Crystals IV

Zeus’ final preparation

Zeus’ final preparation

Well before prudent Zeus had reached the stage of his final training preparation, and right from the moment his mother Rhea had handed him secretly to the Kourites and the Diktaies Nymphs, he had been exposed to a constant educational and training process. Since he was born, the Kourites had taken up his protection and training. In their training effort, the Kourites had been guided by the program of studies given to them by Gaia. Still, to cover the educational needs that emerged in the process, they often would come up with improvisations which they would fit in the already educational program. Besides, Gaia herself had specified the dynamics of each and every program of studies that Zeus would go through.

During his childhood and adolescence, from eight to eighteen years old, quick-thinking Zeus received systematic education in many areas, based on the directives of Gaia and Rhea, so that he could come through the difficult project he was to undertake. He was trained in proper etiquette, mathematics, music, astronomy, philosophy and acquired a good basis in medicine, medicinal treatments but also in the sacred dances. At the same time, he was being trained in gymnastics, horse-riding, hunting, javelin throw, fencing, boxing and footrace. Particular emphasis was given to martial dancing, which represented the epitome of his physical exercises, a complex combination of martial and dancing moves. Even more particularly, he received training in lyre playing, the capture of wild aurochs with his bare hands, hunting wild boar armed with a knife, hunting vultures and Stymphalian Birds with bow and arrow. It is said that of those birds that were saved, most escaped to the Peloponnese, around Stymphalia Lake, where Hercules, a distant descendant of Zeus, would wipe them out thousands of years later.

One of the most difficult and dangerous training was the successful capture of a lion and other similar predators, alive. Such successes of Zeus were the epitome of his training effort by the Kourites. The joy they had as a result of the successful completion of their efforts, was the payback for their investment. Another, similarly important training Zeus received was learning to yell scary shouts and martial cries to terrorize his opponents. Certainly, to be able to withstand hardship, he was trained in real-time hard living conditions, in caves, staying without food and water, stranded in vast forests, under rain and snow conditions at the summit of the highest mountains, in desolate places and in gorges at night. Hunting wild boars but also all the training in hardship was taking place between the valley of Messara and the south outskirts of Psilorites. After all that, Zeus had been transformed into a fearless and invincible Warrior of the Light.

Throughout all those trials, he had a beloved companion whom he had befriended when he was a child in the gorges of Psilorites. During his training sessions in the gorges together with the Kourites, one day he came across a very small, wounded eaglet whose wings were still incomplete. Compassionate Zeus took it under his wing, cured its broken talon and its wounded wing. Ever since that time, they became inseparable friends. Zeus turned it into the symbol of his power when he was invested with the power over the whole planet. But it also stands for the symbol of the freedom each and every one is seeking.

Zeus always admired the lonely, proud eagles that soared up high all by themselves. It is the loneliness or rather the solitude of all those who seek freedom. The more one gains it, he higher he soars. Only the very few are those who soar up there, while the masses on the ground look at them with jealous envy, and slander them in any chance they get. So, after every spiritual level one achieves, he leaves behind a whole lot of masses and packs, with fewer and fewer individuals remaining next to him, thus increasing his solitude. So, it goes without saying that the higher one would climb, the lonelier he will be. It is the spiritual solitude of the thinking people, who have both the blessing and the curse, to live up there in the country of the eagles, and live under a universal light. That light will be felt only by the very few!

When sharp-witted Zeus reached his twentieth birthday, he had completed all the educational levels, including the highest level only reached by few and was then deemed ready for the final stage. The final trial would be on everything he had been taught, just before his initiation ceremony, after which he would take up active duty. The trials would last six days and on the seventh day, the official award ceremony of the armor and weapons would take place. That seventh day was later set by Zeus to be a day of relaxation and celebration for the whole planet Earth. The trial he was about to undergo would be double-pronged: first to showcase himself as a spiritual warrior and second to demonstrate himself as a martial artist and warrior. Depending on his successes on the upcoming trials, he would receive commensurate weapons. He had already acquired the iridescent golden-yellow aura that every spiritual personality has. Both of those would turn him into a Warrior of the Light. Just one of the two would not be enough. One without the other would be ineffective and potentially dangerous.

One month before the final trial, perceptive Zeus sequestered himself in a thick forest, far from the Kourites’ settlement. It was the final and cruelest trial of survival for a month. During that trial, Kourites had been watching him from afar and were trying to set up against him all sorts of obstacles they could think of. They stole his food, clothes and weapons. They messed up the traces of the game he was hunting for, made a clatter to shoo them away, and came up with all sorts of tricks to disorient him and such like. Still, they directed large dangerous predators where he lived and threw large reptiles into the caves he was spending the nights in, muddied the water from the sources, and mixed every adjoining path in the forest. They came up with all sorts of tricks to make his life more difficult than it already was. They left nothing they did not try on him. He spent a month being totally isolated in forests and caves, each day of which he would have to undergo a series of trials before the final trials and ceremonies. That dangerous month comprised the final stage of his highest training that no one had been able to endure in past except very few who would do so in the future, such as Hercules.

All preparations were successfully dealt with in full by Zeus. When he reached the stage of the trials themselves, he passed them all very easily, except in the case of the sixth. He had some difficulties in the trial of philosophy, something that got both Rhea and Gaia worried. It indicated a weakness that would show much later during Zeus’ course, when at a certain point, arrogance would take hold of him as well. But in any case and for the time being, Zeus was getting over one trial after another.