Dark Masculinity

 I am Passion, The Libido. 

I am The Anarchy of Lust, 
The Romantic and The Lover. 

I am also The Warrior, 
The Perfect Line which never wavers. 

Dialog with my Shadow

Dark Man of my soul,

It is you I honor, you from whom all the energy of manhood originates and resides. 

I value the honesty of your feelings, rooted in the earth and in battle and in the hunt. 

Your anger is profound. 

Your need for action true. 

I applaud your sense of outrage and need for justice. 

Without them, where would we be? 

The dragons of our existence thrive without you to combat them. 

You embolden me to walk free, and live by my own code. 

You are my father and brother and truest friend.

This sword symbolizes who you are—what you mean to me and to the world. 

Strength. Action. Defense. 

The ability to cut away illusion. 

It represents the history of Men, blood spilt on the battlefield, which connects us all together.

Stay with me. 

Take your honored place in my soul and in my life.

Strengthen me with your power, and guide me with your earthy wisdom.

HERE IS A LIST OF THE TOP 25 ATTRIBUTES OF THE SHADOW MASCULINE:

Fear of surrendering to the feminine
Rigidity
Controlling tendencies
Hatred (of self, other, an organization, of God/dess)
Entitlement issues (especially when insecurities arise)
Narcissism
Anger
Jealousy
Insecurity
Competition (coming from separation)
Greed
Taking what he wants without consent
Not listening to the feminine
Judgment
Harshness–in language, touch, energy, etc
Mistrust and abuse of the feminine
Suppressing emotions/not expressing vulnerability
Neglecting the inner child/children
Underlying codependence issues with women
Denying the value of the feminine while taking advantage of her
Suppressed sexuality and sensuality/sexual shame
Inability to receive pleasure or abundance
Fear of abandonment, but not willing to admit it (even to self)
Tantrums/outbursts of rage
Acting out from the inner child while doing everything he can to look like a powerful leader

The Shadow-side of Male Virtue

Knightly confrontation.

There is a wild side to man's nature. Unpredictable. Savage. Easily frustrated and angered. We are taught from an early age to repress this part of us as something uncivilized and undesirable. Those of us who respect the law discipline ourselves to reject it. We go on with life ignoring what tendencies remain, channeling the overflow of aggression into "appropriate" conduits, such as ruthless competition in sports or business. 

     But in truth, the dark side of masculinity is never really gone or completely subdued. It follows us like a "shadow" (which C.G. Jung labeled it), dark and indescribable. Like a real shadow, it projects and distorts who we are.

     This is our personal darkness, filled with savagery we try not to recognize.

     It haunts us when we least suspect it—an angry phantom from our primitive core, maligned by moral propaganda, marginalized by repression.

     This frustrated shadow can subvert our best intentions—not because it is evil, but because we continually thwart its existence. 
We deny its proper role in our lives, and view it as uncivilized, something "bad." In effect, we provoke its rebellious discontent by shaping it into a monster when it might have been shaped into something different.

     This shadow is part of who we are as men. Without it, the chivalry we embrace becomes salt that has lost its flavor, an empty shell of moral dictates devoid of essence.

     Our shadow provides male virtue with the tension of having one foot in heaven and the other not in hell but here on earth. Its wildness defines our core. Without it, our personal self-discipline is meaningless, our strength inauthentic, our connection to the earth, which is our Mother, broken. We become the disappointment of heaven's grand design, severed from our roots, sapped of our virility.

     The shadow is an essential element to our every thought and deed as men. As such, it either substantiates or perverts our best intentions, depending on how we relate to it. It is that unrefined edge that distinguishes us from women, no matter how refined we shape ourselves. It connects us to nature. Without it, we are limpid, emasculated, not really alive. To the other extreme, when we fail to give it its proper role, we become discontent, brazen, uncontrollable, perverting the virtues we are meant to honor.

     When we deny our shadow, we urge it to wreck havoc with our lives. We wrestle with it, try to subdue it, only to learn that the struggle never ends. In this respect, the shadow always wins, but only as a dark influence rather than something that completes us. We cannot suppress it without losing the very heart of who we are.

     Chivalry, despite its refining virtues, directs us to embrace the wild center of who we are, recognize its intrinsic value, honor it not as an aberration, but as a natural source of male energy which borders (as all things of nature do) on amorality. It is here where the ideal warrior is fashioned in our hearts.

     Chivalry cannot eliminate or tame this wild excess of spontaneity, and does not try. Instead, it channels it throughout every fiber of our being, melds it to everything we do—and in the processing of doing so makes us whole.

     The wildness is self-destructive only when we reject it or hold it at arm's length. By infusing it into our lives, it nourishes the soul like nothing else can. Our shadow is not a thing of evil and perversion— although untended, it can produce both. We need this shadow to be complete, and it needs us as well. 

