Conventional Christianity has become almost a different thing from what Jesus taught and lived. One can find, if one delves deeply into the early Christian religion and its esoteric heritage, a deeply mythic tradition that can be as liberating and illuminating as any Greek or other myth. It was in fact that discovery of the mythic dimension of the Jesus story and many of its tributaries that brought me back to Christianity after more almost years wandering through Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoist philosophy. As a small child with minimal exposure to Christian teachings, I often dreamed of Christ as a wild, fierce, fiery-eyed being who rushed out of clouds on a wild donkey towards me, hair streaming as he reached out to me - but not only to me - and I would awake wondering anxiously, What does he want me to know? Not just a saviour but a wild Hermes, perhaps, bearing a message that could transform the world if we understood it, a magician, I don't know what. The main difference for me between the mythic Jesus and other mythic characters is that Jesus spoke directly to humankind and speaks directly to the soul that cares to listen because, like Prometheus, he brings gifts, but gifts that each of us must individually accept and choose to use.
Hillman is indirectly criticizing Jean Shinoda Bolen's popular Goddesses in Everywoman/Gods in Everyman series where she used Greek Mythology as a kind of personality typology.
im playing j.s.bach in the background and it really gives you a hilarious mental image of hillman giving this lecture while expertly playing a piano :) R.I.P James.
A quote from Carl Jung, " To watch is not to love ", took me to the "In defense of Carl Jung" by Hillman from 2005 video which is the longest video I've seen ( over the weekend, not straight thru ) and now this video here, which I is quite fascinating and easy to follow along.
Wonderful. Thank you for posting this. Im a writer and I love that an explanation is not my gestalt, but it does confound me when I want an explanation from what I know will lose its conviction when I explain it.
This goes for engineering as well. Most to people have a driving passion for creating something that works for the pure aesthetic itself. To me thats enough.
I have a pretty amazing autobiographical memory. I grew up mormon and as young as 3 or 4 I was wondering if what I was being taught was literally true. I think the human mind in its natural state yearns for truth, and myths are nothing more than an explanatory model for our universe back when people knew way less. It irks me how people who defend mythology gloss over the difference between literal belief and believing in stories. Me thinking about the lessons in Cinderella was a lot different than literally thinking I was going to burn in hell fire for touching my weiner.
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know." - Socrates in Plato's 'Apology'
I hope this helps “Hell” doesn’t exist. It’s Norse mythology. Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus exist and were all mistranslated as “Hell” in English bibles. Find out what Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus are and you have a new and God-glorifying theology. (Hint: none of those three are pagan torture chambers where unbelievers are roasted for eternity). There is no place in the bible that says if you die in your sins your spirit or soul will be punished in hell. Here's why NOT The word hell is (Anglo Saxon) this word would have never been used by Jews it was invented. the Jews spoke of Sheol translation (the grave) or pit or they talked of Gahenna yet the king James translation has deceived many into believing Greek mythology mingled with Christianity. 1 Timothy 6:16 only god is immortal not your soul nor mine
>>-- 19:50 - With our Explanatory Minds we've turned the Myths into Types. We turn God and Goddesses into Types... -- 23:33 - - 33:38 -- used the myth of Demeter and Persephone || Persephone and Hades to show that ✨Innocence 🌀constellates 🌋Horror. -- 35:38 - - from the Greek Point of View, from Socrates p.o.v. that is The Sin, Ignorance is The Sin. and Ignorance and Innocence go together.
0:30- ! - Why you MUST study Myths: Ppl who don't study Myths are Mythic-ally Deficient. There can be mythical dysfunction in the culture, because if one doesn't study Myths - one becomes a willi-nilly Fundamentalist. 6:04 - ! -
great mind is james. interesting to hear him deride innocence and childlike innocence in particular. I think he misconceives the beauty of what this mean, or the potential within it however. I don't know if it is intellectual or cultural, perhaps he sees the simplistic idiocy of the US as innocence and conflates this with childlike innocence. TO me the innocence of seeing things for the first time and becoming engrossed in them is only ever from the childlike perspective. this is something worth preserving and even trying to capture within the adult psyche.
