JOSEPH GELFER

Richard over at Men and the Goddess has posted some very engaging (and challenging) comments in regard to the mythopoetic chapter of Numen, Old Men. I post them below, followed by my reply.

Richard writes:

I’m closely and carefully reading Joseph Gelfer’s book on “Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy” because he offers a clear review of what has been going on with men and spirituality over the last couple of decades and maybe some hope for where we can go as men looking for progress rather than a regress to our baser and lower motivations and instincts. This will be a multi-part comment because there is a lot of material to cover.

As I reported at length yesterday I was directly involved to some degree in the “Mythopoetic Movement.” Dr. Gelfer’s second chapter (after an introductory chapter) is titled: “The Mythopoetic Movement: Getting it Wrong from the Start.”  You can imagine how this caught my attention!

The chapter covers much of my life in the 90s. He reviews the movement, the luminaries and their work. It is a good and fairly detailed review which covers much of the material, yes, some of the shortcomings, but I also think there is something which got lost in the research. I have a hunch that Dr. Gelfer’s research was based to a large extent on the primary and secondary sources with no real experience with either the movement or its leaders. Since I had some reasonable and positive experience of both my view is different. Here I’ll go into Dr. Gelfer’s review, findings, conclusions and then amplify these with my own thoughts.

Dr. Gelfer characterizes the movement using four major themes he culls from the literature: archetypes as identified by Jung and extensively researched and adapted by Robert Moore (a Jungian psychoanalyst) and Douglas Gillette (mythologist); wilderness (also called wildness) sometimes characterized by the Green Man and certainly by Iron John, probably the most notorious character in the movement and main character of the book by Robert Bly of the same title; fatherlessness as an explanation of why we are in this mess in the first place and why we need a movement; and initiation as a key missing component to the raising of American, possibly all of western, men.

He also claims that there is little if any spirituality in this movement. He defines spirituality across two pages in his book and finds one offered by Robert Forman “perfectly acceptable” as do I (Forman in Grassroots Spirituality: What It Is, Why It Is Here, Where It Is Going, 2004): “Grassroots Spirituality involves a vaguely pantheistic ultimate that is indwelling, sometimes bodily, as the deepest self and accessed through not-strictly-rational means of self transformation and group process that becomes the holistic organization for all life.”

With that definition and these themes in mind I’ll briefly summarize Dr. Gelfer’s critiques, offer my own thoughts and conclude with an overall impression of both the book, so far, and the movement, so far.

Archetypes: Dr. Gelfer focuses on the work of Moore and Gillette. I was fortunate enough to take a weekend workshop with Robert Moore before their four archetypal books were even publish. The first one, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine which summarized their model had just been published in 1990. Dr Gelfer spends most of his time examining the King and Warrior archetypes and claims that these represent a call for return to the patriarchy and also claims that these two are the chief focal points for the movement. And here I disagree based on my experience with Moore, the use of the archetypes with Bly and others and my own sense of the operation of these archetypes in my life. Moore and Gillette don’t focus on these two archetypes to the exclusion of the Magician and the Lover. And they don’t call for a return to these archetypes to define the Mature Masculine. Rather they call for a balance and a development. And they clearly point out the shadow side of each of the four archetypes and how they can operate destructively in men’s lives. They also use this archetypal model in a developmental sense claiming we are born as divine children in the King quadrant, move through adolescence and early manhood into the warrior quadrant, move on in our prime to our magician quadrant, as we mature and grow in wisdom we move on to our Lover quadrant, and then as senior men (maybe even grandfathers) we finally move back into the King quadrant where we are generative in our maturity. Obviously this is a simplistic model both of the masculine and the developmental stages we go through. It is meant to be instructive rather than conclusive. There is much more detail (five books worth!) that I can’t go into here, but I will conclude that the model has been very useful in my life as a guide to who I am, how I got here and where I am going. And while Moore & Gillette claim these archetypes are “hardwired” into our psyches I may not go quite that far. I believe we can rise above our development and the archetypes which instruct us but don’t necessarily limit us. And here I go back to the definition of spirituality as a means of self transformation, yes, even beyond archetypes.

