ChristStory Bestiary

CENTAUR

The Archer

The centaur is a mythological creature. Its head, arms, and chest are those of a human and the rest of its body, including four legs, hindquarters, and a tail is like that of a horse.

According to Greek tradition, there are two families of centaurs. The more numerous and unruly centaurs are those born of the union of Ixion, King of the Lapithae, and a cloud which Zeus disguised as his own wife, Hera, whom Ixion had bragged of having relations with. (Others believe these unruly centaurs were the offspring of Centaurus and the Magnesian mares.)

Like their father, these centaurs had no sense of dignity and no respect for the gods of Mt. Olympus. They lived in herds on Mt. Pelion in Thessaly, Greece, and were a plague to the people around them. They went about drunk, eating raw flesh, trampling crops, and raping women. The intellectual parts they inherited from humankind left them ignorant and yet cunning. Eventually, they were evicted by the Lapithae at the Battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs, begun at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, where the drunken centaur guests had the nerve to approach the bride with violence.

These wicked centaurs are the antithesis of the knight and the horseman. Instead of mastering or taming their instincts, these centaurs are ruled by them. They symbolize violent lust, adultery, brutality, vengefulness, heretics, and the Devil. They represent the struggle within each heart between good and evil, moderation and excess, passion and propriety, forgiveness and retaliation, belief and unbelief, god and beast. The same verse used to associate lust with horses was used to connect centaurs with this sin. And who could dispute that centaurs "were like well-fed lusty stallions" neighing after their neighbors' wives? (Jer 5:8). Female centaurs represent the seductress, the lush, or the woman who is unbecomingly curious.

Chiron was like the above centaurs in appearance only. His father was Cronus, the Titan and his mother was an Oceanid or ocean nymph. He was a famous physician and teacher, skilled in the hunt, music, and prophecy. Taught by Apollo and Diana, Chiron went on to tutor Aesculapius, Jason, Hercules, and Achilles.

During the Battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs, Chiron fought for the Lapithae and was accidentally wounded by one of Hercules' poisoned arrows. To avoid a life of unending pain from this arrow's poison, Chiron gave his immortality to Prometheus and died. Zeus set his remains in the night sky where he appears as Sagittarius, the archer.

Chiron represents the positive combination of man's animal and spiritual natures. As early Christians strove to modernize ancient pagan symbolism with Church teaching, the combination of the spiritual and the animal natures in the centaur-archer caused this image of Apollo and the sun to become a representation of Christ, the God-Man.

Archers, both centaur and human, represent Christ, the hunter of souls, especially when shown directing their arrows at peaceful creatures such as deer and birds. The wounds of His arrows, although painful, are those which lead to eternal rewards and life (Lam 3:12-13; Job 6:4; Psa 38:2; Jer 16:15-16). When the archer aims his arrows at evil beasts, he symbolizes the Lord fighting against evil and the enemies of Israel, in which case His arrows may "go forth as lightning" (Zec 9:14), cause famine and other disasters (Ezek 5:16; Deu 32:23), or become "drunk with blood" (Deu 32:42; see also Psa 7:12-13; 64:7).

However, the centaur-archer directing his arrows towards Heaven symbolizes Satan and the "fiery darts of the wicked one" which are quenched by the "shield of faith" (Eph 6:16). Deceit, false-witness, and other provocations of the tongue are represented by these arrows (Prov 25:18; Jer 9:8).

Centaurs may be seen in pictures of St. Anthony Abbot who met both a centaur and a satyr when searching for St. Paul the Hermit in the desert. According to some legends, this centaur was the Devil himself.

There are also deer-centaurs, dog-centaurs, and the Gaelic androcephalous or man-headed horse. Both Greeks and Etruscans sometimes painted a centaur-like animal with the entire body of a human rather awkwardly attached in various ways to the lower or back parts of a horse.

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotes are from the NKJV Bible.