Migrants as Transformers & Renewers

Through the lens of Cadmus, we look at the mythic symbols of migration, and their journey of risk and opportunity.

Cadmus is the Greek hero who wasn’t Greek at all. He was a Phoenician prince, heir to the formidable throne of Tyre, on the coast of what is now modern Lebanon. When his sister Europa vanished — abducted by Zeus — Cadmus was cast out alongside his brothers and ordered to find her. Phoenix and Cilix turned inland. Cadmus took to the sea, sailing west, until fate carried him ashore and onto the Sacred Way leading to the Oracle of Delphi. There, he consulted Apollo's famed priestess, hoping at last for news of his sister.

Apollo, however, had other plans for Cadmus...

Instead of revealing Europa’s whereabouts, the oracle instructed the young prince to follow a cow and build a city where it lay down. Imagine it! Achilles would have bared his naked rump to the temple attendants for such an answer, but Cadmus, ever the civiliser, did exactly as he was told.

But things did not go exactly to plan...

Just as Cadmus believed his task complete — having faithfully followed the cow from the slopes of Kithairon into the fertile belly of Boeotia — disaster struck. His companions were ambushed and devoured by a vicious serpent, guardian of the local spring. Cadmus alone survived, armed with little more than his wits, a lionskin around his shoulders (the uniform of early heroes), and an ash-handled spear.

In the bleak aftermath, when all seemed lost, Athena appeared and revealed the forest’s secret. The serpent’s teeth were enchanted. Planted in the earth, they sprouted into a crop of fully armed warriors: the Spartoi, the “sown men.” So fierce were they that they immediately turned on one another, fighting until only five remained.

These survivors became the first council of Thebes. With their help, Cadmus founded the city he initially called Cadmeia — before thinking better of it and renaming his kingdom 'Thebes.' Thebes is one of those fortunate places with two origin stories: one rooted in history, the other in myth.

Symbols of Risk and Opportunity

The myth of Cadmus is saturated with migrant imagery, which is why scholars call Cadmus a "culture hero." He personifies a cultural group; an ancient diaspora of Phoenician migrants who reshaped Greece — and, by extension, the modern world as we know it.

The simple, almost absurd image of Cadmus following a cow captures the core logic of migration itself: agrarian peoples moving toward greener pastures. So too does Cadmus' exile. Migrants are not gently encouraged to leave; they are more often propelled into the world by forces beyond their control. Like Cadmus and Europa, families are frequently torn apart in the process.

Migration, therefore, is never just movement; it is risk undertaken in the name of possibility. Those who make the migrant journey are almost guaranteed to battle economic hardships, cultural barriers, prejudice, physical threats to health and survival. They “follow cows” — sometimes literally, sometimes symbolically — guided by hope, pragmatism, and necessity, in search of safer, more secure, or more prosperous lives.

To establish the new city, Cadmus must slay a serpent that guards the land. This is no random monster. Snakes are among humanity’s oldest symbols. In scholarly terms, the snake symbol is 'chthonic' (related to the earth/underworld); tied to the soil, cycles of transformation, and to the deep intelligence of untouched nature. They are guardians of springs, forests, and Mother Earth herself: protectors of the wild.

In myth, a serpent does not guard nothing. It guards a threshold. Cadmus cannot found civilisation without violating the wilderness. The spring the serpent protects is ancient and untouched — a blank canvas for colonisation. But the colonising process comes at a price. Athena reveals that the spring is sacred to Ares, the most reptile-minded god of all, and Ares demands a price for the violation. In some versions of the myth, Cadmus serves Ares for seven years to amend his transgression.

This is the uncomfortable wisdom of the story: civilisation does not replace nature. It is forged from it, through blood, risk, and irreversible change. Every city is a bargain struck with the earth and wilderness. In this sense, the myth is pointing to right action: wilderness is sacred and not to be merely plundered. The king's role, therefore — if the kingdom is to endure — is to manage the precarious balance between nature and civil society. Cadmus makes these terms visible.

Cadmus grows Thebes’ first citizens from what remains of a catastrophe. He has no army or family, no inherited infrastructure — only the teeth of the wild serpent he killed. The plundered forest offers up these resources and raw materials. He begins from nothing, from the ground up, scoring the soil of his new homeland with the metal tip of his spear. This is not the plough of a settled farmer but the improvised tool of a displaced wanderer — a reminder that early civilisation is born not from comfort but from necessity.

What Cadmus performs here is a type alchemy. The very forces that destroyed his companions are converted into the foundations of a new society. A further symbol of this is the Spartoi that spring from the earth. They do not arrive gentle or grateful. They erupt from the ground fully armed, embodiments of conflict, survival, and ferocity. Cadmus does not create a satellite of Tyre. He grows a new, hybrid community, combining his home culture with what the land and circumstances will provide.

Bringer of Gifts

Among the many achievements the ancient Greeks attribute to Cadmus, his crowning contribution is the phonetic alphabet. The Greeks themselves called their adapted script Cadmean Letters — a symbolic acknowledgment that their writing system had its roots in Phoenicia.

This was no minor technical tweak. A phonetic alphabet, where written symbols correspond to spoken sounds, transformed Greek society. It allowed knowledge, law, stories, and other ideas to move beyond the impermanence of oral tradition. What could once be lost or forgotten could now be fixed in place, shared, and transmitted across time and space. Culture and ideas gained durability.

Hero Migrant Girl: Digital Art by Myth Meets Modern

In this light, the myth of Cadmus invites us to see migrants not merely as people in search of a better life, but as bearers of transformative possibility. The positive migrant archetype is not passive or pitiful; it is resilient, inventive, and world-shaping. These are hero-migrants, figures who carry skills, technologies, and cultural depth into new lands, leaving them irrevocably changed — a dimension largely absent from the modern migrant narrative.

Migrant Shadow Archetype

In the modern media-scape, fear is a currency. It grabs attention, drives engagement, and keeps eyes glued to screens. And because fear converts so efficiently into clicks, the positive migrant archetype is routinely overshadowed by its darker twin.

The migrant shadow — the figure framed as threat, burden, or destabilising force — fits neatly into this economy. It is simple, emotionally charged, and easily weaponised. Complexity does not trend. Nuance does not go viral. Contribution takes time to demonstrate, while danger can be implied in a headline.

The migrant shadow archetype is especially easy to politicise because it operates at a distance. Abstract groups (the "insert national/religion identity title here") can be burdened with fear, blame, or suspicion without ever triggering our moral alarms. Individuals, by contrast, invite empathy. Stories restore faces. Categories erase them.

From a Jungian perspective, this is no accident. Shadow narratives succeed because they activate our own unexamined fears: the primal instinct to protect, defend, and compete. Fear-based storytelling doesn’t just describe threats: it amplifies them. It turns personal insecurities into collective posture.

In politics, this is known as fear tactics: the inflation of danger to provoke emotional loyalty rather than thoughtful, nuanced responses. Perhaps the opportunity for these modern times and "migrant as enemy" narrative is to reject any shadowy collective categories and see each person as the nuanced individual they truly are.

The myth of Cadmus prompts us to consider whether we want communities organised around suspicion or communities capable of recognising newcomers as bearers of potential renewal. Civilisations, after all, are not only defended; they are built and rebuilt — imagined and reimagined.