DOOM & GLOOM
By G.H. Ellis
DESPONDENCY IS REAL
DOOM and GLOOM! It’s pervasive; it’s undeniable. Nearly everyone is dreading something: forest fires, floods, hurricanes, meteor impacts, nuclear war, the end of democracy, famine, homelessness, refugees, rising seas, misogyny, foreign invasion, white supremacy, A.I., wokeness, corporate enslavement, autocratic control of courts, military occupation, economic collapse, plagues……STOP! STOP! STOP! Help us get off this torture wheel.
This torture wheel is a serious affliction of modernity. Getting off requires courage and hard reflection to navigate this turning point in human history. Sorry for us. We didn’t choose this situation, nor are we at fault, but the Fates have thrown it in our faces. This paper identifies the collective psychological causes of our current doomsday afflictions and accesses resources to allay our doomsday anxiety.
This “end of the world’ anxiety is widespread. Most of my friends are unnerved by television news and refuse to watch. Many complain that just getting out of bed requires too much energy. Visions of mass suffering and impending deaths depress their souls. They feel listless and ungrounded. STOP! STOP! STOP! We must help them get off the wheel!
The human collective psyche is both the source and the remedy for this doomsday affliction. For those not versed in psychology, particularly Jungian psychology, the human collective refers to the entire human psychological trove of experiences, desires, behavioral patterns, and species’ agendas. It is part of our interconnectedness as humans and has been with our species for hundreds of thousands of years. These forces are powerful and exert their effects unconsciously. These collective patterns, called archetypes, have agendas and agency that affect everyone, albeit uniquely to each individual. Long-lasting stories like myths, fairy tales, religious texts, movies, novels, and poems that connect with large numbers of individuals are guideposts for how these archetypes play out.
Archetypal myths can aid our quest to navigate this “end of the world” angst. One excellent myth to guide the journey beyond hopelessness is the myth of Psyche and Eros.
PSYCHE, MYTHIC METAPHOR OF HOPELESS DESPONDENCY, EMPOWERMENT, AND THE RETURN OF EROS
Psyche is a young woman of exquisite beauty who, through no fault of her own, incurs the jealous wrath of Aphrodite (Venus, goddess of beauty). She marries Aphrodite’s son, Eros (god of relationships and caring), but he leaves her when she tries to look at him and accidentally burns him with lamp oil.
Metaphorically, Eros’ flight is a tragic human reality that eros, the caring, loving, compassionate, and nurturing aspects of men, became unconscious thousands of years ago. The burning oil is a metaphor for the wounding impotence that hyper-masculine men feel when their soft caring sides surface, particularly in the presence of women. Several thousand years ago, when tribal barbarism ruled life and culture, male caring and bonding were abandoned for the needs of war. Defending the city-state, stealing food, and basic survival required dispassionate brutality. As male hierarchical dominance evolved, absent male eros became a constellated normalcy. The return of a conscious masculine eros is required if humans are to live peacefully and sustainably. The widespread persistence of dictatorships, gangs, misogyny, and masculine religions is evidence that the return of masculine eros has a long road ahead.
Returning to the myth, Psyche is hopelessly distraught when her husband abandons her. Matters get worse. She appeals to Aphrodite for help, only to receive a list of four impossible tasks to appease the goddess. Psyche is suicidal and throws herself into a river to drown, but the forces of preservation (gods, collective unconscious, evolution) throw her back onto land.
A note about the metaphor of Psyche, a person’s “psyche” is a makeup of feelings and behavioral traits. Feelings have a “feminine” connotation, which means they are more prevalent aspects of human women, but also present in all men, albeit much harder for men to access. Studying the myth of Psyche and Eros is a guide to understanding both the psychology of women and the feeling (feminine) side of men. The Psyche myth describes a path for organizing the psyche of women to alleviate feminine hopelessness. For men, it is a pathway for the return of eros and its potential for joy. The maturation/awakening of the human psyche and the return of eros is an unconscious agenda embedded in the human collective.
Despite your hopelessness with doom and gloom, if you are reading this, any suicidal thoughts you may have entertained, you have obviously not acted upon. Your inner god, (your Self), intervened and rejected the idea. Thus like Psyche, feeling at world’s end, we have been thrown back out of the river to move onward.
Psyche’s first seemingly impossible task is to sort a huge pile of seed grains. This makes her all the more hopeless. Ah, but the gods (unconscious collective) assist her by sending a colony of ants to sort the seeds for her. Specifically, Eros, the god of relationships and caring, although unconscious, is the source of the ants. Seemingly “from out of nowhere” (the collective unconscious) help is sent to Psyche. Overnight the ant colony sorts the pile of mixed seeds. At our deepest level of human agenda, the collective unconscious wants eros to return to our consciousness to balance hyper-masculine harshness and bring enhanced joyfulness.
To move beyond our end-of-the-world depression, we too need to sort things out. Beginning this essay we listed a litany of catastrophes capable of destroying human life that justifiably cause appropriate terror. We begin our healing by sorting this list into those probable or improbable, and imminent versus futuristic. We need to discern those we should confront and let go of those we cannot influence. Physical ones may require defensive action. Potential catastrophes that are more hypothetical can be transformed through internal processing into calm acceptance.
