toxic masculinity – Just the Tarot

The Emperor, The Empress, and Kamala Harris as Feminine Archetype

The re-emergence of the Divine Feminine Archetype in American society.

Carl Jung was always a bit vague about exactly what an archetype is. The basic definition is, “universal symbols or patterns that exist in the collective unconscious of all humans.”

Okey dokey. That’s one of those phrases that sounds like it must mean something really important and leaves us feeling a little dumb because we can’t figure out what it is.

One way of cognizing archetypes is to think of them as sort of Super Energy Forms. They are the essence of a particular idea or feeling, writ large. In Tarot cards, for instance, the card Justice might stand for all legal matters, court proceedings, judges, and lawyers. The Lovers might symbolize all forms of human bonding between couples. The Moon could be seen as all forms of craziness, delusions, and projection.

Now, one of the fascinating things about archetypes is that we can invoke them, which is to say that we can draw their energy into our lives. For instance, if it’s been a very, very long time since we had a romantic relationship, we might meditate on The Lovers and that will serve to create that romantic energy in our existence. Or, if we’re feeling scattered and restless, we can meditate on a statue of the Buddha and that will pull in peacefulness and serenity. If it feels like our lives are full of obstructions, we can invoke the energy of Ganesh to dissolve them.

It’s very much like there are all of these specific energy sources that we can tap into when we need them. Pretty neat, huh?

Although he only hinted at it Jung seemed to warn us that there is also a dark side to archetypes. He seemed to feel that they can actually possess us and take over our lives.

By way of an example, he was doing psychotherapy in Vienna when many of his male clients began having the same dreams. They involved white, Germanic males riding horses in a nighttime parade and carrying torches. This, of course, became a standard practice in Nazi Germany, but their dreams occurred several years before Hitler came to power. He theorized that the collective German unconscious was being slowly possessed by the archetype which would manifest as the Nazi movement.

In another example, Bill Wilson, who was one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, once asked Jung what caused alcoholism. Jung replied that alcoholics were, “possessed by the Devil.” Jung was NOT, of course, a fundamentalist christian, and he meant that in a very specific way. He meant that their unconscious minds were being taken over by the archetype of addiction which, in its essence, is evil.

It is perhaps illuminating to view current American politics as a demonstration of the power of archetypes. In that scenario, Trump might be seen as a sort of a dark magician (The Magician reversed) who has been invoking an archetype in the unconscious minds of his followers. It has a huge amount of negative energy in it – hatred, anger, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, fear.

Many of us have been puzzled by it for several years. We have friends, relatives, neighbors, even lovers, who appear to be normal, rational humans in all of the other areas of their lives. Still, they support a politician whose, “values,” are the antithesis of everything they claim to believe in. How is that possible?

In Jungian terms, we might say that Trump has managed to summon their Shadow selves and form them into a collective archetype. And, at a certain point, that archetype has possessed them and they’re no longer in command of their own faculties. They are no longer individuals, they’re parts of a collective energy form.

One of the most intriguing aspects is that this dark, shadow archetype seems to be summoning yet another archetype in the minds of the people who aren’t Trumpsters.

The Trump movement has become increasingly focused on a particularly malevolent form of misogyny. Under their model, females, even children, will be forced to carry and deliver the babies of the men who raped them. Project 25 documents reveal that there are even plans to eliminate free access to birth control. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate has stated that women who don’t procreate are essentially wasting their lives and should be treated as second class citizens.

In a phrase, women are to be reduced to breeding stock.

Obviously, this is one of the most anti-feminist, anti-female political movements we’ve ever seen in the United States. The good news, though, is that it seems to be giving birth to a new wave of feminism. Suddenly, as if by magic, the male Democratic nominee has been whisked off of center stage and replaced by a very energetic, very feisty female candidate. There is a palpable, almost electrifying energy in our electoral process that hasn’t been there for years.

If we were to cast it in archetypal terms, Trump might be seen as The Emperor Tarot card, the embodiment of toxic male energy. Harris, on the other hand, could be seen as The Empress, the archetype of sensual, relaxed but very, very strong feminine energy. Toxic masculinity versus the divine feminine.

A Battle of the Archetypes. Wow!

It’s going to be a very interesting election.

The Emperor, Psilocybin, and Butterfly Warriors

A look at the role of psilocybin in erasing toxic masculinity.

And then there’s the amazing case of Mark Matzeldelaflor.

Mark was a Navy Seal. In case you’re not familiar with that, the Seals and the Green Berets are the ultimate warriors. Incredible athletes, highly disciplined and impeccably trained, they are considered the finest combat soldiers in the world.

