Mars, the God of War, as another window into Hillman's archetypal psychology

In the last post in this space, there was a reference to Ares, (Mars) the God of War as the dominant and perhaps even prevailing archetype in the American anima mundi (world soul). While we can all agree that ‘the gods never act alone,’ it is also clear to anyone open to looking, that Molloch (God of Money) is still screaming and shouting from the tops of mountains, office towers, banks and financial institutions, as well as from the bell-towers of cathedrals, and the podiums in university and college lecture halls and their labs.

Far ahead and far more insightful than any observations this scribe might make, is the LED spotlight that Hillman pours into the perplexing and confounding, seemingly inextricable ensnarement of the United States, in the archetype of war. And consistent with his other thoughts about having to dive deeply into the heart of any matter that requires explication and detachment, he writes an extensive lecture, reprinted in Mythic Figures, ‘Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman, (second edition), Series Editor, Klaus Ottman, Spring Publications, 2021, p. 121, entitled, “Wars, Arms. Rams, Mars”.

Here are some of the insights, repeated for both the reader and the writer, as any attempt to become steeped in the “tea” of Hillman’s thinking is always, and inevitably a work in progress, without a final destination, leaving both the concepts and their application and interpretation flowing in the same river in which we are all trying to stay afloat.

Hillman opens his lecture, (originally delivered to the conference entitled, “Facing Apocalypse” at Salve Regina College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 1983) with a reference to the film “Patton,” the Hollywood depiction of General Patton’s role in the drive of the Third Army across France into Germany in 1944-45. “(He, Patton) walks the field after a battle: churned earth burnt tanks, dead men. The General takes up a dying officer, kisses him, surveys the havoc and says: ‘I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life’.”

Hillman then continues: This scene gives focus to my theme—the love of war, the love in war and for war that is more than ‘my’ life, a love that calls up a dos, that is helped by a god and on a battlefield, a devastated piece of earth that is made sacred by that devastation. I believe that we can never speak sensibly of peace of disarmament unless we enter into this love of war. Unless we enter into the martial state of soul, we cannot comprehend its pull. The special state must be ritualistically entered. We must be ‘inducted,’ and war must be ‘declared’—as one is declared insane, declared married or bankrupt. So we shall try not to ‘go to war’ and this because it is a principle of psychological method that any phenomenon to be understood must be emphatically imagined. To know war we must enter its love. No psychic phenomenon can be truly dislodged from its fixity unless we first move the imagination into its heart. War is a psychological task….It is especially a psychological task because philosophy and theology have failed its overriding importance. War has been set aside as history, when it then becomes a subchapter called military history. Or war has been placed outside the mainstream of thought into think tanks. So we need to lift this general repression, attempting to bring to war an imagination that respects its primordial significance. My method of heading right in, of penetrating rather than circumambulating or reflecting, is itself martial. We shall be invoking the god of the topic by this approach to the topic. (op. cit., p 121-122)

Those proponents of both philosophy and theology, especially the latter, will

already be “up in arms” in protest of Hillman’s observation that war is a psychological task “because philosophy and theology have failed its overriding importance.” This quote from ww1.ophen.org, in an essay entitled, The Great War and Modern Philosophy, supports Hillman’s contention about philosophy:

…(T)he war motivated an historically singular mobilization of philosophers to write about the war during the years of conflict; significant works of philosophy were written during the war years and immediately thereafter…Surprisingly, while the impact of war on literature, poetry, and the arts, political thought has been a subject of intense inquiry and interpretation, the significance of war for modern philosophy remains relatively unexamined, often misunderstood of simply taken for granted.

Subjects like ‘what constitutes the just war’ or the concept of the abandonment of war altogether, while part of the writing of philosophical offerings about war, do not delve into its philosophical implications, as Hillman sees their efforts. It would be reasonable to posit that either or both of these arguments are intimately embedded in the question of the morality of war. Similarly, the Bible, as articulated in a work entitled, “War, Moral or Immoral, the Biblical Doctrine of War, by Jr. R. B. Thieme, is briefly described on the Amazon website in these words: “Whether you like it or not, the Bible teaches that justified warfare is moral- war that is necessary to protect your country and defend your freedoms!. Immoral acts may be committed in war; but the principle of war is moral when war becomes necessary-not immoral.” Aquinas, the Roman theologian argues, in Summa Theologia, (Wikipedia.org) that there are conditions to be met in order to justify war:

· It must be waged on the command of a rightful sovereign

· It must be waged for just cause or to address some wrong

· Warriors must have the ‘right intent’ to promote good and to avoid evil.

