Emerging Archetypal Themes: Capricorn, Fathers and Fly Away Home

            January is often a dark, depressing month.  It doesn’t have the anticipation of December or the hope of February.  January is also when we’re deep in Capricorn’s territory.  Just remember that the old sea goat enjoys both the high snowy mountains and cold, dark depths of the ocean. 

            There are many themes associated with Capricorn.  The sign of Capricorn symbolizes worldly power and our collective structures: government, finance, law, education, the environment, corporations.  I thought about finding a movie that fit those themes, and the list is extensive when it comes to Capricorn’s shadow side: “ambitious, materialist, power hungry.  . . . Calculating, manipulative, quick to exploit any weakness…the epitome of slick, insidious opportunism.” (Steven Forrest, The Inner Sky, p.81)   Network, Wall Street, and Erin Brockovich are all find examples of Capricorn’s shadow.  Or just look at what’s going on in our society, especially since Pluto entered Capricorn in late 2008, exposing the corruption in our social system.   There are great documentaries made in the past five years about the negative impacts of our social system, from food to fracking to waste and water.  

            The deeper truth of Capricorn is that it represents our inner freedom to act according to our own nature and contribute that nature to our society.  In the East, it’s called Dharma.  “Dharma is to cultivate the knowledge and practice of laws and principles that hold together the fabric of reality, natural phenomena and personality of human beings in dynamic interdependence and harmony. “ (Wikipedia)  When our inner life and our personal values shine through our public life, we achieve Capricorn’s goal.  Capricorn is where our destiny shines.

            But for us to accomplish our destiny, we need good role models.  And the most important role models are our parents.  So I decided to look at another aspect of Capricorn we often neglect to mention.  Just as Cancer symbolizes the Archetypal Mother, Capricorn is the sign of the Archetypal Father.  Just as the “archetypal Mother is the matrix—the form into which we pour our experiences, the archetypal Father represents the dynamism of the archetypal, for the archetype consists of both form and energy.” (C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, p. 101-102)  Mother and feminine consciousness comprise our being, while Father and masculine consciousness make up our doing.

            Like the Tarot card of the Emperor, the Father archetype stands for law, order, authority and the world beyond the home.  The Father stands for the rules of our society, the structures that support our community.  He is responsible for teaching his children to respect and obey the rules of his society so that they can take their place in the world.  Under patriarchy, the Father rules supreme.  In many societies, it’s his ‘way or the highway’.  The rules are what’s important, not the individual emotional body (the Mother, feminine consciousness). At his best, the father serves as the bridge between home and society, and the self and our life purpose.   Instead of telling his children what they CAN’T do, a great father finds out what his child needs to do and helps him/her to do it.  

            As fathers go, one of my film favorites is Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.  There is a sense of strength and morality that shines through his role.  But the film that really expresses for me what the great father can do to help his children is the film Fly Away Home.

Fly Away Home

The 1996 movie, Fly Away Home, is a gem of a movie.  Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin play Tom and Amy Alden, an estranged father and daughter who are reunited after many years when Amy’s mother dies in a car crash.  It’s a wonderful story about how our kids teach their parents to grow up.

The movie begins in the rain.  Anna and her mother are driving home together in New Zealand, and we can see how connected they are as they laugh and discuss their day.  And then suddenly, the car is forced off the road.  Anna wakes up in the hospital with her father by her side, come to take her back to Canada now that her mother has died.  Tom tells Amy, “I’ve come to take you home.”

        Neither Tom nor Anna know what to do with each other.  Tom is an artist, a metal sculptor, and a bit of a rebel. He tells Amy ‘I’m going to be busy.  I have a lot of work to catch up on.’  Her answer is, ‘ I’m not a baby.  You don’t have to hold my hand.’   They are definitely prickly with each other.  Anna retreats into herself, not wanting to be there at all.

Tom seems to be one of those men who never grew up, what Jung would call a puer.  He’s constantly trying to fly with his own home-made wings.   The first morning in Canada, Amy wakes up and watches her father’s attempt to fly, which ends with him crashing in the field.  As Amy watches, he slowly gets up and starts laughing like a lunatic, without any thought for how Amy might feel seeing her only living relative crash and perhaps die.  

