The Archetype
In our World of constantly changing ideals and ideas, sometimes it is hard to keep a foot grounded on Terra Firma. In our subconscious, we all have archetypes, or beings whom we wish to be. Some are real-life figures, some are invented. For our usage, we will concern ourselves with mythological archetypes, and what they represent.
Satan
A real-life personification of Satan can be seen in two people primarily, one being Nietzsche, the other being Socrates. Socrates always questioned all things, and in doing so, he annoyed people, and earning him his death. He was never content with what the authorities "knew", he believed that other answers were at least as plausible, though he never seemed to expect to find them. Nietzsche took a similar conclusion, only his was that they couldn't be found because they didn't exist.
Satan, as derived from Hebrew etymology, means "Adversary", or someone which is against something else. The primary thing which is "against" society, and people in general, is the questioning of all things. No one likes being questioned, as it undermines their self-image and ego. By questioning, we arrive closer to the axis of truth, but truth can be a painful thing. Satan, in reality, represents just one thing. The questioning self.
In our technocratic society, we tend to forget that real knowledge doesn't come from universities, it doesn't come from teachers, it doesn't come from professors, doctorates, or orators. It comes instead, from one source. The questioning self. The college, the high school, the book, they are all just vehicles used by the questioning self to find out answers, and Satan is the questioning self. Satan represents a dynamic self-determination to achieve and be more, and to question society, the self, and things at large in order to cause change in the environment. Satan represents a thinker and a doer, someone who is motivated to act and not to be complacent within social boundaries.
The problem within someone who is intensely curious is that they can become so wrapped up in the exterior world of pursuit they neglect interior speculation, no introspective time can cause them to not reach their full potential and goals. Querat, (La Curiosite'), 1920, informs us, (indirectly), that there's a reason Satan was feared. In the realm of ancient societies, questioning was reserved only for the Gods and it was considered above the realm of man. Satan finds that no knowledge is left to "the realm of Gods", all knowledge can be assimilated if only one puts forth the effort to eat from the sacred tree.
Why use the name "Satan", something associated negatively with active rejection? It was Otto Rank who first observed that the primary assertion of "will" on the part of a child is always in the form of a negation, a saying "no" to the breast. According to Rank, it is only through a nurturance of this "negative will" that the child's positive volition can arise. In the spiritual sense, a neophyte is just a child who has yet found his spiritual way, and as such, he needs an active negative will to forcefully develop his own will.
In this sense, Satan represents the motif of the journey, and 'the myth of the eternal return'. This is the journey out to the 'other' in order to return to constitute 'self', and this movement is a movement of desire. The desire is for wholeness, for self-presence, and for a unified self. It is a desire for origins. Ultimately, the quest to know self is to desire to know the world, the whole spectrum which that encompasses. In the movement towards a conscious self, the self attempts to negate the sensuous world in order to return from this world to self, in order to know: 'that is not I'.
However, the realisation of self-consciousness in contrast to other beings of nature is only the first step. To become self-conscious, we must not only realize ourselves in contrast to nature, but also to other selves which are similar to ourselves. The way to one-self, to self-consciousness, can only be through a relation to another self-consciousness. It identifies itself first with the mother, then it negates it, then with the father, then it negates it, then with the "male mother" or "female father", in Greek mythology the "mentor" who shows the person his true quest. This relationship too is negated, self-consciousness does not exist with crutches. Finally, they realize their wild, sensual side, and now free from the constrictions of the father, mother, and mentor, (which can be society at large sometimes), they find their own way in the World.
Male and Female, evolution created them both
In terms of mythical archetypes, women are looked upon as the calmers of man, the motherly role, while men are looked upon as having wild animalistic urges. Though many feminists have complained about it, (1), it is not just because of social taboo's which have been placed upon them. For example, while they criticize the portrayal of women as motherly, and hence not erotic, figures in "current" mythology, the oldest known literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, has a story where Gilgamesh's best friend is civilized by a priestess/prostitute. In other words, far from being a "Victorian Era" ideology, it was rather ancient. Concerning another of many error-filled statements, problems within sex were abundant far prior to the Victorian Era, it came about when Christians first preached asceticism, (which had its predecessors to Christianity), as men were typically mass rapists during this period. In fact, the origin of the confession box lies in the fact that Catholic priests were such renowned rapists they had to invent a means of giving a woman time to escape the priest when she went in for confession. The question "Why"? pops up.
Mostly, through a rejection of the natural roles of men and women. It goes back to the psychological problem known as a "reaction formation", in order to compensate for a problem, people go too far to the other extreme. In social terms, this has drastic side-effects. For example, Philip Jenkins documents the publics reaction to pedophilia. When it goes to the far-end extreme, the public reacts in just a few years by complete apathy, no one cares what happens to children. Then, after recognizing the trend to ignore child abuse, the reaction starts up again, until it hits the far-end and, once again, people quit caring.
In current times, we see women backlashing so far as to make statements like Diane Purkiss, ("The Witch in History"), that truth is a male empiricism claim, with no basis in reality. Of course, Richard Evans' "In Defense of History" points out that if you claim truth is a male-only criteria, then you yourself, (as a female), cannot make that claim, which is presenting itself as a version of truth. Bill Maher, a popular comedian and talk-show host for "Politically Incorrect", talks about the overemphasis of women and children, at the complete expense of "people". The problem is that eventually, this will cause a reaction formation the other way, women will again find themselves battling for a position as radical feminists push too far, which will invariably cause the counter-friction which antagonizes the situation.
