Fury

Two mentions:

As is often the case in mythology, the symbolism and deeper meaning of the characters was forgotten over time.

This is the case with the Erinyes who took the name of Furies in Roman mythology. From spiritual powers in charge of putting seekers back on the right path, they became the mere forces of vengeance, and appropriate names were given to them.

Originally, in Greek mythology, they were nothing but personifications of curses, i.e. a call to order pronounced upon one who has strayed from the right path.

It would seem, therefore, that Sri Aurobindo used the word ‘fury’ in both senses.

In Greek mythology, the Erinyes were the goddesses of retribution who punished men for crimes against the natural order. The worst were those committed against one’s parents - cutting the seeker off from his divine origin - or one’s children - preventing certain right developments from manifesting themselves.

Also, one could bring the curse of the Erinyes upon one’s relative in response to the latter’s wrongdoing. The most powerful of these was the curse of the parent upon the child.

According to Hesiod, the Erinyes sprung from the blood of Ouranos when he was castrated by his son Cronos: they appeared when the forces of creation entered into action. The structural consonants of the name ‘Erinyes’ are the same as those of Ouranos, Rho and Nu, (Ρ+Ν), those two names bearing therefore the same kind of symbolism, that is the evolution of the right movement of creation according to the divine plan. Being born from the blood of Ouranos, they represent the essence of what Ouranos symbolizes, that is to say the right evolution in the creation of the divine plan.

According to Homer, the Erinyes can also take vengeance on men in the netherworld, i.e. on a movement that has been inscribed in the unconscious.

The Erinyes were also believed to be receptive to the utterance of a just and true word.

The human misdeeds upon which the Erinyes are said to act are the only really serious transgressions on the path. But they are not irremediable since the Erinyes, ‘guardians of the right movement’, allow the right attitude to be found again. To bring the curse of the Erinyes upon someone is to call upon the forces that can help in the return to the right path.

That is why the Erinyes were also called Eumenides, which signifies ’the well-meaning’, or ‘soothed goddesses’, and in Athens ‘semnai theai’, that is to say “the venerable goddesses”.

It is worth noting that in the late Greek tradition, the name of one of the Erinyes, Telphoussa, was usually a byname for the goddess Demeter who represents the force helping the seeker to work towards unity (she is the mother – meter – of union, Δ)

It is, therefore, to the first meaning that Sri Aurobindo refers in Book 1: a spiritual spur.

It seems that in Book 7, Sri Aurobindo uses the word ‘fury’ in another sense: a tenebrous power, at least a dangerous force residing in the subconscient.