Mark was also a professional sniper in the Seals. His job was to kill other human beings by shooting them with high powered rifles, as rapidly and effectively as possible, and he was very good at it.

After serving two tours in Iraq, he left the military and returned to the West Coast, where he became an emotional and spiritual shipwreck. He drifted from one meaningless job to another, drank too much, suffered from horrible PTSD and sank into depression and suicidal ideation.

Then one day a buddy of his said, “Hey, man, why don’t you take some Magic Mushrooms with me”. And it all went away. All of the trauma, all of the depression, the alcoholism, the PTSD – it vanished from his heart and brain like . . . well . . . magic.

Mark immediately started trying to use his new world view to help other veterans and started an organization called Guardian Grange. The idea is to use the discipline and talents that they’ve acquired in the military but channel that into helping to save the earth. And their first project is . . . a refuge for monarch butterflies.

Now, I’ve written quite a bit here about toxic male role models and I find this story so amazing from that perspective. When we think of the classic toxic male, we tend to envision a guy who’s taken a few too many steroids, muscular, swaggering, fairly devoid of emotions, unable to admit any vulnerabilities, and a bully.

That kind of a guy becomes a sort of a silly cartoon when you put him up against the reality of a Navy Seal. These are men who can run or swim for hours with no rest, survive in a jungle or desert with no food, and kill with no mercy or compunction.

So how does someone who is literally a stone cold killer suddenly become a Butterfly Warrior? It’s fascinating to think about, isn’t it?

The normal cultural model for male/female behavior is based on hormones. To put it in a nutshell, men are chock full of testosterone and that makes us aggressive, dominant, and violent. Women are flooded with estrogen, and that makes them passive, nurturing, and weak. That model was given a huge boost by Sigmund Freud, a man who wanted to fuck his own mother and thought the clitoris was utterly unimportant in female sexuality.

Despite it’s rather shaky logic and dubious proponents, that remains the model that most people operate out of: we’re simply predetermined products of our hormones. But what if we’re not?

Scientists are just now beginning to really dig into what psilocybin does to the human brain. They know, for instance, that it has some sort of a strong interaction with serotonin and pleasure receptors, meaning that it makes us happier. They know that it vastly increases the connectivity between different parts of the brain, so that parts of our brain that don’t usually, “talk to each other,” are suddenly communicating. They know that it suppresses activity in other parts of the brain, such as the portion that maintains our sense of self and ego.

Still, there’s much more that we DON’T know about how Magic Mushrooms affect our brains than what we DO know. Somehow it erases depression, anxiety, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. And – I suspect – it may also erase toxic male role modeling.

My symbol for the Male Archetype in our culture is The Emperor. He’s strong, he’s heavily armored, he’s living in a barren environment, and he’s very much alone. He rules, but he’s paid a heavy price for his crown. He is, above all else, disconnected.

One of the best descriptions I’ve read of what psilocybin does to the human brain is that it’s just like a snow globe. It picks up our brains, gives them a good shake, and a lot of our normal neural pathways are disrupted and fly off in totally new directions. If you’re more into mechanistic models, it seems to instantly rewire our brain patterns.

Dig what Mark said in that interview: “I just reconnected to nature and my past, where I was like a kid in the woods.” That description is what we hear from many other people who have taken psilocybin: an instant sense of reconnection with the earth and with meaning.

Now, there’s no suggestion that psilocybin caused a huge drop in Mark’s testosterone levels or that he suddenly became a eunuch and that’s what took away his aggression or his toxic male role modeling. He simply instantly learned how to be a male in an entirely different way than what WE ARE TAUGHT that it means to be a male.

All of this is strongly indicative that, “manhood,” is much more in our heads than it is in our testicles. Toxic masculinity may very well consist of a series of enculturated neural pathways that are so deeply burned into our brain tissue that they’re nearly impossible to overcome. Unless someone picks up that snow globe and gives it a good shake.

We can’t expect that taking psilocybin will turn our culture around anytime soon. For one thing, we’re taught from the cradle that some form or another of toxic masculinity is good, that this is the way that a real man behaves. For another, there’s no money to be made by the pharma industries where psilocybin in concerned. It’s out there and it’s relatively cheap, so why manufacture it?

Still, it’s a start. If a man who was the most efficient killing machine the military can manufacture can suddenly turn into a warrior for butterflies that’s . . . a miracle.

There’s hope.