Jung spoke about the Puer aeternus, which is Latin for eternal boy.   In Greek and Roman mythology, the term designates a child-god who is forever young.   Psychologically, a man who is a puer typically leads a provisional life, fearing to be caught in a situation where he might not be able to escape, such as marriage or a regular job. He covets his independence and freedom and tends to find any restriction intolerable.  He chafes at boundaries and limits because his emotional life has remained at an adolescent level.  We would say he had a Peter Pan complex.  He loves to fly. 

            I think Tom has a bit of the puer in him as most of the baby boomers do who seem determined to act young until they die.  But he makes a successful landing when his daughter comes to live with him. He begins to grow up and take responsibility, even though he doesn’t know how.   He’s one of those self-centered artists, living alone although his lover Susan comes and goes in his life.  He later admits to Amy, when she asks him why he rarely came to visit her, that he was afraid and angry for letting her mom and her go, and besides, New Zealand is far away.  He was an absent father because he couldn’t find the father within himself.  But now with Amy living with him, things start to change.

            As a puer, the idealist and rebel in Tom has been focused on his concern for the environment.  His love of the land is one of the things that ties him down to Earth.  There is a developer who illegally tries to bulldoze some land near Tom.  While Tom and Susan hurry off to a Town Council meeting to protest the project, Amy wanders the land.  She comes to where they’ve bulldozed the trees and discovers an abandoned nest with eggs.  She takes the eggs back to the barn in her old ‘snuggly’ and hides them in a drawer, wrapped in her mother’s old scarfs that she discovers in the barn along with her baby carrier.  Unbeknownst to Amy, in saving the eggs, she begins to reclaim her mom.

Soon all the eggs hatch, and Amy discovers that she’s become mother to a flock of Canadian geese!

            Geese are interesting.  They attach themselves to the first moving thing they see.  If the mother or father goose is not there, they bond with whoever is.  And so Amy becomes their surrogate mother.  

            Symbolically, geese are found in a number of fairy tales, such as The Goose Girl and The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg. There is something magical about them.  They were sacred to the Roman goddess Juno, goddess of marriage.  Perhaps you remember the Mother Goose Tales?  Stories and imagination seem to be part of their mythology.  And their migration patterns gives them a solar aspect (the golden egg), disappearing south in the autumn and returning north in the spring. 

            Even more interesting is the fact that in Celtic lore, the goose symbolizes parenthood and the responsibilities of raising a family.  Geese mate for life and both parents raise their young.  The geese perfectly symbolize the lesson Tom is learning about being a father.  It is by example that they teach their young how to migrate south; it is by example that we teach our children to succeed. 

            As Amy becomes more and more connected with her geese, Tom begins to take more of an interest in Amy.  And as Amy begins to mother the geese, she influences Tom, her uncle David, Susan and even Tom’s flying buddy, Barry.  Her mothering changes the whole feeling of the household.  You can see the love growing.  

            Here is where Tom develops into a great dad.  Realizing that the geese won’t be able to migrate without their help, Tom and his friends devise a plan to lead the geese south in a small plane they build.  When Amy wants to keep the geese with her in the barn all winter, Tom asks her if she thinks that’s fair for the geese.  They were made to migrate and be free.  And so he offers to lead them south.  But when they keep following after Amy, Tom realizes that she’s going to have to do it.  He respects her enough to give her the opportunity to spread her wings and help these birds that she loves.  He’ll build two planes to fly with her as she leads her geese south.

            Meanwhile, the local animal officer, while speaking out on behalf of the wildlife in the area that was bulldozed, is too ready to obey a set of rules that would imprison the geese instead of setting them free.  Just before Tom and Amy plan to lead the geese to a bird sanctuary in North Carolina, he steals them from the farm.  And so they steal them back and head out on their journey.

            As they fly south, they are forced to land at an air force base, then fly over open water and even through a foggy city.  It isn’t a surprise that the media picks up the story.  People know they’re flying south and watch for them to fly overhead.   At the bird sanctuary, people gather to await their arrival, while a developer also waits to bulldoze the area if no birds make their home there by November 1.  That’s one of the reasons for bringing the flock south—to save the sanctuary.  Just before they get there, Tom’s plane goes down in a field and Amy has to fly the geese there alone. When she tells him that she can’t find her way without him, Tom says he knows she can do it.  She’s strong and brave like her mom.  

