Supplemental Essay: The Punisher and the Fury

 

In the main essay I said that the male Punisher and the female Fury represent aggression, force, and an excess of agenda. [...] Healthy Spirituality turns into unhealthy emulation of the Terrible Father and imprisonment by him.

 

I will try to describe profiles of the Punisher and the Fury demonstrating this aspect of their nature: The sense of being trapped or imprisoned in the bivalent.

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The Male Si Punisher

The Faerie Queene

As I discussed in the supplemental essay titled "The Hedonist and the Submissive," The Renaissance-era poet Edmund Spenser wrote a famous epic poem called The Faerie Queene (published 1590 and 1596) about chivalry and the nature of feminine and masculine virtues and vices.

 

The villains in The Faerie Queene include monsters, evil wizards, and brigands; often their victims are helpless women. In her survey of Western culture entitled Sexual Personae Camille Paglia devotes an early chapter to The Faerie Queene. Paglia analyzes Spenser's villains as follows, "As a state into which the virtuous characters may fall, lust is allegorically projected as a series of felons, cads, and sybarites who use force, fraud, or magic to have their way. The Spenserian rapist is a savage, churl, or knight who is not 'curteous' or 'gentle,' who has not, in other words, undergone the feminizing refinement of social life. Due to his failure to incorporate a feminine component, he pursues fleeing, malleable femininity with a headlong ferocity that is a hunger for self-completion. His lust is a semantic error, a self-misinterpretation, a confession of psychic inadequacy."[1]

 

In other words, Paglia views the male rapist as the result of a "failure of socialization."[2] Under stress, anyone of any function level can become one-sided, neurotic, defensive, rigid, etc. But if we are socialized properly, we set limits on our behavior even under great stress. On the other hand, if we aren't socialized properly, then we may engage in extremes of behavior under conditions of stress and one-sidedness. Masculine focus and drive need to be channelled properly into socially approved challenges and objectives. Because without proper guidance and a personal sense of restraint, masculine focus and drive can go to extremes and end up misdirected into sadomasochism, violence, and crime.

 

Below I will summarize some of the main themes of the Si Redeemer under conditions of one-sidedness and patriarchal castration to show how they come together and make up the Si Punisher.

 

In the section on the Si Redeemer I said that Si-Doms emulate the Great Father: The Redeemer restores the order and structure needed for a failing society to turn itself around and thrive. The Redeemer is a builder of civilization. But as I mentioned in that section, the Si-Dom visionary can become the avenging angel, punishing and even destroying what he loves most. In The Odyssey, when Odysseus embraces sacralization toward the end of the saga he finds that he must slaughter his own kinsmen (the suitors) and plunge the island into civil war in order to reclaim his throne and bring order to the kingdom. 

 

Emulation of the Terrible Father

In the "Sexuality Versus Spirituality" section I said that the bivalent of the Good Father is the Terrible Father: If the Great Father came to be represented by Spirituality, then his "bivalent"--the Terrible Father--came to be seen as the soul-destroying side of the spiritual and godly: Despotism and brutality. In other words, when people define themselves in opposition to the Great Father, then the Great Father becomes a raging, vengeful god, a punishing force which threatens to annihilate and condemn them to eternal damnation.

 

In the process of emulating the Great Father the Redeemer may run into opposition, pushing him toward his own bivalent, the Punisher. It's only a step from there to lawlessness, murder, rape, etc. That might seem inconsistent with modern ideas of Spirituality. But that hasn't always been the case. As I said in the "Sexuality Versus Spirituality" section: Mortals were terrified of the old gods, and for good reason. Power is associated in the human mind with brutality, and it's not so far from one to the other for the old gods. The greatest of the Greek gods was Zeus, who was the dispenser of good and evil. But he also ruled by might and fear, and he was a serial rapist who fathered a legion of bastard demigods and heroes with beautiful maidens he came across in his travels. In modern times we see the phenomenon of the Catholic Church harboring child abusers and providing cover for them. In previous generations Fundamentalist preachers often found themselves caught up in sex scandals; cult leaders often treated their followers as a sexual harem.

 

As I said in the main essay, emulation of either the Good or Terrible Father is actually a projection. The Redeemer gets stressed and increasingly one-sided to the point that he taps into his own bivalent. He justifies his actions with reference to a symbolic Great Father in the form of rules, religious dogma, etc. But in fact this is all an expression of his own stressed state.

 

Prestige and temenos

In the supplemental essay on Religion (linked in the section entitled "The Redeemer") I said that seeking out the Great Father is tantamount to flight from the collective. The Redeemer establishes a "temenos" and isolates himself from the society around him in order to identify with and merge with God. As I said in the main essay, A focus on one's divinity and separation from the collective causes the Si Redeemer to respect hierarchy, rank, structure, and boundaries, which make up the foundations of civilization. But taken to extremes, the separation between priesthood and the masses can evolve into elitism and caste systems imposed from above. 

 

Similarly, I said in the main essay that A focus on temenos, contemplation, and meditation means that the Redeemer draws inspiration from inside, lending him the conviction and drive of a visionary or priest. But taken to extremes, the visionary mentality can turn the Redeemer into an outsider, a dissident, a disruptor, a maverick.