Mass extinctions kill off over 75% of life forms and have occurred at least five times, roughly every 50-200 million years. One such extinction was caused by a giant meteor impact. Someday the planet will become uninhabitable. This seed of “end of the world” anxiety is a futuristic catastrophe of no importance in our mortal lifetime. This low probability event is a type of psychological anxiety we attenuate by accepting our mortal life of less than a hundred years and using thoughtful reasoning to give it no further personal impact.
Other anxiety seeds include floods, forest fires, scorching temperatures, hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning strikes. Those that are imminent require appropriate and immediate defensive responses. Get out of the storm. Other disasters are remote and less probable. For example, rising sea levels and global warming are probable but less imminent. We can calmly do our small part with climate support. Similarly being killed by a mass murderer is possible but of such low probability we must let it go; but we can support banning access to weapons of mass murder. Such small efforts of personal agency give us empowerment. Empowerment lessens anxiety.
For other potential disasters over which we have no direct control, such as pandemics, we can support science, vaccines, and containment measures. Sorting lessens anxiety because it directs our agency to exercise reasonable responses.
CYCLICAL CAUSES OF DOOM AND GLOOM
The entire universe is cyclical. All energy comes as wave packets. What is “wavy” are energy fields cycling in and out of existence. Seasons cycle as do planets, stars, and galaxies. Orbits are cyclical events. Human social events and behaviors cycle also. Why does everything cycle? It’s a mystery, but it’s real.
The cyclical nature of human cultures is well documented by history. Recurring human behavioral patterns include wars, recessions, art styles, parenting techniques, political reformation: almost any group activity. Financial collapses with currency devaluations and securities defaults regularly accompany periodic depressions. The anxiety and suffering accompany these scenarios is terrifying: fear of starvation, homelessness, disease, and the inability to obtain basic necessities.
One highly possible event for the near future that is cyclically overdue (explained in the next section) is an economic downturn with a severe recession or depression. Prudent action to lessen one’s fear of economic collapse is to avoid debt, risky assets, and to maintain stores of emergency cash, food, and medicines. Accepting the inevitable next economic recession with plans to navigate it will decrease unnecessary anxiety.
CYCLICAL SOCIOECONOMIC EVOLUTION
Two major cyclical upheavals are afoot that are creating much of our anxiety. It’s not our fault. We are simply living in a time of cyclical transition. One cycle is called the “fourth turning.” The second is a 2000 year cycle of massive spiritual transformation affecting humans worldwide. Because these cycles are in the human collective psyche we are all affected by their impending disruptions.
These two major collective cyclical events will radically alter socioeconomic stability and spirituality. Our intuitive dread of the coming changes are perceived as the end-of-the-world. It is the end of the world as we currently know it. When unwelcome news events occur, fears are substantiated. This upheaval is not our fault, but we do experience the doom and gloom that accompanies this imminent change.
“The Fourth Turning” is a scholarly book written in 1991 by Neil Howe and William Strauss that documents human cyclical generational behavior patterns from 1584 (Reformation era) to the present. The authors (Strauss is now deceased) are university professors. Economies, wars, arts, social patterns, child-rearing, and religious movements are examined for 600 years (24 generations) and the authors convincingly demonstrate that the collective human psychology has an unrelenting pattern of generational behaviors.
In short “The Fourth Turning” shows that societies cycle every 80-100 years through four phases: the first phase of a generational cycle is a high period (each period lasting roughly 20-25 years) of cohesive societal organization and collective purpose. The second phase is awakening. This generation re-evaluates and challenges the status quo. The third phase, the unravelling, brings a generation that deconstructs societal norms. The cycle concludes in a fourth turning consisting of crisis wherein the prior socioeconomic upheaval evolves into a radically new structure (for better or worse).
We (the U.S. and the world) currently (approximate years 2020-2040) are undergoing a massive and permanent change, a fourth turning of the current 100 year cycle that began in the late 1930’s. What changes will occur is as yet unknown.
Consider previous fourth turnings in North America during the last 400 years.
With the invasion and colonization by Europeans North American indigenous cultures underwent a fourth turning that radically changed societal structure (circa 1700). Indigenous peoples were displaced and annihilated and slavery became the economic model.
Forward 80 years (1780) and the Revolutionary war restructured government. A new American government was established and accompanied with a new mythic ethos. The common man abandoned his royal subject-hood and became a pioneer settler of the west. This westward expansion was driven by the development in the American psyche of the cowboy individualist.
After the next 80 years passed (1860) Americans found themselves embroiled in a civil war to end slavery and consolidate U.S. hegemony over central North America. This coincided with the evolving industrial revolution.
80 more years brought the Great Depression and WWII that consolidated American society as world leader in economics and military.
Currently, 2020-2040 we are in a fourth turning that again will replace our current socioeconomic structure and change our world status.
