Table of contents hide 1 1. The lion of Nemea and the sign Leo 2 2. The hydra of Lerna and the sign Libra. 3 3. The Cerinia deer and the Cancer sign. 4 4. Erimanto's wild boar and the Capricorn sign. 5 5. The stables of Augias and the sign Pisces. 6 6. The birds of Estinfalo and the sign Aquarius 7 7. The bull of Crete and the sign Taurus 8 8. The mares of Diomedes and the sign Sagittarius. 9 9. The Hippolyta belt and the Virgo sign. 10 10. Gerions oxen and the sign Aries. 11 11. The apples of the Hesperides and the Gemini sign. 12 12. The can Cerbero and the sign Scorpio.

The 12 works of Hercules represent the twelve stages that man must overcome on the road to liberation, knowledge, truth; the twelve tests that the soul must overcome to free itself from the body, abandon its carnal envelope, cease to be a victim of its desires, passions, of good, of evil, and of the endless eternal cycle of rebirths.

We will talk about Heracles which means "glory of Hera" and therefore a lunar being, who had a twin brother Ificles that means "strong and glorious", to highlight the double nature of the hero as well as the relationship of the 12 works with the 12 Zodiac signs in the milky way.

Our hero had to submit to the mysteries of Eleusis, to which, at that time only the Athenians had access. He who began in these mysteries would be able to enter the other world and leave alive. That is no longer a feat but a prodigy.

The mysteries represented the divine drama of the soul, explaining the earthly drama of man. Today we are all actors in the drama and it is up to us to interpret the five luminous mysteries proposed by Ascended Master John Paul II.

The current method is based on the transitory truth that the common man is subject to the illusory nature of the manifestation, "just as man thinks so is he." However, when it becomes Hercules, the Sun God (or solar Angel) begins to reverse the process and a definite reorientation takes place.

1. The lion of Nemea and the sign Leo

Typhoon is a monster that symbolizes instinctive, irrepressible, destructive drives of emotional violence that devastates everything in its path. The famous Lion of Nemea is the son of Typhoon, that is, he was begotten by uncontrolled instinctive forces, comparable to the phenomena of nature and the effects of cataclysms, to which nothing and no one can stop. The sign Leo is the place where man's will can take uncontrolled, unpredictable instinctive forces, responding to his vital needs, to laws of mother nature that are also those of destiny.

Heracles fails to beat him with his weapons: bow, sword and mace. He ends up strangling him in a melee in which he kills the beast. Weapons represent the warrior's attributes, the instruments of the intellect and the spirit. The bow and arrows represent the ideas, the sword represents the choices, the decisions, the justice, the mace the power of knowledge, but only the firmness of the creative spirit can overcome the destructive physical force.

A divine inspiration dictates to Heracles to use the lion's own claws to skin him, in order to cover himself with his invulnerable skin and make a helmet with his head, a symbol of invulnerability, but also of invisibility.

2. The hydra of Lerna and the sign Libra.

The notions of power, despotism, intransigence, almost always denied in pounds, proliferate in the disciple very much in spite of himself, just as the snake heads of the Hydra multiply with their deadly poison. This is what happens with bad thoughts when they reproduce incessantly if they try to eliminate them superficially and abroad. To stop acting, you have to slaughter or cut the vital head and bury it forever. It is what Heracles did to end the Hydra. Then he can use his poison, not to kill or destroy blindly, but with justice and knowledge of the cause.

Will the world Hercule take this problem to the heavens? and l will raise the Hydra n of passion and hatred, of greed and aggression, of selfishness and ambition, to the region n of the soul?

3. Cerinia's deer and the sign Cancer.

The Cerinia deer is undoubtedly the most beautiful and symbolic and symbolic representation of the most beautiful of women: the Roman's Sofa, Wisdom to. Indeed, it is devoted to Artemis, the moon, has golden horns in which the sun shines, emphasizing the innocence that resides in it. He fed in his bosom a demon, his son Lacedem n, the demon of the lake, but fled to the country of origin. Thus, after gaining firmness and justice, Heracles acquired wisdom by seizing Cerinia's deer.

4. The boar of Erimanto and the sign Capricorn.

The wild boar was none other than Apollo, whom they called the destroyer, who had taken that form to avenge his son Erimanto and kill Adonis, Aphrodite's lover. In ancient Greece, the wild boar symbolized both courage and pure force as well as fertilizing or destructive forces, as the case may be. In addition, the wild boar is a lunar animal because of its crescent-shaped defenses, and lonely as its customs indicate. We are on the moon-saturn axis, cancer-capricorn. Thus it represents the lunar destructive madness, such as loneliness, isolation, saturnine figures of the ascetic or the hermitage of the forest that have to do with the sign Capricorn.

5. The stables of Augias and the sign Pisces.

Augias does not worry about knowing if the herds cause damage or spoil the Peloponnese valley, infesting the entire region. Hence, behind Heracles' work, building two fences and diverting the two rivers in a single day, a symbolic message still beats still more important: if we take without giving, in the long run, everything becomes sterile.

6. The birds of Estinfalo and the sign Aquarius

These birds had a beak, legs, wings and bronze feathers, which makes us think that they are covered with armor and that in this case they would be warriors, an army in the shadow sowing terror, destruction, death; that men for lack of solidarity, are powerless to fight and hunt. Athena goes in search of Heracles and gives him the instrument that will allow him to hunt the birds, or symbolically, exercise his free will: the castanets that symbolize the forecast. Anticipate and anticipate, act and react before anyone else because he knows what will happen, such is the great potential quality of the Aquarian native.

