The Once and Future King

Reading Robert Bly's Iron John. Absolutely amazing. "A book about men". Not at all in contrast to a book about women or a snooty writing that exculdes gay men or transgender, nor a book about tough guys or anythng of the sort. REALLY interesting...Jungian in tone.

He talks about the archetypal kings, the sacred king, which is the transcendent male motif -- Adonai, Jesus, Allah, Odin, Jupiter, etc, and the inner king, the sacred within each man (and woman for each matter, as each man has an inner queen as well.)

One statement that totally blew me away was that "addiction does not have to do with Colombian drug lords, but with the abscence of the King"...not having to do with a lot of inner city fathers not taking in their kids, but really the other way around. Because we have ousted "the King", the inner sacred, (if we ever really honored the inner sacred as a society), all below falls; because we don't know our sacred selves, the poor suffer and the rich glut. Thus we have politicans who care more for religious fundamentalism than for humans, corporations into money and power, millions of addicted souls, and everything in between.

I haven't gotten to the point in the book where Bly talks about transformation of self and society, but in my opinion, this transformation takes place in the growing consciousness movement, the infiltration of Eastern religion into the West, the restructuring of Western religion, things like the Occupy movement, artists, musicians, actors, activists, the common man becoming more environmentally and socially conscious, 12-step recovery, the women's movement (for it takes the discovery of the Inner Queen concurrent with the discovery of the Inner King to bring society afloat -- one without the other is not enough -- and a growing matriarchy does not preclude the arrival of the King -- the two can coexist).

One component, along with the missing King, that has been lacking is making peace with the father -- ones physical father. This does not mean that the father has to become a good father, or even be present. One may not even know ones father, but I think the more one knows about his father and his father's story and situation, his good and bad, the more one can reconcile.

Thus the men's movement. Okay ladies, please stop snickering. This in no way opposes the woman's movement but arises hand in hand with it. We have our issues, us men, straight, gay and transgender. We all have fathers and have issues with them. I will share a Robert Bly exercise for digesting ones relaionship with ones father in a later post. It is rather ingenious and has helped me so much with my perspective on my Dad.

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