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Where are our Bards? And who cares anyway?
"There are times when people need stories more than they need nourishment, because the stories feed something deeper than the needs of the body." Charles de Lindt
I believe we are living in such a time. And yet, we live in a culture that provides us with the opportunity to listen to music or read a story, play a video game or watch a film at every moment of every day. Radio, CD’s, television, books, plays and films cater to our addiction for stories and music. I say addiction because, like any other addictive substance, most of us cannot get through a day without our fix of music, television, video games or films. Like the empty calories and sweetness of our modern ‘snack foods’ which keep us coming back for more, often our modern stories and music don’t satisfy ‘the something deeper’ that de Lindt is referring to. Our stories and music don’t provide the ‘soul food’ that we all crave. Just as addiction is a cry for more spirit in life – liquor is referred to as ‘spirits’ and drugs take you away to another world – so we are crying out for better stories and for music that feeds our souls and awakens our spirits, for this is their archetypal purpose. Our modern media has exploited the purpose of story and music and made it into big business. It has hypnotized our collective psyche by continuously feeding us images and sounds, at the same time implying that we cannot produce our own images and music as well as they can. And so it often happens that we don’t try. Look at our children, who have been raised on television and video games. They don’t play the way we did by in the 50’s, when television was new and not so all pervading in our lives. Children today have a harder time playing by themselves in unstructured time. Our children are losing their ability to imagine for themselves. Their imaginations are dying, to be replaced by images feed to them via a machine. Sound like Orwell’s 1984 to you? When did our stories lose their power to enliven our imaginations about what is possible? We could lay the blame on the big media companies whose bottom line is money. We could blame it on the advertising wisdom that dictates that product – both films and music as well as consumer goods – should be geared towards young men from ages 18-36 who are, for the most part, the most unconscious segment of the population and therefore the most easily manipulated. We live in a culture of the lowest common denominator, which is a travesty of the American ideal that all men are created equal. An idea that was meant to lift us up to our highest good is often twisted into a vision that caters to our lowest needs. But is this the whole story? How did our stories become as unhealthy for our souls as our food has become for our bodies? Just look, for example, at all the overweight, stressed out and depressed people in America. Modern farming and husbanding methods poison our foods with pesticides and chemicals which create illness; working conditions stress out our bodies and our souls; many of our amusements so often involve drinking, gambling and mindless pursuits of pleasure that ultimately don’t please or give joy. Modern American culture urges us to consume unhealthy amounts of refined sweets and flour as well as manufactured goods. Like our food, we have over-processed stories, stories that cater to our lowest emotions rather than stories that inspire our imaginations and moral fiber, stories that keep us entertained without teaching us, stories so empty of meaning that they have us craving something more. And so we keep coming back, hoping that maybe this time we’ll find a story to satisfy our longing and our hunger for that ‘something deeper’ than just cheap thrills. I believe that the bulk of our stories and music are unsatisfying because as a culture, we have forgotten what the purpose of the Storyteller/Musician is our culture. We speak of them as entertainers rather than Bards, for we have forgotten their original purpose. We Americans are in danger of losing our roots. Our families all immigrated to America (except of course the Native Americans) to make a new life for themselves and their descendents. They up-rooted themselves from the soil that had nurtured them and transplanted those roots to America. In doing so, they tried to put behind them those ancient traditions that had sustained them in the old world so they could ‘fit into’ American society, traditions which had nourished their ancestors for thousands of years. This left a deep void in our collective psyche, for we had to create our own identity here in America. But we have to remember that we did this within the context of the emerging modern technological economy. We are very much the products of the new economic realities of the last few centuries. And so without the depth of history and tradition that people in other countries have to balance the