cell913blog.com #77

Tossing out the names of Ares and his two sons, Deimos and Phobos, in the last post here, certainly sounds like merely affixing a ‘face/name’ to what is happening in the city of Springfield, and across the United States, as if this scribe were somehow more in touch with ‘a poetic basis of mind’ than perhaps others. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

However, attempting to ‘imagine’ what the current ‘images’ in Springfield have to tell us about their depth, their contact with the underworld of our most troubling images of ourselves, not only as individuals but also as a culture, in Hillman’s words, anima mundi, suggest that we (including this scribe) struggle somewhat impotently with our own hatred, contempt, bigotry and racism. If we take on the notion that comes from Hillman’s later writings that everything, buildings, streets, institutions, churches, schools, factories…all have a ‘soul’….an ephemeral, ineffable, ambiguous, mysterious ‘pathology’ (as do each of us) that is troubling, disturbing, confounding, and even shaking our ‘comfort’….and our vision of ‘ideas’, then a different process from diagnosing, prescribing, ‘treating’ and especially ‘moralizing’ is possible.

Taken from the Greek, eidos, ‘which meant originally in early Greek thought, and as Plato use it, both that which one sees—an appearance or shape in a concrete sense—and that by means of which one sees. We see them, and by means of them. Ideas are both the shape of events, their constellation in this or that archetypal pattern and the modes that make possible our ability to see through events into their pattern. By means of an idea, we can see the idea cloaked in the passing parade. The implicit connection between having ideas to see with and see in ideas themselves suggests that the more ideas we have, the more we see, and the deeper the ideas we have, the deeper we see. It also suggests that ideas engender other ideas, breeding perspectives for viewing ourselves in the world. (Hillman, re-visioning Psychology, p. 121)

Some might suggest that if the idea of ‘sadness, longing, depression, desperation, for example, is evoked when ‘seeing’ a building, is, from another perspective, a ‘psychological projection’ coming from the ‘perceiver’ onto the building. Hillman’s guidance may help:  

When we do not ‘get’ an idea, we ask ‘how’ to put it into practice, thereby trying to turn insights of the soul into actions of the ego. But when an insight or idea has sunk in, practice invisibly changes. The idea has opened the eye of the soul. By seeing differently, we do differently. Then ‘how’ is implicitly taken care of. ‘How?’ disappears as the idea sinks in---as one reflects upon it rather than on how to do something with it. This movement of grasping ideas is vertical or inward rather than horizontal or outward into the realm of doing something. The only legitimate ‘How?’ in regard to these psychological insights is: ‘How can I grasp an idea? ….(P)sychological learning or psychologizing seems to represent the soul’s desire for light, like the moth for the flame. The psyche wants to find itself by seeing through; even more, it loves to be enlightened by seeing through itself, as if the very act of seeing-through clarified and made the soul transparent—as if psychologizing with ideas were an archetypal therapy, enlightening, illuminating. The soul seems to suffer when its inward eye is occluded, a victim of overwhelming events. This suggests that all ways of enlightening soul—mystical and meditative, Socratic and dialectic, Oriental and disciplined, psychotherapeutic, and even Cartesian longing for clear and distinct ideas—arise from the psyche’s need for vision. (Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology, p.122-123)

Living in a time, place, culture, language and conventionally embedded ‘perceptive mode’ of seeing primarily, if not exclusively, the literal, the empirical, the ‘out there,’ and finding it both unusual and decidedly uncomfortable, to ‘see’ differently, there is a potential seismic shift in what Hillman is offering from our ‘usual’ way of seeing.

It is not that, by ‘name-dropping’ Ares, Phobos, and Deimos, we are looking for what the Democratic presidential campaign staff might ‘do’ differently in order to ‘win’ the election. Rather, by opening up the story of the God of War and his sons, we might envision a pattern, whether we might consider it epic or not, representing the distasteful aspects of brutal warfare and slaughter, Ares was one of the Olympian deities; his fellow gods and even his parents (Zeus and Hera), however were not fond of him…  Ares’ worship was largely in the northern areas of Greece, and although devoid of the social, moral, and theological associations usual with major deities, his cult had many interesting local features. At Sparta, in early times, at least, human sacrifices were made to him from among the prisoners of war. In addition, an offering of dogs—an unusual sacrificial victim, which might indicate a chthonic (infernal) deity was made to him at Enyalius. (from Britannica.com)

Some might suggest that another Greek god, Ate,  according to Hesiod, a daughter of Eris and according to Homer of Zeus, was an ancient Greek divinity, who led both gods and men to rash and inconsiderate actions and to suffering (from theoi.com) is plying her chaos across America. From study.com, Ate is the ancient Greek goddess of mischief. She was a trickster character who would spread lies and encourage to act in self-destructive, reckless, or inconsiderate ways. In some versions of myths, she was the daughter of Zeus. He banished her from Mount ithOlympus and sent her to Earth, where she started wreaking havoc among humans instead of gods….Ate got Zeus to sign an oath saying that his next child born would be a hero and leader on Earth. Hera then switched which child was to be born next, and Zeus banished Ate.

