Masks? In Herman Hesse's Stephenwolf, Haller is taken into the magical theater, in where he learns he is a multitude of personalities. But before we go any further with this preposterous line of thinking, lets back track for a moment. What does this stuff of masks mean anyway. You might think you have only one personality. You might feel like you even have two confronting personalities, much like Haller at the beginning of Hesse's novel. But never more than that. Boy all the secrets that have been kept from you! In Alchemy and its modern component of Jungian Archetypes, there is at least seven. Three in the subconscious, in which Jung was particularly interested in, and three above the ego in the Superconscious. In the subconscious there is the inner child, the wolf, and the shadow. In the superconscious there is the spirit, the dog, and the guide. In the center coordinating the players like some great ring master is the ego. Remember, I did say coordinator, not leader. For the ego is no better or no worse than the sum of all its parts. When this happens then there is the realization of the eighth personality, called the self. This is the reconization of the parts giving up to the sum of the whole. Where the mind realizes it is one system within an organism of trillions of cells no less important. If the hand is infected and goes gangarous, will it not give the brain fevers and eventually kill them both? Where the ego acknowledges coexistence with the other six personalities. Just like how we mentioned earlier that the secret of the trinity is that its number is four. This is had when you acknowledge them working together in one God. It even gets more tricky in Hindu monotheism. All those thousands of demons and avatars and gods are all part of Brahma.

Christ consciousness rests in the fourth chakra in the heart. This is represented most clearly in the sacred flaming heart. This conflicts with the Yahweh in the old testament. Yahweh is the ego acting as a leader who enables or punishes. The ego who only sees itself in the driver seat. He talks to the other parts one in turn, just to deny them when guilt, shame, or fear wells up inside him. He talks to Lucifer when he agrees to Job's temptation. He makes a covenant with Noah in the form of a Rainbow when his spirit is high. But never he mentions that he is of the flesh like the wolf or the dog. Nether is there talk of his potential and playfulness of the child or the spirit. He is very bipolar or at least borderline in his personality. Christ is the mediator. The middle path. He is like Buddha, teaching you the way to truth. He coordinates the parts to bring a balance to the whole. He comes from the spirit to be made flesh. He is the self, and you are him. When you have Christ Consciousness. Open up to him and be willing to give up everything, for he only takes what is not yours. All that is yours will have never left. This is entering the seventh chakra and returning to the fourth chakra without fear and desire.

"You must give up your life to find greater."Jesus

 

So who is this Haller guy anyway and what the hell is his problem. He is a man stuck between his two natures, the dog and the wolf. When ever the wolf nature would rear its head, it was placed under the heal of his parents. The side of him who wanted to be sensuous, inquisitive, and daring was scorned by his parents. Ignored but never forgotten. So when its head was up once more, it produced strong feelings of shame and guilt. It was a part of him he would like to forget. Until he met Hermine.......

Now as there is three personalities above and below, there is two halfs to the ego. Do you not have two parents raising you. To certain degrees do they not think independently. Do they not both teach you to do the same on their own. Even when they work together for the sole goal of raising you, there is still two halfs forming your tiny ego. Two conscious personalities, shaping your ego. When this happens is represented by the Hermaphrodite. When not, the ego is represented by the eunuch. The hermaphrodite, like our DNA, produces equal amounts of male/female or yin/yang traits. We all have x and y chromosomes as well as testosterone and estrogen. The consciousness needs to know when to be passive and when to be aggressive. When to be tender and when to be rough. But balanced. Hermaphrodites are not pictured on separate thrones in the ego, but like Siamese twins that can not go to far from each other. The eunuch on the other hand is sexless. Here we have the vizier who holds regency over pubescent child or has emasculated power and creativity from the ego. Either it be the demanding mother who guides ones decisions or the abusive father that dominates, the ego is not free to grow any sex at all. Only copies of imperfect copies themselves. This is when the anima/animus comes into our dreams rising from the subconscious.