pressures of this new economic world order, we have been left to choose for ourselves who we want to be and what ideals we want to stand for. And because of the pervasive influence of our consumer economy and its need for continual growth, Americans are offered solutions to their problems which are not meeting their needs and so we are now struggling to come to terms with our soul needs without native traditions to turn to. For a people who can basically do anything or have anything we want, we are often unhappy and unsatisfied. And so we keep coming back for more – more food, more things, more pleasure, more stories. It’s a good way to run an economy, but a bad way to live a life. And therein lies the danger for us. Like a top-heavy tree without strong roots, we will be in more danger of being blown over in a strong wind. Since September 11th, we have been renewing our commitment to America, but is this enough in an age in which we are really part of a global community? We can no longer doubt that we live in one world. There are no longer boundaries of time and space to keep us apart. We are instantaneously available to each other via the telephone and Internet, and can travel across the globe within 24 hours. As a nation, we need to understand how other countries and people see us. After September 11th we all wondered why other people would hate us enough to commit this horrific act. We Americans tend to see ourselves as the good guys, and for the most part, in our day to day lives, Americans are good people. But we have to acknowledge that America’s relationship to the rest of the world hasn’t been as idealistic as we’d like to believe. While American political policy says that we want to bring democracy to the rest of the world, in actuality we have supported dictators and repressive regimes, and refused to commit ourselves to global environmental and humanitarian policies that the rest of the world wants. In the coming years, we will be forced to look at ourselves more objectively and understand that with the great power America welds, we will have to take responsibility for how we relate, not just to the rest of the world, but to the environment and global resources. And so American history can no longer be our only touchstone. We need to trace our roots to our inter-national history, our ancient history, and our soul history if we are not just to survive these times but help create a world of peace and justice. As we explore our roots, we need to explore all the facets of our culture, as well as the soulful aspects of our human nature. We are already re-discovering the ancient roots of healing. And with this renaissance of knowledge comes a re-birth of the archetype of the shaman-healer. As medical technology has become more specialized and medical practice more impersonal, the archetype of the shaman-healer has arisen in the collective consciousness to bring back a sense of personal responsibility for our own health needs. Traditional and non-traditional practices, both Eastern and Western, - acupuncture, reiki, energy work, dream interpretation, prayer, meditation, yoga, different psychological techniques and body therapies, and even past-life regression - are being used by people to discover the root cause of both physical and mental diseases. Spirituality is once again flourishing and people are participating in spiritual disciplines that come from all times and all places. Whether this spirituality is birthed through the traditional religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Buddhism or the ancient pagan and Goddess religions, people are seeking a living spirituality, one that helps them to understand their life and their purpose. With this awakening spirituality comes a resurgence of creativity and a re-birth of the archetype of the visionary. Mystic vision is no longer confined to the temple, the convent or the monastery, but is alive and well in the world and in the service of all humanity. We see this practical idealism and vision in the environmental movement as well as in political and humanitarian movements. And finally, after thousands of years of oppression, women are gaining their freedom and equality with men in many parts of the world, although there are still outrageous and heartbreaking examples of the oppression all women have suffered throughout the ages. But in America and the West, the archetype of the Goddess has once again become conscious, especially since the Apollo missions to the moon in the ‘70’s. Once we saw humanity literally set foot on the moon, our collective memories of the archetypal Feminine Spirit that was so often represented by the moon arose in our collective psyches. The archetypal image of the Moon once again became a powerful symbol as women remembered the Goddess and were lead back to a profound sense of their own spiritual power, purpose and responsibility as well as to a new sense of inner beauty, grace and peace. But there