     It is imperative for us to find our shadows and integrate them into our lives. We might not be pleased what we find but remember, this is result of pure neglect. 

     Embrace him. Rescue him. And he will rescue you.

     There are several ways to do this. The simplest is through ritual, whereby we recognize and honor the wild man as a valuable part of who we are. Jung tells us that ritual is enough to heal the rift—the turbulence of the unconscious mind really asks for nothing more. We can add this ritual to our embrace of chivalry.

     The following is a short ritual to illustrate what I mean. Although it involves a sword as a ritual object, which is meaningful to me, you can and should build your own ritual as it best applies to you.

Dialog with my Shadow

Dark Man of my soul,

It is you I honor, you from whom all the energy of manhood originates and resides. I value the honesty of your feelings, rooted in the earth and in battle and in the hunt. Your anger is profound. Your need for action true. I applaud your sense of outrage and need for justice. Without them, where would we be? The dragons of our existence thrive without you to combat them. You embolden me to walk free, and live by my own code. You are my father and brother and truest friend.

This sword symbolizes who you are—what you mean to me and to the world. Strength. Action. Defense. The ability to cut away illusion. It represents the history of men, blood spilt on the battlefield, which connects us all together.

Stay with me. Take your honored place in my soul and in my life. Strengthen me with your power, and guide me with your earthy wisdom.

The Dark King: Archetype of an Emerging Masculinity

December 5, 2014

Our current culture has more opportunities for increased consciousness, personal growth, and collective healing than ever before imaginable.  This makes the 21st century a potent time for actualizing a shared vision of healing for both men and women so that violence and traumas from the past need not be repeated but repaired on both local and global levels.  In order for men to rise and meet their female counterparts as equals, however, I believe that many men must first make a necessary personal and collective  "descent" - away from "acting out" of places of shadow power and dominance, or "acting in" through impotence and castration - and into the origins of these deep and aching wounds.  This is the path that Robert Bly refers to as "the road of grief and ashes," and that I feel leads to a shared re-imagining of what it means to be in power with others, rather than under or over.

An archetype has emerged for me that speaks to such an integration and deepening of the shared capacities of the masculine soul.  I envision him as a "Dark King," an image with archetypal roots planted deep in the mythic soil of East and West, and that represents to me the possiblity of an emerging masculine consciousness that acknowledges and respects the differences of others while remaining deeply sourced in his own integrated life force.  This "dark masculine," or "Lunar King" is a re-imaging of the "Solar King" that we have known for centures:  a king of light who supposedly casts no shadow, a savior, a religious leader or political figure-as-god, who wounds others unknowingly because he does not touch his own darkness, believing that he casts no shadow, and unconscious of his own life's wounds.  This is a figure that we have all known too well, both culturally and historically, as well as in our own families, communities, and religious or spiritual organizations.

A "Dark King" represents a man who is master of his energetic and emotional domain. He knows his shadow because he has been re-born from within its dark, fertile womb. He respects women and honors the sacredness of the feminine because he has touched his own feminine essence and knows it as good.  He is neither a "soft" nor a "hard" man, but a man who works toward integration:  light and shadow, solar and lunar, masculine and feminine.  He is a man deeply sourced in himself who can be of service and good to his family, his friends, and the world around him.  

Archetypally, the resurrection and birth of a "dark masculine" King is foreshadowed in multiple mythologies.  Osiris, a central Egyptian male deity, is killed and dismembered by his evil counterpart and brother, Seth, the god of the desert, only for his parts to be retrieved and "re-membered" by Osiris' goddess-lover, Isis.  Their reunion results in the birth of a divine son, Horus, the bird-headed god, representing the Spirit of a new masculinity born from the union of a consciously re-membered masculinity and the healing capacities of dark feminine awareness. 

Similarly, in the imagery of the Black Madonna of Eastern and Western European consciousness, a black son, the Christ-child, is presented on the lap of his Dark Mother.  Here the union that births the divine child occurs between the Black Virgin, representing matter, embodiment, and the chthonic earth elements, and the masculine Spirit, who impregnates the fertile vessel of the dark feminine goddess, giving birth to a new masculine awareness represented by the black, or dark son. 

In both instances, a son, manifesting as a young king, emerges from the union or re-membering of masculine and feminine, and represents new possiblities of what it means to be a man in relation to his "darker" aspects - embodiment, sexuality, and emotionality - rather than opposed to or repressing these fundamental aspects of life.  This is a fertile masculinity born from the union of a man's conscious relationship to the dark aspects of the feminine as both Goddess and Mother, and his own archetypal relationship with Spirit.  It is this constant interplay between matter and spirit, human and divine, masculine and feminine, that births a new and conscious masculinity in the souls of both women and men.