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| Lupine and Poppies |
Once, my father took my brother
and I and several neighborhood friends out to a river. While my Dad
fished, the five of us explored the oak woodlands, following a trail
that forked so many times I lost my sense of direction. Suddenly we
entered a meadow, and everyone scattered. I chased after one of the
boys, barely keeping up as he crossed a creek and crashed through
dense foliage and looped back around to the meadow. After a short
while, we were all back together again, panting and laughing. Our
leader, however, frowned at the boy I had chased, and whispered, “You
couldn't get away?” I mentioned that we should be getting back, but
no one responded, and we continued hiking farther into the forest.
After awhile, I grew tired and bent down to gaze at a purple flower
next to the trail. Suddenly the boys all vanished into the forest
again, so quickly that I couldn't follow any of them. Alone in a vast
forest, I had no idea how to get back to the river.
They had planned to ditch me from
the beginning, I realized. My brother and the neighborhood boys were
all two years older than I and had ditched me before in perilous
places. Once I had followed them deep into a cave. The leader
suddenly turned off the flashlight, and their footsteps quickly
vanished into total blackness. I sensed that they had all headed in
one direction, so I felt my way along the cave wall until, about
forty-five minutes later, I saw light in the distance. They had, on
different occasions, ditched me more than once on moonless nights far
beyond our camp. Before, I had never taken it personally, however. It
was there idea of having a little fun, I rationalized. This time,
however, I was growing weary of their attempts to make me afraid. As
I ambled along the trail, stopping now and then to gaze at flowers, I
suddenly understood why they kept challenging me and each other.
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| Poppies |
The leader of our neighborhood
gang had always been aggressive and demanding, but after his father
died of leukemia, he became wild and unpredictable. We followed him
everywhere, however, into caves, into dark forests, into battle with
other scout troops. He expected us to follow no matter how insane the
adventure, and every time, he succeeded in making at least one person
feel completely alone and vulnerable. I realized then that he wanted
each one of us to know how he had felt after his father died, and
since I was the youngest, I was usually the one he chose to abandon
in strange places, and I was getting tired of it.
Not knowing which direction to go,
I just kept following the trail. Strangely, even though I was totally
lost, I experienced a deep sense of peace. The forest was so tranquil
that I forgot all about being ditched. I had time to wonder why our
leader couldn't express his feelings, why he was so cruel and
destructive, why he felt compelled to force us to do things that we
knew were harmful to ourselves and others.
Once, out of the blue, our leader
commanded me to beat up one of the weaker neighborhood boys. Even
though the boy was two years older, I quickly got on top of him and
started swinging, but I pulled my punches. I apparently succeeded in
looking like I was beating up my victim because our leader was
smiling, satisfied. By the time we were through “fighting,”
however, my victim and I both felt humiliated. I remember later
thinking that to be a real man, a real tough guy, I should have
punched him much harder. I felt ashamed because pity and compassion
weren't acceptable emotions. I also suspected that my victim, even
though I didn't hurt him, would try to get me back at me at some
point in the near future.
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| Lupine |
In order to prove to our leader
that we were manly, we occasionally ended up doing great harm to
ourselves and each other. One time, for instance, our leader
commanded me to guzzle down two large cups filled to the brim with
some horrible liquid, which turned out to be 151 rum and coke. Half
an hour later my head was spinning. I soon passed out. As the other
boys were playing poker, I woke up vomiting all over the kitchen
table. I continued to throw up as they dragged me into the bathroom.
Finally they took me over to a schoolyard and tried to get me to “run
it off.” The held me up as we stumbled around the track. Whenever
they let go of me, however, I collapsed. I remained violently ill for
three days.
I sensed, as I followed the path,
that our leader was not just “acting” like a conqueror—he
couldn't help himself. He felt compelled to dominate us and make us
feel vulnerable, not because he was pretending to be a “real man,”
but because he was fulfilling a purpose, manifesting the values of
masculinity and leadership. Whenever I was with him, however, I
witnessed continually how a leader—and how a man—should not act.
When his father died, something had gone terribly wrong with him as a
leader, yet everyone in the gang continued to follow him blindly. (A
description of one camping trip is perhaps enough to illustrate my
point.)