Wilderness: Yes, Iron John was a wild man. Dr. Gelfer seems to believe this too is a call to return to strong patriarchy. There is certainly a lot about the mythopoetic movement that calls for a return to nature, a respect for nature and the natural. Clearly there is power in this. But there is also love. Rather than King and Warrior in the Wild Man I see Magician and Lover. When Robert Bly refers to the “soft male” he is referring, in my mind, to absent males who have abdicated, not their patriarchal role as King and Warrior, but their male role in the world as  leader and protector. And there is clearly, in my mind, a reverence here and a “vaguely pantheistic ultimate” at the core of this Wildness. I experienced the “Other” the “Ultimate” in my time within the movement, especially at the “Men’s Conferences” I attended. These were spiritual, transcendent experiences that are not easily found in the literature; but how do you write about the transcendent? Through poetry (of the Lover); through “not-strictly-rational” experiences (of the Magician). I agree with Dr. Gelfer that the Spiritual can be difficult to separate out within the movement’s literature; but it is there to be experienced.

Fatherlessness: This is an important theme in much of Robert Bly’s thought on our current predicament in the post-modern world. He believes absent fathers (boys no longer working side-by-side with their fathers) has meant we have been raised by our mothers to too great an extent and to our detriment. We have been raised without good male role-models; our fathers represent the closest we have to strong, if not positive, models. Here I can agree with some of Dr. Gelfer’s criticism. This theme almost sounds like a blame game; looking for excuses. I personally struggled with this thought and finally abandoned it; I grew up with a wonderful father and worked by his side on the family farm. Yes, this was then, and certainly is now, a rarity. And as I explored this concept of the absent father I reached too far thinking because my father was quiet and we didn’t have deep conversations this meant he was somehow “absent.” But now that I’m well into my own fatherhood and grandfatherhood I realize how important my father’s modeling was in my life. OK, so if I had a “present father” what about the men who did not? I think we find our models as we grow up. And these are choices we make as part of our developmental process. Which leads me to the next and final theme:

Initiation: Bly’s second major book (other than his works of poetry): The Sibling Society focuses especially on the situation in which we are a society of uninitiated adolescents. There are good arguments in this book that we adults (including governing officials) act as children too often. And this can be very scary! (I don’t want to get political here, but I believe we invaded Iraq in a childish and grandiose way resulting in a  country forever changed!).  As we grow up in western culture we do not have tests for maturity; we can test for academic achievement; we can test for attained levels of skill; but emotional and spiritual maturity are difficult to measure. It is precisely this emotional and spiritual attainment which Initiation seeks. It is much more than a rite of passage; it is a process of development for young people to move through. Dr. Gelfer seems to equate this call for Initiation with a return to primitive societies where boys are initiated into the tribe of men to take their rightful places as heads of families, patriarchal leaders. Again, this was not my experience. And I don’t think that is the point of identifying Initiation as a missing component in our society. In my mind we have no process for becoming emotionally mature, spiritual leaders. We need them. We need everyone to be emotionally mature and on a spiritual path of some kind, to access “through not-strictly-rational means of self transformation and group process”  the “holistic organization for all life.” How else will we ever advance Consciousness?

Dr. Gelfer has done a great job in outlining the mythopoetic men’s movement and pointing out some of its weaknesses. I don’t believe it was ever meant to be an end point, but rather a stepping stone, as it’s been for me. It doesn’t really have much life in it any longer, sad to say for young men wondering how to “grow themselves up.” But its leaders have been heroes for me: good models, good thinkers, good Warriors, Magicians, Lovers, Kings. And while I have moved on from some of the more simplistic elements of the movement I sense that I stand on a stronger base for having been part of it.

And, don’t get me wrong; I have very much enjoyed Joseph Gelfer’s book and continue to do so as I read through his critique of the various approaches to masculine spiritualities. And I very much look forward to his recommendations (stay tuned).

My reply:

Thanks for these thoughtful comments: the closest reading yet of this part of the book.

You say that the book is based to a large extent on the primary and secondary sources with no real experience with either the movement or its leaders. Certainly, this study is a textual analysis of the movement, which is a perfectly valid method. It’s interesting that the two most sympathetic studies of the movement (by which I mean academic) are those involved in participant observation (Schwalbe’s “Unlocking the Iron Cage: The Men’s Movement, Gender Politics, and American Culture” and Magnuson’s “Changing Men, Transforming Culture: Inside the Men’s Movement”). These studies see plenty of men with “good intentions” that do not match the quite reasonable and critical readings of the movement leaders’ writing. However, as I mention in the book, good intentions often do not equate with good effects. I believe participant observation gives too much weight to good intentions at the expense of critiquing their negative effects. I have found this tension to operate elsewhere in my own work, which is why I opt for textual analysis, as it seems in many ways less compromised. And, of course, the “men on the ground” generally mobilize the writings of the movement leaders, which again makes them central.