So Amy and the geese arrive just at sunset and save the sanctuary.  Her geese know how to migrate and they have a home.  And now so does she.

            Fly Away Home is a beautiful movie about how a father can help his child follow her vision and her bliss.   As more and more fathers take a bigger role in raising their children, I can only hope that they remember that their job is not only to protect and provide for their families, but also to guide their children as they make their way in the world.

From the Bard’s Grove,

Cathy

             

           

           

Emerging Archetypal Themes: Sagittarius, Cosmic Law & The Way

          The daylight fades quickly now while the nights seem to linger.  We are approaching the darkest night of the year in the northern hemisphere.  (Our southern neighbors are bathed in light as they approach their longest day.)  Each year, we cycle back to this time of greatest darkness.  Each year we celebrate the return of the Light.  Each year, before this blessed event, we travel through the dark with Sagittarius.

There’s something mysterious and beautiful about the evening sky during late November and early December.  The sky is a deep sapphire blue, warm and protective despite the cold.  Sagittarius is like that.  The cold night sky sends us wisdom if we remember how to look for it.  During Sagittarius, the night sky is full of stories belonging to the Summer Stars.  We look at the sky and are assured that there are things in life worth living for.  The sky gives us faith and hope.   

Sagittarius energizes our spiritual search.  Coming after Scorpio’s emotional purge, Sagittarius’ fire energizes our search for a larger vision, a curiosity about what might be out there now that the old life is gone.  In Sagittarius, our perspective widens as well as narrows, like the vision of Eagle, Great Spirit’s emissary.  We want to look beyond our old beliefs and discover something new about the universe.  What we discover is Cosmic Law.  We discover what we have to do to live out our destiny.  We’re called back to our beliefs, whatever they might be.  We are called back to our center.

After the death & rebirth experience in Scorpio, we want a new understanding of our place in the Cosmos.  Our old worldview was distorted by our emotional wounds; a new worldview comes into being if we let the chaos of their death work on us.  We fear the chaos more than anything else.  Once we survive the break-down, the chaos, the silence of death, we’ll find that we coalesce into something new.  Our new energy does need a form, however; a structure to channel it into our new life.  This structure comes from the archetypes, and we access them through story. 

We all need a story to inhabit.  Our deepest source of life energy comes from our imaginations; it is the imagination that tells us the story of what is possible for us.   It is this belief that gives us energy, passion and will.  All too often, our stories are shaped by patriarchy and become too narrow for us to live with.  Hence, the need to leave those stories behind us and heal the wounds that they caused.  As we go through our death and rebirth experiences, we need to re-access our passion and find out what the next step in our life will be.  And that comes to us through the stories we tell ourselves. What does the future hold?    If we choose to live in a story of fear, it will hold fear.  If we choose to live in a story of creativity, it will be a creative story.  If we live in a story of hope, there will be hope.  So it’s important to choose what to believe in. 

Our beliefs power our lives.  Sagittarius helps us choose our beliefs.   While we might not go to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple anymore, we still need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.  This time, though, we need a personal relationship with Cosmic Law, Deity or the Force.  That’s the Sag way.

The Way

The movie I want to talk about for Sagittarius is a gem of a movie called The Way.  Written by Emilio Estevez for his father, Martin Sheen, it is a story of a surprising death and an equally surprising rebirth.  The story is simple: a father heads overseas to recover the body of his estranged son who died while traveling the El Camino de Santiago. Once there, he decides to make the pilgrimage himself.

El Camino De Santiago -The Way of St. James - has existed for over a thousand years. It has been one of the most important Christian pilgrimages since medieval times.  St. James and his brother John were called the Sons of Thunder, and were two of Jesus’ closest disciples.  Saint James supposedly preached in Iberia (Spain) and when he was martyred in Jerusalem, legend holds that his remains were carried by boat to northern Spain where he was buried on the site of what is now the city of Santiago de Compostela.  There are many different routes (how Sagittarian!) on The Way, ranging from 800 km to 227 km to whatever you can do.  Since the Middle Ages, people have settled along the different routes, providing lodging and food for the pilgrims.  Pilgrims walk The Way of St. James, often for months, to arrive at the great church in the main square of Compostela and pay homage to St. James.  Walking on pilgrimage is a time of letting go of our old lives so that we can find a new Way to live.

