|
|
|
|
|
One way or another, we all have to
find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity
in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to
that.
---Joseph Campbell |
"Culture is defined by what it says no to. Not by
what it says yes to. So, what's happening in the sibling society is we
say no to almost nothing."
Robert
Bly to pbs.org/ |
|
What each must
seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is
something out of his own unique potentiality for
experience, something that never has been and
never could have been experienced by anyone else
|
|
Enjoying
a blessed afterlife with your
thiasos
[extended family] is the most
cherished benefit conferred by initiation into
the Greek mysteries |
|
Confirmation among Catholics and Bar Mitzvah for Jews no
longer resonate for the majority of participants
Each generation must either create
its own myths and its own heroes or regenerate those of
the past.
If interpreted literally, these symbols become at best
speculative history, and therefore the grammar of the
symbols has to be understood.
|
|
The myth that the American concept of the
“free world” can be exported, allowing peace and
harmony to reign, has been dramatically shaken by
events following the "9/11" destruction of 2001.
|
|
 |
|
Speaking across the ages from the 1st century AD, at
Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries, is a remarkable series of
panels communicating an initiation ritual for young woman.
|
Initiation for the 21st century:
It has been pronounced that mythical thought always
works from awareness of binary oppositions toward their
progressive mediation. The death of the old culture is
all around us but what is the unifying story of the new
global culture for the age marked by the beginning of
the 21st century?
The paradox of the Monomyth
of All Cultures:
In the second stage of the hero's journey, where
the hero is initiated according to Joseph Campbell he says that
the Hero meets the Universal Goddess. A woman, would
find a Heavenly Husband. It is not clear what he is
referring to. At no point does he elaborate on the Monomyth as relevant from a woman's point of view.
Today, the most vigorous and fastest growing
initiation comes to the world from Brazil where it is
known as the Batizado ceremony of
capoeira. There is some myth, soul and gender
instruction but its strength lies in teaching a respect
for yourself and the ancestors. Carnaval and
carnaval.com are proud to be connected with this
positive force in thousands of communities in over 90
countries.
For many centuries, Masonic
orders provided a link to the rituals and wisdom
contained in the mythical stories not claimed by
Christianity. Since the advent of the powerful media
culture their systems requiring significant memorization
and participatory ritual have not attracted adequate
numbers to avoid closure of over 70% of their lodges.
Still their numbers are impressive and in their temples
are still active in thousands of communities throughout
the world. There are many types of Masons including the
Shriners who love a parade. found many communities their
youth programs provide the best option for youth
concerned about more than just salvation of their soul.
And, beholding in many souls the
traits of the divine beauty, and
separating in each soul that which
is divine from the taint which it
has contracted in the world, the
lover ascends to the highest beauty,
to the love and knowledge of the
Divinity, by steps on this ladder of
created souls. Somewhat like this
have the truly wise told us of love
in all ages. The doctrine is not
old, nor is it new.
---R.W.Emerson
Essay on Love |
|
|
Eros, the
god of love
is the
final panel
given to us by
the House of Mystery in Pompeii |
|
For the youth
entering adult society:
Initiation transforms large quantities of narcissism
to a graceful form of altruism. Consumer society today has
forgotten how important it is to assist
youth in this process of shifting from a narcissistic to a
soulful person.
There's a problematic denial about supporting or creating
institutions which could assist on an essentially spiritual path. Belief is
actually rather cheap, costing very little unlike living as
part of community in service to that community.
Among societies in a
primitive stage of development, tribal initiation usually
possesses a central position in the social and religious
life of the community. The process of the decline of
initiation the Greeks stand somewhere between our own
society, which has lost all save a few traces of initiation,
and those primitive societies in which tribal initiation has
retained its central importance.
In youth narcissism is natural since you're likely to be
focused on yourself, anxious about being accepted and loved.
No matter what your age, the initiatory events from ancient
stories allow for a re-examination of childhood issues from
a different perspective.