You are correct that Moore refers to all four archetypes, and not just the king and warrior. The big “however” is that far more attention is given to these two archetypes across the movement than the magician and lover, which is why I make them central. You mention Moore’s reference to the shadow, but this does not stand up to examination: it is a cursory awareness that breaks down when read closely (see pp. 24-5 and my reading of the King David story). You hit the nail on the head when you say, “It is meant to be instructive rather than conclusive”: this is back in the realm of good intentions. It might have been meant as instructive, but there are two problems here: first, I don’t think Moore et al have the competence to pull it off (that’s mean, I know, but I stand by it); second, even if they did pull it off, it certainly was read as conclusive by too many people. Either way, the net effect is poor.

The Wild Man: Here I think it is important to unpack the difference between “wildness” as it may stand on its own, and then in respect to Bly’s context of the wild man. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with wildness in and of itself: to suggest otherwise would be a claim against nature (and I use “nature” in the ecological sense of the word, not what is “natural” about being a man). Bly’s Wild Man is clearly a combative metaphor, as demonstrated by my reference to folklorist Jack Zipes’ critique. The “vaguely pantheistic ultimate” can be at the core of Wildness, but it is not necessarily (for example, an atheist appreciate of awe in nature): given that it is never explicitly spelled out, it remains, at best, ambiguous.

Initiation: references to primitive initiation rights abound in the movement’s literature. There may have been some “intention” (that old chestnut!) to mean something beyond this primitive context, but I don’t see it. One reads a fair bit along the lines of “we need something that fulfills the functions of primitive initiation in contemporary life”, but no substantial offerings: in the void left by no such offerings, folks on the ground take what they can get (i.e. the primitive). As I also mention in the book, initiation serves well to erase individual identity by co-opting youth into the values of society, rather than the ”intention” of bestowing “mature” identity upon them. Note also, the mantra-like references to “mature” speak to age-based power structures within the movement: a gerontocracy–if ever there was one–which I find most amusing coming from those who not many years previously rejected exactly such a system in and around the Summer of Love!

I honor your reading and experience of the movement, but feel it is colored by your desire to see it in a good light. That said, you are spot on to say the movement should be seen as a stepping stone: The problem is that too many (mostly younger) men are now just going through the same old thing, rather than moving onto the new.

UPDATED 19 April

Richard replies:

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply, Joseph. I appreciate the time you have taken to engage in a discussion on this subject, first through your well researched book and second through your willingness to respond to my review of it.

I certainly don’t want to get into a point by point debate on the issues we each are raising about the “movement.” Clearly you are coming at the subject with academic study as a primary motivation. As such I do understand that you have necessarily restricted your review to the literature. For me, while I understand the sociological benefit of such a study, I find it limited to an examination of only one dimension of the movement, maybe two given the secondary literature, critiques of the primary literature, and the reporting on the movement.

You consider the actual experience of the movement, mine included, as “well intentioned” thereby tainted by the intention. But this argues to throw out all experience as suspect because of preconditioned expectations. Are we all to live in “ivory towers” and study the “plebes” as they go through attempts at growth with all the “good intentions” but expected failures which follow experimentation? I can not discard my experiences; they are what make me today!

I suppose my experiences have also been tainted (I would prefer to say “influenced”) by an identification with the “gerontocracy” you mention. But humans, maybe especially men, must go through developmental stages through their whole lives. It is my hope that men will continue to develop, rather than stagnate into a comfort zone of one archetype or another! I certainly hope that the majority don’t get stuck in the warrior stage (although many have, judging by the rise again of the “militia movements” in this country!). Transitioning through developmental stages (however you wish to label them) is what I call initiation. For me, and I think for the movement in general, initiation involves a transcendence of self from one developmental stage to another. Some of these initiations can be formalized but often they are not.

And what is wrong with “many (mostly younger) men are now just going through the same old thing”? Yes, by definition they need to; this is initiation. And for us “old men” of the gerontocracy of the movement, we too need to move on and grow and offer the next steps, the next levels of development.

