Below are extremely abbreviated versions of four of the myths which might be referred to in the the Mythic Imagination Courses. You might wish to skim through them to refresh your memory or, if you aren't familiar with them already, to get an idea of their richness and complexity as well as their subject matter.

Orpheus
Perseus and the Gorgon
Sigurd
The Lambton Worm

Orpheus

The fame  of Orpheus was mainly owing to the fact that he had made the dangerous journey into the Underworld alone. Although he was the legendary founder of the most successful and enduring religious cult of the ancient Greek world, his story is surprisingly uncomplicated. The son of the Muse Calliope, Orpheus - his name is related to orphne, 'darkness' - inherited the gift of poetry and song.  He may have been taught to play the lyre by Apollo (whom some said was his father, while others said it was Oiagros, 'lonely hunter') or, perhaps, by Hermes - who taught him to play the music specific to each god.

He performed miracles through his singing and lyre-playing.  Birds flocked over his head as he sang; fish leaped from the lakes and rivers.  Trees, and even stones, were moved.  He subdued everything wild, even the savage powers of the Underworld....

Orpheus was profoundly in love with his wife, Eurydice. However, she was attacked one day by a certain Aristaios ('the best'), who was famous for his bees. As she was fleeing, she trod on a poisonous snake that bit her in the ankle - and she died.  She was carried over the river Styx by Charon the ferryman and consigned to Hades.  

The distraught Orpheus set off into the Underworld in search of her.  His song so enchanted Charon that he was given free passage across the Styx.  The dead clustered around him as he made his way to the palace of Hades where the Rich One himself ('Plouton') was so charmed by Orpheus' playing that he agreed to release Eurydice, but on one condition: that while she followed him up to the land of the living, he must not look back.

Orpheus retraced his steps, followed by his wife who was guided through the darkness by the sound of his lyre.  But when he reached the sunlight, he couldn't help turning round and looking back.  At once, Eurydice was snatched back into Hades forever.

And so Orpheus failed to retrieve the wife he loved as much as his own soul (although some say that he brought back instead a gift from Persephone, namely the secrets of initiation).  But there are other versions of the myth which claim that he did succeed in saving Eurydice. 

After returning from the Underworld, Orpheus abjured women and, like Apollo, kept to the company of young men and not (like Dionysus) the company of women.  Thus did he fall foul of the Maenads, those wild women who worshipped Dionysus.  They roamed  the hills and, during their winter rites, drank wine and danced frenziedly, thrashing their hair about until, in a state of mad ecstasy, they dismembered and ate raw a young goat in remembrance of the dismembering of Dionysus himself.   Now, whether they resented Orpheus for what they perceived as his homosexuality, or for worshipping Apollo too fervently at the expense of their beloved Dionysus, we do not know.  We know only that they tore him to pieces.   

His severed head was cast into the sea and, singing the while, floated together with his lyre to the island of Lesbos where the head was set up in a shrine of Dionysus and the lyre was placed in a temple of Apollo. Some say the head went on singing - perhaps prophesying - until Apollo silenced it.  Others say it did not float to Lesbos at all, but to the mouth of the river Meles at Smyrna where a shrine was founded for it and no woman allowed to enter.  His lyre, meanwhile, for want of a worthy owner, was placed by Zeus in the night sky as the constellation Lyra.  Some even say that Zeus killed Orpheus with a thunderbolt for divulging divine secrets....

Perseus and the Gorgon

An oracle told King Acrisius that his grandson would kill him, and so, to avoid this fate he locked up his only daughter, Danae, in a bronze room buried beneath his courtyard.  But the father of the gods, Zeus, impregnated Danae in the form of a shower of gold.  Enraged and fearful, Acrisius locked his daughter and her little son, Perseus, in a wooden chest and cast them into the sea.

Washed up on the island of Seriphos, Perseus was brought up by King Polydectes.  But when he threw a banquet to which every guest had to bring a horse as a present, Perseus - who had no horse - offered in a rash moment to give the king the head of Medusa the Gorgon.  The king accepted - which was unexpected, for everyone knew that it was impossible to acquire the Gorgon's head. 

Perseus laments the fact that he had ever promised such a thing, for he knows that Medusa, one of three Gorgons, inhabits a particular kind of Underworld, the  western land of the Hyperboreans, where she lives among the weather-beaten images of the men and beasts she has turned to stone simply by looking at  them. It is her extreme ugliness - serpents for hair, huge teeth, protruding  tongue, glaring eyes - which has petrified them.

