Levity among the Loons
For Ted Roethke
A loon said to a loon,
“I am lighter than the moon!
Drifting on the sky’s epidermal crust
without a single wing.
I merely trust that gravities will swoon
and air will bear me up—
a miracle babe thrust to the gods,
a mug o’ grog lifted to the toast,
hot vapor rising from a roast,
a glory craving bellowing from a boast,
a bang burst from a balloon!
Infinity’s sylph-slippered asymptote . . .”
“What you mean is that you float,”
said a loon to a loon
who also said, “but a moon is two moons.
One sits on the sighs of the world, shedding stars,
while her sister simmers in this lake,
another lonely girl
frequenting watery bars
where she hangs her neck to drink,
and drinks, and drinks. It makes you think:
some kinds of thirst are lies.
She grows more liquored with the wake.
Hardly even whole, really just a wreck,
hoping that some bottom-love will make her sink
and disappear into the dark.
Water’s the only weight she knows,
and it’s not weight enough
to anchor her ghosty color down
to the oblivion-life of its elementary particles—
sober, spaceless, black . . .”
“Of quarks!?” smirked a loon to a loon
as if to importune.
“Yes, of quarks,
the intelligence of mass, matter’s unmentionables,
the negligees of weight, an article’s innuendoes . . .”
“Perhaps she should date crows!” snickered a loon to a loon,
“Or learn to love the mud—a bottom love, indeed,
if I catch your drift.
Mud does wonders for the complexion, they say,
and crows cast only shadows, never reflections.
But who wants a casket for a wedding bed?
A grave’s not a decent place to stay—
too long a stop to smell the roses decay.
“No, I think she craves a kind of kinship,
another drunken lonely nighthawk
with some drunken lonely night talk,
to come and sit beside her wobbling hip to hip,
a wolf to peak into her basket
and to speak sweet nothings
of her lovely, lolling, loaf-like curves,
her buttery buns, dreaming back
to the churn where they were indiscreetly overfed
with a weeping, running heat.
It brings new meaning to the act
of breaking bread before we eat.
“See now, she’s spread out like a swan
with her skirts above her knees.
She has her pretty pistils on.
Her bloomers are in bloom,
their pollens plashing in her naked buttercup,
her petal ruffles lap
like tiny breakers
lipping to the flume,
oblivious to the delights of ingression
as ashes are to the urn,
that womb-theater where desire colludes
with beauty’s buxom amplitudes
to ape deathlessness
at the cusp of the abyss . . .
and always the act of making braids itself with not,
as nymphs and satyrs strike an odic pose
to tease a Keats out of his thought—
or, perhaps, a maiden
out of her clothes.
“O she’s a dirty, little curtsey,
like a keyhole clicking to its key
to get the fit that it deserves,
and, of course, the turn.
It’s the spinning of the bolt that matters,
a tickle of the mechanism, now inert,
but yearning for a spring.
They say what hurts the hovel
doesn’t hurt the storm,
and the bee is happier in the hive
than in the swarm—
so a little death is but a little sting.”
Laughing to himself, a loon took flight.
Another loon went diving like a kite
down into the moony puddle, imbibed,
dissolving as he fell,
finding moonlove an inebriated hell,
a silvered muddle that can’t be sipped or seized or satisfied.
The upward loon to the upward moon applied
and eased his laugh into the sky’s divide
where it shook a little silence from the light,
a little blink of focus
from the eye-orb of the night.
And a moon stared down at a moon most heavily,
barely lifting her primordial brow.
She was a child staring into a spoon,
round face bent around a prow,
inundated, wild, wearing a sleepy smile,
to think her light could grow so wet,
and so marooned.
And then her weary eyelid shut.
The Big Mistress mumbled what to what
like it was all so picayune, “Such levity
among the loons.”
What To Do With an Angel
I’ll tell you what to do with an angel.
When you walk through the front door
of a stranger’s house
and lying stiffly in a hump of a heap
is an old prayer-stained angel,
take off your overcoat
and throw it over the formless bulk
where the angel’s body is lewdly crystallizing.
Then walk over to the stranger
and put your hand on his shoulder.
Say, “It will be okay now, friend.
Just try to sleep it off.”
Turn to leave.
The stranger will say, “Thank you, friend.”
Smile and nod slightly and step toward the door.
“Friend?” the stranger will call out,
“What about your coat?”
Try not to shudder or hesitate too long.
Reply, “Keep it,” and now you may leave for good, and quickly.
When you have left the house
and are moving away more gradually among your footsteps
you will be free to mutter to yourself,
“It’s ruined . . . it’s ruined . . .”
Furloughed
I.
I’ve decided to die a little today, and maybe tomorrow I’ll do the same.
I’m going to turn my hands into powder. Spill them like salt on the forest floor. Spill them like new crystals in the water that takes and takes, and hunches away over the horizon. I’m going to saturate the juices that digest the land. I’m going to slow the sea’s appetite in my infinitesimal way.
Today, I’ve decided, I’m going to die a little.
II.
It so happens that that woman, the one with the rough eyeballs and hag jowls, has ridden me like a broken horse to all the sepulchral dens of the bridge club . . . exactly as she said she would.
All the ladies laughing with their heavy loaves of breasts, their bodies sheathed in thick bear hair, thighs leaping like bear shadows through the firelight.
The waters come toward their door and then leave. And they leave me worthless.
As a result, I will turn my hands and fingers to powder.
Today, I will die, if only a little.
III.
It so happens that the grotesque hand that lives in the pond over there has reached out to make love to my anklebone like a misguided house pet, exactly as it said it would the last time I passed it.
“I’ll turn my fingers and all ten fingernails to powder,” I said, but the hand from the pond only made moist slapping noises, slapping and sucking at my ankle with its syrupy palm.
The whole Worldbog started slapping and sucking like a wet orchestra warming up.
A little death, then, would not be a bad thing.
IV.
It so happens that the wooden underbelly of a little bridge has made its home above me, exactly as it swore it would, and it stretches on and on in mock of infinite things, stretching like a waking sleeper all day and night. And it feeds me a steady diet of gristly billy goats—pinching the fat on my cheek each morning, still not satisfied. Its footsteps bustling back and forth like a lone dumpling on a plate.
I’d threaten it with turning my knuckles and my fingerprints to powder, but I could just hear it saying, “When in Hawaii, one is inclined to eat more pineapples, no point in complaining.”
There goes the creekwater over my night bed, burbling and jabbering, pretending to be a big boiling stockpot as one might amuse a child by pretending to be a bumbling monster.
All I can do, today or any day, is simply die, a little, and then a little more.
V.
Soon enough all I’ve swallowed will come up my throat like the body of a blue cat, skittery back arched in Halloween blue, a tatter of electric blue fur leaping about in a tease of current.
And I will drain out of the faucets of my wrists as sand drains (creepily) to the nether cup of the hourglass.
And I will fall into the land, which is always so inconsiderately pressed upon, but so accustomed, conditioned, and resigned.
I will fall exactly as it has always told me I would—into its soiled arms like some lonely sailor furloughed in a foreign land falls (out of need more than desire) into the grayed bed of an old whore who is no longer beautiful, who no longer promises any ecstasy, as he no longer believes in any.
VI.
I will call on her every day, slipping away from the memory of wife and kids, from the toe-tapping spouse of the long steel ship, from the lush floorless bisque of the oceans, sliding into her sheets, laying my head on her used bosom, looking for a way to love her, to be loved, to soften her with sweetness whispering,
“You’ve been at this too long, my dear. Come and sail away with me.”
She’ll rise and walk to a basin of wash water by her mirror. The water has forgotten all of its heat, but she dips her long hair into it anyway, a basketful of dried fronds spilling from the head’s roost. Leans back. The water drips over her eyebrows, down below her chin, down her shoulders, over the keel of her stomach, and down.
Yes, my love, she will always reply,
watching the reflections of the water trails fall,
yes, I’ll go with you, I’ll sail away with you.
We’ll sail away together.
We’ll sail away, far away from here,
far away forever, forever.
VII.
As a game, Water invented One, and She came and stowed her smoky body in the hold of her mattress, but One was not enough,
so Water made Two, and the hulk of the ship settled in the port like a beached whale and waited for the call, and waited, and the call didn’t come, but Water wasn’t satisfied,
so it made Three, and I came down on a hoist like a bundle of dry goods, to be the ace and count for either eleven or one.
And Water saw it was a good game and shuffled its deck of cards like fifty two foggy sunrises where the boardwalk paces in its planks, dealt itself a hand and won, and played again and won, and played and won and won.
Scapegoat
I fell
or was pushed
from a seat
among angels
and landed
like an armful of kindling
in a place
where the footsteps
of my father
were deafening.
I broke
or was drowned
in a river
among men
and sank
like a pair of spectacles
in a current
where the hands
of my father
were baptizing.
I shouted
or was blamed
for the waste
of passions
and froze
like grass beneath the snow
in a wilderness
where the breath
of my father
was stilled.
I wept
or was buried
near the mountains
by devils
and dreamt
like the nets of fishermen
in the cradle
that the might
of my father
had toppled.
(take one goat of white
one of black
drive them over the cliff
with your sins
First Blues
I’d slaked myself in the dandelions,
little sun manes weeding in the grass,
fatting the summer with useless constellations.
I was a cricket, unseen by the Mighty Ones,
making my little sun song,
chirping the blues over dirty strings of a cheap guitar,
hoarding myself into the quarried lake of sound
mewled with deaf steel, wanting the wind to open
highways in the sky, hobo trains freighting
Jesus tears to stop and let me ride the blind,
wanting the Road, the Road!
Unraveling and raveling its gravel lungs in my chest!
The Sloughing Snake, Tailbiter, Neverender,
Passagemaker, Seedsower, Devourer,
Regenerator.
The Lemniscate Road, The Way . . .
to be absorbed by the Hunger
that coils the cosmic spring . . .
Ol’ Blacktop, Ol’ Motion who tears at soles,
who tars, and tolls, and swallows . . . .
