Iron John Chapter 00 As we begin, understanding the first line of the story.

The first line of the story requires much unpacking. I have written other Chapters that unpack the psychic geography of the first line.

“Once upon a time there was a King who lived in a castle next to an enormous forest.”

I have unpacked some of what this means below in this chapter and some lives in separate chapters listed here:

Chapter  001.           What is Soul? (The enormous forest)Towards an understanding of Soul. As part of Ego, Shadow and Time

Chapter  002.          The Iron John story. The journey viewed as a whole. Time and Eternity.

Chapter  003.          What is Ego? Towards an understanding of Ego. How Ego is formed and its job description? How Shadow is formed as a by-product of the creation of Ego at the expense of Soul.  OR “Down the rabbit hole with Alice”

Chapter 006            Shadow. Towards an understanding of Shadow.  How and why is it formed? 

Chapter 008            The relationship between Ego, Soul, Shadow, the Status-quo, and time/eternity. 

Chapter 009            A bit about initiation, rites of passage vs rights of passage. Why this is important for us anyway?

Chapter  010           Kings and Kinship.

Chapter 011            The Status-quo

Before we begin. We need to understand these stories as our Ego’s personal journey back to Soul; in metaphor, following the signposts left by those who went before us.

These stories are not so much a historical re-retelling of a Folk tale, but rather a description in metaphor as to how to complete our journey on earth. A guide from the other world to show us the processes and the steps along the way. Just follow the signposts in the stories, step by step. Life is not a linear progression like a train ride. You can be in many places in the story at the same time on your journey.

The signposts of this journey points us to Initiation and Rite of Passage stories in general. “The way out of the labyrinth (of the Ego and the Status-quo) is well known, we only have to follow the Ariadne thread, the signpost left by those who went before us.” Joseph Campbell

Many stories begin “once upon a time”, but what does that mean? We will unpack these stories and understand these stories in a timeless context – the eternal.

“Once upon a time” Stories of this kind exist outside of the requirements and limitations of time. This timelessness makes them constantly relevant. However, some translation is required for us to cross the bridge of time and space between the eternal and here – wherever here happens to be, in a world of different languages cultures, and climates. All of these will modify the telling of the story as the teller seeks to make the archetypes relevant to the environment of the audience in their time and place.

The concept of “Here” is a Soul concept. To be here is sufficient to go on the Hero’s Journey. When we lose our way, it’s good to stand still and listen to Soul and what it’s trying to tell us.

Here is a powerful teaching poem about being lost and where exactly “here” is.

“Lost” by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner, from Collected Poems 1956-1976

The geography of a story. These stories often describe where the story takes place in the world, in a forest, by a river, at a Castle, or in a courtyard. These are descriptions in metaphor of parts of our inner psychic landscape. Indeed, the stories share the same space that the physical world occupies. It is a space of our emotions and psyche. Understanding the geography of the Psyche can assist in understanding the story.

 

Who within us is listening? As we listen to such stories, a deeper older part of us is listening. An older part of ourselves, the part we left behind when we made the journey into life, and then again in the journey from the enormous forest to the Castle Quo, as laid out in the Iron John story. That older part, our Soul, turns events into experiences from our own personal history and then deepens those experiences into meaning. Behavior in stories is understandable because Soul gives it an inside meaning. That older part is also our inner child.

One lifetime is a limitation to understanding. In the western world, our biggest limitation is the idea that life is limited to one lifetime and ends at death. This idea in a way denies the idea of a transpersonal aspect of ourselves and the eternal, life, and existence outside of linear time. In nature, we would not limit a Pupa (cocoon of a butterfly) to a lifetime without the butterfly. Why then, would we do this to ourselves? We do it for our own safety. For Ego, life ends at death, which is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, this is the prime directive of the Ego “Stay alive”. If you are reading this, thank your Ego for a job well done. However, for the Soul, which is the eternal part of us, there is no death, Just a change of state.

The shamanic way. I call myself a shamanic storyteller because my understanding is that these stories were left for us as a description of the evolution of the Soul’s journey to reunite with our divine part, as symbolised by the mystical marriage. In older traditions it was the Shaman who travelled to other worlds to bring back healing and out-of-world wisdom, I feel we do this with these stories and our ever-growing understanding of them. A good part of these stories happens in the other world, and we can travel there with the storyteller and a good story.

