‘In Wildness lies the preservation of the world’

Thoreau

In the first 2 weeks of June 1987 Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh, undoubtedly the most controversial spiritual teacher of the 20th century, gave a series of talks entitled ‘The Rebel’. Over these two weeks, Osho (as he was known to his disciples) outlined an extraordinary vision of a new kind of human being who would inherit our planet in the coming centuries. It was not that Osho was privileged to knowledge that the rest of humanity could somehow not access – many other great teachers have spoken on the very same subject – but what stands out from these discourses is the sheer sense of freedom and power that courses through his words as he describes our future potential. Calling us ‘the new rebel’ he clearly outlined our responsibilities:

‘ The new rebel is not going to conform to the establishment and its interests. He is absolutely unconcerned about his respectability, reputation, honour, worship; he is not in need of any of these things. The new rebel has no hypothetical God. He has a real human being. His effort is to clarify, to unburden the human heart, to raise human consciousness to its highest peaks.’

In my first article in this series on the Centaurs and our future consciousness, I discussed the impact and meaning of Chiron, the first and best known of these legendary figures. In this current article I would like to consider another centaur, the far less well know Pholus, as an archetype of the complex transformations taking place within human beings today. Many people may wonder whether these old Greek legends really have any relevance or meaning in our contemporary world. To this I would respond that all myths tap into a common sacred source – the collective consciousness field that connects all human beings together as one. If we can successfully unlock the symbolism behind a mythical figure, then we have prised something deep out of the hidden world of archetypes. These old legends contain the storyline of our future evolution in seed form.
Let’s take the case of Pholus – He was one of the so-called ‘good’ centaurs and was custodian of the sacred wine of Dionysus. As a ‘brother centaur’ to Chiron, his story shares many traits to that of Chiron – for example, both were wounded by a toxic arrow. In Pholus’ story, in an exchange with Hercules, the chest containing the sacred wine was opened and such was its intoxicating power that it drew in all the other centaurs who went mad because of its scent and were slain by Hercules. Following this, Pholus then accidentally dropped one of Hercules’ poisoned arrows on his own foot and died. What really stands out as a symbol in this story is the repeated symbol of the wine and its intoxicating power as well as the poisoned arrow. The wine and the toxin have a close symbolic connection to Pholus, since he was the keeper of the wine of the Gods and died because of an intoxicating substance.

When I allow my own intuition to penetrate these centaur myths, here is what I see:

The centaurs, as we discussed in my article on Chiron, represent the future man – an integration of the wild spirit of Gaia and the highest wisdom of the human. As keeper of the wine, Pholus represents a genetic triggering mechanism in our blood that when activated leads to a chain reaction in which we are flooded by higher consciousness. This higher consciousness – represented by the intoxicating scent of the wine – literally kills off certain aspects of our lower nature. This notion of animals being driven mad by demons also connects us into Christ’s well-known exorcism of the spirit Legion in the New Testament. Indeed, the higher consciousness is synonymous with Christ consciousness. That both Chiron and Pholus were accidentally wounded and killed by the poisoned arrows dipped in the Hydra’s blood also speaks volumes. The Hydra’s blood is an alchemical symbol for the highest expression of the Divine feminine (also known as ‘shakti’), which destroys the human ego and gives birth to a new and unified consciousness.