The Soul’s Code

"At the outset we need to make clear that today's main paradigm for
understanding a human life, the interplay of genetics and environment,
omits something essential—the particularity you feel to be you. By
accepting the idea that I am the effect of a subtle buffetting between
hereditary and societal forces, I reduce myself to a result."
"As democratic equality can find no other logical ground but the uniqueness
of each individual's calling, so freedom is founded upon the full
independence of calling. When the writers of the Declaration of Independence
stated that all are born equal, they saw that the proposition necessarily
entailed a companion: All are born free. It is the fact of calling that
makes us equal, and the act of calling that demands we be free."

Is there a code to our souls, a DNA of destiny? The question compelled
Hillman to trawl through the lives of actress Judy Garland,
scientist Charles Darwin, industralist Henry Ford, musicians Kurt
Cobain and Tina Turner, and many others, searching for the "something"
that drove them on and made them live as they did. His premise
is that, just as the giant and majestic oak is embedded in the acorn, so
does a person carry inside them an active kernel of truth, or an image,
waiting to be lived. The idea is not a new one: The Greeks had the
word daimon to describe the invisible guiding force in our lives, the
Romans the genius.
We are a story, not a result
The idea of a soul image has a long history in most cultures, but contemporary
psychology and psychiatry ignore it completely. Image, character,
fate, genius, calling, daimon, soul, destiny—these are all big
words, Hillman admits, and we have become afraid to use them, but
this does not lessen their reality. Psychology can only seem to break
down the puzzle of the individual into traits of personality, types, and
complexes. The author mentions a psychological biography of Jackson
Pollock, which stated that the rhythmic lines and arcs of his paintings
were the result of being left out of his brothers' competitions of
"creative urination" on the dust of their Wyoming farm!
Such interpretations kill the spirit, denying that inner visions, rather
than circumstances, are what drive people. The way we see our lives,
says Hillman, dulls them. We love romance and fiction, but don't apply
enough romantic ideals or stories to ourselves. We cease to be a
creation and become more a result, in which life is reduced to the interplay
between genetics and environment.
Another way in which we restrict our existence is in how we see
time, or cause and effect. That is, "This happened, which caused me
to..." or "I am the product of..." The book looks rather at what is
timeless about us, whether we are just born, middle-aged, or old.
Who are our parents?
Hillman is brilliant at exposition of what he calls the "parental
fallacy," the belief that the way we are is because of how our parents
were. Childhood, The Soul's Code argues, is best understood in terms
of the image with which we are born coming into contact with the
environment in which we find ourselves. The child's tantrums and
strange obsessions should be seen in this context, rather than trying to
"correct" them in therapy.
Yehudi Menuhin was given a toy violin for his fourth birthday,
which he promptly dashed to the ground. Even at this age, it was an
insult to the great violinist-in-waiting. We treat children as if they are a
blank slate, without their own authenticity, and the child is therefore
denied the possibility that they may have an agenda for their life,
guided by their genius.
In terms of our daimon, a parental union results from our
necessity: The daimon selected the egg and the sperm as well as their
carriers, called "parents." This certainly turns the tables, but Hillman
suggests that it explains the impossible marriages, quick conceptions,
and sudden desertions that form the stories of so many of our
parents.
He goes further to point out the poverty of seeing our mothers and
fathers as, literally, mum and dad, when nature could be our mother,
books our father—whatever connects us to the world and teaches us.
Quoting Alfred North Whitehead, who said that "religion is world loyalty,"
Hillman says that we must believe in the world's ability to provide
for us and lovingly reveal to us its mysteries.
"I must have you"
The Soul's Code shows how the daimon will assert itself in love, giving
rise to obsessions and torments of romantic agony that defy the logic of
evolutionary biology. Identical twins separated at birth are often later
found to be wearing the same aftershave or smoking the same brand of
cigarette, but in the most important choice of choosing a mate there
can be great differences. When Michelangelo sculpted portraits of gods or of his contemporaries,
he tried to see what he called the immagine del cuor, the heart's
image; the sculpture aimed to reveal the inner soul of the subject. Hillman
says that the same heart's image lies within each person. When we
fall in love, we feel super-important because we are able to reveal who
we truly are, giving a glimpse of our soul's genius. The meeting
between lovers is a meeting of images, an exchange of imaginations.
You are in love because your imagination is on fire. By freeing imagination,
even identical twins are freed of their sameness.
The bad seed
The Soul's Code is engrossing when it comes to love's opposite, the
"bad seed." Hillman devotes most of a chapter to the phenomenon of
Adolf Hitler. Hitler's habits, reported by reliable informants, give evidence
of possession by a "bad" daimon. The principal difference to
other lives discussed in the book is the combination of acorn and personality:
Not only was Hitler's acorn a bad seed, but it was wrapped in
a personality that offered no doubts or resistance to it. From a single
seed, we can see how the fascinating power in this man charmed millions
into a collective demonic state. We can apply the same idea to
modern psychopaths like Jeffrey Dahmer to understand how they can
enchant their victims.
This is not to suggest in any way that the terrible actions arising
from a bad seed are justified. However, appreciating the criminal mind
in terms of the daimon/acorn gives us a better understanding of it than
our conventional idea of evil (that is, something to be eradicated or
"loved away"). What makes the seed demonic is its single-track obsession,
but its ultimate aim is glory. As a society, we should be willing to
recognize this drive and find ways of channeling it to less destructive
ends.
We live in a culture of innocence that despises darkness. American
popular culture in particular, with its Disneylands and Sesame Street,
cannot accept seeds that are not sugar coated. Nevertheless, innocence
actually attracts evil, Hillman says, and "Natural Born Killers are the
secret companions of Forrest Gumps."
The soul mystery
Having spent the book looking at the lives of the famous, Hillman
raises the question of mediocrity—can there be a mediocre daimon?
His answer is that there are no mediocre souls, a truth reflected in our
sayings. We speak of someone having a beautiful soul, a wounded soul,
a deep soul, or a child-like soul. We do not say that people have a
"middle-class," "average," or "regular" soul, he notes.
Souls come from the non-material realm, yet they yearn for the
experience of this very physical world. Hillman recalls the film Wings
of Desire, in which an angel falls in love with life, the normal life of
regular people and their predicaments. To the angels and the gods,
there is nothing "everyday" or ordinary about our lives.
Final comments
Picasso said, "I don't develop; I am." Life is not about becoming something,
but about making real the image already there. We are obsessed
with personal growth, reaching toward some imaginary heaven, but
instead of trying to transcend human existence, it makes more sense to
"grow down" into the world and our place in it. Hillman is not surprised
that the people we call "stars" often find life so difficult and
painful. The self-image that the public gives them is an illusion and
inevitably leads to tragic falls to earth.
The twists and turns of your life may not be as extreme as those of
the celebrities, but they may have a greater positive effect. For character,
Hillman says, we now look as much to "the soldier's letter back
home on the eve of battle, as the plans laid out in the general's tent."
One's calling becomes a calling to honesty rather than to success, to
caring and loving rather than to achieving. In this definition, life itself
is the great work.