In ancient Greece, Orestes is driven mad by vengeful Furies, dark Goddesses hell bent on the application of Divine Law.
He has been forced to kill his mother by Apollo, who insists that the murder of her husband Agamemnon, whom she stabbed in the bath for killing their daughter Iphigenia, be avenged.
Yes, its complicated.
Son kills mother, for killing father, for killing daughter…. you can see how this might end. Orestes fulfillment of Apollo’s law is punishable by death..
not very fair, but there’s no reasoning with Furies….
Eventually Athena intervenes, ruling that twelve judges, she amongst them, will determine Orestes’ fate. The judges are evenly decided but because Athena votes for his acquittal, and its her gig, he gets let off without being torn to shreds.
There is a Chinese saying, ‘One bucket of water thrown, travels ten thousand miles.’ It means that intention, the beginning of things, is of supreme importance. Athena’s judgement is based on Orestes’ intention to do the right thing by Apollo which mitigates the actions for which he is then bought to judgement.
In other words guilt and innocence are not to be found in works or actions but in motivations and intentions.
Without Athena, Orestes would be ripped apart by the Furies. At the Gates of Death he would have to betray his own incomprehension of events, accept his guilt despite the impossibility of his situation in order to find something that made sense of final moments, to shrug off his rage and indignation at capricious and contradictory gods.
Ronald Fairbairn’s great contribution to psychology is an understanding of how and why people blame and punish themselves for things that are scarcely their fault. It’s because self blame/punishment beats impotence/despair. If you are guilty you remain a vigorous party to events, even if it’s the last one you get to attend.
So, if you fancy being in charge, all you need is a religion with guilt at it’s core and people will endure anything…
oh wait..
The story of Orestes is important because it begins with his father sacrificing his sister Iphigenia to Artemis in exchange for favorable winds to Troy, and shows what then happens to sons of the Patriarchy once their sisters have been sold out.
They go crazy with inner conflict….
With my mind
People think I’m insane because I am frownin’
All the time
All day long, I think of things, but nothin’ seems
To satisfy
Think I’ll lose my mind if I don’t find something
To pacify. Black Sabbath. ‘Paranoia.’
Is so unreal
An’ so, as you hear these words tellin’ you now
Of my state
I tell you to enjoy life, I wish I could
But it’s too late.
Can you help me
Occupy my brain? ibid
Athena might then ask, ‘Who, having killed his mother for killing his father for killing his sister will now kill Orestes?’… cutting through neurotic compulsion to the feeling of loss and emptiness under-pining it.
And so chronic emptiness is papered over by the vague sense of having to pay for some unseen crime. Perhaps, the heinous wish to follow one’s own star, a sin to be expedited through debilitating drugs and alcohol or having to scrub the pelmets with Jik and a toothbrush at 4am, endless repetition of apparently meaningless tasks until the comparison is finally made to the feeling of being in a chain gang…
which is at least community.
It’s said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions but you have to wonder what kind of axe the Church had to grind…. threatening meek parishioners with eternal damnation like that, simply for having a bright idea that hadn’t been properly thought through… well, it seems a bit harsh.
Until you take up the context…
which is that the big bosses wanted piety to be about works rather than intentions because it meant you could do as you pleased provided it was in God’s name and you still appeared to pay your taxes. From the 5th C onward, the end justifies the means.
The original saying is, ‘Hell is full of good meanings. Heaven is full of good works,’ which reveals the full extent of the ecclesiastical hand in the proverbial glove. The important thing is what is achieved. Your motivations and hence your own personal values are of no consequence to the greater good…. your wish to see what lies beyond the horizon will therefor be traded off for an invitation to regress and indulge all your worst instincts provided you remember your place and tell yourself it’s all for a good cause.
In an interior way it means that compulsive neurosis and addictive predispositions begin with the gagging and sacrifice of the feminine principle, of feeling connected, all of which then manifests like fissures in a glacial psyche; large chunks calve from the Self, dissociated and dangerous.
Which brings us to Kavanaugh and the sacrifice of the feminine soul that has just taken place on Capitol Hill. Iphigenia has been slaughtered like a goat to invoke favorable winds for the sails of flagship Corporate America.
It didn’t work out for Agamemnon. He hadn’t bargained on Clytemnestra’s blade. Like many a malignant narcissist his abrupt fate only intruded after the moment of triumph, once his goal had been achieved, the dust of battle washed away..
and basking in victory…,
his legacy yet to unfold.