Joseph, you have said little about the Magician and Lover quadrants of development which Moore and Gillette (however incompetently) have explored, believing through your research that it is only the Warrior and King archetypes which are emphasized by the “movement.” This is where my experience disagrees substantially with your research. And this is not about good intention but about the magic and singing and praising and grieving and honoring and, yes, transcending our lower selves to reach for Higher Self which I experienced in Minnesota with Robert Bly, et al and a group of a hundred or so men gathered to do just that. We didn’t talk about war expect to grieve it and its consequences. We didn’t talk about kingliness except to explore it and our grandiosity, as identified by Heinz Kohut, and to understand both the positive and negative aspects of that grandiosity in the human psyche. We did sing, a lot, and read and write poetry, a lot, and listen to and tell beautiful stories. We did praise, a lot, each other, gods and goddesses, our wives and daughters, our sons and grandchildren.

You won’t find much of this in the literature. It’s not easy to write about in any coherent and believable way. But it is real. It is transformative. It is what the movement is all about. If humanity is to survive and continue to evolve we must transcend our current stage of development. I look to the future with tremendous hope because people like Robert Bly have created a rock to step out on, and people like you, Joseph, are looking for something more, the next rock to step up on!

My reply:

I certainly don’t seek to throw out personal experience: the issue on the table is an awareness of the forces shaping that experience. This requires self insight that a lot of people just don’t have. By sticking to the literature, this task is simplified to some degree. Certainly, though, it is possible (and desirable) to include personal experience, but the complications of this must be fully appreciated by all the stakeholders involved. In a world of sound bites, bullet points and instant insights, this is difficult, to say the least.

If you want to see initiation as the same as development, that’s fine. But it’s important to remember that the way the movement literature refers to initiation (i.e. boys being initiated into the “tribal” values of “mature” men, often through a dangerous ritual) speaks to issues of power, identity control and physical extremism that are not necessarily present in common understandings of development. Your developmental interpretation is certainly valid, but it would be questionable to suggest that is the context in which initiation functions within the movement.

The problem with “many (mostly younger) men are now just going through the same old thing” is that we never learn from mistakes. The (broken) wheel is continually reinvented. If we have any hope, each generation must build on the experiences of the previous, not repeat them. Think about slavery as an analogy: do we all have to work through the fact that it is wrong? Development is not simply a personal issue, but a collective and historic issue.

I certainly have no desire to deny your experience with the movement on the ground, and am pleased to hear of the issues you speak of with Bly et al. It’s just a shame that these seemingly better aspects remain obscured by the way the movement leaders presented themselves to the outside world, the simplistic models of masculinity this presentation encouraged, and the fact that this partial picture is the one perpetuated by so many men who speak to these issues.

You know, I actually hold experience in pretty high regard. I hope that before it’s too late I get to look Bly and Moore in the eye and FEEL what they were trying to do. The project they tried to achieve on the page failed, and I strongly believe this needs to be acknowledged before regular men can move on. However, I’m open to the possibility that they have something less tangible to offer: sometimes when we have these pre- or post-linguistic gifts we need to recognize them for what they are, and not try and force a square peg into a round hole. While the constructive aspect of this story may be hard to articulate, the deconstructive aspect is relatively easy, and it is this aspect that is crucial if genuine eyes-open development is to happen.

Contrary to popular belief, I remain ultimately optimistic about these issues: figuring out how to navigate them is the tricky bit

Richard replies:

Thanks, again, Joseph. It’s getting late here and I do want to get on with more of your book, so I have something intelligent to say tomorrow. But I did want to respond to a couple of words that grabbed my attention in your latest comment:

“Broken” – I just don’t see the “wheel” as “broken” as you do. I do think it can be improved, built upon, evolved – no question here. But the wheel that was built by this movement did have some spin to it. It got some things started that were and are desperately needed. So, rather than throw out this wheel as broken I seek to build on it. And I hope we are dealing here with a spiral rather than a wheel. I’d rather see some elevation happening rather than just going ’round in circles with a fancier wheel!

“Failed” – “the project they tried to achieve on the page failed”! But this is my whole point here; it’s not about what’s printed on the page. Yes, for your academic study that’s all you can rely on. But things don’t fail on the page. They fail (or succeed) in the actuation of what’s on that page. Grand designs often fail; but they get tweaked during implementation and then succeed. And even if they do fail, there is so much to learn in failure. Martín Prechtel would say there is great beauty in failure. As long as we are feeding the gods and goddesses (what he calls the holy), even in our failures, there is magnificence!

And one area I think we heartily agree: “figuring out how to navigate [these issues]is the tricky bit.” And the task is worth it!

____

An excellent discussion: thanks Richard. JG.

