Page 15 - Summer 18

could move freely between Heaven, Earth and Hades and conducted departed souls to the Underworld. After paying the boatman Charon a coin, these souls were ferried across the river Styx to their dread destination.
On the opposite bank paced Cerberus, a terrifying, savage, slavering, threeheaded dog, who guarded the entrance to the Underworld, ever ready to devour living intruders or ghostly fugitives. Those under the protection of Hermes he admitted without let or hindrance. It is said that his saliva gave rise to the poisonous Aconite.
Mythographers have interpreted the monster dog’s three heads in various ways, but homeopathy provides the deepest meaning. The provings reveal the critical lack of cohesion or disconnection of left and right cerebral function and the ambivalence of male and female dominance in the Lac-can individual, with the resultant androgeny, duality, conflict, and swinging between opposing halves.
Central to these extremes lies the path of individuation, balance, and spiritual ascent. A Cerberus lies within every Lac-can and can be responsible for “bestial aggression.” It guards the entrance to the personal shadow, which, like Nat-mur and Aurum, many a Lac-can is loath to enter or confront.
The mistress of Cerberus, was Hecate, Goddess of the Dead, who presided over necromancer’s spells and the summoning up of the dead. As goddess of witches, she was invoked during the secret rites of black magic, held especially at places where three roads meet, and was depicted brandishing a torch and accompanied by mares, bitches [hellhounds], and she-wolves.
Her powers were terrifying, especially at night and under the baleful light of the moon with which she was identified. She too, like Cerberus, was threefold in aspect; she was depicted with three heads and three bodies.
The heads were a lion on the right, a dog in the centre, and a mare on the left. The lion is primarily a solar symbol [Aurum], associated with the patriarchal skyrealm and the intellect; the mare is a lunar symbol [Argentum], associated with the feminine water-realm and the deep unconscious; the dog [Lac-can] is both a solar and lunar symbol and is associated with both the male [right] and female [left] principles and the underworld of the shadow [centre].
As a Moon-goddess she represented the three phases of the lunar cycle – waxing, waning and eclipsing. She was venerated as goddess of the crossroads and hence appealed to in tormented times of destiny, dilemma and decision. At the crossroads of life, the soul faces the demand to change direction either to the left or to the right across the horizontal plane of life experience, or, on a transcendental level, the prompting and urge to pursue the vertical path to higher attainment. The choice is often – acceptance, rejection or surrender?
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