You stung me like a hornet.
All I could
do was look
down at the wound,
walk
away stuttering.
(Then my ears fell inside you
like seeds)
Notes on the Poems
Notes
א (Aleph) is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There is a great deal of symbolic and Kabbalistic significance associated with it. In the conventional Rider-Waite tarot deck, the first card, #0, The Fool, depicts a young, well-dressed man standing in the posture of an aleph upon a crumbling precipice . . . and seeming to take no notice. He is the great journeyer . . . and also the great faller. The Fool is the only thing in us that can fall without perishing, the survivor of descents, the indigestible seed that passes through the intestines and is fertilized.
The Aleph is a silent letter.
“Mother, Get my Ax!” is what Jack shouts down as he’s descending the beanstalk. The giant, whom he had stolen from, was right behind him.
This is a sort of overture for the book, and I hope its various meanings and inheritances will accrue (or congeal) as one moves through the rest of the poems.
The line, “Our shadows step forth to cast back the flesh of our bodies”, owes its inspiration to Remedios Varo and her painting, Fenómeno (1962) . . . not just to Orpheus and Eurydice and Lot and his wife.
I feel I need to add an important disclaimer to this poem, maybe even an interpretation. This poem was written before 9/11/2001. The first draft was probably completed late in 1999 with the origins of the piece begun in early 1998. It has been revised dozens of times since then. In fact, I seem to feel compelled every year or two to dive into it afresh, sans life preserver, and “translate” it, interpret it, make sense of it. Each time I have done this, I have come up with another meaning, or another level of meaning. From the very beginning of this ritual of interpretation (in itself, a ritual of faith), I realized that the poem was prophetic. Yet, I imagined it was prophetic of my book, of that whole statement or expression which I have called What the Road Can Afford. This is why it became the opening piece and overture for the book.
In my thickheaded, self-involved, self-captivated poetic intelligence, I amazingly did not realize that it could be (and most likely will be) seen as prophetic of (or related to) the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center terrorism . . . until now, early fall of 2004. This is the kind of goon-headed oversight only a poet could make.
And so, I feel somewhat bullied into providing an interpretation of my poem, both bullied and obligated . . . due to the rather harsh implications one might draw from it, were one to read it as “about” 9/11. On one hand, I do not fear being branded as anti-American. Even though I don’t see myself as such, I realize that we are still (in the George W. Bush era) living fixedly in an era of propagandized language, and so such branding is probably inevitable. On the other hand, I am as horrorstruck, as wounded by the 9/11 atrocity as any American bystander. I don’t wish my poem to try to aggravate those unhealable wounds, and so it is very important to me that it is not bent into such a device. Of course, I believe that if the poem is read intelligently, no such harmful interpretation would be possible. But I am not so naïve to think, because it is “Art”, it won’t be misread or misused, or that such misusage is unimportant. In truth, I have grown quite accustomed to my poetry being read unintelligently, and have come to expect it.
So, without further ado, this is what “Mother, Get my Ax!” is not about . . . .
Neither God nor poets are being blamed in any way for 9/11. America, Americans, and “Americanism” are also NOT being blamed. I do not believe we “deserved” this to happen to us, nor do I believe it is a “punishment” for our various hubrises. Anyone who wishes to see my poem as prescribing such a cultural edict not only does not have my blessing, but is considered by me an arse. I reiterate that this poem was not written about 9/11 and was written before 9/11 happened.
My personal feeling is that this poem is “about” ithyphallic language, which is a language of patriarchy and verticality (rise and fall). Such language incorporates common notions such as human hubris, Man vs. God or Man vs. Nature or Consciousness vs. Unconsciousness, The Fall as myth of consciousness, creation as partner of destruction, the masculine creative dynamic of potency vs. impotency, and numerous other things. In my possibly overly cerebral theoretical contraption, the story arc of humanity is one which falls under the aegis of ithyphallic language. God, consciousness, ego, self, gender, faith, civilization, philosophy, love . . . all are constructions of ithyphallic language. I don’t feel that to say this “gives away” or in any way belittles my poems. This is merely the same thing as saying that my book is about human experience or human perception (a perception that includes the perception of that perception); in other words, it’s about “everything”. The devil is in the details, as they say. Besides, would it really surprise you to hear a poet finds his way at the universe through language?
I will not be the first person since 9/11 to note that the fall of the tall tower is an ancient and powerful symbol, an archetypal part of the human species’ psychic genes. The images I use in this poem (and elsewhere in my writing) of Jack’s Beanstalk, the Tower of Babel, the “maiden towers” of innumerable fairytales and medieval romances, and the Tower card from the tarot deck, are merely well known manifestations of this archetype. It is, in fact, the common bond between these manifestations, the archetype itself, that I am drawn to riff around in “Mother, Get my Ax!”
The fall of the Twin Towers is all the more immense to us because it activates the old archetype of The Fall, that archetype which is the cluster of mysterious reactions surrounding the not quite definable connection between the onset of human consciousness and the birth of a new confusion, shame, or guilt . . . or responsibility. Thus, the force of blame, in all of its ferocity, is the anticipated beast awakened by such a fall. This beast stands between the wound, our loss, and healing of that wound. Blame activates a classic patriarchal redefinition of self and other, a redefinition that is particularly polarizing and has been profoundly troubling throughout human history. Our current trend is patriot/terrorist, a construct which we are trying to insist into a polar division. Of course, the patriot/terrorist construct is actually a patriot-terrorist type, a unity, not two different things at all, but two aspects of one thing, which are no doubt indivisible. They can only be artificially divided with a demolition of language, and the result (for anyone using this damaged language) is a relationship to both patriotism and terrorism that is secured by bad faith.
And now, possibly contradicting myself, I will state that I am willing to accept the association with 9/11 as another valid and useful interpretation of my poem. I don’t really believe in prophecy, certainly not when I am intimately aware of the mundane place said prophecy originated (i.e., my mind), but archetypes are not a “theory”, and this example is a proof of that assertion. What I mean is that these various interpretations all cohere to something which is a oneness, is largely definable and identifiable. In a way, all these interpretations mean the same thing. That thing (which is defined “as if” by its examples) is the archetype of the Tower or The Fall. The metaphor of iron filings (the manifestations) and the magnetic force (the archetype) could be applied.
I am willing to accept this possible interpretation with the condition that we consider 9/11 as something that happened in the realm of language, in addition to something that happened in so many other, more concrete realms. Think, for instance, how the language (rhetoric, really) emerging post 9/11 has been dangerously oppressive. The language has been shattered, just like in “Mother, Get my Ax!” or in the Tower of Babel story. We are left with a dissociation of language, with inadequate terms to talk about our pain, our anger, about America as something complex and multifaceted and non-uniform. Most of this dangerous rhetoric has emerged out of politicians, but the media in general has been complicit in disseminating it unquestioningly, and we, the people, are complicit for swallowing so much of it indiscriminately. This post 9/11 rhetoric is language with especially swollen subtext, is language which depends upon the submersion of that particular human organ required to perceive and read such subtext.
Possibly, not unlike the audience member of the “most devastating reading” given in “Mother, Get my Ax!”, we are struck now with a Great Dumbening. We must ask ourselves what this terrible blow to consciousness, this wound dealt to our ability to both hear (discern) and think (connect), means to us as members of the tribe of America, of the world, and of the species. That 9/11 has clearly been important on the level of language (and language always means consciousness), is not deniable. I can only hope that we will eventually bring forth some sort of greater understanding of the importance of language from it, for instance, that language creates us as we create it. Or, to be more biblical, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
Much to the contrary of our poets’ constant grousing, our declarations of impotence, it would seem this should, in fact, be a time for poets. By poets, I mean those who rebel against the Great Dumbening by making the language useful, useful as a tool for humanity to better understand itself, not into a thing dominated by a subconscious rhetoric of power, of loosed will ripe for the opportunistic designs of sleeping demons. We need to ask ourselves, at times like these, who is tending to the language? Who will heal the language?
It is the rebel angel in us that interprets The Fall, not as a punishment, but as a calling. It is in America much as it is in poetry, a time to rebuild with one eye on the past and one on the future, and most importantly, with both eyes open. It is maybe the first sign in decades that language healers are needed in America, and so must come down from their own fortified towers and absurd, “enchanted” isolations, academic, psychological, or what have you.
Osiris was the ancient Egyptian dying god of the underworld and husband/brother to Isis. He was cut into 14 pieces by his envious brother Seth (god of chaos), who scattered the pieces all over Egypt. Dutiful Isis was able to collect all of them except the penis, which was said to have been eaten by a crocodile or fish. She constructed an artificial penis, attached it to the body of Osiris, and had intercourse with it. She became pregnant and later gave birth to Horus.
Horus and Seth then battled for 80 years over the rule of Egypt before Horus triumphed (less one eye).
The second stanza of the poem contains various images and phrases from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The dead who had to make the journey to the afterlife were said to become Osiris. His mouth and eyes were cut open with an adze so that the god could see and speak his name and use the “words of power”, those magical incantations necessary to protect one against the oppositional forces and judgments one faced.
This is, needless to say, of particular interest to a poet, who must rightly perform an Opening of the Mouth Ceremony in order to create poetry.
Although the poet who speaks this poem is not blessed with a tongue as “perfect” (Book of the Dead) as the one Isis used to weave the incantations which protected Osiris during the process of his reassembly, he still must use it in order to sanctify his passage through the underworld of his impotency. Part of the blues journey requires the journeyer to see himself as godless (or goddessless), as impotent to the forces that act upon him, treating him as if he were merely substance, material, stuff.
Furloughed draws inspiration from classic folktales. The repetitive prosaic structures used are derived from an eclectic sampling of these old stories. The “voice” of folktales is a thing not often explored for its poetic worth (a notable exception would be Russell Edson), but I think it is an essential component, something like blues is to jazz. There are a few specific folktales I take actual plot points from. In order of appearance, they are: “Ridden by a Witch” (from August Ey), “Iron Hans” (from the Grimms), and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” (Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe).