Further to the previous post about Perez’s article: when I originally wrote Numen, Old Men I included a few thoughts about Perez’s book Soulfully Gay, but they didn’t make the final draft. I really wanted to like Perez’s book, because of the importance of bringing gay (i.e. counterhegemonic) voices to the integral table, but I found it rather limited in perspective. Here’s the outtake, which originally followed my discussion of David Deida:

Perez contains none of the misogynistic flavour of Deida, although he does rate The Way of the Superior Man as “one of my favourites” whose writing he sees as allowing for “complex permutations of gender and sexual preference” and focuses on Deida’s presentation of masculine and feminine essences. Also, following Jungian analyst Mitch Walker, Perez suggests that underlining gayness is a mythic archetype, “that straights are drawn to connect to the divine through otherness, and gays through sameness”. Clearly, this appeal to archetypal (prototypal) reality as well as its polarity (straight/gay, otherness/sameness) is problematic within integral thought, as outlined above. It is also another example of how mythopoetic themes again bubble to the surface of integral thought in relation to masculinity, heterosexual or otherwise. It comes, then, as little surprise to find Perez discussing Robert Bly’s approach to the spiritual journey. Perez also pays special attention to the “men’s gatherings” he has attending via the ManKind Project, one of the more widely-known mythopoetic organisations responsible for running the “New Warrior Training Adventure” course. Perez also admires Toby Johnson, acclaimed gay spiritual writer and advocate of Joseph Campbell’s archetypal perspective who will be discussed in some detail in the next chapter about gay spirituality. But during his integral journey Perez has read Wilber’s critique of Campbell and decided that contemplating archetypes is insufficient for spiritual development.

Why archetypes remain in the background of integral discussions remains unanswered: one would think such Jungian hangovers would have been transcended and included. Perez provides a clear example of how integral thought cannot shake free of polar/mythic reasoning, seeking to honour “the value both of dualistic thinking (yin and yang, male and female) and the principle of unity”. But this equation is itself a manifestation of dualistic thinking (duality versus unity). A more valuable equation (assuming one desires to continue the realities of yin and yang, male and female) is to honour “the value both of dualistic thinking and the principle of multiplicity”. The Deleuzean concept of the multiple in regard to gender is one of the key themes of chapter 7. Clearly the multiple exists in integral thought, which is perhaps even based upon it, but the fact that it is transcended and included with a directional impetus towards “orienting generalizations” gives an impression that the integral seeks less to honour the multiple, rather to erase it in “the principle of unity”. Perez seems aware of these dangers, but that he must be ready to move beyond such concerns: ‘I must be even more willing to be perceived by others as mean, intolerant, elitist, arrogant, or worse. I must be willing to be called names by hypersensitive folks … “too Western” or “too white” or “too androcentric”’. Indeed he must.

Much of Perez’s presentation of the integral consists of little more than commenting on how very clever Wilber is, and relaying his various core theories. His most original contribution, however, locates what he describes as “homophilia” at the heart of his own take on masculine and feminine principles. Perez suggests notions of self-transcendence and self-immanence can be equated with the terms “heterophilia” and “homophilia”:

In self-transcendence, all holons transform through an interplay of masculine and feminine principles. Self-transcendence is the root drive underlying heterosexuality in all species. And in self-immanence, all holons transform through an interplay of masculine and masculine or feminine and feminine (that is, the holon turns inward on itself). Self-immanence is the root drive underlying homosexuality in all species.

On one level this is a welcome addition to the integral model, locating same-sex orientation on a par with heterosexuality. However, it is stuck in the old pattern of polarity, and it is noteworthy that same-sex orientation equates with a downward momentum, while heterosexuality equates with transcendence, the ultimate direction of the integral. We have already seen how Wilber privileges transcendence, so even here homophilia suffers relegation. Perez’s model, while seeking to be integral, does not seem able to escape heteronormativity, which itself is a masculine assertion.

I’ve been charting the connection between integral spirituality and the mythopoetic men’s movement for a while now. In short, integral spirituality, for all its desire to transcend and include, does little more than include the men’s movement, with all its problems.

Another recent example of this is Joe Perez’s article, ILP and Men’s Shadow Work: A Powerful Combination, in which he puts the integral framework in dialogue with Robert Bly, Robert Moore, Douglas Gillette, The ManKind Project, and their use of myth and archetypes. I don’t know why integral types continue along this path, as it is a clear example of Wilber’s own elegantly-formulated pre/trans fallacy. Even if one buys into the whole notion of the integral, there is nothing integral here: even Wilber states, “Jungian archetypes…are for the most part … magico-mythic motifs”; i.e. pre-rational. To talk about “men’s work” in these terms is to fall foul of elevationism in the pre/trans fallacy. I talk about this at some length in Numen, Old Men, for those interested in finding out more.

