Notes on Iron John by Robert Bly

A couple good friends recommended Iron John by Robert Bly to me, and I recently finished it. It was a dense, interesting book examining modern masculinity and what men and women can learn about "manhood" from myths and stories of cultures around the world.

The idea is that "men" in modern society have a lot less of a foundation and context in which to grow and find strength than they did in prior generations, and there are lessons to be learned from the way more "primitive" cultures do male initiation through stories and physical acts.


Overall, I found the book enjoyable, and the literary interpretations of multiple texts reminded me of high school English (the good parts). I found the anthropological details and the studies of initiation rites around the world the most compelling as lessons to learn from. I found the heavy and "between the lines" interpretations of the stories and texts to be a bit over the top at times; I'm still skeptical that fairy tales and myths have that many secrets hidden in the diction and language/style to learn from.

My notes are below. I find myself now thinking about how I can grow and improve as a man based on the big lessons in the book and what institutions and activities can help with that growth for me and other men.

Big lessons

• Breaking from the mother
• Finding a male mother/male mentor
• Physical initiation rite prepares and matures men
• Inner warriors and kings can be cultivated and re-discovered
• Proper respect and fighting technique for mature relationship with Woman

Preface

• Modern masculinity
  
• Male initiation
  
• Second father
  
• Old stories don't work
  
• Not challenge to women's movement
  
• Savage man vs wild man
  
• Men's grief
  
• Wild man examines own wound
  
• Stories are the reservoir of old knowledge
  

Ch 1: the pillow and the key

• Changing models of manhood in America
  
• Soft male, nice guys
  
• Not happy, not life giving
  
• Remoteness from fathers
  
• Receptivity not enough to carry relationship
  
• Young men not able to show resolve
  

Finding Iron John

• Grimm Brothers story
  
• Every man has inner wild man side, hairy primate
  
• Hard work to find it inside
  
• Deep male feels risky
  

• Loss of golden ball that unites all kids under 8 before have split off
  
• Finding ball back requires going into male sphere, not asking woman for it
  
• Not compatible with niceness
  
• Wild man energy taken with resolve not cruelty
  
• Bucketing out water from pond in which wild man lives
  
• Freud, Jung
  
• Psyche likes making deals
  
• Wild man gives golden ball back if boy opens cage but boy runs away
  
• Schools and church teach against this
  

• Older adult finally ready to converse with wild man, full of grief 
  
• Key to open cage is under mother's pillow
  
• Pillow is where mother puts dreams for boy
  
• The key has to be stolen
  
• Mother would lose her boy if gave him key
  
• Confront family and say won't carry shame anymore
  
• Dance crazy and let yourself go
  

• Wild man let free
  
• Boy must carry John out of courtyard
  
• Must be ok with hair, body, etc.
  

Going off with wild man

• Modern boys don't get initiation
  
• Need intervention of older men to break bond with parents and become man
  
• Few men's clubs left
  
• Boys talk ugly to moms to make break
  
• Older men need to take over
  
• Industrial revolution pulled fathers away
  

Remote father

• If son doesn't see what dad does everyday all day, doesn't develop as close of bond and malehood
  
• Starts to think dad's work evil
  

Zeus energy

• Healthy male power
  
• Mom gives son bad view of dad
  
• Obsession with mom until about 35-40, then want to see dad for real
  
• Discover for self what father masculinity is, good and bad
  
• Stories good guide free from modern issues
  
• Hindus offer Shiva, good and bad
  
• Hawaiian kahuna
  
• Divine associated with mad dancers, hair, power, not just niceness
  
• Ability to shout
  
• Dionysus
  
• Kala energy, shouting
  
• Not domination
  

Ch 2: when one hair turns gold

• Initiation of boy in many cultures starts with meaningful infliction of pain
  
• Old men tell young story of original man
  

Wild man brings son to forest

• Took him to golden spring and asked him to guard
  
• Boy had wounded finger, dipped in pond and had it turn to gold
  
• Wounds are inward and outward injuries
  
• Not receiving blessing from father
  
• Not seeing father when small is injury
  
• Critical father is injury
  
• Father gives blow, son remembers for years
  
• Father gives blow with axe
  
• Mother pours on shame
  
• Beatings and blows to self esteem
  
• Being lied to by men is injury
  
• Gang members try to learn discipline and loyalty from each other instead of from older men
  