is one ancient tradition that is only just beginning to undergo a long overdue transformation. This is the high art of storytelling. It is now very obvious that corporate interests have controlled what news and information as well as what stories are being told to Americans and to the rest of the world. Whether it’s the publishing business or the film and music industries, stories are big business. And because storytelling is controlled by the economics of the entertainment business, we are in danger of failing to understand our human condition during the most important times the world has ever faced. We are in danger not only of destroying the environment and killing off untold species by the devouring need for economic growth, but we are also in danger of destroying ourselves by not understanding our own human nature, by not understanding what life is really all about, and how to deal with the why’s and wherefores of life. And one reason we are in this danger is because we have been told that stories are ‘merely’ entertainment. We have forgotten that the original purpose of stories was to teach us how to make sense of being human. We have forgotten the archetype of the Bard. Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, was not the first person to speak of archetypes, but he was one of the first to describe how archetypes affect individuals. Jung developed his theory of a collective unconscious that exists along with our individual personal unconscious. The collective unconscious is a universal and impersonal part of the human psyche that is inherited rather than developed, as our personal unconscious is. The collective unconscious is comprised of countless universal, inherited energetic patterns called archetypes, such as the Mother, the Father, the King, the Queen, the Trickster, the Healer, the Wizard, the Child, the Lover, the Bard. The collective unconscious is ancient and it gives birth to individual consciousness just as the ocean once gave birth to life itself. It is the inherited experience and wisdom of the entire human race. And it contains our instruction manual for how to be human. Jung believed that archetypes are the pre-existing forms, patterns or instincts that make us human, the energetic patterns that help us make sense of our experience of being human. These archetypes can only become conscious secondarily – through images - and they give definite form to psychic contents, i.e., emotions, energy, creativity etc. Archetypes can only be known by their images but cannot be known in-and-of themselves. These images come to us in the form of traditional myths and fairy tales, as well as in spontaneous visions and dreams in individuals. Archetypes seem to have a psychoid nature, that is, they not only exist within an individual psyche but also create a ‘field’ which affects outer reality.
At the opposite pole [from the physical], Jung puts the world of archetypes, which in itself is as mysterious and unknown as the chemistry of the body is in its ultimate set-up. When he puts the archetypes at this end he is referring to them as a psychoid factor. Jung ascribes to the archetype a psychoid aspect, which means that there are traces which point to the fact that it is not “only” psychic in the narrow sense of the word, but that in certain of its aspects it transcends the field which we call psychic. For instance, when the archetype appears within a synchronistic phenomenon, then we can conclude that its nature is psychoid. The archetype constellated in a synchronistic phenomenon has the aspect of being able to appear as an arrangement of outer material facts. . . .We can only say that archetypes tend to appear not only within the human being as a psychological phenomenon, but simultaneously in outer material, in physical facts. The bewildering fact is that there is a strong suspicion that those two poles really are secretly connected, that what we polarize into two aspects on the borderlines of the psyche are really only two aspects of a unified living phenomenon – an X which we cannot define and which we must call, for instance, the living mystery of a human being. (Creation/von Franz)
Therefore, while archetypes form the nucleus or center of personal complexes, that is, they are responsible for moving our energies and for creating the life of our individual psyches, they are also the building blocks of our collective psyche and culture. That may be why all cultures seem to have certain aspects in common, such as family, power structures, healing venues and of course, storytelling. While archetypes are eternal, their archetypal images are not. Archetypal symbols can lose their vitality and energy, and when they do, the symbol becomes a stereotype. When the archetypal image of the moon lost its connection to the full depth of Feminine Spirit, it became the stereotype of the inconsistency of women or the demons that prowl the night, rather than the image of change and the