The Hero’s Journey is perfectly legitimate myth with a valid place among many others in the pantheon. However, it is not appropriate today as a primary guide for civilization.
There is a story to be told about the journey of the Post-patiarchal hero. We need to hear this. Feminism cannot afford to ignore the importance of heralding the growth of a post-patriarchal masculinity. It is the story of a man who falls apart, (Rick Tarnas epilogue, Passion of Western Mind), who faces the heart crushing elements of his conditioning as the inheritor of the western tradition and as a child conditioned into patriarchal masculinity (bell hooks). All that he knows and values in himself falls apart - an all too ordinary marriage with no connection? a wife who gives up, a chronic illness? A fallen athlete? He is forced to slow down - he learns to listen - to really listen to that which is not commonly known - to his heart and then to women.
Listen...to his wife, to his mother, to his daughter, like men haven't listened in thousands of years. And from listening to his inner boy (before the love was beaten out of him) and listening to the women in his life with ever growing reverence, a mature man is born who understands a new leadership - one that partners, that empowers, that slows down, watches and learns, one that empowers, understands, and quietly honors.
This man's journey is inward, it is taken at home, and the grail he finds holds the gifts of truly-local, humble action and relational self-expression.
The compelling narrative here is a love story. The love story of our times: A man learning to love his deeper 3 and 4 dimensional self who LEARNS to SEE and HONOR and ELEVATE the women, or a woman in his life supporting her healing and the healing of thousands of years of imbalance, through his love.
The story of our times carries all the wisdom of all the subjugated women of the last several thousand years and turns patriarchy on its head through the True power of Love.
Perhaps there is an older mentor, too, someone connected to the land - to the old, indigenous 'order' of balance?? And a wise elder woman, who teaches her younger counterpart about what it is to truly value oneself, one's body, one's passions and insights. There is so much along these lines to be expressed (-;
Yes! Strangely, I just now finished a lesson with my elder who is walking me through a conjuring process for ceremony. Synchronicities to remind us of what's truly important and also to make us laugh daily. : )
Just read your Kissing the Patriarch Goodbye piece on the Feminine Collective. Beautiful. Evocative. Thank you. May your hard won courage seep into all the cracks you and your husband are curating in your sons’ lives so that they may grow into complex, mature loving beings who experience the fullness of humanness on this planet in the best possible ways.
How beautiful to hear this. That piece was written almost six years ago now and yet it still lives for those who read it. The cracks are where the light shines through. Raising sons is truly an interesting challenge and blessing and its great to have a vision for what CAN be possible, not just what is.Thank you for your kind and encouraging words!
Very few men are going to be interested in reading about 'post-patriarchal heroes', except in the following sense: we already live in the post-patriarchy, a de facto gynarchy; it is spiritually intolerable for the male soul; therefore the journey of the 'post-patriarchal hero' involves not some inward-looking navel-gazing, but defeating the dragon - meaning, escaping from, defeating and destroying the matriarchy. Such a narrative would be extremely compelling for men in our society.
You will however find plenty of boomer women who think your concept of the 'post-patriarchal hero' abasing himself before the female is very clever and compelling, since it appeals quite directly to the narcissism that has been so carefully cultivated in western women.
I'm curious how you get to a de facto gynarchy with the Supreme Court's recent ruling? No doubt you have a story about dragon-women that resonates for your soul. I do know that many men question the value of the inward gaze as emasculating for men.
There is a great definition of post-patriarchal masculinity by a New Zealand (Tacey, jungian) scholar who describes it on a spectrum. On the one hand the journey for the man is to face his patriarchal conditioning as a boy, which includes his relationship with his father, father's father, etc. (so reuniting with his innocent heart in boyhood). On the other end of the spectrum, it is an adult man who, having engaged this work enough, can rise to the lofty and noble challenge of repairing what has been done in his name - stewarding a new relationship to land, women and society in the future. Both tasks require tremendous courage and are radically counter-cultural (required walking through great shame). It is the task of learning how to bring the masculine self, life back into balance with the feminine. What more powerful task can be imaginable for a new hero for out times?
Because of the COURAGE this takes, this should not, IMO, be viewed as emasculating - among other things, vulnerability is our super power! (Brene Brown). Plus, it takes tremendous resilience to stand ground in/for love. Were Ghandi and MLK not men? It takes tremendous countercultural leadership, also, to commit to SLOWING down and reconnecting against the DOING DOING drive of the masculine ego that has landed us in a world spinning off its axis.
On the flip side, IMHO, women need to let men take this journey, which is often hard for two reasons: We do not want to see men's vulnerablity as we have been so wounded/abandoned and misunderstood by the masculine and want them to be steadfastly strong all the time. And, secondly, we - as wives and girlfriends and daughters - codependently care for men and their feelings instead of holding the bar for them to move through their shame, and get (professional or men's group) help elsewhere. This has been my learning curve.
Nonetheless, if you perceive us as living in a de facto gynarchy where the woman dragon must be defeated, then it will unfortunately be hard for us to see eye-to-eye unless some deeper layers of vulnerability can be breached. I know quite a few brave, beautiful, honest men who can share a powerful before and after(ongoing) story of becoming a more post-patriarchal man. When they hear these accounts from other men, they find them very compelling and ... not spiritually intolerable.
Agreed. And also, worthwhile for women to take responsibility for what we have chosen (or resisted) over time, and where we can now choose to hold a space of ruthless compassion for the growth and maturity of our species rather than simply being permissive enablers at every level and then grieving our own painful demise.
I am not a proponent of matriarchy. I don't think it's the solution any more than patriarchy.
There is no doubt that women have had soft power, but it is precisely the soft-ness of it that makes it dismissable - in the end. Women have had a lot of power, in other words, you are correct to point that out. It's just been power under patriarchal rule that has been ultimately optional to choose to respect. Great podcast out of Duke University on patriarchy looks at this: scene on radio. Season...two I think.
As for abortion. Hmmm. Your statistics don't reflect what I've seen. Pro/anti abortion support radically simplifies the situation. Just as the matriarchy/patriarch debate is a bit of a straw man - straw person (-: I highly doubt the majority of women support abortion at late stages of pregnancy. If you are looking at that, your assessment is probably right.
THere's a documentary out on how the right galvanized public concern about abortion over the last twenty years making it the issue it is. Can't remember name right now...
I can say I lived my hero's journey as thoroughly as I could for some years. Traveling, wandering, farther and farther out, learning tons, becoming a 'very cool guy', lone cowboy kinda fellow.
Recently I returned home at the stern call of fate, and the return has been far from heroic; broken, sobering, grief-soaked, soul-fatigued, sitting among the ruins of never having built something rooted.
I'm visited upon by a monumental grief of leaving that former phase, for I had convinced myself fully it would be by following that path only that I would 'manifest my destined life' or whatever.
I long for a new, more mature myth to seize / be seized by, and yet I often see myself wondering if there's any way back into that adventurous way of being, and so I simply find myself in a composting phase. And if you're composting human shit, you need a long time before it turns into something you'd want to use in the garden...
Grief, raw grief. At first it seems like a monstrous curse, and it slowly turns into a loyal, wise, humbling companion.
Thanks for the insightful post. I feel somewhat on a different side of your experience, being 31 and feeling that yearning still nearly constantly to "complete" the Hero's journey. I have travelled by myself a bit in my early twenties, and with my partner in my late twenties, but never did that massive trip I always wanted and was always somewhat afraid of.
I find myself in between the two realms of rooted and adventuring, living both lives, but neither fully. Comfortable at home in Australia with my partner, adventuring when possible within the country. Neither having groundbreaking trials and moments of growth, not experiencing shattering isolation and loneliness. It's a strange place to be, and I don't know if I love it.