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The daemonic mother

In the main essay I said, The Si-Dom bringer-of-order will find the daemonic mother (chaos and the feminine influence) both an attraction and a threat at the same time. As an attraction it represents a challenge, a puzzle in need of a solution; as a threat it needs to be punished and eradicated from existence.

 

In their healthy state the patriarchal Si-Doms (both male Si Redeemer and female Si Guardian) can tolerate an environment with a measure of disorder to it, though they may tend to try to "optimize" it by bringing order to it. But in the event that the environment slides into chaos, their bivalents (the Punisher and the Fury) will come out as avatars of patriarchal castration. But as I said in the main essay, their own repressed feminine side may manifest itself as the use of chaos and brutality in the pursuit of their own goals. Manifesting agenda, focus, vision, and hierarchy, the Si Redeemer and Fury rely on ritual and structure to protect against chaos. But if ritual and structure don't work, they may become the Punisher and Fury and embody chaos themselves in their pursuit of punishment and revenge.

The Female Si Fury

 

In the main essay I said that if the people around the Si Guardian don't live up to her internalized ideals with regard to order, structure, and predictability, the dutiful wife and mother or the dedicated team player can turn angry and vengeful. She may feel that a contract has been violated and faith and trust have been lost forever. At such times a woman may go so far to the patriarchal extreme that she represses all femininity and becomes masculine to a destructive degree. The trouble is that such a high degree of masculinity is difficult to maintain, and her repressed feminine side pops up in "daemonic" form: The Great Mother shows up in her character as a psychopathic bitch. 

 

In Greek mythology the Furies (the Erinyes) were goddesses of vengeance; they pursued and punished people who broke their oaths. Though female, they were aligned with the masculine principle of order and predictability. They were born when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitals into the sea; the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the Earth. They were dark, angry divinities feared even by the gods.

 

Greek mythology has many patriarchal females who rely on law and oaths to protect against chaos. But when law and oaths fail, then they become chaos itself. In her book Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia describes the tragic character Medea as follows:

 

"Medea, gifted niece of the sorceress Circe, is a vehicle of chthonian disorder. She is a metamorphosist who can change gold to dross, joy to horror. [...] Male-willed Medea, who slaughters her children, dismembers her brother, and dupes Pelias’ daughters into killing their father, spreads perversion like a plague. As a Scythian witch, she can violate the unconscious of her victims. [...] Medea is Athens’ worst nightmare about women. She is nature’s revenge..."[3]

 

Medea is a granddaughter of the sun-god Helios, who himself is arguably the most patriarchal of the ancient gods. Medea is an Si Guardian by birth and constitution; however, she starts out her story in rebellion against her own father in the heathen realm of Colchis on the Black Sea, in the territory of the modern country of Georgia. The Greek hero Jason arrives in Colchis to steal the Golden Fleece; he is a classic Se Champion and lover who is protected in his travels by a pair of goddesses: Hera and Aphrodite help Jason seduce Medea and gain her assistance in his quest. Medea promises to use her powers of sorcery to aid Jason if he will commit to take her back to Athens with him and marry her. It's a good exchange of reciprocal altruism that the Se-Dom Jason understands, and he agrees to it readily. In carrying out her end of the deal Medea commits a number of murders, including that of dismembering her own infant brother and scattering the pieces; her father, in hot pursuit of the fleeing lovers, is slowed when he has to stop and gather the portions of his son. Se Champion Jason is a lover, not a fighter; Si Guardian Medea repeatedly rescues Jason and his Argonauts with her sorcery, spells, and poisons, often resulting in painful and horrible deaths for Jason's enemies.

 

Medea and Jason eventually make it back to Greece and take up residence in Corinth; the journey was long and they married and had children along the way. But in Corinth Jason gets an opportunity to marry the princess of Corinth to further his fortunes; his marriage to the heathen sorceress Medea isn't binding under Greek law. Jason makes preparations for the wedding to the princess, assuring Medea that he will make appropriate arrangements for her and their sons. When Medea hears that Jason intends to abandon her, Medea realizes that her assumption of the persona of dutiful wife and murderous sidekick of an Se Champion was a horrible mistake. She prays that the gods will strip away her matriarchal facade and restore to her the patriarchal orientation natural to an Si-Dom descendant of the sun-god. Then in quick succession she murders the princess of Corinth, the king of Corinth, and finally her own children by Jason.

 

In the final scene of Euripides' play Medea the doors open after Medea kills her children, and the audience expects to see Medea blood-spattered and in ruin cradling the corpses of her two sons. But instead she appears on the roof, glorious and regal; her grandfather the sun-god Helios has sent his own golden chariot to ferry her away from the carnage. As a patriarchal Si Fury, there is no dishonor in what she has done. She was loyal to her oaths and to her husband; and when her Se husband didn't reciprocate, it was simply her nature and her heritage as an Si-Dom to destroy those around her. She leaves Jason alive to contemplate the results of his own choices. She is honorable; whereas Jason, as the chaotic Se Champion-turned-Hedonist chasing wealth and title, is dishonorable and he eventually dies ignominiously and alone.

 

The Greeks respected the honor and coherence of the patriarchal orientation, even when it appeared in the form of a murdering heathen sorceress who twice destroyed her own family.

 

Link: Return to Sensing (S)

 

~Posted January 1, 2025

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