Wizards and Knights
Last night I was about to go to bed, but I had left my water bottle somewhere, so I needed to get a glass of water. I filled up a clear glass cup with a picture of Porky the Pig on it. I filled it twice and drank it twice. Each time I drank, a thought came into my mind that stuck there. I imagined myself drinking all the water down and then taking a big bite out of the glass I was using. In my head, it wasn’t a painful thing; it was just me taking a bite, and then it was candy. It was never a bad thing—just this image with a distinct feeling of candy or something. It’s hard to explain. An image or scene enters your mind, and attached is an idea with a feeling, maybe, that is for some reason unshakable. For me, this image followed me all the way to bed and would flash into my mind periodically as I took myself to sleep.
This type of thing, whatever you might call it, happens to me quite a lot. I will get this image in my mind, and it always comes back to me. Once it was like a distorted version of the Monster logo. It plagued my mind for weeks. I’m never sure what these images and ideas are supposed to mean. It’s like a flash of a dream that comes to me over and over. I guess not everything really needs to mean something, but at the same time, I think it is in our nature to want those types of things to mean something. Perhaps it is because of all the stories I read that when something similar happens to me in real life, like having images flash through my mind, I want it to mean something or to make me special. It makes me wonder if I’m chosen somehow.
When I was young, I always thought about how in most of the biggest franchises, there is always a chosen one. It is true in Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings. All these stories have a character who must accomplish a task that cannot be done by anyone else. They are sometimes the first or last of something, a rare occurrence of some kind. I think we as people gravitate to the idea of a chosen one. We love this idea. I don’t think I am isolated in this, but I always identify with the chosen one. I think in some way I have always thought of myself as a chosen one in a sense of the term.
I always imagined when I was a little kid that I would someday go to the doctor, and they would realize that I am drastically different from everyone else and that I can do so much more. It was more a belief than a fantasy when I was very young. I really almost expected it to happen, that one day I would realize that I have a special purpose on earth that could be done by no other than me. That I would discover an ability unbeknownst to mankind until scientists discovered my miraculous power. I would daydream about finding out that something I do all the time no one else does. I talk to myself in my head all the time. Nearly all day I have an internal monologue going. I don’t think that’s abnormal necessarily, but when I was a child, I hoped it was. I remember I asked my mom if it was normal, hoping that I had a power or maybe just like another guy living in my head.
In any case, I always thought I was and hoped that I was special, that I was different from everyone else. In all honesty, I believe that I am still, even to this day. I don’t think I am the chosen one, but I do think I have something that other people don’t. I am not sure what that is exactly, but I think that I have it. Now, this is a hard idea for me to try and articulate, and if I try, I think I will end up making myself sound vain, so I won’t. I have always sort of had this image of myself though in my heart that I am the hero of a story, I guess. And in most cases, we are the hero of our own stories, so maybe it’s okay for me to feel that way.
Similar to how I was explaining about the images that flash through my mind, I always have sort of an image of myself that I hold in my mind. Like when I picture myself, I see myself, but I also see a kind of spiritual representation in the medium of a picture or maybe a series of images. For a long time, I always saw myself as a benevolent knight type. I think because of my size and my proclivity to be very protective, I always saw myself this way as maybe some kind of holy knight with a claymore or the like as my weapon of choice. I think about a passage from Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe once again:
“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oaths, they are given a coin, a knife, a flag—some symbol of what they are to be. Destroy that symbol, and you destroy the soldier. The coin I held in my hand seemed to me such a symbol.”
Much like the coin, the idea of the knight did the same for me. While I held it in my mind, it shaped the way I would make decisions and change even what I thought I myself should pursue, basing those decisions on this symbol that I held in my mind that represented me. In many ways, I think this was beneficial for me for a long time. I think this knight symbol that I had conjured up, though, was based on what I had perceived to be other people’s ideas of me and not my own idea of what I would like to be or who I think that I should be.
Growing up, I always felt like a protector. Oftentimes as a child, I always felt like I needed to befriend the smallest children in my class. My mom told me she thought it was always funny because I would bring a friend over to our house, and it was always the smallest kid in my class. Perhaps it is a mutual attraction that would bring us together. I always felt like in those cases I would end up being the blaster in our master-blaster duo (this is in reference to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome).
In many ways, I allowed myself to just be the big, strong guy. I think a part of me felt the need to embrace this role. I think oftentimes it was encouraged for me to be that guy, not to be dumb but to embrace that I was big and strong and that I would protect people.