As time goes by I believe it is becoming clear that large areas of integral thought fall foul of the pre/trans fallacy. Aside from gender, which I have written about, I would also include the integral presentation of politics and economics: I write about this in a new article, Lohas and the Indigo Dollar: Growing the Spiritual Economy, forthcoming in New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover there were other areas of integral thought which are far from trans-rational in disciplines in which I have no experience.

Such blind spots in integral thought make its viability increasingly problematic. The Integral Emperor has been wearing no clothes for some time now: I feel for his followers as this becomes evident to all.

The following is a pre-print of the editorial for the next Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, which comprises the address I delivered recently at the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

In one of Plato’s dialogues between Phaedrus and Socrates, we are faced with the paradox of the “pharmakon.” The pharmakon is alternatively or simultaneously beneficent and maleficent; it is both remedy and poison; at once fascinating and abhorrent. I find Plato’s pharmakon a useful tool in understanding how men and masculinities function in all religions, both in their histories and futures. Without a doubt, in the name of numerous divinities, men have wrought great turmoil on the world: on women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live. We tend to think in these allegedly post-feminist times that many of the ills men have performed in times past are in some way solved, but they are not. Patriarchy and its damaging effects are alive and well, even among those people who speak about masculinity in spiritual terms. I want to plot a brief course of these masculine spiritualities in recent times: via the mythopoetic men’s movement, the Christian men’s movement, and how what might be described as an “alternative spirituality” men’s movement expresses itself today. These offer us an insight into the poison of the pharmakon. I will then conclude with a different vision for men and spirituality: the remedy.

When most people think of the men’s movement, the image they conjure in their minds is usually one of the mythopoetic men’s movement. It is an image of partially clothed, bearded men, smeared with mud in the woods. It is an image of men getting in touch with their feelings, weeping in the company of brothers or releasing a primal scream. It is an image of storytelling, sweat lodges, drumming and talking sticks. For many, the mythopoetic movement is synonymous with Robert Bly’s Iron John, which recreates a Grimm Brothers’ tale about a wild, hairy man, “Iron John” who becomes a mentor to a young boy. The experiences shared by Iron John and the boy are intended to reflect the stages of masculine development.

There were lots of good intentions behind the mythopoetic movement: its leaders and participants understood that there was something wrong with masculinity in society. Men appeared to be dysfunctional, and something quite rightly needed to be done about it. However, the movement made a crucial mistake. They assumed that there was some better way of doing masculinity that could be recaptured, something from the past, something that dwelled inside men which needed to be rediscovered. They did this primarily via the adoption of archetypes: Iron John, or the “wild man” was the first of these archetypes, which was followed soon after by others such as the king and the warrior. We were told that these archetypes existed whether we liked it or not. Some said, following Jung, that they dwelled in the collective unconscious, others that they were hard-wired into the reptilian brain. And if we ignore them, we were told, problems occur, and this is why modern men were in trouble.

But the problem with these archetypes was that they promoted a certain type of masculinity. The wild man required an earthy, hirsute individual who belonged deep in the forest. He demanded challenging initiation rituals that transitioned boys into a certain vision of authentic and mature masculinity. The king archetype demanded that men see themselves at the center of their own mini kingdom, the people in their lives as subjects who need to be directed, resources to be secured and exploited. The warrior archetype demanded that men see themselves as soldiers on some kind of crusade. Life is to be framed in militaristic terms: battles are to be fought and won. All these archetypes, for all the noises about thinking of them in terms of myth and metaphor, promoted a type of masculinity that is at best oppressive, and at worst pathological and violent. Anyone thinking this interpretation is rather excessive is gently reminded of the recent tragic deaths of three people in a sweat lodge at Sedona who were involved in precisely this thing: seeking the spiritual warrior within.

The mythopoetic movement was part alternative spirituality, part pop psychology. But traditional religions also perpetuate similar problems. Around the same time that Iron John was released we saw the establishment of Promise Keepers which sought to re-establish male authority in the home. Promise Keepers is just one of many thousands of men’s ministries operating around the Western world. Today, Christian manhood has once again been realigned with biblical manhood, where the husband and father is the intermediary between his family and God. Even academics have begun to speak about this in positive terms with the identification of “soft patriarchs” who are more involved with family life than non-Christian men due to their “symbolic” headship of the family. Presumably soft patriarchy results in soft oppression.

