The Fool and the Grail

On Fools Day and in honour of all the Fools in my life, both family members and close friends, I am recyling an old post about one of my favourite archetypes.

During a time of upheaval and chaos in my life, it was the Fool archetype that sustained me.  The Fool enhances the delight my Clown finds in absurdity and irreverence.  It engages with my child’s sense of joy. In Tales for Jung Folk, Richard Roberts says “children know that foolishness is wisdom turned inside out so that grownups cannot recognize it, and he plays with each child like the Imaginary Playmate come true, whispering confidences that only the inner most heart could share”.

Carol Pearson writes "the Fool is an aspect of the inner child that knows how to play.  The Fool is the root of our basic sense of vitality and aliveness – a childlike, spontaneous, playful creativity."

The Fool is breaking the rules and is a little anarchic and definitely irreverent. He/She is adept at exploding boundaries and exposing hypocrisy. The Fool is a truth-teller, and you will need a sense of humour around them because they call you on your B.S! 

The Fool communicates very serious messages and devastating truths with seemingly light hearted wit or jesting, and often with a deadpan face. Our inner Fool will tell us truths that we do not wish to hear.

In byegone days the Fool had a significant and important role and place at the Royal Court. The Fool is part of a ubiquitous family and is really much more than is apparent on the surface. As the Court Jester (Richard Pryor) he brought important messages to the Sovereign via his often caustic jokes which contained truth. He was the King’s close confidante, keeping him informed about who was plotting against the Crown. No-one takes the Joker (Jack Nicholson in Batman and Robin Williams in various roles) seriously and therefore speak openly in his presence; anyway he's just a Clown (Charlie Chaplin) and no threat, so we  think.

The Fool is among the highest forms of development.

In one of the Grail myths, Parsifal, an unlikely hero, is the Holy Fool. Born after his father’s death, Parsifal is cosseted and kept as a mummy’s boy. His mother dresses him in homespun cloth in order to disguise the fact that he is a descendant of a lineage of knights of the realm. His father, elder brothers and uncles all lost their lives seeking the Holy Grail. One day, however, Parsifal chances upon a party of knights and departs with them – your fate will always find you. And so begins his search for the sacred treasure. Just because others have not succeeded does not mean that you will fail.

The Grail Castle

Parsifal wanders aimlessly for years seeking the Grail Castle, a place of miraculous healing. The Grail Castle is the home of the wounded and suffering Fisher King who is the centre of power. The Grail is his capacity to heal everyone except himself; that can only be done by Parsifal, the unlikely hero.

When Parsifal eventually stumbles upon the Grail castle, he is dumbfounded by the vision which he beholds. Unable to speak, he is incapable of asking the obvious question which will give him access to the secret of the Grail and at the same time heal the wounded King; he has to leave.

Decades go by, life shifts and in time Parsifal is able to fulfil his destiny. Confronted by the Grail once more, Pasifal now knows what question to ask.

Myth as Metaphor: myth, legend, folktale and fairytale are the blueprints and route maps that show humanity the way home. They codify the processes and experiences of the soul’s passage through human chaos to gain experience, acquire knowledge and wisdom, and, having reached a state of completeness can return to Oneness. 

It would take much too long to go into the fullness of Parsifal’s story, you can read it for yourself. See Robert A. Johnson's The Fisher King & the Handless Maiden. For the high minded Wagner's opera "Parsifal" is said to be powerful. 

Honouring the Mother

Another year, another Mother’s Day in the UK and in a while I shall join our little band of one grandmother, two mothers, one daughter and offspring to honour the occasion by cooking and sharing a meal, a joint enterprise. The occasion will also honour Exalie and Janillia our ancestral mothers. They are always invited to share with us and be our guides in life.

There is also the primary parent, Mother Nature. Gaia or the Great Mother is a metaphor for the Earth. As the Dynamic Feminine, she is wild and creative, ever ready to shower love and affection on all those who cherish and nourish her. The inscrutable face of the Mother Goddess is humanised and made accessible through the more prevalent pattern of the personal mother. 

