Book Reviews

IRON JOHN: A Book About Men, by Robert Bly; Addison- Wesley, Reading. MA . 1990; hardcover.

KING, WARRIOR, MAGICIAN, LOVER: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette; Harper Collins, San Francisco. 1990; hardcover.

Long ago in the seventies, in an inchoate “men's group” which had no sense of any national “men's movement,” the name of Robert Bly was never spoken. Someone in the group of professional men may have known his work as a poet and critic, but his name never came up. With no Bly, we were discussing the changes we were experiencing as men in terms of Jung and Jungians, Campbell, and Castaneda's don Juan Matus- especially don Juan.

We loved it when don Juan would accuse the comically over-intellectualizing Carlos of “indulging,” since we all knew that the intellectual life could be an evasion of the maturing process. Rather than deal with some of the feelings generated by inventories of our male shortcomings created by ex-wives and feminist writers, we could “rationally” discuss the archetypes of animal/animus or look for some faint trace of the heroic journey in our lives in academia. But don Juan would be there at the end of the evening, tapping derisively on our shoulders, laughing and letting us know that internal and external dialogues can be nothing more than indulgence and evasion.

The men's movement of the eighties and nineties, however, seems inseparable from Bly's name, his craggy face, his droning voice, his wicked smile. And his long awaited Iron John .is a powerful expression of the mature masculine spirit. Bly's insight into contemporary and ancient history, his self-knowledge and observational skills, his poetry and his storytelling skill make this guided “depth-tour” of the Grimm brothers tale of “Iron John” an experience which is clearly not an indulgence. The account forces one to ask tough questions and respects grief while disdaining whining. (And I cannot imagine don Juan telling Bly to “Shut up!”)

King, Warrior. Magician. Lover by Moore and Gillette, however, is a different case. Getting a clear focus on what we mean by and want from human maturity is an important task for both sexes. Moore, a Jungian analyst, and Gillette, a mythologist, definitely have the scholarship and experience of working with contemporary men to provide a useful framework for delineating the mature masculine.

That framework includes an analysis of each of the four archetypes in the title which contrasts the mature realization of the archetype with two polarized immature examples of the stunted archetype. Thus, the King in His Fullness is contrasted to the Tyrant and the Weakling, and the Hero is contrasted to the Bully and the Coward . The framework can be interesting in itself for the academically inclined. And yet this work seems to lack the fullness and vitality of Iron John. In some ways it seems like the outline of a stronger work which may come later from Moore and Gillette, after they have experimented more with the framework. And I hear my inner vision of don Juan's mocking voice telling me that playing with these archetypes can be just an indulgence.

–ANTONY LYSY

Summer 1991

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD: New Writings by Spiritual and Psychological Leaders, edited by Benjamin Shield and Richard Carlson; New World Library, Sari Rafael, CA, 1990; paperback.

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GANDHI: Conversations with Spiritual Social Activists, by Catherine Ingram; Parallax Press, Berkley, CA, 1990; paperback.

THE FIRESIDE TREASURY OF LIGHT: An Anthology of the Best in New Age Literature, edited by Mary Olsen Kelly; Simon and Schuster, New York; 1990; paperback.

A NEW CREATION: America’s Contemporary Spiritual Voices, edited by Roger S. Gottlieb; Crossroad, New York, 1990; paperback.

AT THE LEADING EDGE: New Visions of Science, Spirituality and Society, by Michael Toms; Larson Publications, Burdette, NY, 1991; paperback.

New age … new visions … new creation. Whatever the label, these five books share a sensibility, as they offer up a virtual feast of spiritual thought at the “leading edges” of the new spiritual experience and its relationship to science and culture. Some of the same people pop up ubiquitously in two or three of these books, yet each of the books also has its own character.

The Ingram book contains interviews never published before with Desmond Tutu, Joan Baez, Thich Nhat Hanh, Cesar Chavez, and others, and has a distinctive focus on social activism. The Shield-Carlson book is all new writings by the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Matthew Fox, David Steindl-Rast, and others.

The Kelly and Gottlieb books are both collections drawn from many sources; each contains dozens of short samples of the work of contemporary spiritual thinkers as diverse as Shirley Maclaine, Louise Hay, Fritjof Capra, and M. Scott Peck.

Toms offers up a sampling of interviews from his New Dimensions public radio series, including Joan Halifax, Rupert Sheldrake, David Bohm, Huston Smith, and others.

-WILLIAM METZGER

Summer 1991

THE LANGUAGE OF THE GODDESS, by Marija Gimbutas; Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1989; hardcover.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE GODDESS: A Symbol for Our Time, by Elinor W. Gadon; Harper & Row, Sun Francisco, 1989.

THE HEART OF THE GODDESS, by Hallie Iglehart Austen; Wingbow Press, Berkeley, 1990; paperback.

The Goddess peers at us from the covers of many books these days as she reenters society jaded from too much science and rationality. Women and men are looking to her more and more for inspiration and are invoking her spirit to create a new pattern of partnership, peace, and harmony. Three Goddess books in particular are notable for their profuse and stunning images.

In The Language of the Goddess anthropologist and prehistorian Marija Gimbutas documents the prehistoric Goddess era with over 2000 symbolic artifacts (shown in black and white) dating from Neolithic times, She adds more archaeological data to the growing evidence that the Goddess as Earth Mother was worshipped for millennia through a vast area of Europe to the Near East. Gimbutas attempts to recreate the worldview of these prehistoric agrarian cultures by interpreting the images they left. For example, she cites the persistence of images of snakes as a sign of devotion to snake Goddesses and Gods as symbols of the life force, of fertility and increase, of regeneration and healing. The scope of the material is dazzling, and one wants to accept the author's conclusions. However, skeptics could accuse her of reading too much into the designs of these people whose inner lives are lost in the mists of time. One wonders if the zig-zag or the chevron, for instance, always were meant to convey spiritual meaning, and if so if they had the same meaning from one culture to another.