Another way to almost instantly expand your consciousness is to buy my ebook, Just the Tarot, available dirt cheap on Amazon.

The Emperor, Robotic Cats, and Suicide Among Elderly Men

Examining the reasons for the high suicide rate among elderly males.

I was just reading an article about suicide in the elderly and the author – a certified therapist with a PhD, mind you – suggested that a good preventative might be a robotic cat or dog that we could talk to and sleep with. That way, we wouldn’t be lonely and, if we weren’t lonely, we wouldn’t be offing ourselves at record numbers.

Now, if you weren’t already suicidal, the idea of having to get a little cat robot to be your best friend would surely drive you over the edge. It’s such a radiant example of NOT understanding suicide in the elderly that it’s almost breathtaking.

Here, kitty kitty! Oh, shit, her batteries are dead. Might as well just kill myself.

The, “reasons,” for elder suicide are all over the place. According to the experts, it’s because we’re lonely, or we’re socially isolated, or we’re sick, or we don’t have jobs anymore, or our spouses died, or we’re invisible in a youth-culture, or we never get touched by anyone.

My very favorite is that elderly people commit suicide because they’re . . . drumroll, please . . . depressed.

You think?

After spending several days combing through articles and studies about why elderly people kill themselves, I came to two conclusions. One – nobody really knows why. Two – nobody is very motivated to find out. From a purely dollars and cents perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to social scientists to study elderly suicide because – hey! – old people are, you know, old. Why spend a ton of money studying how to keep them alive when they’re supposed to die soon anyway?

They have pretty much pinned down the people at the highest risk. The person who is most likely to commit suicide in the United States is an elderly, white, male, introvert with a family history of suicide.

Males kill themselves four times more than females. Apparently it’s one of our special skills, though it’s probably best to not note it on our resume’s. No surprise, then, that those statistics would go across all of the age groups and extend into old age.

I can also understand the factor of the family history of suicide. Perhaps that’s just a genetic predisposition to depression, but once you’ve seen suicide modeled in your own family, it’s hard to unsee it.

Introversion is a little harder to grasp, because it exists across such a broad spectrum and means so many different things to different people. About 52% of the general population are introverts but most of them are obviously not suicidal.

Researchers have been quick to make the leap from introversion to loneliness and social isolation, though. Under that model, introversion = social isolation, which = loneliness, which = depression which causes suicide.

Leaving aside the fact that those us with robotic cats are hardly lonely, other statistics would seem to refute this approach. Elderly women actually report much higher levels of feeling socially isolated and much higher levels of feeling lonely than elderly men. If there was causation from those factors, we’d expect to see the gender statistics reversed, with women killing themselves at four times the rate of men.

There’s another interesting difference we can discern when we look at a recent study from UCLA. Dig this:

“What’s striking about our study is the conspicuous absence of standard psychiatric markers of suicidality across all age groups among a large number of males who die by suicide,” said Kaplan, a professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. They found that 60% of victims had no documented mental health conditions.

In other words, the standard perception of suicide as being caused by long term mental illness simply isn’t born out. Suicidal men aren’t crazy, they’re just suicidal.

So, if elderly men aren’t killing themselves because they’re more lonely, more isolated, crazier, or more introverted than everyone else, what’s causing it?

I suspect that a large part of it may lie in another part of the description, which is, “white male.”

Of all of the many groups in the United States, there is no group that is more likely to fully participate in the toxic masculine paradigm than the Caucasian male. We have, simply by being born with white skin, more access to the education and financial resources that enable us to become completely enmeshed in the insane pursuit of money, power, and position. We abandon our own authenticity in that lifelong pursuit.

When we look at the Tarot card, The Emperor, we see the ultimate outcome of that paradigm. Yes, he’s sitting on a throne and he’s powerful. He’s also completely and totally alone, covered from head to toe in his armor. Everything around him is a blasted, sterile wasteland. No friends. No lovers. No family.

He doesn’t even have a fucking robotic cat to sit on his lap.

When we talk about toxic masculinity, we mainly frame it in terms of the negative effects that it has on women who come into contact with it. We tend to forget that it’s the men who are carrying all of those toxins around with us. And it’s killing us.

Is it likely that white American males will begin to look at the female paradigm or perhaps people of color and try to figure out why we’re killing ourselves and they’re not? Probably not. On the other hand, artificial intelligence is improving by leaps and bounds. It’s only a matter of time – hopefully a very short time – until we’ll all have robotic cats and dogs who can actually talk to us and help us deal with our emotional problems more realistically.

