"The Patron creates The Propaganda - and what I wanted to do was go back to some of the Older Propaganda, which was consistent through ALL of The Societies, Mythology -
Which is to say,
"What Do They
ALL Believe..?"
Because all of this propaganda was created INDEPENDENTLY.
And what are these Things Which They ALL Believe, which is --
• Relationships with Your Father,
• Relationships with Your Society,
• Relationships with Your History,
• Relationships with The Gods -
All of this stuff, it's old, but there were psychological motiffs that were created, through Storytelling, primarily ORAL Storytelling, that explained WHAT They Believed in and WHO They Believed in.
So what I wanted to do was go back and find the psychological motiffs that underlie that - those grow out of Popularism.
And to say that - not all - but a MAJORITY of People,
BOYS, have a certain psychological relationship with Their Father --
And that's been going on through History, and trying to explain that to say :
"We Know Your DARKEST SECRET --
and therefore,
You're PART of US.
Because We ALL Know The SAME THINGS....!!
WE Know What You're Thinking About Your Mother;
WE Know What You Think About Your Bother;
WE Know What You Think About Your Father, REALLY -- "
-- George Lucas.
No suffering is more unendurable than the presence of Beauty that one cannot accept.
THE HEALING OF THE FISHER KING WOUND
A true myth always prescribes for the problem that it lays forth. Like any great work
of art, it follows the pattern of Darkness being redeemed by Light. The Darkness of
Our Story thus far is the despair and isolation of The Wounded Fisher King, a suffering that has reached its apex in our own time. And the redemption of that darkness? Where is a cure to be found for so pervasive a problem?
The Answer is to be found in a most unexpected place, in the blunderings of an innocent fool who has it in his power to release the agony of the suffering fisher king.
The Legend of An Innocent Fool who will one day find his way into The Grail Cas-
tle and bring the healing of the fisher king has long been known in the land so rav-
aged by the wounding of their king. In its simple language the myth promises that
one day a young man, entirely innocent of his great mission, will wander into the
Grail castle, see the magnificent procession that is enacted every night, and, if he
asks The ONE Pertinent Question, will relieve The Fisher King’s suffering and remove the blight from The Land.
What a power to have! And what an unexpected place for it to be lodged!
It is Parsifal—not by chance his name means Innocent Fool—who brings this healing power, and we now examine his story that has given him so much curative power.
It is humbling to find that the wounded fisher king is totally at the mercy of an
innocent fool to bring the precious healing for his suffering. This is to say that the
deepest part of ourselves, the king, can be healed only by a boyish, inventive, capri-
cious, youthful quality.
PARSIFAL
Parsifal, our innocent fool, was born after his father’s death. Redeeming heroes so
often have difficult parenting and Parsifal obeys this pattern by growing up with no
father and the loss of all of his brothers who had been killed before his birth. His
mother, Heart’s Sorrow, has lost her knight husband and all of her sons to the
foolishness of chivalry and the customs of her time that all aristocratic males shall
spend their time in knight errantry and heroic battles. Heart’s Sorrow under-
standably decides to keep Parsifal’s parentage secret from him and he grows up
knowing nothing of the heritage of chivalry that flows in his veins. His mother
keeps him in the garden of innocence and clothes him in a single garment of
homespun that symbolizes his rustic upbringing. But one day Parsifal comes onto
a party of five knights and his innocence is broken and he must follow the pattern
of his ancestors and make his way into the heroic world.
Parsifal has many adventures and finds himself drawn into the court of King
Arthur, where he is knighted. He finds an excellent teacher, Gournemont, who
gives him all the equipment for the life of a true knight. But even Gournemont is
unable to convince Parsifal to abandon the ridiculous homespun garment that his
mother imposed upon him. This homespun single garment is to play a vital role in
Parsifal’s story when there is a collision between the garment and his fateful duty
to ask the redeeming question at the Grail castle. One can best understand this
symbolism by seeing the homespun as Parsifal’s mother complex—that inborn
tendency in every man to look backward and be caught in an infantile wish for the
security of mother and infancy. To be clothed in this regressive tendency is the
worst impediment to the redeeming power of masculinity. It is a poignant moment
when Parsifal defends his mother’s homespun against all the teaching and exam-
ples of his guide and compatriots.
