THE FLEECE AS SOLAR SYMBOL
AND SYMBOL OF SPRING
If Strabo's idea of the Golden Fleece as a mining tool was the standard view adopted by archaeologists down to the present day because it appealed to their preconception that myth represented distorted fact, early mythologists instead adopted the symbolic view that the Fleece was a cypher for the sun. This theory had a very long life, though is today less prominent than in years past. If scholars of religion no longer believe, as F. A. Paley put it in 1879, that "everything was the sun," the idea that the Fleece had a solar connection is not yet dead. Some still support the theory today, and it retains its popularity among "alternative" archaeologists and occult scholars. Below are some of the hundreds of texts on the solar theory published in the ninteenth and twentieth centuries. Following this, we will examine a subset of this theory, the idea of the Golden Fleece as the symbol of the seasonal or spring hero.
Solary Symbolism
ASTROLOGY THE ORIGIN OF MYTHOLOGY
"Zadkiel"
1834
By the fabled sacrifice of the Ram to Mars was perpetuated the doctrine that Mars rules the sign Aries, the Ram; which, as before said, is the house of Mars, according to all astrologers. It cannot be objected that this merely proves that the Ram was dedicated to the god Mars; for Ovid makes it appear that Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, was this identical ram so sacrificed. And as Phryxus was not engaged in a warlike expedition, why should he sacrifice to the god of war? He had stolen the golden fleece, and it was therefore more likely he should sacrifice to Mercury, the god of thieves. If he offered the sacrifice in gratitude for his safe journey, Mercury, the god of travellers, also was, for that reason, more deserving his worship. The sun has always been taught by astrologers to rule among metals gold and among animals the ram; and as the sun has his exaltation in the sign Aries, this may be the origin of the term golden fleece. The story that this had been carried off by Phryxus, who was descended from Aeolus, the god of the winds and tempests, was an allegorical method of denoting that when the sun enters Aries, (at the vernal equinox,) the weather is boisterous and tempestuous. The doctrine of Aries being the house of Mars and exaltation of the sun, appears to have been concealed in this very ancient fable, the period of which was about 1300 years before Christ, as the Argonautic expedition is fixed about the year 2714 A.M.
Source: Zadkiel, “Astrology the Origin of Mythology,” The Metropolitan 10 (1834), 92-93.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS
George W. Cox
1870
(Note: "Aryan" was the nineteenth century term for the people now known as Indo-European. It is not used here in the later racist sense.)
In the legend of Deianeira, as in that of Iason and Glauke, the [golden] coat or shirt is laden with destruction even for Herakles. It represents, in fact, 'the clouds which rise from the waters and surround the sun like a dark raiment.' This robe Herakles tries to tear off, but the 'fiery mists embrace him, and are mingled with the parting rays of the sun, and the dying hero is seen through the scattered clouds of the sky, tearing his own body to pieces, till at last his bright form is consumed in a general conflagration.' In the story of Medeia this robe is the gift of Helios, which imparts a marvellous wisdom to the daughter of the Kolchian king. It is the gleaming dress which reappears in story after story of Hindu folk-lore. 'That young rajah's wife,' people said, 'has the most beautiful saree we ever saw: it shines like the sun, and dazzles our eyes.' It is the golden fleece of the ram which bears away the children of the Mist (Nephele) to the Eastern land. In other words, it is the light of Phoibos, the splendour of Helios, the rays or spears of the gleaming Sun. [...]
