In the ancient myth, Narcissus was a beautiful young man who rejected those who loved him. As punishment, he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, not realizing at first that the face he desired was his own. Unable to possess the image before him or turn away from it, he slowly wasted away beside the water.
The story is tragic not simply because Narcissus loves himself, but because he becomes trapped by an image that can never love him back. His reflection is always close, yet forever unreachable.
"If he but fail to recognize himself, a long life he may have, beneath the sun."
— Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III
"He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of. For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water—is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness? So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated, not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the Intellective-Being, where, blind even in the Lower-World, he shall have commerce only with shadows, there as here."
— Plotinus, Volume 1, Ennead 1.6
Library of Light Edition 1.0 — Last revised: January 2026