For most today the most important ritual experience of
transformation is the marriage ceremony, there is an
unavoidable initiation as well when the alchemy that begins
with ceremony becomes the daily giving of oneself to the
unity of marriage and welfare of its children.
However, the rite of passage from youth to adulthood, has
been one of the most neglected of rituals here during
expectant times on the cusp of the 21st century. The lack of
sustained efforts, point to a failure of institutions and
the need for a new shared vision of what is the necessary
role for the village in raising the child.
| The Ongoing
Discussion: |
|
In the nineties, Robert Bly's best selling book Iron
John energized the
mythopoetic men's
movement as did the idea of a reclaiming men's
mid-life initiation. A retreat from the forefront
followed in the wake of media
trivialization, but many others carry on. Bly still
leads men's group in the midwest but the charismatic
Michael Meade has assumed the mantle of creating a
meaningful link between boys and society. |
Do women have different stages of initiation? That wasn't
discussed. Do artists have different stages of initiation? That wasn't
discussed. Are there spiritual roads that involve the male learning
grief? That wasn't discussed. Every book can contain only a small sliver
of the vast field of mythology. Joseph Campbell opened the awareness of
the link between mythology and initiation, and the discussions went on
for years."[robertbly.com/int_8.html
]
"The media has
tried to paint things differently. The most powerful
enemies of men's openness are the corporate men.
Three or four years ago there were hundreds of
posters in New York one spring saying, "You don't
need to beat a drum or hug a tree to be a man." At
the bottom: "Dewar's Whiskey." The corporate world
dares to say to young men, knowing how much young
men want to be men, that the only requirement for
manhood is to become an alcoholic. That's
disgusting. It's a tiny indication of the ammunition
aimed at men who try to learn to talk or to feel."
[robertbly.com/int_8.html
] |
|
|
|
Being alive at the end of this
millennium means getting caught in a
fundamental crisis that calls into question every
aspect of life and death. It becomes essential to
have an eye for the symbolic and a feel for ritual
as radical changes says Michael Meade in the
introduction to Mircea Eliade's Rites and Symbols of
Initiation or as Eliade reminds us "the hope and
dream of these moments of total crisisare to obtain
a definitive and total renovatio, a renewal
capable of transmuting life."
Michael Meade |
| |
No rite or
ceremony is a true initiation if if does not do the
following;
- Cause you to engage in
introspection - that is, turn your consciousness
within, to look upon yourself;
- engender within you a feeling
of aspiration and idealism; and
- exact from you a sacred
obligation or promise which you make to yourself
that you will try to fulfill your aspirations.
|
 |
|
An important aspect of both the men's and women's
movement is a focus on gender reconciliation.
Understanding the nature of the male/female dynamic
is particularly fluid at this time making it both
exciting and difficult for youth to understand their
place in the world. For this reason we put our
gender initiation page in the myth aforum
section where it will not be indexed by search
engines and it is possible to add comments and
links. |
| Myth
is a fundamental component of human thought. One has only to
consider the magical feelings attaching to authority, or the
glamour attributed to celebrities, to appreciate the importance
of sharing mythologies within the community. Unfortunately, the
few artists of stature who occupy this field, are film directors
beholden to short-term commercial interests. |
|
|
The Monomyth
|
The Monomyth:
hero's
journey common to all cultures and ages |
 Written in the forties, The Hero with a Thousand
Faces remains Joseph Campbell most
important and influential book. It traces the
archetypal myth of a hero's departure, initiation,
and return in various cultures' folklore to uncover
a "monomyth."
The conquest of fear yields the courage of life.
That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic
adventure-- fearlessness and achievement.