Doom and gloom is an inevitable feeling during a fourth turning because we intuitively know massive change is afoot. Remember this cycle is inexorably present in our collective human psyche. The doom is caused by our unconscious collective knowledge that our lifestyle replacement is inevitable. The gloom is fear that the future will be more dangerous and painful than the present. Perhaps the coming evolutionary change may be glorious. On the other hand war, torture, starvation, enslavement, famine are always distinctly possible as have occurred during many previous fourth turnings especially in Europe and Asia. Our doom and gloom is justified; our goal is to make it more tolerable.
Knowing and accepting that the fourth turning is imminent validates our uneasiness. We must accept this reality as we cannot stop it. In response to this knowledge we can also assume a vigilant resolve to positively contribute to the imminent outcome when possible. Recognizing and asserting our agency is a comforting action.
The second great cycle contributing to our angst is the evolving Aquarian Age.
THE 2000 YEAR CYCLE, THE COMING NEW SPIRITUAL AION
In 1951 Carl Jung published his text, AION. Aion according to Jung is an era of roughly 2000 years of human collective culture. Jung’s book is pictured above on the right. Jung is difficult to understand. Edward Edinger is a much clearer expositor of Jung’s work. Thus the left picture is a recommended book to understand Jung’s concept of aion. The leonine figure on its cover is a statue of Aion, a Hellenistic god of cyclical cosmic time.
Somehow in the spiritual evolution of human collective religious experience there are recurring 2000 year cultural cycles that also follow along four phases. Jung’s book explains the Christian aion of the last 2000 years. This period corresponds to the astrological Piscean Age.
The first 400-500 years of a spiritual aion is a tumultuous period when the prevailing religious structure dissolves and a new god-image/religion becomes consolidated. In the early Piscean aion before Christianity or Islam was established and accepted, there were hundreds of years of resistance and persecutions.
The second quarter of an aion cycle is one of general acceptance and stability of the new religious container. This was the medieval times when homogeneity prevailed in Christian communities.
An unravelling 500 years occurs in the third phase. In Europe during the Renaissance and Reformation humans reclaimed their “godly” creativity and rejected the divinity of the ruling monarchs. The final phase of the religious aion brings rejection of its dying religion and a birth of a new god-image and religion. This last quarter of the Piscean aion for Christianity ran from approximation 1500 to present. We are in the first 500 years of the new aion of Aquarius.
NOTE: There are two ways to view the astrological connection to this religious 2000 year cycle. One is metaphor and the other causal. Metaphoric adherents like myself view astrology as patterns in the collective human psyche that are projected onto the stars and planets. The antics (myths of the gods) and forces of the heavenly bodies (astrological proclivities) are merely the hard-coded psychic patterns in the human behavioral genome. The timing of the cycles of human behavior are in sync with the celestial orbits, hence these celestial objects are appropriate hooks for our projections. The mythic stories about them exerting their energies persist because the patterns are true representations of the human collective psyche.
A causal view (that of astrologists) is that intrinsic cosmic universal forces created the cycles of stars, galaxies, animals, humans, i.e. all of the universe is patterned in priori energy fields. Thus every entity in existence is affected by universally patterned cyclical forces. They could be correct. I am reserving judgment, awaiting convincing evidence. Beliefs and opinions aside, the recurring cyclical nature of the human behavioral patterns has abundant scholarly documentation.
The last three religious cycles of human spiritual evolution demonstrate a similar pattern to the Piscean/Christian aion. During the religious aion of Taurus (4000-2000 years ago) humans worshiped nature gods. Early in that period gods were natural forces. Like Taurus the bull, they were solid and immutable. These gods were originally imaged as amorphous or animal-like controlling weather, seas, and food sources. Prayers were pleas or gratitude for favorable gifts from nature.
Religious images slowly changed such that by 2000 BCE these nature gods became anthropomorphic with personalities. The personalities of the gods were the projected human behavioral patterns (archetypes). The collective psychic evolution had moved from oblivious forces like the weather to recognizable personality patterns in humans, expressed in the stories of the anthropomorphic deities. People attributed human behaviors to the actions/influence of the corresponding gods who acted out similar behaviors.
In the following Aires aion (2000-0 BCE) gods evolved from individuals with specific domains into a hierarchy with male dominance. The aion culminated in monotheisms wherein the minor deities were finally eliminated and a single all-power god was accepted. This hierarchical organization mirrored the human development of city states and small kingdoms. Governments were structured similarly with male hierarchies led by single all-powerful kings. Zeus, king of the gods, predated the transition to Yahweh in Judaism and Allah in Islam, monotheistic male gods. Earthly pleas were directed to kings; spiritual pleas to a monotheistic god.
States of human possession by archetypes are common. Persons possessed by archetypes unconsciously act out the behavior patterns of the gods they emulate. Lovers (Aphrodite, Casanova, Marilyn Monroe) are wild, reckless, and polygamous. Warriors (Ares) are brutal killers. Government leaders are grandiose and often womanizers (Zeus, JFK, Clinton, etc.). Homemakers (Hestia, Martha Stewart) are quiet guardians of home life.
