"…Christianity was mainly interested in repressing the chthonic gods and the emotions they constellate. In the realm of images, the repression was concentrated on the great god Pan, who came to personify the Christian devil. This meant that the Titans - who for the Greeks, personified evil, so to say - went unchecked, and thus what they represent in human nature was no longer reflected upon and, in the course of Western culture, got out of hand." 

Raphael Lopez-Pedraza, p.8.

In other words, Christianity let the titanic cat out of the bag.

We know that over the so-called Christian era - corresponding in astrological terms with the Age of Pisces - it is the God Pan, or more exactly, Dionysus, Christianity with its images of the Devil.

What concerns me, is that the Titans, or Titanism is now the new demonic!  We have to be careful of falling into dualistic traps.

By a denial of Titanism, by a denial of a titanic archetype, we deny the fact that we have titanic propensities, and we close the door to the eventual transformation of these energies.

"The Titans had no rites, no cult, and so they remained marginal to Greek cultural life with its images and forms."

Says Rafael Lopez-Pedraza.

According to the analysis that Zeus-Jupiter is nurtured by Nature, and is therefore, quintessentially Nature itself, the Zeusian Matrix of Nature would be polarized by the Titanic, who, in the case of Dionysus, dismember the Gods.

Zeus is not dismembered.

Osiris, Orpheus, Attys, Adonis and others are dismembered.

We would have to do an exhaustive survey of dismemberment in mythology, as a motif, and also continue this research into that reservoir of imaginal and mythical material, alchemy, where the myths take on new clothing, in new environments.

The Titanic dismembers Nature.

Now if we place this is context of Global Warming, the Ozone hole, and ecological genocide - it says that the Titanic energies are only concerned with the eventual destruction of Nature itself - of Life, Zoe itself. The intelligence of this strategy is perfectly expressed in the AIDS virus, and perhaps in CANCER, and takes us into the realm of lethal substances such as Uranium and Plutonium, which via the nuclear industry are also responsible for genetic deformities. To this we can add the titanic programs of cloning, genetic engineering and the other horrors that Hillman reminds us of.

The only conclusion that one can come to, is that the Titans are in control of this planet - or at least, they think they are.

We must never forget that Prometheus is, was titanic.

The titanic must be placed alongside the Promethean. Perhaps we have to distinguish between a positive and a negative Prometheanism. Which would suggest that Titanism too, has its good points. 


TECHNE AND THE TITANIC

Samten de Wet

“The Orphic story tells of the dismemberment of the infant Dionysus by the Titans at the instigation of the goddess Hera. Proclus saw in the scattered members of the god the multiple ubiquity of Plato’s “anima mundi,” and he saw in the preservation of the infant’s heart the soul’s unity; the Dionysian heart remained unaffected by the cruelty of the Titans. I associate the Titans with technique: they are the fabulous technicians, the mythical surgeons that operate the dismemberment and scatter soul into the world. Without them, Dionysus, reputed to be the god of theatre, would have remained a baby-god, and imagination would have remained in the crib, identified with the infant, as it remains for so many today. Titanic cruelty tears this baby-imagination apart, boils it, and casts it out into the world. The egocentric, unified imaginal body of the infant is torn into its different components, differentiated. Titans were said to have souls of steel, which fits our image of technique: the hard, arid, steel-like, analytic dissociation drills that actors are put through in “object-metaphor” exercises are a titanic endeavor, tearing apart the infant’s subjective vision, its innocent wholesome body, so that it may see the world, and even his own members, as “other.”

Enrique Pardo, “Pan’s “Theatre of the World”, Spring Journal 1989, pp. 76 -84.

 

James Hillman, 'AND HUGE IS UGLY.' Though some aspects of this lecture, which was given to the Schumacher Society, and published in RESURGENCE MAGAZINE, [No. 134] - have already dated - I still think it remains, one of the most valuable cries from the late-20th century that I have ever read.  I am by no means in agreement with everything that James Hillman says - but there are some very powerful core ideas, that still need amplification, attention and action.  I thought I would invite your responses, questions, networking and contributions, as you absorb this fascinating piece of thinking - and we could gather all this material, plus commentaries from myself, on a page on one of my Websites. 
Using HYPERLINKS - I will add material that can help to amplify the ideas - for example, the bibliographic reference to Kerenyi on Prometheus.
Anyhow, these are a few ideas - let me know how you feel… here some of the FEEDBACK

The original project is dated: July 06, 2001

 

FEEDBACK AND RESPONSES

24th July 2001

Samten, - Thanks for y'rs. - re y'r titanic thread, Richard Olds


'listen
to the white world -
its horrible exhaustion, from its immense labours,
its rebellious joints cracking
under the pitiless stars....

its blue steel rigidities,
cutting through the mysteries
of the flesh.

listen to their vainglorious conquests
trumpeting their defeats.

listen to the grandiose alibis
of their pitiful floundering.'

