pigs

 

In ‘The Odyssey’ Book X, Odysseus lands on the island of the ‘polypharmakos’ (one who weaves many drugs into potions) Circe, who lives in exile without a father, or brother, or male guardian to protect her.

Seeing smoke rising from her chimney, some of Odysseus’ crew set out to investigate. Coming close to her hall, they are drawn by her singing, as she sits and weaves at her giant loom. All but one enter her hall, whereupon she bids them eat and drink drug-infused fare, and then transforms them into pigs, and corrals them in her sties.

This is a pre-emptive defence, based on years of ships’ crews landing, coming to her door, revealing in their eyes intention to take first her body, and then her treasured possessions, for themselves (see Virgil’s ‘Aeneid,’ Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’—and, for a beautiful modern retelling of Circe’s story, see Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’).

Informed of their fate by the one more wary sailor, and both instructed and protected by the god Hermes, Odysseus confronts Circe and forces her to return his crew to human form.

In Christopher Nolan’s new big screen adaptation, she does so saying, hauntingly, ‘Return to your disguise, Return to your disguise.’

(For a contrasting view, Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’ (Book XII, 67) contains ‘Beasts are Rational’ (Bruta animalia ratione uti) in which Circe permits Odysseus to have a conversation with Gryllus, a fellow-Greek transformed into the body of a pig while retaining the mind of a man, in which Gryllus argues that his life is happier in his present state, and that pigs are more noble than men.)

(An aside: I have written elsewhere about the wider parallels between ‘Odyssey’ chapter X and ‘Luke’ chapter 8.)

In ‘Journey to the West’ the General of the Heavenly Navy-soldiers, or marine commandoes, is thrown out of heaven for drunkenly attempting to seduce the moon goddess. Falling to earth to be (re-)incarnated, he lands in a well for watering pigs, and takes on a monstrous half-human, half-pig form. Many years later, this lazy, gluttonous, lustful being encounters the personification of Mercy, and is given the name Zhu Bajie, or Pig Awakened to Abstinence—that is, to the power and ability to exercise self-control.

Both stories, one 3,000 years old from Greece, the other 500 years old from China (though each sits within traditions that weave them into both earlier and later texts) employ zoomorphism to explore the shadow personality we try to hide; the true, or noble, form of a healthily integrated life; and the possibility of transformation—in either direction. Neither story arises within a Christian context, but both speak to the Christian concepts of vices—including lust, gluttony, and laziness—and virtues—including chastity, temperance and diligence.

Appetite is common to humans and other animals. To become fully human is not to transcend appetite but to learn mastery—leadership, captaincy—over our appetites, which can make for good companions but sometimes make unwise choices (such as Odysseus’ men letting the wind that had carried them to within sight of home out of the bag, blowing them back from where they had come, before they arrive at Circe’s shore). There is a nobility to this, that does not arise from status among men (or pigs) but is inherent to every creature—human, pig, otherwise (so, at the end of the ‘Journey to the West,’ Zhu Bajie, who has not yet fully embraced the virtues of Abstinence, is not given back his divine form but remains half-human, half-pig, and is restored to the lower, earth-bound, rank of Cleaner of the Altars).

We are also more than capable of debasing ourselves and becoming what we are not (whether or not pigs are more noble than humans; whether or not men make very good pigs). Of needing to be saved from our own actions, or intentions—even unacted on—by Mercy intervening to protect others and to send us into an experience of desolation and of consolation—of coming to the full, terrible, consequences of our lostness, and to the re-orienting, re-conferring promise of grace, that points us towards the homecoming we long for, and strengthens us for the still-long and at times arduous journey it will take to get there.

Every culture has to wrestle with such things. And every tradition—including faith traditions—has a framework for this work.

Where have you seen yourself, with newfound clarity, for less-than fully human?

And where have you experienced the intervention of Mercy, to restore you to humanity?

What practices have you found helpful in engaging with this process?