Parsifal has attained enough manhood to be on his knight errantry and we find
him riding on his horse through a forest one evening just before dusk. There is no
place to stay the night and he faces the lonely and cold prospect of sleeping in the
woods without shelter. But just as he is resigned to this prospect, he comes upon
a lake with a lone fisherman in a small boat. He hails the fisherman—who is none
other than the fisher king spending his time in the one thing that brings him any re-
lief from his suffering—and asks if there is any place to stay the night. The fish-
erman replies that there is no dwelling within thirty miles. Then, in contradiction to
this statement, the fisherman continues by inviting Parsifal to his own house. “Just
down the road a little way, turn left, cross the drawbridge, and you will be my guest
for the night.” This simple set of instructions is so powerful that one should
memorize it deeply within his consciousness since it will be the formula for finding
the way out of the fisher king wound when one is in the grip of its suffering. And
one may take note that it is the suffering fisher king within one that offers the first
directive for his own cure.
First, the fisher king says there is no dwelling within thirty miles, a way of say-
ing mythologically that there is nothing in the three-dimensional world which will
help one in any practical way. But then he goes on to say that by following specific
instructions a place of comfort and safety is not far away. The specific instructions
are to go down the road—whatever road one is involved with at the moment—turn
left, which is to say go toward the unconscious or the world of imagination and
fantasy, cross the drawbridge—the division between our conscious world and the
inner world of imagination—and one will be in the Grail castle, the miraculous
place of healing.
What a promise contained in so simple a set of instructions! As was promised
in the old myth known to the people in the Grail castle, here is the formula for the
redemption of their suffering king. It is equally effective for the suffering king that
resides in the breast of nearly every modern man.
Parsifal follows the instructions, goes down the road a little way, turns left, and
crosses the drawbridge, which snaps closed the moment he has crossed it, ticking
the back hooves of his horse. This nearly unseats him but he survives this test of
balance and strength. Many a youth gets as far as the drawbridge of his healing
only to be thrown from his horse by this test.
Parsifal is welcomed into the Grail castle, brought to the awesome procession
that goes on every night and watches mutely as the miracle of the Grail brings its healing to everyone present—except the fisher king, who is unable to partake of the
miracle.
Since every detail of a myth is important and no event, no matter how insignif-
icant, is without meaning, we are instructed that the healing vision of our lives oc-
curs every night in our interior Grail castle. It is in the hidden world of dreams and
imagination that the miracle is presented every night. The healing is never far
away—either in distance or time; only down the road a little way and turn left to
find that the great drama of healing takes place every night of our lives!
But one detail isolates us from the healing of the fisher king at this point in the
story. Everything has been accomplished for the prophesied healing of the fisher
king—all but one detail. Parsifal does not ask the prescribed question, Whom does
the Grail serve? That is, Parsifal does not make the experience conscious. Because
of this failure the great procession in the Grail castle comes to a close as in count-
less nights before and the fisher king remains unable to drink from the healing
Grail and remains suffering on his litter.
What a terrible drama! Is it true that every youth comes this close to the re-
demption of his suffering and fails the one essential question which would end the
alienation of his life? Yes; this is the psychological history of virtually every modern
man. He is offered a vision of the meaning of his life in his mid-teens but cannot
find the strength of consciousness to accept it. The first meeting fails, inevitably.
Who can stand the first—or the hundredth—vision of beauty that he has seen? But
later a mature meeting after one has done his work in the world brings the consciousness—the question—that is healing.
Why? What is this mute prohibition which keeps Parsifal from asking the ques-
tion which would give him citizenship in the Grail castle and healing to the suf-
fering fisher king? Parsifal takes the gifts of consciousness but fails to reply with
his own act of consciousness.
