Odysseus and Penelope

Odysseus and Penelope
The supreme moment of liberation in a story may well come at precisely that point where the hero and heroine are finally brought physically and spiritually together, melting into each other in an act of overwhelming love.

The Cosmic Happy Ending

Almost every story we have looked at has centered around one of two general situations.

Firstly there is the type of story which shows us an essentially light hero or heroine who spends most of the story under the shadow of the dark power as it emanates from some source outside them. They are struggling, developing and working towards that eventual climatic moment when the scales can be finally tipped, the dark power can be overthrown and they can at last emerge from the shadows into the light.



Theseus and Minotaur

Theseus and Minotaur
The other type of story is that which shows the hero or the heroine as themselves the chief dark figure, casting a shadow over others. In this case also, the light, redeeming element eventually emerges from the shadows to overthrow the darkness and to end the story on a final image of wholeness.

Darth Vader aka Anakin Skywalker

Darth Vader aka Anakin Skywalker

The Four Values: strength, order, feeling and understanding


The great prize can only be wrested from the darkness when the hero or heroine, or both together, have been transformed in such a way that they are potentially whole. This means that, between them, they must represent a balance of certain specific qualities: those qualities we can identify an the 'masculine' and 'feminine'.

The Two Elemental Principles


The first essential principle is the masculine one of power and control. The second, allowing the state of potential wholeness to be reached, is the feminine one of connection and joining together.

Such are the two elemental principles around which stories are constructed. If the hero of a story is destined fully to succeed, he must be shown to be fully masculine. He cannot be weak and ineffectual.

But his masculine power must not be hard and inflexible. He must not be egocentrically closed off within himself. He must be open, in ways which connect him positively with others, with all that is beyond him, with the flow of life.

Only when this potential state of balance has been achieved is the hero ready for the moment of liberation when the life-giving treasure is released.

The Pattern


The process whereby this is achieved invariably requires a specific sequence of steps.

First we see the hero or heroine in that incomplete, unresolved state which characterizes the beginning of a story.

Then something has to emerge which opens them out to the possibility that eventually they may achieve the distant state of wholeness.

Thirdly, and this may comprise almost all of the action of the story, they have to be shown as developing, or in some way bring brought to the point where they are finally ready to realize that state.

Only them, as in the opening of some complicated lock which requires all the tumblers to be aligned in exactly the right way before it will open, can we see the fourth, concluding step: the moment of final transformation and liberation from the dark power which releases the life-giving treasure and brings the story to its triumphant resolution.


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