The Guardians of Renewal: Musings on a Transrevolutionary Archetype

Craig Chalquist

As an old order ruptures and teeters before breaking down, seeds of renewal germinate in the thick square shadows of trembling towers about to fall. The old order might be an ailing body, a moribund government, an ossified religion, a corrupt corporation, even an entire movement, society, or age past its prime: at any rate, something once-vital but now headed down the entropic drainpipe of history, where Nemesis waits to disassemble and recycle whatever fails to adapt. The seeds sprout in the ruins. That’s when the Guardians appear.

Meet the Guardians Actually, you already have. The three Wise Men who show up for the birth of Jesus; the Twelve who follow him. King Arthur’s Round Table Knights. The Fianna, those elite foresters who protected the High King of Ireland. The Shambhala Warriors. The Oathbound Spirits. The Bogatyri. The Lokapala who guard the Four Directions; the Four Heavenly Kings (Feng Tiao Yu Shun). In Greek mythology, the armed Kouretes on Mount Aigaion grouped around baby Zeus. When his cries threatened to alert Cronus, who sought to swallow him, the Kouretes danced around him in full armor while clashing their shields together. They protected the pick of Gaia until he grew old enough to overthrow the Titans and establish a new order. Apollo’s children the Korybantes clustered around the goddess Cybele, the Phrygian counterpart to Rhea. They also tended ecstatic visions and initiated boys into manhood.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. From BNF 112, a manuscript of the prose Lancelot attributed to Walter Map (Gaultier Moap) or Michel Gantelet. Evrard d’Espinques. 1470. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

2 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 Spring 2017 immanencejournal.com 3 The Gnostics referred to their Guardians as the Children of Light: the introverted offspring of Seth, first Gnostic and son of celestial Adam. In them lived the divine spark bestowed by Sophia against the day the Children would return this precious possession to the Treasury of Light in the Pleroma (“Fullness”), their version of Heaven. Eschewing open rebellion, the Children of Light conducted disciplines and studies designed to see through and bypass the Authorities of Darkness who ruled the subcelestial realms.

What makes us free is the gnosis of who we were of what we have become of where we were of wherein we have been cast of whereto we are hastening of what we are being freed of what birth really is of what rebirth really is. The Journey of the Three Kings by Leopold Kupelwiese. 1825. —Excerpta de Theodoto (Hoeller 10) Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We see the Guardians’ crested silhouette in fiction and fantasy too: inthe 2. Gathering: individuals emotionally resonant with this great new birth Fellowship of the Ring, the Jedi Order, the Fedaykin and Fish Speakers of Dune, find each other and form a group to protect and serve that which is being Asimov’s Second Foundation, Smith’s Lensmen, the Priory of Sion. Guardians too born from the thrashings of a dying order. Their primary mood is shaped one-sidedly good (hidden power drive!) or insufficiently reflective risk seduction by by the daimon Elpis: Hope. archontic Authorities and subsequent regression into shadow forms: ninja and sulsa, Fascist elites and terror bands like ISIL, Sith Lords and the Knights of Ren, all of whom 3. Apotheosis: their aspirations and deeds add threads to the legend woven serve Death instead of Life, degeneration and not rebirth. around the new birth by storytellers of the society transformed by it. Unlike such shadowy Guardians of Degeneration, those of Renewal are not threshold guardians in Campbell’s sense: beings who test whether the Hero is worthy of Once the god or order is born, Guardians stay vital in service to it, his great adventure (59). Rather, our Guardians gather around and safeguard some grand transform into its officiants (the Stilgar syndrome), die protecting it (Galahad, new possibility emerging into actuality. The archetype they express unfolds like this: Boromir), or retire (Oisin). They leave behind tales of the beloved community they helped found. 1. Theogenesis: a god is being born or reborn. Examples of this: birth Always the Guardians seem linked somehow to the natural world, operating of an actual deity; a new order of things emerges from the ruins of the deep within it or sanctioned by its sacred presences. In The Idylls of the King, old; an enchanted realm (“the Kingdom of Heaven”) infiltrates a moribund Guinevere’s father beholds the land’s response to the king and queen commissioning empire; a complex system begins organizing around a rising new attractor; the Round Table: a constellating archetype activates ever-larger circles of sensitive people.