Aime Cesaire.


"Always leave some food

for the mice;

pity the moths,

and don’t light the lamp."

 

Thoughts like these

that the ancients had

are the living, life-giving Way

of us humans.

 

Without this,

we are nothing.

Huanchu Daoren


Speciesism

 

The Oxford English Dictionary

defines speciesism as

‘an assumption of human superiority,

leading to the exploitation of animals.’

 

" Mankind Above All ! ",

is the theme-song of the march of ‘Progress’.

 

It is the anthem of a cruel and brutal despotism

even now committing casual and routine genocide,

at the rate of an entire species every ten minutes,

eliminating up to fifty thousand species of living beings

from among us, forever, with each passing year.

 

Since we know that elephants, for example,

with cerebral cortices much larger than our own,

have complex social structures, language and culture,

how exactly does our ‘culling’ of elephants

differ from the mass murder of Jews, Tibetans or East Timorese ?

 

Ancient wisdom universally insists on the fraternity of all that lives;

while we, by contrast, regard our fellow living beings,

their bodies, their homes and their families,

as so many ‘resources’ for exploitation,

or as ‘vermin’, to be exterminated.

 

We have become inhuman.

 

It has been said,

 

" For hundreds and thousands of years,

the stew in the pot

has bred bitterness and discontent.

 

If you would know

the reason for chaos, for famine and war,

listen to the cry from the slaughterhouse

at midnight."


15th July 2001

Thanks for the James Hillman article. The subject matter is very much along the lines my own mind seems to travel most of the time. What puzzles me is why most people cannot see the glaring truth of the de-sensitizing power of the mass media, the modern opium of the people.

However, I think he misleads slightly with his thoughts on Buddhism. Sure, there is the 'profound insistence on the void' but this is not the end of the realization. Rather than this insight leading to a nihilistic attitude, to my mind it should lead to the awareness of the profound sacredness of life itself, as each and every form or being, which lasts only so long as one is aware of it, which is possible only if we take time out from distraction through 'retreat and meditation', which he seems to feel are antitheses to 'activism'. I would think that worthwhile activism can only be performed with sufficience insight which only comes in silence, don't you think?
I would say that Buddhism (as I understand its principles) positively embraces every point he has raised .....

"to begin where we actually are right in the middle of the huge and the ugly ..... don't escape by looking of origins or solutions. Just begin in the midst of the mess."

"The world does not ask for belief. It asks for noticing, attention, appreciation, care."

I don't think Buddhism espouses 'absence of God' in the way he is describing. Buddhism says more like "If you must have a God, know it as yourself, and consequently behave accordingly."

Oh well, if that is not what Buddhism says, then I say it!
Joanne Taylor, Ireland


Thank you my brother for sending me this article. I have read it and shared it with the members of the JUNG-L discussion list. I agree with you that Hillman has given a powerful voice to action.
I am by no means in agreement with everything that James Hillman says - but there are some very powerful core ideas, that still need amplification, attention and action.

Exactly! No one has yet got all the words right, but there is a definite pointed direction. In a way, it is like a novel where a sub character sets the hero off into another direction and set of adventures which lead to the solution of the crisis. It is important not to discount the words because of who the author of the words happens to be.

I will give more time and thought to the article and share these with you.

I am touched that you have thought of adding my thoughts to your project which I feel is valuable. Thank you again for remembering me.
Robert


11 July 2001

Dear Samten
Thank you for the James Hillman article. I am honoured that you ask for my contribution, but I really don't feel qualified to comment. Other than to say that I would not assume that all things huge ARE ugly. In some instances, huge can be very good and powerful. Is huge a "mess"? And I would not agree that "hugeness is the signature of the absent God". I personally am not ashamed!
Kind wishes
Helen Ranger


17th July 2001

Dear Helen,

Thank you for your reply …[…]…For the moment in response to yours, I would say that we [you] do not need qualifications to comment or have an opinion. I fact I think we have got our society into serious trouble by letting the 'expert's the 'fundi's, the men in white jackets, the Men in Black, telling us that genetic engineering is good, the only good penguin is a dead penguin, covered in oil, that the Kyoto Agreement on the Environment is a threat to the oil industry and other such strategies, which all seem very huge to me.

The discourse on titanism has reached another level with the recent publication of a new book by Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Dionysus in Exile - In the Repression of the Body and Emotion [available at the excellent C.G. Jung Library in Rosebank] I am busy reading it at this moment and will interleave quotations into this discussion group - and ever so slow - project.

More sometime in the future ...

