The Ancient Sky presents: McVeigh: The Abandoned Soldier Within

McVeigh:
The Abandoned Soldier Within

Marie-Louise von Franz, CG Jung’s closest associate, once had a client bring the dream of an analysand. The dream consisted of a childhood memory at first, swinging on a swing, higher and higher, like all children. However, the dreamer was reaching for extremes. To his delight, his ropes extended even longer, and the dreamer could extend himself as far as the heavens and never look back. Von Franz reacted with a shock.

“Don’t bring me this analysand, this one is a murderer.”

Her client also registered a shock. Indeed, the client's analysand was in jail. The charge? Murder. Von Franz explained that when the dreamer seeks less contact and connection with human warmth, the rules that guide these collectives, our tribes of humanity, cease to operate. The abandoned solider admonishes, "When the rules do not apply to me I have no compulsion to comply."

McVeigh was a loner.

He carried a gun to take out the trash. Such a profile might give us the life of a dreamer but mostly his life was one of wanting very much to belong to some “cool group”. He was married twice. The second one was pregnant too.

I have the feeling McVeigh dreamed the dream of reaching for extremes more than once, dreaming of his disconnection from everyone else. The Washington Post reported, ""What it amounts to is what we casually call an insecurity. But a drifter lives without security, and sometimes suffers, but resents others’ with petty jealousies, not seeking to truly redeem himself, but to show these others that their rules do not apply to him. If McVeigh would have had the capacity for greater connection it might have come from his mother, since clearly it did not develop after she left when he was ten. A lack of love in the house, or a reticent father, shy of affection, might be enough to alienate such a child. Where there might be a weakness in the surface of the human collective, such an individual might allow greater access to the evil which exists there.

It is likely that Jung would remind us all that there is little to be gained from a privatio boni, the religious idea that evil can be done away without recognizing it as a force of its own. Jung’s concept of Individuation called out for the opposites in man to be united in each person.

The individual who seeks out what is evil in himself can help to heal the world of its own evils simply by preventing the ones so close to the surface of our conscious attitudes from becoming suppressed; by instead transforming it by just knowing it, recognizing and admitting his weakness, bringing it into a conscious awareness. It is not enough to simply hate evil. Because of our participation in what is a collective experience each person is responsible for holding together the tensions of these opposites.

Anyone using one-sided attitudes tips the weight of the scale of evil against themselves. For example, what is good about me has some shadow material attached; If I recognize that and use the evil impulses in one way or another to teach either God or another about how I suffer, some of the evil is mitigated.

The difference being (using myself as an example) that I might recognize that I can be destructive, a drag, not completely adapted to our culture. This in spite of my perfectly shiny smile, and well behaved manners: all may not be what it appears.

Possibly, McVeigh felt impotent with his life, and age 29, when he committed the crime which cost him his life the other day, astrologers speak of “the Saturn return,” to name the process of adulthood which may permanently dissolve the parent/child hierarchical relationship, and begin the natural accommodation to his own authority, instead of that of a parent. Another way around this is via the father. We don’t have any details about McVeigh’s father. But I am reminded of the parent of one of the Columbine high school gunners who manifested an interest in things military and destructive. If something similar had perhaps been in the house the entire life of McVeigh’s childhood, we may assume this evil reached at the consciousness of his son. This without the protective wrapper of a strong ego which can vigorously hold on to the tension of his “good” side vs. the “bad.” What is unconscious with the parent may be expressed by the child, “the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children,” and “the seeds which do not far fall from the tree” are both metaphors which we recognize.

This is true also of the good traits which exist in our shadow material. Something suppressed, artistic inclinations, a quest for glory, many stories tell us that while the father was not able to climb Mount Everest, the son was. The story of a generational passing of such traits should remind us again of our responsibilities to our own psychology in the face of children: that it is up to each individual to determine their depth of personal shadow and stop rejecting out of hand, Privatio Boni-style, the fact of evil within himself. It might also have been observed by the Jungian analyst that our culture has moved all things related to death and killing--such as might be witnessed on a country farm--to the isolation of the abattoir, far from town. No one kills their own chickens anymore.

Somehow, the daily contact with this capability has us cut off from our instincts to hunt and kill, and they remain suppressed in the unconscious. If one in twenty of us would kill a cow every now and then, or if one in a hundred brought home enough bear or dear steaks to feed a hundred, we’d be great heros. But these are no longer the images; the hunter is now driving around on the freeway, or in a Ryder rental truck. I think some of the thought of the sixties, the “back to nature,” and “off the grid” movements make sense in terms of a more well rounded psychology where everyone shares in the instinctual life, where killing is a constructive act followed by a good meal. We have lost the instinctual basis of our cultures, and thus young men must gun their engines and brandish their blades in an unconscious reenactment.

If we insist that we are so pure and civilized that no killing is justified, we risk living again in the one-sided sphere, attracting evil from wherever it is hiding. Jung might disagree with the stance that promotes life sentences for everyone and no “bad things” to be carried by the society. Individuation means responsibly accepting the weight of living in the world, and then politely, retreating into unconsciousness again.

