King Kirk and the Goddess of Love: An Imaginal Treatment
Tom Lowe
What could be more commonplace than infidelity--forsaking one's spouse of many years for the affections of another? The governor's behavior repeats itself literally thousands of times each day. Like a tornado, men and women under the spell of an errant, but irresistible, attraction leave wide, destructive swaths of heartbreak, betrayed friendships, and financial ruin, all for the siren call of a new love. Being merely typical, why would King Kirk's infidelity be of any interest at all? Even if we factor in his high office, his monumental arrogance and his flagrant hypocrisy, in its details, the affair still refuses to rise above the multitude of conspicuous infidelities and affairs which form the daily substance of scandal-sheets and gossip columns. One could hardly expect an artistic affair from the likes of a civil engineer, anyway.
And, dear reader, let us admit to ourselves that this latest Parisian episode of the governor has given rise in us to a touch of smugness, or even a feeling, faint in some but having the force of certainty in others, that the governor is getting just what he deserves: a highly embarrassing exposure of that false rectitude that carried him recently to the highest pinnacle of his political career: a co-chairmanship of the presidential campaign of that self-righteous, vapid, juvenile, Hoosier wind machine, Dan Quayle, a signal honor which King Kirk has been forced to relinquish.
The affair also recalls the mythical story of Paris, son of Priam, king of the legendary city of Troy, who, being solicited by Aphrodite, Hera and Athena to chose the most beautiful among them, turned down the bribes tendered by Athena and Hera, namely wisdom and power, to chose instead the gift of Aphrodite, the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen. Who would blame Paris? Through the myth, the Greeks teach one of the most certain principles of the human soul: that the choice of Paris is our choice. Indeed, any other choice would be inhuman, and the fact that Paris ultimately loses his life and brings down destruction and death upon his family and his city, all because of the gift of the goddess, doesn't change our assessment. That rare person who chooses power or wisdom over love is either a monster, a martyr or a mouse, but certainly not a true man or woman.
So what are we to make of Kirk, who seemed for so long to love power and its trappings more than anything else; who acted as though completely bereft of compassion, that noble emotion that marks us as spiritual beings; whose lack of respect toward his political opponents, and more recently, toward his own political allies appeared pointless and self-defeating? Here was a man whose behavior we all felt confident in predicting. He might be constantly having foot-in-the-mouth problems but never gender-related problems like these.
Another Greek myth comes to mind, Euripides's tragedy of Hippolytus, the son of King Theseus and one of his mistresses, Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. Hippolytus was a devotee of the chaste goddess of the hunt, Artemis, and ignored the sphere of Aphrodite--love and marriage. He spent his time hunting and tending his horses, and so offended the goddess of love to the extent that she plotted revenge. Aphrodite had no thunderbolts like Zeus, the king of the gods, nor did she have the arrows of Apollo. In fact, she was the most vulnerable of all the deities on Mount Olympus and was even capable of being injured by mortals, as she was in Homer's Illiad. Her sole power was to kindle in the human heart the flames of desire and fan them into a consuming fire. She took her revenge upon Hippolytus by causing his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him. Phaedra's maid revealed her love to Hippolytus under promises of secrecy, but Hippolytus was deeply offended and refused to have anything to do with either Phaedra or the maid. In a deep shame, Phaedra hanged herself holding a letter accusing Hippolytus of having violated her, and Theseus, refusing to believe Hippolytus's denials, banished him from the kingdom and prayed that the ocean god, Poseidon, would kill him. As Hippolytus was departing, a great bull emerging from the ocean frightened his horses, which panicked and trampled him to death.
The parallels with the governor's situation are not obscure. Kirk revelled in hunting, whether it was wild boars in Romania or gnus and other exotic game in Africa, and hung the heads of the unfortunate creatures in the governor's mansion as trophies of his love for that most sanguine of sports. Hunting, together with a lifetime of managing a corporation, governing a state, and doing the work of a civil engineer, all arts far removed from the realm of Aphrodite, lay the groundwork for the disruption in the life of the impious. In spite of Kirk's professed belief in the sanctity of the family and the importance of fidelity, he has become quite unable to control his suddenly-aroused passions for a women not his wife. He was literally being trampled by the horses of his passions and the result was a kind of death; not a physical death, as in the myth, but death and destruction, nevertheless.