possibilities of the unknown that it once symbolized. Archetypes and symbols always point to something deep and vital within the human psyche. Stereotypes are conventional images or modes of thought which trivialize the true meaning of the symbol and therefore of its purpose. But the archetype is eternal and always available, waiting to be remembered, reclaimed, re-birthed and released, as we are seeing with the re-birth of the Moon/Goddess archetype. As energy is withdrawn from the image and leaves behind the stereotype, it returns to the archetype itself and gets recharged with new archetypal energy, which is then released and transformed into a living, viable energy that takes on new forms which embody the new spirit of life that wants to emerge. Archetypal energy can renew but it can also destroy. The power in the archetype can be quite emotional, overwhelming and disorienting, and even destructive. It’s like the energy of a panic attack when you are suddenly overwhelmed with an unknown fear and your body reacts quite violently. But if you understand that this pan-ic comes from the ancient god Pan, that is, it is a reaction of your primal instincts for survival to the situation, you can begin to control it. The image focuses and controls the energy. That’s why the image of the mandala, a symbol of the circle and wholeness, is so powerful for people going through change. It orders and contains the raw new energy in the unconscious and gives it meaning. Otherwise an individual or a people can be overwhelmed by the disorienting power of the archetypal energy. However, there is a danger inherent in the conscious manipulation of archetypal images. The Nazis consciously used archetypal symbols to manipulate the energy of the German psyche. The swastika was an ancient and universal sun symbol meaning balance, happiness, luck and fertility. In misusing this ancient symbol, the Nazis have forever changed its meaning in our collective psyches to one of death and political repression. We are warned about the power in these collective symbols as well as about the destruction that can come from their misuse. Modern advertisers also use these symbols, often with great economic success, in selling their products. One of the reasons Nike is so successful is because the archetypal energy of Nike symbolizes victory, even when you don’t know Greek mythology. The same holds true for the idea of patriotism. As we are seeing today, we have a very narrow and misunderstood ideal of patriotism. Patriotism does not mean standing by the President, whatever he does. Patriotism isn’t about standing up for your country, whether you believe its acts are right or wrong. Patriotism is believing in the ideals that your country is built on, the values that you hold as a human being, and standing up for them. It has nothing to do with supporting a limited administration’s policies. Archetypes influence individuals as well as collectives. Archetypes shape our world and create consciousness of our needs, our potentials and our spirit. They appear in all times and in all cultures and they are universally similar and surprisingly individual. And we can learn about them through a study of mythology, religion and art, as well as dreams and fairy tales. Most importantly, archetypes in themselves are eternal, but their archetypal images are not. These images lose their power over the collective imagination over time and when they do, they become stereotypes. And that’s what has happened to the archetype of the bard. We have been left with the stereotype of the entertainer. This book is a study of the Archetype of the Bard, the Musician, the Storyteller. The tremendous power modern entertainers have over our collective imaginations has its roots in this ancient and universal figure. Writers, actors, musicians, and storytellers need to name themselves and look at the archetype from which they get their power. We all know the power of naming. We need to name ourselves so we know what we are capable of as well as what we are responsible for. In the Judea-Christian Bible, God commands Adam to name the animals in the Garden of Eden and then He gives Adam dominion over them. In Jewish and Islamic lore, King Solomon has power over the Jinn because he knows their names. Naming gives us an identity and, some people even believe, a destiny. “Know thyself” is an ancient and universal dictum and the first step on any spiritual path. We are empowered when we know ourselves for who we are. Just recently, I had series of dreams in which important dream people acknowledged me by my name. It was empowering to me to be acknowledged on so soulful a level. To name something is to know what a thing is and perhaps even its purpose. Like the Scarecrow in Oz, we need to acknowledge the reality of what we do best. And we can do this by naming ourselves and the archetype that is at the root of our talent and art. Archetypes choose us. We are born with certain