• Few soul unions with other men in modern times
  
• Infantile grandiosity beaten down by shame blows
  
• Blows to princehood
  
• Everyone has something wrong
  
• When people identify as wounded child, radiates destruction
  
• Recovery and initiation critical
  
• Grandiose road, Depressed road both bad
  
• When key remains under mom's pillow, stay stuck
  
• Even when steal key, can complain of wound for a while, still not good
  
• Look for mentor who possesses right attributes
  
• Can't just be wild man immediately (grandiose)
  
• Manic excitement, victim excitement: 2 bad paths 
  
• Male mother figure is the solution
  
• If instead of first two bad paths, climb onto shoulders of wild man, then 3 good things happen: wound seen as gift, secret spring will appear, and the energy of the sun will go into man's body
  

Water is sacred spring

• Holy wells in mythology
  
• Water of soul life
  
• Being both fisherman and fish
  
• Being active with soul
  
• Gold on fingertip won't wash away
  
• From old myths across world same image
  
• Divinity inside you
  
• Mentor guides you to your own gold
  
• Initiation is knowing when to dip wound in water in front of mentor
  

• Where your wound is (drunk dad, shaming mom, etc.) is not your place of shame but the place from which you'll find your gift to the community
  

• No polarization of earth and sky for genders
  
• Water both masculine and feminine
  
• Sky and earth both masculine and feminine, not just male sky and female earth and water
  

The second day

• Boy lets hair fall into spring by accident
  
• Wounds ate impersonal, need to be lifted up
  
• Hair symbol of animals, sexuality, excess, spontaneity -- all good 
  
• Boys instinctively drawn to hunting
  
• Hair is intuitions that come when unobserved
  
• When human takes action, soul adds to it
  
• Dream manifests in response to action
  

The third day

• Boy tries hard not to move finger
  
• Looked at face in water and hair fell into spring and turned gold
  
• Looking at own face in mirror powerful
  
• Look for your other half, hidden half, soul
  
• He does what you don't do
  
• Your shadow
  

Going out into world

• When man sees glimpse of true self, gets golden head
  
• Wild man as meditation instructor
  
• Initiation is expanding sideways into wilderness, forest
  
• Iron John is initiation story
  
• Teaches man power he has
  
• Fails at wild man's trials three times but attempt more important than success
  
• Told to leave forest but gets gift of being able to come to forest edge if in trouble and get help from wild man
  

Ch. 3: road of ashes, descent, and grief

• In childhood we know we belong to grandeur and try to forget details that don't meet that
  
• Flying people: The Little Prince, Don Juan
  
• Grandiose ascenders
  
• Ascent as revolt against female earthiness
  
• Boy into bird like creature
  

• Passivity, naïveté, numbness
  
• Men moving into passivity, women into activity
  
• Boy learns to sulk, be passive to own hurts
  

Naïveté

• More in touch with women's pain
  
• Listening to others' pain different from carrying it
  
• Believes in own and others sincerity
  
• Unaware of boundaries
  
• Gives away eggs
  
• Wants ecstasy through feminine
  
• Sink into a mood like a hole, attached, can't separate
  
• Mood trance: not present to wife
  
• Lacks natural brutality, instead waits until major wounding
  
• Timing off
  
• Link to betrayal, lies
  

Numbness

• Mother's protection makes numb when replaces father's protection
  
• Numbness in chest
  
• Not finding own feelings
  

Story

• After boy ascends and knows gold, Iron John sends him into world to know poverty but tells him that if ever needs help to come to edge of forest, call his name, and he has gold riches
  
• Boy goes to town, gets job in kitchen (descent from king's son to kitchen helper)
  
• Lowly work path to getting past naïveté
  

Catathesis

• Greek name for "drop"
  
• Next step in initiation is rat's hole, darker way, way down and out
  
• College education, entitlement to homeless lowest rank: important for growth
  
• Old shame surfaces, old man comes out
  
• Men fail to notice own suffering
  
• Wound, kitchen work, is a door
  
• Lives the shaming, multiplies inner effect to draw contrast
  
• Requires fall from status with consciousness
  
• Divorce feels like a discharge
  
• Use divorce as invitation to catathesis to enter wound as door and come out different at end
  
