Umierający Sokrates i Wielka Matka
Dying Socrates and the Great Mother

Summary/Abstract: The last days of Socrates’ life, which, as indicated by ancient sources, took place at the turn of the months of Mounuchiōn and Thargēliōn, fit into the scheme of the sacral calendar of Athens as a spectacle completing the ritual sacrificial cycle connected with the commemoration of the Cretan expedition of Theseus and the Thargēliōn festival celebrated immediately after it. Socrates dies as a sacrifice offered to Artemis, the Great Mother, and at the same time fulfills the heroic myth. This myth on the Jungian psychoanalysis plane signifies the liberation of the conscious ego from the power of the unconscious, represented by the Great Mother archetype. The mythological-psychological context allows us to give a new interpretation to the discussions which Plato noted in his dialogues and which are connected with the death of Socrates. Above all, they put in a new light the Socratic majeutics, as about the service of Artemis, as well as the consideration of the immortality of the soul and the eschatological myths told on their occasion, which Plato wrote down on the pages of the Phaedo.

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