Not another one. Yes another one. This one only stays in the subconscious when the parent does not let go of its separate throne next to the eunuch. It is the prince or princess charming who rides in and frees Snow White from the evil step mom. Or it is them killing the evil tyrant to bring back the realm from the wasteland. My friend had a dream of a man in a sports car dying and confronting his mother. Even though the two was dangerous, this is what she felt comfortable with. Next in the dream she had seen a shadowy man rising from the swamp, this scared the hell out of her. Like the people in the dining room in hell in Sarte's no exit, the fear of the unknown is so great we will not take water from a stranger in the middle of a desert. The desert for her was living with the man in the sports car and his mother. This was all the men who were like her incestuous father that been abused by their mothers. The man in the swamp was the healthy role model of a man that is taking shape from the people she is now bringing in her life which are safe. But it is still hard to give up what is comfortable, no matter how harmful it is. Faith is void in these people, because the pain never dulls through time. Change is void. Pain is constant. They feel lucky to adapt to the level of pain they are in, they feel any more would kill them. So they avoid all that is not similar to them. Water is the symbol for something spiritual manifesting in our world. The fact that it is a swamp shows the readiness of the ego to accept it. As well as the persons face being hidden in the shadows.

When a child builds its constructs of the world, it builds them from what it sees and hears. Along with its emotional stance on these things that support or deny what its instincts tell them. Half concrete, half abstract. The art and the science of their world. These are shaped by those who are in the most contact to the child. Most likely the parents. But it also takes into concern those aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, and the like the child sees in constant repetition. These people build the constructs of the child before he reaches the age of four. Especially what boys and girls are.

In my first four years, the men and women who were constant in my life were; my mother, my father, my grandmother, Sharon who was three years older, Holly who was four years older, Denise who was twelve years older, and Michelle who was a year younger. I used to always try to get my mother's attention when I sat next to her in bed and was often rejected for the TV My father was mostly absent then and had a split personality in my eyes. One side was highly funny and imaginative as he rough housed and tickled me. The other side was highly judgmental and punishing with a short temper. This was tempered in later years for he is a great catalyst for change. The three older girls matured me quicker and I have tended to date older women. Who were older but less mature, as the three girls were. The oldest Denise, she was thin, tall, and had long hair. She later went through a string of abusive boyfriends and severe drug habits. Two of my girlfriends were alcoholics and the one I almost married was thin, tall, and had long hair. She ended up being just as unstable as Denise. The other alcoholic ended up having the same strong demanding type of mother and passive father that Denise had. With the two of them I would sit in bed and wait for them to do something years upon years. Just like my mother. Then Michelle who was younger was a bit larger set, three of my lovers have been her size. All the girls I have been with would go out of their way to do things that I was quite capable of doing at their expense. My Grandmother would take the knife and mayonnaise out of my hand to make the sandwich I was fully capable of doing. They would treat me like the pampered prince that my grandmother had done in the past. These women have made up my Anima. These women have made up my construct of what a woman is, they have created the other half of my hermaphrodite I was born with. But by building new constructs and having a new woman to reassure them, my anima can change. So can your anima/animus. No longer does anyone have to continue the string of codependent or abusive relationships. Just find healthy people to associate with. I know you first have to learn what is healthy...but that will be later.

Ok, God damn; it is what you are probably saying now. Who is this Herman Haller! we know he is a person who is at odds with himself and what is socially acceptable and what his desires want to lead him to. Then there is this Hermine chick. I had introduced her and then went on some tangent about my childhood or something or another! Well Hermine in the ancient story telling fashion is, Haller's female half stuck in his subconscious. For Haller is a eunuch in spirit controlled most likely as his father sits in regency in his ego. Hermine is the shadowy figure rising from his swamp.

