When The Lights Go Out

Implicit in the idea of ‘archetypes’ is the possibility of ambivalence, the bipolarity of light and dark – also, there is the possibility of mortality, for archetypal influences can wax and wane or ebb and flow, like tidal forces, like everything in nature. If the world is an imperfect place, then the archetypes are correspondingly imperfect (natural): it is unrealistic to assume, like Plato, when he devised his scheme of ‘ideas’, that the archetypal world is a transcendent sphere of ultimate, supreme perfection. It is necessary to criticise this Platonic delusion, crucial to expose this mystique of ‘perfection’ and purity. But, even in a secular society, there will be a reluctance to deconstruct any proposition of this kind because humanity is so desperate to escape the curse of endurance. Any straw in the wind, any ‘insight’ confirming the universe we know as ‘fallen’, or a pale reflection of a better, happier place beyond suffering and degeneration, becomes more precious than holy writ and believed even more tenaciously.
The shadows on the wall of our cosy, little cave are our own ‘ideas’ – shallow and superficial intellectual speculations, ideological snares and distractions, nothing more – we are the sole occupants. When the cave is blocked by an avalanche, what then? What happens when the lights go out?

Published in Monomyth Supplement Issue 20 2005

Illustration: Evil Shadows, 2001