4 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 Spring 2017 immanencejournal.com 5 The individual expression of transrevolution is the epiphany. Degraded in All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse, modern use to “realizing something,” the word originally meant a life-changing Each with a beacon-star upon his head, sacred encounter. The Magi appear, and things change forever after. Epiphany is And with a wild sea-light about his feet, ignited by theophany: the appearance of a god. A transrevolution is a collective He saw them - headland after headland flame epiphany, a great awakening, with permanent transmutative consequences. As such Far on into the rich heart of the west: it transcends politics and is incompatible with violence. And in the light the white mermaiden swam, The transrevolutionary pattern stood out for me one day as I donned the lenses And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea, of depth psychology, systems/complexity theory, and my notion of eradigmatics— And sent a deep sea-voice thro' all the land, the study of how rising archetypes shape entire eras—to search back through history To which the little elves of chasm and cleft for signs of genuinely deep and lasting change. Transrevolution seems to unfold in Made answer, sounding like a distant horn. twelve overlapping phases: ...For all the land was full of life. (Tennyson 451) 1. Recognition: Nonmaterial forms organize complex systems. Every dynamic What might the Guardians look like in human aspect today? system is the material expression of its pattern of organization. Systems large and small are ultimately shaped not by fixed roles or plans, but by invisible, intangible Guardians as Transrevolutionaries patterns (archetypes, motifs, meanings, images). It’s useful to distinguish between revolution and transrevolution. Revolutions replace one power group or ruling party with another. The new 2. Systemic problems are not correctable without structural change. Ongoing authorities always end up resembling those they replace, as when the American problems like wars, political corruption, racism, sexism, and ecocrisis cannot be Revolution traded in white British rulers for white colonial elites. After violently repaired because they are systemic (Donella Meadows). An initial step toward deep protesting taxation without representation, the Americans inaugurated their new change is facing the fact that old systems incapable of adaptive self-reorganization wealthy president in a bank. New leaders and new proclamations, then, but with cannot be reformed and must be remade. old social structures left in place. Systems theorists call this first order change. As revolutions revolve around a sudden power vacuum, freedom fighters become 3. In outworn systems a new core image/myth/vision emerges from rupture and secret police, radical intellectuals apologists, and rebels the new aristocrats. chaos. As the old system wears out, a new organizing attractor—a new myth—emerges Transrevolutions demonstratesecond order change by restructuring the system that carries the seeds of future social structure and culture-making. Sensitive people from the ground up. For that reason they are rarer than revolutions. Inspired by who can stay inwardly transparent to the new myth resonate with it and find ways to a numinous vision of grand new possibility, a new collective consciousness rises protect and develop it. As Systems theorists observe, changing the ruling paradigm from the remains of the old. New religions begin as transrevolutions. So did the changes every key interaction in a system. Women’s Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. They not only transformed values, attitudes, and actions, they transmuted them: melted down the old into 4. Living the core emblems and principles of this new image/myth/vision plants the newer, stronger alloys. seeds of new culture. As Guardians of Renewal, spokespeople for the new myth form Some transrevolutions give birth to physical institutions: the House of Wisdom groups of likeminded kindred and converse (via heartsteads) to start living the core in Baghdad, the Alexandrian Library, the Jixia Academy in Shandong, the Florentine attractor/new myth of future culture now. These new transrevolutionary explorations Platonic Academy, the Oracle of the Pythoness at Delphi, the ancient city of Ife in limit themselves to a modest number of self-replicating evolutionary principles, Western Nigeria. images, and guidelines to form the core around which new kinds of culture grow.