Religious evolution’s next stage, the Piscean aion (0-2000 c.e.) showed that the human collective spirit’s agenda was to share the monotheistic god’s divinity with individual humans. God (the human collective spirit) needed to incarnate into man: thus Christ and Muhammad became carriers of incarnated divinity. The need of the collective psyche (human god) included an evolutionary agenda for individual persons to feel divinity. The Pisces symbol of two fish at right angles echoed the religious dualism of the vertical: heavenly-good-god-masculine-spirit, versus the horizontal earthly-bad-satanic-feminine-flesh. Jesus is imaged as a sacrificial lamb. Jung comments in Aion that in one sense killing the lamb (crucifixion) is a symbol of ending the Aires (the ram) aion. The baby sheep is simultaneously a symbol of the birth of a new aion in Pisces and a source of spiritual nurture (communion).
Jesus, and to some extent Mohammed, exhibited human eros. They preached compassion, caring, acceptance, and love. Eros is still a trait/god in the collective unconscious. The parables of Jesus showing his kindness are evidence that eros is striving to incarnate into human consciousness.
Religious evolution is a slow process requiring hundreds of years of change. The transition from nature gods to anthropomorphic deities took a thousand years to become ensconced in culture. Similarly the Piscean aion began with a backlash against Christians who were crucified, murdered, and denigrated for hundreds of years before the Roman Catholic church was consolidated in the 4th century, Islam in the 7th century.
Once consolidated, Christianity was relatively stable for the next 500-600 years (second quarter of the aion cycle, i.e. the medieval period). Islam is unravelling more slowly. Evidence of its unravelling is the vicious backlash against women by groups like the Taliban. Evolution continues inexorably. That god became man-like in Jesus presaged divinity becoming conscious in actual men. The Magna Carta (1215) eroded the deification of kings. The Renaissance saw creativity move from god to humans. During the final 500 years of the Piscean aion the duality of good spirit and bad profane has decayed as the Aquarian aion has begun. The profane earth, feminine, and horizontal networks (opposing vertical hierarchies) are gaining spiritual value.
What the Aquarian (water bearer) aion will eventually consolidate is conscious awareness, water being a metaphor for unconscious contents brought into consciousness. Humans will consciously make informed choices. For example, the Christian aion of “be fruitful and multiply” will give way to population control as humans choose sustainability of life on a planet with limited resources. The song, “The Age of Aquarius,” is quite accurate. Its lyrics include: harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more falsehoods or derisions, mystic revelations, and the mind’s true liberation. Truth and revelations are making unconscious contents conscious (“water bearing”). Harmony, sympathy, and trust are the return of eros.
What does this spiritual evolution have to do with our end of the world doom and gloom? Everything! Hang in there.
Jung empirically studied history and cultures across the planet. He concluded that evolution of religion is cyclical and in the hard wiring of our species. This human psychic hard wiring is exposed in religious texts and the arts. For our angst discussion concerning the world’s end we next consider the stories of apocalypse.
Why the apocalypse? Because the doom and gloom we feel is our intuitive knowledge of the incipient end of the world, aka an apocalypse. The human psyche’s sense of this end is expressed in movies, books, and religious texts. In the Bible apocalypse is the theme in Revelations.
There are hundreds of dystopian movies, television shows, and books about post-apocalypse worlds of desolation and despair. Take heart, it is a basic human fear. Once we understand more of its content our fear will lessen.
The New Testament ends with the Book of Revelations. Edward Edinger is also a great expositor of Bible scripture. The short synopsis is that Jesus returns to earth in a rage of retribution. He releases his true followers from Hell and marks the foreheads of people whether they go to heaven or not. Then he viciously unleashes plagues that destroy the rest of humanity. There is no kindness nor forgiveness. Intuitively we knew Jesus had a mean side. As the Son of the Father he expresses the cruel narcissistic rage of Yahweh.
Currently we are experiencing a psychological response to an active apocalypse. The Christian Piscean aion has ended and the Aquarian aion has begun. Apocalypse literally means “apo” (derived from) “calypse” (the hidden). Revelations is the uncovering (revealing) of what has been hidden or secret. Fundamentalists believe what will be revealed is the kingdom of the hereafter and an ultimate punishment of non-believers. To Jung what is revealed in each apocalypse is a new order of spirituality. Previously worshipped “gods” become understood as behavioral patterns (archetypes). The Christ figure in the Aquarian aion already has become (for those already spiritually transitioned to the Aquarian aion) or will become (those still in the Piscean aion religious container) the archetype of resurrection, i.e. the ability to die (give up one pattern) and experience rebirth (adopt a new pattern).
Apocalyptic angst is an appropriate response to Revelations. Those fixed believers in the old tradition side with their god and are elated. They exalt in the destruction of the world and the death of non-believers. They feel that their sacrifices for their religion are being rewarded. Their world view is immortality with everlasting life, a denial that they are mortal. They identify with God and heaven. They have no sympathy for the decimated earth left behind. They are unconcerned with climate change as the earth need no longer exist.
The opposite side, the non-believers, accept the transition to the new aion by embracing change, a new image of divinity, and water bearing (ego consciousness with integration of spiritual with physical). They are living the Christian motif of death and resurrection regarding spiritual transformation. They sanctify the earth and life for future survival.
