Sign Up
Enter your name and email to receive updates on all Explorer Poet content
These words are not my own and I take no credit for them. I share them here as a resource for anyone seeking personal growth or as source material for their own creative expansion of the collective.
Initiation is, essentially, a process that begins with a rite of submission, followed by a period of containment, and then by a further rite of liberation. In this way every individual can reconcile the conflicting elements of his personality: he can strike a balance that makes him truly human, and truly the master of himself.
The ego, nevertheless, is in conflict with the shadow, in what Dr. Jung once called "the battle for deliverance." In the struggle of primitive man to achieve consciousness, this conflict is expressed by the contest between the archetypal hero and the cosmic powers of evil, personified by dragons and other monsters. In the developing consciousness of the individual the hero figure is the symbolic means by which the emerging ego overcomes the inertia of the unconscious mind, and liberates the mature man from a regressive longing to return to the blissful state of infancy in a world dominated by his mother.
Though the Twins are said to be the sons of the Sun, they are essentially human and together constitute a single person. Originally united in the mother's womb, they were forced apart at birth. Yet they belong together, and it is necessary though exceedingly difficult-to reunite them. In these two children we see the two sides of man's nature. One of them, Flesh, is acquiescent, mild, and without initiative; the other, Stump, is dynamic and rebellious. In some of the stories of the Twin Heroes these attitudes are refined to the point where one figure represents the introvert, whose main strength lies in his powers of reflection, and the other is an extravert, a man of action who can accomplish great deeds.
Dr. Radin noted four distinct cycles in the evolution of the hero myth. He named them the Trickster cycle, the Hare cycle, the Red Horn cycle, and the Twin cycle. He correctly perceived the psychology of this evolution when he said: "It represents our efforts to deal with the problem of growing up, aided by the illusion of an eternal fiction."
… at each of the stages in this cycle there are special forms of the hero story that apply to the particular point reached by the individual in the development of his ego-consciousness, and to the specific problem confronting him at a given moment. That is to say, the image of the hero evolves in a manner that reflects each stage of the evolution of the human personality.
… the essential function of the heroic myth is the development of the individual's ego-consciousness - his awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses in a manner that will equip him for the arduous tasks with which life confronts him. Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero's symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity.
…the heroes of Western modernity would be technological or scientific geniuses of logos, not the spiritual geniuses inspired by mythos. This meant that intuitive, mythical modes of thought would be neglected in favour of the more pragmatic, logical spirit of scientific rationality.
You cannot be a hero unless you are prepared to give up everything; there is no ascent to the heights without a prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.
The myth of the hero was not intended to provide us with icons to admire, but was designed to tap into the vein of heroism within ourselves. Myth must lead to imitation or participation, not passive contemplation.
He [the Buddha] owed his liberation precisely to the extinction of the unique traits and idiosyncrasies that Western people prize in their heroes. The same goes for his disciples.
Enter your name and email to receive updates on all Explorer Poet content