This idea was reinforced even more when I started to play football in the 6th grade. I was very disillusioned in thinking that they would ever let someone as big as me touch the football. I was, as many kids are, convinced that they should be the quarterback. My first day at tryouts, they looked at me and put me with what in our league was called the X-Men. They called us this because if you were over a certain weight, they put an X on your helmet and don’t let you carry the football in any way because it’s unfair. Then, because of that, the positions you can play are limited. I ended up playing left tackle. As the left tackle, you usually cover the quarterback’s blind side if they are right-handed, which most are. When they turn to throw, they put their back to the left side and can’t see what’s coming. My little league coach’s son was the quarterback and my coach often reminded me that I needed to protect his son, seeing that I was covering his blind side. As a young man, I took this very seriously. I took it even more seriously a little later because me and his son became good friends. So not only was it my job, but also it was my boy taking a hit if I messed up. I think this further pushed me into my identity as a protector. As the knight.
Many other aspects of my life, I feel, encouraged me to take on this designation, including my parents and siblings. As I continued on in life, I think without even realizing it, I had attached this symbol to myself and let it inform who I was and even how I made decisions regarding who I was going to be. In May of last year, I finished The Book of the New Sun, the series from which I quoted earlier. As some of you may have already inferred, it had a deep impact on me. I do believe it is because of these books that I was led to think more deeply about this image I had conjured for myself, really unknowingly.
I would see the knight in my mind’s eye and know that it was me without acknowledging what that really meant and what that meant for me. For a time after finishing those books, I reflected on myself and who I was becoming. It led me to my understanding of the symbol I had taken upon myself and how it was influencing me every day. As I pondered this idea, I realized that it was inhibiting who I was hoping to become. I was letting the knight conflict with who now I felt that I needed to be. I realized that I needed a new symbol, one who represented to me who I am now and more importantly, who I am hoping to be. Letting this new symbol inform my decisions pushes me to become a new type of person, the type of person I believe this symbol or ideal represents.
Now before I continue, I do not wish you to think that I lament the time I spent with the knight in my heart or that I resent those who pushed me to take that mantle upon myself. I love and revere that part of myself, but the knight is who I was as a child. And so I must move on, for now, I am a man. Now more so than ever before and especially since it came to my attention, do I feel that I am different. That who I am becoming is not who I had suspected and that I am no longer a boy. Almost without thinking, my mind found itself locked onto the idea of a wizard. Wizard, thaumaturge, or shaman perhaps.
Now do not make the mistake of thinking I believe myself to currently have a likeness in knowledge or deed of the aforementioned. I use this ideal in a way that helps me to consider what I do in terms of if that makes me closer or takes me further from being like the magus of yore. I think about what it means to be a wizard in terms of my own life and what I am doing to become a wizard or shaman for the people around me. Do the things I do every day bring me closer? I think, as reflected on this idea, I found that the idea of the wise old man resonated with me that Jung describes in his writing. In The Book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert L. Moore and Douglas Gillette further expound on some of the things that Jung says about archetypes like the wise old man, or what they refer to in their book as the magician.
I was going to put a quote from their book here but found this shortform article that this lady named Becca King wrote that describes what I am going for a lot better.
“The Magician empowers someone to act as a healer and problem solver, like the wise men of ancient cultures. The Magician’s knowledge makes it the aspect that’s best suited for treating illnesses and injuries, as well as giving advice in difficult situations. Again, this includes helping the one whose mind it’s a part of. For example, suppose someone hurts his ankle: His inner Warrior might encourage him to push through the pain, but his Magician aspect will wisely advise him to rest and heal.”
She says her article is based on stuff Jung wrote, but I'm not really sure what she’s quoting. I really like that description though. I obviously have my own understanding of the idea, but I think she says it more concisely than I can.
As I think about these ideas of what it means to become the wizard or the magician, I think a lot about what it is that I need to do to realize this new ideal. I think first and foremost, if we go all the way back to what I was describing at the very beginning of all this, I have a few images and ideas that flash through my mind often when I am reflecting on this. One that stays with me constantly is this image that is a version of myself that has disentangled myself from the need to be a part of a social hierarchy. I have a constant idea about how I am perceived and how that makes me look in comparison to how I think other people who could be considered my contemporaries are perceived. I think largely this is due to just me being in a band, and I worry about if my band is getting more popular or where we rank on a social scale, so to speak. I also find myself thinking about who likes what and who follows. In this image I see of myself I am older and more learned. I am at a candle lit table studying a book. Perhaps the Knight would concern himself with the politics of court and the goings-on that come with such, but the magician, I think, would do no such thing, for he would be more vested in scholarly pursuits, if you get my meaning. The problem is I get such a kick out of story likes and knowing that people think I’m funny or think that what I am doing is cool. I think, unfortunately, the time is soon at hand, when I must forgo all that to come closer to my ideal, which has now become my goal.