I worry that I will continue this way and the window of time will close to me for which I should have used my able body and youth to be completing that very Hero's journey.
Thank you for articulating this - composting/metabolizing over 4K years of history takes time! There are men's communities out there to connect to that will offer support and hopefully guidance for you to find YOUR way. Please don't go it alone. There's been too much of this for men (and all of us) for too long!
I can relate to what you write. Thanks for sharing so honesty. I am/have been a long term traveler and always thought I'd find my place in the world where I felt at home. People do find their direction sometimes in this manner. But I didn't after 5 years and many countries. I too went into major grief, sorrow when I realized I just need to be wherever I am and stop reaching/expecting something else/better. I don't know where it fits in the Hero's Journey per se other than the inner journey continues and guides no matter what is going on on the outside. I have learned a lot a bout myself and the world in which we live in the process but def not easy. Reading what you wrote (you being a guy) is very hopeful, for me this is the kind of process that needs to happen to raise male consciousness and the female divine as well. To feel deeply our truths, in this way the world can be transformed. I wish you much peace.
Hmmmm, thanks for sharing your version of that path. It's good to hear, really.
Often on my travels I wondered... Have I gone too far? Or not far enough?
That question remains unanswered, but for the realization that I went as far as I could, and that'll have to do... for now, at least.
Makes me want to insert a Stephen Jenkinson quote:
Elders are master practitioners of the failure to prevail. That's their gig; that they practice failing. And the good ones are ever more graceful in how they fail. Maybe that's what dignity - properly understood - is; is how to fail, not not to fail. If you don't fail, you fail young people. You betray them by making as if failure is blowing it. But failure... is signing up for active duty.
That's the only sense-making I've been capable of so far; that this indeed is failure, but the failure of a a story living through me (Into The Wild - Hero's Journey bone-deep myth) that needs to happen, cause there's little jet-engine fuel to go around for all those jetpacks of our immature adventuring. That that story needs individuals to enact its grand failure, and to craft meaning from slowly chewing on the dust of its ruins. An inner version of the adventure continues, indeed. Like a whole new, unexplored land. For adventure, there's plenty advisors, and that time seems more guided, synchronicity-filled. But for the dark, lonely whirlpool of spiraling grief that gives no promise of salvation, I find it hard to see the mentors that could offer some breadcrumbs. And the fresh, clumsy practice of embracing the fullness of raw grief doesn't seem to make me a very desirable friend, so lonely indeed the start of this journey seems.
But yeah, I find others in that, and so I know I'm not alone and daunting though it may seem, there's gold to unearth here that others will need later.
Curious because you brought up that I'm a guy and that that connects to male consciousness. Do you think/feel/see that the male version of this composting chapter is different than that of a woman's, in some important/mythic way?
Also curious to hear your age. I've heard 28 is an age that (in Steiner/anthroposophy) is a shift in those 7 year phases that the initial youthful energy (that can propel us so effortlessly through life) starts running dry, and that at that age an individual will have to find within themselves the call and dedication to continue their life from a more mature but less effortless commitment. An age/shift, they said, that is very possible to be accompanied by (what society calls) depression. I'm 29 now, and can definitely say it does kinda feel that way. Peace back at ya.
Yes there is gold to unearth I believe that, especially in difficult times. They are our teachers.
I think we all go through these things, it is an innately human experience to rise, to fall, to learn and go forward as best we can. Why I mentioned male consciousness is because you don't find many men willing to take that ride and be fully open to it. They are out there (Charles is doing it too :)) but I find them a rare bird, maybe I don't fly in the right places LOL. I actually met another (awake guy to himself, feeling his feelings, thoughtful, kind) today live in person, so refreshing! Regarding age: I am 56. I get depressed too, particularly the last 2 years. It's not easy times for those of us who see what is happening, see what is being revealed. Hang in there. I am checking out your webpage. :)
I suggest looking into the traditional Chinese-Korean-Japanese four-act literary structure whose Japanese name is Kishōtenketsu. This name is sometimes translated into English as "Plot without conflict," though that's an oversimplification. Kishōtenketsu story-dramas can include conflict, but if they do, it's not the main propulsive vehicle of the plot, as it is in The Hero's Journey and (nearly) all other stories.
I am heartbroken. The myth of the hero's journey is - I believe - one of the most important ones of our times. Especially when you are searching for an ecological ground in our stories. Admitting that Joseph Campbell himself perhaps never realized it, 'leaving home' stands for the deeper ecological law of life: we all need to 'leave the body of the mother'. This challenge is more dangerous and difficult for boys. Girls' separation from their mothers into adult individuation, is less a life threatening proces. That is why we live in a world rule by non-adult boys who actually never really got away form their mothers. That might well be the reason why we live in a world of separation, ruled by the anger and frustration of those boys. Separation that is being violently demanded and created, becáúse it is not a free and natural experience in most of the modern grownup men in western society. Boys who try to turn their backs on love, on care, on feelings in general, on everything that reminds them of the body of their mothers. Boys who live in a revengeful way towards life and towards nature. If there is one important story that helps us to realize this, it must be the Hero's journey. Which by the way never originally was supposed to talk about a courageous child to reach succes or victory, but was supposed to talk about the maturing child (girl and boy) who would transform courageousness into bringing home their lessons learned and in that way, bringing their unique contribution as their free gift to the community that gave birth to them.
Powerful reflection on an all-too-often-misunderstood/misanalysed cycle of inner transformation, x or y chromosome notwithstanding. It's been one of my pet peeves to see this deeply valid observation of Campbell's turned into a target for the sole purpose of differentiating one's own academic take/book. I've yet to see a valid critique of the Hero's Journey model that felt like it was coming from a place of truly understanding what Campbell was really talking about it. The premise that The Hero's Journey model ignores women's experiences is false... this is a human endeavor. Thank you for standing up for it!
Thank you for these heartfelt reflections. Boys leaving mother doesn't need to be violent if they are able to internalize something good there and do not feel forced to separate too quickly. Girls leaving their mother (and her patriarchal internalizations) can be no small feat! There is a lot of pathologizing around separating from mother in girls - can make it very hard for a woman to claim her value if she remains close to a mother who does not know/negates her own. Just sayin' as you surely know, it is complex in our times of change!
I was thinking that we have become so distant--both culturally, artistically, and even in our framing of feminism--from the Mother, perhaps the quintessential human archetype.
It has become near impossible to speak to the feminine principle without sounding like we are reifying the gender binary. It is so needed though. Not enough for women to enter the ranks of men for equality.
I read King, Warrior, Magician Lover last year and really got so much out of it. It's all inside each of us, after all! If you haven't ever read Dr. Estés' Women Who Run With The Wolves-- it's really about being a growing, evolving human being.
If you like Women Who Run with Wolves you might like the 4-part series by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas that starts with The Development of the Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 1 then moves to Dynamics of the Unconscious and The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope and ends with The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality. BRILLIANT books. I don't think one has to be an astrologer to get a lot out of them.
Aren't the titles just delicious? :) The books are very inspiring. We are evolving, growing. transforming, dynamic Human Beings. We're beautiful.
Oooh thank you!! I will def check out! I've learned so much about the layers of personality we all have through studying astrology-- so I'm into it!
I'll share one more in exchange for your suggestion-- my fave Dr. Estés work is her audio lecture series, Theater of the Imagination! That audio got me through my divorce-- I listened to it AT LEAST 10x!!