[W]hether the old Vedic hymns contain the germ of the Iliad and Odyssey, or whether they do not, it seems impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that the whole mythical history of Hellas exhibits an alternation of movements from the West to the East, and from the East back to the West again, as regular as the swayings of a pendulum. In each case either something bright is taken away, and the heroes who have been robbed, return with the prize which, after a long struggle, they have regained; or the heroes themselves are driven from their home eastward, and thence return to 'claim their rightful heritage. The first loss is that of the Golden Fleece; and the chieftains led by Iason set forth in the speaking ship on their perilous voyage to the shores of Kolchis. Before the fleece can be regained there are fearful tasks to be done: but the aid of the wise Medeia enables Iason to tame the fire-breathing bulls, and to turn against each other the children of the dragon's teeth. Then follows the journey homeward, in which Medeia again saves them from the vengeance of Aietes, and Iason reigns gloriously in Iolkos after his long wanderings are ended. This tale is repeated again in the story of the wrongs and woes of Helen. She, too, is stolen, like the Golden Fleece, from the western land, and carried far away towards the gates of the morning, and a second time the Achaian heroes are gathered together to avenge the disgrace, and to bring back the peerless queen whom they have lost. Here again is the weary voyage, lengthened by the wrath of the gods, and the perilous warfare which must precede the ruin of Ilion. But the aid of Athene, answering to that of Medeia, wins the victory at last for Achilleus, and then follow again the wanderings of the heroes as they return each to his home in the far west.
Source: George W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1870), 149-150, 204-205.
George W. Cox
1870
(Note: "Aryan" was the nineteenth century term for the people now known as Indo-European. It is not used here in the later racist sense.)
In the legend of Deianeira, as in that of Iason and Glauke, the [golden] coat or shirt is laden with destruction even for Herakles. It represents, in fact, 'the clouds which rise from the waters and surround the sun like a dark raiment.' This robe Herakles tries to tear off, but the 'fiery mists embrace him, and are mingled with the parting rays of the sun, and the dying hero is seen through the scattered clouds of the sky, tearing his own body to pieces, till at last his bright form is consumed in a general conflagration.' In the story of Medeia this robe is the gift of Helios, which imparts a marvellous wisdom to the daughter of the Kolchian king. It is the gleaming dress which reappears in story after story of Hindu folk-lore. 'That young rajah's wife,' people said, 'has the most beautiful saree we ever saw: it shines like the sun, and dazzles our eyes.' It is the golden fleece of the ram which bears away the children of the Mist (Nephele) to the Eastern land. In other words, it is the light of Phoibos, the splendour of Helios, the rays or spears of the gleaming Sun. [...]
[W]hether the old Vedic hymns contain the germ of the Iliad and Odyssey, or whether they do not, it seems impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that the whole mythical history of Hellas exhibits an alternation of movements from the West to the East, and from the East back to the West again, as regular as the swayings of a pendulum. In each case either something bright is taken away, and the heroes who have been robbed, return with the prize which, after a long struggle, they have regained; or the heroes themselves are driven from their home eastward, and thence return to 'claim their rightful heritage. The first loss is that of the Golden Fleece; and the chieftains led by Iason set forth in the speaking ship on their perilous voyage to the shores of Kolchis. Before the fleece can be regained there are fearful tasks to be done: but the aid of the wise Medeia enables Iason to tame the fire-breathing bulls, and to turn against each other the children of the dragon's teeth. Then follows the journey homeward, in which Medeia again saves them from the vengeance of Aietes, and Iason reigns gloriously in Iolkos after his long wanderings are ended. This tale is repeated again in the story of the wrongs and woes of Helen. She, too, is stolen, like the Golden Fleece, from the western land, and carried far away towards the gates of the morning, and a second time the Achaian heroes are gathered together to avenge the disgrace, and to bring back the peerless queen whom they have lost. Here again is the weary voyage, lengthened by the wrath of the gods, and the perilous warfare which must precede the ruin of Ilion. But the aid of Athene, answering to that of Medeia, wins the victory at last for Achilleus, and then follow again the wanderings of the heroes as they return each to his home in the far west.
Source: George W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1870), 149-150, 204-205.