How is this playing out happening today? In the U.S. President Trump is possessed by the archetype of the apocalyptic god. He is filled with narcissistic rage demanding retribution. Upon entering office, he immediately freed the Jan 6 rioters (same as Jesus emptying purgatory). Next he embarked on a program of total destruction of woke (opposite groups who reject his agenda). Health institutions, universities, international aid, treaties, NATO, prior U.S. political allies, solar energy, FEMA, Medicaid, critical race theory, LTGBQ rights, free speech, the judicial system, etc. are being demolished akin to Jesus destroying the earth with his plagues. This is the vengeful apocalyptic god in full force. His followers are all in without protest. They revel in the apocalyptic destruction.
Those opposed to the Trump/MAGA retribution campaign feel the doom of this destruction accompanied by a gloom of no recourse. What feels mandatory for those transitioning to the Aquarian aion is the development of renewable energy, elimination of CO2 emitting fuels, the acceptance of all races and sexual orientations, the development of sustainable co-habitation with the non-human biosphere, and necessary reduction of human population and development. Their goals are the targets of MAGA retribution against the Aquarian agenda.
So are we doomed to extinction? Do we just drown? Not yet! Our river of collective will to survive throws us back onto land. That brings us back to the Psyche and Eros myth.
MYTHIC GUIDANCE TO REDUCE THE GLOOM
Psyche’s second task from Aphrodite is to obtain tufts of fleece from the golden rams of Zeus. Now these aren’t sweet little sheep. They are vicious beasts that gore to death anyone who approaches them. These murderous beasts belong to Zeus who is a metaphor of patriarchal power.
Psyche is again despondent and contemplating suicide. But nature in the form of river reeds instructs her to wait until dark when the rams fall asleep and then collect tufts of the golden fleece which have been scraped off into brambles.
What are the reeds of nature? They are the forces of life and evolution. The human collective has an agenda to ultimately return Eros to human consciousness. This will to survive is a mystery of divinity.
This task of gaining pieces of the golden fleece is a metaphor of how to obtain personal power from a toxic and vicious masculine authority. Nature’s indirect\thoughtful\feminine intuition is the approach to obtaining such power. In today’s economy it is disruptive technology that circumvents the system of established corporations. The entrenched “mano-sphere” of guns, laws, and police is a power structure that requires intuitive disruptive circumvention. Rejecting the established power base and gaining one’s “golden ram tufts” is exalting.
The really scary history from the last aion transition is that the Roman, pagan, and middle-eastern dynasties brutally resisted the implementation of the Piscean aion culture for nearly 500 years prior to consolidation of its religious containment. Jung in his book, Aion, warns that a similar era of barbarism is not unlikely over the next several hundred years. Hence to avoid succumbing to despair we can consciously be vigilant to circumvent these modern day golden rams of backlash retribution. We can take solace in our calculated resistance. Plus we intuitively know that as adopters of Aquarian aion culture, we are on the right side of destiny. Sustainability will come to pass. Eventually we will be vindicated as were the activists for democracy, abolition, gender rights, and feminism. Sadly drastic change takes time.
Lessening the doom and gloom of the backlash to the emerging Aquarian aion, individuals must sort their personal seeds. One seed is to evaluate where are you in the spectrum of acquiring the Aquarian principles of acceptance, sustainability, and debunking dogma. Another is where are you on the acquisition of a new god-image.
Polls show that nearly 1/3 of the current population have no affiliation or belief in the traditional religions. Another 1/3 are participatory but consider scripture as metaphor and God as a remote or dubious concept. That leaves 1/3 of the population as followers retained in the residual religious container of the Piscean aion. The latter include the religious right who are unlikely to ever accept a new religious structure. This knowledge reminds us to accept the gestation period for the spiritual transition to occur. Simply walking away lessens our gloom.
By god-image we mean one’s understanding of the mysteries of creation, life, death, spiritual forces, and the infinite cosmos. Gods are beyond our comprehension of how and why: the mystery of existence. Traditional gods (behavior patterns of the collective human unconscious) do have agendas and agency to effect their goals. The prior Piscean aion strove for a duality opposing divine against profane. The new Aquarian aion strives for consciousness of the inter-dependence of all creation organic and inorganic, human and not. Evolution is destiny and the Aquarian aion evolutionary agenda is a new social structure. To satire Shakespeare, “The fault lies not within ourselves, but within the stars.”
For me personally the new Aquarian age of revealing truths with reflection has evolved to a multi-level sense of the divine. What traditional religion told me was God’s intervention to me personally, I sense to be my personal center of psychic control, the Self. The Self is that mysterious agency that brings my dreams, my intuition, and my spontaneous responses, the lowest and personal level of divinity.
The next level of my divinity schema is the god of the human collective unconscious. My interpretation is that this god is the classical Piscean god that interacts with humans as tribes or nations, and constructs culture.
A higher level, beyond the human tribal god, is a biosphere god, a force whose agenda is life development of all species. Humans are just one small concern for this god of all life.
