The Colours of the Soul

 The opening words of the Iliad, therefore of Western literature, are about wrath: “Heav’nly Goddess! sing Achilles’ wrath”.  It could therefore be argued that our culture, allegedly based on rational assumptions, on Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy and on Euclid’s geometry, was originally marked not by reason, but by a form of passion: wrath.
Ancient Greek tales about passions entail entering a partly familiar and partly unfamiliar world: if passions derive from the unconscious, and are hence universal, the way they are described depends essentially on the psychological and cultural models of each civilization. Epic passions, such as wrath, describe a choleric ego, love is the passion of all passions, whereas melancholy is the saddest of passions. In ancient philosophy, passions were considered to be the soul’s foe, impulses that needed to be fought in order to achieve the peace of mind of the wise. But should we really consider passions to be a stain, or should we accept the fact that they are the real substance that the soul is made of, just like the tesserae of a mosaic represent the essence that the mosaic depicts?
The question about passions also represents that of the soul’s life. If, by their very nature, passions were embedded in our unconscious mind, it would be impossible to identify or even describe them without a conscious elaboration of the ego. Having a passion therefore also means having a conscious perception of it. Passions are perceived only through the conscience, although they are beyond its control. They are the meeting point between reason and the unconscious mind. Hence, the book deals in contemporary terms with what occurred in the mind in an ancient society that represents the basis of today’s civilization.