Oooooh that sounds awesome - I'll put it in the queue! Ahhh I just had to look up Dr. Estes birthday because with a title like that: Theater of the Imagination - what sprung to mind was she must have some Leo planets (Theater!) and a strong Neptune (Imagination!) placement and lo and behold she does :) Leo Moon/Pluto conjuction AND Neptune makes a very tight trine to her Sun and Uranus (making a Grand Trine - isn't that perfect for her intuitive and out-of-the-box-ness?) and also makes 6 aspects to her other planets - Neptune makes more aspects to other planets than any other. Suuuuuuper cool. Having a Leo moon myself and a pretty strong Neptune (first house Mercury/Neptune in Scorpio) I bet I will love it! Thanks for the suggestion :)
So cool. That does makes sense about her chart. I totally get off on all the correspondences and synchronicities astrology reveals-- it truly re-enchants my experience of life! I prefer it much better to my dystopian materialism-dictated days. I prefer life with lenses that show me more wonder and awe-- much more nourishing and thrilling!
The stage is a special place for creating reality for a moment in time. It’s an invitation to exit your current framework and reprogram your emotions; to become alive in a dream. The silence in the house is thunderous, a nervous sensation in your stomach reminds you how impermanent everything is and then the curtains pull back and the dust gets caught in the spotlight.
Your endeavour sounds challenging. Have fun! (That’s why they call it a play!)
I appreciate the reflection on the hero's journey. As you mentioned this is often a journey of youth. Part of the story that calls to the soul in these journeys is the process of awakening and overcoming the obstacles. The hero's journey is sort of like a trip to the ER, the ends are usually resolved by the end of the story like neatly wrapped in boxes. We like things neatly wrapped in boxes, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc.
Replacing a male hero with a female misses the point. We have come to a place in our growth that there is a need to stop replacing one for another. This is simplistic. Both male, female, or whatever need to be able to stand together. The Old paradigm is one group being raised up in order to succeed while pressing down on another. Patriarchy happened on the heals of matriarchy, neither are balanced, neither should be idealized. Success is in the collective rising together, leaving the ease and well trodden path of separation & division that is on loud speaker throughout the talking media heads. Substituting one hero's gender for another re-enforces this separation. Children and animals don't know property lines, they recognize the whole. It takes a lot of work and conditioning to break beings of acknowledging the whole. The new paradigm, new structure, is a wholistic myth, a collaborative dreaming. This collaborative dreaming might even be groups all having different dreams and functioning as individual pods. We do not all dream the same dream but all dreams can stand alongside each other. There are technocratic dreams that will come into being and there are earth based dreams that will bloom. The autonomy of each must be respected for a new myth to be born.
Innnnnteresting! If you are researching the "Call to Adventure" archetype I suggest reading "The Luminaries - The Psychology of the Sun and the Moon in the Horoscope" taken from the seminars by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas.
I really like how Liz says that most of us are fulfilling the Moon side of our Selves until our 30s or so and then it's usually sometime after our Saturn Return that we get that "Call to Adventure" and start on our true Hero's Journey, that is represented by our Sun. I don't see it as a Feminine or Masculine journey but a Universal journey.
My "Call to Adventure" (some people use the word 'Awakening' but the Sagittarius in me prefers Call to Adventure 🙂 ) came when I was 33 (magic/mystical year) having just gone for my first astrology reading. Unbeknownst to me transiting Pluto (planet of death and rebirth: transformation) was sitting just one degree away from my Sagittarius Sun about to engulf it/me! Perfect timing, of course! It was time for the old Me to die and the new Me to be reborn....and so it happened...my mom remarks that before 1999 I was really completely different! Pluto will do that for you 🙂
From the book:
"This awakening of the Solar principle may coincide with the beginning of a period of inner exploration, and this in turn may be precipitated by a crisis of some kind which leaves depression and discontent in its wake.
The Sun is not really concerned with the concrete world as its final destination. Material reality is the domain of the Moon, and often what we think of as goals in the first half of life are really the lunar security needs translating themselves into mundane terms. Solar goals are inner, and are concerned with self-realisation and experiencing one's life as special and meaningful. These goals are very difficult to define, and they differ from one person to another in the kind of outer expression they need. Socrates called this mysterious inner driving force his daemon, the destiny that impels an individual toward becoming his or her own ideal. The Sun says, "But I am not just any old mouse or rabbit or cabbage. My life means something, I have potentials that I have not yet fulfilled." You can see why we ignore this solar drive at our peril, for if we do not take the heroic leap and make a unique creative contribution in some way, however small, we are doomed to the nagging torment of an unlived self. Then we have every reason to fear death, for we have not truly lived.
.....The young hero-to-be has to develop realism, since envy is a fact of life and an indelible part of human nature. He cannot always run home bleating when his specialness is attacked or called into question. And he must aquire toughness, self-sufficiency, insight, intelligence, and loyal friends in order to survive as an individual. Otherwise he might as well quench his solar light and crawl back into the womb again. This is in fact what many people do, for they find mother surrogates such as unfulfilling jobs or stifling relationships to protect them, and suppress their own individual potentials to avoid the competitive world outside.
At some point in his growing-up process, the hero receives what Campbell refers to as "the call to adventure." this can come in a number of forms. The divine parent may appear in a dream or vision, saying, "All right, son, pull your finger out, it's time to grow up and go after the treasurer hard to attain." In other words, the call may come from within us - a sudden intuition of meaning and destiny - which frequently occurs under major heavy planet cycles such as the Saturn return at 30, or in midlife coincident with the Uranus half-cycle or the second Saturn half-cycle. The hero's call in myth may also come through apparent external upheaval or disaster - the crops are failing, or a plague or invasion has struck, or the old king is dying and there is no known heir.
The mythic call to adventure can thus express itself in our lives as a major crisis which, unlike our usual everyday troubles, challenges us to plunge into the unknown and discover new resources that we did not know were there. I believe this is how the majority of people experience the solar call to adventure which, as well as being signaled by heavy planet cycles, is often reflected by a major transit or progression involving the Sun.
We all get many transits of heavy planets to the natal and progressed Sun during the course of a lifetime. Unlike the hero, we are given more than one chance to respond to the call, and it may come in separate segments, disguised as disparate life situations linked by a single meaningful thread. The hero's journey does not occur for us once and for all. It seems to operate on many levels, and repeat itself throughout life."
I just love these books and, as you can see (I hope) they are not just for astrologers! There is a series of 4 in the series. They are SO GOOD.
I posted an expanded version of this post four years ago in a Jungian group and asked for people's birth dates and the dates they felt their "Call to Adventure" and I found a very trippy synchronicity - many of us had experienced this Call when transiting Uranus (planet of personal freedom, radical change, individuation and movement 🙂 ) was in aspect to our Moons! Either conjunct or mine was Inconjunct. Faaascinating!! I believe, like Liz, that this Hero's Journey never ends...it spirals up and around and we dance with the archetypes....each of us unique...but Universal...so here's to movement and the excitement of Adventure!!
So cool .. I recently had a reading done of my gene keys, where I first learned about the special position of Saturn in relation to what you call crisis/call to adventure. Very fascinating indeed :)
Regarding other female archetypes, I wonder if there is a Midwife archetype? Jizo, in Japan midwives souls from life into the after life. Women being the actual bearers of new human life into the world, may hold the central though not exclusive psychic space of this archetype. It has definitely been stripped of potency in Western culture, as we have relegated both birthing and dying to medicalized (thus largely hidden away from real life) environments.
Best of luck on this new endeavor, Charles -- I'm so looking forward!
It is the same dilemma over and over. The more removed from reality one becomes, the more disconnected they become. Rather than living in reality, they instead live in an abstraction, sometimes twice or thrice removed. One who plucks their own chickens has a different take on reality than someone who thinks chicken nuggets somehow magically show up in the store. As one lives closer to reality, masculine and feminine energies come to the fore when appropriate rather than confined to stereotypical role models. Necessity brings clarity. What was important is suddenly seen as superfluous or even counter productive.