In order to complete his task, Perseus first of all wisely consults the goddess Athene, who takes him to Deicterion in Samos, where images of the Gorgons were displayed so that he will be able to distinguish Medusa from her two sisters. She also teaches him not to look at Medusa directly but only at her reflection, and for this she gives him a highly  polished shield.  She also gives Perseus a golden sickle to use for the beheading.  

The shield and the sickle will enable him to complete his  task; but in order to return alive he needs three more things: a pair of winged sandals, like Hermes', for speed of flight; a wallet to contain the dangerous decapitated head; and the dark helmet of invisibility which belongs to Hades. In  order to get these he has to make a preliminary journey into the Underworld, to  the Stygian nymphs who have charge of these items. But in order to find them, he has first to visit the three Graeae who alone know where the  Stygian nymphs can be found. The Graeae are the Gorgons' sisters who devour any unwary traveller.  They only have one eye and one tooth between them; but, ironically, this enables them to be ever-vigilant because they pass the eye and tooth between themselves with great speed.  Perseus has to match their speed by snatching the eye and tooth while they are for a split second in transit between one of the Graea and the next.  This done he blackmails them into revealing the whereabouts of the Stygian nymphs. Once he has found them - and procured his sandals, helmet and wallet - he sets off for the land of the Hyperboreans.   

After much hardship, he locates the desolate spot where the Gorgons live among their petrified images. Perseus approaches Medusa by walking backwards and holding up his polished shield to catch her image so that he can avoid looking directly at her. Then, quick as lightning, he beheads her over his shoulder with the golden sickle. At once her corpse gives birth to the winged horse Pegasus, and Chrysaor the warrior, both of whom had been begotten on Medusa by the  sea-god Poseidon.

However, Perseus still has to escape the wrath of the  Gorgon's two sisters, who, awoken by the commotion, come howling after him.  Quickly he slips on  his  helmet of invisibility and takes flight with the winged sandals, carrying the severed head hidden in the wallet.

On his way home, he sees far below him a beautiful woman chained, naked, to a rock on the sea shore.  He lands and talks to the woman's distraught parents, who explain that they are obliged to sacrifice their daughter to a sea monster who is ravaging the land. Perseus promises to help, providing they grant him the daughter, Andromeda's, hand in marriage. Naturally, they agree.

As Perseus approaches the sea monster she rears out of the deeps (she is connected to Medusa - another version of Medusa perhaps - through her connection with Poseidon.)  However Perseus flies high into the air, between the monster and the sun.  The monster is distracted by his reflected shadow on the surface of the sea, giving Perseus time to swoop down and decapitate her.

Returning home with his bride, he finds that Polydectes has imprisoned his mother, Danae, and so he turns the King and all his courtiers to stone with the Gorgon's head, before giving it up to Athena (who wore it on her aegis evermore) and living happily ever after....

Sigurd

The Germanic myth of Siegfried provides the archetypal background for that singular perspective of spirit we might call the northern Protestant ego, from which the rational ego derives. This is the earlier Norse one, where Siegfried is known as Sigurd and Brunhilde as Brynhild. The parts of the plot which concern us are briefly as follows:

Sigurd's first major heroic task is to kill the dragon Fafnir, who guards the treasure that includes the fateful Ring. By digging a trench, he is able to stab the monster in its soft underbelly; but he is also bathed in the dragon's blood which renders him invulnerable, except for a  small spot on his back where a linden leaf has fallen. He also cooks and eats the dragon's heart, which enables him to understand the language of the birds - who at once tell him to seek out Brynhild. 

Sigurd finds Brynhild on a mountain peak, in a tower  surrounded by a wall of flame which only he can breach on his magical horse, Grani (reminiscent of the shaman's 'spirit horse'). Brynhild is no ordinary woman, but a valkyr - one of Odin's otherworldly warrior-maidens whose task is to conduct the souls of dead warriors to the halls of Valhalla.  She and Sigurd spend three days together and fall in love, avowing that they are each other's very souls. He then leaves her in order to perform more deeds of derring-do, so that he can be worthy of  such an exalted hand in marriage on his return.  

Actually, he at once falls in with a king called Gunnar, and his two brothers, Hogni and Gotthorm.  He gets on so well with Gunnar that he becomes his blood-brother, incidentally confiding in him the secret of his weak spot.  However, Gunnar's mother, Grimhild plans to marry her daughter, Gudrun, to this magnificent young warrior.  But seeing that Sigurd has no interest in Gudrun, and being well-versed in the arts of sorcery, she covertly gives Sigurd  a drink that makes him forget all about Brynhild and marry the charming but shallow hausfrau.  

