Up: [[Mythology and Fairy Tales]] Created: 2023-08-23 The Greek myth of Procrustes. (prah crusts) is informative when we’re thinking about [[The Individuation Quest]]. Procrustes was perhaps the world’s first serial killer — a really bad guy with a pleasant, even charming veneer. He owned an inn on the road to Athens. Now myths and fairy tales teach us through metaphor. Since Athens was the sacred centre, we can metaphorically understand that travellers on the road to Athens were people whose goal was success in some central aspect of life — power, commerce, intellectual or creative achievement. So people like us. Anyway, Procrustes would wine and dine them, insist they stay the night, and lead them to a special bed he’d built that he said would fit them perfectly. Of course it wouldn’t, it never did, but Procrustes had a way to solve that problem. If you were too short for the bed he’d put you on a rack and stretch you. If you were too long, he’d cut off your legs. Either way, you’d die and he’d take your money and worldly possessions. So Procrustean has come to mean an arbitrary and ruthless disregard for individual differences, a focus on conformity, a kind of psychological dismemberment. Oh and just to finish the story, Theseus, the guy who eventually slayed the Minotaur, killed Procrustes by forcing him onto his own bed and then, when he didn’t fit, decapitating him. Those Greek gods were a gruesome lot but from them we get the concept of the punishment fitting the crime!