While the Heroine's journey is the inner journey of self-ownership, leaving the Father's House and regaining a connection to her instinctual nature (which the religions of the book have demonized) so that she can express her truth and her gifts, the masculine journey now is about supporting the feminine imagination and helping to manifest it in the world. Like the warriors who supported the grandmothers to stop the Keystone pipeline, and like King Arthur, men need to learn to protect life and to sacrifice their need to 'make something of themselves' -- meaning join the money-making machine. We all need to step away from this patriarchal mindset. Isn't it time to re-think what makes life worth living? the Green Man is a great archetype for us all. We all have to reconnect to Mother Earth's biosphere and become the stewards of the Earth we are meant to be. I think lots of young men are learning this when they have children. They are beginning to value life instead of money.
This is beautifully written Cathy. "Supporting the feminine imagination." I love and resonate with all you share here. It feels to me like half of the story needs to be about a new man "learning to listen" - to *hear* that imagination. The second part, then, may be about serving the Mother a-new. It is so complicated because so many women have been hurt and act out against men (myself, of course, included) in ways that make it hard to want to listen. But if we each do our work - women learning how to trust themselves more and men learning to listen - we begin the Great Repair!
That said, and... I am the mother of twin boys, 13 years old, eager to make something of themselves. It is a reflection of their joy in life, their desire to express themselves, to compete and be good at what they do. As their mother, I want them to also see how their "making of themselves" is SO dependent on others at every turn. They make nothing of themselves without the help of others, (let alone without the help of a rising sun every morning). If I might share it, here, my poem about this: https://medium.com/p-s-i-love-you/reverence-9231ece3a7cc
REVERENCE
(A morning prayer for men and those similarly afflicted by Patriarchy)
May I awake each day remembering
I am not the master of
all that follows.
May the light casting through the window remind me
that the uprightness of my home depends
upon the power
of a far-away sun.
May I remember how little I know of that sun,
its un-thinkable scale,
the force of its heat and invincible magnetism.
May I remember I depend on this.
And everything else.
May I remember I depend on the children
who wrestle and shout in the room next door,
without whom I may have forgotten, altogether,
what it sounds like to laugh like this.
To live as Goodness.
May I remember the sheets I throw off my body
as I rise
were washed by someone,
that the bed was made,
by someone,
that the sheets were woven,
by someone,
that they were packaged and shipped and unpacked,
and washed,
by someone.
May I remember I cast off those thousand hands
that kept me warm through the night
when I lean, now,
towards the unknown
of this new day.
May I stop at the sink to smell the cool, wet air of October.
You are cherishing the world and so will your sons!
. My 3guys are all grown up —. My youngest is turning 42 Sunday! And while they’re not perfect, they
all have good hearts so they listen -eventually! Mothers shape our boys just as much as our girls. I worked to become conscious so that my kids would be.
We women can change the world by teaching our men to reconnect with their emotional body. Then helping them understand what it’s saying. Yeah moms!
Hi Cary. I like your drawing. Complicated like most things in nature with many repeated shapes. I am especially fond of spirals. Thanks for sharing. 🦋Diana Robbins
OK, but ... what's the actual plot arc with which you propose to replace the Hero's Journey? There are a few other plot structures I'm aware of, but all of the ultimately have very deep cultural and psychobiological roots; inventing new ones is very difficult.
I'm not really sure that an alternative to the HJ is really what our civilization requires, however. Seems to me that it is precisely the lack of heroism that is bleeding white the souls of our youth. The values of the longhouse, of middle-aged women and old men, have no ability to inspire young men; without the energy of young men, civilization falls. Looking around us, it is not the middle-aged women and old men who have been abandoned and cast into the cold ... to the contrary, society is organized around their desires, and the result is a cultural enervation that threatens to consume us.
To put it in more concrete terms: "saving the environment" or "fighting climate change" or whatever does not inspire me in the slightest. To the contrary, I'm left utterly cold. I know for a fact that's true of many other men. Men want to go out and explore, and build, and fight; it's what we're designed to do. Not to sit around at home in the garden. Ecological metaphors are all very well and good, but ecologies involve predators as well as herbivores, so to speak, and predators are excluded at one's peril: remember the effect on Yellowstone of reintroducing wolves.
Appreciate your comment. I don't think replacing the archetypes is possible. I do believe tho that their original healthy life serving intentions can be reclaimed. To me the rulers of empire throughout time have co-opted the archetypes to serve their own agendas. I have a native perspective on this that I believe may be a bit closer to what you are talking about. I wrote a long comment about this I posted here a bit ago. Warriors were considered sacred and invaluable protectors of commiunity throughout ancient cultures. But when I look at the military-industrial complex today, I see that desire to protect and serve being subverted by the mentally ill in charge who are out to serve themselves and their own power base. I don't want to get rid of the Warrior or the Hero or even change them fundamentally. I want to reclaim the original honorable intention of those archetypes that have been stepped all over and driven into the mud.
Warrior/heroes aren’t the only ones who have been subverted. Healers also, in our Medical Industrial Complex. Mothers also, in the form of neurotic helicopter mothers that bring the Devouring Mother archetype to mind…it’s all a mess, such a mess!
Interesting you brought up the subverting of the Mother archetype as I was just having this conversation with a couple of friends yesterday. Us old ladies are finding it difficult to know how to talk to young mothers lately as they seem determined to let their kids run the show. Which makes for some pretty self-absorbed, entitled and disrespectful kids who quite likely are going to get slapped down pretty hard at some point. The world is crumbling and these kids think they are supposed to be enabled and catered to.. One of my young mother friends, who is an incredibly loving, patient person was bemoaning the fact that she had yelled at her kids. My mouth hung open. She has two very strong willed boys who are constantly testing the boundaries and a very young daughter who still needs alot of attention from her at the same time. Who wouldn't yell ? Certainly NOT a failure of Motherhood on her part! Where are these young mothers getting the rulebook from now? They seem so overly concerned with gender pronouns, micro-agressions and causing 'harm' through the normal language of every day converse, that basic communication has become increasingly surreal and loaded with booby traps. One of my friends has a new grandbaby and the parents are telling her she is supposed to call her grandchild an IT because they are raising the baby gender neutral. She laid down the law and said no way is she doing that. The Mother archetype is so under seige on so many levels right now just as our precious Mother Earth is under siege as well.
There is a story to be told about the journey of the Post-patiarchal hero. We need to hear this. Feminism cannot afford to ignore the importance of heralding the growth of a post-patriarchal masculinity. It is the story of a man who falls apart, (Rick Tarnas epilogue, Passion of Western Mind), who faces the heart crushing elements of his conditioning as the inheritor of the western tradition and as a child conditioned into patriarchal masculinity (bell hooks). All that he knows and values in himself falls apart - an all too ordinary marriage with no connection? a wife who gives up, a chronic illness? A fallen athlete? He is forced to slow down - he learns to listen - to really listen to that which is not commonly known - to his heart and then to women.
Listen...to his wife, to his mother, to his daughter, like men haven't listened in thousands of years. And from listening to his inner boy (before the love was beaten out of him) and listening to the women in his life with ever growing reverence, a mature man is born who understands a new leadership - one that partners, that empowers, that slows down, watches and learns, one that empowers, understands, and quietly honors.
This man's journey is inward, it is taken at home, and the grail he finds holds the gifts of truly-local, humble action and relational self-expression.
The compelling narrative here is a love story. The love story of our times: A man learning to love his deeper 3 and 4 dimensional self who LEARNS to SEE and HONOR and ELEVATE the women, or a woman in his life supporting her healing and the healing of thousands of years of imbalance, through his love.
