The Myth of the Moment: A Letter to Patrick Harpur
Dear Mr. Harpur,
I was watching an interview you gave to Jo Hickey-Hall where she asks what god is behind modern society.
I think the psychological perspective of Pluto underpins our modern madness.
There have been many cases of assault and violation in the media today and a general distrust of men in power. There also seems to be an erosion of secrecy and with that its powers to transform the psyche.
As you write, the Soul is inhuman and pitiless foisting upon us whatever misfortune or misery that will drag us down into the labyrinthine depths of our selves.
Pluto is the god to do with depth and death, and secrecy with his Hadean helmet that hides the outward nature of things.
We live in a society suspicious of secrecy. Every slight must be aired in the open like a soiled singlet. We live in a society that dreads death and fears depth and the darkness it brings. We live in a society that hates Pluto and the pain he caused Perserphone.
The great Soul-making myth of the Western world is a rape narrative. There are other soul-making myths like the Passion of Psyche or Odin swinging upside down from the World-tree like the Hanged Man of the Major Arcana. A self-tortured sacrifice of himself to himself, his pain so powerful his psyche splits open and snatches the runes.
Gruesome.
Yet society can come to terms with extremes of self-sacrifice but I think our age, uninitiated and immature, rejects the very idea of the Soul finding value through violation.
It reminds me of the scene in your novel, The Stormy Petrel, when a young Søren sees an image of Jesus. A sort of image of worldly failure so unlike the Classical hero. The vulnerable man. As the Germans call him Der Schmerzensmann — the Man of Sorrows. Half-naked, crying, and beaten by the World.
Our times has a similar revulsion to that tale of feminine vulnerability. The violated Kore is not encouraged to go inside herself or to go down into the dank depths of her soul and be transformed into the Queen of Hell — Persephone, Bringer of Destruction. Society prefers the sexless path of empowerment —Athene. Rather than the inward soul-making journey that drags one down into the hot epicentre of pain and shame, now society encourages the outward crusade. Today accusations of assault spring forth from the lips of survivors like new-born, full-armoured Athene from the head of Zeus.
Athene has a complex relationship to rape victims. Athene’s priestess was violated by her rival Poseidon (angry over being passed as patron of Athens now named after Athene. Can you imagine if he had won?! ‘Poseidonia the cradle of Western civilization’ sounds rather odd).
At any rate, Athene is so livid with her priestess’s vulnerability that she curses her and she becomes the Gorgon Medusa.
It is the Classical Herculean, Egotistic fear of vulnerability rearing its rational head again.
Before the MeToo movement women who were violated were shut up in shame and silence, their souls in shock. Their experience, a secret. Yet it is these very four horsemen of initiation, Shame, Shock, Silence, and Secrecy, that shatter the self so that the Soul may live.
As you write in your books learning how to keep a secret opens you up to other secrets such as Alchemy which is a gem of knowledge hidden in the Underworld. And who rules the riches of the Underworld? None other than Pluto — The Rich One.
Lulu