Here kitty kitty! I have some brand new batteries for you, sweetheart.

I am very pleased to announce that my ebook, “Just the Tarot,” is now available FOR FREE on Amazon for anyone who has a Kindle Unlimited membership. The cheapest robotic cat that they offer is $113.00 so this is just one hell of a deal.

Toxic Masculinity, The Inner Marriage, and Percolating Testicles

On the exterior level, the Two of Cups obviously represents two people who are falling in love. On a deeper level, though, it represents the Inner Marriage, the harmonious joining of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine in one person’s Soul. In a sense, it represents learning to fall in love with yourself. Or maybe your Self.

I was watching an interview about that the other day and I got plumb confused. The speaker was discussing the way that her Tantric Tradition deals with the Yin/Feminine and Yang/Masculine energies that we all contain. I followed the beginning of it with no great problem. Obviously, every human being incorporates both Yin and Yang and we give greater or lesser expressions to those energies at different times in our lives.

Then she got off into some territory where I felt like I needed to make a chart to keep track of it all. She said that every person has a Yin and a Yang, but women’s Yin have a Yang within the Yin and men’s Yang have a Yin within the Yang. The Yang in women’s Yin is apparently centered at the birth canal, because that’s where they project their being into the world. The Yin in men’s Yang is located in their testicles because that’s where they hold life and sort of . . . . um . . . percolate it.

It all just seemed really complicated.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not in any way making fun of that tradition or denigrating it. In fact, I was really impressed that someone had invested that much time and effort thinking about testicles because most of us are perfectly happy to let them just hang around without analyzing them too much. Men, in particular, consider their testicles as really good buddies, despite the fact that they seem to cause a lot of problems in the world.

What came through to me, though, is how much more women have advanced than men in thinking about all of this. Despite the recent legal set-backs in reproductive rights, the women’s movement remains relatively robust. Women continue to question and examine their roles in society and try to sort out their emotional energies. The men’s movement on the other hand . . . um . . . oh, that’s right . . . there IS no men’s movement.

Well, there IS a sort of a men’s movement, but it’s pretty horrifying. It seems to be based on the idea that men have a divine right to be belching, farting, weight lifting, muscle car driving, gun toting swine and that anyone who questions that is a bitch or a fairy. If you type, “Toxic Masculinity,” into the YouTube search bar, here are a few of the videos that come up:

THE WAR ON MEN

START INCREASING TOXIC MASCULINITY LIKE A REAL MAN

THE RISE OF WEAK MEN: BREAKING DOWN TOXIC MASCULINITY IN AMERICA TODAY

THE INSIDIOUS TOXIC MASCULINITY MYTH IS HARMING HUMANITY

Here’s a screen shot from one of them that kind of says it all:

Ironically, there’s a female side to that story, as well. Under the same topic we find vids (by women) with titles like:

DON’T BE A SIMP: WOMEN LIKE BAD BOYS

WOMEN HATE MEN WHO ARE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR, “FEMININE

SIDE”

WHY WOMEN CRAVE DOMINANCE

and my personal favorite: MEN TRY TO GUILT US BY BEING,

“NICE.”

So there seem to be a fair number of women who don’t want any Yin in their Yangs. Men, of course, take note of that and process it as, “Yeah, I know they SAY they want sensitive men but I’ll never get laid by being evolved.” And, really, we even see quite a few, “feminists,” who are still dating knuckle draggers because it, “just feels right.”

Despite all of that, I still see a fair amount of hope on the sexual horizon. For one thing, we virtually never see a debate over what it means to be a REAL woman. Women seem to be pretty accepting of each other’s life choices now days and career women and lesbians are just as welcome in the tribe as homemakers and mommies.

Kansas City Chiefs football player Harrison Butker recently got into some serious trouble by suggesting that women are much more fulfilled by having babies than they are by having careers. A lot of Yins suggested cutting his Yang off, but it really hasn’t been that long since that would have been considered normal speech.

Up until the late 1960s, it was commonly accepted that the only, “natural,” role for women was producing babies until their uteruses fell out. A corollary to that was the widely held stereotype that only women who had large breasts were truly sexy, a belief that must have made most women feel fairly uncomfortable.

Thankfully, a huge amount of the sexual stereotyping around women has fallen away. Unfortunately, men seem to still be stuck at first base, he said, using a very masculine, butch sports metaphor. So what is it going to take for men to dribble their balls down the court and kick one over the goal posts for a home run?

Well, first and foremost, it’s going to involve men actually claiming that Yin side of their nature and saying, “Yes, REAL men have sensitivities and emotions and needs and men who don’t have them aren’t real in any human sense of the word.”

