The Furies

Beyond a certain point, there is no return.

This point has to be reached. 

-Kafka

When the Greek god Cronos flung the severed phallus of his father toward the sea, the Furies were born of the blood that fell to the earth.  The Furies embody the dark side of the binding power of Eros,  the madness of blood betrayed, the primal emotional cry when one's identity is denied.  These three whip-wielding sisters, winged with serpentine claws are the beastliest of predators when enraged. They emerge from their underground lair to punish the most heinous of crimes. Their names are Unceasing, Vengeance and Strange Dark Memory. 

Relentless, begrudging, insatiable and pitiless, they avenge all betrayals and sins against primal relationships with ruthless intensity.  They do not allow a single disregard of the humanity of others through envy or greed or insufficiencies of love to go unpunished.  Even inner struggles between independence and relationship provide fertile soil for the scathing marks of the Furies' claws.  Fury is a psychological reality, like madness and guilt, that cannot be denied.  They must be suffered through in order to reap the benefits of their deeper meanings.  The Furies know their way around the darkest parts of humanity.  They were born there and continue to thrive there as horrifying reflections of the darkest, meanest, most hateful nature that lives inside each of us.  The Furies painfully dismember all prior realities about who we thought we may be and force us toward the fertile magic of rebirth.   

Because of their destructive force, the Furies also offer correction and redirection toward wholeness... if we allow ourselves to embrace their work fearlessly. This is challenging because when the Furies are in action, they tear us apart so thoroughly that it becomes difficult to believe we will survive.  If we let them lead us to an underworld initiation, their darkness becomes communal and guilt no longer makes sense. 

We have been taught to deny the Furies, shrugging them off as "crimes of passion" or "temporary insanity" but like an earthquake pressing toward rupture, they continue to burst forth.  When we do not give them the credit they deserve, they bomb, chide and mutilate until they are sure that perpetrators of crimes of the heart know they are watching. The Furies cannot be subdued and it is a wise person who learns to befriend them, through right actions, empathetic approaches to relationship and a recognition of our own suffering souls. 

We all will have to go below, again and again.  It is the Furies who drag us down into darkness to set things right.