Yours sincerely

Samten de Wet


14th July 200

Dear Samten

Thanks for this but to date have not really had the time to read it. I will let you know my thoughts when I have read it. I hope you are not in a hurry - like yesterday!

Blessings

Barbara Antrobus - Durban, Natal, South Africa.


14th July 2001

Dear Samten
If you are refering to James Hillman's article "And Huge is Ugly". I can find no fault with his supposition, however, I think that at times Hillman hoists himself on his own petard, anyone can be a critic, even me, but there are so few true 'inovators', and I would love to hear what Samten thinks, not just his opinion on other writers, but I know that you have to make a living, but I also know what Mike has told me about you, so I'm not enterested in the pros and cons of writers, I want to know what you think my brother. Come out from behind that accademic facade and tell me what you really believe.
Love
Freeman, United States of America.

12th July 2001

Dear Samten,

Many thanks for the fascinating article/talk :"Huge is Ugly" It certainly made me think!

Sarie Perks, Johannesburg.


12th July 2001

Your interest and the stimulating information is greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks - John Phillips, Johannesburg

July 07, 2001

Sam

Thoughts on the Hillman article:

ee cummings said it long ago, and more concisely:

Jehovah buried, Satan dead,
do fearers worship much and quick...

but then poets take small is beaut more seriously than most other writers.
When much and quick become gods, then truly the Titans walk among us.

This is why poetry has (almost) always stood against the Beast.

Some suggested texts to run alongside this one:
- any Donna Harraway on situatedness, (esp. an article called "Situated Knowledge")
- Gary Snyder's 'Practice of the Wild' to blow some fresh air through Hillman's odd notion of Buddhism whilst agreeing with and elaborating his notions of a sacralised earth.
- Anne Klein's 'Meeting the Great Bliss Queen' for a theory/practice which links Buddhism and feminism/situatedness in a way that Hillman should find interesting, if he hasn't already.
I do like his theory of Titanism as well as his unashamedly irate tone.
best

Michael Cope - Website http://www.cope.co.za


9th July 2001

Dear Samten, This is an interesting, if difficult article to read - I am not familiar with all his references. What he does seem to be saying on one level - which is similar to the old Portuguese proverb - is "pray to God, but watch the pot on the stove (so that it doesn't boil over)". He also seems to be saying that our vision of the world is too general and abstract, on one hand, and too obsessed with self, on the other. We fail to see the crimson dawn, smell the sweet breeze or look at the miniature little lizard soaking up the winter sun - we fail to be the observers of the cosmos and the universe we are all intended to be, for that is how the universe reflects on itself - through us - and if God is dead, it must be that, psychically at least, we are equally dead too. For God is alive in us when are alive and immersed in the beauty of creation. Yes, as soon as we see the colours and taste the tastes and feel our exuberance or pain and express our love or disgust magically we become alive again. Being alive psychically means being connected to our world, the immediate world around us, to all the minutiae of experience around us. This is where we all make our true contributions - on an individual scale they are small, but collectively they could add up to being something great, rather than just enormous.

Though, I reckon, the article deserves a closer second reading.

Ta, Cheers,

Hillman's article is very thought provoking. The universe dreams, thinks, feels, and creates itself through us. Some modern-day physicists ask the question: would the breeze still be sighing through the trees if there were no observers to note that occurrence? Those who raise that question very often defer answering it. However, the truth of the matter is that if there were no observers, nothing would be observed to be happening. In short, nothing would be happening - the crimson dawn, the waft of jasmine on the breeze would be in vain. Not only would the whole universe be dead/inert, but so would God. The new born Christians know that God becomes alive when they do too - but was God dead or merely sleeping? Just dreaming the possibilities of his existence in us and waiting to awaken once more?

Perhaps, as Confucius held, to rule we must first learn to serve. And to serve is to become selfless, and to lose oneself is really to find oneself again refracted in the deity and the unity of all things, and to find the deity and the unity and order of everything refracted in us. Such is the grand mystery of life and the magical oneness of all being. That is the great invitation of our times: to realise in ourselves the grand unity of being of which we are all part.

Cheers,

manton

Dr M. M. Hirst, Amathole Museum, PO Box 1434, 5600 King William's Town, Eastern Cape, SOUTH AFRICA.
Tel: (043)642-4506


6th July 2001

Yeah, I have read one of Hillman's books which irritated me a bit at first, but it certainly improved on reading - and I guess that is probably the mark of a good therapist; at first to irritate and then to enlighten.

So, I look forward to reading the article and will certainly respond thereafter.

Many thanks, Cheers,

manton


6th July 2001

thanks for the Hillman. My contention exactly and brilliantly didactic! though I think he hasn't understood Buddhism except through Jung's myopic eyes. It should resonate with much of Julia's work, too. I can't say that I'd have any original or scholarly addition to make but I  might try...  Michael Cope