Though I can find no mention of this in any of the myths, I think it is Parsifal’s
inability to put off his mother’s single homespun garment (his mother complex)
which alienates him and makes him inarticulate at the critical moment. Perhaps redemption cannot come so early and the great drama of one’s life would not be complete if Parsifal consciously experienced so great a vision early in his life.
Parsifal spends the night in the Grail castle, awakens in the morning to find no
one about, saddles his horse, crosses the drawbridge, and is back in the ordinary
world of time and space.
The myth tells us that he then spends the next twenty years in the exhausting
work of rescuing fair maidens, fighting dragons, relieving besieged castles, and aid-
ing the poor—all the male experiences which intervene between early youth and
middle age when one has a second chance to visit the Grail castle. Fate is kind and
allows us two chances in life when the veil between consciousness and the uncon-
scious grows thin. One of these is mid-adolescence when one is gratuitously al-
lowed to see a great vision and the other is in mid-life when he has a second
chance to touch his visionary life if he has earned the right. The Grail castle is close
at hand every night of one’s life and may be experienced at any time; but it is most
easily accomplished at these two critical times of one’s life.
The middle portion of a man’s life is then recounted in Parsifal’s story; all the
maidens and dragons and noble deeds which fill the middle section of a man’s life
are recounted and we find him again at a time when he is capable of touching the
Grail castle.
The Parsifal we find this time is a middle-aged man, weary, worn, and tired of
the heroic journey. Fair maidens have lost their charm and dragons no longer in-
spire him to heroic action. Parsifal has worn out the youthful activity of his life and
it has gone dry. But he has put off his mother’s homespun garment in all this activ-
ity and is now free to bring his unimpaired maleness to the Grail castle.
One day Parsifal is trudging along on his horse when a group of pilgrims chal-
lenge him: “Why are you in full armor on the day of the death of our Lord? Don’t
you know it is Good Friday?” No, Parsifal does not know it is Good Friday and has
little interest in such things. But the pilgrims convince him to take off his armor
and go for confession with them to a hermit who lives nearby. The old hermit is se-
vere with Parsifal and recounts all of his sins and mistakes to him. The worst of these mistakes is that he failed to ask the burning question at the Grail castle, which would have redeemed the suffering fisher king. Parsifal understands the great vista of his life and is recalled instantly to the principal duty of his life, to heal
the suffering fisher king. The old hermit instructs Parsifal, “Go down the road a lit-
tle way, turn left, cross the drawbridge….” Here is the same instruction from twenty
years earlier! True: the Grail castle is never more than a little distance down the
road, then turn left; but it is only when a man is at his best—by naivete in his youth
or by having earned the right in his middle age—that he is capable of seeing that
sublime fact. The Catholic Church presents this in its medieval formulation when it
says that the Grace of God is always available but man must ask for it before it is
effective.
Parsifal regains the Grail castle easily and finds himself in the great hall with the
divine procession before him. This time he asks the crucial question, Whom does
the Grail serve? and is instantly made aware of its answer, The Grail serves the
Grail King. Only now we are informed that an old king lives in the Grail castle who
never shows himself but who is the center of the castle and its great power. Parsifal
is informed of the greatest secret of a man’s life by this simple question and its
equally simple answer. One discovers that the Grail King—a thinly disguised de-
scription of God—is as near as the Grail castle has been.
The meaning of life is not in the quest for one’s own power or advancement but
lies in the service of that which is greater than one’s self. Carl Jung made this state-
ment in more modern terms when he said that the meaning of life is to relocate the
center of gravity of the personality from the ego to the Self. If asked what is the
meaning of life, most people would answer that it is to serve me—my ego plans
and involvements. The revelation of the Grail castle is that life serves something
greater than one’s self.
This requires a Copernican revolution to relocate the center of the universe
from the ego to the Self. And that revolution is as painful in our personality as the
Copernican revolution was in history.
A detail of the story is encouraging: Parsifal need only ask the question; he is not required to answer it. Once the question is asked the answer comes from a source greater than his store of personal wisdom.