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and
our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic
transformation of consciousness. Campbell divides
this "monomyth" into three main stages--Departure,
Initiation, and Return |
"During the Seventies a tremendously healthy discussion
was
going on as well in the US around therapy, fairy tales, mythology,
stages of growth and the meaning of initiation. I first heard
Joseph Campbell talk in Toronto in 1975, and
his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces was the Bible of those
discussions. He welded many different stories and myths together in a
way that emphasized the heroic male, the young hero who leaves his
village, fights various multiple-headed beings, gets a boon, and brings
it back to the village. That was the initiation, so to speak, of the
male hero.
Robert Bly |
|
Joseph Campbell has identified
the following common sequences in this story
likely to have a version in most cultures: |
| |
|
Reigning Monomyth |
 |
Star
Wars is a masterpiece of synthesis, a
triumph of American ingenuity and
resourcefulness, demonstrating, how the old may
be made new again: Lucas raided the junkyards of
our popular culture and rigged a working myth
out of scrap.
Andrew Gorden |
|
|
|
|
Typically, the hero is the
orphaned son or royalty. Unaware of his true
identity, he is consigned to a life of drudgery
and exile. He is first called to adventure by a
herald, signifying that "the time for the
passing of a threshold is at hand" (p.51). The
threshold represents a rebirth into adulthood;
the hero or heroine must overcome the parents,
who stand as "threshold guardians."
|
|
The next step in this
wish-fulfillment dream is the encounter with a
protective figure, "some wizard, hermit,
shepherd, or smith, who appears to supply the
amulets and advice that the hero will
require....The call, in fact, was the first
announcement of the approach of this initiatory
priest" (pp. 72-73). |
|
Nothing in mythic plots
adheres to the conventions of realism; it is all
guided to fulfill the hero's "destiny." And what
is destiny but a supernatural "Force" which
arranges for things to happen? It is another
word for the belief in the magical omnipotence
of thought |
|
As Otto Rank notes in The
Myth of the Birth of the Hero, "the myth
throughout reveals an endeavor to get rid of the
parents," |
|
The next stage of the
adventure, says Campbell, is the passage into
"the belly of the whale" (p. 90) The initiation
consists of a series of miraculous tests and
ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the
advice, amulets, and secret agents of the
supernatural helper" (p. 97) ); |
|
At the center of the journey
is "The Meeting with the Goddess" and "The
Atonement with the Father," both symbolic stages
in working out the Oedipal crisis. |
Having symbolically met
his mother and made his peace with his father,
the hero, according to Campbell, has reached the
stage of Apotheosis. He is now the possessor of
the grace of the Gods, "the Ultimate Boon" which
can restore his culture.
Briefly formulated, the universal doctrine
teaches that all the visible structures of the
world--all things and beings--are the effects of
a ubiquitous power out of which they arise,
which supports them and fills them during the
period of their manifestation, and back into
which they must ultimately dissolve....Its
manifestation in the cosmos is the structure and
flux of the universe itself (pp. 257-58).
|
|
The Departure and the
Initiation completed, the hero now begins the
third and final stage: the Return. "The full
round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that
the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing
the runes of Wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his
sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of
humanity, where the boon may redound to the
renewing of the community, the nation, the
planet, or the ten thousand worlds" (p. 193).
In the stage of Return, the Hero returns from
the Dark as Master of both worlds, the world of
everyday existence and the Mysterious Void
beyond all Imagining that underlies it
|
|
According to Campbell, "the
work of the hero is to slay the tenacious aspect
of the father (dragon, tester, ogre king) and
release from its ban the vital energies that
will feed the universe" (p. 352). His job, in
other words, is the destruction of the status
quo in order to permit renewal and restoration. |
|
LINKS |
“Finding Our Way Home:
‘The Wizard of
Oz’ as Communitas” by Brian T. Hartley
Featuring over 40 cites published
sources, a brilliant compelling and
important case for The Wizard of Oz as a
primary myth for our age and a balance
to the more masculine Hero's Journey
articulated by Joseph Campbell
.greenville.edu/faculty/bhartley/wizard.htm
|
|
|
Dionysian
Greek Mystery Initiation
|
| |
|
FOLLOWING
THE RITE OF INITIATION: |
|
One would feel at
one with nature, in all its intensity, both light
and dark. A total egoless union with the other
initiates present, thus identified as the collective
Dionysos, along with the liberation, gained through
the removal of all ‘masks’, and the realisation of
one’s own inner divinity, also identified as
Dionysos.