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| Poppies and Bush Lupine |
In late afternoon, I finally
stepped through some brush onto the riverbank. I had no idea that I
was even close to the river until that moment. I could see my father
fishing and my brother skipping rocks in the distance. As soon as he
saw me, my father waved us in and told everyone that it was time to
go home. We all piled into the car, the other boys quickly falling
asleep. I suddenly had a terrifying premonition: My father was going
to die soon. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I would soon be
totally lost and alone, and no one would understand my grief. No one
would ever try to understand it. The terror slowly subsided as the
car curved around the hillsides. Whether or not I had experienced the
premonition because our leader had made me feel so vulnerable and
alone that day is irrelevant: My premonition came true.
When
I was seventeen, my father died of a heart attack, and while I was
grieving, my “friends” abandoned me. At the time, I was also
struggling with celiac disease and with sickness from four years of
inhaling the toxic fumes of acrylic and oil paints in my poorly
ventilated art studio, my bedroom. I realized then that I couldn't
count on male friends. Any sacrifices I made to be a real man in
order to fit in would not help me through hard times or illness or
grief. I knew I would end up alone even if I succeeded in making
everyone respect me, so I decided to give up trying to be a “real
man.”
Over and over as I was growing up,
I experienced the negative aspects of masculinity, but I rarely, if
ever, experienced real emotional support from a man. I have numerous
examples of the negative side of masculinity, but a few incidents
stand out. For instance, in elementary school, I loved sports. I
excelled at football, basketball and four-square. One day when I was
in sixth grade, Dwayne, a tall, gangling boy with little or no
coordination, sneaked up behind me at the beginning of recess and
punched my ears as hard as he could with his fists, for no reason
other than to show that he could bring me to my knees. When I
regained my hearing at the end of recess, I could hear him still
bragging to anybody who would listen, “Did you see that? I got
Robbins good!” I had hardly ever even talked to him, let alone
bothered him. Since I was having trouble hearing, a friend told the
yard duty teacher, who did nothing. Dwayne pounded the ears of
another strong, athletic boy the same way a few days later. The boy,
who was normally tough and stoic, wept uncontrollably all recess.
Dwayne got suspended, but only after I swore to a teacher that Dwayne
had done the same to me.
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| Poppies, Lupine, Bird's Eye Gilia |
In seventh grade, I sat next to a
stoner, who was a year older, in art class. Every day he pestered me
to lure one of my friends outside when the teacher wasn't looking.
The stoner acted like my friend and assured me that he just wanted to
show us something. I had no idea what he had in mind, but finally,
after weeks of badgering, I gave in. As soon as we got outside the
stoner repeatedly punched my friend in the stomach, and my friend
crumpled against the wall and collapsed. I stood aghast, stunned,
unable to move. The stoner rushed back into class, and I followed,
realizing that any help or comfort I might provide my friend would
not be appreciated. I thought the stoner was a psycho and begged the
teacher to move me to another seat. I soon realized that the stoner,
an eighth grader, might have simply wanted to get the better of two
seventh graders so that he could feel more like a man. I approached
my friend a few days later and swore that I had no idea that the
stoner had planned to hurt him. “But you didn't try to stop him,”
he snarled. I was speechless. He was right. Over the years, I have
occasionally felt twinges of guilt about that incident.
In high school I took a poetry
class. A large jock took the class as well, probably believing that
it was an easy A. He never once participated in discussion. During PE
one day, one part of the class was playing water polo, and the jock
and I happened to be in the pool together. Suddenly the ball was in
our vicinity and a number of us scrambled for it, including the jock,
who got there first. Several of us, including me, were struggling to
grab the ball away from him when, suddenly, he punched me in the
face. I fell back, stunned, and play stopped. Standing at the side of
the pool, the coach asked the jock why he'd punched me. The jock
replied, “That little faggot grabbed my balls!” The coach stared
at me and asked if that was true, and I weakly replied in the
negative, my face still stinging. The coach quietly conferred with
another coach, and suddenly the bell rang. The jock suffered no
consequences. In elementary school and junior high school, I was a
jock myself, usually on the winning team, but in high school I was
smaller than many other boys, and far less likely to win in a sports
competition. In high school, I slowly began to accept this change in
stature. Why the jock felt the need to punch me and humiliate me made
no sense to me at the time.