Some parts of this story happen outside our physical world. This marriage, and indeed many parts of the story, happen in another world, outside of time and space. These stories were left for us as guidance and instruction for those ready to come on the return journey.” the way out of the labyrinth is well known we only have to follow the Ariadne thread, the signpost left by those who went before us.” Joseph Campbell

In Greek mythology, Ariadne was a Cretan princess and the daughter of King Minos of Crete.  One year, the sacrificial party included Theseus, the son of King Aegeus, who volunteered to kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love with him at first sight and she provided him a sword and ball of thread (ο Μίτος της Αριάδνης, “Ariadne’s string”) so that he could retrace his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur

Stories need the skill of a storyteller to give them context. Understanding these stories is about giving them context. Stories are written in a kind of shorthand, or code that requires storytellers to flesh them out. That code I have called the bones of the story. The skill of the storyteller is to make them relevant in any given time and place, language and culture and put them into a context we can understand, whilst drawing on our own life experience to make them relevant.

To understand the intent of the story we must look at the ending. Stories that end in a marriage, Gold, or a ring, are stories that complete the cycle of life’s intention from a Soul point of view. This has been called the Mystical Marriage or Squaring the Circle. Squaring the circle was a Renaissance idea that covered the same territory.

The Mystical Marriage: In one way the Mystical Marriage describes the whole point of life, from outside of life and time. Certainly, outside of one physical incarnation.

Birth and Parents. As we begin the incarnating process of this lifetime, we first must learn how to use the vehicle we were given. Apparently, it takes some years for this to happen. Our parents and the community we incarnate into have a vested interest in seeing that we are socialised acceptably so that we can enter the group as productive member of the community.

A story for both men and women. These stories seem to describe how a boy or a man might go on the quest to find himself, ending in the Mystical Marriage. The marriage between Soul and Ego. This appears to exclude women and girls unnecessarily and is false in my understanding, as both men and women have Ego and Soul. It is the ego that needs to go on the quest for the Soul. This is the basis for the Heroic journey. This quest culminates in the mystical marriage.

The union of Ego and Soul in which they/we live happily ever after. (Until the first disagreement that is.) This marriage may happen many times in one lifetime, may span many incarnations, or just one.

To the extent that we describe Ego as He. We are referring to the energetic nature of Ego for both men and women. Goal-directedness, penetrative, risk-taking, curious, and hungry for experiences and adventures of all sorts. This is Masculine orientation which is why the hero is described as “He”. Women go on this journey as well, within a female body. While the original narrative seems to refer to males, boys, and young men, it is the Ego as a Masculine aspect that they are describing, not the sexual orientation or plumbing of the protagonist.

The psycho-dynamics of the story. Whoever is mentioned first in any story, indicates the psycho-dynamics of the story and includes the geography within the story. At the very beginning of the Iron John story, we have “The Castle” with a king and the King’s hunter. The hunter disappears into the enormous (dangerous and dark) forest with a hawk and an eagle flying over it.

The Castle and the enormous Forest. Describes for us our state of collective duality, the state we live in today, and the juxtaposition of Ego and Soul. The boy with his golden ball (in Iron John) represents us on our journey through life on multiple levels. Not every part of this story happens in our world.

Metaphor gives the happenings some context. Because stories operate outside linear time, in the eternal, some descriptions talk about happenings in other worlds. In this way, we mortals can get an insight into what’s going on. That insight is Soul’s work of making connections in an ever-unfolding revelation as we grow in the experience of living into our own story.

The stone castle. Stone in stories always carries the idea of literal truth, the truth of this world, anyway. A castle represents a structure comprised of literal truths, which I have called the Castle Quo. The status quo is made of literal, unyielding stone-like truths. A castle, like the Ego, is built to keep things safe, to keep some things out and some things in. All the while keeping those two things separate. Castles often had a moat around them and a drawbridge so that the castle and its inhabitants could keep themselves safe from the outside world and hopefully safe from attack by hostile forces. Separation, boundaries, and definition are the keywords for the castle, Hierarchies order, Law, cause and effect  – a Newtonian view of the world “I think, therefore I am”.

The downside of this structure is that it may remain long after the original need has fallen away. Long after the original builders and inhabitants have ceased to exist. This is the stuff of growing up, putting childlike things aside as we grow through the phases of life – as we grow into our story.

This is also the stuff of coaching and psychological work, of triggers and trauma of beliefs, addiction and depression. This is the concretising of experience, the building of protective structures.

The Great Mother expressed as the Feminine drives the story forward: The Masculine can only take us so far, then the originator of the story, and of all life  – the Feminine, takes over. Ironically, the mother of the child plays a double role, one as the midwife of the status quo, the other as the championing of her children to fulfil their true potential.

 

 

Continued Iron John Chapter 01 What is Soul