One of my favourite stories for the soul to re-visit this season is the one of Hercules and the Hydra.
Not only is it nicely analogous with the Scorpio season (when the sun does its annual transit of the zodiac sign of Scorpio), but it feels especially potent this year (2022) as the upcoming Solar Eclipse (~Oct 25th 2022) is in the sign of Scorpio.
A Solar Eclipse is where the Moon (which is a New Moon) comes in between the Earth and Sun, blocking the Sun’s light for a bit. This also means that the New Moon (when it is dark) is also in Scorpio.
Whether you can see it from where you live or not, everyone on Earth will feel it - maybe it hits in our unconscious body in which case we will feel wild and crazy things and not know why; alternatively we may choose to offer ourselves our own love and give some time and space to our consciousness, allowing what needs to rise to come up.
To have heard or seen a story once or twice is one thing. To know it, is to absorb and integrate its medicine in different ways in different aspects of our lives. Some of the best stories bring up, re-connect or help us realize something amazing, no matter how many times we have heard it.
This is certainly the case for me with this story of Hercules and his Hydra.
The Hydra
Most of us know the hydra is a monstrously large snake-like creature. It lives in deep dark watery caves where no-one goes. The Hydra in our life is anything that lives in our unconscious and emotional depths (the cave), but we only ever see a part of it - the head/s. The body remains hidden from our view. This symbolizes that we engage with the part of the issue that we can see, often ignoring, denying or being entirely unaware that something massive exists beneath that we haven’t known or seen as yet.
The Hercules
Hercules, is our active, actionable consciousness. It is that part of us that cannot help but jump in, save, do, achieve, solve and fix things.
At the start of this story, Hercules uses all his skill, force, immense strength and heroic confidence of previously slayed demons to cut the head of this snake, which he does with some effort, as its head and neck are very dense.
Much like, when we may deal with a problem by slaying it with our sharp rational cold thought and intellect.
After a momentary sense of victory of having slayed our snake-head, we feel a chill down our spine.
When we turn to look, we are horrified at the re-animated corpse, as a little more of the hydra's body is revealed and from the stump of it’s head, emerge two more, very much alive ,with a singular will to devour the light of our consciousness.
#Overwhelm
We all know this feeling.
We know it in our workplaces, in our relationships, in our kitchens and our cars.
We know it as we try to make our ambitions and dreams come true, as we attempt to change our diets and lifestyles.
We know it in beginnings and ends of things, and in our projects and travels.
Some problems in life require us to take all our force, skill, courage and strength and apply it with our willpower and focus. When this works, the victory and exhilaration is unparalleled.
The story-medicine of Hercules and his hydra story is not that type of tale.
Like Scorpio energy, the hydra taunts us with the magnitude of information that we do not know, that we are not conscious of and we simply cannot see.
When we ‘attack the hydra problem’ with just our strength and force and what worked before, it duplicates. And in the way of snakes, tends to wrap itself around us while we are distracted with our cerebral slicing. A bit like this image below.
Attacking the Problem
Scorpio energy in our lives is the stuff we think we know, but we absolutely do not know. Not only that, we are unaware of the magnitude of what we do not know. It is the accumulation of all our unconscious beliefs and programming that we do not know we have received. This may have come from family, religion, culture, society, media, institutions, traumas, childhood experiences, unresolved past-life memories and the likes. Not all of it is bad essentially, a lot of it isn’t. But since it is unconscious, we are unaware of how much these energies may be influencing us or causing a conflict within us.
In astrology, our relationship to sex and death is ruled by Scorpio, likely because we often have weird, taboo and sometimes terrible ideas of both these intimate experiences. Sex is an aspect of our Creative life-force power, and Death is the sister-experience to Life. As such, with warped ideas of both sex and death, we find ourselves in a world where Creation and Life experiences are distorted.
A lot of us get stuck in the place of Hercules, where we keep chopping off the heads. Our action-hero side takes over and we put all of our effort into doing the same thing repeatedly. This is us, coming from our unconscious mind, getting wrapped up in only what we can see and what we think we know. It's a bit like a default program on your computer. It just runs without you knowing why, but it’s draining your battery.