Josh Scannell I hear what you are saying... I also hear what he is saying. I think that old proverb to be like children indeed means to look at the world with the wonder of a child. I think the world has misconstrued the proverb, if you look at the middle ages also called the "dark ages" where nearly all of Christian Europe was ignorant and even the Pope, Gregory basked in his own ignorance a prime example of how people take a good idea and twist it. I doubt Jesus was the originator of this proverb all though it is said that it came from his lips, it is a universal truth. Children have unabounding curiousity, they do not bask in their ignorance, they have no pride in it, they are quite humble about it, yet people took the idea and killed because of it. The killed the wisom religions and those who taught it...Why? The great Socrates was supposedly a very wise man, but when did he ever give a theory of his own. According to the dialogues given by Plato Socrates never gives any theories, but he asked questions, a lot of questions, his questions of course had aims such as bringing those he asked questions of to discover the folly of their own beliefs. Some people out right hated Socrates because he was master at dispelling the beliefs people held sacrad, and had pride in... it is very much a contadiction to claim to be childlike and innocent, yet kill those who do not follow and believe what you do. I think this is what he was trying to convey, but that is very difficult to do so when we have been brainwashed into a certain idea of what it means. To me being childlike isn't to be innocent or ignorant, but to simply see things with the wonder of a child. We our linguistic and must name everything, so when we go through the world we must label everything and that takes the wonder out of it because we think since we name one we know them all, so when walking through a forest we can't just go with the mind of a child, but we must call each tree what it is, no longer is each tree a beautiful individual, but it is just a maple or a pine, so we automatically even unconsciously, but see each tree from that point of knowing what it is. This goes for all things and it really takes the wonder out of the world, because we think we know it, but really the world is still very much a mystery despite our ignorance in thinking we know it.
You make a very important point, Josh. There is of course childlike innocence - which many maintain well into adulthood - and the innocence of a mature psyche that has gone the long journey through worldliness, loss of faith, loss of trust, bitterness, cynicism, intellectualism, arrogance etc. and in some way or other has realised that it has become a narrow, tight, cut up thing, unfulfilled, its potential unrealised. The shedding of all that (or the collapse of it, as it is often not voluntary) can open the gates of perception to such an extent that one cannot but realise that all he or she or the society knows is only a tiny part of reality. Some I think are so disturbed by that they snap the gates shut, but others are bedazzled by this greater reality and its infinite potentiality, and like children, open their hearts in wonder. Stay in that wonder, that openness long enough and, even if you have not reached that understanding before, you will come to sense that beneath, within everything is a loving supportive consciousness, and to trust it. When one lives in that awareness, that is, I think, innocence, conscious innocence.
Josh Scannell Hillman always brings in wisdom that is lacking. His point was that there is an overemphasis on the worship of innocence in our culture. The other side of innocence is stupidly and ignorance. We seem to have an abundance of it and so he overemphasises the wisdom of senex or The Wise Old Man to balance it out, He also overemphasises on other things to make a point when there is gross imbalance eg we are obsessed with too much navel gazing in psychotherapy so he goes in the opposite direction. I think he’s an extremely important thinker in our self obsessed and oversimplified culture.
Listening to people stories will always remind oneself that myths are living. I work with a girl who had parent that were founders of a hermetic cult she is one of seven biological sisters. She was an orphan is now a mother and is living with her boyfriends parents. She was beaten by her two first husband's and has two daughters. The myth runs deep in places where chaos and mystery are still living.
Hillman is brilliant but he also overindulges in white guilt and if misunderstood he may even be the origin of it. There’s a great deal more to Hillman than that but it is too obvious to ignore and too rarely recognized.
I'm glad someone else pointed this out. Its enough to make one suspicious. And it's interesting that you suspect he may be the progenitor of it. His age fits the timeline of how this attitude progressed post WW2 (relatively when he was born) and exponentially increased since the 'free love' movement (relatively his academic/young professional years). Now the objectively paranoid inquisition takes hold of me. Is his public stance something of an organic blossoming of the times he was raised in? Or are his professional credentials a construct of handlers who have political goals to achieve? Have any of us been able to construct a line of thought outside the influence of political correctness? The evolution of thought is fascinating but I digress.
I have one more desperate cry for attention... "BEWARE OF THE DICHOTOMIES"! They are not our games. Play them and you risk defeating only your own will with the will of another.
Your timeline is off. Hillman was born in 1926. He served in WW II, he wasnt born then. To claim he was the originator of white guilt is just preposterous.
