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'If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star... And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider- lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that at awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe- should be clear; the darkness around us is deep.' From 'A Ritual to Read to Each Other' by, William Stafford |
It always feels both frightening and exhilarating to be on the cusp of change, but that is where I believe Men's Work is at. Not a birth but a rebirth. An opportunity for growth, communion. co-mingling and - with a little luck and a lot of fine judgement - community.
The area of this work I have been most closely involved with is usually called Mythopoetic. Its inspiration is drawn from mythology, ritual, poetry and anthropology - aided and abetted initially by the ideas of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.
Its present form started almost by accident about fifteen years ago in the United States. The poet Robert Bly was teaching Fairy Tale and Mythology workshops and found the participants eagerly responding to the mythic images presented with tales of their own lives. The stories were acting as metaphors for the human condition, the trials of the Prince or Princess in the story corresponding to real events in the participants' lives. The hero or heroines struggle to please and outwit the King or Queen, Giant or Witch, bearing immediate comparison to daily struggles with father and mother, patriarchy and matriarchy, masculine and feminine principles.
But the participants at these seminars were overwhelmingly women. The few men present seemed more reluctant to open up to the emotional storehouse of their own lives - especially, it seemed, in front of women. It was decided to experiment with a workshop just for men. The fairy tale Robert Bly chose to be the mythic container for this event was 'Iron John' - and the rest, if not quite history, is at least better documented elsewhere than this space allows.
In the ensuing years other minds and ideas were added to the poet's initial inspiration, notably the mythologist and writer Michael Meade, archetypal psychologist James Hillman, Jungian analyst Robert Moore and more recently the initiated African medicine man Malidoma Some and Guatamalan Shaman Martin Prechtel.
Initial concerns included absent fathers, the lack of effective male role models and the apparent inability to express emotion (except anger). My point of entry to this work was Father, as it is for many men. My father had died three months before I attended my first men's workshop and my male psyche was in shock. I wanted to be a loving husband and father, but seemed to lack the heart or the courage to really be these things. I was numb from the neck down, cut off from real feeling. Drifting, rudderless, in a swelling sea, unable to believe in any direction I was blown towards. When I heard Robert Bly state that in a society without effective initiation a male cannot become a man until the day his father dies...' a weight was lifted from my shoulders. The task ahead was clear, though the path towards it was dark, difficult and painful.
| The boy had to die in order that the man could be born. It was time to grow up |
Initiation (as Mircea Eliade defines it in Rites and Symbols of Initiation) '...denotes a body of rites and oral teachings whose purpose is to produce a decisive alteration in the religious and social status of the person to be initiated. In philosophical terms, initiation is equivalent to a basic change in existential condition; the novice emerges from his ordeal endowed with a totally different being from that which he possessed before his initiation: he has become another'.
In my terms, the boy had to die in order that the man could be born. It was time to grow up. And I was shit scared.
In ancient cultures it was apparently possible to manifest this change over a period of a few weeks intensive work off in the woods with a group of older initiated men. Our culture generally lacks both the rites and the elders. Six years later I am still doing the work that may have taken an ancient ancestor six weeks. But we cannot simply revive ancient rites and expect magical change. We can learn from the past. adapt their lessons to our own cosmology, psychology and mythology and start again. In my experience, responsibly led men's workshops and focused men's groups can assist this process. Although the journey is a lonely one, we do not have to be alone.
The first time I glimpsed the size of the task confronting me was at the first residential weekend I attended, led by Michael Meade and Robert Bly. In the midst of an ancient chant used to invoke grief, an image of a stone boy swam in front of my eyes. I tried to push it away but it would not let go, the image imprinting itself on my retina. A short while later, I realised that I had just seen a perfect symbol of myself. A boy. literally petrified (turned to stone) at an early age. who could not now melt the stone that had grown to imprison him.
I felt helpless unable to undo that which had been done so effectively so long ago.
But still later that night when the work was over and a drumming, dancing celebration had begun, Robert Bly called me into the centre of the circle of men and invited me to start a dance. Years of embarrassment about my physicality instantly flooded over me, voices in my head telling me 'You can't do it - and even if you do, you'll still look a fool - and then they'll all see through you, and see you for what you really are - nothing'. Maybe you know the voice? An astonishing number of men I've worked with since that night have their own version of this critic, judge, jury and occasional executioner.
But in that moment, I looked around at the faces of the fifty men around me, flushed, exultant, expectant, and I felt safe. I looked at the friendly bear-like figure of Bly waving me towards him and I felt protected. Not only allowed to be foolish but encouraged. I started to pound my legs into the wooden floor in an ungainly manner, eyes closed. I felt a surge of heat move around me and I opened my eyes to see the whole room dancing. My offering had been accepted. I had been accepted, somehow on trust, with trust, by a group of men who had been strangers twenty-four hours before. It was an extraordinary sensation. I kept dancing. The energy in the room grew, until we seemed to be moving with one intention but through many individual bodies. I felt as if we were creating a pool of strong masculine energy which somehow became larger than its constituent parts. And therefore we could all take more away than we had put in. Then I realised: this was the energy I would need to melt the stone that had surrounded my heart since childhood. And I could find it, occasionally, among groups of men, met together with ritual purpose.