Colourfully, since Scorpio is a water sign, this energy often rears its head in our relationships. Certainly relationships to other people, but also to ourselves, to God/ Universe, to things and situations that make us feel safe or powerful.
The themes are are intimacy, intuition, vulnerability, power, and our relationship to each.
Think of all the dramas, traumas, desires, betrays and stories we may have around these themes, not the mention all the people (the characters) play a part in our stories. These are the many heads of the hydra, and we are yet unsure what lies beneath the surface.
The Trap
In Herculean survival-mode, we try desperately to dodge the ever-increasing snapping heads, to think and act our way out, to rationalize or throw money at problems; this is akin to continually chopping heads with our sharp sword, bewildered at the outcome - more heads!
We believe that if we stop, even for a second, we shall be consumed. That is true. And yet, it is not the full truth, because it only based on what we can see right now.
This can feel like attracting the same type of toxic relationships into our life and wondering why this happens.
It can feel like the world is against us every time we try a new venture or project and it keeps failing.
It is also that moment when we feel that no-one gets us or understands us, not realizing how closed of we are to human interaction.
In all these cases and many more, we do not realize our part in the creation of our story an interaction.
This is the great and profound medicine of this story and Scorpio energy in general. It doesn’t tell us anything like other stories; rather we feel ourselves digging our own deep hole, repeatedly creating our own Herculean labours.
In the case of Hercules, it is said that he cut the hydra’s head a thousand times, before he realized what his actions were causing.
So when we feel completely burdened and exhausted by what may feel like ground-hog's day in our life, it may be because 2000 hydra-heads, birthed from our unconscious body, are staring down at us, and we've been chopping at them to no benefit.
We continually neglect to pause, to observe, to witness, and to make changes that we have every power to make, but can't realize that.
Scorpio energy is about that too - Power. How we are so seduced by desire and power that we either fear them completed, locking them away in our caves or become entirely seduced by them.
The Medicine of this energy is to learn to wield the fullness of our power.
The Realization
Hercules does eventually notice the pattern though, and so do we.
In one version of the story, he climbs the tall mountains surrounding them.
He hadn't noticed them before, but where there are caves, there are also mountains (and as such the ability to take a higher elevated viewpoint).
The hydra follows him up, continually chomping at him with its 2000 heads, because it has no intention of letting up.
It is not an easy climb, even if 2000 sharp jaws weren’t clipping at his heels.
But he knows that the heads will follow him up and reveal something below.
From the higher vantage point, he beholds the snake-like body - one body and one heart.
The skills he uses here are not his just his brute strength, force, mind and willpower, but also, faith, trust, his observation skills, vision and creativity.
He still has to dodge the heads, but he now knows that the heads are a distraction.
He knows the ‘heart of the problem’.
He is realized.
When we access and integrate the sometimes difficult, impossible-seeming teaching of Scorpios, snakes and hydras we receive the gift of realizing ourselves anew.
He glides from the top of the mountain, with all his strength, power and focus, and while the heads are busy trying to bite a chunk out of him, he is clear on his target.
He descends with all his might and plunges his sword deep into the heart and body of the hydra, neutralizing it instantly.
All the heads dissipate into dust.
The Doubt
One question I’m often asked with this story is:
“But how? He changed tactics and climbed the mountain, but what if I try and I fall!”
The truth is that I cannot answer that for you, no-one can. I can tell you, that with energy like this, we have to constantly re-evaluate assumptions and the (often) hidden foundations of our beliefs. What we perceive as risk-reward, success-failure, power-helplessness is revealed to us.
If I refuse to look within and change a toxic behaviour that I know will cost me my relationships, then this is a journey of identity, attachments and perhaps pride.
We see this very easily in others, but often not in ourselves.
The Victory
This is not easily energy to work with, but in my experience, it is possible one of the more rewarding ones.
It is said that in all his previous labours, Hercules the hero, experienced and revelled in victory in the form of jubilation, success and pride in his physical prowess.
But after this way-past-exhausting trial that was the hydra battle, his experience of victory, was spaciousness, quietude and for the first time, the hero felt peace.
Whatever version of the hydra you face this day, this month, may you realize your immense and varied Gifts, Creativity, Life-force and Power within.
May you learn to Play and hone and Enjoy its service to all.
May you realize Peace within and around you.