Asmodeus, King of Lust and wrathful longing, rises from within the smoke of the underworld. He sneers, “The little boys may have danced with demons, brother. But now, let’s see how you fare against a King of Hell.” His legions snarl and surge like hunger itself.
 

“You think yourself ready for redemption Hades, but the dead cannot live in sunlight. Unless—” he grins, “you dissolve. Let desire be your compass. Let it tear you apart and remake you.” Hades does not recoil. He kneels not in surrender, but in reverence—to desire not as master, but as guide. And so, the god of the dead begins to die.

From the cavern of surrender rises two figures: Abraxas and Shiva—one offering annihilation, the other transmutation. Abraxas speaks first: “Let go of all names, all forms. Be erased, and find yourself in the nothingness.” But desire, no longer screaming or clawing, stirs softly within Hades—a gentle ache, not for pleasure, but for meaning. It inclines him toward Shiva, who dances in fire, eyes glowing with truth.

 

“Burn, and be reborn,” Shiva says. Hades sees truth in both. He does not reject oblivion, but chooses the flame that leaves ash behind. Not to escape himself—but to be remade. And so the god of the underworld becomes more than a god. He becomes human.

In the smoke of his transformation, Chiron waits—wounded and immortal, healer and hurt. “What Asmodeus said is true,” he tells Hades. “Desire wounds most deeply where love once lived. The greater the love, the greater the grief.” Chiron places his hand over Hades’ heart. “Your deepest wound is your deepest bond. Do not cast it away. Transform it. Let it guide you home.” And then, he too fades into mist.

The ground turns soft, cool. A gentle wind moves through the soul. Archangel Raphael appears, holding a luminous flask. “You have opened the wound. Now let it be cleansed.” He pours light over Hades’ cracked form, and with it flows a balm that does not erase pain—but makes it holy. Healing does not come as forgetting, but as integration. The wound remains—but no longer festers.

Healed but not whole, Hades is summoned by the sacred figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who speaks not of travel, but of alchemy. “You have died and returned. You have walked three worlds. You are now thrice-born.” Hermes places a golden serpent at Hades’ feet, which coils up his body and rests at his throat. “You are no longer merely god or man. You are Logos and Mythos united. Speak with that knowing.”

Hades finds himself wandering deep within an untouched forest and approaches an inky lake rests beneath a swelling full moon. At its heart, a lone figure bathes—unashamed, magnetic. Hades, rapt, stands at the water's edge. The bather turns, moonlight revealing their countenance—not of a maiden, but that of a man. Wild. Luminescent. Artemis.

 

The once-guarded hunter opens his arms—naked and sovereign beneath the stars. Behind him, a deer trembles at the water’s edge, locked in fearful recognition of its own reflection. With a single clap from Artemis, it comes back to awareness then bolts from the scene. 

Hades steps forward and speaks “That was me once… nephew?” Artemis smiles. “All of us,” he replies. “Products of a world that taught us to fear what moves in shadow.”

 

Hades replies: “I buried that part - the one who felt too much.” The lunar deity's voice fills with warmth that betrays the cool moonlight surrounding them “You’re not alone in that,” Artemis says. “Carry no shame for adapting to survive what the cosmos demanded of us. But there is another way...” 

 

In his nephew, Hades sees the anima returned—not as muse or mystery, but embodied in a man made whole through the sovereign union of Divine Feminine with her Masculine counterpart.

 

From this Artemis—the protector of the wild and guardian of what was once exiled—a liminal moonlit path reveals the final way. Without comment, Hades takes to it, feeling the support of his younger kin in the luminescent glow reflected from the moon above.

And then, from the deepest hollow inside, comes a scream. The walls tremble. Saklas, the first exile, the sensitive boy buried alive beneath shame and silence, bursts forth. Rage, long denied, radiates through every limb. “You banished me for feeling too much! For being too soft! Too loud! Too alive!” he roars.

 

He does not ask for understanding—he demands witness. Hades does not defend. He listens. He kneels. He weeps with him. And only then does Saklas lower his fists. Seen, he no longer needs to scream.

The anima returns, and with her, the Animus—not as the armored shell once worshipped, but as the balanced, integrated force.

 

Masculine and feminine, held in communion. Hades does not merge with them. He dances between them—just as desire taught him, just as Shiva burned into his bones, just as Chiron wept, Raphael healed, and as Hermes anointed. 

​

As Hades inclines his head to the sky, he catches the last of Artemis' silvery radiance as the moon dips beyond the horizon which soon begins to glow with the golden promise of a new dawn - and for healed man - the promise of a new and fulfilling life where the only limits or limitations are those he sets upon himself.