Why is one of the first tasks on the inner path to control oneself and our body?

Answer from the V.M. Samael Aun Weor.

The classic art of Tauromachy is indeed something Initiatic and it is related to the mysterious worship of the Sacred Cow...

Behold, the Atlantean bull ring from the Temple of Neptune and the present one. Indeed, they are nothing but a living zodiac, in which the honorable public as starry constellations are seated.

The Initiator or Hierophant is the Master, the walking baderilleros are the companions, and the mounted bull fighters are the beginners.

Therefore, the beginners ride on the horse, in other words, with all the ballast over their untamed body, which always fall dead in hard battle.

The companions already feel superior since they are putting the banderillas or the lances into the wild bull, into the animal ego; in other words, they are already (as Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita) the persecutors of the secret enemy. The Master (as the God Krishna from that old poem) with the cape of his hierarchy, which signifies the dominion of Maya, is the one who grasps with his dexterous hand the flaming sword of willpower. He becomes not the persecutor, but the killer of the ‘I’, or the beast, a horrifying, roaring monster, which was also seen in Camelot, KAMELOK or KAMALOKA by the very King Artus, supreme chief of the illustrious Knights of the Round Table.

Samael Aun Weor. Excerpt of the book: The Parsifal Unveiled.

Answer from the Magazine "The Wisdom of the Being".

A true warrior is not the one who kills another, but the one who conquers himself, stopping lying to reach the truth of the Father and eliminating hatred, resentment and desire for revenge from our emotions to achieve the love of our Divine Mother.

We could also interpret the horse as the physical body, this by the law of correspondences, since the horse is like a transport vehicle, as is the body for the soul.

“Horse: Physical body. Rider: Intimate. Runaway horse: Bad spiritual plane, Intimate does not dominate the physical body. Fall off the horse: Go off the path.” (Samael Aun Weor, Hidden Meaning of Dreams).

From this point of view we will have that the horse in the white pieces would be the control of themselves, of the body, the mind and the emotions; what Buddha strongly instructs us as self-control.

“Oneself is his own refuge. What other shelter could there be! Having controlled oneself, one obtains a hard-to-get shelter.” (Dhammapada).

In the black pieces, the horse would represent the dominance it has over us, our animal part (our psychological defects) dominating our mind and heart.

The Wisdom of Being Magazine 97, Chapter: "The Horse."