Part of that swamp is the black eagle tavern. He has always stayed to the front where the respectable patrons sit, never daring to venture into the back with that racy new music they call Jazz. One day his wolf lures him into the back by the sounds of a saxophone. Once within he meets Hermine who teaches him to dance, to make love to many women, and fall in love with her. But upon falling in love with her, he must kill her. As in the tale Taming the Shrew and The Man Who Would be King, it takes one character and splits them into its two sides. For the moral of the shrew is that before you marry the younger playful half of any woman, you must accept her fiery shadow side first. So Harry and Hermine are two halfs of the personality that got separated by the parents. Then by killing her, it is removing her position in the subconscious and placing it equal in the ego next to the newly risen male after the pubescent has been sacrificed. The tyrant only removes himself and his regency when something better than his role comes along. The tavern that this all happens in is called the black eagle, the eagle is the symbol of the souls rebirth.

The place he kills Hermine is in the back room of the Black Eagle tavern which becomes transformed into the magical theater where only madmen may seek entrance. Only when you give up all hold on reality and its constructs, may one have entered this theater. Here he is guided by Pablo, the man on the saxophone who led him into the section with the jazz in the first place. It is Pablo who teaches him through a chess board that he is in fact a multitude of personalities. Pablo arranges the chess pieces in ascending order from Pawn to King and says this is how the ego coordinates its parts one minute; then shuffles them randomly with the pawn on top; and this way the next. Pablo explains this is what a healthy ego does. A unhealthy ego has this just happen to him randomly and always shifting. So in fact Haller is not two personalities, but as many as there are Hindu gods with in the totality called Brahma. Later when he sees Pablo making love with Hermine, he stabs her. For her to only vanish on the rug. He might have been a latent homosexual before this point, for in one dream sequence in the theater Haller realizes that Hermine is just the feminine version of an old childhood friend named Herman. Seeing Pablo embrace his feminine part might of caused him to kill her. Could Pablo have touched him, Haller, and removed any latent homosexual potential as he annexed Hermine into his ego?

Funny side note; It was not until the year thousand that the queen took her seat on the chess board. Replacing the vizier.

So besides Hermine who now sits in the Hallers ego as the other half of the hermaphrodite, what are the other thousand personalities I am saying are within me and you. When we are calm and in a normal non excited or non threatening state; our personalities vary to our environment. You talk about cars to your motorhead friends, not your mother mostly. You talk about your inner most desires and fears to your wife and not to the homeless guy you found picking through your garbage, mostly. Each of these conversations call for different personalities. Also each of these personalities gravitate to certain people who can elevate or depress your mood by the ranges in conversation. When this happens you address the Shadow or the Guide of your Self.

In the picture above we see the angel and the devil persuading the ego in the middle on what to do or think. It is the good cop, bad cop scenario. They are both catalysts for change. One offers the easy way that you must deny your wolf nature. The other half ignores the dog side and gives you the hard way. Yes the bad cop offers great pleasure, but pleasure that leads to excess that brings the fall to the king. The shadow calls for you to loose everything until you give up your life to a higher power. It is the side that told you to drink a fifth of vodka every night until you woke up with your drool frozen to the street grate; before you started the adventure to sobriety. Another persons shadow might of only needed them to get driven home by the police once when they were sixteen to drink responsibly. The angel tells you the truth, but calls for active hard work now. The shadow does not argue with you to make your bed or change your sheets, it just gives you fleas so you will change it later. So as in Zoriastorism, there is no evil. Only the evil done by the consciousness. As in all the myths, the devil can only tempt. Even in possessions, he must acquire someone else's body to manifest anything. It is that ego who is occupied by the devil who decides. Granted under great propaganda and ego feeding, but the ego still holds the power. This is the Guide and the Shadow. One above the ego and one below. But most of the time, the vizier or evil queen tells the eunuch to ignore them. But the shadow is smarter than the vizier, the shadow can feed the vizier's hubris to bring him ruin as well. Only at the fear of death does the vizier let go of the pubescent ego and let it become an adult. Other times the vizier lets go to the higher wisdom of the Guide.

Now the Vizier............

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