• Conscious act of descent
  
• Grief is conscious, intentioned; depression external, unconscious
  
• Repentance
  
• 12 steps of AA
  
• Discovering the dark side of mother earth
  
• Only the wild man can stand up to her
  
• Baba Yaga
  
• Boat tusked, dark queen, Grendel face
  
• Not about killing her but developing energy as intense as hers
  
• When achieve that, she will ask him what he wants to know
  

Taking the road of ashes

• Descent or kitchen work can take 3 other forms: Taking the path of ashes, learning to shudder, moving from mother's world to father's world
  

Ashes and cinders work

• In fairy stories like Cinderella this is the right task
  
• Cinder biters of Norway
  
• Ash Wednesday
  
• Ashes remind of death, kill inner infantile
  
• Disneyland (our culture) means no ashes
  
• Coolness of American men haven't found own ashes
  
• Catathesis about abrupt social change
  

Learning to shudder

• Feel strong emotion, let out physical feeling like grief, shock, anger
  
• Boys do this well but then numb themselves
  

Going from mother's house to father's house

• Boy cannot change into man without intervention of older men unlike girl who can change into woman just by bodily changes
  
• Because both initially raised by mother
  
• Clean break with mother required
  
• Convincing comfort loving young man inside to die
  
• Increases stomach for ashes, terrifying facts, grows ability to shudder
  

Ch 4: hunger for the king in the time of no father

• modern: "there is not enough father"
  
• Father hunger like lacking protein
  
• Women cannot replace it
  

Distrust of older men

• Poorer bonding between father and son with each generation
  
• Son couldn't see father working anymore
  
• Imagines his father as suspicious
  

Temperament without teaching

• Just see dad's temperament at end of workday but no teaching
  
• Touchy mood, shame, hate of job
  
• Before, could teach physical skills
  

Disappearance of positive kings

• Darkened father
  
• Father feebled
  
• Rejected
  

• How can son view future for self if father viewed negatively
  
• Some go to darkness of own
  
• Some compelled to be bright against darkness of father
  
• Redeeming darkened father by becoming enlightened
  
• Bird like modern men: charming, open to addiction
  

Story

• Descents like Joseph, Job
  
• Second king appears in picture
  
• Boy takes job as kitchen helper
  
• Cook gives him order to carry food to king
  
• Gold hair helps us to survive in adolescence but sore point later
  
• Why do we have so much hunger for the king? Celebrities, teachers, mentors, gurus
  
• Want praise and validation badly
  
• Small glimpse allowed of king but then ends quickly
  
• Flash of light then back to darkness
  
• Addiction is attempt to break limitations of reality
  
• Singles bars are visits to the king extended too long
  

• King and queen have long history in stories
  
• 3 kings: upper sacred, earthly middle political, inner king 
  

Sacred king

• Sacred king rearranges molecules of ppl like a magnet
  
• Sacred king blesses
  
• Encourages creativity as his realm
  

Earthly king

• Mesopotamian king
  
• Rejection of political kings
  
• Now live in national enquirer
  
• Fathers appear broken like fallen kings
  

Inner king

• Connected to our inner passion
  
• Knew what wanted inside
  
• Dies in young age
  
• Controls our moods
  
• When my king is weak, ask wife what to do
  
• Step 1: Finding Your king: Attention to tiny desires, hints of what one likes
  
• What were the delights we felt as kids before gave control to those we had to please?
  
• Step 2: Long grieving over dead inner king
  
• Step 3: Once resuscitated requires feeding king properly
  

Double stream inside sacred king

• Second darker side of king encouraging disorder
  
• Poison king
  
• Destructive trickster and playful trickster
  

Double stream inside father

• Have to deal with that part of the father who hit us with an axe (myth)
  
• Beatings
  
• Abandonment
  
• Some feel strong blood tie to fathers
  

Longing to live with the king

• Son must furnish house in mind to prepare for king to visit
  
• Add rooms for father's dark side and rooms for light side
  
• Talk to friends of father
  
• Make and furnish two rooms
  
• Invite mentor in with two rooms
  

The male as a set apart being

• Fetus begins female
  
• Father set apart from wife and kids
  

Ch 5: the meeting with the goblin in the garden

• Maternal feminine and private feminine
  
• Boy meets gold-loving feminine
  
• Spiritual, playful
  
• Moon energy
  
• Moon attracted to sun
  
• Meeting the king's daughter
  
• Fruitful meeting with woman only after both have done the work, ashes
  

Boy expelled from kitchen to garden work

• Took off head cover in heat and showed gold hair
  
• Princess makes him get flowers to trick him and take his hat off and does this a few times giving him gold coins but she doesnt win; he holds hat and refuses coins
  