Other men’s ministries revolve around the theme of sport. Training manuals for these ministries are laid out like play books, and talk about life in terms of sporting metaphors and how men must lead their families in the way a coach leads his team. Other men’s ministries base their whole identity around military themes such as Band of Brothers, BattleZone ministries and Top Gun ministries. They read books such as John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart in which the author dances around his house wielding replica swords and defining masculinity by battles that must be fought. Again, there are real-world ramifications of this, and not just by families damaged by the assumption of a patriarchal male figure. Recently, it has been discovered that John Eldredge’s book is used by the violent Mexican Christian drugs cartel, La Familia, to provide a model of masculinity to which to aspire which results in being, quite literally, murderous.

Like the mythopoetic movement, the intentions of the Christian men’s movement are often good. They want to think more closely about masculinity, and they want to support their families and communities in which they live. But their answer to this is to promote rather unsavory masculinities: male authority in the home, whether it be biblical patriarch or sports coach. Where is the mutuality and respect here? What signals are young boys being sent in these families about the role of women in society? Or, as with mythopoetic archetypes, masculinity is aligned with violence. Why? Where is the inspiration for men who do not want to lead families, who may not even be part of a family, or who do not like sport, or playing real or imaginary war games? And we tend to think of the men’s movement as historical, but there are more and more men’s ministries every year. And new forms of men’s movement adopting themes of male power and archetypes are appearing right now.

For example, alternative masculine spirituality today looks quite a lot like previous forms of masculine spirituality. One popular book is David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work and Sexual Desire. Deida presents himself as a kind of Buddhist sexual radical, but his message is anything but. Deida promotes a very muscular way of being a man: of taking control, making decisions and generally being a success with women. Deida is very popular in the pick-up-artist community, which provides techniques for men to seduce women, which seems rather at odds with the kind of spiritual development Deida promotes. Old ways of doing masculinity in new spiritualities appear in other venues such as Andrew Cohen’s EnlightenNext magazine. A recent edition focusing on the “new masculinity” kicks off with an interview with Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, author of the book Manliness, which paints a picture of a feminized society that could benefit from learning about the history and virtues of traditional manliness stretching all the way back to roaming the savannah. The next article, “Beyond the Rambo Mentality” sounds much more promising; however, it speaks of “authentic” masculinity, archetypes and initiation, which could have been lifted directly out of Robert Bly’s Iron John. Next is an interview with Erwin McManus, a Christian minister popular at Promise Keepers events whose book The Barbarian Way wants men to engage with “the ancient, primal, and dangerous.” This is followed by the story of Nathaniel Fick, an Ivy League graduate who learned how to be a man in the Marines. Later we read about how Scandinavian men lost their Viking spirit, the “confessions of a formerly sensitive New Age man” in which a Californian generation-Xer laments being feminized by his psychotherapist mother, and finally Cohen and the “integral philosopher” Ken Wilber bemoan postmodernity which “creates weak, inauthentic men” who have overly bought into the myth of patriarchy. It seems that even at the glittering edge of alternative spiritualities, when men are referred to we come back to the same old story: power, control, strength, the poison of the pharmakon that has got us in the hole we are in today. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Consider this quote from a leader of a particular form of men’s movement, outlining the attributes of its participants:

• They are not, by nature, territorially aggressive and do not impose their political claims on others.
• They are not, by nature, competitive but are passionately interested in sharing with others.
• They are not interested in conquering nature but are interested in harmonious living with all of nature.
• They are not interested in denying bodiliness and carnality but are passionately involved in celebrating all aspects of human sexuality.

That sounds like quite an interesting complement to the previous forms of masculine spirituality I’ve been discussing, doesn’t it? Not aggressive, not competitive, harmonious with nature. This is actually a quote from Harry Hay, the unofficial leader of the gay men’s movement. What I find interesting about this quote, and I’ll out myself here as a straight man, is that there’s nothing specifically “gay” about it. There’s nothing in it that should unsettle even the straightest of men. Gay spirituality is a useful example for all men. I’m not suggesting that straight men should all go out and try and adopt a different form of sexual orientation, rather there are things that can be learned from the way that gay men see masculinity, and the way they express themselves spiritually.