Regardless of what kind of mothering we experience in the external world, we can shape our own inner Mother Archetype giver of unconditional love and nurturing. She is patient, and kind. She protects and bestows health and wellbeing. She is the harvest and the warm hearth. 

           

In West African mythology Yemayá is the Yoruban Great Mother, Sovereign Queen of all the Orishas. Yemaya is invoked for blessings, compassion, wisdom, fertility, inspiration, female power, natural wealth, sustaining life, washing away sorrow, revealing mysteries, acquiring ancient wisdom, protecting the home, and comforting children in crisis.  Obatala, the Great Father Orisha and the seed of life, respects Yemaya and her powers for it is she who germinates his seed; without Yemaya Obatala’s seed would perish.

As always, in honouring the Divine Feminine, I turn to Ethan Walker’s anthology Soft Moon Shining - Devotional poetry for the Mother of the Universe ...an invitation to step into the heart of the Goddess. She is ready to shower Her love and affection on any who care to turn their gaze toward Her fiery heart.

Dance with me
   under the soft moon shining
   in the wide open fields
      far beyond the toil and trouble
      of my busy mind

Dance with me
   before the night grows old
      while the winds of love
      still bow the grasses
         and the coyotes cry for you
         to step their way

Dance with me my beloved
   while the Mystery's Edge
      still flirts in the shadow
      of your radiant light

Myth and Archetypes

The Virgin Bride

One of my favourite legends of all times is the ancient Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. The mortal soul, Psyche, is saved from certain death by love, Eros. However, the liaison cannot last because Psyche is afraid of life and has a dependent personality.

The lovers reunification is conditional on Psyche growing in consciousness; before that can occur she has to face and overcome her fear. Throughout that journey various aspects of Psyche's being or her archetypical patterns of behaviour (princess, virgin, parent/adult, oracle, goddess) impede progress and  illustrate the interplay between shadow and light or true and false. Although they remain unnamed the child, saboteur, victim and prostitute aspect of Psyche are in full flow. 

The story begins, as with all royal events, in the palace of the king and queen. Psyche’s two older sisters have been married off, and are settled in their own domains. Psyche, the youngest and most gracious of the royal princesses was worshipped from far and wide for her breath-taking beauty. A hint of mystery surrounds her and lends to the enchantment. But alas for all that adoration, a suitable suitor has not yet been found for the young princess, much to the concern of the king and queen.

The adulation heaped on the young beauty infuriates Aphrodite, the time-honoured Goddess of Love whose immense beauty had in the past caused unbridled rivalry among potential suitors and often led to war.  Nowadays Aphrodite’s temple stands empty as the people’s devotion turn to the younger nascent goddess.

Aphrodite is consumed with rage that her exalted position is being usurped by this young upstart. She consults the Oracle and conspires to sabotage her rival. Observe here how the old established order manipulates a source of knowledge and wisdom for its own ends.

Meanwhile the king, in despair about his adored daughter’s unmarried status, and suspecting that the family had incurred the wrath of the gods, consults the Oracle. He is unaware that the Oracle is in league with Aphrodite, and Psyche’s fate has already been sealed.

The Oracle’s response to the king’s offering in return for good counsel on the matter of facilitating his daughter in finding a husband is devastating. The Oracle informs the king that his beloved Psyche is to marry Death, the ugliest most hideous monster in the land.

On Death Mountain

The Oracle tells the king that Psyche must be clothed in appropriate attire and taken to the nearest mountain top where she must be chained to a rock to await her bridegroom. Marriage and death are to be merged into a single rite of passage, a journey into the unknown.

 Certain that they have no choice in the matter, Psyche’s parents, siblings and courtiers accompany her to the appointed place, where she is left to be ravished by a monster. In effect the young princess is abandoned to her fate. Petrified at the horror of her impending doom, Psyche begins to lose the balance of her mind.  