PRE-HOMERIC LEGENDS OF THE VOYAGE OF THE ARGONAUTS
F. A. Paley
1879
[T]he sun is generally symbolised by a fiery cloud, or golden fleece, as the mantle of glory and majesty in which the god is wrapped. Amictus lumine sicut vestimento is the description that the Psalmist gives to the Divine Being himself. The aegis of Pallas, the goddess of the Dawn, is in the same manner the fringed cloud that arrays in spangled light the Aurora of the Greek Mythology. It was represented in ancient art, as may be seen on many of the early Greek vases, as a fringed goat-skin, the root of the word, which implies "rushing motion," being confounded with αἴξ, "a goat." We read in Homer of the golden tassels or fringes surrounding it, and Herodotus tells usthat the dress of the goddess was derived from the stained goat-skins (apparently closely akin to what we still call Morocco leather) worn by Libyan women. This shows that he had not the least suspicion of the true origin of the symbol, as a solar "glory." Even in early Christian art the oval nimbus, or aureole, enveloping the whole form of the Blessed Virgin, may be referred to the same traditional idea. The edges of the goat-skins were cut in strips and curled to imitate snakes’ heads, and this, which at first merely represented the ragged edges of a cloud, was designed to add terror to the form of the dread war-goddess.
So naturally is the idea of a cloud associated with that of a fleece, that Virgil describes the absence of cirri, or what we ourselves call "light fleecy clouds," as a sign of the approach of fine weather, —
Tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri.
But other proofs are not wanting that this interpretation of the "Golden Fleece" is the true one. We read in Sophocles that the wife of Hercules, jealous of her husband's supposed attachment to a younger woman, sent him, under the guise of a costly sacrificial robe, a garment smeared with some phosphoric preparation. It is to be noted that the poison itself was laid on with a piece of wool, and that the wool first caught fire and was consumed. No sooner had he thrown the mantle round him, and approached the fire of the altar, than it burst into flame, and so nearly destroyed him that he implored his own son to finish his pains by burning him on a pyre upon Mount Oeta. A nearly identical story is told of Medea, who, enraged at Jason’s desertion of her for a royal bride, sent by her own children a robe and a golden coronet as a present to the princess. Here, too, the gift proved a fatal one, for not only the bride herself, but her aged father, who ran to her assistance, miserably perished by the fiery robe cleaving to their flesh.
Now the evidence furnished by these several legends must be regarded as complete, when we consider that Hercules was the Sun-god; that his dying on the pyre obviously symbolises the Sun sinking in flames behind a hill; that Medea was the grand-daughter of the Sun, and that the fiery robe had been bequeathed by the Sun-god himself to his descendants. Nor can we doubt that the gilt chaplet which adhered to the brow of the bride, like red-hot iron, is nothing more than a symbol of the round and glowing orb of the sun itself.
Thus far, then, we seem to have made out a clear case for the right explanation of the Argonautic legend. An expedition to bring home the golden fleece was an attempt — not either a very absurd or a very unnatural one in such remote ages, when the only knowledge was obtained through the senses — to get close enough to the rising sun to find out his true nature.
Read the entire piece here.
Source: F. A. Paley, “Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts,” The Dublin Review (Jan. 1879): 164-182.
F. A. Paley
1879
[T]he sun is generally symbolised by a fiery cloud, or golden fleece, as the mantle of glory and majesty in which the god is wrapped. Amictus lumine sicut vestimento is the description that the Psalmist gives to the Divine Being himself. The aegis of Pallas, the goddess of the Dawn, is in the same manner the fringed cloud that arrays in spangled light the Aurora of the Greek Mythology. It was represented in ancient art, as may be seen on many of the early Greek vases, as a fringed goat-skin, the root of the word, which implies "rushing motion," being confounded with αἴξ, "a goat." We read in Homer of the golden tassels or fringes surrounding it, and Herodotus tells usthat the dress of the goddess was derived from the stained goat-skins (apparently closely akin to what we still call Morocco leather) worn by Libyan women. This shows that he had not the least suspicion of the true origin of the symbol, as a solar "glory." Even in early Christian art the oval nimbus, or aureole, enveloping the whole form of the Blessed Virgin, may be referred to the same traditional idea. The edges of the goat-skins were cut in strips and curled to imitate snakes’ heads, and this, which at first merely represented the ragged edges of a cloud, was designed to add terror to the form of the dread war-goddess.