          Martin Sheen plays Tom, a successful doctor from southern California.  Stuck in his ways, content with his life, Tom can’t understand why his middle-aged son, Daniel, won’t settle down. As Tom drives Daniel to the airport to see him off on yet another adventure, they argue. They argue over how to live life. Daniel dropped out of his PhD program to travel the world and experience what he’d been studying and now he wants Tom to drop everything and come away with him, to travel as father and son.  But Tom thinks it’s irresponsible. This is the patriarchal lie that we all tell ourselves.  Tom thinks that Daniel looks down on him for the life he’s chosen.  To which Daniel replies, “You don’t choose a life, dad, you live one.” This is so typical of the tension between a patriarchal father and a son who wants to follow his own dreams.  Unfortunately, that’s the last time Tom sees Daniel.

          Tom misses a call from Daniel and gets annoyed that he doesn’t know where his son is or how to contact him.  Tom tells his assistant, “He wanted to see the world.”  And his assistant says, “And he did.”  She sees what Tom can’t see, which is so true of the feminine spirit of life.   Tom wants everything secure and controlled.  Unfortunately, Daniel won’t give it to him. This is how we’ve been trained to live under patriarchy.   Let nothing be left to chance!

          The next day, Tom gets a call from France in the middle of his golf game: Daniel has died in a sudden storm on the very first night of his journey on el Camino de Santiago.  Tom leaves immediately to claim his son’s body, but when he arrives in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, he talks with a very sympathetic police captain who explains what his son was doing and why it is important.  Tom rejects the whole notion of the pilgrimage, but going through Daniel’s backpack that night, he suddenly decides to cremate his son’s body and take his ashes on the pilgrimage.  The police captain tries to explain that he isn’t ready to do it, that he lacks the training, but Tom is nothing if not determined.  He will make sure his son gets to finish his pilgrimage.

          And so, Tom sets out on The Way.  He doesn’t know what to expect.  He’s in a chaos of emotions over his son’s death.  And so he walks.  He walks alone, even though other pilgrims join him.  He walks alone even when others try to connect to him.    As Tom says,” I’m old and tired.”  He’s lost his faith, not only in God but even in his golf partners.  When people ask him why he’s making the pilgrimage he says he’s doing it for his son.  But the captain tells him, The Way is a very personal journey.  The journey itself will teach Tom why he’s going.

Before Tom starts out, he is sitting alone at a restaurant when a fellow pilgrim, Joost, sits down with him.  Joost is a gregarious Dutchman who tells Tom that he’s walking to lose weight for his brother’s wedding - and to make his wife and doctor happy.  And then he proceeds to eat, unconsciously and compulsively.  And of course, Tom can’t wait to get away from him. 

 One thing you can say about Tom, he’s determined to do this for Daniel.   While he says he’s going on pilgrimage for his son, I think he’s going to prove to himself that he loved Daniel. They had grown apart since his wife’s death, mainly because of Tom’s judgments about Daniel’s new lifestyle. And while he thinks he loves Daniel, his guilt is strong.   And he has a fear of death - he couldn’t even touch Daniel, like I imagine his mother would, when he went to identify his body.  Tom thinks he goes on pilgrimage to reclaim his son.

The Way itself is beautiful.  Tom and his fellow pilgrims walk through fields, forests, hills, mountains and cities.  The Way encompasses all of life’s beauty, strength and compassion, as well as its quirks and horrors.  When Tom passes a homemade cross on the mountain the first day, he flashes on Daniel and realizes this cross is where Daniel died.  He leaves the first pile of Daniel’s ashes there.

Lost in thought at the site of his son’s death, he has to trek through the darkness to his first pilgrim hostel.   Being late, he gets no supper, and finds he has to sleep in a big dorm room with all the other pilgrims.  Nothing like what a wealthy doctor expects - a metal bunk bed in a crowded, noisy room.  There he runs into Joost again, cheerfully eating and smoking grass. 

Tom ends up traveling with Joost, letting him talk him into getting coffee before they leave and then goat cheese at the next village.  He looks down on Joost while joining him in all the distractions along the way.  While Tom walks with Joost, who finds joy and food wherever he goes, he doesn’t journey with him, hiding from Joost whenever he leaves ashes.  Tom doesn’t share himself.  He’s locked away.  He looks on Joost as a fool, without seeing his kind heart.  But he, like Joost, is searching for what will nourish him.  