Levity Among the Loons was written immediately after I read Theodore Roethke’s Collected Poems. It is not meant to be an ode or an imitation; rather, I think it is more a personal reaction to and transmogrification of Roethke. I had especially noticed Roethke’s fascination with the dark anima or the ruthless consuming unconscious, which he seemed unable to work through. He was like a man in an old story that was enchanted by a mermaid or water spirit and lured into a watery death. I believe he characterized this as a necessary “regression”, but sometimes in the dizziness of diving, we accidentally drown. The unconscious is not so much a romper room as it is an ocean, just as deep and terrible and powerful as it is full of life and buoyancy and eco-structure.
Drinking was, of course, a problem for Roethke. Drinking and depression.
[A few years after writing this poem and at least a year after writing this note, I discovered that my approach to Roethke may have been unintentionally prescient. It seems (I read this online, and don't know if it's 100% true) that Roethke died after mixing some drinks and jumping into a swimming pool . . . where he had a heart attack and drowned. Maybe I would seem all the more clever if I had known this before I wrote "Loons" . . . but as I said, this was not meant to be an ode . . . or an elegy]
Roethke’s sing-songy children’s and nonsense verses juxtaposed and imbued his “more serious” poems with their darker, childlike (or fairytale-like) humor. They painted a portrait (in my mind at least) of a fascinatingly divided and self-destructive artist.
Possibly, this inspired me to create my self-reflecting, self-serious loon and his watery, lecherous, punning, foolhardy alter ego who plans to woo the reflection of the moon by hook or by crook. He was a very fun character to write.
Just a personal note, the voice and persona for the moon were inspired by Margaret Dumont, the wealthy dowager character wooed by Groucho in many great Marx Brothers movies. So, it would be fair to say that the reflected loon owes a great deal to Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, and not just Roethke.
Some years after I wrote this poem, I discovered that a very similar theme existed in a very famous poem of the 8th century Chinese poet Li Po called “Drinking Alone (by Moonlight)”. The first stanza as translated by Sam Hamill is:
I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.
I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.
But the moon doesn’t drink,
and my shadow silently follows.
I will travel with moon and shadow,
happy to the end of spring.
When I sing, the moon dances.
When I dance, my shadow dances, too.
We share life’s joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.
Constant friends, although we wander,
we’ll meet again in the Milky Way.
One might think I must have happened across this poem at some point during my education, and that, if only subconsciously, it influenced me . . . but I doubt it. Rather, I think it is a matter of the old axioms, “like thinkers drink alike” and “all new poetry is really old poetry”. I gladly bow to the bottle of Li Po. He pours a loving cup.
Featherhorse is, like Osiris, a retelling of an ancient myth from the perspective of a non-hero. This is the ancient Greek story of Pegasus, of course, who along with his “brother”, the giant (?), Chrysaor, sprung from the spilled blood of decapitated Medusa after the golden hero, Perseus, struck his mortal blow.
The winged horse, Pegasus, would go on to famous adventures, most notably with the Greek hero, Bellerophon, who was able to slay the chimera while riding his winged steed. Bellerophon was also a fallen goldenboy, bucked from Pegasus as he tried to ascend to Mount Olympus. Zeus sent a gadfly, which stung Pegasus and prevented the hubristic ascent of Bellerophon.
Pegasus was the horse of the Muses and the symbol of poetry. Chrysaor, on the other hand, received little literary attention and disappeared into anonymity. Maybe he sired Geryon, the keeper of the red cattle, who Heracles dispatched during a labor. I was curious; if Pegasus is the symbol of poetry, then what relationship does his brother, Chrysaor, have to poetry? Surely there must be some connection. Could Chrysaor represent a kind of anti-poetry, an inglorious voice (a voice and not an instrument), an unpoetic mind, and yet something more human, more conscious and anthropomorphic than a winged horse? This intrigued me, so I made him the speaker of this poem. Chrysaor means “Golden Sword”, which suggests divinely inspired discernment ("consciousness"). Other stories of Chrysaor suggest his difference from Pegasus had to do with where Medusa's blood landed: that which landed in the water (i.e., the unconscious) created Pegasus, and that which landed on the ground (i.e., the conscious) created Chrysaor.
Also, some sources claim that Chrysaor sprung from the ground in full armor (like Athena). Athena was the daughter of Zeus and Metis ("Wisdom"). Metis (the first wife of Zeus, who he swallowed in order to prevent her from giving birth to a son who, it was told, would overthrow Zeus) was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Chrysaor married Callirrhoe, also a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Medusa was made into a Gorgon by Athena for being raped by Poseidon (a rival of Athena in Athens) on the floor of Athena's temple.
Medusa was a patriarchally corrupted version of an ancient goddess of wisdom and the earth. She represented aspects of the feminine which the patriarchy could not absorb, and so became “ugly” in the eye of the patriarch. What a wonderful muse for American poetry today, though. She is what is left behind of the muse/feminine after the male poetic mind has ravished and raped and lopped off her head. I figured her children, Pegasus and Chrysaor, would both have some resultant version of a mother complex: one soaring/ascending and serving heroes, the other decaying/descending and hating heroes.
Sitcom. The “stone icon of Mary evacuated through the sky” was “lifted” from Federico Fellini’s film, La Dolce Vita.
The Progeny of Behaviorists. My parents do both hold Ph.D.s in psychology. In spite of this coincidence, this poem is not in any way drawn from the actual events of my childhood. Really.
The Literary Life must be a reaction to all those fruitless years I spent in university writing programs where we were told we must do this and must do that and must never do such and such. I thought I would try to write a poem that was clearly a “bad poem”, that broke workshop rules, was replete with “young poet hubris”, and yet, somehow, worked (hopefully the reader will think this does actually “work”).
Forbidden things do not disappear. In fact, they continuously gather their strength as they lie in wait until, finally, the tables are turned. This is the rule of the universe . . . a thing to which we are not immune.
Fantasia on a Train Station is dedicated to T.S. Eliot, who couldn’t figure out if manhood was Prufrock or Sweeney, impotence or abusiveness. There is a tiny nod to Freud in there, too . . . very subtle, though. I hope you found this a penetrating read.
Creation Myth is a kind of companion piece to “Mother, Get My Ax!”
The Gospel of Mark is, I believe, thought to be the first of the four New Testament gospels written, serving as a source for Matthew and Luke.
This poem established the theme for Faith Fictions: the gradual reconstitution of reaction into formulation, belief, and faith . . . or, an acclimatization to darkness.
Polka for the Recently Exhumed is my invective account of the MFA experience. Well, my MFA experience, at least. I apologize for its strange brand of cloaked double entendre, but this is always the way the tongues of the oppressed must speak. It would be profusely naïve to believe there are no moral conflicts involved in the creation of poetry. A sense of moral responsibility is especially important in this contemporary era of unchecked colonial thinking.
I’d like to see a re-Americanization of American poetry. We have convinced ourselves that, because the nation ignores us, we can ignore it in return. We are thus free from bearing the American shadow, or so we think. I disagree. We poets are the true indentures of the American shadow. We are its scullery maids, its standard bearers, its grave diggers and embalmers.
But we have forgotten the vaudeville of our “Alas, poor Yorick!” routine.
I wrote this poem before I had read anything by Jack Spicer, but after reading Spicer, this poem seemed like it was written for him. I guess on both of our radios we share a common station through which the spooks and Martians are babbling. Or possibly, we share a taste in furniture.
Self Portrait in Canine. The tongue that is “loosed and thrown askew to palpitate/and drizzle impugningly” was inspired by my dog, Marley, who is a walking wet mop. Whenever her mad slurping is heard, all but the ignorant start to batten down, fortify, and pray to their prophylactic gods. Of course, she believes slobber is the greatest gift (and she is very generous by nature). Then the cries of “Ewwww!” begin, accompanied by chaotic fleeing or the usage of various defensive barriers. Many pools of drool spring up wherever she stops for a moment. Trouser legs often fall victim to large, wet chin prints.
Marley still has all four legs (but only half of a tail).
In alchemy the Axiom of Maria states that “. . . out of the three comes the one which is the fourth.” So there you are.
For Every Action . . . is a companion piece to “Furloughed”. These two poems, along with “Levity Among the Loons”, form a triumvirate of odes to water, which reflects and distorts us, which we consume, which consumes us, which we mostly are, which we need in order to live, yet can die from too much of. No trees were harmed during the writing of this poem.
The trinity of the poem is not meant to be the conventional Christian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . . . not really. Think of it more as Flooder, Baler, and Sailor . . . or Drowner, Drinker, and Floater . . . or Self-Destroyer, Self-Healer, and Paparazzi-Poet . . . or chose your own favorite trinity (aquatic themes preferred). At the final stretch, I encourage you to bet on the apes.
Slaying Humbaba was inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh and his wildman “brother”, Enkidu, chose to prove their manliness by slaying Humbaba, the guardian of the Cedar Forest. Humbaba was a sort of monster, a representation of untamed nature. He was talked up as quite a serious threat (although he just hangs out in the forest far from human civilization, bothering no one), and both Gilgamesh and Enkidu have episodes of trepidation and indecision (and in some interpretations, a brawl) before they finally confront him. Eventually, Humbaba weeps and begs both Gilgamesh and Enkidu for his life, but Enkidu keeps spurring Gilgamesh on to slaughter. In the end, Humbaba is easily, somewhat pathetically, dispatched.
The entire Epic portrays Gilgamesh with a kind of Herculean arrogance. He is destructive and aggressive, and this behavior eventually has its consequences. First, Enkidu is condemned to death by the gods (for both his and Gilgamesh’s sins), and later, Gilgamesh fails in his quest for immortality.
My personal spin holds Gilgamesh’s first sin against the gods of the unconscious (Nature), the slaying of Humbaba, as emblematic of his condemnation to habitually repeat the fallacy (phallusy) of patriarchal consciousness: that the dire perpetuation of an aggressive, linear, monolithic will (or murderousness) is the goal of human life. The worship of rigidity, and the repression of flaccidity and fluidity.
