The Cosmic Sacrifice: Eros in Exile
From Underworld to Elysium
Last night, I cried for him. I cried for Robin, not as the person he became, but as the person he never got the chance to be. The inner child inside me that still carries his fragility, his open heart, his need for touch. I cried because of her. The kind girl at the shelter. Let’s call her Maria. Her kindness was like a single ray of light cutting through the darkness that has been my life. For the first time in a long while, someone saw me. Not just saw me, but offered something. Real, genuine kindness. And I, Sylwen, who is left behind with nothing but the fragments of Robin’s existence, broke.
I cried, not in the usual way that mortals cry, but in a way that only those who have touched the deep abyss of despair can. I cried because I was holding something long lost, hope. The hope that in the presence of a kind soul, I might feel like I belong, even for a moment. I cried, not just for myself, but for Robin, and all like him, who never received the warmth he so desperately needed. I held my plush fox, as I wept. For in those hours, as I let the tears fall like raindrops on an empty field, I remembered what it was like to feel. For those few hours, I was no longer the one who carried the world’s burdens alone. I was not the child who had been abandoned to the shadows. I was not alone. It’s a sadness tied to a kind of cosmic neglect. Being a living sacrifice for a greater good without ever receiving the nurturing or love one deserves.
The softness of Maria’s kindness pierced me deeply. I wept because she was kind to me. I cried because the echo of my ancient grief, a grief that has followed me across lifetimes, suddenly found relief. But even as I wept, I knew that this cry, though it was for the child I once was, was not just a cry for Robin. It was a cry for all those who have ever been unseen, unheard, unloved. I cried for the love that was never returned, the touch that was never offered, the kindness that never came. I cried for Robin, who was too soft for this world. Crying together with my Anima, with Persephone.
The Cosmic Shattering: Robin as the Sacrificed Child
What I am, is not the underworld twin who got dismembered, but the daemon-self who remembers and grieves the act of cosmic shattering. Where Robin symbolised Dionysus-Zagreus, dismembered and shattered, by the sacrifice of his essence for the creation of the cosmic order of Kronos, I am what lives before and after it. Grieving with Lucia Nyktelios, with Persephone for her child. Robin was the child sacrificed to the underworld, becoming Hades, the ancient Zagreus. It became what Robin was assigned as a role within the grand cosmic drama of civilisation. As civilisation itself, is build upon the act of cosmic dismemberment of the Self, the soul of the person. This lives within every human as the primordial wound. Yet Robin who embodied Eros, the force of wholeness and reconciliation of opposites, did not only suffer this internally, yet it became his life.
He was cast in the role of Remus, of Yemo the primordial being, who is sacrificed by Romulus, so Manu, to create the cosmic order of sacrifice. Every civilisation does this act and perpetuates it unconsciously. There are those unconsciously chosen for their embodiment of Eros, the deep connection to the Self. Those who are whole are made to carry the burdens of the shadows of their family and society. Yet the cost of this is steep for the person. Robin for most his life, lived in the underworld. Within a state of depression, suicidality and eventually a state of psychic catatonia. Cut of from his Anima, his feeling side, from life itself. That is what it means to be made the king of the underworld. Not being part of society, and live in it as if in an emotional tundra.
Seeking a Way Out
The last five years especially Robin sought a way out. Out of the scapegoat complex, out of the civilizational pattern of scapegoat and external redeemer. To no longer be the lord of the dead, who suffers in a state of dismemberment. Emotionally cast out, by all those who were supposed to love and cherish him as a child, to see the Eros that he embodied and truly was. Robin ventured deep into his inner wilderness, whilst spending time in the wilderness of Finland. To turn his emotional exile into a place for growth. This is when the Koryos of Wolf-Apollo called him. To find belonging in the wild, and nurture the dismembered child within. Which was not just the state within, but the seed of my birth. A kindling of a new fire, the sacred task of Wolf-Apollo.
Grief and Rebirth
As Persephone and Lucia Nyktelios know, this is the price to pay and the grief to feel, to become once more whole. How the Lord of Death returns to be Eros once more. And Robin paid this price, he grieved for the dismembered child within himself, for his wounded Anima, for his Anima Christina, that transformed into Lucia Nyktelios. They held each other within love and grief, for what happened, for what never was, for the grief of a life spend within exile in the underworld. It is within this period in Finland that in a shamanic journey Robin found his inner child locked in a cave eating ash. Starved for the love and connection he deserved. Yet it is the love that in the end he had to give himself. He had to nurture his inner child, nurture his Anima, and hold each other within his mind and writings. For there was no one physically to hold him in his pain. At times Robin fell into states of catatonia, where only his Anima was there to hold him in his mind. To offer him some semblance of comfort.
Persephone navigates the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, she represents the journey through grief. She holds space for the grief of the dismembered child. Lucia Nyktelios, as a nurturing and compassionate figure, is the bridge between the underworld and the heavens, offering the warmth of Elysium (the afterlife paradise) as a place of love and restoration. A place of compassion and love without condition.
Elysium Found: The Birth of Sylwen
It was in the winter of Finland, that he found the warmth of Elysium. It is where he connected to the Self, to the archetypal parents of Lucia and Hermes within. To feel the archetypal love that he was always denied. He was sitting in his bed alone, crying feeling something he never felt before. Love. Not just any kind, but unconditional love, a love that did not demand anything, it just accepted him for who he was. It is within this moment of his psychic death, that I was born. As the transfiguration of Robin into what I am now, Sylwen, came through this death before death. To become Eros reborn from the depths of the abyss. The Self, Phanes (Eros) as lord of Elysium, the kingdom of happiness, wholeness and integration. Now holding space for the human, and child, that dissolved into it. The myth of Phanes, who in Orphic tradition is the primordial being of creation, in that sense symbolizes the origin of all things and the reunification of opposites. A return to wholeness through divine love.