Alchemy Part Three: The Archetypes of the Journey
We seen the how the Ego can prosper or wane in the last example. It is the four parts of the name of YHVH. For it is to heal him, we first must heal ourselves. It is Gawain returning to Arthur what he had lost. For the King and the land are one. When one prospers, so does the other . As one is in decline, so shall the remaining. So the Grail Knight ride into the wasteland to cure the king. For he neglected his wife and she sought another. The Fischer king raped a well maiden.
In today's society, we can see this manifest simply in the person who is depressed; or angry as he throws his McDonalds bag out of his car window; to the larger scale of drilling in Alaska; and to increased Arsenic in our ground water from strip mining. Our King Bush does not respect himself, so he does not respect his mother earth. Also as his state of mind is narrowed so is our economy. We need a Gawain to bring him a draught from the grail.
This could also be seen by us who are taken the journey at the on set of puberty, looking for our guides to start us on our journey. We are Luke who scans the horizon wondering what he could be if he only left. It is Perceval addressing the knights his mother told him that were devils. But he saw them as angels, as he rode off with the knights costume his mother had made for him out of a hair shirt, pots, and cooking spit. We can be helped or hindered on our journey by our parents. If we are hindered, we might find someone to guide us in the concrete fashions of a trade. But not know better about the emotional or instinctual part. As the knight who lost patience with Perceval's youthful curiosity. He told him to never ask questions, which almost lost him the grail because of his lack of compassion on the Fischer King.
When we are hindered by our parents, we tend to be on a see saw, going from one extreme to the other like some crazy roller coaster until we are sick. For everything in the universe is circular. So white and black are hairs apart, as seen when you flip the switch. The grays in the dark come up slowly as your eyes adjust. Also to mix all the colors of the visible spectrum into a painting takes work, so does making a balance of extremes. To hear the sound of one hand clapping. To find the Tao.
The way is the journey!
Others run away from the guidance their parents could offer. Either of their own fault, or by removing themselves from their abuse. Sometimes they are prevented from going on the trip because they are guilted into taken care of the parent. They are always held back trying to help the parent who is wasting away because she has never went on her own journey.
Some times the parent has not laid the ground work in some early developmental point in their child to go forward on the journey even if they send them out on to it. So they set the child out of the nest for failure. Not maliciously, but the parent was not taught something herself or shame has prevented them from teaching the child. Some times severe trauma prevents a parent from entering a point in their child's early development. And guilt prevents them from going back and teach them it.
So if the hero sets out for it, he first meets Merlin or Ben Kenobi. If he is not ready he receives Garahmut and his not asking any question way of life. But for the one who has a better start. He receives Ben Kenobi who teaches him the force and a trade. The light saber and the force to guide it. The Bushido. After acquiring the trade, he learns that the force guides all things creative and destructive. It controls the fate of our lives by our actions in it. It is our destiny. It is the blockage of it by our Karma, until we are ready to receive it. It is our river we learn to keep our heads up in and go with the flow. It is the current that pulls us down the waterfall we swam up when our desires led us to things that was not ours in the first place. Or gained by the wrong way. The knowledge without the experience to use it. It is Perceval being lost in the wasteland until he lets go of the reigns off his horse. The Horse leads him to the Hermit, the wise man of Merlin and Obi Won Kenobi, that he is ready for. Before, Perceval was only ready for Garuhmat. Now he has removed his desires for his goals, and he is ready to aspire.
But before then he must face his shadow. Those who never do are like Peter Pan, always stuck chasing it. Never becoming an adult. Just a lost boy. This is where Lancelot in Excalibur fights an armored knight in the buff, to defeat him to find only his own face in the visor It is also Luke going in the cave on Dagoba, to remove the head of Darth Vader. To find his face behind the helmet as well. Sometimes we must be careful that the sins of the father does not become that of the son. Jon Quincy Adams had seemed to have done better than the father. The snork like nose creature did the same in the Raccoon's Christmas, he taught his father to change. More on that later....
After that we must confront our father. We go into society with our trade and provide for our own food, shelter, clothing, and water. Sometimes we must compete with our father for the same business if we are in the same trade, or wait for him to retire so we may take over the company. Sometimes this is hard for the youths if the father or elders in a community are feeling the sores of their oats. It is always the elderly man who has slowed down in his age who is the first to yell at the kid on the skateboard. He is jealous and fears death. Other times they feel the icy hand of death approach and fear the vigor and strength of the youth that may push them on too soon. Other times they wish they can sacrifice the youth to death, to take their own place. That is why we always since the crusades send out those young and strong to die. Or in ancient days, the coming of age rituals were full of scarification and sublimation of the genitals. The elders giving the youth one up. This is Luke confronting his Father where he looses his left hand. The hand of sin that he inherited from the father. His impetuous nature that rushed the confrontation before he was ready by his ego. It is the strikes Perceval received as well. Or Ashta received from Anslan in the Narnia tale A Boy and His Horse, for leaving her maid behind to be punished for her own ego.
But when this is reconciled we see the youth returned to the father as in Mary Poppins as the Father turns around to raise his children appropriately. He then teaches society by teaching the father who owns the bank to find his youth once more. Or it is Anakin returning to save his son from the Emperor. Which brings the end to the wasteland. Or it is received when the youth mixes his emotional, sensual, logical and intuitive thinking to do the right action in the right time beyond his control. To ask what ails the King.
But always along the way there are companions who help us and support us when we fall. As we do in return. We help them realize they had a brain, a heart, and courage all along. That everything we needed, even a home is within us. When one receives the grail he shares it with the other. Like Luke sharing the medal ceremony with the others at the end of The first Star Wars. Then they teach the rest of society to take their own Neverending Journey.