The voice of the “You” character seems to me to represent the other. It possesses the wisdom, sympathy, and femininity that the “I” (Gilgamesh) character lacks. In fact, this poem is, maybe more than any of the rest, a poem of the other.
“Slaying Humbaba” came out fully formed and has never been revised or altered. It is, despite its apparent simplicity, extremely dense (as all “thoughts” of the unconscious are). It is likely the densest poem in this collection, dense with otherness. I feel like it tells me something different each time I read it.
Anima is permeated with images from Homer’s Odyssey: Polyphemus, Circe, Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, the prophesy of Odysseus’ death, etc. The anima is a Jungian archetype of otherness not integrated into the male ego’s concept of self (in women, the term would be animus). Poets call her the muse. These “men’s women” are of course, patriarchal notions, but, I think, important ones to recognize, to relate to sympathetically, instead of just usurp.
What Has Happened in Heaven? Viva La Manifest Destiny! “Croatoan” was the single word found carved on a tree in Roanoke Island by Gov. John White when he returned from England in 1590 with provisions for the Roanoke colony. He found that all of the colonists had vanished without a trace. Croatoan was the name of a Native American tribe the colonists had established friendly relations with . . . also, the name of a nearby island.
The Croatoan provided food for the colonists (who, for some reason, decided not to engage in farming, hunting, or gathering on their own). The relations with the Croatoan tribe became strained due to certain acts of violence committed against them by the colonists, who had mistakenly sought revenge in retaliation against the attacks of a different tribe, the Powhatan.
Despite these previous skirmishes, the Lost Colony of Roanoke seems to have disappeared without any sign of struggle . . . although supposedly they did so suddenly, right in the middle of their daily tasks. The Roanoke colony was the first English settlement in the New World.
There was some speculation that the colonists had “gone native” and were absorbed into the tribes of pre-colonial America. It took John White three years to return with the provisions due to war with the Pish. Other stories had them all (or just the men) being massacred, trying to sail back to England on boats of their own making (and being lost at sea), or venturing either inland or to the islands offshore, but the true story of these colonists remains a mystery. Theirs is a voice that belongs to the unconscious (and the lore) of our nation, and as such it is one of many voices that cannot be heard.
In his famous song, “Sweet Home Chicago”, the great bluesman, Robert Johnson, refers to Chicago as “the Land of California”. It is assumed he meant this epithet to indicate that Chicago was a land of promise and reward (and riches and escape) for blacks at the time (and especially musicians).
I owe thanks to Michael Moore and his consciousness raising about the closing of the General Motors plant in his home town, Flint, Michigan, and the ensuing devastation of the local economy/psyche. This provided the basic model for my Great Downsizing of the corporation of heaven.
The marginalization of the other is not only significant to patriarchy and to America in general, but also, of course, to American poetry. Even within the kingdom of American poetry, the usefulness or audibility of the voice of otherness has rapidly faded into extinction.
The Family Business. Christy, my wife, had a dog named Indy when she was a girl. Indy could, indeed, much to the astonishment of all who witnessed it, sing Old Man River. I heard this once with my very own ears (after expressing a great deal of skepticism regarding the family’s claim) before his passing.
Our dog, Marley, although she does have loose gray skin (or gray fur at least), does not sing . . . even after years of lessons.
This poem is dedicated to my wife, who tolerates me as a human being, but does not like poetry at all. She has long hoped that I will start writing fiction instead. Regrettably for all, this has not happened. Instead, the old man lingers on at the threshold of extinguishment, serving as emblem of my stubbornness and indulgence, as my eternal and somewhat dissatisfying muse.
The Grail knight associated with a fox pelt is Sir Gawain in the story of the Green Knight. On his quest to meet his doom at the hands of the Green Knight, who wagered one stroke of an ax against another (but declined to mention that he had a detachable head), Gawain stays three days at a strange castle with a noble hunstman and his beautiful wife.
While his host (who is also secretly the Green Knight Gawain has come in search of) spends his days out hunting, Gawain spends his days in bed with his host’s wife. By their agreement, Sir Gawain and the host must exchange whatever they managed to win during the day. The host gives Gawain the spoils of the hunt, and Gawain gives the host the kisses he won from the host’s wife. Gawain also accepts a magic green girdle from the woman . . . which he does not give to his host (as it is supposed to protect the life of anyone who wears it). On that day, the host has only a meager fox pelt for Gawain. Of course, this is a story about an exchange of heads . . . and Gawain feels rather attached to his.
The Green Knight spares Gawain, but allows him to keep the green girdle, which Gawain chooses to bear as a mark of his shame.
A Mounting Song. Gondwanaland, or Gondwana, was the southern supercontinent (the northern being Laurasia) formed after plate tectonics split the original land mass called Pangaea in two in the Mesozoic era.
Firebird is a character from Russian folklore similar to the Phoenix; a large, magical bird with glowing red and gold feathers. When it sang, it was said pearls would fall from its beak, and its glowing feathers could illuminate large dark spaces (it appears to have been, although not exclusively, nocturnal). In the best known Firebird tale, it steals the golden apples of youth from the Tsar’s garden. The firebird is pursued and finally captured by the Tsar’s youngest son (an Ivan).
Firebird appeared in my imagination as I wrote “A Mounting Song” just as “dramatically” and unexpectedly as he appears in the poem. In fact, it would seem he chose to bypass my critical faculties and go straight into the words (and straight into Sagging Pants). He knew I was less worthy than the roaring, nincompoop swain of Sheela-na-Gigs, I suppose, and he was right, as usual.
I did about two weeks of digging (after beginning this endnote) before I discovered where I had first read a folktale in which the Firebird carries the questing hero on its back during part of the hero’s journey. It must have been in the book, The Maiden King by Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, which I read when it was first published in 1998. My poem was written in 2003-2004, so it’s not surprising that I forgot where Firebird first appeared to me (especially because I wasn’t overly fond of the Bly/Woodman book).
The folktale that book analyzes is called the Maiden Tsar (another Ivan story), and it was originally recorded by the renowned Russian folklorist, Aleksandr Afanasyev. The passage with the Firebird begins in the hut of a Baba Yaga who wishes to devour Ivan, who is on a quest to find his betrothed. Following the instructions of another Baba Yaga, he asks the devourer for three horns. He then blows each one with increasing force. Suddenly, all kinds of birds appear, including the Firebird, who tells Ivan to hop on his back to escape the Baba Yaga. Ivan and the Firebird escape, and the Baba Yaga ends up with only a handful of Firebird tail feathers. The Firebird takes Ivan to the shore of a great sea where he discovers the house of the Crone (who helps him eventually regain the love of his betrothed, the Maiden Tsar).
I suppose Firebird showed up in my poem due to all of the horn blowing throughout this book. Blowhards and poets are just two of the many Ivans, or fools, who seem to be the archetypal partners of the Firebird. In The Maiden Tsar, not only is the Firebird a keen listener to the fool’s blowing, it is the intelligence that moves the fool from the devouring blackness of the Baba Yaga to the constructive wisdom of the Crone. The fool’s intelligence is the only masculine (although, one could argue it is actually androgynous) kind that can survive amidst the hunger, power, and wisdom of Baba Yagas, Warrior Queens, and Crones. As always, the fool proves indigestible.
With his proclivity for fools, it is no surprise Firebird wandered into a poem about an icicle farmer with plumber’s crack.
This poem is, rather than being a hymn of praise for the gods spoken by the poet, a hymn of praise for the poet spoken by the gods (who have fun putting on the airs of an overblown mock poetic language). So it seems, rather than the fool riding the Firebird as convention would have it, the Firebird rides the fool, imbues him, possesses him like an ecstatic spirit.
I guess after being bashed throughout most of the previous 31 poems, something in me felt the poet deserved at least one pat on the back (something compensatory in the unconscious, no doubt). Of course, this pat on the back also includes the indiscrete planting of a “Kick Me” sign in addition to the congratulation. That is, the poet is revealed in all of his utter foolishness.
A Volunteer from the Audience. This was the last poem written, coming about two years later than anything else in the book (itself a 7 year project). It took me this long to digest the other poems, to figure out what they meant to me, what they had made of me.
I suppose “Volunteer” is an overview of the process of creation that became What the Road Can Afford. It is also a very personal ode to my muse, my true mentor who has created me as I created this book.
The poem follows the narrative of the alchemical opus, the conjunction of the opposites . . . from the blackness of the prima materia to the golden consciousness of the lapis.
What I discovered during this process was that my true goal all along had been the connection with some other. In approaching this, I realized that the audience and the muse are one at some point, that the poet is created for the reader by the poem itself.
The notion (seemingly simplictic) challenges the idea of patriarchal creation, which is seen as an act of will, an expulsion. In contrast, the audience must give birth to the character of the poet, that other who they can dialog with. The reading of the poems is a kind of labor, and I, as the writer of the poems, am the midwife.
I started researching stage magic when the magician figure appeared in my poem, and I was lead into researching the life of Harry Houdini, and then to the symbolism and practice of Tarot.
In Tarot, the first card, #0, The Fool, plays a very important role in the symbolic universe. As I learned more and more about The Fool, I became increasingly aware that I had always been a great admirer of his, and had for years written stories and poems endowed with foolish characters, narrators, and the foolish spirit.
At this time, I returned to my manuscript and to “A Mounting Song” (as well as some other “stuck” poems) and realized that my blockages all had one thing in common: I had written (unknowingly) poems about fools, but had not been kind to the foolish spirit. I had been judgmental of the foolishness. It was this judgment, this improper handling of and sympathy for The Fool that was responsible for the failure of the poems. I should have remembered the old proverb “God watches over children and fools” as I wrote a book about the relationship between foolishness and creation, but alas, I was a bad god in need of redemption myself.
Maybe this has something to do with why, in a poem exalting the audience as muse, I ironically found self-expression only through very esoteric and personal references.