Mars, the planet of instinct, the Warrior Archetype

When we see it in the world, we may not notice it. The movie, "Lawn Dogs" about the effects of a wise child on the Puer figure (the lawn guy) has the mythical story laid out beautifully, displaying one Martian type of scene after another. Lawn Dogs focuses on the choices of the Lawn Guy, who in the course of cutting (a Mars tool is the blade) lawns finds himself in the unconscious web created by his unwillingness to fulfill his own potentials. Important scenes feature admiration for one another's scars and wounds, the uses for blades, the necessity of death and the detachment necessary to inflict it, the coldness of violence (however, I recommend this movie to those squeamish on violence, it's not a Peter Bogdonovitch movie by a long shot).

Our current levels of disassociation to formerly coherent images of church, family and order, is now a chaos and blur, splurting out of every radio, television, beverage label and on the Internet. Coca Cola emblazoned on the Pyramids, and Nike shoes on the Pope; the mixtures are the tone of the age, so loosened are the images of the collective unconscious which now penetrate to subtler and more refined areas of our lives. We are bombarded by the images, brought to you by this or that sponsor, and we all want our Place In The Sun.

However, so much upward striving is the result of the one-sidedness of the Christian and Semitic points of view. It has historically "cut off" (to use Mars' expression) the so-called "evil" effecting a kind of pariah in anyone who catches it, like a cold. The scapegoat is prevalent in the one-sided model: someone has got to shoulder this and go to his own sacrifice. We are still doing it, after all these "civilizing" years. The delusion is that we are civilized in the first place!

So seduced and one-sided are we, that we believe that cars improve our lives (they make for softer bodies, something the instinctual Mars knows is wrong--you've got to be taut for the road, says he, but we drive on. We believe that Saran Wrapped meat is nourishing, forgetting that it has passed through that last transformation from Living into Dying, the specialty of Mars. We forget that Mars is present in almost everything we do, we masticate, and interrupt others; all "cutting" images of Mars.

Along with Mary Poppins and the Catholic Church, the Mars function has been fairly well edited out of our picture of civilization, for the most part, correctly. But no honor given to this soldier of our unconscious and instinctual life means to isolate him to the farthest edges of mindfulness. He is abandoned there, which sooner or later blinds us to the "leaks" within. Our "psychic boats," the ego, are perforated with the kinds of leaks that permit explosions from the deep to permeate our conscious attitude.

The father figure in "Lawn Dogs" is devastated by one such overwhelming invasion from his unconscious. We are each of us like little perforations loosely settled on top of a vat of boiling instincts. An eruption can come from anywhere. The weakest of the ego strengths is the one pinned solely on the Instinctual forces for leadership, thus McVeigh's own preference for his personal Mars "mythology" which caused him to pack a load just for taking out the trash, is now in unadapted territory. The same thing follows for Mr. OJ Simpson, whose brutality and overwhelming instinctuality was on one night to turn the fate of his life. He has the Mars of an athlete, but his "perforation" was weaker than he expected, more marred by immaturity and inability to contain or suffer the wounds of love. I think he also had a similar Moon configuration; a truly sweet guy in person; he offered me a drink when I was a Hollywood Publicist and used to seeing "celebs" on their best behavior. And so it goes, on and on, until each one of us is doing our share of "killing."

What do we kill? This is where the story differs between the uses for the blade, or anything which may cut, wound, burn or bleed. The Mars archetype is present when a surgeon finishes washing his hands and an assistant hands him the scalpel. The Mars is operating when we use a knife at dinner time (in the most civilized fashion, of course) or when we gnash our teeth--the blade again. What we want to kill is disease and discomfort, injustice and impropriety.

Those of us with an undeveloped Mars should find a way to arrive at more primitive lifestyles; sometimes the images from the Peace Corp offers the best examples of cutting wood, burning it for fuel, making one's own knives, using shovels to cut and cultivate. Where can we go with our Mars, since the astrologer knows that it cannot be surgically removed (Mars would hold that knife) from anyone's chart? This is the necessity of seeking out the opposite in ourselves, the opposite of our acceptance of 20 or 30 pounds of fat as we grow older--we have lost our "sharpness" in the body, a result of perhaps suppressing the Mars energy that is stored now in a deeper, more unconscious place.

To kill a shadow, one merely needs to throw a light on it. But not all shadow needs killing. On a hot day in the Sun, we retreat to the coolness of that shadow under the tree. Only the repressed Mars lurking behind the tree, the hidden or suppressed instincts which we can only suspect are present, must be sought out and brought to the light. When capital punishment is the question, we must ask ourselves, what have we taken responsibility in killing today? How 'bout that hamburger? Juicy? But did you butcher the animal? Have we ever heard of a butcher going on a mass-murder spree? (I haven't)

The killing that we do consciously takes care of this shadow, it nourishes it and respects it. The executioner deserves our respect. Not because of his state-imposed duty, but because his Mars is not repressed. This inner soldier is put to use in the way that a society requires. For some of us, it does close the wound, at least psychologically. For those who survive the victims of his "work," I don't know. It is one thing to have lost, quite another to have that loss called out as, "collateral" by the perpetrator of true evil.