Clearly, none of us can deny or avoid the mythic as well as the epic face of Nemesis as one of the mor prominent mythic voices on the American political landscape. From theoi.com, Nemesis was the goddess of indignation against and retribution for, evil deeds and underserved good fortune. She was a personification of the resentment aroused in men by those who committed crimes with apparent impunity, or who had inordinate good fortune. Nemesis directed human affairs in such a way as to maintain equilibrium. Her name means she who distributes or deals out. Happiness and unhappiness were measured out by her, care being taken that happiness was not too frequent or too excessive. If this happened, Nemesis could bring about losses and suffering. As one who checked extravagant favours by Fortune, Nemesis was regarded as an avenging or punishing divinity.

Taking the ‘stage’ in the mythic landscape, although not necessarily in the ‘public mind,’ along with Ares, Ate, Deimos and Phobos, Ate and Nemesis, almost as if evoked by this ‘battalion,’ are various mythic voices of (form theoi.com) Harmonia..the goddess of harmony and concord. She was daughter of Ares and Aphrodite and as such presided over both marital harmony, soothing strife and discord, and harmonious action of soldiers in war….Harmonia was born of Aphrodite’s adulterous affair with the god Ares

Harmonia’s opposite, Eris (from theoi.com) was the goddess or personified spirit (daimona)of strife, discord, contention and rivalry. She was often portrayed, more specifically, as the daimona of the strife of war, haunting the battlefield and delighting in human bloodshed. From Britainnica.com, Eris, in Greco-Roman mythology, the personification of strife…..Eris is best known for her part in starting the Trojan War.

Also deeply embedded in the anima mundi, is the goddess Elpis,  (from theoi.com)…the personified spirit (daimona) of hope. She and the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of the first woman Pandora. When she opened the vessel all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis (Hope) who remained behind to comfort mankind. Elpis was depicted as a young woman carrying flowers in her arms. Her opposite number was Moros, the spirit of hopelessness and doom.

Some readers are already, if they have waded into these “word-waters” this far, are asking themselves, and certainly this scribe, ‘What is the point of this catalogue of Greek/Roman mythological figures?’

We are such a deeply embedded ‘ego-driven-and-defined’ culture, based on the literal, empirical data of our ‘daily news’ and our twisting of the information contained therein, we have lost sight of deeper, more both ordinary and certainly far less binary, dichotomized and exclusive voices, both in our own heads and in the culture(s) in which we live. These mythic voices carry voices, moods, exploits, victories, losses, triumphs and disasters in a sometimes symphony, other times cacophony of psychic energies as we are deeply, if somewhat unconsciously, engaged in today.

And while, through a lens of ideology, and/or of religion, and/or of economic and/or educational ‘accomplishment’ and/or scarcity, and/or personal taste and/or gut feeling, we each bring to the voting booth, as well as to the kitchen table, to the sanctuary, the mosque, the synagogue, the board room, the classroom, the athletic field, the laboratory and/or the construction site a highly complex, highly mysterious and highly diversified human being.

Irrespective of which ‘role’ or which ‘situation’ we find ourselves in, and these too change often almost without warning, without plan and without our direct control, the moments of our deepest psychic turbulence are those moments that offer the chance to ‘dig’ into the mythic voices that seem to ‘have us’ in their throes. Listing names on a screen, is neither a clinical approach to psychic trauma, nor a superficial, adolescent application of a mythic ‘name’ to an emotion.

Each mythic voice is also an ‘idea’ in the sense that it is perceived, grasped, and also that it enables a different way of seeing. In a time/culture/place when we are just trying to keep our ‘heads above water’ in a hellish ‘sea-storm’ of lies, deceptions, personal agendas, the slaughter of children, women, families, towns and cities, when we are also flooded with “pills” and therapeutics of all kinds to ‘grow’ and to ‘get better’ and to become ‘unified’ in our thoughts and emotions, the life-saving rings thrown out to us drowning demonstrate their impotence, their reduction both of the ‘sea-turbulence’ and our individual capacity to continue to struggle against the undertow.

To even the most casual observer, (aren’t we all?) something clearly in wrong with this picture. Walking, riding, thinking, perceiving and believing that our ego is our last and only defense is precisely the petard on which we are all hoisted.

And, whether consciously and deliberately, or unconsciously and unwittingly, we are all walking in a mass parade towards our own demise. We throw around the word ‘existential’ about the various threats we face (for Democrats, the threat is Republican; for Republicans, the threat is Democrats); similarly, Israel claims Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran are all existential threats. Super-domes that intercept missiles and drones on their path to killing Israelis, from whatever direction and source, is a metallic metaphor for the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Pentagon, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and even NATO….

While we listen to shouting and wailing about immigrants and refugees eating cats and dogs in Springfield Pennsylvania, all of the ‘tempest in a teapot’ for the purpose of distraction and demonizing, weaponizing, and self-promotion, the world is unconsciously, (or perhaps willfully?) poised on the edge of a gigantic, shared, eroding and fragile escarpment of political, ethical, moral, environmental, global dependence. That escarpment needs to be brought into the ‘personal, political, ideological, theological and ethical consciousness not only of the millions of children, many of whom are currently taking nations to court for failing to meet commitments on the protection of the environment, but also those men and women charged with ‘public responsibility and duty and the honour of ‘protecting’ their respective public.

Let’s try to begin to release our heroic definition and dependence on our personal ego, transferred also to our national ego, and all of the various demonic and death-wish voices that will never be cast off from our psyche.