So naturally is the idea of a cloud associated with that of a fleece, that Virgil describes the absence of cirri, or what we ourselves call "light fleecy clouds," as a sign of the approach of fine weather, —
Tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri.
But other proofs are not wanting that this interpretation of the "Golden Fleece" is the true one. We read in Sophocles that the wife of Hercules, jealous of her husband's supposed attachment to a younger woman, sent him, under the guise of a costly sacrificial robe, a garment smeared with some phosphoric preparation. It is to be noted that the poison itself was laid on with a piece of wool, and that the wool first caught fire and was consumed. No sooner had he thrown the mantle round him, and approached the fire of the altar, than it burst into flame, and so nearly destroyed him that he implored his own son to finish his pains by burning him on a pyre upon Mount Oeta. A nearly identical story is told of Medea, who, enraged at Jason’s desertion of her for a royal bride, sent by her own children a robe and a golden coronet as a present to the princess. Here, too, the gift proved a fatal one, for not only the bride herself, but her aged father, who ran to her assistance, miserably perished by the fiery robe cleaving to their flesh.
Now the evidence furnished by these several legends must be regarded as complete, when we consider that Hercules was the Sun-god; that his dying on the pyre obviously symbolises the Sun sinking in flames behind a hill; that Medea was the grand-daughter of the Sun, and that the fiery robe had been bequeathed by the Sun-god himself to his descendants. Nor can we doubt that the gilt chaplet which adhered to the brow of the bride, like red-hot iron, is nothing more than a symbol of the round and glowing orb of the sun itself.
Thus far, then, we seem to have made out a clear case for the right explanation of the Argonautic legend. An expedition to bring home the golden fleece was an attempt — not either a very absurd or a very unnatural one in such remote ages, when the only knowledge was obtained through the senses — to get close enough to the rising sun to find out his true nature.
Read the entire piece here.
Source: F. A. Paley, “Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts,” The Dublin Review (Jan. 1879): 164-182.
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE "SOLAR MYTH"
F. A. Paley
1879
The Article in the January Review [above], on "Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts," brought to the author of it an interesting and instructive correspondence. Several scholars, well known in the literary world, readily expressed their opinions that the "Odyssey," as we now have it, may have been more largely indebted to the "Argonautica" than has hitherto been acknowledged, or even suspected. "Your inference" (says a distinguished writer) "that the 'Argonautica' and the 'Odyssey' are both drawn independently from the old storehouse of myths, seems to me irresistible." Indeed, a clear allusion to the story of Jason, and his touching at the island of Lemnos, occurs also in a passage of the "Iliad" (vii. 469), to which a reference ought to have been given. But, while assent was in most cases accorded to this part of the argument, dissent was expressed by several writers and critics, whose opinion on the subject is certainly entitled to consideration, from the "solar" interpretation suggested of the "golden fleece." I quote here the words of one well-known writer on Ancient Art:—"I can see no connection between sun-worship and the solar myth. Sun-worship is natural and obvious. The sun is daily before our eyes, bestowing light and heat, contributing to the growth of animal and vegetable life; he is the chief animating principle in Nature. But straining and twisting a plain story of human life into the counterpart of the sun's daily course in the heavens is unobvious and unnatural. "What do we gain by being told that in the 'Iliad/ which is a representation of human life and character amidst struggles and difficulties—that Achilles and Agamemnon are sunbeams and shadows—that the rival hosts of Greeks and Trojans are mists and breezes, pursuing each other over an imaginary plain? What would you think, if it was said that 'Waverley/ which is another representation of human life and character, typifies the passage of the sun through clouds and mists, with occasional bursts of sunlight? This symbolical mode of treating the myth is totally inconsistent with the phase of mind of that early age; and this is, in my opinion, an insuperable difficulty. Symbolism argues a late phase of mind, and a late age." Another correspondent" thinks the argument is not very strong that the 'fleece' was the sun; and if it was the sun the adventurers went to explore, what (he asks) is. the meaning of finding the fleece? "Was it some great discovery in astronomy?" A fourth, approving and accepting the article as a whole, reminds me that in treating of Colchis and the sun-lands of the East, in connection with Jason, I should have referred to Herodotus (iv. 179 and vii. 198) as containing the same legends which are given by Pindar in the fourth Pythian Ode. A fifth correspondent also accepts the solar theory, and believes that the well-known story of Little Red Riding-Hood has no other origin. Thus opinions are divided; but there seems a decided preponderance, in all the letters received, against the "solar-myth theory.''
