The last blog entry entitled Myth & Justice (“Image is Everything”) argued in essence that “everything is image.” The language, motifs, and images with which we surround ourselves come from deeply felt needs and intuitions within the psyche, or unconscious. From an inner sense these needs then take on outer form: the mythic sense is given concrete expression.
One example given of this concrete expression in the last entry was that of the plaques and/or monuments engraved with the Bible’s Ten Commandments. If one thinks about it, there is a certain irony in the very existence of these monuments as well as the court battles that have surrounded them in recent years. After all, the second of the Ten Commandments is: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4 KJV). The zeal with which these monuments are protected and court cases waged suggests that the proponents are themselves unknowingly caught in the grip of powerful images which, as the case would have it, have been graven or carved in stone. Whether they know it or not, these proponents are violating the very same commandment they seek to preserve.
The first of the Ten Commandments is also telling and ironic: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus: 20:3 KJV). Here, the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) demands fealty from His subjects, but in so doing He at the same time admits the existence of other gods! While these commandments are deserving of their own series of blog entries, on a psychological level the existence of multiple gods, i.e., a pantheon, symbolizes the individualized embodied expressions of deeply felt psychic needs and energies. The injunction against graven images in the second commandment reflects to a substantial degree, then, the first commandment’s desire to have one psychic image or expression put above all the others.
Of course, the imagistic embodiment of psychic energies was and is not limited to gods but includes goddesses as well. One such Greek goddess is Themis whose Roman name is Iustitia, or Justice. A Google Images search quickly turns up some very interesting (even provocative) images of Themis, many of which are in the form of statues decorating courthouses around the world. The global presence of the Themis image strongly suggests the embodiment of energies still alive in and important to the human psyche – especially when it comes to the idea of justice.
Much could be said about Themis and the role she played in Greek mythology. I refer readers to From Ancient Myth to Modern Healing by Pamela Donleavy and Ann Shearer which bears the subtitle Themis: Goddess of Heart-Soul, Justice and Reconciliation. For the purposes of this blog series on Myth & Justice, Mythfire will provide only the briefest of insights into her symbolic meaning in this and the following entry.
The heart-soul in the subtitle just mentioned speaks to the idea that, born of the Titans, Themis is connected to the emotional and instinctual energies or passions that come into conflict with the more rational spirit-soul of the Olympians. This latter soul is characterized by adherence to transcendental and/or eternal principles and ideals. On some level, every person has both souls dueling within him or herself, a fact also noted by the great German writer Goethe:
“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for mastery there.
The one has passions craving for crude love,
And hugs a world where sweet senses rage;
The other longs for pastures fair above,
Leaving the mark for lofty heritage.” *
A recent article by Peter Bart about the Roman Polanski case currently in the public eye bears the title “Passions Polarize over Polanski’s Plight” which, while alliteration heavy, reflects along with the article’s content much the same battle of two souls as limned by Goethe and again in the above book by Donleavy and Shearer. The article title also testifies to the fact that the spirit-soul can be as passionate about its beliefs as the heart-soul. In the Polanski case, the spirit-soul is focused on his violation of both a young girl and the law when he raped her and then again when he fled the country. The heart-soul focuses on the “erratic behavior of the judge who mishandled the case 30 years ago,” the fact that Polanski did everything the judge asked of him, and, of course, Polanski’s own personal history, i.e. tragically losing his parents in the Holocaust and later his wife Sharon Tate to Charlie Manson’s murderous followers. One might say that the spirit-soul’s call is “Remember: no one is above the law,” to which the heart-soul gives this response: “Yes, but there are extenuating circumstances! Don’t you have a heart?!!?”
Bart closes his article with this statement: “I realize there are grounds for disagreement here, but the nastiness of the debate surprises me. If there is yet another act to be played out in the Polanski opera, one would hope it would be conducted with greater restraint and civility.”**
The next blog entry will continue to broach the question of how this “greater restraint and civility” might be realized between the warring passions of the spirit- and heart-souls. In the time of Ancient Greece and their mythology, it was realized in the figure of Themis – a goddess who arguably still speaks from within us today.
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*Faust, Part One (trans. Wayne), p. 67.
**http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010350.html?categoryid=3745&cs=1&query=Polanski
