Odyssey - Return of Menelaus

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The Return of Menelaus

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If in the Odyssey, Telemachus, the son of Achilles, is surprised that Menelaus left the murder
of Agamemnon unpunished for so long – during the seven years of Aegisthus’ reign – it is
simply because Menelaus had not yet returned home to Sparta.

On his departure from Troy, when Menelaus arrived at Cape Sounion, he had to endure the
wrath of Apollo, who struck his pilot Phrontis, son of Onetor. Then, as he rounded Cape
Malea, Zeus sent a storm that scattered the fleet. Menelaus led some of them to Crete where
many ships crashed on a smooth rock, but the men survived.

Only five ships reached Egypt, where Menelaus accumulated much food and gold. He
wandered among peoples with foreign languages, visiting Cyprus, Phoenicia, the Ethiopians,
the Sidonians, the Erembes and Libya, where lambs have horns from birth and where
opulence reigns. (It was at the beginning of this wandering that Agamemnon was killed).

Then on his way back, he was held up for lack of wind on the island of Pharos, off the Nile
Delta. After being stranded for twenty days and as his men began to run out of food and
became discouraged, his despair moved Eidothea who came to find him. She was the
daughter of Proteus the Egyptian, an old man of the sea, infallible, immortal, who knows the
abysses of all seas, guardian of the seals of Poseidon, the offspring of the Sea Beauty
(Amphitrite). She advised him to take hold of the old man, who would then show him the way
back, the length of the route and how to navigate, as well as what had happened in his
mansion during his absence.

She also showed him how to surprise Proteus when he comes out of the wave, when the sun
reaches the middle of the sky. He then goes to bed in the shelter of hollow dens, checks and
counts five by five the multitude of seals that accompany him, exhaling the acrid and deadly
smell of the deep abyss. She also warns the hero that Proteus could take the forms of
animals crawling on the earth, as well as animals of water or fire with a divine blaze.

Menelaus and three of his companions followed her recommendations. They covered
themselves with sealskins, protected from their deadly smell by a nectar of ambrosia that
Eidothea had given them. They grabbed the old man by force and held him despite the
shapes he took to escape: lion, dragon, panther, pig, clear water and tree. When they had
subdued him with the help of the goddess, the old man, tired, returned to his original form.
Following Eidothea’ recommendations, the hero loosened his grip and questioned him.

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Proteus informed Menelaus that he had been delayed by the gods because he did not
perform the ritual hecatomb. So he had to return to the river Aegyptus which “comes from the
gods” and sacrifice to the immortal gods.

Although he had to endure another dangerous journey through the mist of the sea, the hero
agreed to return to Egypt. Before his departure, the old man told him of the fate of the
“lesser” Ajax, that of Agamemnon and of the wandering of Odysseus (Ulysses).

And it was only on the very day when Orestes offered to the people of Argos the funeral
meal for the death of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra that he returned from Egypt.

After the great reversal, and on the quest for inner growth (Cape Sounion is a promontory
south of Athens), the seeker no longer knows how to progress towards liberation (Menelaus
loses his pilot). The cause is the “light” of the soul (Apollo), for the seeker must undergo trials
that will lead him to a higher knowledge.

The first trials concern only the structures of the personality: first a dissociation of its
elements (the scattering of vessels) and then the destruction of many of them without any
loss of fundamental energy (however without death of man).

Crete is the land of the labyrinth and the Minotaur, but above all, the land of Minos, of right
discernment and right consecration.

The confrontation takes place around an essential “knot” over which the seeker has no
control, which he does not yet have the means to dissolve (ships crash on a smooth rock in
Crete,). But his “coming into contact” causes the end of many of his personal structures
(putting into question personality structures based on outdated beliefs).

Five being the number linked to forms, the five ships that arrived in Egypt can be considered
as the basic structure of the seeker, stripped of all masks and artifices.

Then the seeker gathers the elements necessary for his future yoga, in the quest for freedom
in the body: on the one hand, what will keep up his energy, on the other, the tools for this
quest for freedom (In Egypt Menelaus accumulated a lot of food and gold).