And yet the full discussion and exposition of the theory in Sir G. W. Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"* including as it does (book ii. chap, iii.) the legend of the Golden Fleece, might have satisfied some of the objectors that no other view presents any reasonable explanation of this and similar stories.
Source: F. A. Paley, "On the Origin of the 'Solar Myth' and Its Bearing on the History of Ancient Thought," The Dublin Review (July 1879): 90-91.
F. A. Paley
1879
The Article in the January Review [above], on "Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts," brought to the author of it an interesting and instructive correspondence. Several scholars, well known in the literary world, readily expressed their opinions that the "Odyssey," as we now have it, may have been more largely indebted to the "Argonautica" than has hitherto been acknowledged, or even suspected. "Your inference" (says a distinguished writer) "that the 'Argonautica' and the 'Odyssey' are both drawn independently from the old storehouse of myths, seems to me irresistible." Indeed, a clear allusion to the story of Jason, and his touching at the island of Lemnos, occurs also in a passage of the "Iliad" (vii. 469), to which a reference ought to have been given. But, while assent was in most cases accorded to this part of the argument, dissent was expressed by several writers and critics, whose opinion on the subject is certainly entitled to consideration, from the "solar" interpretation suggested of the "golden fleece." I quote here the words of one well-known writer on Ancient Art:—"I can see no connection between sun-worship and the solar myth. Sun-worship is natural and obvious. The sun is daily before our eyes, bestowing light and heat, contributing to the growth of animal and vegetable life; he is the chief animating principle in Nature. But straining and twisting a plain story of human life into the counterpart of the sun's daily course in the heavens is unobvious and unnatural. "What do we gain by being told that in the 'Iliad/ which is a representation of human life and character amidst struggles and difficulties—that Achilles and Agamemnon are sunbeams and shadows—that the rival hosts of Greeks and Trojans are mists and breezes, pursuing each other over an imaginary plain? What would you think, if it was said that 'Waverley/ which is another representation of human life and character, typifies the passage of the sun through clouds and mists, with occasional bursts of sunlight? This symbolical mode of treating the myth is totally inconsistent with the phase of mind of that early age; and this is, in my opinion, an insuperable difficulty. Symbolism argues a late phase of mind, and a late age." Another correspondent" thinks the argument is not very strong that the 'fleece' was the sun; and if it was the sun the adventurers went to explore, what (he asks) is. the meaning of finding the fleece? "Was it some great discovery in astronomy?" A fourth, approving and accepting the article as a whole, reminds me that in treating of Colchis and the sun-lands of the East, in connection with Jason, I should have referred to Herodotus (iv. 179 and vii. 198) as containing the same legends which are given by Pindar in the fourth Pythian Ode. A fifth correspondent also accepts the solar theory, and believes that the well-known story of Little Red Riding-Hood has no other origin. Thus opinions are divided; but there seems a decided preponderance, in all the letters received, against the "solar-myth theory.''
And yet the full discussion and exposition of the theory in Sir G. W. Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"* including as it does (book ii. chap, iii.) the legend of the Golden Fleece, might have satisfied some of the objectors that no other view presents any reasonable explanation of this and similar stories.