• Acts of serendipity between man and woman make you think comes from other world
  
• Woman who starts things, asks for flowers
  
• King's daughter so from holy world
  
• Likes gold, gold hair
  
• She knows something
  
• Garden work for boy; natural plants developed by intent in walled garden
  
• Mercury's well/fountain
  
• Hermetically sealed
  
• Hermes guides cultivation, alchemy
  
• Walled garden (university)
  
• Hortis conclutis (walled garden), poem
  
• Garden is place to flee from world, distrust, haven to develop introversion
  
• Cultivation
  
• Initiation asks every young man to develop a lover inside him
  
• Learn poems, music, garden work
  
• Robert Moore: "appreciative consciousness"
  
• Lovers full of praise
  
• When man falls in love, he's in the garden
  
• Attention to boundaries to prevent care taking all the time
  
• Addiction to perfection means no garden
  
• Garden is personal space and time
  

The woman with golden hair

• Gold woman's beauty may just hide insecurity
  
• Marilyn Monroe
  
• But inside highly vulnerable girl
  
• Falling in love with beautiful woman across the room may mean he has soul work to do; go to river, write poetry
  
• Wild woman
  
• Divine feminine each woman partakes of
  
• Mans decisive move towards legends
  
• World of law vs world of legends
  
• Instigating woman who looks both ways
  
• Shakti
  
• Czarina
  

Saturn is g-d of ashes

• Condensed
  
• Driven
  
• Bitter
  
• Correct failure
  

Hermes allows quick messages between parts of body

• He is mercury
  
• Wednesday, mercredi
  
• Witty contributions
  
• Can't hold in fingers quicksilver
  
• Freudian slip is Hermes precision
  
• Choosing of wild flowers rather than tame
  
• Mercury is nearest plan to sun
  
• Mercury can liquefy gold and silver
  
• Flow between masculine and feminine
  
• Hermes and Aphrodite work well together
  
• Hermaphrodite
  
• Artist should be cautious to show gold quickly
  
• Hermes hermetically seals spaces
  

Ch 6: to bring the interior warriors out to dance

• Can't give sword to man who can't dance
  

The warriors inside

• Inner warrior stands up to defend own mood but if crushed too early by dominating dysfunctional family, can lose it
  
• When parents don't respect child's boundary and castle sovereignty by yelling and stuffing food in mouth, it makes child feel invaded and shamed
  
• Inner boy in messed up family gets killed, can't grow up
  

The outer or disciplined warrior

• 3 soil layers: king, warrior, farmer
  
• 3 ceremonies, 3 ways of living life
  
• Warrior in service to true king
  
• Role of strategy
  

Eternal or sacred warrior

• Divine battlefields
  
• Aries not present on modern battlefield
  
• Matter of aggression looks different when you've been invaded
  
• Warrior made irrelevant in mechanized war
  
• Man must be able to defend on own space
  
• Outer world connected to inner world
  

The story, the battle scene

• Kingdom invaded
  
• King in story goes to war
  
• Boy in garden given lame horse, wants to help in war
  
• Boy goes to forest and asks iron John for war horse
  
• He receives it and army of iron soldiers
  
• Triumphs
  
• returns horse and army to Iron John and comes back anonymously
  
• Made fun of in court because warrior identity was secret
  
• Kingdom invaded like boys psyche invaded
  
• When king losing battle, time for warrior to fight 
  
• Must kill all to the end, no halfway measures
  
• Need decisive move
  
• Right for boy to be in contact with enemy directly, not through someone
  

Gaining four-legged horse

• Instead of three-legged horse he got before
  
• Four is right number
  
• Horse is animal side of human
  
• Fourth leg is shamed leg
  
• When we were tiny, horse galloped happily with four legs
  
• Boy's horse needs to be brought to mentor Wild man
  
• Ask him for better horse, Even to ride temporarily
  
• Work to prevent further shaming
  
• Work to get in contact with four-legged original horse
  

Warriorhood in education

• Disappearance of fierce debates in teaching
  
• Warriorhood just left to sports now
  
• Warrior acts in business
  
• Japanese business culture
  
• Sense of duty
  

Creation myth

• Modern man needs sword to cut psychic umbilical chord with mother
  
• Cut us from self pity, victim hood, rage
  
• Divine cutter myth of creating world by separating opposites
  

Warriorhood in marriage and relationships

• Conscious fighting is productive
  
• Never seen parents fighting productively
  
• Husband fights in office
  
• Adult warrior can get hit and still maintain form and courage
  
• Knows rules of war
  
• Doesn't take cheap shots or use word "always"
  