predispositions to see the world in a particular way. In ancient times, this would have been understood as a call from the god, a mystery that chooses us and uses us and which we had no power to resist – like Moses’ call from Yahweh. Today, as Jung once said, we are so impoverish that the gods appear as psychological complexes, and so today we would see the call as an inner compulsion, an inner call. So the question is, which god is calling to all the writers, actors, filmmakers and musicians who are such an important part of our culture. Or another way to put it would be, which is the archetype that personifies who we are and what we do. The answer is the Archetype of the Bard. Like Orpheus, the figure of the bard has been dismembered, it’s parts scattered to many other occupations. The ancient Bard was shaman, shapeshifter, wonderworker, magician; jurist, historian, spy, warrior, messenger and newsbringer; visionary, prophet, poet, truthspeaker, teacher and councilor to kings. The Bards held the keys to tradition and wisdom. Their training was long and arduous, their memory stretched back to the beginning of time, and their purpose was to serve their people by helping them to understand what it means to be human. In ancient Greece, a bard was a man of Logos, a man of the Word. For the ancient Greeks, this meant the power of language, the power of spoken words to communicate ideas, to reason and to persuade. Logos encompasses both the speaker and the listener. Logos reminds us of the power of words to hurt or to heal. Not all storytellers and musicians are bards, as we see today with so many books and films and music. Even in the time of Homer there were distinctions between a true bard and the rapsodes who wandered from place to place and told the old lays – and in the Celtic countries there was a distinction between the bards who sang for the aristocracy and the minstrels who sang for the people. The Celtic bards studied for twelve years, memorized over 350 tales in verse as well as genealogies, histories, laws, philosophy, grammar and numerous methods for accessing prophetic insight. So, where is the archetype of the Bard in our times? I’m always amazed that the only time we use the word bard is when we speak of Shakespeare. He is THE BARD, as if there are no others. (It was like being told when I was young by the Catholic Church that there were no more saints and no more miracles. I always wondered why our time should be denied these possibilities.) With Shakespeare, it is very interesting to notice that all of his stories deal with the types of stories that were taught in the bard school of the times: histories, love stories, genealogies, hero stories, ghost stories, magical romances. He wrote them all. And I’ve often wondered if he was really the front man for the bard schools of his time, since the English were disbanding the schools as they started to understand their influence on the subjugated Celts of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland. The English tried to get rid of their national stories in the hope that they would forget who they were, because the bards and the stories they remembered conserved the traditional language and character of the Celts. (We did the same thing in America with the Native Americans. We destroyed their culture by trying to wipe out their stories and language.) Because of the controversy over who wrote Shakespeare’s plays, it tickles my fancy to think that Shakespeare was an undercover bard for those dissidents. And of course, that’s another function of a bard – sometimes they were messengers and spies! The Archetype of the Bard is alive, but not well, in our times. Russell Crowe acknowledged it at the 2002 SAG awards when he said that he and all of the actors in the audience were members of an ancient and honored profession. Then there was a recognition of it in the man who saw Bruce Springstein after 9/11 and called out “We need you now, Bruce!” And in Springstein’s response – his CD The Rising. But in an interview with Springstein, he played down his role by saying that he was JUST a musician, that he was just doing his part in responding to the tragedy. He can’t get beyond the fact that he’s supposed to be only an entertainer. The archetype of the bard includes entertainment as part of it’s function in society. Storytellers, poets, musicians, actors, writers – part of their function is to entertain through the gifts of artistic expression. But that is only one small part of their purpose. When I hear someone like Robert Redford say that he’s in the business of entertainment, when I hear him say that he was naïve to think that he could change the world with his films, I know that he has lost conscious touch with the archetype at the center of his being. If you study his films, a theme runs through all his works - the question of what makes a man if not his honor, his integrity, his principles, his sense of self? More than most