Everyone shares why they are going on pilgrimage, but Tom won’t tell anyone.  He thinks he’s hiding his wound.  Finally Joost puts together the story – Tom is related to the young man who died in France.  Once Tom tells Joost his story, he finds an excuse to go his own way and get away from Joost.  He stops at a wonderful Basque pensione, where travelers argue with their Basque host about history. Tom can imagine Daniel enjoying these conversations.

Tom runs into Sarah at this pensione.  Sarah is sarcastic, hurt and angry.  She taunts him about his motives for being pilgrimage.  He tries to ignore her, which makes her open up.  She’s going to give up cigarettes, but she’s going to enjoy them until she gets to Compostela.  Tom’s reply to that is, “Spoken like a true addict!”  Tom has no social skills anymore after spending his time with his doctor buddies, whose way of relating is to taunt each other.  He has a superior attitude and doesn’t think much of the other pilgrims.  Tom’s lack of social skills, communication and caring are evident at this stage of his journey.

  In the morning, he sees the proprietor pretending to be a bullfighter.  When he’s discovered, the owner tells Tom, “I wanted to become a bullfighter.  My father wanted me to become a lawyer.”  All over the world, our personal desires are negated by the expectations of our fathers.  Tom isn’t alone in what he’s done to his son.  But he sees how other sons have dealt with having their dreams denied.

Tom’s adventures continue to include Joost and Sarah.  After some time, they run into Jack the Irishman.  Jack is running around a field, acting crazy, but when he sees them, he proceeds to give a lengthy description of his time on the road.  To wit, he’s a travel writer and he has writer’s block.  He’s both full of himself and also down on himself.  Tom dislikes him from the start.  A true shadow projection!  Later in the movie, Tom tells Jack that he reminds him of Daniel and it drives him crazy.  But in reality, Jack is Tom’s shadow.  He even tells Tom about giving up his dream to be a great writer when he started making money on travel books. “But it’s the life I choose.”    Tom’s words in Jack’s mouth!

Soon after this, Tom and Sarah have an altercation.  Joost has let slip the story of Tom’s son, and Sarah shares her story about an abusive husband and her decision to abort their baby.  Tom finally shows some feeling and says he’s sorry about her baby and she replies that she’s sorry about his.  When he says that his son was almost 40, she says, “But he’s still your baby.”  Sarah, his anima/soul, reminds him of a truth that he’s forgotten.  Something changes after this conversation.

Tom, the typical patriarchal man, is so out of touch with his feelings that he has trouble feeling any empathy for other people.  Sarah represents his bitter, wounded shadow anima.  His feminine, feeling side is just as wounded as Sarah.  They are both prickly.  They are both sarcastic.  They both hurt.  As their relationship improves, they both get in touch with their feelings.  

At one point, they all argue about what makes a true pilgrim? Tom has had it and asks, “Someone who died on the Camino?”  Tom then proceeds to get drunk and tells them all what he thinks of them.  Jack is a writer who thinks he’s better than everyone else.  Joost is a great big lug who eats too much.  Sarah is the poor, victimized woman. 

Tom gets rowdy and ends up in jail. The other three bail him out, but they ignore him. Tom’s outburst makes them all think.  The silence of the Way comes into play now.  Ignored, Tom finally gives in, but instead of apologizing, he goes to Jack and insists he’ll pay him back.  Jack asks Tom to let him write about his story instead.  That’s when Tom says that Daniel was like Jack - smart, confident and stubborn.   “He pissed me off a lot.”  

On the Way, Tom meets his shadows: the unconscious need for comfort, the bitterness of harsh reality, and the blocks to his creative spirit.   

At Burgos, the four meet up again with old acquaintances they’ve met on the Way.  That’s where a young gypsy boy steals Tom’s backpack with the ashes.   The four of them give chase and end up where the gypsies live.  Joost and Jake tell him to give up, that the gypsies are trouble.  That he’ll never get his pack back. That’s when Tom does give up – with the box gone, he loses hope. 

