Book 22 of the Odyssey (those 12 women)

Think about this: in Book 22 of the Odyssey, when Odysseus finally slaughters the suiters and clears out his Palace of their presence (they are the Many 'I's) there is the episode at the end of the book where he uses the 12 maids (a specific number) who had been having sex with the suiters and had been generally promiscuous in sporting with them and all that in Odysseus' absence to clean the palace of the dead and the blood, and then he and Telemachus take the 12 maids out and hang them all from the same rope.

It seems so cruel, but it's because they were foundational to the chaos.

There are alot of little details in this episode that will bear pondering on, but the overall meaning within the context of the Work and the Palace being Odysseus' inner being is those 12 sexually 'boundery crossing' or promiscuous maids represent the sex center of the inner being when it is operating where it shouldn't (sexual energy operating in centers where it doesn't belong) and is contributing to the chaos of the lower centers in sleeping man. And there are 12 of them because there are 12 divisions in the four centers: instinctive, moving, emotional, intellectual.

This goes back to my seeing the Work in full in the Odyssey which I wrote about on one of the yahoo forums way back when. This episode just struck me in its meaning though.