Guarding against any possibility that Psyche might not go completely insane from the intensity of her fear at the thought of marrying Death, the Goddess of Love instructs her son Eros to pierce Psyche with one of his arrows. This will guarantee that she falls in love with Death and remain in the underworld for all time. Eros follows his mother’s instructions and flies off to do her bidding. 

When Eros sees Psyche on Death Mountain he is transfixed by her beauty and in his confusion pricks his own finger and falls instantly in love with her. Inflamed with passion Eros transports Psyche, who is by now in a state of comatose, to a dwelling place in a paradise garden and marries her.

The young princess is blinded by the dazzling light of the God of Love; she is able to discern very little of the good fortune which has befallen her. All Psyche knows is that she is not after all the bride of Death; instead she lives in paradise with a god and has every possible thing that she could ever desire, or does she...?

Healing the Split

As aspects of core personality structure, archetypes are innate predispositions to react, behave and interact in certain typical and predictable ways; they dictate our personal values and belief systems, modes of relating, patterns of thought and behaviour; even how we dress!

These vast impersonal forces of motivational energy are symbolic of the two most powerful opposing emotional forces within in the psyche: love and fear (or true and false) and are expressed through our actions in the world. Hence the opposite of love is not hate, it is fear. These patterns may be reinforced or repressed; extroverted or introverted by socialization and cultural norms, but cannot be obliterated.  According to Carole Pearson

Archetypes [are] encoded in the collective unconscious…They are what make us uniquely and characteristically human. They are inherited and not acquired, and they belong to each human being by virtue of being born human[1]                                                                                  

Hence, the personality is comprised of the various masks we wear, many of which will be readily identified by others. In early theatrical productions masks were used to depict the different ‘persona’ portrayed by the players. As such they symbolized a pretension, not the true character of the person. Nowadays the term persona has lost its connotation of pretence and illusion and has come to represent the individual’s observable or explicit personality traits.

As I begin to develop and run workshops on encouraging individuals to get to know and begin to explore at much deeper levels, aspects of their personality that have remained unknown, unacknowledged (in shadow) the more fascinated I become at how aspects of personality can hi-jack our lives and best intentions.

Our inner mental states can also show up in the world as other people. Recently ask@coachbobbi.com posted that “your perception of me is a reflection of you”; this becomes even more powerful when you turn it on its head: my perception of you is a reflection of me.

Years ago I met someone whose marriage was in the throes of disintegration. One half of the partnership referred to the other as a ‘monster’, while the other experienced the spouse’s behaviour as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Inevitably the marriage broke up and even if neither of the partners really wanted that, there was no chance of the relationship coming back together until each could acknowledge their own particular ‘monster’ and take steps to heal the fragmentation in themselves first, before they could heal their relationship. So our masks wear us and, they turn up in the world wearing other people!

The existence and expression of various aspects of self is entirely normal. However, we can ‘split’ and completely compartmentalize our different selves. When our various selves become distinctively observable the response from the medical profession is to assign a pathological label. That is sad, in most cases unnecessary and mostly ignorant.

It was Professor Flora Rheta Schreiber, author of ground breaking book Sybil, published in 1973, who located the origins of dissociative identity disorder (known then as multiple personality disorder) in trauma.  One day Sybil’s 16 personalities emerged to introduce themselves to her psychiatrist.

Extreme pressure or an intolerable experience will cause the personality to disintegration or ‘split’ especially if the trauma dates from early childhood. Children typically use their ability to “go away” in their head as a defence against physical and emotional pain, or fear of that pain. This ‘dissociation’ allows the child to function normally by separating the mind from the thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions of the trauma.

In effect the individual has forgotten his or her ‘true self’ as a whole integrated being, and effectively lives in separated compartments. This enables the aspect(s) of self holding the trauma to 'fall into shadow', where it becomes unknown or unacknowledged.

