The Myth of the Golden Fleece: Jason, the Argonauts, and the Alchemical Conquest of the Ram of Light
The Voyage of the Argo and the Heroic Quest In the rich mythological heritage of ancient Greece, before the Trojan War and the wandering of Odysseus, a legendary expedition set sail from the shores of Thessaly. Jason , the dispossessed prince of Iolcus, was commanded by his uncle, the usurper King Pelias, to perform an impossible quest: to travel to the distant kingdom of Colchis on the eastern shores of the Black Sea and to recover the Golden Fleece ( Chrysomallon Deras ). To accomplish this mission, Jason gathered the greatest heroes of Greece—including Heracles, Orpheus, Castor and Pollux, and the helmsman Tiphys—and built a magnificent, fifty-oared ship named the Argo (the "Swift"), which was constructed with the assistance of the goddess Athena. The voyage of the Argonauts is the archetypal pilgrimage of the initiate, a map of the Great Work of alchemy. The Golden Fleece, which was the skin of a winged, golden ram sent by the god Hermes to rescue the children Phrix...