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| Wind Poppies, Chinese Houses |
As I grew older, I began to
understand that a “real man” has to demonstrate social dominance,
anti-intellectualism, aggressiveness and sexual prowess with
women—all the time. In the face of adversity, toughness and
stoicism are the only acceptable attributes. Competing for wealth and
power are the only acceptable pursuits. Earning respect from others,
even total strangers, is absolutely essential for the well-being of a
real man even though the act of earning respect might require the
sacrifice of mental, emotional and physical health or turn one into
an animal. Respect has to be continually earned, moreover. A man is
always in danger of being reduced to a wimp or a failure or a
“faggot” or a “pussy” through the actions of other people,
men and women. A challenge to one's manhood must be dealt with
quickly and decisively, with the challenger thrashed or humiliated.
Losing face in a moment of weakness can lead to the possibility of
loss, of a job, of friends, of wife and children. A common way to
establish and maintain power: Violence or the threat of violence. The
number of people harmed by this social attitude is incalculable.
Even the belief that a real man
should always be a good provider reduces manhood and masculinity to
an external factor, an aspect of the male that can be taken away or
destroyed. If your status depends on your job or your financial
situation, then your manhood is always at risk, determined entirely
by your employer in a volatile economy. A real man is always at risk
of losing his manliness and must succeed, no matter the economic
circumstances, no matter the cost to himself and others.
After
much experience with the archetypal energies of the Tree of Life, I
believe that many of the destructive beliefs about masculinity stem
from the archetype of the conqueror. One way that the negative
aspects of the archetype play out in a capitalistic society is
through cutthroat competition, whether in business, politics, or
academia. Jupiter and Mars are both conquerors, and within each
archetype is a spectrum of energy that includes a positive pole and a
negative pole, virtues and vices, in other words. The positive pole
of the Jupiter archetype includes spiritual magnificence, harmony,
and abundance; the negative pole includes bigotry, gluttony, and
tyranny, vices that elevate the selfishness of the individual above
the good of the whole. The positive pole of the Mars archetype
includes strength, discipline, and courage; the negative pole
includes cruelty and destructiveness.
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| Lupine |
A
society that has not learned to polarize to the positive pole of
these archetypes expects males to compete from childhood through
adulthood, from classroom to playground to playing field to
workplace, with social situations resulting in either dominance or
subjugation. The inability to empathize is a consequence because
everyone is a potential adversary or pawn, and a male learns to
expect either overt or subtle conflicts for dominance in most social
situations. Emotional and spiritual distance is perpetuated in the
never ending process of winning and losing. The winner justifies his
status and his prejudices by convincing himself of his superiority.
The loser feels the sting of failure and betrayal and often strikes
back in subtle ways to get even. A male who lives by the negative
aspects of these Mars and Jupiter archetypes, whether he wants to or
not, can eventually find that his relationships have become empty and
exploitative. Worst of all, the other aspects of the psyche
represented by the Tree of Life are ignored, leaving males
spiritually unbalanced and emotionally stunted.
Many males, of course, are demeaned simply because their behavior does not fit into the patterns of the Mars and Jupiter archetypes; they may be introspective or artistic or nurturing, for instance, instead of extroverted, competitive and domineering. Recognizing all the archetypal energies of the Tree of Life liberates individuals from the adverse aspects of the few socially dominant archetypes. Moreover, individuals who bring the archetypal energies through with power into the mundane world can create a paradigm shift within a civilization, as Jesus and Buddha have done, for example. The more individuals within a given society who choose to move from the negative to the positive poles of both the dominant and the less acknowledged archetypes, the more likely that society will be spiritually balanced. In the meantime, individuals can liberate themselves from destructive patterns within society by balancing all the energies of the Tree of Life within themselves, which may eventually lead to a critical mass, a kind of morphic resonance, where the many are suddenly able to do the same because the inner work of a few individuals has deeply affected the collective consciousness.
My inner work, of course, is not
entirely altruistic. Due to my chronic illness, I need to attract the
most positive force, spiritual love, into my life, which requires me
first to let go of damaging beliefs about masculinity. If I am to
survive, I need to change my consciousness on a deep level, so I have
devised two rituals to help me overcome the negative aspects of my
social conditioning as a male. In the process, I hope to feel greater
love for all Being, including my self, in order to stop attracting
negativity.