Houston writes ‘if schizophrenia is the disease of the human condition then polyphrenia, the orchestration and integration of our many selves may be the health…If we can only recognise and encourage the healthy development and orchestration of our various selves, we will avoid much incipient neurosis and pathology.’[2] 

---

[1] Awakening the Heroes Within

[2] Houston, Jean. In Search of the Beloved

Uncovering the Dynamics of the Soul

According to Buddhist monk Darmachari Vessantara, we remain ignorant of, or oblivious to, those primordial patterns (dynamics of the soul) lodged deep in the human psyche:

“It is as if we live on the surface of life whilst in caves deep underground the kings and queens of our energies, the magicians, dancers, and sages remain quietly aloof unable to raise any interest in our [mundane] desires. But if we aspire to reach the heights, then all of a sudden in those caverns far below, ageless heroes and heroines will awaken to the sound of distant trumpets and goddesses will weave afresh the old spells which protect the daring”.

Vessantara is referring to our innate, habitual and archetypal (and therefore universal) patterns of perception, response and behaviour. They are inherited not acquired, and it is up to us whether these patterns are expressed as shadow (destructive) behaviour, or as acts of random kindness (truth and love).

At the time of facilitating a small group through a process of identifying their own archetypal behaviour patterns and how these operate in their lives, there are the inevitable questions:

ARCHETYPES AND SELF KNOWLEDGE (Q&A)

What exactly is an archetype?

This is a typical or habitual pattern of behaviour that is replicated and can be identified across gender, race, class, culture and nationality; therefore ‘archetypal’ behaviour is universal. An archetype is NOT the same as a stereotype, which is a specific word/phrase (usually negative) used to describe a particular group, or an entire culture, race or nationality – e.g. all women are emotional. I am sure you can come up with your own examples of ‘group scapegoating’.

Can you give an example of archetypal behaviour?

There is no need to describe the characteristics of the addict, victim, thief, and angel for example, we would all (I think) immediately understand quite a lot about that person and/or behaviour. We use archetypal language all the time. In describing someone and their behaviour, we might say that XYZ is a minx, little madam, bit of a princess or drama-queen etc. You may be less familiar with the description of ‘eternal child’ – but if I said bit of a ‘Peter Pan’, you would understand more – an adult who remains childlike and does not want to grow up. Michael Jackson for example displayed the eternal child archetype, Peter Pan-like, he even lived in ‘Never Land

Are Archetype cards like the Tarot?

No, the cards presented in the Caroline Myss box set are nothing to do with the Tarot; they are simply her representation and short description of the characteristics of a cross-section of archetypical behaviour, but are by no means the full number of archetypes that exist. However, when you have identified your full set (wholeness) of archetypal patterns (at least 12) you can then actually ‘consult your Self’, and your ‘Self’ will respond!

Where does the idea of archetypes and human behaviour come from?

Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung (1875-1961) first brought this concept to the study of human behaviour - for example see The 12 Common Archetypes. However, the existence of ‘originals’ or ‘blue prints’ for human personality types was accepted by the early Greeks, and in African (Orishas) culture long before Jung. The work of Caroline Myss (see Sacred Contracts and Archetypes: Who are You?) has broadened our knowledge.

HOW ABLE AND WILLING ARE YOU TO LEAVE HOME?
"Leaving home” means stepping out of your comfort zone and following a long held dream such as starting your own business or community enterprise, or sailing your own boat around the world. Alternatively, like me, you may simply wish to spend time in the desert, talking to scorpions with Lench Archuleta, wise sage of the Yaqi Nation.** 

Would you be surprised to know that four key archetypes play a significant role in our ability and willingness to make that journey? Caroline Myss identifies the Child, Victim, Saboteur and Prostitute as the four constants in human personality that represent the issues, fears and vulnerabilities that cause us to sell ourselves short in the world.

For further information on workshops contact AMARI  email askforum3@gmail.com




** www.windspiritspiritteaching.com