This voyage to Egypt can be considered in two ways:

Either by considering this country as the depository of the ancient knowledge during
the time of Intuition. As this is a text from the Iliad, reference would be made to a period
several centuries before its composition, a period that would be contemporary with that
of the Vedas. This passage would then evoke an occult plunge into the Memories of
Humanity, supported by an understanding of the ancient texts, such as those engraved
in stone in ancient Egypt.
Or this journey can be interpreted with the sole meaning of the word Egypt “Αιγυπτας”,
“the one led by Ptah” and therefore “the aspiration for the Divine”.

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In addition, the seeker acquires a broad understanding of the multiple paths of Yoga in their
many forms of expression, which are foreign to each other (in different languages): the path
of love (Cyprus), the path of the spiritualized vital based on the forces of nature that can be
associated with shamanism in the broadest sense of the term (Phoenicia “purple”, the colour
of the spiritualized vital), the path of the organization of Higher Knowledge (Egypt), the vision
of that which ignites or generates the inner fire (Ethiopia “the vision of that which ignites”),
knowledge of the process of incarnation of love (Sidonians, a word related to the
pomegranate) and of plunging into the shadows (“dark” Erembes), as well as the truth of the
way of “sacrifice” (which makes sacred) from the beginning of the process of purification in
the incarnation (Libya, where the lambs have horns from birth).

It is during this period that the transfer from active yoga to a contemplative mystical union
takes place (Aegisthus kills Agamemnon).

There follows an episode difficult to bear in which the seeker, in his quest for freedom, no
longer receives the support of the divine helpers, the “winds” (Menelaus was detained for
twenty days because of lack of wind on the island of Pharos). (This period is probably related
to the source of duality).

He then obtains “an exact vision” from the depths of the vital which tells him to dig even
deeper, towards what is most primitive in him at the emergence of life outside matter
(Eidothea “who sees in truth” advises him to go and find his father Proteus “the first to
appear”, “the old man of the sea”).

Here Homer does not stage the character of Nereus but that of Proteus because these two
gods do not represent exactly the same thing, although they are both protean “old men of the
sea”.

Nereus is the first son of Pontos, and therefore the symbol of the emergence of the vital
consciousness not yet deformed by the mind, and therefore the source of the multiple “true”
capacities (father of the three thousand “beautiful” Nereids).

On the other hand Proteus, whose father name Homer does not tell us, is a “guardian” deity,
just like Cerberus or Ladon, the Serpent-like dragon of the Hesperides. He watches over
Poseidon’s herds of seals, that is, over the vital elements that make the transition between
life and mind, for us from the realm of the subconscious (he is a son of Poseidon). In other
words, he watches in the subconscious mind over the memory of the processes that allowed
the emergence of life and are at the origin of vital forms. That is why he knows “the abysses
of all seas”. Proteus is therefore the guardian of vital forms which is why he counts the seals
five by five (five is the number associated with form).

Undistorted by the mind, this subconscious knowledge is anterior to duality and therefore
accurate (Proteus is immortal and infallible). This subconscious is extremely plastic with an
instantaneous capacity for adaptation. The forms through which it reaches our

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consciousness change so rapidly that we have a “protean” perception of it. In order to
understand this image of the protean deities, we can refer to the explanations given by
Mother in the Agenda: Before the emergence of the mind in life, the Unconscious was plastic
and the mind made it aggressive, resistant, rigid, hard and obstinate. And since then, the
unconscious organized mind refuses to change.

As we have seen, the nickname “Proteus the Egyptian” given by Homer can be explained in
two ways: either the Egyptian sages of the age of Intuition were the precursors of the dive
into the abysses of the vital consciousness, where the subconscious kept the memory of it;
indeed, Proteus knows “the way back, the length of the path and how to navigate”. But it may
be simply a purely symbolic element indicating that Proteus is the guardian of the forms at
the origin of our surmental creation (Aegyptus is Αιγυπτος “who is led by the god Ptah”, who
is the great demiurge of Memphis).

This deep subconscious mind is also capable of retrieving information from events that took
place at other times and places (Proteus informs of the events that took place in Menelaus’
mansion during his absence).

However, this perception of terrible forces and tenebrous influences acting in the depths of
consciousness can be extremely dangerous for the physical and psychic health of the
insufficiently purified and equanimous seeker. (Cf. Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Book II).

This subconscious guardian of the archaic memories of life manifests itself when the action
of the supramental light is at its maximum power (The old man of the sea comes out of the
wave when the sun reaches the middle of the sky). The seeker can only approach it veiled
and protected by his extreme sincerity and absolute surrender to the Divine, under penalty of
madness or even death (the hero must be protected by the ambrosia of the deadly smell of
the deep abysses exhaled by the seals).