A number of Tarot cards play a role in the narrative of “Volunteer”: The Fool (in stanza 8), Strength and The Tower (in stanza 10), The Hanged Man (in Stanza 11), and The Magician (in stanza 12). The little white dog who nips at The Fool’s heals also appears in stanza 13.
Two paintings by Remdios Varo also found their way into the poem: Rupture, 1955 (in stanza 10) and Useless Science or the Alchemist, 1955 (in stanza 11).
The Ceremony of the Broken Wand is a ritual performed at the funerals of magicians in which a wand is broken in half above the grave.
The use of the word “effulgence” twice in the first stanza is a nod to Joss Whedon character, Spike (a.k.a William the Bloody). Before becoming a vampire, William is a bloody awful poet who recites a love poem in public with the word “effulgent” in it. It is met with laughter and ridicule. But, hey, he had to find a rhyme for "a bulge in it" . . . so what could he do? Such is the poet's burden.
"My heart expands
'tis grown a bulge in it
inspired by your beauty, effulgent."
The word “germinism” (orginally, Germanism) was used by my muse to describe my overly-cerebral (and misguided) poeting in a dream I had as a young man. Having grown a bit since then, I decided I was ready to meet the word half way, make it “germinate”. As Sir Gawain wears his lady’s green girdle, I also wear this word with both pride and shame. In itself it is a coniunctio.
“Mother, Get My Ax!”
I. We Made a Deal with That Mysterious Man and Lost the Cow
Then the poet comes in—
rubs his feet along the floor, cosmic sloth
in fashionably cheap pants—ascendingly,
up toward the podium microphone,
eyes turn like a sonnet—
thunk-thump,
the iambic gait, lamed
hop-and-drag limp, his eyes
deeper than worlds, crappy with despair,
and his shoulders from the catalog of Atlas,
hunched forward, gargoyling over the pages
a tremble in his hands,
sprinkling loose a salt of verbs
that bear him.
Up. Forward.
A coiled sestina, a dragon
ushered upon his own precious
useless dainty exquisite golden things—
humanesque. Reeking of nightingales,
whiskey, and whiteout.
A coagulation of nuances
metaphorizing into
a bulk, a giant,
something immense that can walk into a room
of empty ears waiting to buzz for words
like it’s a kitchen
and he’s an exhausted man coming home from work
past supper.
No. Not nuances. Hungers.
The voice is a bison—
shagged, matted, abundant.
Hairy words: Fee Fi Fo Fum—
those original hairiest of words.
Pre-language of scent and taste,
the first invisibles on the tongue.
Now, what we’ve been doing is building,
small taps of a drum roll laid down—
our hearts, kidneys, colons,
bricks of a tower rising,
anticipating,
our livers, snaking intestines, stomachs piled,
groping upward like an arm out of a grave’s new soil.
Some towers invade the sky
poised to trip low flying planes,
maiden towers hoping to catch the air’s verse.
Somewhere there is the Word
elusively soaring, a murmur:
love . . . ?
He looks out at all the motionless sitting bodies.
“This is called ‘Mother, Get My Ax!’”
Frees his verse,
free, free.
II. The Birth of the New Redestructionism
Let’s call the empty space between us,
where the sound of the words means nothing to the air—
wilderness.
Let’s say our anticipation disappeared into the wilderness
like a fractal fades into its private micro-cosmos of formulations,
still existing but cached away by infinity,
the way matter in the mouth of a black hole
becomes impossibly dense and loses
its relationship to light,
and the slope of sound like the slide of a fly
down the throat of a pitcher plant
shatters the one tongue.
Our stalk of organs planted and growing
as prayers grow—out of some wrongful state of death
with a vegetal uncertainty, an acquiescence,
toward heaven, holding out their sun-spoon leaves,
hopeful for that everlasting communion with light . . .
but the words hit at the base of the trunk, a thud,
and our tower starts to topple—
prayers falling everywhere, crockery crashing
against the hard hearth floor.
There will be no more hiding in the ovens
of strangers’ kitchens
waiting for Mother to rook him over,
no more love cries from the hooded prince,
no more pawing of his steed, snorts into the mist,
incessant combing of the hair, recombing,
no more nights spent tending the long-burning
Promethean fire.
We clap, stand, and leave,
each with his golden stolen phrase,
his gold-laying goose, his jabbering harp
all golden and grafted into his nerves now
like a catch reflex.
Our shadows step forth to cast back the flesh of our bodies,
a last glimpse that condemns us to return
to that sound collapsing in our chests, that physical comedy,
vaudevillian slip, that greatest performance
by that perfect performance artist.
Then to touch ourselves in the dark, bitterly,
where the great tower once grew up thick
into the clouds from that magic bean.
Oh, for the belief in magic beans!
Now the massive impact crater
filled with beard, bone, and tooth fossilizing.
Our hands chafed with the shaft of the tool.
The downed stalk browning into a paste
discarded through the village,
a massive shed snakeskin hacked with doorways,
passageways, throughways
for the necessities of commerce.
When we woke the morning after,
there it was, leaning up against our nightstands:
the ax, like an unopened gift
from someone who never really knew us—
our inheritance.
Yes, it was a most devastating reading.
We will wear it like a hide forever
and limp through our days in honor
of all that has fallen before us, all that falls and will fall,
and cries out from its death pit to warn Jack
that he is no longer a boy.
What the Road Can Afford
What the Road Can Afford
Contents
Downtime For The Goldenboys
“Mother, Get My Ax!”
First Blues
Scapegoat
Kite
Thief
Osiris
Furloughed
What to Do With an Angel
Levity among the Loons
Featherhorse
Sitcom
The Progeny of Behaviorists
Nightlife
How to Taunt an Abyss
The Literary Life
Fantasia on a Train Station
Crucifixation
Faith Fictions
Creation Myth
Polka for the Recently Exhumed
Problems with Romance
Self-Portrait in Canine
A History of Bitings in the Domesticated Universe
For Every Action
Slaying Humbaba
Anima
Revolt among the Cabbage Heads
What Has Happened in Heaven? (Another American Messiah Tells His Tale)
Forty Days and Forty Nights
The Family Business
Dream of the Thousand Men
Rite of Passage
A Mounting Song
Exeunt
A Volunteer from the Audience
Acknowledgements
Deconstructing and Reconstructing Individuation
Introduction
The following reflections constitute a preliminary dive (or cannonball) into an area of Jungian thinking that is in very dire straits: the construct of individuation. Why is it in dire straits? The reasons are many, and I don't intend to systematically delineate all of them in these essays. To name a few . . . because the Jungian individuation construct is flawed and does not work. Because the individuation construct is mired in very woolly language and thinking communicable only to "believers". Because the developmental and archetypal schools of Jungian thought have already moved on to reject or ignore or degeneratively redefine the individuation construct the classical school has always cherished and locked safely in its trophy case to gather dust.
These are perhaps strong accusations, although not truly original ones. Some of the previous critiques of the individuation construct are quite valid, in my opinion. But they commonly lead to a debunking and rejection of individuation as a useful psychological or psychotherapeutic paradigm. Individuation has often been (to its critics) a piece or archaic, useless clutter to be tossed out during any spring cleaning of the Jungian household. My perspective is different. What I think we have here is no trophy or tattered antique. Rather, it is an exquisite, but broken, instrument. It must be deconstructed, taken apart, carefully cleaned and repaired. But it can then be reassembled in a functional form.
To recast that analogy, it is as if the instrument of individuation was incorrectly assembled (and perhaps designed) by Jung and his early and more classical followers. When it was wound up with the hope of spinning into some kind of perpetual motion, it quickly sputtered to a halt. Since then, the classical true believers in the original assembly of individuation have insisted that it is really a great instrument . . . but with numerous qualifications. It is-but-is-not X, Y, Z. It is endless and has only a symbolic/imaginal conclusion. As a movement toward wholeness, it is always growing and growing asymptotically. If you are becoming frustrated with its lack of payoff, you simply aren't doing it right . . . although only a qualified Jungian can subjectively assess whether or not you are doing it right (payment for this assessment is much appreciated, although buying the book of said Jungian is the next best alternative).
There is a great deal of mystification and fluff padding the abundant failures of individuation to prove itself equal to the classical Jungian propaganda about its transcendent sublimity and incalculable worth. Like any god who does not show at the designated time and place, individuation has become mythic, fantastic, arcane, and much abstracted and rationalized. It's failures are always failures of the believer or pursuer and never of the paradigm itself.
I envision a work of scholarship that systematically analyzes the history and construction of the individuation construct, pulls together various ideas, quotations, social and historical contexts . . . a kind of critical biography of this Jungian deity. Such a work is, I think, necessary. But I do not intend to attempt it, certainly not in these essays. I don't intend to attempt it in part because it is a massive task involving a great deal of tedious scholarly research that would be of minimal interest to me. But more importantly, I won't attempt it because I have absolutely no expectation that there would really be an audience interested in such a work, no matter how "necessary" I feel it is. More accurately, I don't think the audience that would be interested in a critical history and analysis of individuation would be very interested in where it would lead.
Where I think it would lead is to the death of a beloved god. That death would have to be defended against and denied all the more forcefully and delusionally, driving Jungian thinking deeper and deeper into dysfunction, hypocrisy, and ineffective isolation (or occultism). I do not want to serve that destruction and decline of Jungian thought (although it will probably get there eventually on its own terms). If an author were to write the kind of historical critique I am envisioning, it would only be embraced by critics of Jungianism, providing more fodder for the condemnation and dismissal of Jung and his ideas. Jungians would, I feel quite sure, be utterly unable to make any use of it.
As precedent (among many smaller examples) I give the Jung-bashing books of Richard Noll. Noll's books did indeed stir up the Jungian community and definitely contributed ammunition to opponents of Jungianism. They even had a subtle but seriously destructive effect on Jungianism, contributing to (although, of course, not originating) the splintering of the Jungian tribe into at least three schools in conflict with one another in complex ways, all diverging from a center. Noll gave more embodiment to a characterization of Jung that many Jungians want to get away from, to distance their own Jungianism from. But fleeing from this shadowy Jung and from a point of central convergence in Jungian thought that functioned as a core value system and "origin myth" has led many Jungians into self-conflict with their own Jungian identity.