Meanwhile, Gunnar has heard of the beautiful warrior-maiden Brynhild and determines to  win her. Sigurd offers to help. But, arriving at the flame-encircled tower,  Gunnar cannot traverse the fire, even when Sigurd lends him the magical horse. 

However, remembering one of his mother's spells, Gunnar decides to change shape with Sigurd in order that Sigurd can win Brynhild on his behalf. Thus, in the guise of Gunnar, Sigurd breaches the wall of fire for the second time and  wins Brynhild, who reckons herself (correctly) forgotten by Sigurd and reasons that this 'Gunnar' must be worthy since he was able to penetrate the ring of fire.  She does not  see Sigurd resuming his own appearance and galloping off home in advance to warn the household of Gunnar's return with his bride.  Only when Brynhild arrives does she realise that her beloved Sigurd has betrayed her and married another.  Then her cold and mirthless attitude, so  alien to the worldly household, grows more icy, remote and incomprehensible to Gunnar and Gudrun. 

As soon as he sees Brynhild at her wedding feast, Sigurd remembers everything ˜ but can say nothing for the sake of Gunnar, his  blood-brother, and Gudrun, his wife. It is only after a year, during a row with Gudrun over who has the better husband that Brynhild  discovers from Gudrun that it was Sigurd, not Gunnar, who won her.  She  confronts Sigurd, and he stumblingly explains what happened, that he was enchanted,  etc. Brynhild begs him to leave with her at once so that they may live together as originally planned. But Sigurd will still not betray Gunnar and  Gudrun.  

The spurned Brynhild vengefully tells Gunnar that  Sigurd really loves her and wishes him, Gunnar, dead.  Neither Gunnar nor Hogni can kill Sigurd because of the blood oath that binds them; so they persuade their younger brother, Gotthorm to do the deed.  And so, while they are out hunting they stop to drink from a stream.  As Sigurd kneels to scoop up the water, the noise of the stream drowns the sound of the birds who are warning him of his danger - and Gotthorm plunges his sword into the vulnerable spot on Sigurd's back.  With his last ounce of strength Sigurd kills Gotthorm - and dies.  

When they arrive home with the corpses, Gudrun weeps bitterly; but Brynhild says not a word.  She simply arrays herself as if for a marriage feast; and, lying on her bed, stabs herself in the breast   Then, as she bleeds to death, she calls for Gunnar and tells him how Sigurd loved her before he ever did and how Sigurd was a good friend to him, refusing to betray him.  Finally she asks that she may be placed on the funeral pyre next to her beloved.  And so it ends.

The Lambton Worm

The ancient myth of the Lambton Worm from Fatfield Parish, Washington, in Northumberland describes very powerfully the daimonic realm of changing and significant sizes. The same condition of wildly fluctuating sizes characterises modern daimons, drawing attention to the daimonic perspective and where it places us in the landscape. 

The Lambton Worm 

'Around the time of the crusades (in some accounts) John Lambton, the young heir to Lambton Hall, was fishing on the river Wear one Sunday morning, while all the other villagers and residents were at Mass in Brugeford Chapel. He caught a small, black worm-like creature with the head of a salamander and needle sharp teeth, and nine holes along each side of its mouth. As he wondered what to do with the creature, an old man appeared from behind him, and warned him not to throw the creature back into the river. "It bodes no good for you but you must not cast it back into the river, you must keep it and do with it what you will." At this the old man walked away, disappearing as quickly as he had appeared.

            'Walking home Lambton threw the catch into an ancient well, forever after known as Worm's Well. Years passed and John Lambton went off to the crusades, and with every passing year the worm grew in strength in its deep, dark hole. One night the worm, in full maturity, slipped out of the well and wrapped itself three times around a rocky island in the middle of the river.  It had no legs or wings, but a thick muscled body that rippled as it moved. Its head was large and its gaping maw bristled with razor sharp teeth, venomous vapours trailed from its nostrils and mouth as it breathed.

'During the day the Worm stayed in mid stream and at night it came back to land and coiled itself three times around a knoll known as Worm Hill, leaving spiral patterns in the soft earth.

