Once upon a time there was a childless couple. Their sadness was so great that eventually the man went off to carve a stump he found in the forest until it resembled a boy and took it home to his wife. That night while they slept the wooden boy came to life and woke them up. They were amazed and admired him till morning.
After breakfast Wooden Peter asked his father for eight florins to buy a sword, the first the local blacksmith had ever made. After much searching the blacksmith bought out a small rusty sword and strapped it to Peter’s belt where it suddenly gleamed with new life. In the village square a crowd had gathered around two magnificent Oxen held together with a golden chain. Whoever could break the chain could have the Oxen. Many had tried and failed but Wooden Peter was undaunted and cut the chain in two.
Wooden Peter took the Oxen home with instructions to feed them live coals when he arrived.. He built a great fire and fed the coals to the Oxen which then flew off to the points of sunset and sunrise respectively, without so much as a by your leave.
Wooden Peter then summoned his father and showed him something amazing, that by touching the gate posts he could cause the one to produce wine and the other, brandy. Wooden Peter then announced his wish to go out into the world, saying,
‘When the mill stone in the yard leaps into the barrow of its own accord, the wine turns to water and the brandy to blood you will know I have died. Then climb in the barrow which will bring you to me.’
Wooden Peter then set off on his adventures, arriving eventually at a great castle where the king was preparing for war. Peter volunteered his services and dealt with the enemy single handed until he stumbled and was killed.
The millstone back home jumped into the barrow of its own accord. The Wine turned to water and the brandy to blood. The old man got in the barrow as he had been told which took him to the spot where Peter had fallen but he was not to be seen. Then the two Oxen arrived, one from the direction of sunset, the other from sun rise and dug up the broken body of Peter from where it had been buried.. The one re-membered his body, the other replaced his soul and soon Peter was restored.
Our story begins with a barren situation, the childless couple. The Psyche is stagnant, there’s nothing going on. Sharing in the collective identity predominant in pre-neolithic culture, being a chip off the old block is no longer enough. The concept of personal destiny begins to emerge from the millennial dominance of clan imperative, demanding both a new relationship with the world and a new relationship with tribe.
Stories are a bit like teddy bears, both me and not-me. They bridge separation and show us how separation might be managed. Finding a distinct sense of self involves much loss and parring away which re-configures how we imagine meaning might be found and where we imagine redemption may lie.
As primordial Parsifal, Wooden Peter sets out on his heroic quest of self discovery. He begins at the Blacksmith shop where he asks for the oldest, rustiest sword. What is the significance of that? Why does it have the power to cut the chain binding the sacred oxen?
The difficulty for emerging ego is the issue of the shadow, it must find a way of incorporating inferior aspects of the personality in order to make wholeness out of heroic self idealization. The sword is ‘inferior’, the inexperienced first effort of youth, which, consciously wielded, is also ‘beginner’s mind’, the zen-like stillness of not knowing which such adventures often require.
The personality still in touch with it’s own limitations, though by association also awe and wonder, is what’s required to free the sacred Oxen so that they can come into a more purposive relationship with emerging ego which has to feed them with living heat, intense and passionate involvement.
Originally, according to Chinese myth, plow-oxen lived in Heaven, as the Ox constellation. The Emperor of Heaven, wishing to help humanity, sent the Oxen down to Earth with the message that if they worked hard, they could be sure to have a meal at least every three days. The Oxen got the message mixed-up, and instead told the people that the Emperor of Heaven promised them they would be able to eat three times a day.
This put the Emperor of Heaven in a bit of a pickle, since the people on their own would not be able to accomplish such a thing. Being as much poet as administrator, he saw a way to fulfill this great boast by having the Oxen remain on Earth. With their help the mighty feat of eating three times a day could then be achieved.[To the ancient psyche, Oxen were the message and manifestation of divine providence.
Wooden Peter has to develop a relationship with the something he is emerging from, because that something might easily swallow him back up. To prevent this and to free the oxen to their more constructive purpose, they must be approached with a symbol of everything which is unpretentious, simple, without agenda. Then, enormous amounts of energy must be invested in them.
Once this is done, rather than being depleted, Wooden Peter seems to be imbued with miraculous powers. Getting in alignment with that which transcends him ensures a kind of cosmic co-operation whose effect is magical. In our own lives this might manifest as synchronicity or as events which seem to line up, not by direct influence but by a tending of their fundamental roots. The ancient Chinese call it Wu Wei, effortless action.
‘If attention is directed to the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water. For consciousness is just as arid as the unconscious if the two halves of our psychic life are separated.” C.G. Jung, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.
Wooden Peter is not redeemed by his own actions. Even though he achieved great things, these alone lead ultimately to the limits of heroic action, the death of an ideal Siegfried. It is the Oxen, with whom he developed right relationship, which come and save the day. This rather invites us to reconsider what we mean when we talk about ‘working on myself’, or, more crudely, ‘fixing myself’. It seems all noble and well intentioned but it assumes the ego is the agent of change which might well be a large part of the problem to begin with. Many modern afflictions have ancient roots, we confuse ourselves with the gods and then, having skipped over self-discovery, suffer the inflation of ‘self-improvement’.
Our story suggests that what is meaningful and redemptive is no amount of great deeds, but whether or not you can be emotionally invested in the Other. For this it is necessary to develop a certain ambivalence to one’s own destiny. It’s no longer about meeting my goals or loving myself or thinking positively, because the point of reference is still stuck at me, myself, I.
Quick fix therapies, particularly those which offer you control over your thoughts and feelings are fostering narcissism. Fortunately they tend to be short in duration, the patient becomes so inflated they don’t need help any more. Unfortunately, they are also short on efficacy. Within no time at all the band aid comes loose and the wound of personal goals triumphing over meaningful participation begins to bleed again.