The next higher level is the earth god that creates continents, arctic ice lands, islands, volcanoes, etc.
Beyond earth the cosmic gods create new stars, galaxies, black holes, and whatever. I know not what gods exist beyond the visible universe. What I can believe is that these god levels beyond humans have an agenda of creativity that cares diddly squat about humans.
The Aquarian god-image accepts the un-explainable as divine mystery and rejects untenable dogma. I have no idea whether these levels of divinity have conscious intent, but clearly they have agencies to assert their evolution.
I have a wall in my home with my Aquarian aion god-images enshrined. The painted picture in the center includes my Self (green orb), the Aquarian age birth of a water bucket with the Aquarius waves symbols on it is delivering a baby from the earth. This infant is both the dawn (new aion) and sunset (end of Piscean aion). I commissioned an artist to paint it for me. The vision comes from a dream the gods sent me one night. Below to the left of the painting are photos of the earth god of a volcanic lava flow, and the work of a cosmic deity construction, a nebula spanning hundreds of light years. (I have a detailed description of my Birthing the Aquarian Age dream and painting on my website: ghellis.com)
If the Aquarian aion is destiny, as asserts Jung, it is nascent. We can evaluate our personal progress into its transition. For me I am well along in sustainability and its requirement to establish population limitation. I value the dignity and diversity of all races and sexual orientations. I am contained in a new god-image/religious structure compatible with the Aquarian energy to make conscious the unconscious. I’m only partially there on sustainability. I do have an electric car, solar panels, and geothermal A/C. But I’m a carnivore unlike my vegetarian wife. The killing of animals is unnecessary for our survival, but I haven’t made the leap. Additionally I have too large a house and lawn which unnecessarily wastes energy and resources. I did father the maximum of two children. Consciousness at least makes me aware I have accepted the Aquarian transition.
Returning to Psyche and Eros we find more guidance for reduction of doom and gloom. The collection of golden ram tufts requires circumvention of the brutal masculine hierarchy. There is no sugar-coating the potential malevolence of the entrenched power structures. To help understand one important unconscious force present in much of the American male psyche, I refer to a recent book, Cowboy Apocalypse.
In this book, author Rachel Wagner, professor at Ithaca College, describes a deep unconscious ethic in the American psyche, the cowboy. Americanism in her view includes the right to conquer the west without regard to its indigenous inhabitants (absent eros). The cowboy’s ultimate power is symbolized by his gun. The hero archetype is expressed in the cowboy as individualism. He alone must use his gun to implement his narcissistic view of a just world order.
This cowboy archetype explains much of America’s obsession with gun ownership. Gun power is an essential element of implementing American hegemony, individually and collectively. At a national level the U.S. has an existential need to have the world’s largest, strongest, and most heavily munitioned military. Our national fantasy is that we are white-hatted cowboys creating just world order according to Uncle Sam. This cowboy’s messianic attitude is a form of archetypal kingship. It is a one-sided belief in an American led world order (American hegemony) and the justification to kill to enforce it.
The American scourge of mass shootings is then a group of individuals possessed by the cowboy archetype, and their unconscious participation in the present apocalypse. The shooter feels the imminence of impending doom and reacts with vengeance using his only means of cosmic justice, his gun. Of course, this makes no logical sense on the surface, but psychologically he is responding to apocalyptic doom. The public is baffled at why he chooses indiscriminate victims. The victims have no meaning to him; the shooter is simply discharging his gun/agency in reaction to his apocalyptic angst. The cowboy’s unconscious logic is that “the world is ending; I must prevail; all must die; it matters not whom I kill.” The gun is his lone tool of salvation.
The followers of the apocalyptic god in Revelations were imprisoned or in purgatory awaiting their savior. These faithful prisoners were released in the vengeful god’s first action. In current affairs it was most significant that Trump released his minions from prison on day one. He also pardoned other felons to demonstrate to his followers that he is their genuine god of their apocalyptic vision. Their god is a doer, not an empty talker.
Like the biblical believers who accept and obey any of God’s edicts, Trump’s followers accept any sort of conspiracy tale that their god feeds them. Trump started with the birthplace of Obama, followed with the fraudulent claim of a “stolen election.” His adherents in turn distributed their own favorite conspiracy theories such as Q-anon, RFK’s anti-vaccine propaganda, the debunking of global warming data, the general evil of government, and the need to eliminate science research, public education, planned parenthood, national public radio, etc. The media and the political left are flummoxed by the right’s reversal from previous platforms. MAGA has an archetypal possession thus follows their leader-god wherever. Any edict from their god takes precedence to any prior allegiance to traditional conservative values such as deposing dictators, vilifying Russia, upholding the U.S. constitution, or defending the Bill of Rights.
The political left, the media, scientists, and thoughtful people are confused because they make the inaccurate assumption that there is logic behind the administration’s agenda. This is a huge error. The political left has no clue that they are dealing with a political coalition under the spells of archetypal possessions. Archetypes have no logic or conscience; they are spontaneous actions. The right is executing an agenda of their one-world-view. It is an agenda unconcerned with death or destruction. Destruction actually delights them as it promotes their unconscious desire to abet the apocalypse. They have one focus: a lethal vengeance against all forms of conservative dissent.