actors and directors, he has followed the path of the bard in trying to make sense of a situation men find themselves in today. He doesn’t believe anymore that he can teach with his works. And yet he does. Like the Scarecrow in Oz, perhaps he needs to be told that he is a Bard – and that we recognize that he is one. But it is not his fault. Look at the public outcry that accompanies Redford’s battles for the environment, or Sting’s work in South America or anytime an actor or a musician takes a stand on world politics. Look at what happened to Richard Greer after 9/11 when he made a public appeal for peace. Or Vanessa Redgrave’s defense of the Palestinians? Or the Hollywood blacklist in the 50’s. Or Michael Moore at the 2003 Oscars when he accepted his award for “Bowling at Columbine” and then proceeded to blast President Bush on the Iraqi war. Or even the Dixie Chicks? Our culture has forgotten that these ‘entertainers’ were once bards, and that their purpose is to tell us about the world and shape our consciousness of it. Our culture has to be reminded that their ‘stars’ are not just entertainers but people who might be worthy of commenting on the culture, the world, and our human condition. Or perhaps the people intuitively know that they are and it is only the critics and shapers of collective opinion that raise such an outcry when they do take a stand. If the archetype of the Bard was consciously acknowledged by our collective culture, I believe musicians, storytellers and filmmakers would feel more comfortable about speaking out on political and social issues, for they’d have a ground to stand on. Look at what’s happened since 9/11. The politicians have taken over the story and pre-empted any new understanding of the situation by manipulating our emotional renewal of patriotism with their political stand, and pressing their political agendas of military might and economic recovery along the same old lines as before the attack. Instead of 9/11 changing our perceptions about ourselves and the world, we were herded into a war with potentially devastating results not only for ourselves and the soldiers we send to fight, but for the whole world. Those of us who grew up in the 60’s were lucky. We did have bards – Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkle and of course, the Beatles. We took in their message with their music. They helped us understand ourselves and our world and we set out to change ourselves and our world. I love to imagine how people in 500-1000 years will remember the Beatles. Will they have stories about 4 Bards who changed the world through their message of love and imagination? Will they tell the story of their descent to the watery underworld, in something called a Yellow Submarine, to bring back the gift and knowledge that “All you need is Love!”? My own fascination with bards started early. Like most writers and musicians, I loved movies and plays and books. But I was also a dancer, and almost every day for a few years I danced around the living room to Rimski-Korsokov’s Scheherazade. I took in the story through my body. You see, I loved heroic adventures but all the really good heroes were men. Robin Hood and Zorro were much more interesting than Nancy Drew or The Bobbsey Twins. But then I encountered Scheherazade! She was intelligent, brave, sexy and above all, a heroine – for she faced death every night and only had her wits and a story – or maybe a dance – to keep off death and save the women of her land – as well as its king. And because I danced that story into my consciousness, I have always listened and learned from music and stories, for through them I learned how to listen to my heart and let it lead the way. I began my career as a mythologist in 9th grade, for my very astute and handsome teacher made me teach the whole 4 week section on mythology. And I did a great job. After that, I gobbled up Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, George McDonald, William Morris and all the old fantasy writers, for they are the mythmakers of modern times. But it was when I read Ann McCaffery’s Pern novels that the idea of the Bard took root. I had a choice between wanting to be a Dragonrider or being a Harper, and I knew that I was harper material more than dragonrider material – I was already a mother by then! Then came the big bardic dream at the Jung Institute. After that, in my own naïve fashion, I wrote to Sundance during the 80’s urging them to include mythic story structure and psychology in their program – and if they didn’t want to hire me, at least get someone else to do it. I kept getting letters back thanking me for my suggestions but they really weren’t interested in that sort of program. After that, I wrote screenplays, went to Hollywood to see what it was all about, left Hollywood to go back to my kids and clients and wrote a modern retelling of the legend of Thomas the Rhymer, a Scottish bard. And I began my study of mythic bards.
