Quest for the Elixir
This post is part of an ongoing series. If you’re new to it, you’ll want to read the introduction first: “Quest for the Elixir: Three Maps for the Journey”.
The Monomyth: Refusal of the Call
"The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life."
– Joseph Campbell
Pathways to Bliss (112-113)
At our current stage of the Monomyth, the hero has received the Call to Adventure and taken some tentative steps toward Adventure’s realm. How exciting it is to find new experiences and learn new things! But give up where he is? Uh… maybe not, at least not now, because he is not yet ready even to seriously consider stepping over that threshold between the familiar place where he is and the unknown. He needs now to pause until such time as he is ready. This is the Refusal of the Call.
The instinct to refuse the Call to Adventure is attributed in the Monomyth to the restrictive actions of the sinister “Guardian of the Threshold” (or “Guard” or “Watchman on the Threshold”), an intimidating personification of Fear. The hero is initially attracted to an adventure and makes some progress toward it. But the moment the ‘terrain’ becomes too unfamiliar, in one guise or another the frightening Guardian always appears to deter him from advancing into the unknown.
The Guardian has the most power over a person — and rightly so — during childhood. That’s when we first encounter him and he is most effective. Childhood is a temporary period of dependency on adults for all needs and training, and for protection from danger until the child is able to protect and provide for himself. Basically, the child stays in the ‘nest’ and gets ‘fed’.
Since before he can remember, the child has been safely growing within the family mold, learning the habits and ways of the adults who are raising him. Those are apparently the ways that have always kept his family alive, comfortable and safe, even if less than perfectly blissful. They are the ways he’s used to and trusts, the only ways he really knows — in contrast to the formidable unknown, where he couldn’t know what to expect or how to survive. They make up the foundation of his life, on which he depends, and the loss of which is his greatest fear.
"The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure." ~ Joseph Campbell
The ways of the family are those within the boundary that the child’s elders enforce and warn him not to cross. What would a child have to lose by crossing the forbidden boundary to the realm beyond familiar safety? Like a flightless baby bird falling out of its nest, everything. We need enough time to ‘grow wings’ before we can fly safely out of our familiar ‘nest’. Hence the function of the Guardian of the Threshold, who tends to appear and raise doubts via watchful elders during childhood, and via instinctive feelings at other times in life whenever we approach the unknown.
In our Wizard of Oz example, Dorothy has set out on the dirt road with Toto in answer to her Call to Adventure. After crossing a bridge, she encounters an unfamiliar scene and an unknown neighbor. “Professor Marvel” is peculiar but friendly and kind. Once he understands Dorothy’s intentions, he takes on the role of a protective elder.
In this example, an impressive verbal warning is enough to deter the young runaway from dangers of the unknown. With an exotic story and his crystal ball, the “Professor” easily invokes a Guardian-inspired fear in Dorothy, who immediately forgets adventure and rushes homeward to comfort and save her beloved Aunt Em.
In cases where a verbal warning doesn’t suffice, the Guardian of the Threshold may appear in some other way. I’ll give you a second example from my own family.
When I was a child, my Grandmother Zenna used to tell me stories about her own 1890s childhood in a family of Irish Americans with what she would have called a “comical” sense of humor. They lived on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, probably not unlike Dorothy Gale’s home.
One day some item from the local village was needed, and the family’s horse and buggy weren’t available. Young Zenna and her slightly older sister Maud were sent on a walking errand to fetch the item. Though old enough to walk it, they were small girls, and it would be quite a long hike for them. As they started out on the dirt road in afternoon daylight, they were instructed not to dillydally in the village, but to come straight home with the item. In addition, they were given a stern warning to be home before dark.
Zenna and Maud walked to the village and fetched the required item. And got distracted by things going on in the village. And dillydallied. And forgot all about the time. The sun was sinking out of sight by the time they remembered they should be on their way home and began their trek back to the farm.
As the girls approached the farm, the sun was long gone, the sky had been dark for some time, and the long, lonely country road had become shadowy and eerie. They were both feeling nervous about their lateness and hoping they weren’t in for too much trouble.
At last the sisters were within view of the family farmhouse, when suddenly their nervousness turned to sheer terror. Immediately ahead of them on the road loomed the towering, solid black figure of a stranger in a long coat and hat, all features concealed in ominous shadow. He wasn’t walking, but stood facing them squarely in motionless silence, blocking their path!