So the dilemma of dealing with Trump, the vengeful god of the apocalypse, his followers (MAGA), and the American cowboy archetypes of gun-toting one-world-view vigilantes, is threefold.
They have a one world view and willingness to destroy people and culture to implement it. They have acquired the political and fire power to assert their world view. We see this in military occupation of cities, and the revocation of social, educational, democratic rights, health services to the poor, immigrants, and non-white, non-christian, and gender minorities.
The personality types of Jung and Myers-Briggs, the E (extroversion), S (sensate), and T (thinking) sub-types tend to have one world views and are dominant in the American population, especially MAGA. Seeking an apocalyptic god is in their DNA.
The MAGA minions have an allegiance to their apocalyptic god (Trump) and blindly accept any course of action he pursues. To follow his agenda requires absence of eros because love, compassion and empathy for those they destroy would inhibit them.
Under archetypal possession the god followers obey without reflection. They accept any statements of their god: true or false. Those possessed by the American cowboy archetype are ready to use their guns. Both factions support a barbaric agenda without remorse.
We respond with WWPD (What would Psyche do?)!
One cannot kill an archetype, so one must detach from people possessed by archetypes. In the Psyche myth the river reeds tell Psyche to wait until dark when the rams are asleep. This is disruptive technology: the power mongers don’t know they are being usurped as they are asleep to ongoing change. One should not engage the rams (MAGA). The reeds are from nature and actions that defy nature such as environmental destruction, over-population, excessive development, and water depletion will naturally erode their power. Hopefully this can be achieved through the political process and not require civil war.
We cannot underestimate the fire power of the political establishment and the gun toting cowboys. Usurping their power is not possible by trying to convert the MAGA: archetypal possession does not respond to logic. Quietly motivating the 30% of non-voters to align with the conscious sustainability of the Aquarian aion has a greater chance for success. The alternative, a civil war, will likely end the American democratic experiment. If civil war occurs we can lessen our gloom by accepting that change is inevitable in a fourth turning.
Our path to diminish doom and gloom continues with insight from Psyche’s third task to appease Aphrodite. She must obtain water from the river, Styx, the flow of life and death. The catch is that if you get too close to the river or take too much water, you get taken into the river and perish. Her aid comes from Zeus who sends an eagle that dips a small cup into the river, thus obtaining just enough water for her. Symbolically Zeus (God of man) represents the entire human collective unconscious and his eagle our collective ethereal spirit. Thus when we contemplate the issues of life and death we must take just the right amount, and it requires spiritual assistance. We must live our own personal life and accept what the gods send us; not try to be gods.
We cannot take on more than we can handle without worrying about death or trying to live too much. This means we need to calm down and back off our apocalyptic angst: spiritual forces of human evolution will help us through. This is not an empty Pollyanna-ish aphorism. Zeus will send his eagle. We must clearly acknowledge that we are not gods. We are mortal and receive spirit when spirit is moved to deliver it. Taking just the right amount of life is itself an empowerment that we are doing our part and letting the gods handle the big picture. Ooooommmmm!
In each phase of Psyche’s journey to regain her beloved Eros she becomes progressively stronger in ego discernment and control of her own capabilities. For us to dissipate our doom and gloom, we are learning to think constructively (sort our seeds). We are utilizing interventions to reclaim the power usurped by the white male capitalist hierarchy (gathering ram tufts). We are obtaining a balanced personal life (taking just the right amount of the waters of life) that grants us personal power without infringing on divine territory. Reclaiming power reduces doom. Accepting our human limits allows us to forego the worry of “doing it all.” An important corollary to feminine empowerment is that masculine eros unconsciously responds with enlightenment and maturity as we describe in Eros below.
Psyche’s final task is to travel to the land of the dead and obtain a container of Persephone’s beauty cream for Aphrodite. She is again despondent and again decides to kill herself. She ascends a tower with the intent to jump off. Before she leaps the tower speaks to her and lays out instructions on how to complete Aphrodite’s task. She must take two coins to pay Charon, the ferryman who will take her across the river, Styx, to the underworld. One coin to go; one to return. She should keep them in her mouth which will prevent her from eating in the underworld. Should you take any food in Hades you are doomed to stay for eternity. Next she is instructed to bring honey cakes as treats to distract Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades, so she can enter.
The metaphors of the coins and the treats for Cerberus are paying the price of success, i.e. doing the conscious work to tolerate the experience of visiting the reaches of the underworld. Often this means years of therapy to consciously accept one’s life. Psyche is also instructed to not eat or sit down in the underworld lest she stay eternally. This metaphor means that to experience life and have a future one must let go of the demands of ancestors (parental and societal complexes). Letting go means not taking nourishment (eating there) or spending too much time worrying about what others think (taking a seat in the underworld). We all know too many people stuck in the underworld who are unable to move forward in life. Our current task involves refusing to stay stuck in the doom and gloom which is preventing us from moving on.