Source: F. A. Paley, "On the Origin of the 'Solar Myth' and Its Bearing on the History of Ancient Thought," The Dublin Review (July 1879): 90-91.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
Ninth edition, Vol. 13
1888
s.v. Jason
We can analyse the legend still further, determining the religious centre round which this historical framework has been constructed; this we shall find to be one of the commonest naturalistic myths. The sun, the ram with the golden fleece, flies through the air to the land at once of setting and of rising sun; there he is sacrificed on the shore in the fire of sunset; his skin is hung upon the tree of the nightly heaven, and guarded by the envious power, the dragon, till it is captured by the solar hero, by whom the darkness is dispelled and the dragon slain.
Ninth edition, Vol. 13
1888
s.v. Jason
We can analyse the legend still further, determining the religious centre round which this historical framework has been constructed; this we shall find to be one of the commonest naturalistic myths. The sun, the ram with the golden fleece, flies through the air to the land at once of setting and of rising sun; there he is sacrificed on the shore in the fire of sunset; his skin is hung upon the tree of the nightly heaven, and guarded by the envious power, the dragon, till it is captured by the solar hero, by whom the darkness is dispelled and the dragon slain.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY
F. MAX MÜLLER
1892
It was the fleece of the golden ram on which Helle and Phrixos, children of Nephele, had crossed the Hellespont. Helle (Surya) was drowned, like the Sun-daughter, while her brother Phrixos (ripple) when arriving in Aia hung the fleece of the ram on which he and his sister had been riding on a great oak-tree which was guarded by a dragon. […] This recovery could only be the work of a solar hero, who brings the next day, and might well have been called Vivasvan or Jason, the sun (not yet Jason, the healer), being the father of the two Asvins, and the husband of Erinys (Saranyu). The fundamental idea of this expedition of Jason as of several of the labours of Herakles, such as the fetching of the apples of the Hesperides, the recovery of the girdle of Hippolyte (the Sun-daughter also has her girdle), the chase of the golden-horned Kerynean doe (generally taken for a representative of the moon), seems to have always been the same, the bringing back of the western sun.
Read more of this piece here.
Source: F. Max Müller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, vol. 2 (Longman, Green, & Co., 1897).
F. MAX MÜLLER
1892
It was the fleece of the golden ram on which Helle and Phrixos, children of Nephele, had crossed the Hellespont. Helle (Surya) was drowned, like the Sun-daughter, while her brother Phrixos (ripple) when arriving in Aia hung the fleece of the ram on which he and his sister had been riding on a great oak-tree which was guarded by a dragon. […] This recovery could only be the work of a solar hero, who brings the next day, and might well have been called Vivasvan or Jason, the sun (not yet Jason, the healer), being the father of the two Asvins, and the husband of Erinys (Saranyu). The fundamental idea of this expedition of Jason as of several of the labours of Herakles, such as the fetching of the apples of the Hesperides, the recovery of the girdle of Hippolyte (the Sun-daughter also has her girdle), the chase of the golden-horned Kerynean doe (generally taken for a representative of the moon), seems to have always been the same, the bringing back of the western sun.
Read more of this piece here.
Source: F. Max Müller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, vol. 2 (Longman, Green, & Co., 1897).
THE EUROPEAN SKY-GOD
Arthur Bernard Cook
1904
In the story of Atreus' golden lamb Zeus causes the sun to travel backwards,49 and, since control of the sun's course constituted an equal claim to kingship with possession of the golden lamb, it is not improbable that the golden lamb was the sun itself. Again, the golden ram, which carried Phrixus and Helle through the air till the latter fell into the Hellespont, affords so close a parallel to the myth of Phaethon that we are forced to interpret it as a piece of solar symbolism. Phrixus, who got safe to Colchis, sacrificed this ram to Zeus and gave its fleece to Aeetes, son of Helios, who hung it on an oak-tree in the grove of Ares: so much we are told by the Greek mythographer Apollodorus, but a valuable Latin treatise on mythology preserved in a Vatican manuscript adds that the golden fleece stripped from Phrixus' ram was that "in which Zeus climbs the sky"—a clear case of Zeus being equated with the sun.