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| Path 14 |
Many males, of course, are demeaned simply because their behavior does not fit into the patterns of the Mars and Jupiter archetypes; they may be introspective or artistic or nurturing, for instance, instead of extroverted, competitive and domineering. Recognizing all the archetypal energies of the Tree of Life liberates individuals from the adverse aspects of the few socially dominant archetypes. Moreover, individuals who bring the archetypal energies through with power into the mundane world can create a paradigm shift within a civilization, as Jesus and Buddha have done, for example. The more individuals within a given society who choose to move from the negative to the positive poles of both the dominant and the less acknowledged archetypes, the more likely that society will be spiritually balanced. In the meantime, individuals can liberate themselves from destructive patterns within society by balancing all the energies of the Tree of Life within themselves, which may eventually lead to a critical mass, a kind of morphic resonance, where the many are suddenly able to do the same because the inner work of a few individuals has deeply affected the collective consciousness.
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| Path 15 |
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| The Empress with Foundation Cards (Aces) |
THE EMPRESS AND THE FOUR QUEENS
In the previous ritual, I invoked
Hathor, Egyptian Goddess of Love. (See previous post.) I learned that
the power of love, which includes love of Being and self-love, is a
necessary part of healing to keep negativity and illness away. During
the ritual I cleansed myself, draining all negativity in my primary
chakras away. I was successful in eliminating dark energy from all
but the heart chakra. The
blackness in my heart chakra kept returning—so much so that I
expected to have a heart attack in the near future—until l I
finally understood that I really do need to love and accept myself,
that it isn't just an idea. As soon as I felt that love and
acceptance for myself, the chakra was clear and full of light, so I
decided to invoke Hathor, The Empress, again, this time with all the
Queens in the Tarot as support.
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| The Empress with Queens |
After
I dealt the foundation cards (The Aces and Judgement) in the order of
the active invoking pentagram, starting with the Ace of Wands (Fire),
I placed The Empress in the center of the pentagram. I invoked the
Goddess of Love with prayer and then began laying down the Queens,
starting with the Queen of Wands and once again moving in the order
of the active invoking pentagram. I asked the Goddess of Love to help
me realize the best qualities of each Queen.
- The Queen of Wands: With a great fiery will and openness, she radiates and receives joy and love.
- The Queen of Swords: With great emotional and intellectual wisdom, she remains balanced and open to Being.
- The Queen of Cups: With great sensitivity and creative will, she manifests positive cosmic forces.
- The Queen of Pentacles: With great maternal love and stability, she remains fertile on all levels of Being.
In
the process, I concentrated on letting go of the negative aspects of
masculinity and balancing the masculine and feminine energies within
me.
THE
EMPEROR AND THE FOUR KINGS
The
next day I performed a ritual to balance the energies of The Empress
and the Queens by invoking the Emperor and the four Kings of the
Tarot. The for Kings show spiritual maturity on the levels of will,
intellect, emotion, and material being. Staying with the Egyptian
pantheon, I invoked Horus as the Emperor.
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| The Emperor with Kings |
After
I dealt the foundation cards (The Aces and Judgement) in the order
of the active invoking pentagram, starting with the Ace of Wands
(Fire), I placed The Emperor in the center of the pentagram. I
invoked the God of the Higher Self with prayer and then began laying
down the Kings, starting with the King of Wands and once again
placing the cards in the order of the active invoking pentagram. I
asked the Horus to help me realize the best qualities of each King.
- The King of Wands: With great fiery will and farsightedness, he maintains dominion by burning away what does not serve him while passionately striving for the highest possible good.
- The King of Swords: With fierce intellect, he exercises keen judgment, allowing the higher self to reach great heights.
- The King of Cups: With great sensitivity and creative will, he remains immersed yet stable within positive cosmic forces.
- The King of Pentacles: With great paternal love and stability, he enables Being on all levels to flourish.
I
focused on accepting myself as a creative, loving, spiritual man,
ending with this chant:
I
love and accept myself
as a
man who chooses to live
in
the higher self
even
in this world.
I
love and accept all Being,
adding
my light
to
the light of the world.
You might think I'm crazy, but after
both rituals, I feel free of the negative aspects of masculinity and
much more relaxed and at peace with myself. I feel more joyful than I
have in years.
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