And, second, it going to involve more women letting go of that toxic stereotype, as well. As long as women continue to have sex with emotionally primitive men, men will continue to be emotionally primitive.

I mean, why wouldn’t they?

Donald Trump, The Empress, and The Emperor

A juxtaposition of male and female energy patterns as exemplified in the Emperor and Empress Tarot cards.

I have to admit that I’m always a little puzzled when I run across one of those news columns discussing, “Donald Trump’s Toxic Brand of Masculinity.” To me, a guy who gets daily manicures, has his dyed hair styled every morning, and bakes under a sun lamp until he turns orange isn’t masculine ANYTHING, toxic or otherwise.

But maybe I’m just being defensive on behalf of all of the sane men in the world.

Today IS the International Day of the Woman, though, so perhaps it’s a good time to talk about all of this.

The Emperor and The Empress, sharing the same exalted positions and residing side by side in the Tarot deck, are often – in fact usually – held up as examples of male and female energy in the world. But let’s a take a step back from that. Let’s just consider them as examples of energy in the world. Different ways of being.

Ram Dass has a rap in Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness that says you can consider people on a number of different levels. You can look at their skins and see black and white and brown. Or you can look at their signs of the zodiac and see Aries and Scorpios and Capricorns. Or you can approach it like a psychologist and see obsessive compulsives and narcissists and dependent personalities.

Or you can take it right down to the bedrock and see Souls. Fellow travelers on this very strange journey through this beautiful world who just happen to be incarnate as a Taurus or a Leo in black or brown or pink skin and seem to have developed a little problem with OCD.

Or to put that another way, we are all multiple patterns of energy existing in the Earth Plane.

And two of those patterns of energy are male and female.

There are, obviously, very valid and real differences between the two patterns. The human body responds quite differently to testosterone and estrogen. Males tend to have more muscle mass and extra cones in their eyes. Women tend to have more fat cells and to visualize more in patterns than lines.

We can take those differences and we can celebrate them as we do when we recognize both the God and the Goddess. The problems start to arise when we view those differences as being absolute and we turn them into stereotypes. “Real,” men are always muscular and silently strong. “Real,” women are always soft and fluttery and vulnerable.

I’ve known women who were so physically powerful that they could have bounced me down the driveway like a basketball. And I’ve known men who were nervous nellies residing in very frail bodies. You can take any stereotype of masculinity or femininity and find examples of it in both men and women.

Likewise, we know that we all have both testosterone and estrogen in our bodies. We all have both, “male,” and, “female,” hemispheres in our brains. Some men retain massive amounts of fluids when the moon is full. Some women are natural born weight lifters.

So masculinity and femininity are much more of a continuum than a dichotomy. It’s a lot more gray than it is black and white.

From that perspective it’s much easier to drop the idea of looking at The Emperor and The Empress as masculine and feminine energy and just look at them as ways that energy can exist on the Earth Plane.

The Empress is relaxed. Comfortable. At ease in her world. She reclines on a velvet throne, legs slightly spread, wearing an unfettered, flowing robe and she is crowned with stars. She holds a sceptre – her symbol of power – but she holds it loosely, almost as if she’s forgotten she has it. A lovely waterfall flows out of a verdant forest behind her and wheat – the symbol of nourishment – grows in front of her. And . . . is that a box of chocolate leaning up against her throne?

The Empress is very, very powerful. She is the power of life and fertility but it’s a gentle, unassuming power. Most of all, she BELONGS in her world and she blesses it and it blesses her.

And now look at The Emperor.

Kind of a nasty faced old man who looks like he’s suffering from a severe case of hemorrhoids. He sits on a hard, stone throne (ouch) and tightly grasps a vaguely Egyptian looking sceptre. His garments are tight, as well, and reveal that he is fully armored beneath them. Mountains rise behind him, barren of any vegetation, and far, far below him a river flows at the base of the cliffs.

The Emperor is also very powerful, but he’s very different from the energy of The Empress. It’s tempting to view him as the alpha-dog but he’s so obviously, painfully alone that you know he doesn’t even have a pack to run with. The Empress exists IN her world, as a part of her world. The Emperor has, “conquered,” his world, destroying anyone and anything that got in his way. He’s at the top of the heap but his heap is a pile of ashes.

Sadly, there are still many people in the world (and, yes, they’re mostly men) who choose to adopt the energy patterns of The Emperor rather than The Empress. And we all pay a price for their choice.

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