Noll's books fueled this explosion considerably despite the fact that they themselves were very weak and often misleading in their anti-Jungian arguments . . . despite the fact that, literally speaking, most of Noll's implications and accusations were untrue, and provably so (as Sonu Shamdasani demonstrated in his own debunking of Noll's scholarship, Cult Fictions, 1998). But if fallacious and antagonistically partisan pseudo-scholarship could wound (or aggravate an old wound in) the Jungian "soul", imagine how much more damage a completely logical, valid, and abundantly evidenced critique of a Jungian "god" would do.
If Jungians could not take any valuable lessons (e.g., some serious shadow examination) from the Noll debacle, how would they recover from a more accurate and penetrating assault? Richard Noll made a mistake that Jungians should count as a great and miraculous blessing: he imagined that Jung was the weak link in Jungianism. And if Jung were attacked as a charlatan, those who worshiped him would be defeated. But Jung, despite his well-advertised shadow, is by no means the weakest link in the Jungian chain. He even remains as strong as ever, despite brushes with various kinds of "sinfulness", with sexism, colonialism, antisemitism, and inflation. Jung, the man, weathers these storms, emerging a little more ragged yet all the more impressive for his survival. The weakest links in the Jungian chain, although they can be said to stem to varying degrees and in complicated ways from Jung's own complexes and personal equation, are those linked on by many of his followers and the creative, intellectual, and social choices they have made.
The Jungians (even the self-declared "post-Jungians") have not convincingly managed to improve upon Jung's theories and attitudes, even as various splinter groups have adopted many means of differentiating themselves. No splinter tribe has moved along its chosen road without leaving some very valuable ideas and understandings behind.
My own desire is not to destroy Jungianism and Jung's thinking, but to build anew from its center. That is, a new revisioning. In this revisioning, various critiques of Jung and Jungianism will be implied. But my goal is not to merely substitute a new god for an old one, say, to reject Jung's supposed "monotheism" for an alternative "polytheism" as was one staple of James Hillman's revisionism. I am not, like Hillman, a disenfranchised, prodigal son setting off on his estranged road away from the realm of the father . . . the direction largely defined by that puer escape and defiance. My goal is to contribute to a (substantially linguistic) repair of Jungian theories, not to their rejection or defiance. I am not driven by seeking "difference" to father Jung's thinking. I want to get the old instruments working again. And this is not in the service of "resurrecting the Father" (at least not directly and intentionally). It is not the "Father", but the tribe and its utility that I would like to serve. I would like to see the Jungian tribe become survivable. I don't care if we are good sons and daughters or prodigals. What matters to me is that we learn to adapt and not die out.
There is something that Jung started . . . not as much a set of ideas as a set of valuations. The expression of these valuations is not, for me, the alpha and omega. It does not need to be purified of its taint and raised up to glory. It is an ancestor that contributed DNA to us Jungians, and we seek to adapt and mutate and find fitness within our environment. Our environment is not Jung's environment, and so there are new and other pressures upon us to adapt.
What I want to address and help illuminate is an individuation construct that actually works and is non-delusional. As ambitious as that sounds, I have to confess up front that reconstructing individuation in this functional way requires the sacrifice of many conventional Jungian sanctities and precious dogmas. For instance, the idea that individuation is a good in itself, that it is universally to be desired and pursued, that it leads to enlightenment and transcendence, that it saves, that it heals, that it betters the individual. It is that fantasy of individuation that makes it attractive to most people, and it is this desirability that allows individuation to be commodified for a lay-Jungian, self-help audience and market.
To hear Jungians talk about individuation is to hear an evangel, the Good News of potential salvation through faith. But individuation (as I will go on to construct it) is more of a heresy, or even sin, than it is a salvation of the individual. Individuation is a Mark of Cain, not the blessing of the house of Abel. Individuation is not the transcendent movement of the individual toward wholeness. It is the excommunication of the individual from the "whole" state of participation and its mystique.
As I reconstruct individuation, the question that a good and obedient Jungian would have to ask is: "Why would I want this cheap and shoddy thing instead of the resplendent numen of classical individuation?" And the only answer, dissatisfying though it may be, is: "Because it is more real and genuine than the resplendent numen classical individuation imagines." This genuine individuation will simply not be attractive to most people . . . and it is not prescribable universally for our various modern ills. Yet it is only this unprescribable, less desirable, and much harder won individuation that can be historically and psychologically studied and validated.
The path of individuation is not a chosen path, and it is not a path for the believer. It is a path of compulsion, perhaps a "Calling", a path of last resort, a surrender to something destructive. It does not reward faith with solace and fulfillment. It can be brutal . . . and there is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, no treasure mythically awaiting the seeker. What treasures individuation holds are created by the individuant, not found or won. There is no manna. What is gained instead is responsibility, duty.
Jung remarked that the individuation journey never ends while we live. Only in death can it be completed. That is too mystical and grand for my tastes, but I will offer a similar aphoristic bone as aperitif: Individuation's a bitch, and then you die.
Individuation Credentials?
On what basis do I offer a revised individuation construct that (supposedly) contradicts the prevailing (largely classical) Jungian model? My revision has very similar origins to Jung's original construct. That is, it derives largely and initially from personal experience. Jung's individuation model, although he felt it was corroborated by his patients' experiences, derives almost entirely from his own "confrontation with the unconscious" beginning around 1913 after his split with Freud. This becomes especially clear now that we have the publication of the Red Book, Jung's individuation opus. The material, characters and narratives of the Red Book serve very neatly to demonstrate the theory of individuation Jung proposes in his scholarly publications. The attitude Jung prescribes to the would-be individuant is very much the same attitude he adopts in his Red Book experiment. His scholarly characterizations of the unconscious, the anima, the mana-personality, the persona, the hero, the wise old man, the shadow, and various other staples of his theory all have clear foundations in the Red Book. For more on this subject, the reader can peruse my essays on the Red Book here at Useless Science.
I don't mean to jauntily claim credibility for my revisions based on some kind of divine revelation or specious spiritual enlightenment or attainment. My intention is to demonstrate that experience, although extremely important, is only useful in such a revisionary venture to the degree that its artifacts can be logically explained and argued for. I will attempt to argue that the revised individuation paradigm I will propose is also better supported by texts (many of which Jungians are quite familiar with and have also depended upon for corroboration of Jung's theories), is "more archetypal", and is more elegant and logical than the conventional Jungian paradigm. Still, there is a very distinct sense in which both Jung's and my individuation paradigms are highly personalized creative works emerging in the specific clothing of our personal languages. As I will explain later, individuation as a whole owes its shape immensely to a very arbitrary languaging process.
From roughly the age of 16, I began to devote the lion's share of my mental energy to pursuing and understanding individuation. It was not a whim, a psychedelic trip, a spiritual or philosophical flirtation. It was an absolute immersion in what I now recognize to be a "Calling". Although I had a conscious desire to seek self-betterment, to overcome ignorance and "unconsciousness", and (at the very beginning) to "attain" higher states of mind or soul, it never felt like individuation was optional to me. It was individuate or die (this dire imperative was recognized and validated in tribal cultures, as I will explain in later installments). This threatened death was both spiritual and potentially literal (in the form of madness and/or suicide). The feelings Jung describes at the onset of (and during) his confrontation with the unconscious were extremely familiar to me, and they served as one of the primary attractors that brought me to Jungianism. In Jung I saw a person who had experienced what I was experiencing and who had survived, managing to transmute the dismemberment and dissolution of that confrontation/Calling into more golden stuff. I sought to walk in his footsteps and orient myself with his field notes. I wanted to survive and heal from the same disease Jung suffered.
I owe Jung my life for this assistance, as I would have had no idea how to proceed without the initial container of his language and example. I was familiar with other religious and spiritual traditions (and sampled them), but none of these helped keep my path "true" in the least. Instead, they fed the looming madness that seemed to trail and taunt (and sometimes control) me. Jung's language was a panacea, enabling me to find brief but essential moments of clarity. It is out of gratitude for this "medicine" that I continue to consider myself a Jungian today (despite many deviations and heresies) and work in my shadowy, agonistic fashion to serve the "treatment" of the Jungian tribe.
Another identification factor for me with Jung was his response to the same kind of confrontation/Calling. Like Jung, I did not merely want to endure and pass through this experience. I wanted to understand it as thoroughly and accurately as I could. Not everyone is (and probably very few people are) so analytically inclined. Certainly, even as Jungianism centers around an "analytic community", most Jungians seem contented with religious artifacts, dogmas, and totems and do not also ask what these things are in themselves, what they are objectively. But Jungian psychology originated (and was practiced by Jung) as a analytical enterprise. And it was this analytical orientation that differentiated Jungian psychology from a religion. Jung was (again, as the Red Book amply demonstrates) an astute and powerfully driven researcher of the "soul". As much as he championed "experience" with the unconscious, he seemed more motivated by (and more adept at) the desire to know, verifiably, what the nature and artifacts of the unconscious really were. It is this analytical, objective, and often rationalistic Jung that, in my opinion, has all too often been lost as a guide in Jungian and post-Jungian psychology. But it is this Jung that is most responsible for Jungian theory . . . and it is this Jung that is, I believe, most extraordinary and rare. By contrast, Jung the guru and/or spiritual adventurer was merely of a type, a generic personage who did not especially set himself apart from others of his kind.
As I undertook my own self-experiments, even from the first years of my Jung-illuminated individuation event, I began to pencil practical revisions into the margins of Jung's guide book, to note what "worked" and what didn't in the field. It would be nearly two decades later that these notes were reconstructed into a theory of individuation. For most of the interim, it never occurred to me that a "theory of individuation" was of any use. Individuation, like survival in the wild, was a practical art. My eventual desire to recast my experimental "field notes" into an intellectualized theory came about only because I tried to talk to other Jungians about the stuff of these field notes and found they had no idea whatsoever I was talking about. Understanding eventually that my practical Jungianism was heretical, I felt a need to better formulate it and describe it as logically and clearly as possible. Only then did I find myself wearing the shoes of a "revisionist". Before this, I simply felt that my "revisions" and "heresies" were logical applications of Jung's own ideas and principles.