But boy’s father arrives with the backpack and an apology, and invites all of them to be his guests at dinner. That night while the gypsies entertain them, Tom sees the power of family.  The gypsies are outcasts, yet they have a strong sense of honor. The father, Ishmael, tells Tom to take Daniel’s ashes to the sea at Muxai past Compostela.  When Tom says he’s not religious, Ishmael replies, “Religion has nothing to do with this, nothing at all!”  The next day as they leave town, Ishmael has his son carry Tom’s pack for him.  When Tom tries to downplay what the son has done, Ishmael asks, “What would you do with your son?  Our children – they are the very best and the very worst of us.” 

After this meeting, a deep healing occurs in Tom and therefore in the others.  They finally begin to journey together!  They are no longer separate, but now they are a family.  They help each other, they laugh together, they enjoy each other. 

When they come to a big town, Tom treats them all to their own rooms in a marvelous hotel.  They can have anything they want, but food, pedicures, and writing no longer serve them.  They all end up in Tom’s room.  A family!  He’s become not only a companion, but a father.

When they get to Compostela, Tom dedicates the pilgrimage to Daniel. Each of them has found a measure of peace.  And they all go with Tom to Muxia where he releases the last of Daniel’s ashes.  The Way has healed them.  The pilgrimage has bestowed grace on them.   

The wisdom they’ve found?  Jack realizes that words don’t stand up to experience.  Sarah admits that it’s never really been about giving up smoking.  And Joost admits he needs a new suit.  Tom is now free to live his life.  And he does.  He starts to travel!  He continues on his Way!

The Way is a modern-day mystery play.  Tom symbolizes our western ego, lost in the glamor of things and work and responsibility.  As he walks the Way, he discovers his own shadow: his unconscious use of the world, his bitterness and fear of emotional pain and his useless intellect.  Along the Way, he re-integrates his kindness, his courage and his vision.  And so is made new again.

As we wait upon the arrival of the magical, holy season of Winter Solstice, may you walk the Way and discover your inner child once again.

From the Bard’s Grove,

Cathy  

The Fountain: Scorpio's Path to Transformation

Scorpio's initiation is one of the hardest in the zodiac.   To complete this spiritual test, we have to face death.  Since this is happening on a cultural level as well as on personal ones, it's time to stop being afraid of death and start 'taking death as our adviser' as Don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda.  We have to stop looking for our immortality on the physical level: our immortality lies in our soul.
   

Would you like to see an intelligent, well-acted, emotionally moving, exquisitely filmed and brilliantly realized metaphysical film about death, multiple lifetimes and karma? Darren Aronofsky offers us a sumptuous feast of amazing images as well as a transformative message that is sorely needed in our culture.  The Fountain examines these issues with greater depth and imagination than this year's movie about karma, The Cloud Atlas. 

The Fountain examines a theme that is highlighted in this month's Scorpio Solar Eclipse.  The Sabian symbol for the solar eclipse at 22* Scorpio is: Hunters shooting wild ducks.  The question posed is: What do we do with our aggressive, warrior energies?  This movie examines the transformation of the warrior archetype.  The message of The Fountain is that warriors have to stop fighting death, and instead, learn to defend Life.   

This metaphysical film not only explores other dimensions of reality but also operates on many dimensions of reality. The Fountain's story is relevant on many levels: it shows us (1) how we individually and collectively can transform our cultural warrior mentality into a search for wisdom through love; (2) how each individual has a mythic story that needs to be explored and understood; (3) how a psychological complex is broken through and transformed; and most importantly, (4) it reminds us how we human beings need to understand and accept Death.   It is the awesome story of how knowledge of the soul's journey through time can illuminate our current life struggles and bring us to consciousness and an acceptance of life, which includes death. Hence the line in the movie, "Death is the path to awe."
 
The Fountain takes place -- essentially simultaneously -- in the past, present and future, as well as in the body, mind and spirit of the character, Tommy, interweaving three stories through the lives of a man and a woman.

         

The story in the past takes place in 16th century Spain which is in the midst of the Inquisition. The Grand Inquisitor flagellates his own flesh as the source of evil and death, and tortures anyone who does not follow his death-dealing beliefs. He is determined to kill the Queen, Isabella of Spain, who is intent on finding the Tree of Life, which she believes is hidden in the jungles of South America. She sends Tomas, a conquistador, to find The Tree of Life and bring it back to save Spain. And to become her true lover. She gives him a ring that he will be able to wear once he accomplishes his task of finding the Tree of Life, thereby uniting them forever in Love. The Ring symbolizes their unity, as well as the inner unity of body, mind and spirit.

