Blood Brotherhoods

. This is the manifestation of the Terrible Father, the father who destroys his own children, just as the Abrahamic god promises to destroy the whole world if his children are not obedient to his higher order. A significant part of the patriarchal matrix is the appearance of the Son, or of the Hero, who represents the individual ego. Jesus is the good son who models obedience and offers a way for his followers to avoid the promised apocalypse. But just as there is the good son there is also the evil son. King Arthur was eventually killed by his own son, Mordred. There is a family tragedy at play here. It contains the awful reality of patricide, fratricide and incest. This drama is played out everyday as sons and daughters attempt to create a separate identity and escape the psychological games of the family. Some never make it and remain locked in a psychological inner family. This is an important point because it happens to cultures as well. The symbol par excellence of the final escape from the family is marriage. It is the union of male and female which allows a new round of birth to occur. In patriarchal societies the daughter is given away by the father into the care of the husband. The marriage ceremony is a rite of passage into full adult responsibility (and marks the taming, the civilising, of the wild youth). It recapitulates the ancient union of the god and goddess and it is a theme I will return to at the end of the chapter. The above themes develop the archetypes of the father, the individual and civilisation, the patriarchal matrix. Joseph Campbell explores these themes in his famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The psychologist C.G. Jung also elaborates on this theme.[xvi] There are many aspects of this grand narrative, sometimes the Hero is escaping the clutches of the Terrible Mother, at other times he is escaping the injustice of the Terrible Father. The Hero then undergoes a tremendous journey and through a series of challenges returns to the world with a greater understanding. The whole heroic cycle is a metaphor for the successful transformation of the psyche and it shows us what must be done in order to achieve the final goal. Unfortunately the whole idea of comedy and more importantly, tragedy, is that the Hero can also sometimes fail. These tales of error are important because they warn us that things can indeed go wrong, that if the archetypal pattern is not followed then there can be fatal consequences.

THE DEVELOPMENTAL TRAGEDY OF THE BROTHERHOODS