ABSTRACT
In preparation for my research in Thresholds of Initiation (Henderson 1967) I found that symbolism of the ancient Greek father-god and of the mother-goddess were inextricably bound together in a harmony of ambivalence rather than a conflict of opposites, and which allowed each to find its place in an all-containing mythologem (the expression of a culture-complex). Common to both I found an image of a ritual foot-race for a prize, which originates in the story of Rhea, the mountain mother of Crete and her holy child, Zeus, who had to be protected from his alien father Cronus. The infant Zeus was guarded by the Kouretes, young menin-arms who executed a leaping dance or ran in a race. In Jane Harrison’s (1912) Themis Menis I found the full account of the tradition and it gave me the material I needed to explain the dream of a modern man in Jungian analysis. In an early dream he was in a procession led by one who carried a bust of what he described as the “Queen Mother”; he himself was impelled to run to the head of the line and, seizing the statue, become the leader himself just like the ancient Greek Kouros or leader of the band of Kouretes (Harrison 1912). This marked the beginning of a process of understanding and ultimately of healing his mother-complex for which he came to be treated.