The stuff of my revisions will be laid out and argued in the following essays, but there is one general difference that I will set down here. Much of my early individuation work was focused (like Jung's Red Book dialogs) on interactions with anima figures. I have transcribed and commented upon the highlights of this anima dream series at the Useless Science forum. This served as the mystical bedrock of my individuation event. In more recent years, especially as I tried to have discussions with other Jungians about the anima and animus, I came to see that what I had long felt was a very elegant and purely archetypal encounter was largely foreign to many Jungians. I started calling this stage of individuation in which the animi figure is discovered, engaged with, valuated or redeemed from the shadow, and then eventually initiates the (heroic) ego, the "animi work". The animi work is (as I experienced it and only very recently found corroborating evidence for) extremely archetypal and should (like all individuation motifs) be traced back to the mythos of shamanic initiation, where the shaman's marriage to a spiritual spouse is a common factor of his or her initiation into full-fledged shaman-hood.
The animi work is also what a great many fairytales describe (typically those that end in marriages that endure "happily ever after"). The shamanic and folk (and alchemical) precedents of the animi work are substantial, but (as I found out) the animi work is not well understood at all among Jungians. The reasons for this are complex and require careful analysis to explicate (this analysis will follow). For now, I will posit two potential reasons why the anima work is not adequately understood through the Jungian paradigm of individuation. First, as much as Jung and Jungians have indulged in the adoration and analysis of fairytales, the archetypal constructions that Jung most used and Jungians inherited tend to derive more from the heroic epics of great patriarchal civilizations, especially ancient Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian cultures. I believe that the renderings of archetypes like the hero and the animi portrayed in fairytales stems from an even more ancient and pre-civilized source. Perhaps the origin of these heroic archetypal fairytale motifs is the narrativizing of prehistoric shamans who explained (in song, poetry, dance, and theater) just what their spirits were doing in the other world while their bodies remained in the material world of their audiences and patients.
In other words, heroic epics and cultural myths (especially of the patriarchal cultures on which Western civilization was founded) are archetypally degenerate. Jung did not adequately recognize this, and Jungians are the heirs of this distorted archetypal theory. It has lead us to (often subtly but importantly) misread the very texts we have used to corroborate Jungian theory. And of course there are many, as all our texts were written or redesigned in the historical, modern era. They have been culturally recontextualized, and wherever this cultural recontextualization also served the promotion of a modern, patriarchal ego-ideal (like Gilgamesh or Heracles or Siegfried), distortions of the prehistoric shamanic archetypal structures and dynamics arose. Many fairytales (even those rewritten in the last few centuries) do not suffer from serious distortions like these because they have never served as vehicles of promoting a cultural ego-ideal. This is also why fairytales have just as many female as male heroes, while cultural myths and epics depict the journeys of only male heroes.
The second reason that the animi work is not well understood among Jungians is that Jung was extremely ambivalent about his own anima experience. On one hand, Jung sets a stellar example of the kind of psychic awakening and development that can come out of valuatively engaging with the animi (as personification of the unconscious Other). Not only did he write the anima dialogues that went into the Red Book, he rewrote them in fancier language and elegant calligraphy and accompanied them with detailed oil paintings. Not many people would give so much time and consideration to their animi.
On the other hand, Jung spent more time "fighting off", rejecting, chastising, denying, and demonizing his anima during these engagements than he did wooing, valuating, loving, and learning from it. He ultimately and definitively refused to be initiated by the anima. And he developed a rationalization of a theory holding that the anima was both essential soul and wicked temptress that had to be approached while maintaining one's stoic autonomy. This in spite of all he knew about the historical symbols like the alchemical Coniunctio or the hieros gamos. It appears to me that Jung felt any "unions with the god/goddess" had to be conducted only intellectually and rationally so the ego could maintain its separateness and sanity and not become a victim to the "dark side" of the god.
Here it is absolutely essential to recognize that this attitude of Jung's (right or wrong, we will not argue for the time being) is utterly in defiance of archetypal mysticism, in which the human and the divine Other do in fact unite. The Jungian method of individuation deviates in this essential factor from conventional mysticisms. I cannot even begin to express how massive a difference this makes, and how dramatically it snowballs as Jungian theory is spun around this core of "anti-mysticism". And again, I reiterate what I wrote above regarding Jung as more of a rationalistic, objective, "soul researcher" than a mystic. The dressing up of Jung postmortem as a mystic or spiritual adept while downplaying (and often even forgetting) his rationalistic proclivities is an act done in bad faith. It turns out Jung the rationalist dominated Jung the mystic once all the tallies are taken. Jung the mystic is not a figment of the Jungian imagination, but the predominance of Jung the mystic in Jungian constructions of the founder is simply an unfortunate and self-deceiving wish fulfillment fantasy.
The period of individuation I call the animi work encompasses all of Jungian individuation. It is not the end of the archetypal process of individuation. Or rather, whatever we would like to call the instinctually organized process of post-adolescent psychic growth, adaptation, and development . . . Jungian individuation only makes up a small (but very dramatic and important) portion of it. Moreover, one of the reasons that Jungian individuation is said to have no end or to be cyclical is that the deviations of the conventional Jungian paradigm from the archetypal animi work prevent the process from reaching its completion. That is, Jungian individuation is habitual or like a complex in the sense that it is destined to fail again and again.
This is also to say that the animi work (and therefore Jungian individuation also, should it revise itself adequately) is a finite episode in the individuation process. The languaging and relanguaging of the animi work can continue throughout life and until death. But the event of the animi work itself is not only finite, its duration (when properly facilitated) is often fairly short (often measurable in months rather than years and definitely not in decades). This brief duration corresponds to the nature of the animi work as a rite of passage or initiation. How we understand, live out of, and dynamically language that initiation is a massive undertaking that will take years (probably decades) to come to any kind of fruition and usefulness. But the event of initiation itself is like a scarification, a ritual wound struck once and worn ever after.
There's no sugar coating it. The implications of this critique and revision are massive. They suggest that the Jungian house of individuation is built upon sand. The bad news is that this is, I fear, very much the case. But the good news (not nearly as dramatic as the bad news, regrettably) is that the phenomenal artifacts of the individuation process Jungians study are very much the right ones. There is just a fly in the Jungian individuation ointment, a poisonous element (based largely in the two factors just mentioned above). I believe this "taint" or parasite can be extracted and that the Jungian "waters of life" will then be able to clarify.
Rationally, this revision doesn't ask that much. To a non-Jungian, it is probably six of one, half-dozen of another. The real challenge in achieving this clarification of individuation for Jungians, though, is relinquishing the habitual death grip on some very sacred cows. Cows like "all heroic figures are inherently inflated", or "the anima and animus are always morally equivocal and must be related to with great caution", and most of all "Jung was the Risen Christ and messiah of the modern soul whose gospel is the way, the truth, and the life".
That is, I am arguing that the main thing standing between the prevailing Jungian individuation paradigm and theory and more accurate, more archetypal/historical, and more functional ones is a quasi-deification of Jung. So long as we believe (even if only unconsciously, as is the case with many "post-Jungians") that Jung was a great mystic who had more or less the last word on individuation, Jungian individuation will flounder, and its waters will remain dark and unsustaining. Additionally, Jungian individuation theory will remain highly esoteric, arbitrary, cultic, and incompatible with more scientific psychological methods and ideas.
The completion of the animi work is not the "master work" of individuation. It is an initiating threshold that must be passed through in order to begin the so called Great Work depicted in alchemical mysticism. So, to put it into those alchemical terms, the animi work (which again, encompasses and transcends all of Jungian individuation) is like the derivation of the alchemist's prima materia. The culmination of this first and essential process is indeed the Coniunctio, but Coniunctio in alchemy is not a hieros gamos, not some transcendent and elating union of the conscious and the unconscious or of man and God. Coniunctio, unequivocally, is death . . . the product of dissolution or dismemberment. And it is followed by Nigredo, blackening, decay, putrefaction.
The skewing of Jungian individuation feeds the perversion and misunderstanding of the alchemical process, where, classically, union (of Sulfur and Mercury, Sol and Luna, or the heroic ego and the animi) is equal to death and NOT some kind of transcendent rebirth. There is enormous misuse of the alchemical terms Coniunctio and Nigredo in Jungian parlance, and this misuse compounds the dangerous misunderstanding of individuation.
I will argue that the alchemical model is more functional than the Jungian. The alchemical opus corresponds, like shamanic initiation and fairytale heroism, to the true individuation archetype (which I will generally call, the mysticism). Alchemy is in fact an inheritor, a true heir, of the shamanic tradition (and no doubt some of its symbolism), as Mircea Eliade makes quite clear in The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy. It makes for a difficult situation. Alchemical allusions and terminology have become signature Jungian affectations, no doubt contributing (along with many other Jungianisms) to a disconnect with other academic and scientific fields. And yet, despite extensive research on Jung's part (much of it quite thorough if not terribly well organized), Jungian psychologization of alchemical symbols and processes suffers some fatal flaws. It would be easier for a progressive, revisionary Jungian if alchemy were just a bunch of gibberish and Jung's psychologization of it fundamentally pointless. Then alchemy and its extreme convolutions and complexities could just be set aside.
But as it turns out, alchemical mysticism or Hermetic philosophy depicted a crucial turning point in the history of human mysticism. Medieval alchemy (like Jungian psychology) attempted to depict the archetype of mysticism in proto-scientific, quasi-material terms. Alchemy, which mostly died out with the advent of modern chemistry, recorded the last episode of practical "soul work" in human history before the languaging of the soul fell into ruin. Jung's valuation of alchemy showed intuitive prowess, but he was still a "modern man in search of a soul". In search of, not in relationship with. Jung's ideas suffer from the problem he addressed: reinventing the wheel that had for millennia been mysticism.