The key issue is multiple masculinities. All the other forms of masculine spirituality assume masculinity to be a certain, fixed type of thing: specifically, a married, rather conservative man who should provide for, protect, and lead his family. Gay spirituality assumes there can be any number of ways of being a man: maybe married, maybe not, maybe tough, soft, competitive, whatever. These different types of masculinity offer complements to traditional masculinity. And as traditional masculinity in spiritual contexts has tended to be rather unfortunate, I’d suggest gay spirituality offers better types of masculinity.

But the gay issue is just a jumping off point, not the focus. I started by saying that without a doubt, in the name of numerous divinities, men have wrought great turmoil on the world: on women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live. Yet at the same time, many of the most peaceful and divinely inspired individuals of all religions have been men. Clearly, there is nothing inherent in men that demands destruction; clearly there is something in men that also seeks peace. The future of peace requires the mobilization of men in all faiths who reclaim what is naturally peaceful about being a religious man. It is a process of healing within each faith, between different faiths and with those who choose no faith. And it is not simply men’s work, but a partnership between men, women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live.

But we cannot achieve this while masculine spirituality is defined by a patriarchal nature and restrictive treatment of gender: I would go so far as to say we should reject masculine spirituality as a term because it does not seem capable of shaking these critical issues. But, importantly, this does not close down in any way men discussing religion and spirituality in terms which resonate with being a man. It opens up a conversation which resonates with any number of ways of being a man (or masculine) that rejects patriarchy. It is a pro-man conversation because it is pro-person, which by necessity must involve the liberation of all people. Feminist and queer theories and theologies have done most of the work in making way for such a conversation. What is needed now is for predominantly straight men to step up and play their part in a process which will benefit the vast majority of people. This is hardly a new or radical suggestion, but its realization remains elusive. Such is the insidious nature of patriarchy. But, as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

In Numen, Old Men I write about the ridiculous lengths the men’s movement has often gone to demonstrate manliness and its appeal to archetypes. Today we read the sad, but somewhat inevitable news related to a Spiritual Warrior Event run by James Ray in which two people died after two hours in a sweat lodge. Check out the write-up over at Beyond Growth and SWANS®SONG.

From Numen, Old Men: “For a man to access the Wild Man he must retreat into his psychic depths, into the forest, into a pre-Christian pagan space of hirsute manliness. Bly intends the Wild Man, with his relationship with the young boy of the Iron John story, to be an example of how men can be initiated into adulthood and the deep masculine. This would be a worthy exercise if it enabled boys to flourish for both their own sakes and the good of the community, but instead Iron John ‘celebrate[s] violence and killing as the means to establish male identity’. This is the archetypal path established by Bly. … This disturbing precedent is continued with Moore and Gillette encouraging men to access the warrior in the male psyche, whose natural presence is indicated by the fact that chimpanzees resort to battle, and men’s fascination with war movies such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket. Moore and Gillette would have their readers believe it is natural for mythopoetically inclined men to imagine themselves operating within the presumably dark and oppressive jungle … these appeals to archetypal models promote largely oppressive and violent masculinities.”

It’s that time of year again… For years now the Burning Man Festival has been marketing itself as the bastion of new edge thought: a utopian experiment, freeing itself from the nonsense of the regular world akin to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone.

For at least the past five years, the Burn has appeared an increasingly tired and clichéd example of the commodification of countercultural values and so-called “conscious capitalism”: a playground in which people pretend to be out on the edge while, in reality, repeating many of the same values of the society at large, except wearing day-glo clothing and fuelled by exotic psychedelics.

One theme I’ve always thought would make a great research topic is how gender plays out at the Burn. For all the allusions to “sacred sexuality” and Tantra that seem to abound in Burn discourse, it seems very much an old story: largely neo-Jungian archetypes of the essentialized masculine and feminine. It’s also hard not to notice that many of the women that are photographed as examples of Burner lifestyle tend to be gorgeous half-naked nymphs: a hipster version of the Playboy Bunny.

So it was interesting to see this week that Eben Pagan is speaking at the Burn. Pagan has historical connections with the “seduction” or “pick up artist” community. According to Beyond Growth, Pagan ‘teaches men to be “authentic” manipulators of women. He now makes over $20 million a year teaching men that women are “secretly wanting a man that is in control of himself, his reality, and them” (pg 13 of the Double Your Dating eBook, 2003 edition). Through his information products, Pagan teaches psychological tactics for controlling yourself, your reality, and other people–especially women, but also anyone whom you could get to give you money’.

How’s that for Burner values, gender or otherwise?