Too terrified to scream, the girls bolted off the road to the safety of their house as fast as their young legs could carry them.
Zenna and Maud had a sister several years older than they. Unlike her younger sisters, Jessie was heavy set and tall. She had charge of the house that day because their parents were away, and it must have been she who sent the girls to the village. I can picture Jessie at the farmhouse window at sunset, watching the road for the girls’ expected return. She would still have been watching as the sun sank out of sight, leaving the road in deep shadow, and still her young sisters had not come home. No doubt there was a wry grimace on her face as she strode to a closet, rummaged for a man’s old black coat and hat, and walked out to stand in the shadowy road, silently facing the village and waiting….
Cancer
All three of the Water signs are about feelings. The Water signs express neither dynamic motivational energies like the Fire signs nor intelligent connective energies like the Air signs. They aren’t active at all, but rather receptive and responsive to the active energies around them.
In Pisces, feelings flow and grow, seeking attachment in response to positive imaginary scenarios or numinous dreams. In Scorpio, feelings ebb and reform in response to withdrawal or loss of objects of attachment. Cancer is the sign of contained and settled feelings, where attachment is neither anticipated nor relinquished, but fulfilled and purposeful.
The Cancerian style is basically conventional, humble, and happy in the rhythm of a predictable routine with things safely under control. To keep a hypnotic mood of peaceful contentment flowing as smoothly as possible, Cancer refrains from “making waves” and avoids jarring disruptions. Appreciative of protections and security, Cancer is instinctively supportive of authority, complying easily with rules, minimizing burdens and problems.
As there are feelings we like and others we don’t like, we might experience the positive or the negative side of Cancer. Positively, we feel satisfied, content, and grateful in the security of our arrangement, attached to something or someone consistently beneficial and supportive, and reciprocating happily with domestic comforts and nurturing activities.
But if we’re experiencing the negative side, we feel uncomfortable and “crabby”, stuck in claustrophobia with someone or something we feel should be more or differently supportive than they are. Our dependency might be resented for exaggerated neediness, or maybe controls imposed are excessive or somehow unhealthy. Something is out of balance, and needs aren’t being satisfactorily met.
In an astrological chart, houses represent the various ‘departments’ of life, and the places where they function. The natural house of Cancer is the 4th house, located at the bottom of the wheel as shown above. That’s the house of family, home, and roots, and the sign on its cusp describes the kind of home life we were used to as children and tend to recreate as adults. It also describes our experience of our nurturing parent, while the structuring, breadwinning parent is described by the (opposite) 10th house.
In the language of astrology, planets function as ‘nouns’ or ‘verbs’ that represent or express the various energies of life. Each sign reflects the qualities of the planet which rules it. The sensitive Moon is the only planet with a feeling function, and Cancer is the only sign it officially rules. However, the other two Water signs are really lunar also, because they are also about feeling. Their official classic rulers are Fiery planets that power emotional development and change. Expansive, optimistic Jupiter (along with imaginative Neptune) rules gestational Pisces, and sharp, aggressive Mars rules the culling in Scorpio.
"A complex is a cluster of energy in the unconscious, charged by historic events, reinforced through repetition, embodying a fragment of our personality, and generating a programmed response and an implicit set of expectations." — Carl Jung
This quote from Jung perfectly describes the astrological Moon. Impressionable and childlike, the Moon is the preserver of the personal complex; it’s one spherical memory sponge. It remembers everything a person experiences, consciously noticed or not, and stores the memories and associated feelings in the unconscious. All of our habits, good and bad, are ‘programmed’ in our Moon, mainly during childhood, there to stay unless they’re ‘reprogrammed’ later. Because of our Moon we can form good habits early in life, so that we don’t have to think consciously about every single thing we do. It makes sense that the Moon is the ruler of Cancer, the sign of the child and family, and that a child’s Moon sign is more prominent in his life than his (as yet undeveloped) Sun sign.
Our feeling responses to new events include programmed feelings associated with similar events in our past. Like the light and dark sides of the physical Moon, we carry memories of happiness and approval in familiar situations (the light side) as well as unpleasant memories and fears of the unknown (the dark side). Our Moon is generally helpful to us, but sometimes an unhealthy habit may indeed call for conscious ‘reprogramming’.