One task of underworld work is to bring back the beautifying elements of what has preceded us, but no more. You cannot save the dead or complete their failed agendas. Psyche does this. She makes her way to Persephone, the queen of Hades, who, for whatever reason, readily gives Psyche a vial of her beauty secrets to take to Aphrodite.
Unbeknownst is that the vial contains eternal sleep. Now Persephone had a tumultuous relationship with the Olympian gods. It was Zeus that gave permission for Hades to abduct her. Aphrodite is Zeus’s aunt and they tend to work in concert. If eternal sleep was meanly intended for Aphrodite we don’t know, a mystery of the gods. Another possibility is that Aphrodite knows that the cream is eternal sleep. Hence she was laying her final trap for Psyche. As women typically succumb to curiosity (Pandora and Eve exemplify this archetypal pattern) Aphrodite knows Psyche will succumb to temptation and open the vial. Thus jealous Aphrodite might dispose of her nemesis for once and all. Whatever…???
The point is that Psyche gets the vial of cream, pays Charon his second coin, and makes it back to the living world. She’s done, her doom and gloom is abated. For us, having done our underworld work of leaving the past behind us and moving toward the future is a huge step toward doom and gloom reduction.
But we and Psyche are not done. Psyche is human after all, and what woman could resist the finest make-up in the universe? She just wanted a little dab of extra beauty, despite already being so beautiful that Eros fell in love with her and Aphrodite was insanely jealous of her. So Psyche opens the vial and falls into an eternal sleep. Life is never easy and at some point we lose all energy to continue. Psyche’s eternal sleep is a metaphor for humanity’s loss of eros that has been asleep for 3000-4000 years, an eternity for the last 200 generations. Eternity is forever, but alas so are the GODS!
Eros is one eternal god (masculine relationship in the human collective), who wants to return to human consciousness (become awakened). In the myth Eros has matured in parallel to Psyche’s development. He defies his mother to pursue Psyche (becomes free of his mother complex as Psyche leaves the ancestors of the underworld).
This is an important metaphor. Male domination and cruelty toward women has unconsciously been fueled by fear of the powerful feminine, thus demonizing it. That Eros learns to stand up to his mother means he is no longer infantilized as the impish Cupid in her presence. He has matured into an individual who can express his love. As modern women have exerted their empowerment, eros has increased in men. One sees kind parenting by young fathers; one witnesses husbands who support their wives’ careers; men are forming kind loving relationships with other men. This is evolutionary evidence of Eros returning.
Enantiodramia (fated tendency of opposite karma to emerge) is a backlash to keep eros unconscious. Today we are witnessing a surge in right wing dictatorships, misogynistic groups of “man-o-sphere” on talk radio, and INCELs (involuntary celibate men) who are angry and confused why their attitude toward women precludes conjugal relationships. The road to a fully engaged masculine eros is unfortunately slow but fortunately fated to evolve.
The Psyche and Eros myth concludes with the mature, fully empowered Eros taking charge. He searches and finds the sleeping Psyche. He kisses her and she awakens. They are reunited consciously. Eros then takes her to Olympus and convinces Zeus to make her an immortal goddess. The Olympian pantheon then regales in a grand wedding. Later Psyche and Eros have a child, Pleasure.
PSYCHE AND EROS CONDENSED
In re-cap, the myth of Psyche begins with her in a blissful but unconscious state of marriage with Eros. The union dissolves when Psyche tries to see the fullness of Eros. He is wounded and can’t deal with fully expressing his feminine side of relationship; he flees. In order to regain her relationship with Eros, Psyche must develop her discernment (sort seeds), obtain a strong personal agency (learn how to deal with the patriarchy), gain a conscious balance of life’s processes; and let go of her ancestral and cultural influences to move ahead into the future. Most importantly she allows her natural spiritual forces to guide her. These are lifelong tasks, but the ultimate outcome of her growth and empowerment is the return of masculine eros. This mature relationship yields Pleasure. There is no greater experience in life than pleasure; it cannot co-exist with doom and gloom.
GENERAL SUMMARY
The pervasive doom and gloom we are experiencing is a collective force due to the coalescence of two powerful cyclical upheavals: a socioeconomic fourth turning and a psychological apocalypse from the end of the Piscean/Christian aion. As a collective phenomenon no one is at fault, but all are affected.
As doom and gloom is a collective spiritual issue, wisdom for explanation and assistance is available in the form of collective lore, especially myth. The myth Psyche and Eros is apropos to deal with inner despondency (doom and gloom) caused by outer collective turmoil.
Guidelines from the myth are to hone one’s differentiation of specific causes and potential interventions. (seed sorting)
Vigilance in resisting forces that perpetuate gloom require intuition for circuital depotentiation of those forces.
One must consciously live a balanced life, refusing over-investment in gloom and under-participation in resistance.
One must do the personal work of introspection to negate the negative influence of ancestors and culture with a commitment to future life.
Accept one’s humanity and allow the human collective spirit of relationship to generate true joy, the ultimate goal of human life.
This is the promise of the Aquarian aion: enlightenment, gender equality of agency, and the pleasure of fully engaged human eros.
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