Source: Arthur Bernard Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folklore 15 (1904), 271.
Arthur Bernard Cook
1904
In the story of Atreus' golden lamb Zeus causes the sun to travel backwards,49 and, since control of the sun's course constituted an equal claim to kingship with possession of the golden lamb, it is not improbable that the golden lamb was the sun itself. Again, the golden ram, which carried Phrixus and Helle through the air till the latter fell into the Hellespont, affords so close a parallel to the myth of Phaethon that we are forced to interpret it as a piece of solar symbolism. Phrixus, who got safe to Colchis, sacrificed this ram to Zeus and gave its fleece to Aeetes, son of Helios, who hung it on an oak-tree in the grove of Ares: so much we are told by the Greek mythographer Apollodorus, but a valuable Latin treatise on mythology preserved in a Vatican manuscript adds that the golden fleece stripped from Phrixus' ram was that "in which Zeus climbs the sky"—a clear case of Zeus being equated with the sun.
Source: Arthur Bernard Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folklore 15 (1904), 271.
Spring or Seasonal Symbolism
The story of the sun is the story of the changes it undergoes over the course of the year, most dramatically the shortening of the days down to the winter solstice. And the sun's yearly journey is intimately tied to the annual cycle of vegetation. It is no wonder, then, that when the solar theory of mythology gradually lost support, the vegetative theory sprang up (if you will pardon the pun) in the wake of the sun. Sir James G. Frazer's massive Golden Bough (1898 and after) developed the theory that the the essence of human religious beliefs revolved around two key concepts: first, that mythology revolves around the annual birth, death, and resurrection of a god representing vegetation, and second, that this myth was enacted by the ritual murder of a king or his substitute to guarantee the resurrection of the god and the vegetation. In The Golden Bough, Frazer discusses the myth of the Golden Fleece, seeing in it a substitution of the ram for the (son of) the king, Athamas, whose royal family practices weather-magic to resurrect the crops:
The tradition which associated the sacrifice of the king or his children with a great dearth points clearly to the belief, so common among primitive folk, that the king is responsible for the weather and the crops, and that he may justly pay with his life for the inclemency of the one or the failure of the other. Athamas and his line, in short, appear to have united divine or magical with royal functions; and this view is strongly supported by the claims to divinity which Salmoneus, the brother of Athamas, is said to have set up. We have seen that this presumptuous mortal professed to be no other than Zeus himself, and to wield the thunder and lightning, of which he made a trumpery imitation by the help of tinkling kettles and blazing torches. If we may judge from analogy, his mock thunder and lightning were no mere scenic exhibition designed to deceive and impress the beholders; they were enchantments practised by the royal magician for the purpose of bringing about the celestial phenomena which they feebly mimicked.
Source: J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1900), 38.
Source: J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1900), 38.
From here it is only a short leap to the theory of the German R. Shröder, who in 1899 saw in Jason the "spring hero." Carrying Hera over the river, for example, was for him the freeing of the spring-goddess. Ludwig Preller concurred in his 1854 Greichishe Mythologie, seeing Jason as "a spirit of the spring with its soft suns and fertile rains" (as cited in Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, 1884). In this reading, the seizure of the Golden Fleece becomes spring's triumph over winter, freeing the sun from the darkness and restoring light and vegetation to the world. This spring myth was also seen as having an astral dimension, the elements of the story deriving from the sun's path across the stars over the course of the year and through the constellations, as in this 1903 article:
The account of Jonah's sea voyage begins at the autumnal equinox, and the place where Noah entered the ark; and the two stories, as well as those of Jesus stilling the tempest and the shipwreck of Paul, are but variants of the same myth. This "ship" or "ark" is the arc of the sun's ecliptic extending from the fall equinox to that of spring, which the sun apparently traverses during winter—the rainy season, the sea of the year—symbolized in the southern heavens, the sea of the sky, by the constellation of the ship Argo navis. This arc of the ecliptic, and so symbolized, is the ark of Noah, the "ship" in which Jesus was when, like Jonah, he lay asleep when a tempest arose which he was called upon to still; the same ship in which Paul, at first called Saul (sol, sun), and a variant of the Greek-Roman sun-god Apollo, sailed when he had such a tempestuous voyage, and like Noah, Jonah and Jesus, finally got safely onto "dry land;" the same ship, Argo, in which Jason (the same name, etymologically, as Jesus) and his companions went to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece (sun in Aries, the Ram of the zodiac, in which the spring equinox occurred). Now notice this curious thing: in all these stories the storm is an important part, the voyages all end at the vernal equinox, and we of our boasted modern enlightenment still speak of the "equinoctial storm" of the spring season!