'However the beast eventually became hungry and started to rampage around the countryside, always returning to Worm Hill or Worm's Rock in the river Wear. It took small lambs and sheep and ate them whole, and it tore open cows' udders with its razor teeth to get at the milk, which it could smell from miles away. Some brave villagers tried to kill the beast but were torn to pieces with its razor fangs.

'After seven years had passed, John Lambton returned from the crusades, and when he heard of the plight of his village he went to the wise woman who lived in Brugeford to gain her advice. She told him to have a suit of armour wrought with razor sharp spear heads studded throughout its surface. However she told him that if he slew the beast he must also put to death the first thing he met as he crossed the threshold of Lambton Hall; otherwise "three times three generations of Lambtons would not die in their beds."

'Next day John Lambton, clad in the specially made armour, engaged in battle with the dragon in midstream. The more tightly the worm clasped him the more it cut itself to pieces, pieces which the torrent swept away so they could not re-grow together, and finally John despatched it.

'Unfortunately the servants forgot to release a dog from the house to meet him as he had arranged, and as John passed over the threshold of the hall his father rushed to greet him.  He could not kill his father, so the vow was broken and for nine generations after none of the Lambtons died in their beds. It is said that the last one died while crossing over Brugeford Bridge a hundred and forty years ago.' 

Commentary:  

The worm bears all the characteristics of a daimon. It is a tiny thing, a negligible detail: yet suddenly everyone becomes aware that it is in fact a huge and menacing monster. It is contained at first within the small, round shrine of the well: but the picture is then inverted, for when neglected and ignored it grows large and wraps itself around the huge, circular shrine of the knoll.  

In common with many creatures in folklore it demonstrates that the intermediate, daimonic world is not one of fixed largeness or smallness: it is one of unstable and fluid dimensions – big becomes small and small may seem big.  We are reminded of the words of one of the Sidhe to a Sligo man: 'I am bigger than I appear to you now. We can make the old young, the big small, the small big.' 

Big things may be tiny because far away or small things may be big because near by: and each may change from one to another as the onlooker changes position. The confusion, we are to understand, is just a matter of perspective. The emphasis on extreme and significant size changes in many folktales (Jack-and-the beanstalk for instance) gives a clue to the nature of the daimons' world: it is continuous with this world but is a different perspective on it.  

The etiquette involved in dealing with the daimons needs attention. The traditional stance towards them is of simple acknowledgement. The custom of keeping them a place near the hearth; a portion of the harvest, a libation or saucer of cream, or a holy ‘flame’ in the hall, is no longer cultural orthodoxy. Yet on a social or personal level some balance of this kind must be struck if commerce with the otherworld is to run smoothly. It might be that nowadays even a salute to a magpie keeps the conventions intact – or a silver pin or coin in a well, a shred of cloth tied to a thorn bush - and ensures that the daimons will not have to become too importunate in order to be noticed.  

Perhaps the more we do ignore them, the more physical and quasi 'scientific' the daimons are forced to become, to attract our attention. Perhaps by closely parodying the fierce felines we see in zoos or in Africa, Anomalous big cats answer our modern, 'scientific' requirement for quantifiable effects, and then confound it by disappearing.  

There is something worse than ignoring daimons, however, and that is denying them altogether. Young Lambton was performing the most daimonic of rituals – linking two mirror-worlds with a strand of silk. He was fishing. He naturally raised a daimon, but did not have any interest in it; he was young and heedless, it was small and insignificant, and his first thought was to throw it back.  

If Jung had been a bystander on the river bank he might have had something to say about the folly of repressing aspects of the soul, particularly those you have called to the surface, however small and ugly they look at first. And indeed perhaps he was a bystander, for as Lambton 'wondered what to do with the creature, an old man appeared from behind him, and warned him not to throw the creature back into the river. "It bodes no good for you but you must not cast it back into the river, you must keep it and do with it what you will." At this the old man walked away disappearing as quickly as he had appeared.’  

But Lambton neither kept it nor ignored it by throwing it back; he wanted to be even more thoroughly rid of it – so he threw it down the well. 

Jung might have told him that after an appropriate gestation period, what is small but denied may return as a monster. As a minor daimon the little worm would have been content with a regular saucer of milk, or the equivalent traditional recognition. Denied that courtesy it perforce took that milk as a terrible beast – the villagers were forced to fill larger and larger troughs for it, but to no avail: 'It took small lambs and sheep and ate them whole, and it tore open cows udders with its razor teeth to get at the milk, which it could smell from miles away.’