In the Middle Ages, rapists were almost all sexually insecure, (in every piece of periodical literature I've found so far, I've noted no exceptions), though there are several different types of rapists. Sadistic rapists, such as DeBardeleben, tape and recorded their sadism and do they reveal themselves to be ritualistically scripted, and a man who is full of self-hatred, and needs to experience pain in others or himself to get aroused. Typical of rapists, he would make them perform degrading acts, and couldn't maintain an erection. He said to one girl that he was doing it because he was getting back at his wife. Also typical of rapists, he had difficulty with females, and a belief that his victims desired what he did to them. (The words of Mike Tyson always echo, "Nobody ever objected before.") According to his third wife, DeBardeleben thought he was God. DeBardeleben wrote that sadism is "the central impulse to have complete mastery over another person, to make him/her a helpless object of our will, to become her god." His short-comings were numerous, he had to give himself "steps" to overcome his fear of women and had to re-live his fantasy before he could enact it. In Maloy's book, "Violent Attachments", dealing with sadistic rapists, he says "In virtually all cases of sexual sadism, including sexual homicide rehearsal fantasy is a prerequisite."
There are basically six types of rapists, four main categories and two minor categories. The two minor ones are opportunistic rapists, (they take the chance when they can, no real psychology behind it other than greed), and gang rapes, which is a form of group subversion of the will.
Power-reassurance: That's what law enforcement calls the "gentleman rapist." He has a complex fantasy of a consensual relationship with a woman.
Power-assertive: That's the individual who believes that he is entitled to do whatever he wants to women. They're to be used for his gratification. His fantasies are minimal.
Anger-retaliatory: This person assaults because he's motivated by anger and he's getting even with women for real or imagined wrongs. He has almost no fantasy. He simply strikes.
Anger-excitation: He's a sexual sadist. He's punishing women because he believes them to be evil and powerful, so he's trying to take away that power. He has deep and complex fantasies.
The point of that? In the earliest part of the Christian era, the Anger-retaliatory method of rape was the most common. Church fathers abhorred women as evil instruments, and struck back out at them for eating of the forbidden fruit. Many Church fathers would gleefully report that women received no sexual gratification, and took extreme measures to rob them of any sexual/sensual capability, the current trend found within Islamic fundamentalists.
With priests as time passed, the more predominate type of rape was the power-reassurance rapists. Typically, the perpetrator of this crime will be a loner, who feels himself to be sexually inadequate, and almost all have little to no sexual experience prior to the rape. To fulfill the need for resassurance and power, he rapes women/boys/girls, (typically, young children are selected for this task because younger victims are easier to control and dominate), and will typically tend to date those who are younger and more immature to prevent feelings of inadequacy. They typically tell their victims to say that they are wonderful lovers and to reassure their ego. Here we find the answer, an insecurity with the power of women is the reason behind the degradation, a woman's power is something incomprehensible to the Church fathers, who saught to deny it. This caused a forceful retaliation in the population at large.
In current times, the sand has shifted the other way. Women have been using claims of abuse, without evidence, as a means of vindiction. For example, in one college, a girl had her ex-boyfriend kicked out of school because she claims she was not coherant when they were having sex, even though the two talked for forty-five minutes after sex, and she talked with friends shortly after she left. In order to make up for what is perceived as a 'male' problem, males have flipped to the other way and gone too far in order to compensate for our perceived short-comings in past ages.
Thus, our job is to figure out how to minimalize these reaction-formations, and to do this, we push that a reintegration of the soul must happen. Our four parts to the soul include:
To re-balance the psyche and soul, and to explore the power of men and women in cohesion not opposition, we have four predominate archetypes outside of Satan, (who is androgynous); two male archetypes and two female archetypes, achieving a balance of the soul. (2) The male archetypes are Dionysus and Apollo, the female are Isis and Ma. Through conscious identification with the archetypes, (and these are not the only ones either, just the ones which have the most personal value to me), we explore deeper cultural relationships and interpersonal communications. There are no Gods, demons, or angels that aren't created for us, by us.
1: See Carol Travis, Judith Walkowitz, and Leah Wyman if you want to read some mindless garbage.
2: Woolger and Woolger ("The goddess within: A guide to the eternal myths that shape women's lives") suggested that each woman is influenced by a combination of six major goddess types: including Athena (intellectual life, wisdom, achievement), Aphrodite (love, intimacy), Persephone (spirit world and mystical experiences), Artemis (adventure, physical world), Demeter (nurturing, motherhood), and Hera (power, leadership).
Bolen ("Goddesses in every woman") divided her list of seven goddesses into the categories of virgin goddesses (Artemis, Athena, Hestia), vulnerable goddesses (Hera, Demeter, Persephone), and a transformative goddess (Aphrodite).
For our purposes, Isis represents material fulfillment, adventure, athletics, acquiescence of inner desires, physical achievements, power, leadership, and goal-setting achievements. Ma represents the spiritual world, enlightenment, nurturing, motherhood, compassion, intellectual life, and wisdom. Apollo represents cultural refinement, justice against injustice, love of family, and pleasure of accomplishment. Dionysus represents the enjoyment of the physical, the sensual, the blurring of social roles, the act of active attainment of consciousness, the love for new things.