The story of our times carries all the wisdom of all the subjugated women of the last several thousand years and turns patriarchy on its head through the True power of Love.
What to Remember When Waking
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
IN this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
David Whyte
Perhaps there is an older mentor, too, someone connected to the land - to the old, indigenous 'order' of balance?? And a wise elder woman, who teaches her younger counterpart about what it is to truly value oneself, one's body, one's passions and insights. There is so much along these lines to be expressed (-;
Yes! Strangely, I just now finished a lesson with my elder who is walking me through a conjuring process for ceremony. Synchronicities to remind us of what's truly important and also to make us laugh daily. : )
Just read your Kissing the Patriarch Goodbye piece on the Feminine Collective. Beautiful. Evocative. Thank you. May your hard won courage seep into all the cracks you and your husband are curating in your sons’ lives so that they may grow into complex, mature loving beings who experience the fullness of humanness on this planet in the best possible ways.
How beautiful to hear this. That piece was written almost six years ago now and yet it still lives for those who read it. The cracks are where the light shines through. Raising sons is truly an interesting challenge and blessing and its great to have a vision for what CAN be possible, not just what is.Thank you for your kind and encouraging words!
*raises hand*
Hi. Man here.
Very few men are going to be interested in reading about 'post-patriarchal heroes', except in the following sense: we already live in the post-patriarchy, a de facto gynarchy; it is spiritually intolerable for the male soul; therefore the journey of the 'post-patriarchal hero' involves not some inward-looking navel-gazing, but defeating the dragon - meaning, escaping from, defeating and destroying the matriarchy. Such a narrative would be extremely compelling for men in our society.
You will however find plenty of boomer women who think your concept of the 'post-patriarchal hero' abasing himself before the female is very clever and compelling, since it appeals quite directly to the narcissism that has been so carefully cultivated in western women.
I'm curious how you get to a de facto gynarchy with the Supreme Court's recent ruling? No doubt you have a story about dragon-women that resonates for your soul. I do know that many men question the value of the inward gaze as emasculating for men.
There is a great definition of post-patriarchal masculinity by a New Zealand (Tacey, jungian) scholar who describes it on a spectrum. On the one hand the journey for the man is to face his patriarchal conditioning as a boy, which includes his relationship with his father, father's father, etc. (so reuniting with his innocent heart in boyhood). On the other end of the spectrum, it is an adult man who, having engaged this work enough, can rise to the lofty and noble challenge of repairing what has been done in his name - stewarding a new relationship to land, women and society in the future. Both tasks require tremendous courage and are radically counter-cultural (required walking through great shame). It is the task of learning how to bring the masculine self, life back into balance with the feminine. What more powerful task can be imaginable for a new hero for out times?
Because of the COURAGE this takes, this should not, IMO, be viewed as emasculating - among other things, vulnerability is our super power! (Brene Brown). Plus, it takes tremendous resilience to stand ground in/for love. Were Ghandi and MLK not men? It takes tremendous countercultural leadership, also, to commit to SLOWING down and reconnecting against the DOING DOING drive of the masculine ego that has landed us in a world spinning off its axis.
On the flip side, IMHO, women need to let men take this journey, which is often hard for two reasons: We do not want to see men's vulnerablity as we have been so wounded/abandoned and misunderstood by the masculine and want them to be steadfastly strong all the time. And, secondly, we - as wives and girlfriends and daughters - codependently care for men and their feelings instead of holding the bar for them to move through their shame, and get (professional or men's group) help elsewhere. This has been my learning curve.
Nonetheless, if you perceive us as living in a de facto gynarchy where the woman dragon must be defeated, then it will unfortunately be hard for us to see eye-to-eye unless some deeper layers of vulnerability can be breached. I know quite a few brave, beautiful, honest men who can share a powerful before and after(ongoing) story of becoming a more post-patriarchal man. When they hear these accounts from other men, they find them very compelling and ... not spiritually intolerable.
Agreed. And also, worthwhile for women to take responsibility for what we have chosen (or resisted) over time, and where we can now choose to hold a space of ruthless compassion for the growth and maturity of our species rather than simply being permissive enablers at every level and then grieving our own painful demise.
"I'm curious how you get to a de facto gynarchy with the Supreme Court's recent ruling?"
So a necessary feature of matriarchy is the unfettered slaughter of infants? Fascinating.
The rest of what you said is just typical boomer female pathologization of anything masculine. As toxic as it is tiring.
I want to go surfing tomorrow morning, but I have to work. That is the real problem here,
truth that
I am not a proponent of matriarchy. I don't think it's the solution any more than patriarchy.
There is no doubt that women have had soft power, but it is precisely the soft-ness of it that makes it dismissable - in the end. Women have had a lot of power, in other words, you are correct to point that out. It's just been power under patriarchal rule that has been ultimately optional to choose to respect. Great podcast out of Duke University on patriarchy looks at this: scene on radio. Season...two I think.
As for abortion. Hmmm. Your statistics don't reflect what I've seen. Pro/anti abortion support radically simplifies the situation. Just as the matriarchy/patriarch debate is a bit of a straw man - straw person (-: I highly doubt the majority of women support abortion at late stages of pregnancy. If you are looking at that, your assessment is probably right.
THere's a documentary out on how the right galvanized public concern about abortion over the last twenty years making it the issue it is. Can't remember name right now...
Really good podcast: http://www.sceneonradio.org/men/
Yes! This is the story I see a few men almost ready to take around me. This is a voice that needs articulating.....
Very relevant for where I'm at.
I can say I lived my hero's journey as thoroughly as I could for some years. Traveling, wandering, farther and farther out, learning tons, becoming a 'very cool guy', lone cowboy kinda fellow.
Recently I returned home at the stern call of fate, and the return has been far from heroic; broken, sobering, grief-soaked, soul-fatigued, sitting among the ruins of never having built something rooted.
I'm visited upon by a monumental grief of leaving that former phase, for I had convinced myself fully it would be by following that path only that I would 'manifest my destined life' or whatever.
I long for a new, more mature myth to seize / be seized by, and yet I often see myself wondering if there's any way back into that adventurous way of being, and so I simply find myself in a composting phase. And if you're composting human shit, you need a long time before it turns into something you'd want to use in the garden...
Grief, raw grief. At first it seems like a monstrous curse, and it slowly turns into a loyal, wise, humbling companion.
Thanks for the insightful post. I feel somewhat on a different side of your experience, being 31 and feeling that yearning still nearly constantly to "complete" the Hero's journey. I have travelled by myself a bit in my early twenties, and with my partner in my late twenties, but never did that massive trip I always wanted and was always somewhat afraid of.
I find myself in between the two realms of rooted and adventuring, living both lives, but neither fully. Comfortable at home in Australia with my partner, adventuring when possible within the country. Neither having groundbreaking trials and moments of growth, not experiencing shattering isolation and loneliness. It's a strange place to be, and I don't know if I love it.
I worry that I will continue this way and the window of time will close to me for which I should have used my able body and youth to be completing that very Hero's journey.
Any thoughts/advice appreciated.
Eamon
Thank you for articulating this - composting/metabolizing over 4K years of history takes time! There are men's communities out there to connect to that will offer support and hopefully guidance for you to find YOUR way. Please don't go it alone. There's been too much of this for men (and all of us) for too long!
Wow, Kenny, what a beautiful, raw, naked, honest, soulful human communication. Thank you!
Thank you for this wise post! Keep listening to yourself--the way is there.