|
|
Greek Mysteries |
|
One of the chief reasons for the sustained
popularity, which saw the Elysian Mysteries last for
1000 years, was the democratic nature in which they
ministered to the needs of the individual man.
Completely denationalized and liberated from racial
prejudices, they welcomed men of all races to their
membership. They were genuinely democratic
brotherhoods in which rich and poor, slave and
master, Greek and barbarian met on a parity |
|
Dionysus Mysteries |
|
|
|
Greek
Mystery Initiation |
The soul on the point of death has the
same experience as the initiand in the great mysteries . . .
at first wanderings and wearisome hurryings to and fro, and
unfinished journeys half-seen as through a darkness; then
before the consummation itself all the terrors, shuddering
and trembling, sweat and wonder; after which they are
confronted by a wonderful light, or received into pure
regions and meadows, with singing and dancing and sanctities
of holy voices and sacred revelations, wherein, made perfect
at last, free and resolved, the initiand worships with
crowned head in the company of the pure and undefiled
looking down on the impure, uninitiated multitude of the
living as they trample one another under foot and are herded
together in thick mire and mist.
'Plutarch on
Greek Initiation:' |
| |
|
| The Initiation Chamber |
|
Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 50-60 BC
|
The
frescoes from the Villa Item ("House of the Mysteries")
outside Pompeii were discovered in 1909. We are honored to
present such stunning work from the past which speaks so
clearly here in the present.
Dionysiac
initiation is entry into the Dionysiac community, the
thiasos. The thiasos is a mythical community, a
collective power capable of insuring a blessed afterlife.
Through initiation an initiate become a mythical follower of
Dionysos, a Maenad or a Satyr and insured a place in the
underworld after the current life passed.
The term "mysteries" refers
to secret initiation rites of the Classical world. The Greek
word for "rite" means "to grow up". This ancient fresco
cycle depicts statuesque women engaged in activities that
have often been connected with the initiation of a young
woman into the mysteries of the cult of Dionysus in
preparation
The Greek term
mysterion derives from the verb muein, meaning
to close the mouth or the eyes -- a going into the darkness
therefore, as the candidate or mystes after
purification or katharsis withdrew into the
mysterion, the darkness of the initiation chamber,
where he suffered a symbolic death, to be reborn into the
light of a new revelation, called the epopteia.
The great merit of the
Mystery Schools was that they made the universal
wisdom-traditions available to anyone capable of grasping
them and allowed the initiate to live with understanding and
to die without fear, as Cicero tells us.
|
| |
| I fear to
breathe any treason against the majesty of love,
which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we
must not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms
or flower-leaves indifferently. There are persons
from whom we always expect fairy-tokens; let us not
cease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not
to be limited by our municipal rules. For the rest,
I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The
best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in
the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to
you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am
I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house
and lands. No services are of any value, but only
likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to
others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,
-- no more. They eat your service like apples, and
leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and
delight in you all the time.
--Ralph
Waldo Emerson (1803-82), Essays, Second
Series.
|
|
|
Archetypal or Mythopoetic
|
Myths are public dreams,
dreams are private myths. If your private
myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that
of the society, you are in good accord with your
group. If it isn't, you've got an adventure in
the dark forest ahead of you.
--- Joseph Campbell |
|
Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that
are renditions of insights, giving some sense of
the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life
|
| Our demons are
our own limitations, which shut us off from the
realization of the ubiquity of the spirit . . .
each of these demons is conquered in a vision
quest. |
"Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou
art."