7. The Cretan bull and the Taurus sign

Minos seized the gift that Poseidon had given him, without fulfilling his promise of sacrifice, instead of doing so, dazzled by his beauty and strength, he chose to deceive Poseidon and conserve this powerful animal. In doing so, Minos yielded to the conservation instinct. He faltered at the weaknesses of Taurus: possession, selfishness, immobility. Heracles must sacrifice the bull, as in the ritual dedicated to Dionysus or Mithras.

8. The mares of Diomedes and the Sagittarius sign.

In Sagittarius Heracles's mission is to unify his head with his body, his spirit with his flesh, his masculine and cerebral component on the one hand, and his feminine and instinctive component on the other. But he is almost always a victim of his brain activity that dominates his wild and untamed nature, then prompting him to play his life rather than live it, or, he suffers from a frenzy of the senses and instincts that make him wild and indomitable, incapable of mastering and restraining oneself.

9. The Hippolyta belt and the Virgo sign.

The Amazons are free women, warriors, wicked, fierce, cruel, who use men for their needs, but who do not love them and do not want to be loved by them. Thus, being a priestess of Hera or Amazon is the same. In one case as in the other, it is the emotion that suffers or is canceled.

By delivering his belt to Heracles, as a pledge of his love, Hippolyta joins him in the purest, deepest and most true sense. It is a true carnal and spiritual fusion between man and woman; man, in this case, Heracles, embodying the power of dominated consciousness, and Hippolytus embodying the fruitful power of controlled emotion. It is a meeting, at the top, between the solar and lunar principles, the Amazons being, as you can guess, moon women. We also see the fusion of the opposite signs virgo-piscis. The frightening ride of the Amazons represents the unleashing of the unleashed, primitive emotions, which destroy everything in its path, which the natives of Pisces may be victims, since they aspire to carnal and spiritual love-fusion. They swim in emotion, receptivity.

10. Gerions oxen and the sign Aries.

Geriones is the grandson of Poseidon, king of the sea, and the great-grandson of the ocean. It came from a family dominated by water. Upon arriving on the island of Eritia, Heracles crossed two stages: he receives from Helio a gold cup that will allow him to defeat Oceano, which can mean that to overcome the emotional disorders that can paralyze us and induce total confusion, we must use the head, the active energies, the burning, your inner flame, all these qualities of Aries. By seizing the pack of Gerions, what Heracles achieves is the conquest of his individuality.

11. The apples of the Hesperides and the Gemini sign.

These apples are closely related to the one Eva ate. The three Hesperides allow themselves to be seduced by Ladón who is wrapped around the tree to obey Hera, so that the nymphs of the night cannot steal the apples. Intelligence is linked to the primordial instinct. So the tree is the man, the snake is the primary energy that circulates in it and the apples are the fruit of the knowledge that it has always had. This revelation is what Heracles has when doing the eleventh work. Indeed, it kills the snake that has a hundred heads and speaks all the languages ​​of the earth. Knowledge and truth are often given more to those who show innocence, candor and purity in their intentions than to those whose motives are having, knowing and power.

12. The can Cerbero and the sign Scorpio.

Can Cerbero, the demon of the abyss, is the guardian of something that does not exist, something absurd, since it has no meaning, no background, no end. But if something has no end, it is something that continues. The kingdom of the Dead of Hades is pure illusion, and it is enough to be an initiate in the Mysteries to be able to leave this kingdom unscathed, which it usually does not return. Life and death become one, just to engender a new life. Heracles, understanding this and doing his last job, could finally live free.

The current disciple still has four tests:

• The intuition that governs aspiration - Sagittarius. The soul consciousness in the early stages. First and second initiation. I visualize
• The lighting that governs intuition - Capricorn. Awareness of the soul in the later stages. I understand
• The inspiration that governs the service - Aquarius. Group consciousness. I arise
• The identification that governs liberation - Pisces. Divine consciousness. Me and the Father are one.

It has to develop the qualities of three planets to achieve it: Saturn, Venus and Uranus.

• Reason: from instinct to intellect.
• Love: from intellect to intuition.
• The Decision: from intuition to inspiration.

It is interesting to note that in Scorpio the inevitability of the final ascension of matter to heaven in Capricorn is established; This is foreseen in the history of Hercules in Scorpio.

The Buddha possessed the secret of revelation in Taurus, just as the secret of energy directed at Scorpio was the origin of the force of Hercules. But the Christ, knowing both secrets, understood the transcendental mystery with living rapport, because the light of the Transfiguration, suffered in Capricorn, revealed to him the glory.

These three great children of God have expressed for us the quality, the keynote and the development manifested in each sign:

Hercules-Scorpio. Strength through the test.

Buddha-Taurus. Illumination through the fight.

Christ-Pisces Resurrection through sacrifice.

Gemini and Libra are two strictly human signs, and correspond to the common man. Gemini represents the humanity of man, while Libra rules his spiritual and subjective life. The other signs, at their culmination, lead man beyond the stage of common humanity, and bring the following states of consciousness:

• Aries and Virgo. - The cosmic Christ. Universal and individual.
• Taurus and Pisces. - The Saviors of the world, for example, the Buddha and the Christ
• Leo and Aquarius. - The Servants of the world, for example, Saint Paul
• Sagittarius and Capricorn. The Ascended of the world, for example, John Paul II
• Cancer and Scorpio. The triumphant Disciples. Hercules

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This article was taken from the Encyclopedia of Astrology and the divinatory arts of the French Didier Colin, session Myths, legends and symbols. The astrological information was taken from the book Esoteric Astrology by Alice Bailey.