Instincts: Wild vs. Domestic
Rough draft/excerpt from the book I’m working on.
Looking again at the instincts (and the Four Elements I associate with them) at an archetypal level.
SP = Earth
SO = Air
SX = Fire & Water
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One angle on the three instincts is a conceptual division between SX versus SP and SO. The latter two organically combine at an elemental level to often generate stability, structure, sustenance for oneself and the collective – the figurative machinery of day-to-day life and culture, among other things.
Sunlight, air, wind (SO elements) applied to SP Earth renders dry firm frameworks, firm systems, routines, work habits, rituals. A sober grid placed across Time/Space, a calendar of pragmatism, shared reverence and celebrations honoring higher principles of invisible ‘sky laws’ that inspire human excellence and basic human decency.
Air and sunlight also kill bacteria. Hence, in the blend of SP and SO, the framing and mechanisms (literal and abstract) that make up and support the functional routines of life and cooperative human interaction which these two instincts build and create remain significantly dry and neutralized – largely devoid of SX’s Water and the temperature extremes and variance of SX Fire – thereby fostering collective sustenance and growth of various kinds (commercial growth, civilizational expansion, etc).
An underlying reason why we get sick with the common cold or flu (or worse) is the eruption of SX’s shadow in the form of personal inflammation (SX ‘flames’) originating in the messy, sticky wetness of SX Water in our bodies. Illness forces a break in the workaday world that SO and SP are attempting to hold in a state of healthy sterility and bright Apollonian light.
In so-called ‘less civilized’ cultures, the daily stuff of life is, let’s say, still somewhat necessarily governed by SP and SO. Mental attention into sexual attraction and attractiveness – the transfixing and self-involved mating dance that is SX – isn’t particularly sustainable or conducive to group cohesion or the pragmatic coordination of people and resources.
Some such cultures have SX built into their calendar and mythology. The shaman, for example, is clearly an embodiment of SX energy, with his inherent androgyny, use of ecstatic music, fortunetelling, spells, ‘fiery water’ potions and hallucinogens, mercurial magic and Trickster-ism, engaging in blood/fire rituals of destruction, chaos, and rebirth, pushing souls over the edge of the boundary line between the daily world and the spiritual realm.
Overall, a sizable factor in the health of a society is determined or can be gauged by its underlying relationship and degree of integration of SX into the culture. In the modern world, the role of shaman is often partly embodied in (or projected onto) musicians, rockstars, actors, painters, filmmakers. The degree to which this idol worship is a genuine replacement for established rituals that more directly revere and incorporate SX into the culture is a long topic and subject to debate. Quickly glancing at the state of the World, however, the current status quo appears imbalanced or distorted, bordering on dysfunctionality and societal breakdown.
This steers into another large topic – the religious urge that most people seem to have in varying degrees – also brings up the subject of religion as an underlying mytho-spiritual backdrop for cohesion of civilizations and groups of various sizes. Our current-day celebrities are our ‘stars’ – diamond-set in the dark velvet high of night where we admire their shine and magical winking. Our innate religiosity unconsciously holds pop stars in much the same abstract realm as planets and astro-constellations named after mythological deities – the same sky theater that we imagine governing our fate, as gods do.
The varying amounts of demonization-of-SX that arise in societies, religio-philosophies, and civilizations predominated by SO and SP, from one perspective, are a correct response to the destabilizing energy of SX.
Fires have to be watched closely, as they always hold the threat of going quickly out of control and becoming a major force of destruction. While the watery dissolution and liquidy loss-of-self symbolized in archetypal SX seek out the very lowest places, seep under the interactive frameworks that bond cities and systems of commerce and government, rusting the psychic iron grid, potentially toppling great structures by dissolving their stance and making them loose down below.