In the present-day scenario, Tommy is a scientist who is desperately seeking a cure for the cancer killing his wife Izzi, who has almost finished writing a book called The Fountain about Queen Isabella and Tomas. Tommy struggles with his wife's coming death by spending most of her last days of life in a laboratory experimenting on chimps to find a cure for her cancer. By not really dealing with Izzi's immanent death, he misses out on her life. By doing what he thinks is right, he does the wrong thing. He can't accept the laws of life, and so he decides that death must be just another disease, which he will find a cure for. He is so frantic to save his wife from death that he uses death to fight death. Sound familiar? In one of the very first scenes, Tommy loses his wedding ring. He loses his connection to his wife Izzi, and to his soul, even as he struggles desperately to save her. 

The future is the 26th century, where Tom floats in a bubble-like spacecraft towards Xibalba, the golden nebula wrapped around a dying star that Izzi had shown Tommy in their previous lifetime, when she shared her wonder and delight at the Maya's ability to pick a dying star as the source of rebirth. Tom no longer has his wedding ring, but instead has tattooed a ring on his finger, along with circles on his arms, like the rings of a tree. He is trying to become the Tree of Life himself. While he floats through time and space, he tries to understand his past lives and especially his beloved's whispered words, "Finish it." This is the task she has set him. 

Is it to finish his search for the literal Tree in South America, or to finish his experiments and save her life, or to finish the book she leaves for him to finish, or is it truly to finish the task she originally set him: to find the Fountain of Immortality. In this future lifetime, Tom is becoming a spiritual warrior, meditating on his behavior in dealing with those other lifetimes. Until he attains the wisdom from the Tree of Life, all three lifetimes hang in the balance. The turning point of greater consciousness comes when he finally listens to Izzi's request to come for a walk with her instead of working on finding a cure for her disease. He makes a different choice, and that makes all the difference in all the lives.

These lovers are united through time and space to work out a problem – "what is eternal life?" Isabella/Izzie represents the Soul, the archetypal Feminine which symbolizes life itself – just as all the ancient Goddesses represent life. The character of Tomas/Tommy/Tom represents our Western, masculine, rational, warrior ego-consciousness, as well as our individual relationship to life, and therefore to death. The story shows us that the Feminine Soul is in jeopardy; if the masculine consciousness of the Warrior/Scientist/King does not listen to Her demands, there will be no immortality.

The mythic element of the story explains the journey and the task. To find eternal life. The myth of the sacred King, the one who is willing to lay down his life for the greater good, is found all over the world. The Tree of Life is symbolic of eternal life, as well as the Great Mother, and yet in the myths, it is the sacrificial death of the god/king/warrior/ego that brings us eternal life. The mythic Tree of Life grows out of the body of the sacrificed god. It is the story of Osiris, Dionysus, Christ, Mithras and the Mayan creator god, Gukumatz. Out of his body, the Earth grows. The myths state it clearly – out of death comes new life. And yet we doubt it and so fear death. Our fear of death creates more death. What is acknowledged in the myth is that life demands the acceptance of the Earth's natural laws, which includes the part of the cycle of life that brings death. Unless we accept death, we will never find rebirth.

The Queen symbolizes the soulful aspects of life. She seeks the Tree of Life to offset the cruel and unnatural tortures that the Church, which demonizes the body and the Earth plane, brings to her land. The archetypal Queen's power lays in life, just as the Feminine Spirit is the Incarnated Spirit – the life of the body and the Earth, the feeling and intuitive side of life. As Isabella, she must see the bigger picture to bring life to her country and stop the unnatural death that the Church's Inquisition has brought there. They bring terror with death, for they see death as only damnation and burning in Hell. This is our western unconscious belief about death. The Queen, however, knows what is needed to restore balance to the land - the love of life here on the Earth. For it is in the physical body that we experience and learn about love. 

In the contemporary story, it is only after Izzi's initial fear of death is overcome that she makes her peace with life. But her husband Tommy cannot overcome his fear and accept death as a natural part of life. Psychologically, it is often the masculine element of life that wants to hold on – it can become a holdfast. But it is also the masculine element that strives for the answers, and finally, it is the masculine ego that must eventually die, as exemplified in the myth of the death of the son/lover. Tommy doesn't give Izzi what she asks for. He thinks he knows what is called for in the face of death – to discover a cure for her cancer. She, however, just wants him to be there for her – to live life with her, until her death. In the future life, Izzi becomes the archetypal muse for Tom, the source of his meditation and the inspiration for his transformation. Hence we have a symbol of the triple Goddess – life, death, and rebirth.

