Where are the Old Men?
I am preparing for a series of lectures I will be offering with JungArchademy (jungarchademy.com) in February. The title of the series is, “Where are the Old Men?” You could say these lectures are companion pieces to the series I offered last year called, “Once There Were Old Women”. I am looking forward to the opportunity to muse out loud about what may be needed to make the passage into wisdom, for men and women, for the masculine and the feminine, for spirit and body. In my write up I ponder:
Familiar to us as Gandalf in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, Mr. Miyagi, in The Karate Kid (1984), and Dumbledore in the wildly popular Harry Potter series, this elusive and mysterious figure of the masculine as mentor and guide is often sought after and too often disappointed when he asks for nothing less than everything. We must learn how to answer his call, accept his challenges, suffer his tests, and finally withdraw our projections if we are to embrace the agency necessary to achieve our destiny. The third act is where we meet the old man. Will he be a ranting mad King Lear, or a measured and wise King Arthur?
Most of the lectures I present are my working out my own wondering. To understand me and the edge of my thinking, one need only look to my offerings. I write to know, to think, to understand. Here, and in my presentations. Last year I was taken up with the archetype of the old woman, the crone, the Baba Yaga. I worked with my students in my fairy tale seminars to explore the emergence of wisdom in her feminine guise. Now, of course, what is the point of an emergent feminine at the crossroads of wisdom if she does not have a masculine strong and willing enough to stand with her.
I have suffered too many mad fools. Too many ranting or whining male teachers who foster women only when it serves them and their purposes. I have been vulnerable and victim to the gurus who appear to offer a portal to coniunctio, a sacred marriage, only to disappoint. I take full responsibility for my experiences. I have too often sought what Barbara Hannah has called, the spiritual animus, in his outer form. No man could hold these archetypal projections. I needed to be looking inward. I have projected my inner other onto mortal men who could not hold my spiritual emergence, or if they did, they held it hostage in service to their design. To echo the mad King Lear, “Never, never, never, never, never, never, never.” Never again!
Surely my work as a woman is on the cultivation and claiming of my feminine essence. I need to meet the fullness of the feminine in Eros. I must value above all else, the innate desire to connect, to nurture, and to hold. I need a spiritual consort who will shine the light of consciousness into the darkness. A torch bearer. Not the playful boy, not the seductive lover, but the measured Senex. A masculine partner who stirs deep within me and seeks expression in the truth of what I think, what I understand, what I know. Logos. This is not opinions, pronouncements, or ideological proclamations. This is not anything more than that which shines the light on my heart and draws my gaze upward. Toward my highest value and beyond. I say beyond, because whatever my earthy form claims as its highest value, it is but a portal to the greater mystery, to the ineffable, toward the transcendent. With the wholeness of what I experience, what I feel, what comes to me seeking witness, I need a spiritual sensibility that lifts us all up.
Years ago, I would run an intensive called, “Old Women Dreaming”. It was my experience that old women dream differently than young women. Old women dream of the future. In preparation for one such gathering, seeing the long-range forecast for rain, I asked my nephew if he could construct an awning, or pergola that would shelter the old women when they came together to dream. He was about 17 years old and living with us in the Algonquin area. He asked if I would like him to build a reciprocal pole lodge. I did not know what that was so he explained how the logs of the roof would lean on one another without nails, but that gravity would hold it up. I loved the sound of it and he and my husband went to work. Oh, what a beautiful structure it was. I watched for days as young man and old man worked together to design and create the lodge.
The climax of the endeavour came on a warm Sunday afternoon. We had visitors and the land was alive with the clucking of old women, the laughter of small children, the barking of dogs, and the counsel and industry of the men as the final touches on the lodge were being worked out. To this point, the roof was resting on a scaffold. It came time to remove the scaffolding and let the logs come into a right relationship with one another. As the women sat in the shade drinking sweating glasses of iced tea, as the children and dogs romped in the meadow grasses, as the Bonnechere River flowed by, it was announced that the moment had indeed arrived.
My nephew was on a ladder and his head was poking through what would be the smoke hole of the lodge. The men; his father, uncle, and our friend stood beneath him. They were all looking upward as they began to unlash the logs and remove the scaffold. It was a magnificent tableau. The older men looking up to where the youngest man was emerging in service to old women and their dreams of the future. We held our collective breath. Even the children and the dogs sensed the magic of the moment and paused in their play. Would the roof settle into position? Had the labour been accomplished? Would the eight heavy logs lean and be leaned on in a reciprocal manner? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! We all cheered as the creak and groan of the wood strained into place and the roof held. What a magnificent lodge!
We named our new structure, Turtle Dreaming Lodge. We inaugurated her with offerings and drumming and the blessings of Grandmother Shirley John and Grandfather Ron. It is a stately shelter with its evergreen boughs adorning the reciprocal pole structure of the roof. A turtle shaped fire pit has received many offerings and around its sacred flames, many dreams were incubated and articulated.
Imagine if you will an attitude of older men holding up and lifting up the industrious and emergent masculine in our culture. Imagine if you will, the future romping in flowering meadows as mothers and grandmothers share stories in the shade. Imagine if you will an emergent masculine in service to the dreams of old women. Imagine if you will, a shelter for the dreams of the future. Imagine if you will, as the embers of the sacred fire die, as the sun sets and the stars dance in the midnight sky and are reflected in the flowing river, an old man and an old woman cluck and coo as they cross the threshold into bigger dreams, eternal wisdom, and infinite love.
Wisdom tells me that the past is in front of me, not behind me. Wisdom tells me that the future is behind me, not in front of me. I walk in the footfall of my ancestors and leave a trail for my descendants. We have long since left the river’s edge that holds that Turtle Dreaming Lodge. I pray she serves and is served well by her new stewards. Today, and every day, here in our 100acre wood, an old man and I serve a much humbler lodge - a Baba Yaga hut at the edge of the forest. And, when the forgotten gods come calling, we will serve up all that we have. Like Baucis and Philemon, we will not forget, we will remember.
If you have the time or the will, please join me in the search for the old men who are called to meet the old women. Please join me in the virtual lodge of JungArchademy on Feb. 3 and 10, 2024. (https://www.jungarchademy.com/oldmen)