The moment Parsifal asks the fateful question (that is, consents to conscious-
ness) the wounded fisher king rises from his litter of suffering and is miraculously
restored to health and strength. The whole kingdom rejoices at the return of their
strong king and a great springtime of joy and life begins.
The healed fisher king dies after three days. This is a strange ending to his part
of the story but it can be understood that the wounded part of ourselves can be left
behind when it has served its function in the development of the mature man. Par-
sifal is the matured hero and the suffering of the fisher king is no longer required.
Our story has presented the healing of the wounded feeling function in mytho-
logical language, and the actual transformation in one’s life is likely to be less dra-
matic and not just one glorious moment; still, the formula holds true.
THE RESTORED FEELING FUNCTION
One may inquire why all of this is associated with the feeling function. It is specif-
ically so in our culture though in another set of circumstances it might be another
faculty which is wounded, suffers for the traditional twenty years, and is restored by
a heroic action of an intelligent man. Since it is the feeling function which is so ne-
glected and wounded in our culture, this drama falls on that faculty in our expe-
rience.
We may be grateful for the mythology of the twelfth century, when so much of
our modern world was beginning, for its definition of this wounding and its final
healing.
Note
1. Much can be learned from a comparison of our Western heroic ideal with the
East Indian view of the same material. Our Western ideal, which I grew up with and
was not aware of any alternative to until I visited the East, is to make a heroic jour-
ney through life. That is best portrayed by the medieval knight, done up in his
armor, helmet, and visor, sword in hand, javelin at the ready, waiting for anyone who will challenge him in the duel of chivalry. It was the heroic duty of a knight to find evildoers and run them through with his sword of righteousness. Dragons
were specially the foe of knights, and the medieval stories tell countless tales of the
great knight fighting some dragon that was holding the castle of a fair maiden
under its tyranny.
Tournaments were the great delight of the medieval knight and he spent much
of his time at this stylized form of fighting. If the knight later went out on a solitary
quest for a fair maiden or the holy Grail and he came across another knight, visor
was lowered, javelin was leveled, and the two knights went at each other in mortal
combat. Each presumed he was fighting on the side of absolute right and his life
was not too high a price to pay for this noble combat. In short, almost the whole
content of life was devoted to right fighting wrong.
The East found a very different attitude toward the collisions of life. Their ideal
was to search out the cause of the antagonism and reduce the tension between the
warring opposites. They began with the basic assumption that nothing had a
charge of energy unless it was in polarity to its opposite. It followed—gently—from
that premise that if one could reduce either of the warring polarities, the other
would diminish instantly and to the same degree. Conflict and hostility could thus
be reduced by either or both parties concerned if one would reduce the vehemence
of his own point of view.
Our heroic stance as seen through the eyes of an Eastern philosopher would
seem to be the very formula for increasing hostility and producing an ever-
escalating antagonism.
The young prince—soon to be the fisher king—follows the heroic ideal in our
story and is immediately embroiled in a battle which can be nothing but destructive
to both parties. This is the tragedy and near insolvable depth of our wounded feel-
ing function that is so painful a burden to the Western world.
The legend of St. George and the dragon makes an interesting comment on the
heroic ideal. English crusaders found the myth of St. George in the Middle Ages on
one of their crusades, altered it to their own liking, and took it home as the epitome of English valor. The original form of the myth is as follows: St. George meets a dragon and goes into mortal combat with it. In a short time all three combatants, George, his horse, and the dragon, are mortally wounded. All three lie bleeding out
their life on the ground. By chance, St. George has fallen under an orange tree
(some say a lime tree) and by chance a bird pecks a hole in an orange directly over
his mouth. A drop of the orange juice falls into St. George’s mouth and revives
him. He rises up with new strength, plucks an orange, squeezes the juice into his
horse’s mouth, and both rise up healed and strong. No one puts any juice into the
dragon’s mouth. The orange has long been a symbol of consciousness because of
its similarity in shape and color to the sun.
This view of the disposition of energy in antagonism represents a more mature
and realistic attitude than our traditional medieval triumph of good over evil.