The alchemists also carried the torch of the shamanic mystical tradition and symbolism through much of the Christian era, even elucidating the initiatory and shamanic elements resident (but dormant) in the Christian myth. Alchemy carried and preserved the "material soul" during these centuries of anti-material, Platonic Christianity, until it was relinquished to modern science . . . which regrettably suffered from an overly reductive, positivistic rationalism more directly inherited from dogmatic Christian theology than from highly imaginative and complexity-tolerant alchemy.
Revisioning the psychology of alchemy is a book-length project in itself, so later parts of this essay will only touch briefly upon the relationships between alchemy and individuation. Additionally, the alchemical opus depicts a much more extensive process than Jung's individuation paradigm does. This essay will spend much more time reworking the stages of individuation Jung and Jungians have most concerned themselves with than it will on the more esoteric and subtle facets of later individuation.
One last thing to clarify is that I do not, in criticizing Jung's theories, mean to air some kind of general disrespect. I can think of no higher form of respect to pay Jung than the devoted attempt to build on the foundation that he laid. It is quite possible to marvel at the accomplishments of the man while also disagreeing on some of the finer points. That should go without saying.
During most of my 20+ years as a Jungian, I adhered mostly to the letter or Jung's ideas. I know what it is like to accept and not reflect upon the many Jungianisms Jungians take for granted and do not analyze or evaluate. It was only gradually that I felt forced to question these assumptions . . . as they began to show their flaws in practice. If one does not attempt to apply Jung's individuation theory as a kind of quasi-spiritual, psychotherapeutic discipline, I suspect one will not stumble upon the seams and frayed ends of the theory. But to live and practice individuation is to need it to be a functional instrument and languaging tool. To take individuation as a totem or object of belief and projection and identity construction, one doesn't need an individuation theory to be robust and highly accurate. Just as a religious believer doesn't need God to be perfectly defined and beyond reproach. That's what rationalization and imagination are for.
When using Jung's works as a foundation, we are faced with a great deal of complexity and seeming (as well as actual) self-contradiction. As frustrating as this is for a reader of Jung. I am sympathetic to the condition and construction of Jung's writings. He was trying to language a complex, dynamic object (the psyche) in a way that connected ancient religious ideas and terminologies to modern thinking. Jung's project was a languaging project. Specifically, it was a psychologizing project. I believe it was more a languaging project than, for instance, a religious or mystical or even philosophical project. Jung meant to bring older (often archetypal) ideas about the human soul into a suitable modern dialect. He was not necessarily trying to tell the world things about the soul that had never been known before. He was trying to treat a kind of Orwellian wound in modern language that prevented us from being able to talk functionally and with sophistication about the soul. It is in this sense that Jung was part of the romantic tradition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But that languaging project was a vast and complicated undertaking, and psychology itself, though modern, was (and remains) in its "pre-paradigmatic" infancy. Jung's project served the religious and mythopoetic imagination more than it did the rationalistic, scientific, post-Enlightenment, positivistic trend of modern thought. But his modern intellectual means, his inherited language and culturally constructed selfhood was distinctly rationalistic, scientific, and post-Enlightenment. We could say (in Jung-speak) then that he was seeking the solution to a union of perceived Opposites. How does one manage to get archaic mythic thinking and modern scientific rationalism to play nice together?
I don't think Jung solved this problem, but I do think he made some very noble and enterprising attempts to formulate a modern language of the soul. Sometimes, he did not deconstruct the language of the day well enough to recognize its arbitrary cultural constructions, its prejudices and unfounded assumptions . . . and other times he did not deconstruct older religious and mythic languages well enough. In Jung's finished product (not a completion of a task, but simply the state of things when he died), many cultural artifacts, both modern and ancient, remain and remain relatively unreflected upon.
With only a few exceptions, Jungians have not engaged in the conjunctive soul-languaging task that Jung devoted himself to. Instead, they found in some of his attempts comfortable and idyllic grottoes tucked away from the modern world where they could sip a bit from the sacred font. And this is where most Jungians set down their roots. But I think that these anti-modern grottoes of thought and language were for Jung more like weigh stations where bits and pieces of his thoughts paused briefly while he figured out how to bring them together and into motion with other thoughts. This dynamic and ongoing reassociation effort has never been an important (or remotely conscious) thrust in Jungian thinking post-Jung.
A vaguely parallel effort has moved forward in recent years to connect Jungian thinking with postmodern academic theory. I suspect that the desire behind this is to pick up some of the scraps that fall off the academic table (rather than say, attempt to innovate in either the liberal arts or social sciences . . . occasional declarations of such intentions strike me as overblown and fantastic). Misguided though this effort might be on some levels, it may inject some languaging awareness into Jungian thought. The struggle then will be whether Jungians can maintain a sense of Jungian selfhood and not be totally assimilated into postmodern theory and study. I would prefer to see Jungians glean some languaging awareness from these fields without begging from them or risking assimilation and loss of selfhood . . . but it is hard for Jungians to break out of the habitual complex of oscillating between grandiose puerism and shame-ridden (shadow-identified) dejection. The relationship with the puer in Jungian culture is home to serious malignancy.
Regardless of whether Jungians will start to pursue a renewal and continuation of Jung's languaging project en masse, that project will be (and has been) my own chosen path. And what I have found in picking through the Jungian corpus is that Jung has done most of the preliminary work for us. That is, he has established the prima materia necessary to select and distill from. Jung's great strength as an intuitive thinker enabled him to sniff out the psychic material one would need to construct a viable, contemporary psychological paradigm. He had his fingers in all the right cookie jars: myth, fairytales, religion, pre-modern/tribal culture, mysticism, dreams, creativity, art, imagination, spiritual disciplines, psychological pathologies, evolutionary biology, and what is now called complexity theory. Jung was drawn to these areas and driven to valuate the psychic phenomena or data these realms of human thought and experience produced. And he not only valuated them separately, but recognized the value of their interrelation.
Jung was a great valuator of psychic phenomenon, and I think it is this pattern of valuation that serves as the thriving root system of Jungian identity. It is what draws people to Jungian thinking and what sustains the compulsion and numinousness of Jungian ideas and objects of study and wonder. It is my attraction to and valuation of this same root system that leads me to consider myself a Jungian (even as I have many languaging conflicts with other Jungians). The problem we face (as a Jungian identity group or tribe) is that we do not have a very conscious appreciation or understanding of our relatedness. We do not very well understand this root structure of psychic valuation or pay much attention to its survival and growth. Despite the powerful emphasis on the "unconscious" and the "depth" of the psyche in Jungian dialect, our eyes remain fixed on the manifest, egoic, and superficial constructions of Jungianism. That is, the terms, beliefs, compulsive identity constructions, totems, taboos, and trends. We speak frequently of God and gods, of soul and spirit and numen and "anima mundi", but we relate to these things only superficially and to the degree that they forge for us a collective sense of identity. That is, we respond to their value, but the response is unconscious. We feel the value of these things, but we don't know what it is we are feeling or why. Our experience of these valued things is totemic and static, and the things themselves are related to only as language-totems, husks, informational constructs, signifiers loosed from what they signify. This is the superficial stuff of our tribal identity construction, and we feel only the unconscious drive to preserve these husks, having no insight into the dynamic, complex objects these husks were originally meant to represent.
We remain in a state of fundamentalism, where the text must be preserved vigorously and at all costs . . . a kind of defense of the Word of God. But we relate to this God only through the defense of its Word, not intimately, not as a dynamic, complex, living entity or system. We have clung to static informational signifiers at the expense of the very "soul" we so adamantly chant about. This is what happens when languaging doesn't remain dynamic and responsive to the living and growing complexity of the thing it is designed to express and describe. Jung spent his life trying to language the soul, and that process was one of continuous evolution and change as he responded to the shifting and many-faceted complexity of the object itself. We Jungians have spent our decades since engaged in the worship of mere snapshots of the process that Jung himself engaged in. We have mistaken the text for the object, for the god itself. And so, we have lost the god, the source of living, dynamic complexity.
Jung, I contend, was a better valuator of psychic phenomena than he was a languager or psychologizer or interpreter. On a valuative and intuitive level, Jung grasped the relatedness and importance of his object of fascination and study. But his languaging intelligence trailed behind. His collected works leave us field notes and piles of loosely organized but relatively unanalyzed data. Yet it is this languaging Jung that has been deified by Jungians . . . even by those Jungians that struggle with and attempt to reject father Jung, the tribal founder and demigod. Rejection of a deity (which is usually substitution of one deity for another) is a form of religious behavior, and that rejection or criticism is chosen instead of some kind of relationship to Jung the valuator. Jung the valuator remains hidden in shadow, a kind of alien or invisible being.
I am essentially saying that we have erected false idols, idols that serve the defense of the Jungian ego and identity construction and do not serve the Jungian tribal Self. We do not have a communal relationship with the Self. Our Jungian endeavors are largely determined by the desire to satiate our egoic wants. The study and valuation of the soul has been eclipsed by our need to have the soul languaged in such and such a way . . . so that we can feel secure in our adopted sense of tribal identity.
The genuine process of individuation is a psychic movement that would dissolve and reconstruct this state of selfhood. It would dismember the inflexible and inflated self-interest of prevailing Jungian egoism and reorient the intentional drive of Jungian identity to the facilitation of the Self-as-Other. Therefore, my critique and revision of Jungian individuation theory is directed not merely at bettering the understanding of the individuation phenomenon, but also at the treatment of the Jungian soul (or Self), which I feel compelled to respond to due to my valuation of it.
Individuation is always directed at this manner of project, is always devoted to the valuation of the Self system and the relanguaging of the Self in highly aware egoic terms (as a Logos). To individuate is to feel this instinctive compulsion and to follow its organizational thrust until it is no longer truly "optional" or chosen. For the individuant, the egoic facilitation of the highly valuated Self system principle has become the new seat of identity. Individuation itself is a finite process of establishing this condition of devotion and responsibility to the Self-as-Other. It is ultimately an ethical movement.