This deadly odor of the abysses can probably be related to the “odor of sanctity” – the odor
of someone who has reached exactitude by the psychic – which is its counterpart. The sense
of smell is perhaps also the sense most closely linked to the attraction/repulsion duality
which is at the origin of life.

This guardian of the depths, in order to hide its true nature from the consciousness of the
seeker, manifests itself under the appearance of various forces: that which supports the ego
at the root of life (the lion), the evolutionary power (the dragon), the errant vital (pig), the pure
vital (clear water), the natural vital power (tree) and perhaps the power and suppleness (the
panther).

The seeker is then “informed” of his error which is to have forgotten to give thanks (to
sacrifice to the gods) and understands that he must go back again, in spite of the difficulties,
to the source of the current of consciousness coming from the present surmental creation,

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that is to say, to the laws of energy and consciousness which govern and stabilize the forms
of our present humanity (to the waters of the river Aegyptus which “come to us from the
gods”), and there surrender himself totally to the Divine.

This part of the myth, which appears near the end of the Odyssey since it comes just before
the death of Aegisthus, deals with the transformation of the “forms” (including the functions)
that are at the basis of the present surmental creation, a transformation that must precede
the installation of humanity in the Supramental. The question here is to become aware of its
possibility, for it will only be effective when the action of the supramental forces in the being
is at its maximum (when the sun is at its zenith). What the seeker wants to know at this
moment in the yoga is the path that leads to such a transformation, the stages on that path
and the methods to be employed (the way back, the length of the path and how to navigate).

He then makes an assessment of the last major events of his yoga: the extinction of the ego
or “little self” (the death of the “Lesser Ajax”), the passage from a phase of powerful acting
tension to a more contemplative period (the death of Agamemnon and ascension of Aegis to
the throne) and the trial and error in the progression towards the spirit-matter union (the
wandering of Odysseus (Ulysses)).

The beginning of the next phase marks the return to the right path in the dynamic of progress
(the death of Aegisthus by Orestes, both belonging to the lineage of Tantalus), when enough
elements have been gathered for the continuation of the path towards total liberation
(Menelaus accumulated food and gold for his return).

There has been some speculation as to where Helen was staying during the “returns”.
Whether she returned to Sparta or accompanied Menelaus is irrelevant to us, as the seeker
is always in search of greater freedom.

(Only Euripides states that she remained for the duration of the war in Egypt, in the house of
Proteus where Menelaus found her. It is said, only her eidolon, her double, has gone to Troy.
If one accepts this idea, it could find its justification in the fact that the symbol of the quest for
ultimate liberation, Helen, can in no way “go astray” even following a lack of consecration).

The end of Menelaus and Helen

Neither Helen nor Menelaus – the goal of liberation from all limits (or universalization) and
the work to achieve it – can disappear, for liberation/universalization, after having been
conquered in the mind and then in the vital, must also be conquered in the body. If some late
authors bring these two heroes to the Elysian Fields, their work must be continued by others.

In the process of liberation-purification, this will be the last “objective” of Heracles, Iole “the
integral liberation” that the dying hero gives as wife to his son Hyllus “a very great freedom”,
as well as the work of the other Heraclides. In practice, it will be the work in the details of

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daily life of the descendants of Polynices and the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus “the new
struggles”.

In the work of spiritualization of the mind, the return of Menelaus coincides with the funeral
games celebrated for the death of Aegisthus, shortly before the arrival of Odysseus
(Ulysses) in Ithaca. The work must therefore continue with the massacre of the suitors and
then “the future battles” (Telemachus).

(For reasons of overall consistency, regarding the prefix τηλε, we made a sense of temporal
distance prevail, whereas it most often indicates a spatial distance. Telemachus can
therefore also be understood as “who is far from the struggle”, that is to say, who has come
out of duality, who works by integration and no longer by exclusion. Or again as the one who
“does yoga by widening his consciousness”).

The seeker must become the equal of Hermes “the just movement of consecration”, symbol
of the overmind, and make Apollo and Artemis become greater gods in him than Hephaestus
and Ares.

Next : Hermione’s Marriage to Neoptolemus and her union with Orestes >>

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