Myth of Er

myth of ER

greek: Πολιτεία Ι΄ (Republic Book X)

Definition

The Myth of Er closes Plato's Republic (Book X, 614b-621d, c. 380 BCE). It tells of the soldier Er, who returns from near-death to describe a journey to a meadow among the heavens where souls choose their next lives. Plato shows Ananke (Necessity) keeping the great spindle the cosmos turns on, the eight planetary whorls each humming a note of the music of the spheres, the three Fates — Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos — confirming each soul's lot-drawn choice of a life and a guardian spirit, and the soul passing beneath Necessity's throne before rebirth.

In Tradition

For the Hellenistic blend of philosophy and astrology, the Myth of Er is the founding Platonic source for the soul's pre-birth descent through the planetary spheres, the choice of a guardian spirit (daimon) to oversee the life, and the lot-based way fate is handed out. Greenbaum identifies that last piece as the template behind the Hellenistic Lots and the personal-daimon doctrine, and Clare Martin reads the chosen daimon as an early version of the birth-chart idea.

In Practice

Hellenistic astrologers and modern readers draw on the Myth of Er at three connected levels. As cosmology, the spindle and its eight whorls — turning at different speeds, each Siren sounding a tone — give the model of the planetary spheres that Hellenistic thought folds into the doctrine of the soul's descent past the planetary rulers, set out in Macrobius and the Hermetica. As an account of fate, the soul's lot-draw, its choice of a life and a daimon, and the Fates' confirmation supply the template for Hellenistic Lot-based reading; Greenbaum (The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, Chs. 7-9) traces this straight into the seven Hermetic Lots and the Panaretus framework. As daimon doctrine, the chosen daimon as "guardian of the life and fulfiller of the choice" (Republic 620d-e) gives the Hellenistic personal daimon — a fate-companion, not an outside god — that Clare Martin (Mapping the Psyche Volume 2) reads as a mythic forerunner of how a birth chart discloses character and destiny.

Historical Origin

The source is Plato, Republic Book X (614b-621d), c. 380 BCE. Standard editions of the Greek are Burnet's OCT (1902) and Slings's OCT (2003); standard English translations include Jowett (1871) and Shorey's Loeb (1930-35). For its reception in astrological writing, see Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology (2016), Chs. 7, 9, and 12 — covering the lots-of-fate apparatus, the lot-and-daimon choice, and Plato's Ananke — and Clare Martin, Mapping the Psyche Volume 2 (2016), Ch. 6, on the personal-daimon doctrine.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading