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By Root 5686 0

has to face the Labyrinth, with its maze of tunnels and dead ends, representing the ordering faculty of the human mind when it is cut off from life and the ability to see whole. What Theseus requires to rise above this double-test is the quality to turn each of these things into its positive, and it is this which he finds in his secure link to the feminine, in his loving bond with Ariadne. It is she who brings his strength to life by giving him the sword to slay the Minotaur; and she who gives him the vital thread which will liberate him from the deadly, suffocating Labyrinth, by enabling him to `see whole' and thus connecting him back to life, light and the fresh air of the real world. Thus rooted in his link to the loving feminine, Theseus is finally able to rise to his full stature - fitting him on his return home to succeed to the kingdom.

(1) and (2) from the heroine's point of view

We may see either of these types of story from the point of view of the heroine herself, in stories where she, rather than the hero, is the central figure. In such fairy tales as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, we see a beautiful, gentle, entirely feminine heroine who is passively languishing in the shadows of the imprisonment where she has been placed by the `dark feminine', a wicked stepmother, witch or bad fairy. What is required in each case to bring about her liberation is a handsome loving hero who can introduce into the equation precisely the element which is lacking, and which is necessary to override the negative, unbalanced, unloving power of the `dark feminine- namely masculine strength which is superior because it is balanced and open to the true feminine.

In stories where the heroine is `active, such as Jane Eyre, The Snow Queen or Fidelio, and where it is the hero who has most obviously fallen into the state of imprisonment, it is the balanced heroine herself who introduces the element of strength which is necessary to release him and to restore him to his proper masculine state - even though she has only been brought up to her own full strength and stature by the inspiration of her love for the hero.

(3) Dark hero/light heroine

The third variation arises when we come to those stories where the hero is himself the chief dark figure of the tale. Here the three-cornered battle has to be fought out essentially within his own divided personality. The hero may have most obviously fallen into the grip of the `dark masculine, in which case he is strong, domineering and ruthless; he may have become possessed by the `dark feminine', in which case he is most obviously weak and passive; or he may be in the grip of both, so that he behaves erratically, using his masculinity in a weak, treacherous way. In any respect, the one thing that is certain is that he is unable to make contact with the true feminine: he behaves egocentrically because has not got the capacity to feel for others or to see whole. And it is precisely through each of these deficiencies that, by the inexorable logic of storytelling, he gets caught up in the tragic downward spiral towards catastrophe. His inability to feel for others leads him to become progressively isolated and estranged from those around him, so that they (or those who survive) gradually constellate in opposition to him. His inability to see whole means that becomes enmeshed in that increasingly tortuous labyrinth of misjudgements which characterises any dark hero, as he is carried ever further from reality into the fantasy world of wishful thinking.

This is the real reason why any story in which the hero is dark shows him moving through mounting frustration into a state of nightmare. As his egocentricity drives him increasingly into outward and inward isolation, the reality of the world he has defied closes in on him until he is trapped. He faces the final crisis. And at such a moment his only hope of not plunging on to final disaster is that the terrifying pressure of his plight may at last force him out of the limited state of consciousness which has brought him to such a pass, and