerberus choked and yielded."
       Again, I must remark that the termite planet doesn't have any mammals, so I had to make my Cerberus character a reptile.  And Ki'shto'ba is great at wrestling.  Furthermore, he doesn't need a lion pelt, since Shshi Warriors are protected by their own very thick chitin shell!
       I'll have more to say about the journey into the Underworld in my next Hercules post.  Meanwhile, here is my drawing of Ki'shto'ba contending with No'dai'dru'zei, the Monster of the Pit.


Ki'shto'ba and Bu'gan'zei enter Mik Na'wei'tei'zi
(Place of Holy No-Seeing, the Underworld)
Click for larger view