I can relate to what you write. Thanks for sharing so honesty. I am/have been a long term traveler and always thought I'd find my place in the world where I felt at home. People do find their direction sometimes in this manner. But I didn't after 5 years and many countries. I too went into major grief, sorrow when I realized I just need to be wherever I am and stop reaching/expecting something else/better. I don't know where it fits in the Hero's Journey per se other than the inner journey continues and guides no matter what is going on on the outside. I have learned a lot a bout myself and the world in which we live in the process but def not easy. Reading what you wrote (you being a guy) is very hopeful, for me this is the kind of process that needs to happen to raise male consciousness and the female divine as well. To feel deeply our truths, in this way the world can be transformed. I wish you much peace.
Hmmmm, thanks for sharing your version of that path. It's good to hear, really.
Often on my travels I wondered... Have I gone too far? Or not far enough?
That question remains unanswered, but for the realization that I went as far as I could, and that'll have to do... for now, at least.
Makes me want to insert a Stephen Jenkinson quote:
Elders are master practitioners of the failure to prevail. That's their gig; that they practice failing. And the good ones are ever more graceful in how they fail. Maybe that's what dignity - properly understood - is; is how to fail, not not to fail. If you don't fail, you fail young people. You betray them by making as if failure is blowing it. But failure... is signing up for active duty.
That's the only sense-making I've been capable of so far; that this indeed is failure, but the failure of a a story living through me (Into The Wild - Hero's Journey bone-deep myth) that needs to happen, cause there's little jet-engine fuel to go around for all those jetpacks of our immature adventuring. That that story needs individuals to enact its grand failure, and to craft meaning from slowly chewing on the dust of its ruins. An inner version of the adventure continues, indeed. Like a whole new, unexplored land. For adventure, there's plenty advisors, and that time seems more guided, synchronicity-filled. But for the dark, lonely whirlpool of spiraling grief that gives no promise of salvation, I find it hard to see the mentors that could offer some breadcrumbs. And the fresh, clumsy practice of embracing the fullness of raw grief doesn't seem to make me a very desirable friend, so lonely indeed the start of this journey seems.
But yeah, I find others in that, and so I know I'm not alone and daunting though it may seem, there's gold to unearth here that others will need later.
Curious because you brought up that I'm a guy and that that connects to male consciousness. Do you think/feel/see that the male version of this composting chapter is different than that of a woman's, in some important/mythic way?
Also curious to hear your age. I've heard 28 is an age that (in Steiner/anthroposophy) is a shift in those 7 year phases that the initial youthful energy (that can propel us so effortlessly through life) starts running dry, and that at that age an individual will have to find within themselves the call and dedication to continue their life from a more mature but less effortless commitment. An age/shift, they said, that is very possible to be accompanied by (what society calls) depression. I'm 29 now, and can definitely say it does kinda feel that way. Peace back at ya.
Yes there is gold to unearth I believe that, especially in difficult times. They are our teachers.
I think we all go through these things, it is an innately human experience to rise, to fall, to learn and go forward as best we can. Why I mentioned male consciousness is because you don't find many men willing to take that ride and be fully open to it. They are out there (Charles is doing it too :)) but I find them a rare bird, maybe I don't fly in the right places LOL. I actually met another (awake guy to himself, feeling his feelings, thoughtful, kind) today live in person, so refreshing! Regarding age: I am 56. I get depressed too, particularly the last 2 years. It's not easy times for those of us who see what is happening, see what is being revealed. Hang in there. I am checking out your webpage. :)
NickiG and Kenny: 29 and 56, Saturn returns. Big transitional times.
Thanks Kenny. I have found Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects incredibly helpful with the grief about the world...
and just found this: #40 | Before The Patriarch, The Trickster - Allan Chinen (Beyond the Hero) https://www.themythicmasculine.com/episodes/allan-chinen and Michael Meade's podcasts can be helpful too.
I suggest looking into the traditional Chinese-Korean-Japanese four-act literary structure whose Japanese name is Kishōtenketsu. This name is sometimes translated into English as "Plot without conflict," though that's an oversimplification. Kishōtenketsu story-dramas can include conflict, but if they do, it's not the main propulsive vehicle of the plot, as it is in The Hero's Journey and (nearly) all other stories.
One article with a detailed description of the four parts of a Kishōtenketsu story, with several examples: https://mythicscribes.com/plot/kishotenketsu/
One of the examples is the plot of the animated movie "Kiki's Delivery Service," directed by the same Hayao Miyazaki whom Charles finds inspiring.
I am heartbroken. The myth of the hero's journey is - I believe - one of the most important ones of our times. Especially when you are searching for an ecological ground in our stories. Admitting that Joseph Campbell himself perhaps never realized it, 'leaving home' stands for the deeper ecological law of life: we all need to 'leave the body of the mother'. This challenge is more dangerous and difficult for boys. Girls' separation from their mothers into adult individuation, is less a life threatening proces. That is why we live in a world rule by non-adult boys who actually never really got away form their mothers. That might well be the reason why we live in a world of separation, ruled by the anger and frustration of those boys. Separation that is being violently demanded and created, becáúse it is not a free and natural experience in most of the modern grownup men in western society. Boys who try to turn their backs on love, on care, on feelings in general, on everything that reminds them of the body of their mothers. Boys who live in a revengeful way towards life and towards nature. If there is one important story that helps us to realize this, it must be the Hero's journey. Which by the way never originally was supposed to talk about a courageous child to reach succes or victory, but was supposed to talk about the maturing child (girl and boy) who would transform courageousness into bringing home their lessons learned and in that way, bringing their unique contribution as their free gift to the community that gave birth to them.
Powerful reflection on an all-too-often-misunderstood/misanalysed cycle of inner transformation, x or y chromosome notwithstanding. It's been one of my pet peeves to see this deeply valid observation of Campbell's turned into a target for the sole purpose of differentiating one's own academic take/book. I've yet to see a valid critique of the Hero's Journey model that felt like it was coming from a place of truly understanding what Campbell was really talking about it. The premise that The Hero's Journey model ignores women's experiences is false... this is a human endeavor. Thank you for standing up for it!
Yes! and no.
Thank you for these heartfelt reflections. Boys leaving mother doesn't need to be violent if they are able to internalize something good there and do not feel forced to separate too quickly. Girls leaving their mother (and her patriarchal internalizations) can be no small feat! There is a lot of pathologizing around separating from mother in girls - can make it very hard for a woman to claim her value if she remains close to a mother who does not know/negates her own. Just sayin' as you surely know, it is complex in our times of change!
Beautifully said, thank you...
I hope you're exploring the Magician and Lover in the female character too!
I was thinking that we have become so distant--both culturally, artistically, and even in our framing of feminism--from the Mother, perhaps the quintessential human archetype.
It has become near impossible to speak to the feminine principle without sounding like we are reifying the gender binary. It is so needed though. Not enough for women to enter the ranks of men for equality.
Isn't that implied in the Queen?
I read King, Warrior, Magician Lover last year and really got so much out of it. It's all inside each of us, after all! If you haven't ever read Dr. Estés' Women Who Run With The Wolves-- it's really about being a growing, evolving human being.
If you like Women Who Run with Wolves you might like the 4-part series by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas that starts with The Development of the Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 1 then moves to Dynamics of the Unconscious and The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope and ends with The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality. BRILLIANT books. I don't think one has to be an astrologer to get a lot out of them.
Aren't the titles just delicious? :) The books are very inspiring. We are evolving, growing. transforming, dynamic Human Beings. We're beautiful.
Oooh thank you!! I will def check out! I've learned so much about the layers of personality we all have through studying astrology-- so I'm into it!
I'll share one more in exchange for your suggestion-- my fave Dr. Estés work is her audio lecture series, Theater of the Imagination! That audio got me through my divorce-- I listened to it AT LEAST 10x!!