6 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 Spring 2017 immanencejournal.com 7 causality, and bounded rationality. Leaders tend patterns, directions, interactions,

5. New energies and meanings multiply fractally along critical connections rather qualities, feel, pace, mood, inspiration, creativity, and rhythm. Creative autopoesis: than from mere critical mass. The transrevolutionary network expands via smart new combinations and wisdom groups always beat simply adding new elements. networking: redundant central hubs connected to reality labs on the periphery to tend what emerges. The new vision/myth/attractor depends on reinforcing loops 10. The new system and its evolving subsystems self-organize as a rite of passage. that feed and spread it. Methods for spreading the vision are coordinated across a Defending the new system requires countering opposition with success stories, multitude of places, events, and media. discrediting outworn ideologies and bounded logic, framing reactionary leaders as old paradigm, appealing to potential change agents, making systemic injustices

6. Spokespeople for the new image/myth/vision gather and transform all those highly visible to all, and seducing intelligent opponents with what the new system who resonate. This support empowers interested people and equips them with has to offer (e.g., meditation , psych analysis, belonging, meaning, purpose, visionary critical consciousness while inspiring them with the new vision and its memes. What work, a new myth). Culture crisis can be framed as rite of passage, with tools offered educationally empowers people with sense of agency, voice, and liberation awakens for surviving it and outgrowing it: growing people up via initiation moves them above all who hear to body, emotions, soul, nature contact, and spirit; and this undermines the crisis . Broadcast the voices and examples of true elders and adults. oppression. The new vision can seduce people away from ineffective, outmoded, or destructive projects by offering deeply meaningful activities and responsibilities. 11. Remaining unstuck from any paradigms lets transrevolutionaries wield any of them as tools in service to the new system. Donella Meadows: “It is in this space of 7. Redundant communication nets keep the evolutionary memes moving along, mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring especially when linking novel experiments with each other, using micro innovation down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have to make for macro change. Information must flow across ordinary boundaries (make impacts that last for millennia” (165) . them clear and semipermeable), and new connections form between elements, between subsystems, and between system and environment. 12. As old institutions either reorganize themselves or fall by the wayside, the new systems and subsystems expand and anchor their forms of culture by being linked 8. Networks congeal into parallel institutions—subsystems of transformation: not to similar efforts going on elsewhere, by building and connecting stocks (community revolution so much as cultural resilience experiments—that do something better resources), by being in conscious relationship to place and Earth, and by promoting than the old institutions while operating as adaptive organizations that learnon the resulting new norms. the go. At the heart of a working parallel institution is a combination of vision (refinement of the emerging myth/attractor), fairness (which is archetypal: cross- In summary, a motto of transrevolution is: If you can’t beat ‘em, transmute ‘em. species and deeper than morality), commitment, autopoesis, and a semipermeability Expressed in the language of systems and complexity: “What affects a pardigm, that that lets in new info and keeps the ambitious, controlling, and emotionally immature is, the vault key of a whole system of thought, affects the ontology, the methodology, from achieving influential positions. the epistemology, the logic, and by consequence, the practices, the society, and the politics” (Morin 34).

9. Under wise leadership, ever-wider and deeper new subsystems manifest, How might the Guardians of today peacefully foment transrevolution? complexify, and multiply. Systems strengthen and consolidate when connected to more of themselves, creating stronger relationships while building better access Archetypal Activism to themselves (Wheatley) and increasing their diversity. Strategic thinking moves In 2014 I began teaching an online class, Deep Storytelling and Archetypal past and across splits/compartments, repetitive interactions, vicious circles, simple Activism, for Pacifica Graduate Institute. Storytelling lends itself to personal and