Even the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, lists four strict conditions for ‘legitimate defense by military force:

§ Damage inflicted by the aggressor on the community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain

§ All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective

§ There must be serious prospects of success

§ The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

The War and Peace section of the Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church….offers criteria of distinguishing between an aggressive wa, which is unacceptable, and a justified war, attributing the highest moral and sacred value of military acts of bravery to a true believer who participates in a justified war. (Wikipedia.org)

This document also accepts the Catholic rationale for the justified war.

After reading and transcribing some of these notes, I am prompted to recall a former friend, a man who was born to a Jewish family, who, upon facing the ‘draft’ in the United States, as part of the engagement of that country in Viet Nam, came to Canada and joined the Quaker Society of Friends, a religious group that denounces war. I am also prompted to recall another class-mate who, as a Canadian, enlisted in the American military, served in Viet Nam, returned to Canada to study theology and subsequently, after declaring a family rule that no one was permitted to speak about the war, suffered a massive cardiac event.

 

After detailing the weapons, the music, the manners, the names, the spit and polish that depicts, enshrines and ennobles the military in the United States, Hillman writes poignantly these words:

Our American consciousness has extreme difficulty with Mars. Our founding documents and legends portray the inherent non-martial bias of our civilian democracy…Compared with our background in Europe, Americans are idealistic: war has no place. It should not be. War is not glorious, triumphal, creative as to a warrior class in Europe from Rome and the Normans through the Crusades even to the Battle of Britain. We may be a violent people but not a warlike people—and our hatred of war makes us use violence against even war itself…Our so-called  double-speak about armaments as ‘peacekeepers’ reflects truly how we think. War is bad, exterminate war and keep peace violently: punitive expeditions, pre-emptive strikes, send in the Marines. More firepower means surer peace. We enact the blind god’s blindness (Mars Caecus, as the Romans called him and Mars insanus, furibundus (frenzied, maddened), omnipotens), like Grant’s and Lee’s men in the Wilderness, like the bombing of Dresden, overkill as a way to end war…..Gun control is a further case in point. It raises profound perplexities ion a civilian society. The right to bear arms (in the U.S.) is constitutional, and our nation and its territorial history (for better or worse) have depended on a citizen-militia’s familiarity with weapons. But that was when the rifle and Bible (together with wife and dog) went alone into the wilderness. The gun was backed by a god; when it stood in the corner of the household, pointing upward like the Roman spear that was Mars, the remembrance of the god was there, and the awe and even some ceremony. With the neglect of Mars, we are left only the ego and the guns that we try to control civilian secular laws. If in the arms is the god, then arms control requires at least partly, if not ultimately, a religious approach…..We worry about nuclear accident, but what we call ‘accident’ is the autonomy of the inhuman. Arms, as instruments of death, are sacred objects that remind mortals that we are not athnetos, immortal. The fact that arms control negotiations take on more and more ritualistic postures rather than negotiating positions also indicates the transcendent power of the arms over those who would bring them under control Military expenditures, of course, ‘overrun’ and handguns ‘get out of hand.’  I do not believe arms control can come about until the essential nature of arms if first recognized. (James Hillman, Mythic Figures, p.127-8-9)

Here in this passage, lie many of the fundamental, foundational ‘stones’ of the edifice Hillman is attempting to build in his exploration of what he terms ‘archetypal psychology’. The former acknowledgement of the god of War, as a quasi-religious significant feature in the lives of Americans, yet a different and separate entity and a different purpose and relationship for humans from the religious “God” and the Bible, and the disavowing of such a mythic ‘deity’ in favour of both ego and literal “personal security” goes to the heart of his perspective. Further excavation of Mar’s blindness, as a feature of the American anima mundi, illustrates, rather than a denial of his appropriation of the Roman god of War, but a full acknowledgement, disclosure and exposure of the god’s imperfection. For many readers, it may seem both improbable and literally  impossible to have a ‘god’ even in the mythic sense, who exhibits an inherent blindness.