However, Joseph Campbell is one who was convinced. In his foreword he writes. “The iconography of the Great Goddess arose in reflection and veneration of the laws of Nature.” For him “the message of [this book] is of an actual age of harmony and peace in accord with the creative energies of nature.”

In The Once and Future Goddess, art historian Elinor Gadon traces the vast sweep of history from the Ice Age to the present. Through 200 black-and-white and 50 color photos, along with full explanations, she illustrates the varied visions of the Goddess and ways of worshipping her through the ages. Yet, according to the author, “While the Goddess has indeed had many names, many manifestations throughout human history, she is ultimately one supreme reality.” The richly illustrated accounts reveal the feminine deity as earth-centered and body-affirming; not otherworldly; holistic; immanent and part of nature. The way of lie she inspires is peaceful and promotes harmony among men and women and with the natural environment. To bring her spirit into our times, contemporary artists from many backgrounds are reimaging the Goddess as a symbol of resacralizing the feminine in our male-dominated world, and their creations are well represented in the book.

Again, the author's thesis is appealing. But when she tries to recreate the mindset of preliterate peoples, we could wish that she would distinguish more clearly between fact and interpretation and back up her interpretations more thoroughly. Still, this is a book that those who appreciate the Goddess will treasure.

The Heart of the Goddess by Hallie Iglehart Austen is not a scholarly treatise about the Goddess. Rather it is a visual meditation on some of her manifestations. The author has assembled beautiful images of seventy  Goddesses from cultures throughout the world, each a piece of sacred art that was at one time worshipped and revered. A description of the cultural background of each image is given. And for each Goddess a bit of a story or myth or a poem or song offers another mode for sensing her essence, as does a visualization, prayer or ritual prescribed for each. The gentle, meditative practices suggested for restoring an appreciation for the sanctity of life are a welcome complement to the more aggressive methods of some environmentalists and feminists.

As more and more Goddess books come out every year, we realize, as a bumper sticker says, that “The Goddess is alive and magic is afoot.”

-SHIRLEY NICHOLSON

Summer 1991

THE EYE OF THE HEART: Portraits of Passionate Spirituality

by Harry W. Paige
Crossroad; paper.

The Eye of the Heart takes its title from a Lakota word describing a way of seeing that is "not with the eyes alone but with the heart," a way that is meant to complement our already well-developed faculties of logic and rational thought. Harry W. Paige links this idea with the Christian concept of faith, finding much contemporary Western spirituality to be without passion, the yearning for God that has been the subject of the poems of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the medieval mystics, and the Indian ecstatic poets.

In these accounts of his experiences, mostly in the American Southwest among Hispanic, Native, and Anglo Americans, the author not only paints a living cross-cultural portrait of other people's passionate spirituality, but also investigates the spiritual emptiness and isolation he himself feels in the midst of such experiences. Although his perspective is mainly Catholic, he looks at the "double lives" of Christian Native Americans, who see no conflict between older spiritual practices and Christianity, and at the inner conflict of an atheist parishioner.

Paige describes himself as a "head" Catholic, one who has seen through the eye of reason for most of his spiritual life. The experiences described in his book, consisting as they do of an inner journey or pilgrimage, lead him to feel a personal emptiness and a yearning for the spiritual passion he sees in others around him. "I would like to shed the shackles of the mind…allowing the imagination to soar to a…greater faith ."

Of course, an overabundance of passion can carry risks as great as any posed by excessive rationality. Even as the author describes his loneliness and detachment from true feeling, we read horrifying accounts of acts of penance committed in moments of passionate spiritual excess. Whether it is a Yuwipi healing ceremony, in which pieces of flesh are gouged from the arms of petitioners, or a dangerous reenactment of the Passion in northern New Mexico, where a secret society publicly scourges and crucifies one of their number who volunteers for the role of the Cristo . we realize the extent to which a world seen only through the eye of the heart can blind us. And yet, Paige's yearning, his sadness at not being able to feel his beliefs strongly, despite his genuine desires to share the strong feelings of the people he writes about, made this writer wonder which excess is worse. Broken bones sustained from falling under the weight of a 200-pound cross can heal - but what about a heart, broken or in disrepair from lack of use?

Memory is another element that plays an important role in The Eye of the Heart. The memories of a mother whose son died in war, of the priest of a deserted "ghost church" without a congregation, of the author's own Catholic childhood, all playa vital role In passionate spirituality. Eastern and Western religious rituals often have much to do with remembering a story; and when we think of the origin of our word "religion"- from a Latin word meaning "to bind back" - the elevation of simple, personal memories to an almost sacramental role in the awakening of passion seems to fit. We make people sacred-ancestors. saints, teachers - because of our present use of them to reconnect with a higher reality. Likewise, it is the memories we associate with a place whether it is a son's grave, a military cemetery, an abandoned church, or a hometown-and our use of them now that make a place sacred, either individually or collectively.

The Eye of the Heart is recommended both as a first hand account of spiritual practices in the Native Southwest, and as a tale of personal discovery and aspiration to spiritual passion.

-JEFF ZETH

Spring 1991