The first phase of this work, I believe, is about the past. If we do not really know where we have come from, we will not truly know where we are now, or where we want to go. I had to look at the parenting I had received and other early influences to try and discern what parts of me had grown naturally and what had been instilled by others. And, within both these growths, which were useful and creative and which were constricting and destructive, I had to relearn many things I had known early on and forgotten, and unlearn many habits I had later grasped as self-defence - perhaps necessary at the time, but limiting in the long run.
| I had been accepted, somehow on trust, with trust, by a group of men who had been strangers twenty-four hours before |
This journey to the depths was tortuous and at times torturous, as if my skin was being peeled away layer by layer, revealing yet more vulnerability, wounds and apparent weakness. None of which, at the time, made me feel any more 'a man'.
This stage is necessarily selfish. About ME and MY problems. Even paying this much attention to yourself can be an issue for British men, often raised as we are with the unconscious message that, when it comes down to it, we are not, frankly, worth the effort.
At the other extreme, of course, is narcissistic self obsession. The danger here is that you continually wallow in your problems, and become addicted to feeling the victim. 'If only things could have been different in the past, then I could have had a chance...'
One of the ways mythopoetic work is trying to revision initiation is to use the past creatively, as a springboard into the future, not as a lead weight forever holding you back. From this perspective you need to look carefully into the wound or wounds inflicted in the past because they hold a message about the future. In the fairy tale Iron John, the young Prince receives a wound to his finger. Later, when the finger hurts he dips it into a special pond and the tip turns gold. There is gold in the wound, the tale seems to say.
An Innuit myth tells of the making of a Shaman whereby the initiate is chopped up into pieces and dropped into the underworld. Various demons come along and chew on his bones, after which he is reconstituted and revived. He is now a Shaman, with one important qualification. He can only heal people who are afflicted by the demons that chewed on his bones.
So maybe we can realise our creative, healing potential only if we can recognise the demons who have chewed on us early on. And this, then, becomes the second stage of the work. Once we have looked into the past we can turn our heads to look into the future.
As we make this shift the focus changes from me to us, from birth to death, from individual family to community. And, I believe from Father to Fathering, from Therapy to Ritual.
| this was the energy I would need to melt the stone that had surrounded my heart since childhood |
The work being undertaken in the residential mythopoetic weekends now is very different from six or seven years ago. Particularly among the body of men who have been involved for a while, there seems to be an urge to work with others and for others. Elaborate and beautiful 'set construction' is achieved within a remarkably short time, often to create a space for ritual activity to occur. Within the rituals men are caretaking other men and finding a pleasure in the service. A gentle outlet for energy that if not focused and used creatively will turn angry and destructive. Particularly among younger men who feel the existing culture (with the exception of advertising executives and drug dealers!) ignores them.
The impulse to become responsible for others is beginning to move outside small groups and large workshops, and thereby - I hope - away from the danger of stagnation into some kind of glorified white, male, middle-class art therapy.
The four principle areas of new exploration are Youth, Violence, Multi-culturalism and Gender Reconciliation (and most of these overlap). Although much of this work is being pioneered by Michael Meade and Malidoma Some in the States, interest is growing here, and about time too.
But as mythopoetic work begins to deal with these issues it also has to become more aware, socially and politically. There used to be an unspoken apolitical elitism around, of which I was part. A kind of 'Fuck the world - let's drum and talk about my stuff' approach. Which is the shadow of the genuine desire for self improvement. But it becomes harder to complain about my nanny potty training me too early when I'm faced with a young gang member who risks being killed if he returns to his neighbourhood because he left without permission.
I am not trying to devalue men releasing personal burdens, I spent several years doing it myself, but to emphasise that if that is all it is, mythopoetic work will get stuck and die looking at its own navel. If we can make this shift and educate ourselves in other arenas, I believe this work can make a difference out there, as well as in here. I believe that in this shift lies the potential healing of the previous suspicion/antagonism between some of the disparate elements of the Men's Movement.
We have all done our homework within our different areas of research and study. Now we have the opportunity to share our knowledge, to form an alliance of differences and move beyond a separation of opposites. For there are many common - if perhaps as yet deliberately undefined - goals.
One popular misconception, voiced by Andrew Samuels in the previous issue of Achilles Heel, is that mythopoetic work seeks a return to and a strengthening of old male stereotypes. It does not. It is a genuine attempt to revision ancient archetypes so that they can have meaning in a radically changed modern world. We cannot afford just to sit around and feel the confusion. Too many young men are dying out there. No-one I know wants to start a new religion, but plenty are interested in the potential for a non-violent cultural revolution. Things have got to change. It will take a different type of man to effect these changes creatively and soulfully. If Men's Work does not lose it's head, or inflate it's head, all approaches can be valuable assistant midwives at the rebirth.
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