The ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, who journeyed to retrieve the legendary Golden Fleece, has sparked a debate among scholars over whether the fleece symbolized the sun or spring.
Nineteenth-century mythology experts adopted the long-held view that the Golden Fleece symbolized the sun. This was a long-held theory, but, in the early 20th century, the prevailing interpretation shifted, with the coveted Golden Fleece thought to symbolize springtime—when the earth is rejuvenated and reborn after a long winter of darkness and dormancy. In spring, the land begins to produce crops again, continuing the everlasting cycle of life.
Nevertheless, the idea that the ancient Greek myth of the Golden Fleece had a solar connection was never forgotten. In modern times, some scholars in archaeology and the occult continue to support the solar theory, as evidenced by scholarly works.
The origin of the Golden Fleece
In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece was the wool of the ram that carried Phrixus and his twin sister, Helle, as they fled from their evil stepmother, Ino. They were the children of the king of Boeotia, Athamas, and Nephele, the goddess of the clouds.
When Ino became their stepmother, she devised a scheme to get rid of the two children she despised. She destroyed all of Boeotia’s crops and bribed the messengers sent to consult the Oracle. She told them to report back that, according to the Oracle, for the earth to yield crops again, the gods required the sacrifice of Phrixus and Helle.
As the two children were about to be sacrificed, their real mother, Nephele, sent a flying, golden ram to rescue them. The twins climbed onto the ram, but during the journey, Helle looked down and fell into the sea at a point that was later named the Hellespont in her honor (modern day Dardanelles). Phrixus continued his journey and eventually reached Colchis, where King Aeëtes, the son of Helios, the sun god, ruled. His wife, Queen Perseis, was an Oceanid and sister to Circe and Pasiphaë.
Aeëtes received him kindly and gave him his daughter Chalciope as a bride. Grateful for his good fortune, Phrixus sacrificed the golden ram to Zeus and offered the Golden Fleece to Aeëtes in gratitude for his generosity. Aeëtes took the precious Golden Fleece and placed it in a sacred grove, where it was guarded by a never-sleeping dragon. This Golden Fleece hence became the object of Jason’s adventurous quest during his Argonautic expedition to retrieve it.
The sun symbolism
English classical scholar Frederick Apthorp Paley (1815–1888) argued that the sun is generally symbolized by a fiery cloud or a golden fleece. He compared it to the fringed cloud that displays spangled light at dawn, associated with Aurora, the Greek mythology goddess of the dawn. This cloud was often depicted on ancient vases as a fringed goatskin.
According to Paley, Jason’s expedition to bring home the Golden Fleece was an attempt —“not either a very absurd or a very unnatural one in such remote ages, when the only knowledge was obtained through the senses—to get close enough to the rising sun to discover its true nature.
In the mythical destination of Phrixus’ journey, the sun—the ram with the Golden Fleece—flies through the air to the land where the sun sets and rises again and again. There, he is sacrificed on the shore in the fire of sunset; his skin is hung upon the tree of the nightly heaven and guarded by the dragon until it is captured by the solar hero, by whom the darkness is dispelled as the dragon is slain.
British archaeologist and classical scholar Arthur Bernard Cook wrote in 1904 that the ancient Greek myth of Phrixus closely parallels the myth of Phaethon, son of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid Clymene, thus supporting the solar symbol theory. Phaethon (Greek: Φαέθων, meaning “radiant” in Ancient Greek) traveled far east to meet his father and confirm his ancestry. He asked Helios to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun. Despite Helios’ warnings that only he could control the wild horses of his chariot and the dangers of such a celestial journey, young Phaethon persisted and was reluctantly granted his wish.
Indeed, the young man could not control the horses of Helios’ chariot, as they dragged him down too close to the Earth, scorching it, and then too far up into the sky, freezing it. After numerous complaints from the stars and the Earth, Zeus interfered and threw a lightning bolt, instantly killing Phaethon, whose body fell into the river Eridanus. A Latin treatise on ancient Greek mythology, preserved in a Vatican manuscript, adds that the Golden Fleece stripped from Phrixus’ ram was that “in which Zeus climbs the sky”—a clear example of Zeus being equated with the sun.
Spring or seasonal symbolism
By the end of the 19th century, the solar symbolism theory of the ancient Greek myth of the Golden Fleece was considered outdated by some scholars and was replaced by seasonal symbolism. The sun’s yearly journey is intimately tied to the annual cycle of vegetation. It is no surprise, then, that when the solar theory of mythology gradually lost support, the vegetative theory emerged.
Social anthropologist James G. Frazer, in his 12-volume The Golden Bough (1906–1915), argued that many ancient religions were based on myths of a dying and reborn vegetation god. He believed this cycle was often enacted through the ritual killing of a sacred king or his substitute to ensure nature’s renewal. Frazer discusses the myth of the Golden Fleece, interpreting the ram as a substitute for Athamas (or his son), whose royal family practiced weather magic to ensure the resurrection of the crops.
The seasonal symbolism theory of the German scholar R. Shröder (1899) saw Jason as the “spring hero” who retrieved the Golden Fleece. For Shröder, Jason carrying Hera across the river symbolized the freeing of the spring goddess.
Scholar Andrew Lang, in Custom and Myth (1884), explored myths as symbolic stories tied to nature and the seasons. The tale of the Golden Fleece has been interpreted as representing spring’s victory over winter, with the return of light and growth. Some have also seen an astral meaning in the myth, linking parts of the story to the sun’s journey through the stars and constellations over the year, used to measure seasons and agricultural cycles by ancient peoples.