8 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 Spring 2017 immanencejournal.com 9 5. Viewing the concern empathically and non-judgmentally from different cultural transmutation. It creates trust, enlists emotion, activates more points of view, especially those pushed to the margins of collective of the brain than a lecture can, bypasses moralizing and argument, eschews the consciousness, shaming and blaming that so many angry activists counterproductively fall back on, rejuvenates the teller, leaves interpretation to the hearer, and speaks in a medium 6. Maintaining openness and curiosity about the particularities and details natural for all human beings. of the concern, Depth psychologist Stephen Aizenstat coined “archetypal activism” in 2002 after noticing, time and again, how tending one’s dreams as indicators ofouter 7. Amplifying them by doing cultural and historical homework on them, events led naturally to action: “...If our dreams arise from the World's Dream, then we can perhaps glimpse what the world itself desires. And knowing this, we can then 8. Staying in a space of uncertainty, exploration, and tension until new act in the world, on behalf of the world ” (170). understandings emerge, Archetypal activism is neither an overt political program nor retreat from reality into fantasy. Instead, it bridges action and reflection, planning and imagination: 9. Allowing these understandings to shape action on behalf of what is witnessed or dreamed, I noticed that whenever people began to see dream images as speaking on behalf of everything in the world, often their relationship to the 10. Taking three concrete steps on its behalf, world transformed into something radically new. By consistently asking the fundamental Dream Tending questions ("Who is visiting 11. Assessing the effects of these steps, and now?" and "What is going on here?"), at a certain point they heard the voices of other creatures and inanimate beings around them, 12. Either ritualizing a closure for the project or deciding on further efforts and having heard these dream voices, they felt compelled to make a on its behalf. response. They felt the need to not only interpret dreams, but also to take action on behalf of dreams in the world. (Aizenstat 101-171) These could be thought of as modes of one two-phase operation: 1. Listen to the guidance of imagery buried in an event, and 2. act on behalf of that imagery. Expanding on this, I rolled out a 12-step model for performing archetypal activism: What would happen if archetypal activism came into its full potential asa group action, even a transrevolutionary movement? What would Round Table 1. Witnessing or dreaming something (a “pressing concern”) in and from the Knights of the World Soul be like? The experiment awaits. world that needs tending,

Kairos Rising 2. Heeding its images as potent metaphors in motion, The rent of tearing metal fills the imaginal air. In politics, in finance, in medicine, education, religion; in living rooms, bedrooms, and corporate boardrooms; 3. Resolving to reflect on and respond to the concern with soul, in megachurches and hardened bunkers; in fragile institutions around the world, the cacophony of collapse grows louder as a world civilization hubristically at war 4. Creating a support network for the effort, with the once-green planet begins to totter, a victim of its own toxic wastefulness. Standing behind Gaia, Nemesis bats last.

10 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 Spring 2017 immanencejournal.com 11 Who will save us? That is what so many wonder as they consult pastors, gurus, and clerics, email urgent requests for mercy or advice to powerful CEOs, and write frantic appeals to puppet presidents. The question itself is a symptom of decay.Who will save us? No. When and how will we act to save ourselves? The ancient Greek concept of Kairos stands on a revealing etymology. The images in it include shooting an arrow through a sudden opening and passing a shuttle through the threads of a loom (Sipiora and Baumlin 17-18). In rhetoric, the argument shifts just enough to allow a conversation-changing point to be pressed. Kairos! One such moment opened as wandering 12th-century troubadours who also sang of love spread Grail lore just as warfare and corruption emptied out the soul of the monolithic Catholic Church. It would never recover its hold on Europe. Propelled by love and fancy, the legendary Chalice holding the blood of Jesus poured mythic hope into the spiritual descendants of Cathari, Bogomils, and Albigenses guarding new visions of radical inward freedom fed by outward practice. As the window for transrevolutionary change opens all too briefly, Sir Percival stands trembling in wonder before the glowing Grail. He trembles because he has already blown the test once, a Guardian who failed his own initiation. “What is the How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with the Sanct Grael; but Sir Percival’s Sister Died by the Way. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Watercolor and gouache on paper. 1864. secret of the Holy Grail?” he is asked again. “Whom does it serve?” Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Today, a third question about the Grail is put to we who stand in the place of the indecisive knight: Who is willing to serve it? Depth psychologist Craig Chalquist, PhD is Associate Provost at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a consultant for other academic institutions, and Founding Editor-in- Chief of Immanence: The Journal of Applied Mythology, Legend, and Folktale Works Cited (immanencejournal.com). He is also the author of several books, including Storied Aizenstat, Stephen. DreamTending: Awakening to the Healing Power of Dreams. Spring Journal Lives: Discovering and Deepening Your Personal Myth. Visit his ever-active Facebook Books, 2011. Public Page at Facebook.com/chalquist. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library, 2008. Hoeller, Stephan. Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. Quest Books, 2002. Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems. Chelsea Green, 2008. Morin, Edgar. On Complexity. Hampton Press, 2008. Sipiora, Phillip, and James Baumlin. Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis. State U of New York P, 2002. Tennyson, Alfred. The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Worldsworth Editions, 1998.

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