When Aphrodite strikes, the past dies. To the lover, there is only the painful present and the hopeful future. All past loves, all past pains, all past vows are as nothing, almost as if they never were. Social friendships die, because such friendships are almost always based upon a relationship with the former couple, and that couple no longer exists, the marriage having truly died. When the marriage ends, friendships must be created all over again from scratch. One's relationship with one's children and one's relatives must often be built from nothing. All this can be painful, and usually is painful, because the ending of close relationships is almost always the occasion for great pain.
But most profound is the death of the lover himself; falling in love is a kind of death and rebirth. It is the ego itself, that part of us that we truly believe in our hearts is the "true me"--that unchangeable core of being, that "something" that has persisted since my birth that makes me unique. Falling in love is painful because the ego must die, at least for a little while, until we regain our wits. The ego must be swept aside by the flood of passion and sweetness. It is not unusual for the lover to remark that he or she has become a new person, and indeed, the ego, the illusion of an unchanging self, has been suddenly been captured and imprisoned and even killed by the new relationship that has established itself in the soul. Ego is resistant to change. Ego gives a sense of separateness, or uniqueness, of importance. Love pays no attention whatever to those demands. The very horses, the power of soul that Hippolytus cultivated for the purpose of hunting, have become the creatures that trample on the recalcitrant ego.
So why are we fascinated by this sorry affair of infidelity on the part of King Kirk? Is it not because that story drives straight to that presence in our souls that is vulnerable to the workings of Aphrodite, that stands poised, waiting for the surprising smile, the furtive gaze, the subtle intimations that transmit the eternal message: I desire you, I love you? That all of us are susceptible to the whims of the goddess is demonstrated over and over by the popularity of tabloids, romantic novels and even idle gossip, most of which concerns itself with the peccadillos of important people.
Wisdom, sadly, is not one of Aphrodite's gifts. Regrets, yes--but not wisdom. The passion of love defies all limits, including conventional wisdom, which is no more than the knowledge of one's physical, mental, emotional and social limits. The myths of all civilizations recount the excesses of love as a sacred activity, not to be hemmed in by mere morality or custom. A king's daughter elopes with a pauper, a minister's son with a prostitute. That passionate, excessive love of Romeo and Juliet repeats itself over and over again throughout the ages. As William Carlos Williams wrote:
The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
it break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement--
or find a deeper well.
Aphrodite does not bestow power, in the political sense, either. Not very many years ago, the King of England relinquished his crown to marry the woman he loved. Marc Anthony abandoned his fleet to chase Cleopatra's ship, and in so doing, lost an empire, and ultimately, his life. Love doesn't care about power and empires. No empire is worth the ecstasy of a single moment of the beloved's gaze. Marriages were undoubtedly arranged in the age of monarchy for that reason; an overpowering attraction was a liability to a soldier expected to take up his sword and shield and ride into battle upon a moment's notice. A man too attached to his wife is reluctant to go to war.
Thus we find ourselves, precariously standing between our old loves, our sense of morality and our habits of propriety on the one hand and on the other hand, the yearning for the goddess's touch, a touch that transforms ourselves, the beloved and the entire universe into a magic wonderland; that raises one from a dull humdrum life into a life of excitement, romance, and utter novelty; that indeed makes life worth living, at least while it lasts.
What is the lesson to be learned from Kirk's experience and from these myths that tell of the power of love in the lives of men and women? First and foremost, the goddess of love and beauty must be honored. This, you must realize, is not a theological statement, but an imaginal statement. For the theological equivalent, see the famous dissertation on love by St. Paul in I Corinthians. It would be a waste of time to build an actual altar to an ancient Greek goddess. Aphrodite, as with all the other gods of the Greeks, is the Greek's way of describing in poetic-mythological form the workings of a part of our own souls--a part that occasionally seems to behave with a mind of its own and which must be attended to--honored, as it were--if we are not to experience evil consequences.
Our society, in spite of its preoccupation with sexual matters, is particularly impious in this regard. Love is relegated to the realm of the psychoanalyst and the psychiatrist on the one hand, and to the superficial eroticism of Playboy Magazine on the other. Aphrodite is no longer present in the works of architects; modern buildings have lost the grace and beauty that we associate with the goddess of beauty. Our technology is impressive, but it is not beautiful. It does not honor the goddess of love. The stories tell us that such behaviour will result in consequences that we least expect and that we often regret.