Originally Posted by jgreen44

Logos and Eros are the male and female principle, respectively; Yang and and Yin; the vertical bar and the horizontal bar of the Christian cross representing, respectively, the active and passive principles; the upward and downward pointing triangles of the Star of David. In Empedoclean thought, these are the concepts of Strife and Eros. In Greek mythology, Apollo and Donysus represent these ideas. These are basic realities, intrinsic to every person and culture, archetypes.

"The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness, or masculine)
the eros (appetitive, or desire, or feminine)
Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris – the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

As for ego death, the underworld journeys of Inanna, Heracles, Orpheus, Jesus and others are stories of ego death. The idea of ego death is probably common to all shamanistic cultures but it defintiely goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.

"Parmenides, in turn, travels to the depths of the underworld—the world of death—and meets a goddess whom Kingsley identifies as Persephone, the queen of the dead. It is only by making this journey that Parmenides is able to learn the truth about reality and mortal opinion and return to the world of the living with his prophetic message. Thus, both Empedocles and Parmenides, like other mystics, find wisdom, healing, and eternal life in what most people suppose to be the dark and grim reality of death. As Kingsley puts it, the absolutely essential requirement for traveling this spiritual path is that, “You have to die before you die.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley_(scholar)

"When all visible light is extinguished, one finds the light of the self."

- The Upanishads

And this passage from the Gospel of Thomas...

"The kingdom is like a certain woman who was carrying a jar full of meal.
While she was walking on the road, still some distance from home, the handle of the jar broke.
The meal emptied out behind her on the road. She did not realise it; she had noticed no accident.
When she reached her house, she set the jar down and found it empty."

Originally Posted by MarkA

The cross analogy seems rather forced to me. Are you explaining some gnostic tenet here? The cross is a metaphor only?

Originally Posted by jgreen44

Tree of Life = Eros, Tree of Knowledge = Logos

Consider this:

1 Corinthians 13:10 ...when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

In the Temple, Scripture (the Torah) stood in for something "perfect" to which the Hebrews no longer had access. That "perfect" something lost had once been located in the Garden of Eden and guarded by two cherubim. That "perfect" something was the Tree of Life. Similarly the Torah (also known as the Tree of Life) was guarded by two cherubim placed on top of the Ark of the Covenant. And as we all know, the Torah means the Written Law or Scripture. The Tree of Life, therefore, was or is the perfect thing which was replaced by an imperfect thing. The imperfect thing was the Written Law, the Torah or Scripture. The imperfect thing was a form of Logos. Mere proximity to the perfect thing, the Tree of Life, provided Adam and Eve with the original law or the perfect law. The Tree of Life is synonymous with Paul's "law of the Spirit of life". The Tree of Life is synonymous with Eros and, oddly enough, was the original Logos or Law. Originally, Eros and Logos were one.

Jeremiah 31:33

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Originally Posted by spamandham

Cross symbolism predates Christianity. Although I'm unfamiliar with any reason to give it the meaning jgreen gave it, it's easy to see how a pre-existing symbol (symbolic of what in a Christian context ...?) could get woven into the Christian tale.

Originally Posted by Chili

Oh nice, but for me eros is just opposite to life as it is selfish, temporal, needs an object, needs a subject, is jealous, appeals to reason, is without substance and therefore void, is an illusion and opposite to life which has substance in the beauty of truth = agape.

Originally Posted by jgreen44

Actually Eros has two sides.


"Eros brings beauty, meaning and divinity into our lives. It comes to us through a very particular epiphany, a passionate inspiration present in a particular lover, teacher, melody, or landscape. We long to follow it always. But this is not the whole story. For eros also brings us obsessions, cruelty, abandonment, and betrayal."

- The Other: Loveliness by Harriet Eisman
http://www.chronogram.com/1998/02feb.../F-5eisman.htm

"Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so . . . . He belongs on one side to man's primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony."

- C.G. Jung, The Eros Theory
http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/Poseidon2.html

Originally Posted by Chili

In other words, when the opposites are gone in our own mind in the convergence of the twain then you will enter the kingdom (elsewhere called "sage impotency" or "there is no marriage in heaven" or "no impediments in the marriage of true minds" or "they become one" in Gen.2).

Originally Posted by Chili

It is like a diamond, sir, tranforming the human heart in the mind of man to which the kundalini is raised.

Originally Posted by Chili

To be blunt, I have no problem with eros bringing beauty into our lives once you have a hardon but never thought that it is a good idea to have a hardon for Jung because he will screw your brains out.

Originally Posted by jgreen44

Or...."The Tree of Life is synonymous with Eros and, oddly enough, was the original Logos or Law. Originally, Eros and Logos were one."
"You shall separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, suavely, and with great ingenuity and skill. Your skillful work ascends from earth to heaven and descends to earth again, and receives the power of the superiors and of the inferiors. So thou hast the glory of the whole world--therefore let all obscurity flee from thee. This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing."

- Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet

Originally Posted by MarkA

I am unclear about the arguments being put by Chili and jgreen44.

Are you claiming that at the time the Inanna myth was written down the society in question had detailed knowledge of the workings of the human mind that prefigured modern psychoanalysis? If so could you please provide some evidence to support this?

To me it seems the meanings you are giving to what appear to be very straight forward texts are imaginative at best and totally without support at worst. Giving twentieth century or even late classical meanings to early iron age or bronze age texts is rather odd.