Don't allow æons of History and Life to be blinked out of being just because YOU have a grudge against Your Father!
So you lost the opportunity to marry, settle-down and
give life; sire a few heirs,
found a Royal Dynasty --
You’re being given the chance to play FATHER to The GALAXY by ACTING like one and protecting it. Saving it!
What Good would a Woman’s Blood be to The Earth?
We bare, my dear — women give birth.
That am our work
BILL MOYERS:
What about the female?
I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male.
Was this a kind of secret society for males only?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
It wasn’t a secret society, it was that the boys had to go through it.
Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with the female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us.
In primary cultures today, the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation.
It happens to her;
I mean, nature does it to her.
And so she has undergone the transformation, and what is her initiation?
Typically it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, and realize what she is.
BILL MOYERS:
How does she do that?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
She sits there.
She’s now a woman.
And what is a woman?
A woman is a vehicle of life, and life has overtaken her.
She is a vehicle now of Life.
A woman’s what it’s all about; the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment.
She’s identical with the earth goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself.
The boy does not have a happening of that kind.
He has to be turned into a man, and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself.
The Woman becomes the vehicle of nature; The Man becomes the vehicle of The Society, The Social Order and The Social Purpose.
LORD:
Welcome, Fool.
You have come of your own Free Will to the appointed place.
The Game is over.
POLICEMAN :
Game? What Game?
LORD :
The Game of The Hunted leading The Hunter.
You came here to find Rowan Morrison, but it is We who have found You and brought You Here and controlled your every thought and action since You arrived.
Principally, we persuaded you to think that Rowan Morrison was being held as a sacrifice because our crops failed last year.
POLICEMAN :
I know your crops failed.
I saw the harvest photograph.
LORD :
Oh, yes. They failed, all right, disastrously so... for the first time since my grandfather came Here.
The blossom came but The Fruit withered and died on The Bough.
That must not happen again this year.
It is our most earnest belief that the best way of preventing this is to offer to our God of The Sun and to The Goddess of Our Orchards the most acceptable sacrifice that lies in our power.
Animals are fine, but their acceptability is limited.
A little child is even better, but not nearly as effective as the right kind of adult.
POLICEMAN :
What do you mean, "right kind of adult"?
LORD :
You, Sergeant, are the right kind of adult, as our painstaking researches have revealed.
You, uniquely, were The One We Needed.
A Man who would come Here of his own Free Will.
A Man who has come Here with The Power of a King by representing The Law.
A Man who would come Here as a Virgin.
A Man who has come Here as a Fool.
POLICEMAN :
Get out of my way.
WENCH :
You are The Fool, Mr. Howie -
Punch, one of the great Fool-Victims of History, for you have accepted The Role of King for a day, and who but A Fool would do that?
But you will be revered and anointed as a King.
You will undergo Death and Rebirth - Resurrection, if you like.
The rebirth, sadly, will not be yours, but that of our crops.
POLICEMAN :
I am a Christian, and as a Christian, I Hope for Resurrection.
And even if you kill me now, it is I who will live again, not your damned apples.
Sleep Close and fast
POLICEMAN :
No matter what you do, you can't change the fact that I believe in the Life Eternal, as promised to Us by Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
I believe in The Life Eternal as promised to Us by Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
LORD :
That is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift these days - a Martyr's Death.
You will not only have Life Eternal, but you will sit with The Saints among The Elect.
Come. It is time to keep your appointment with The Wicker Man.
Didn't your dad ever teach you to look before you leap?
Crystals. They're amazing, aren't they?
They inherit The Traits of The Minerals around them...
kind of like — A Son
inheriting The Traits
of His FATHER !
Look buddy, we sent you there
to die, but ya' had to come back . . .
Oh yeah. All those photos?
Those stories about
Krypton still existing?
It was me.
And him.
Lex looks toward Stanford.
Thankfully,
The Press doesn't check Factslike they used to.
Hey, you took away five years of my life.
I just returned the favor.
SUPERMAN :
I'm still Superman!
SUPERMAN REVENGE SQUAD :
Get up! Come on!
Now, fly.
•STABS HIM WITH A KRYPTONITE SHIV AND SNAPS OFF THE BLADE•
LUTHOR:
So long, Superman.
“We require RULES, STANDARDS, VALUES
— alone AND together.
We’re pack animals,
Beasts of burden.
We must Bear a Load,
to justify our miserable existence.
We require Routine and Tradition.
That’s Order.
Order can become excessive,
and that’s Not Good,
But Chaos can swamp us, so we drown —
and that is alsoNot Good.
We need to stay on
The Straight and Narrow path.
[I seek,] Therefore [to]
Provide A Guide to Being There.
“There” is The Dividing Line
between Order and Chaos.
That’s where we are simultaneously Stable ENOUGH,
Exploring ENOUGH,
Transforming ENOUGH,
Repairing ENOUGH,
and
Cooperating ENOUGH.
It’s there we find The Meaning that justifies Life and its inevitable Suffering.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first,
Resentment, then Envy,
and then
The Desire for
Vengeance and Destruction.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we wouldn’t have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own Insufficiency and Ignorance.
Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell —
and we have seen in the terrible Twentieth Century
just how real Hell can be.
Humanity, in toto,
and those who compose it
as identifiable people
deserve some sympathy
for the appalling burden
under which
The Human Individual
genuinely staggers;
Some sympathy for subjugation to
Mortal Vulnerability,
Tyranny of The State, and
The Depredations of Nature.
It is an Existential Situation that
no mere animal encounters or endures,
and one of severity such
that it would take a God to fully bear it.
It is this sympathy
that should be the proper medicament
for self-conscious self-contempt,
which has its justification,
but is only halfThe Full and Proper story.
Hatred for Self and Mankind
must be balanced with
Gratefulness for Traditionand The State and
Astonishment at what Normal,
Everyday People accomplish —
to say nothing of
The Staggering Achievements
of the Truly Remarkable.
We Deserve some respect.
You Deserve some respect.
You are important to Other People,
as much as to yourself.
You have some vital role to play in The Unfolding Destiny of The World.
You are, therefore, morally obliged
to take care of yourself.
You should take care of,
help and be good to yourself
the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
You may therefore
have to conduct yourself habitually
in a manner that allows you
some respect for your own Being —
and fair enough.
But every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God.
If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time.
That would not be good.
That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way.
That simply cannot be the proper path forward.
To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you.
THIS IS •NOT•
“What You WANT.”
It is also NOR “What Would Make You HAPPY.”
Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy.
That does NOT mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy.
“Happy” is by no means synonymous with “Good.”
You must get children to brush their teeth.
They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously.
You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity— Able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so.
Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?
You need to consider The Future and think,
“What might my life look like if I were caring for myself •properly•?"
"What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences?"
"What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?”
You need to know where you are, so you can start to chart your course.
You need to know who you are, so that you understand your armament and bolster yourself in respect to your limitations.
You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on The World.
You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel.
You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play.
You must discipline yourself carefully.
You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.
You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be good to make The World a better place.
Heaven, after all, will not arrive of its own accord.
We will have to work to bring it about, and strengthen ourselves, so that we can withstand the deadly angels and flaming sword of judgment that God used to bar its entrance.
Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction.
These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities.
Strengthen the individual.
Start with yourself.
Take care with yourself.
Define who you are.
Refine your personality.
Choose your destination and articulate your Being.
As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted,
“He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”
You could help direct The World, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell.
Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that.
You could aim elsewhere.
You could, in fact, devote your life to this.
That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M.
That would justify your miserable existence.
That would atone for your sinful nature, and replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden.
You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.