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish
writer. |
| |
|
Archetypal or Mythopoetic is
Polytheism: Suppleness is an important quality of soul.
In Greek mythology the flexibility of the gods is one of
their chief important traits. They help sustain their
interrelationship of polytheism. Polytheism is a
psychological model, not religious belief.
In the early nineties, the Mythopoetic men's movement
garnered much attention. It's leadership resurrected the
cannon of great mythical stories told in a rhythm
favored by the soul. This
poetry reading, was accompanied by books by Robert Bly,
Michael Meade and James Hillman. However,
as quickly as the movement rose, it largely disappeared.
The charge of moving past its own narcissistic initial
stage of self or
mid-life initiation to initiation of boys to manhood was
too great a task for these prophets without
institutional or strong local support to take on. This
short-lived men's movement amounted to university
teaching outside the university setting, yet the truths
and needs remain as urgent as ever.
Whatever happened to the Mythopoetic men's movement?
The amount of and Michael Meade read or recited to the men's groups.
The three of you gathered many of those poems in The Rag and Bone Shop
of the Heart. In a sense, .
|
As a natural centring and
unfolding of the personality, individuation is
an alchemical cycle of separation and synthesis
which involves the dethroning, or relative
abolition of the ego. This mythic process takes
place through the gradual distillation of the
Self - the ambivalent archetypal core of the
personality - out from a latent condition of
unconsciousness into its rightful place at the
centre of consciousness. Individuation is a
lengthy process, indeed one which once begun,
never ends, for becoming centred in the Self is
merely the starting point of a new journey
which, like the Medicine Wheel, moves outward in
an ever-widening spiral to embrace the fate and
soul of World and Cosmos.
In this interweaving waltz,
through the Dionysian explosion of the isolated
ego, soul's diffusive movement outward meets
soul's infusive movement from outer to inner,
and the two merge in an imaginal Cosmos, whose
Centre, as all shamans know (through imaginal
'gnosis'), is everywhere.
If "soul" refers also to an
anima mundi, a world soul, then as alchemists
such as Paracelsus stated, the soul in one sense
lies beyond the individual and belongs to a mode
of reality beyond our control. In the
Neoplatonic Fourth Ennead, Plotinus discusses
whether all individuals are one soul,
James Hillman has undoubtedly
contributed more than anyone in the post-Jungian
camp to stressing our need to honour the
Dionysian, or 'dis-integrating' dimension of
therapy. Conversely, positive thinking - as a
psychological theory - assumes that anything
that's broken, or off-centre (eccentric!), or
suffering, or in darkness, depression, neurosis,
or symbolic death needs to be immediately fixed
up, centred, unified, or brought into the light
of health.
As Hillman notes, there is a
soul-world of difference here between 'spiritual
discipline' and therapy. As he puts it: 'Anyone
who tends to dismiss pathology for growth, or
anima confusions for ego strength and
illumination, or who neglects the
differentiation of multiplicity and variety for
the sake of unity is engaged in spiritual
discipline.'(2) Therapy, on the other hand,
concerns itself with 'soul' which, as Hillman
stresses, is inherently pathological, multiple,
prone to wandering, death, depth and depression.
The re-connection with soul,
then, is not equivalent to the re-enthroning of
the monotheistic myth of psychic unity, but is
rather on one level the reinstatement of soul in
all its imaginal complexity and fragmentation,
its meanings and meanderings; for if the psyche
protects against splintering, it is also prone
to splintering its protection. Perhaps, in other
words, we need to 're-vision' soul retrieval by
viewing it not only as a reintegration of the
personality, but also as an affirmation of
polytheistic soul that is at the heart of the
"I-Thou" of human and Cosmic life. If soul is
both one and many, then the centripetal
re-connection to multiple soul compensates the
centrifugal re-collection of an original unity
of soul.
