When Penelope tells her story to the stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise, she reveals how the loom strategy she used to keep the suitors at bay came from a divine source: “A god from the blue it was inspired me….”[i] So Penelope set up a great loom and for four years wove daily a shroud for Laertes, and each night unraveled what she had woven.
Penelope’s weaving, a gift of the goddess Athena, is a motif that bears multivalent meaning in The Odyssey. For one, it can be understood in relation to the poetic narrative of the epic, as any great story is a tale woven into form employing words like threads. We can also think about the weaving motif in relation to Odysseus who is trying to make his way home and is thwarted at various times by Poseidon, and even his own crew, and literally goes backwards, farther away from Ithaca than before — ‘weaving’ his way home.
Whereas the epic treats Odysseus’ many adventures on his journey home, Penelope is on her own journey if we look at her weaving in a certain way. Perhaps the current circumstances of our Covid-19 world presents—confined movements, limited outward excursions and contact with others—gives us an insight into Penelope’s style of journeying. Unlike Odysseus who spent years on distant shores, from the battlefield of Troy and Calypso’s sweet scented island, to sailing through foreign seas meeting exotic people and strange creatures, Penelope was home. Her movements were free within the confines of the domestic sphere and her whereabouts familiar—the same faces, same food, same views.
Yet, she traveled far. Her weaving was the journey through time to the present moment when Odysseus returns. By going back and forth over the vertical threads with her shuttle she wove her way forward. In undoing those very threads each night, she could weave herself onward again. Undoing and doing, unraveling and raveling, this rhythm carried her on, day after day. Her fingertips traveled a thousand thread leagues. Haven’t these many months allowed us to experience Penelope’s style of journeying? Have we not been pressed to learn something about the uses of confinement and the passage of time?[ii]
René Guénon’s study on the symbolism of weaving in The Symbolism of the Cross reveals cosmic dimensions of the metaphor. On the loom, the warp refers to the vertical threads that are formed and create the foundation of the weave. The weft (or woof) are the horizontal threads made by the shuttle passing through the warp. In cosmic terms, the warp corresponds to the archetypal or divine principles of the world and the weft is the time, place and conditions in which those archetypal energies manifest. The Hindu concept of Śruti, the vertical warp, corresponds to the transcendent principles of the universe. Smṛti, the horizontal weft, is the human interpretations and applications of those principles in life. Together these threads weave the world as a garment of divinity. In another beautiful metaphor, Śruti is compared to the light of the Sun and Smṛti to the light of the Moon, the two luminaries symbolizing not only the eternal and temporal but also masculine and feminine energies in the universe.[iii]
What does this symbol of the loom offer for our contemplation of day to day experience? I would like to have us listen to it in relationship to our inner lives, the life of the psyche grounded in the archetypal patterns of nature. So much of contemporary culture privileges our outer world orientation at the great expense of our interior compass. Penelope’s journey challenges the notion that life happens only in relation to the world out there. It is as if it’s only when we are in an Odyssean epic and dealing with outer life and its collective human activities, that anything of value is going on. In James Hillman’s words, “Events are not essential to the soul’s experiencing. It does not need many dreams or many loves or city lights. We have records of great souls that have thrived in a monk’s cell, a prison, or a suburb. But there must be a vision of what is happening, deep ideas to create experience.”[iv] Those deep ideas are the vertical warp threads of the archetypal imagination, which astrology, myths, poetry and art render visible.
Penelope’s patient weaving and humble unraveling presents a paradox in terms of journeys. To undo what she has done means to go backward, start again—no forward progress. Yet it is the unraveling that keeps the story moving. The unraveling is what requires the spinning of new threads. In psychological terms the unraveling is a metaphor for old attitudes and habits, frames of mind undone in order for new threads and new patterns to emerge. Penelopean loom work means traveling to interior reaches where the warp and weft meet in such a way that kindle the light of deep experience.
In astrological terms, Penelope’s unraveling is the magic of retrograde cycles, which is when the planets appear to move backwards. In relation to the cosmos at this time, we are now at the beginning of Mars’ retrograde in Aries, a period lasting from September 9th to November 14th. The sensibility at work in Penelope, her style of loom journeying provides a metaphor for the imaginative possibilities of this Mars retrograde. Mars symbolizes life’s forward drive, and as the warrior of the Sun it is the force of activity and courage to pursue our vision and call (in Aries the desire is to do this with vigor, enthusiasm and haste). During Mars’ retrograde, inner focusing is invited as counterbalance to the momentum that defines its usual emphasis on doing. We could say the vitality of Mars during a retrograde becomes more lunar in that it becomes more receptive to inner connections and awareness.
A Penelopean approach to Mars retrograde is not so much about moving forward but kindling some inner light. It invites a greater capacity to paying attention to how our courage, purpose and will live inside us. It could be an inner pursuit for understanding how we use our energy, which would inform what we do and how we move once the paths open up again. And they will.
[i] Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles, p. 394
[ii] Pressures abound as the Saturn-Pluto conjunction reflects our perceptions and responses to life in the pandemic. It strikes me that a similar psychic reality was afoot for Penelope. At the start of The Odyssey, she has lived for years in a cloud of not knowing whether Odysseus was alive or dead. In addition to that, could we not imagine that the suitors who came to Penelope’s house each day pressuring her to remarry one of them provoked her survival instincts and fears not only for herself but her son?
[iii] In Joseph Campbell’s Asian Journals he describes Śruti as, “harkening to the voice of the living God, the Muse”[iii] and notes how these two concepts also communicate the polarity of knowing (Śruti), and seeking (Smṛti), which add another level to the cosmic dimension of the warp and weft.
[iv] Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 122
Note: A non-astrological version of this essay was published in the Joseph Campbell Foundation Myth Blast series, August 2020.
Image credit: “Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night” (1886) by Dora Wheeler (1856–1940)
Silk embroidered with silk thread, 45 x 68 in. (114.3 x 172.7 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York