Oooooh that sounds awesome - I'll put it in the queue! Ahhh I just had to look up Dr. Estes birthday because with a title like that: Theater of the Imagination - what sprung to mind was she must have some Leo planets (Theater!) and a strong Neptune (Imagination!) placement and lo and behold she does :) Leo Moon/Pluto conjuction AND Neptune makes a very tight trine to her Sun and Uranus (making a Grand Trine - isn't that perfect for her intuitive and out-of-the-box-ness?) and also makes 6 aspects to her other planets - Neptune makes more aspects to other planets than any other. Suuuuuuper cool. Having a Leo moon myself and a pretty strong Neptune (first house Mercury/Neptune in Scorpio) I bet I will love it! Thanks for the suggestion :)
I got chills reading that!!!
So cool. That does makes sense about her chart. I totally get off on all the correspondences and synchronicities astrology reveals-- it truly re-enchants my experience of life! I prefer it much better to my dystopian materialism-dictated days. I prefer life with lenses that show me more wonder and awe-- much more nourishing and thrilling!
❤️
There's no better hero's journey than that of Frodo.
The stage is a special place for creating reality for a moment in time. It’s an invitation to exit your current framework and reprogram your emotions; to become alive in a dream. The silence in the house is thunderous, a nervous sensation in your stomach reminds you how impermanent everything is and then the curtains pull back and the dust gets caught in the spotlight.
Your endeavour sounds challenging. Have fun! (That’s why they call it a play!)
I appreciate the reflection on the hero's journey. As you mentioned this is often a journey of youth. Part of the story that calls to the soul in these journeys is the process of awakening and overcoming the obstacles. The hero's journey is sort of like a trip to the ER, the ends are usually resolved by the end of the story like neatly wrapped in boxes. We like things neatly wrapped in boxes, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc.
Replacing a male hero with a female misses the point. We have come to a place in our growth that there is a need to stop replacing one for another. This is simplistic. Both male, female, or whatever need to be able to stand together. The Old paradigm is one group being raised up in order to succeed while pressing down on another. Patriarchy happened on the heals of matriarchy, neither are balanced, neither should be idealized. Success is in the collective rising together, leaving the ease and well trodden path of separation & division that is on loud speaker throughout the talking media heads. Substituting one hero's gender for another re-enforces this separation. Children and animals don't know property lines, they recognize the whole. It takes a lot of work and conditioning to break beings of acknowledging the whole. The new paradigm, new structure, is a wholistic myth, a collaborative dreaming. This collaborative dreaming might even be groups all having different dreams and functioning as individual pods. We do not all dream the same dream but all dreams can stand alongside each other. There are technocratic dreams that will come into being and there are earth based dreams that will bloom. The autonomy of each must be respected for a new myth to be born.
Innnnnteresting! If you are researching the "Call to Adventure" archetype I suggest reading "The Luminaries - The Psychology of the Sun and the Moon in the Horoscope" taken from the seminars by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas.
I really like how Liz says that most of us are fulfilling the Moon side of our Selves until our 30s or so and then it's usually sometime after our Saturn Return that we get that "Call to Adventure" and start on our true Hero's Journey, that is represented by our Sun. I don't see it as a Feminine or Masculine journey but a Universal journey.
My "Call to Adventure" (some people use the word 'Awakening' but the Sagittarius in me prefers Call to Adventure 🙂 ) came when I was 33 (magic/mystical year) having just gone for my first astrology reading. Unbeknownst to me transiting Pluto (planet of death and rebirth: transformation) was sitting just one degree away from my Sagittarius Sun about to engulf it/me! Perfect timing, of course! It was time for the old Me to die and the new Me to be reborn....and so it happened...my mom remarks that before 1999 I was really completely different! Pluto will do that for you 🙂
From the book:
"This awakening of the Solar principle may coincide with the beginning of a period of inner exploration, and this in turn may be precipitated by a crisis of some kind which leaves depression and discontent in its wake.
The Sun is not really concerned with the concrete world as its final destination. Material reality is the domain of the Moon, and often what we think of as goals in the first half of life are really the lunar security needs translating themselves into mundane terms. Solar goals are inner, and are concerned with self-realisation and experiencing one's life as special and meaningful. These goals are very difficult to define, and they differ from one person to another in the kind of outer expression they need. Socrates called this mysterious inner driving force his daemon, the destiny that impels an individual toward becoming his or her own ideal. The Sun says, "But I am not just any old mouse or rabbit or cabbage. My life means something, I have potentials that I have not yet fulfilled." You can see why we ignore this solar drive at our peril, for if we do not take the heroic leap and make a unique creative contribution in some way, however small, we are doomed to the nagging torment of an unlived self. Then we have every reason to fear death, for we have not truly lived.
.....The young hero-to-be has to develop realism, since envy is a fact of life and an indelible part of human nature. He cannot always run home bleating when his specialness is attacked or called into question. And he must aquire toughness, self-sufficiency, insight, intelligence, and loyal friends in order to survive as an individual. Otherwise he might as well quench his solar light and crawl back into the womb again. This is in fact what many people do, for they find mother surrogates such as unfulfilling jobs or stifling relationships to protect them, and suppress their own individual potentials to avoid the competitive world outside.
At some point in his growing-up process, the hero receives what Campbell refers to as "the call to adventure." this can come in a number of forms. The divine parent may appear in a dream or vision, saying, "All right, son, pull your finger out, it's time to grow up and go after the treasurer hard to attain." In other words, the call may come from within us - a sudden intuition of meaning and destiny - which frequently occurs under major heavy planet cycles such as the Saturn return at 30, or in midlife coincident with the Uranus half-cycle or the second Saturn half-cycle. The hero's call in myth may also come through apparent external upheaval or disaster - the crops are failing, or a plague or invasion has struck, or the old king is dying and there is no known heir.
The mythic call to adventure can thus express itself in our lives as a major crisis which, unlike our usual everyday troubles, challenges us to plunge into the unknown and discover new resources that we did not know were there. I believe this is how the majority of people experience the solar call to adventure which, as well as being signaled by heavy planet cycles, is often reflected by a major transit or progression involving the Sun.
We all get many transits of heavy planets to the natal and progressed Sun during the course of a lifetime. Unlike the hero, we are given more than one chance to respond to the call, and it may come in separate segments, disguised as disparate life situations linked by a single meaningful thread. The hero's journey does not occur for us once and for all. It seems to operate on many levels, and repeat itself throughout life."
I just love these books and, as you can see (I hope) they are not just for astrologers! There is a series of 4 in the series. They are SO GOOD.
I posted an expanded version of this post four years ago in a Jungian group and asked for people's birth dates and the dates they felt their "Call to Adventure" and I found a very trippy synchronicity - many of us had experienced this Call when transiting Uranus (planet of personal freedom, radical change, individuation and movement 🙂 ) was in aspect to our Moons! Either conjunct or mine was Inconjunct. Faaascinating!! I believe, like Liz, that this Hero's Journey never ends...it spirals up and around and we dance with the archetypes....each of us unique...but Universal...so here's to movement and the excitement of Adventure!!
So cool .. I recently had a reading done of my gene keys, where I first learned about the special position of Saturn in relation to what you call crisis/call to adventure. Very fascinating indeed :)
I love this - it is well time to go beyond the hero/heroine myth
More feminine archetypes to write from, in line with the masculine version are
maiden , wild woman, queen (mother) , crone
Yes ‼️ especially crone
Regarding other female archetypes, I wonder if there is a Midwife archetype? Jizo, in Japan midwives souls from life into the after life. Women being the actual bearers of new human life into the world, may hold the central though not exclusive psychic space of this archetype. It has definitely been stripped of potency in Western culture, as we have relegated both birthing and dying to medicalized (thus largely hidden away from real life) environments.