Just as shamans, through
initiation death-rebirth must heal themselves,
so the effective depth therapist is one who
through individuation as the ongoing
"re-collection" of wholeness, has transcended
the "dis-ease" of imbalance and conflict by
becoming consciously centred in the Self rather
than in the one-sided ego. This re-centring does
not obliterate conflict, multiplicity of soul,
or pathology, but rather allows for the
coexistence of a more central and detached
vantage point from where an untouchable core of
the personality serenely views the conflict,
while the pathologizing soul is unavoidably
immersed in it. Our wounds, after all, parent
our destinies and keep us in the body - and in
the world. They stop us from the temptation to
escape upward along the vertical axis of
"spirit" and keep us anchored instead in the
World, hence along the horizontal human axis of
Keatsian "Soul-making", with all its attendant
yet necessary limitation and suffering.
|
The Father is the world generating spirit and his power
passes through the transforming medium, who is the
Mother of the world. When men become attached to forms,
and forget the Power of the Void, then the time comes
for the Hero to make the journey back to the Source,
reminding men of all that is Eternal and Unchanging.
The Hero is represented in two ways - he is either a man
who has to make the psychological journey back to the
Source or else he is a God come to life whose Hero hood
is predestined and preordained. This God Hero then makes
the journey and returns and goes forth slaying tyrants.
The Tyrant stands for the earlier Hero who is now
attached to the ego and is unwilling to forsake his
personal gains. Once the tyrant is got rid of, the Hero
then returns to the Void. Thus the cycle continuously
repeats itself.
To learn more about the Mythopoetic men's movement,
visit the
Men's Center Los Angeles. Here is founder
Dr. Stephen Johnson's
The Quest for the Masculine Soul (Whole Life
Times, August, 1995); and "Natural
Allies: In Search of a Mentor" (Man!, Spring,
1992). Also, see Stephen's interview "Healing
the Masculine Wound" (Whole Life Times,
August, 1992). |
|
The
Branches of Mentoring, the Roots of Elders
offers orientation and training in the core
ideas and purposes of mentoring. The word
'mentor' refers to 'lived knowledge,' it comes
from an old myth in which Mentor acts as guide
and teacher using inspired ideas and a keen
knowledge of survival. |
 When Bill Moyer's PBS special
on the Robert Bly
aired in the winter of 1990, it brought forth an unprecedented
flood of calls and letters from both men and women attesting to
the pain and confusion experienced by many contemporary men.
This was the author's long-awaited book on male initiation and
the role of the mentor, the result of ten years' work with men
to discover the truths about masculinity that get beyond the
stereotypes of our popular culture.
In the tradition of Blake, Yeats, and D.H. Lawrence, the author
has turned to the most ancient stories and legends to remind men
and women of welcome images long forgotten, images of a vigorous
masculinity both protective and emotionally centered. He takes
as the frame of his book the tale of "Iron John", which the
Grimm brothers collected in the early nineteenth century, but
which in its themes and motifs goes back thousands of years. In
the story, an ancient "hairy man" - Iron John - becomes a mentor
to a young boy, and each event or adventure is regarded as a
stage in male growth. As the author retells the story, he stops
at times to reflect on initiation rituals for men which still go
on in some parts of the world or are still remembered in epics
such as The Odyssey. As the book progresses, it brings
together a rich and coherent picture of what it has meant
through time to pass from boyhood into manhood. Throughout that
long history of initiation the role of the older men has been
central. Yet in our own time, the young men he observes are
hungering for the father and the mentor as intensely as they
hunger for food. Some say stuck in the "tough guy" mode. Others
linger in the naiveté that destroys relationships, so doubtful
of themselves that they can be life preserving...but not life
giving. This book is at the same time a new version and a very
ancient vision of adult manhood, one that has depth, vividness,
and solidity. It reconfirms the power of ancient stories to
guide, to heal, and to convey the deepest truths.
|
| |
|
Main Page: Carnaval.com
|
This Page