So many of us have the one-sided point of view that ALL of life deserves to continue, and that NO killing will take place in my backyard, that we continue to suppress it. Anti-abortionists certainly have this attitude. But so do those professing their civility and offense at the death penalty.

Each side takes up its own corner and both are irreconcilable. To hold on to the tension produced by the emerging Mars archetype in the seeker of his own integrity it is necessary to accept the fact of this least civilized corner of our personal consciousness. Some things just need killing, to quote the Sweet Potato Queens. (add dot-com to that title for a good laugh).

According to the astrologer, McVeigh had a nearly psychic sort of sensitivity--too sensitive. (details of his history and his astrological chart are posted at AstroDataBank.com) He retreated to the instinctual side of his nature to escape the vastness of his inner vision, it was to him, so terrible. He had the Moon in Pisces, the most tender of all the Lunar positions, but his treatment was less than tender. He had to be "tough." This is important to almost every young man. He has to brandish his weapons somewhere, sometime. Kids in Karate class must also, and so must we all.

The Mars in his chart makes an easy aspect to this Moon, so the images from the collective unconscious were perhaps a constant threat; he needed to defend himself from the phantoms that permitted themselves a disco dance in his head. The fifth house of leisure and creativity is where the astrologer goes to answer the question, "What do you like to do in your spare time?"

In McVeigh's chart, it's Venus, goddess of love who rules here. But, she's in a sign ruled by Mars, Aries. Starkness, Spartan lines, packing light, it's all an esthetic. Venus is conjoined the Saturn, the archetypal "Old Man," sometimes the father. "Tough Love," goes well with this combination, but it must be channeled, and the inner Feminine needs expression, especially with so impressionable a Moon figure, which launches him into the abyss of vulnerability. His mother (moon support) left at the age of 10.

The crime imposed by mothers who leave their children is well-known. The Polly Klass murder was one such case. The murderer's mother abandoned him in a trailer park one afternoon, never to be found again. What would the instincts do then? If his feeling of rejection was profound enough (and it would be with the mother just rejecting him outright) he would be angry, and of course his defiance can be seen in the Martian Archetype. The final scene of the burial of the young girl was a sacrifice to his own horror, now a form of worship in the disconnected ones. There is nothing to satisfy this inner tension. There is only the continual revisiting of the little crosses on the road, and no continuing past these descansos which mark the place of our losses.

What shadow we may "kill" by throwing the light upon it is to ask ourselves if we have done our share of "killing" today. See the archetypal path of the warrior, support it and offer it the succor that it needs; don't take in murderers, that would only be a projection; and don't commit murder, that only brings the Sacrifices of Mars against one. Do hard work, and toil in the sun. Use a hammer for a constructive purpose. Use a chain saw to kill off the dead parts of a tree. Teach a young man how to use a blade, for whittling, for carving and for sculpting. Expression of the Mars, and recognition of him in our daily life, recognizing what these instincts "know": that death is a necessity to Life, and Mars is here to do the killing.

The wise child of "Lawn Dogs" has been "to hell and back" with open heart surgery, and has a wound of which her father is ashamed. It so mars his image of his daughter that he insists on another surgery, this time to take the thick red bead following the the lenghth of her torso to something "more acceptable." But her desire, having been to Hades, Land-of-No-Return, is to honor Mars. The "Lawn Guy" has a scar too. They each touch the other's wound. That is the honoring of Mars, giving it the sincere touch of Venus' tenderness, accepting it, and in doing so, making ourselves whole once more.

The young girl also, in her journey to the Other Side has seen death, but she hasn't seen it in its brutality, as she witnessed the mercy killing of a dog, and misunderstood--that until she catches the sight of her father--a seething subject of the repressed, abandoned soldier within himself, holding a two by four over the head of the young "Lawn Guy."

Mars has a tendency to scars and wounds of all variety. Some African tribes do scarification as a mark of beauty; this scene from "Lawn Dogs" describes a similar situation. Yes, the Martian archetype is best expressed in soldiering and armies. And these will always be necessitated by the larger order of life, just like the t-cells who must also kill the invader microbes in the body.

It is more a much more vigorous and responsible attitude to expect armies to guard the greater tension of maintaining the Peace. Our personal work starts only with ourselves in aiding the adapted uses of Mars, trimming and cutting, sawing and nailing, even the seamstress uses Mars with her needles and scissors. We need more conscious expression for each individual in order to cause the overwhelming amount of his archetype to feel satisfied that he is present and accounted for.

If this Mars archetype, the "soldier within" ever feels that he has been abandoned, woe to the weakest of these egoes and to their future victims.