Best of luck on this new endeavor, Charles -- I'm so looking forward!
It is the same dilemma over and over. The more removed from reality one becomes, the more disconnected they become. Rather than living in reality, they instead live in an abstraction, sometimes twice or thrice removed. One who plucks their own chickens has a different take on reality than someone who thinks chicken nuggets somehow magically show up in the store. As one lives closer to reality, masculine and feminine energies come to the fore when appropriate rather than confined to stereotypical role models. Necessity brings clarity. What was important is suddenly seen as superfluous or even counter productive.
While the Heroine's journey is the inner journey of self-ownership, leaving the Father's House and regaining a connection to her instinctual nature (which the religions of the book have demonized) so that she can express her truth and her gifts, the masculine journey now is about supporting the feminine imagination and helping to manifest it in the world. Like the warriors who supported the grandmothers to stop the Keystone pipeline, and like King Arthur, men need to learn to protect life and to sacrifice their need to 'make something of themselves' -- meaning join the money-making machine. We all need to step away from this patriarchal mindset. Isn't it time to re-think what makes life worth living? the Green Man is a great archetype for us all. We all have to reconnect to Mother Earth's biosphere and become the stewards of the Earth we are meant to be. I think lots of young men are learning this when they have children. They are beginning to value life instead of money.
This is beautifully written Cathy. "Supporting the feminine imagination." I love and resonate with all you share here. It feels to me like half of the story needs to be about a new man "learning to listen" - to *hear* that imagination. The second part, then, may be about serving the Mother a-new. It is so complicated because so many women have been hurt and act out against men (myself, of course, included) in ways that make it hard to want to listen. But if we each do our work - women learning how to trust themselves more and men learning to listen - we begin the Great Repair!
That said, and... I am the mother of twin boys, 13 years old, eager to make something of themselves. It is a reflection of their joy in life, their desire to express themselves, to compete and be good at what they do. As their mother, I want them to also see how their "making of themselves" is SO dependent on others at every turn. They make nothing of themselves without the help of others, (let alone without the help of a rising sun every morning). If I might share it, here, my poem about this: https://medium.com/p-s-i-love-you/reverence-9231ece3a7cc
REVERENCE
(A morning prayer for men and those similarly afflicted by Patriarchy)
May I awake each day remembering
I am not the master of
all that follows.
May the light casting through the window remind me
that the uprightness of my home depends
upon the power
of a far-away sun.
May I remember how little I know of that sun,
its un-thinkable scale,
the force of its heat and invincible magnetism.
May I remember I depend on this.
And everything else.
May I remember I depend on the children
who wrestle and shout in the room next door,
without whom I may have forgotten, altogether,
what it sounds like to laugh like this.
To live as Goodness.
May I remember the sheets I throw off my body
as I rise
were washed by someone,
that the bed was made,
by someone,
that the sheets were woven,
by someone,
that they were packaged and shipped and unpacked,
and washed,
by someone.
May I remember I cast off those thousand hands
that kept me warm through the night
when I lean, now,
towards the unknown
of this new day.
May I stop at the sink to smell the cool, wet air of October.
May it still me in my tracks,
forging space between my thoughts,
to simply
to simply
encounter nothing.
May it remind me that whatever I do on this day
depends on the great will
of a Universe
that turns according to its own
mysterious rules,
unpredictable
beyond my control.
May I look in the mirror, then,
to see through, and beyond, myself
to my image dissolving
in the mist rising from the wet plants
warming under that great autumn sky.
And then, may I be grateful,
for all that I am not,
upon all I depend,
and beyond all I think I am,
for all that I am.
I am not, after all,
the master of all things,
but the one tasked to cherish them.
May I know that in this reverence
for things unknown,
for things delicate, silent,
kind and beautiful,
I find my true purpose.
May I remember
to look,
to be touched,
to see,
to love.
May I remember
I am nothing, alone.
You are cherishing the world and so will your sons!
. My 3guys are all grown up —. My youngest is turning 42 Sunday! And while they’re not perfect, they
all have good hearts so they listen -eventually! Mothers shape our boys just as much as our girls. I worked to become conscious so that my kids would be.
We women can change the world by teaching our men to reconnect with their emotional body. Then helping them understand what it’s saying. Yeah moms!
Yessss!
Hi Cary. I like your drawing. Complicated like most things in nature with many repeated shapes. I am especially fond of spirals. Thanks for sharing. 🦋Diana Robbins
Ditto Cary!
But l see The Hero’s Journey as a metaphor of growth, time and time again…inner work not outer.
OK, but ... what's the actual plot arc with which you propose to replace the Hero's Journey? There are a few other plot structures I'm aware of, but all of the ultimately have very deep cultural and psychobiological roots; inventing new ones is very difficult.
I'm not really sure that an alternative to the HJ is really what our civilization requires, however. Seems to me that it is precisely the lack of heroism that is bleeding white the souls of our youth. The values of the longhouse, of middle-aged women and old men, have no ability to inspire young men; without the energy of young men, civilization falls. Looking around us, it is not the middle-aged women and old men who have been abandoned and cast into the cold ... to the contrary, society is organized around their desires, and the result is a cultural enervation that threatens to consume us.
To put it in more concrete terms: "saving the environment" or "fighting climate change" or whatever does not inspire me in the slightest. To the contrary, I'm left utterly cold. I know for a fact that's true of many other men. Men want to go out and explore, and build, and fight; it's what we're designed to do. Not to sit around at home in the garden. Ecological metaphors are all very well and good, but ecologies involve predators as well as herbivores, so to speak, and predators are excluded at one's peril: remember the effect on Yellowstone of reintroducing wolves.
Appreciate your comment. I don't think replacing the archetypes is possible. I do believe tho that their original healthy life serving intentions can be reclaimed. To me the rulers of empire throughout time have co-opted the archetypes to serve their own agendas. I have a native perspective on this that I believe may be a bit closer to what you are talking about. I wrote a long comment about this I posted here a bit ago. Warriors were considered sacred and invaluable protectors of commiunity throughout ancient cultures. But when I look at the military-industrial complex today, I see that desire to protect and serve being subverted by the mentally ill in charge who are out to serve themselves and their own power base. I don't want to get rid of the Warrior or the Hero or even change them fundamentally. I want to reclaim the original honorable intention of those archetypes that have been stepped all over and driven into the mud.
Warrior/heroes aren’t the only ones who have been subverted. Healers also, in our Medical Industrial Complex. Mothers also, in the form of neurotic helicopter mothers that bring the Devouring Mother archetype to mind…it’s all a mess, such a mess!
Interesting you brought up the subverting of the Mother archetype as I was just having this conversation with a couple of friends yesterday. Us old ladies are finding it difficult to know how to talk to young mothers lately as they seem determined to let their kids run the show. Which makes for some pretty self-absorbed, entitled and disrespectful kids who quite likely are going to get slapped down pretty hard at some point. The world is crumbling and these kids think they are supposed to be enabled and catered to.. One of my young mother friends, who is an incredibly loving, patient person was bemoaning the fact that she had yelled at her kids. My mouth hung open. She has two very strong willed boys who are constantly testing the boundaries and a very young daughter who still needs alot of attention from her at the same time. Who wouldn't yell ? Certainly NOT a failure of Motherhood on her part! Where are these young mothers getting the rulebook from now? They seem so overly concerned with gender pronouns, micro-agressions and causing 'harm' through the normal language of every day converse, that basic communication has become increasingly surreal and loaded with booby traps. One of my friends has a new grandbaby and the parents are telling her she is supposed to call her grandchild an IT because they are raising the baby gender neutral. She laid down the law and said no way is she doing that. The Mother archetype is so under seige on so many levels right now just as our precious Mother Earth is under siege as well.