Torn Apart: A Myth of Yearning and Reunion

-By Ana Binny

It is believed that when humans were initially created at the beginning of time, they had a different form than they have today. They were both male and female, with four arms, four legs, and a single head composed of two faces (“The Myth of the Missing the Missing Half”).

Plato had Aristophanes, a great Greek theater and comedy writer, narrate the story of the Soulmates in "The Symposium." (“Symposium”)

Plato describes it this way:

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives searching for their other halves.”

Plato posits in the Symposium that the search for one's other half is based on love and harmony (Moderator).

Let us first define their origin before learning what the Gods feared in them. Androgyny and homosexuality are also seen in Plato's Symposium, in a myth where humanity started as three sexes: male-male people who descended from the sun, female-female people who descended from Earth, and male-female people who came from the Moon. [7] This is one of the earlier written references to androgyny - and the only case in classical Greek texts that female homosexuality (lesbianism) is ever mentioned (Wikipedia contributors).

Aristophanes then claims that when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated (192c). This feeling is like a riddle, and cannot be explained. Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. He says that men should fear the gods, and not neglect to worship them, lest they wield the ax again and we have to go about hopping on one leg, split apart once again (193a) (Wikipedia contributors 2).

And there was a time when humans were bold and powerful beings who dared to threaten the Gods. They threatened to destroy them and reign in their place, therefore establishing themselves as the new Gods. So the Gods had to respond, and they pondered how to deal with the threat posed by humanity, as well as what needed to be done to restore harmony and balance.

They considered fully wrecking humanity, fighting them in a battle and killing them with lightning, as they had done with the Titans. However, if humans were no longer there, there would be no more human sacrifices to Gods, an idea that the Gods hated.

As a result, Zeus created a new plan. They'd divide the humans in half and punish them for their selfishness and vanity. Apart from the suffering they would experience, they would also double the human population, resulting in a doubling of the sacrifices that humans would have to pay to them. As a result, humans all across the world were divided in half.

These new creatures were completely miserable, immersed in their anguish. They were so depressed that they wouldn't eat or drink for days, unaware of the fact that they would die.

Apollo, the God of music, truth and prophecy, healing, and light, couldn't take seeing them like this, so he patched them up, reconstructed their physical shapes, and only left the navel as a memory of their former selves. As a result, humans evolved from double-faced, double-sex creatures with aspects of humanity to single-faced, single-sex creatures with two arms and legs. And they yearned for their soul and bodily counterparts for the rest of their lives.

Their body natures would yearn to be complete with the physical natures of the other sex, and their souls would ache for the other half of their soul, their soulmate, to be whole. And, according to myth, when these two parts find each other, they will have a wordless comprehension of one another, will feel connected and exist in sync with one another, and will experience no greater pleasure.

In Plato’s Symposium, it says that,

“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole…and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him. (Conlin)”

It is a ridiculous theory the more one thinks about it, this business about two-headed, octopodal people, and once Socrates got a hold of the subject of the true nature of love, it didn’t stand up to his logic. But one has only to look inside himself to understand its resonance. People don’t want to see love as a dirty, ugly, vagrant — no matter how much you argue with the metaphor — because that isn’t how they feel. But Aristophanes freak show stays with us because love is simply not like that. It makes a person feel complete. Once he finds that “other-half”, he never wants to be parted from that person, because it is not the natural way to desire a state of only half-completion, only half-contentedness. And if he is unfortunate enough to never find that “other half,” he is still aware that something is missing and consequently spends a lifetime of agony trying to repair his broken self (Hunt).

Paul Eluard echoed this idea in a passage from his poem “Ombres.” (Knott)

In grief and in joy we were but one

Same color and same odor same taste

Same passions, same rest, same equilibrium (. . .)

I embraced you you embraced me I embraced myself

You embraced yourself without even knowing who we were

We may never know if the Soulmate tale is true. Those who have found their soulmate, or twin-flame, companion in life, however, consistently describe the event in the same way: "He was the stranger I recognized. She suddenly reminded me of home. We seemed to have known each other for many years. It appeared that we were intended to be together." So, may we all fearlessly go on this quest to discover the One for us, the One who is ourselves.

Works Cited

Moderator. “Androgyne in myth - Kosmos Society.” Kosmos Society, 10 Oct. 2022, kosmossociety.org/androgyne-in-myth.

Knott, Robert. “Artforum.” Artforum, 26 Sept. 2023, www.artforum.com/features/the-myth-of-the-androgyne-209622/#:~:text=THE%20TERM%20ANDROGYNE%2C%20TAKEN%20FROM,both%20sexes%2C%20in%20one%20figure.

Wikipedia contributors. “Androgyny.” Wikipedia, 1 Oct. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgyny#cite_note-7.

---. “Symposium (Plato).” Wikipedia, 24 Sept. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)#Interpretations.

 Plato; Cobb, William S. (1993). The Symposium and The Phaedrus: Plato's erotic dialogues. SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press

“SPLITTING GEMINI: PLATO, GIRARD AND ‘LA ESTRELLA DE SEVILLA’ on JSTOR.” www.jstor.org. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43808377.

Hunt, Austin. “When Zeus Split Human Beings - Austin Hunt - Medium.” Medium, 31 May 2018, medium.com/@AustinSamuelHun/when-zeus-split-human-beings-3020ca1a15a2.

“Symposium.” Google Books, books.google.co.in/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Conlin, Ben. “The Myth of Soulmates - Ben Conlin - Medium.” Medium, 17 June 2023, benconlin.medium.com/the-myth-of-soulmates-e4e8e9b155de.

“The Myth of the Missing the Missing Half.” oercommons.org.