Our use of, and comprehension of the word and concept “god” in and to the literal, while eliminating the metaphoric features of that word, is another of the blindnesses Hillman is attempting to unveil. The very existence of the mythic gods and goddesses, for Hillman, in and through both their acknowledgement and their embrace, as portrayals of the anima mundi, is a parallel he deploys in his explication of a psychology of the ‘abnormal’ among human individuals. And my referencing Mars, in all of ‘his’ strength and vulnerability, is one attempt to pave a pathway for a neophyte’s grasp of and significance of what Hillman is trying to share with his readers.

In another exploration of Mars, Hillman makes reference to the Roman Republic, where he was most developed as a distinct figure, (Mars) was placed in a Champs de Mars, a field, a terrain. He was so earthbound that many scholars trace the origins of the Mars cult to agriculture….Mars did not belong to the city. The focus of martial activity has usually been less the conquest of cities than or terrain and the destruction of armies occupying terrain. Even the naval war in the Pacific (19410-45) followed this classical intentions of gaining area. The martial commander must sense the lay of the land. He is a geographer. The horse (an animal of Mars) was so essential for martial peoples because horses could realize the strategy of winning terrain. Martial strategy is archetypally geopolitical. (Mythic Figures, p. 130-131)

And lest we be induced into thinking that Hillman is ‘fighting the last war’ as the cliché about the contemporary military establishment alleges, he is quick to draw from the nuclear age.

Hillman writes:

The nuclear imagination, in contrast, calculates in terms of cities, and its destructive fantasies necessarily include civilians. The city (and thus the civilization), whether taken out by ICBM’s or kept as intact prizes by the neutron weapon) is the main focus of nuclear imagination. The land between Kiev and Pittsburgh (hence Europe) is relatively irrelevant. (More about this from the perspective of 2023 below.) A second contrast between the martial and the nuclear: Mars moves in close, hand-to-hand, Mars propior and propinquus. Bellona (Ancient Roman goddess of war) is a fury, the blood-dimmed tide, the red fog of intense immediacy. No distance. Acquired skills become instantaneous as in the martial arts. The nuclear imagination, in contrast, invents at even greater distance-intercontinental, the bottom of the sea, outer space. Because of the time delay caused by distance, the computer becomes the essential nuclear weapon. The computer is the only way to regain the instantaneity given archetypally with Mars. The computer controls nuclear weapons, is their governor. Whereas the martial is contained less by fail-safe devices and rational computation than by military ritual of disciplined hierarchy, practiced skill, repetition, code, and inspection. And by the concrete obstacles of geography: commissary trains, hedgerows, bad weather impedimenta. (Hillman, op. cit. p 130-131)

Another enriching and enhancing deployment of the deep and searching active imagination arises in the evocation of Bellona, and continues the depiction of the anima mundi, as “doing psychology” from the perspective of the ‘active imagination, in and through the images of the gods and goddesses, in this instance, of war.

It is this perspective or the poetic basis of mind, expressed in and through the active imagination, courageously and diligently and relentlessly seeking for our psychic ancestors, as a way to restore psychology to what Hillman considers its rightful place in our panoply of disciplines. And this ‘poetic basis of mind’ and its agent, the active imagination, is accessible to everyone. Here is the nexus of the scribe’s interest in archetypal psychology and Hillman’s insights, intuition, including its depth and breadth of range. We are far more complex than our literal, nominal, empirical, and reductionistic vernacular and the parsing of exigent behaviour into merely moral opposites for the purpose of intervening and correcting.

Indeed, paradoxically, it is in our very dependence on the literal that we become ensnared, in a manner of self-sabotage, whether conscious or not, in our own blindnesses, denials, and paralyses. Naturally, we can assume that Hillman is not a war-monger; nor is he not deeply cognizant of all of the many historic, psychic, theatric and poetic features of our relationship with war and the military. Indeed, it is his very diligent and perceptive and imaginative and resourceful re-visiting of those voices that have planted many of the seeds of our collective and our individual psychic realities, most of which we are innocently unaware.

Not only is Hillman offering a cosmic ‘wake-up’ call, to individuals, but he is also offering a similar psychic alarm to the anima mundi.

Can and will we hear him?