It is the Goddess of Life (which includes Death) that sends her son/lover/hero on the quest for new life. Queen Isabella knows that her purpose is to defend life in the midst of this unnatural death, and sends the warrior Tomas to the New World to find the Tree of Life. Tomas succeeds in finding the secret pyramid guarding the Tree, only to be confronted by a Mayan high priest, who is also a warrior of the god (a bit like the Spanish Grand Inquisitor, they have both disfigured their bodies in sacrifice to their gods). Tomas must get past this Guardian at the gates to achieve his quest for eternal life. 

It is the Warrior who must achieve the Quest. But the Warrior archetype needs to be transformed by greater consciousness through time. The Conqueror/Conquistador becomes the Scientist/Explorer – the body and mind united. But it is only with the added dimension of the Spirit that the Warrior can fulfill the Quest. The Warrior must sacrifice himself to renew the land. And it is up to the man to transform his consciousness. The woman has already done so because of her intimate connection with Life.

Tomas/Tommy/Tom represents our individual ego's relationship to life – and therefore to death. This man Tomas/Tommy (perhaps named for Jesus' twin, Thomas, in Gnostic belief) represents Everyman, our cultural masculine ego consciousness that needs to be transformed. Tommy's trinity of lives is lived out on the cross of matter: on the horizontal axis of shared humanity as past, present, and future; on the vertical axis as his individual need for the unity of his body, mind, and spirit. This axis or Cross or Tree is the Eternal Now, when everything happens in eternal time, all at once. Western culture is faced with a paradox – is time linear, or does it circle around, or does it spiral? Or is it something else entirely. 

Psychologically, Tommy represents the heroic ego, while Izzi represents the soul. Symbolically, he represents the warrior mindset of our culture, while Izzi represents the love and ideals that uplift the warrior archetype, for Venus/Love is always coupled with Mars/War. Love is the only way to guide and ultimately tame the warrior spirit. 

When Izzi dies, life and love and feelings freeze up like winter snows. It is only when Tommy integrates the inner truth of feminine consciousness – that life contains death, and love contains loss – that he can find new life. Western culture and religions have cut life off from death, and so we fear death instead of welcoming it as a creative act of life.

Death is imaged in Nature as winter, and yet we have the sure knowledge that spring will come again and life will return. The old form is really the seed of the future. The death of an old form gives way to a new form. This film wants to make Death our adviser, as don Juan would say. It wants us to see death as a creative act of awesome dimensions, because when we take death as our adviser, we live life fully and deeply.

It is an archetypal truth that the Ego must die to the call of the Self, just as the ancient King died so that the greater life of his people could go on. It is this mystery – that life is served by the death of the old form – that is explored in The Fountain. And it is a mystery that our culture must look at and understand if we are to get through these tranformative times. For as a culture, we are called upon to let our old values die - the values of the Warrior, of Christianity and of Capitalism - so that new values can give birth to new life for our planet. 

Death of the ego, death of our power, death of a worn-out vision, death of our fear – which is why we need the courage of a warrior, the mind of an explorer, and the imagination of a mystic. The death of an old, outworn belief system, the death of a culture of fear. We have to work it out in our individual lives (and many people are in the midst of learning this, which makes the movie so relevant), but even more importantly, we have to work it out as a society. It is time for the military-industrial complex to sacrifice itself for the life of our planet. We need to change how we do things. 

Each and every one of us must go on this quest. The feminine spirit, which is capable of great love and even greater wisdom, can lead our masculine side to give up our old life – to accept the sacrifice that things will be different, that we can live differently, both individually and collectively. The Fountain speaks to the transformational process of setting ourselves the task of understanding, loving and accepting our lives, just as they are. And letting go of what is no longer life-giving. Then each death can become a creative act.

This film gives us a multi-dimensional vision that anyone who is on a spiritual path will feel immediately. The film itself operates on many levels – engaging our attention on all those levels at once. So it feeds the entire Self. What other film has done that in recent years?

From the Bard's Grove,
Cathy