So where are our Bards? Where are the voices that can balance this political take-over of our collective psyche? For in the coming years, we will need voices and visions that open up our collective consciousness to a new awareness of the changes which our world will be going through. For these changes are coming, and we need men and women of vision to speak to these changes, and the best way is through the power of archetypal stories, for these are the stories which speak to the heart. Now is a good time to reclaim the archetypal power of the bard. Astrologically speaking, when the planets Uranus and Neptune pair up, they have profound effects on the collective unfolding of consciousness. Uranus is the energy of revelation and revolution. It’s all about change. It’s a cosmic wake-up call to individuation. Neptune is the energy that lets us merge with others, that makes us receptive to the feelings of others and connections us to the archetypal realm. It is our longing for redemption and our imagination to get there. It helps the artist access images and inner wisdom. Every 171 years these two planets come together to start a new cycle and they did so from 1988 –1998. The broad social issues they invoke could be described as “what do we believe about ourselves and our world, how can we change our culture to fit those beliefs and then how do we take it world-wide so that all people realize that they are one and free?” We need to take the vision of the new world order out of the hands of the politicians and military leaders and put it back in the hands of individuals. And it is precisely the storytellers, musicians and artists who can facilitate this. Uranus has been traveling through it’s own sign of Aquarius, the collective mind, since 1996, and you can see how the technological innovations of the Internet have connected people from around the world as well as within their own communities. It will enter the sign of Pisces in March of 2003 and stay there for the next 7 years, and we will have a wake-up call of the collective heart. Pisces represents the collective heart and the realm of the collective unconscious, and when Uranus travels through it, it will awaken not only the archetypes, but also universal love, for it was when the potency of Uranus (his phallus) was thrown into the ocean that the great goddess of love, Aphrodite, arose in the foaming waters. But we have to remember that when the archetypes are constellated by this passage, we will need renewed images to contain their energy, for these powers can be destructive if they have no form to flow into. Charles Williams wrote The Place of the Lion about just that. And personally, I’d rather see writers/bards envision these archetypal energies than politicians. The planet Neptune has been traveling through the sign of Aquarius since 1998 and will enter its’ own sign of Pisces in the year 2012. Neptune in Aquarius often breeds utopian political ideals – Sir Thomas Moore wrote his book UTOPIA when Neptune transited through Aquarius in 1516 and the word ‘socialism’ first appeared in Europe during the next transit of Neptune in Aquarius in the 1830’s. Neptune in Aquarius wants social progress that benefits the whole group. It is the ideal of the Round Table, where each individual is there to contribute to the whole group. In astrology, there is a symbol assigned to each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. They are called Sabian symbols. It is interesting to note what the images of the last degrees of the signs of Aquarius and Pisces are – the last degree being the culmination of the whole essence of the sign.
30 Aquarius: Deeply rooted in the past of a very ancient culture, a spiritual brotherhood, in which many individual minds are merged into the glowing light of a unanimous consciousness, is revealed to one who has emerged successfully from his metamorphosis.
30 Pisces: A majestic rock formation resembling a face is idealized by a boy who takes it as his ideal of greatness, and as he grows up, begins to look like it.
The Aquarian ideal is one of group process and creativity and spirituality. And the Piscean ideal speaks to the power of the natural world to shape our awareness and our ideals about who we are and what we are meant to become. The bards of all cultures were the great communicators. They communicated with the feminine spirit of life, in nature and within human nature, through the imagination. Then they communicated what they saw and felt to their peoples through their poetry and songs. The archetype of the bard implies a social purpose, for these arts are for healing and transformation and teaching on a collective level. And so the archetype of the bard implies a deep responsibility. We now know – from numerous official studies – what most of us have always known. We know that TV and films affect the collective imagination. If there is ever to be independence from the ‘entertainment business’ it has to start with an acknowledgement that storytellers, musicians and filmmakers are bards and that our power and purpose and responsibility is to shape the collective imagination. Bards are the guardians of tradition, a word our culture shies away from. It is all too often used by politicians or religious leaders to retain their own authority. But I am speaking about the ancient traditions that govern the growth of consciousness and the path of the soul, traditions that go beyond religion, politics and race to the archetypal patterns that make us all human. By songs and stories, through memory or the power of prophecy, a bard can instruct and guide seekers. Through the power of words, music and images, a bard can reach across barriers to the minds and hearts of people everywhere. So we need to understand this power that we channel, to give it the respect it deserves, and to serve it well. The rebirth of the archetype of the Bard has to take place within each individual storyteller as well as within the culture, for the archetypes themselves need the bard to tell their stories.
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