Source: Singleton Waters Davis, "How the Whale Swallows Jonah," The Humanitarian Review 1 (1903), 131.
This is all well and good, except that the constellations did not have their current form until after 500 BCE, too late for the Jason myth. Similarly, Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian mystic philosopher, developed the idea that the Jason myth derived from the precession of the equinoxes, the slow churning of the stars in the heavens. According to him, beginning in 800 BCE, on the spring equinox the sun rose in the constellation Aries, the Golden Ram, thus giving rise to the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece as a legend of the sun's new stellar location in the spring. This myth was then used, he said, by initiates to reach the pure astral body. (He also said many other things about the Argonauts, some of which contradict themselves, but no matter.)
Although the nature myth, like the solar myth, is no longer supported in most scholarly circles, the idea that the quest for the Golden Fleece represents the sun entering the House of Aries in the zodiac continues to be repeated down to this very day by mystics, astrologers, and some astronomers.
The account of Jonah's sea voyage begins at the autumnal equinox, and the place where Noah entered the ark; and the two stories, as well as those of Jesus stilling the tempest and the shipwreck of Paul, are but variants of the same myth. This "ship" or "ark" is the arc of the sun's ecliptic extending from the fall equinox to that of spring, which the sun apparently traverses during winter—the rainy season, the sea of the year—symbolized in the southern heavens, the sea of the sky, by the constellation of the ship Argo navis. This arc of the ecliptic, and so symbolized, is the ark of Noah, the "ship" in which Jesus was when, like Jonah, he lay asleep when a tempest arose which he was called upon to still; the same ship in which Paul, at first called Saul (sol, sun), and a variant of the Greek-Roman sun-god Apollo, sailed when he had such a tempestuous voyage, and like Noah, Jonah and Jesus, finally got safely onto "dry land;" the same ship, Argo, in which Jason (the same name, etymologically, as Jesus) and his companions went to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece (sun in Aries, the Ram of the zodiac, in which the spring equinox occurred). Now notice this curious thing: in all these stories the storm is an important part, the voyages all end at the vernal equinox, and we of our boasted modern enlightenment still speak of the "equinoctial storm" of the spring season!
Source: Singleton Waters Davis, "How the Whale Swallows Jonah," The Humanitarian Review 1 (1903), 131.
This is all well and good, except that the constellations did not have their current form until after 500 BCE, too late for the Jason myth. Similarly, Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian mystic philosopher, developed the idea that the Jason myth derived from the precession of the equinoxes, the slow churning of the stars in the heavens. According to him, beginning in 800 BCE, on the spring equinox the sun rose in the constellation Aries, the Golden Ram, thus giving rise to the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece as a legend of the sun's new stellar location in the spring. This myth was then used, he said, by initiates to reach the pure astral body. (He also said many other things about the Argonauts, some of which contradict themselves, but no matter.)
Although the nature myth, like the solar myth, is no longer supported in most scholarly circles, the idea that the quest for the Golden Fleece represents the sun entering the House of Aries in the zodiac continues to be repeated down to this very day by mystics, astrologers, and some astronomers.