Lunar people tend to be tribal, and can be moody or cranky if they’re uncomfortable. Basically they’re gentle, nurturing, sympathetic, and caring people, especially among those they know well.
The Guardian (The Devil)
YIKES! Who is this evil-looking creature? It’s the tarot bogeyman, that’s who! Not that there isn’t real evil in the world, but this guy isn’t it. The traditional tarot calls him “The Devil”. I call him “The Guardian”, because that’s what he’s called in the Monomyth. He’s not really evil, but he’d better appear to be, because his only purpose is to frighten us. He exists to deter us from stepping over the threshold into the unknown, where real evil may be lurking, especially when we’re innocent children too young to cope with serious trouble.
bogeyman
/boo͝g′ē-măn″, boo͞′gē-, bō′gē-/
noun
A menacing, ghost-like monster in children's stories.
(by extension) Any make-believe threat, especially one used to intimidate or distract.
— from Wiktionary, Creative Commons
In the ominous darkness of a solar eclipse stand a man and a woman with horns and tails. Chains firmly attached to a block between them are looped like nooses around their necks. The eclipse implies the threat of the unknown, for the illuminating solar light of conscious awareness is blocked by the lunar body of unconscious programming. These people are deprived of even the secondhand reflection of moonlight, for they are shown only the Moon’s mysterious dark side. That’s the stuff they haven’t noticed or don’t remember and don’t want to remember. Some of it may be good, but they don’t see it. There is no guiding light of personal awareness. There is only the dominating authority of the Guardian on whom the man and woman completely depend. And he has them paralyzed in fear.
The terrible Guardian, half man and half goat with bat wings and a grim scowl, sits perched on the block. His right hand is raised in a Vulcan salute; his left hand holds a torch, with which he ignites the man’s tail.
The Guardian’s scary appearance discourages any challenge to his power to control the situation. The Saturn glyph on his right palm proclaims his authority to contain his territory within a strict boundary. His Vulcan salute is a gesture of conditional blessing or benediction. “Don’t dare to cross this threshold!” his gesture warns, while assuring, “Stay safe within this boundary, for your own good.”
But with his left hand, the Guardian is stoking the fire of the man’s tail, fueling his desire. Clearly the man and woman are both in the primitive, animalistic mode, in which desire fuels the fight for survival. They want what they want, and the Guardian is either preventing them from pursuing that, or forcing them to keep what they don’t want, or both. Even as he restrains the man and woman, he exacerbates their frustration, enforcing contradictory decrees. They need protection, yet need also to be uncomfortable and motivated, lest they fail to develop further. The Guardian is both egging them on and buying them time.
The situation of the man and woman isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t supposed to be. At some point something’s got to give. But if we’re in it, what’s to be done? The answer depends on our readiness to be free of it.
If we’re really children, immature, naïve, and wild, we need to heed the Guardian and stay within his boundary until our development has prepared us to leave it. The unknown really is too dangerous for us now. We are attached to the Guardian because we need him, and his restrictions are truly a blessing.
If we’re adults, though, we should detach from dependency on external “authorities” that seek to manage our own legitimate responsibilities for us. This is the challenge of adolescence, when we begin to mature in earnest. If we can become our own authorities, we have better things to do with our energies than languish in the youthful frustration and resentment that initially stimulated our growth. That doesn’t happen overnight, but when it does, the unknown will become an appropriate field of exploration for us, and we can bypass the Guardian with increasing confidence.
Another kind of unhealthy attachment and dependency is addiction, another guise of the dreadful Guardian. Whether we’re addicted to a person or a substance, we don’t believe we can live without it, and it runs our life. Even a bad habit can block or interfere with our progress in life. This sort of trouble is unnecessary. We need to take control of our situation and go through the necessary steps to be free of it.
The chains of attachment around the necks of the man and woman are loose. They are only there because the man and woman believe they need them. What they really need is to develop the maturity, courage, and self respect it takes to remove them.
In divination, I read the Guardian as fear. Someone is afraid to move beyond their current situation because of some form of dependency or addiction, or is simply afraid of the unknown. Their fear may or may not be justified.
If it’s reversed, I read it as someone’s overcoming of a fear, possibly abandoning a dependency, and refusing to let it control him.
See other posts in this series here.