• Fight clean
  
• Interior warrior can help fight on human plane instead of damaging battles on divine, poisonous plane
  

Iron vs copper

• When vutra sword does its proper cutting, man less needy and can face world of opposites
  
• Child in messed up family may feel intense tension between cold father and warm mother
  
• Child goes from iron work to copper work, becoming a bridge of that good conductor
  
• Boy conducts intense emotions from others through him to earth
  
• Can conduct intense ones without heating up because good conductor
  
• Son loses his distinctiveness as a man by becoming conductor
  
• Need to see father step up against mother's abuse
  
• Father must set limits to mother's raging or else children become copper wires to dissipate others emotions and ground them like electricity
  
• If not, will be conductor as adult and find more situations to be such bridge
  
• False androgyny
  
• Can have boundaries in marriage that allow different points of view
  

Living between the opposites

• Accepting both to survive
  
• Rejoicing in both
  

When Paris chooses

• Choosing the one precious thing requires our warrior
  
• As long as nothing is clear, the king sleeps on
  
• Choosing our one path in life wakes up our king
  
• Requires courage to say no to many paths available
  
• Break addiction to harmony
  

Moving from copper to iron

• Imagine bringing inner warriors back to life
  
• Find your boundaries
  
• Put the doorknob to ur room on the inside and in your control
  
• Don't let others shame you. Name the shame they're trying to put on you. 
  
• Talk about reality and do the hard work instead of talking about dreams
  
• Communicate about reality. Name the conduction. Say you won't be conductor for someone anymore. 
  

Ch 7: Riding the red, black, and white horses

• In other tribes, when adolescents begin acting out, the tribe starts terrifying initiations kept secret which produce real men
  
• Our society just backs away
  

Overview of classic initiation

• Linear process of five stages
  
• Overall initiation resembles a sphere
  

• Step 1. Bonding with mother and separation from mother. First part we do ok, second not. 
  
• 2. Bonding with father and separation from father. First part delayed, second maybe never. 
  
• 3. Arrival of male mother or mentor who helps man rebuild greatness. Haphazard if at all
  
• 4. Apprenticeship to hurricane energy like wild man culminating with a drink from divine water. Such a drink adolescents are yearning for. 
  
• 5. Marriage to holy woman or queen
  

• Conscious mother vs unconscious mother who doesn't want to release grasp
  
• Must steal key from possessive mother
  
• Psychic incest between mother and son
  
• Mom sharing too much info
  
• Mother looks to son for companionship
  
• Substitute husband
  
• Elders are those responsible to start initiation
  
• Men feel guilt when can't rescue mother and then punish themselves with career or wife or something bad for them
  
• Need male mother mentor
  

The story chest full of golden apples

• Men need to be able to be in warrior mode and dancing mode
  
• Daughter wants to know identity of secret knight
  
• Throws dinner and throws golden apple to see who catches
  
• Boy asks Iron John for horse and armor and help to catch ball
  
• He catches but gallops off after
  
• Repeats twice and king tells men to chase knight with sword
  
• Gets leg wound and loses helmet, all see he has golden hair
  

• Apples golden
  
• Old ritual
  

Threshold space

• Ritual space entered by threshold
  
• Change only in ritual space
  
• Ceremony before
  
• Heated space
  
• animal displays of beauty, dances
  
• Boy rides to display without shame
  

Red white and black horses on 3 days

• Strong associations of colors historically
  
• 3 phases of life all need to go through
  

Ch 8: the wound by the kings men

• Wound slows him down and deepens feeling
  
• Wounds as part of ritual initiation
  
• boar wound myths
  
• Wound as male womb
  
• Gives second heart
  

Story

• Boy gives apples to gardener's kids
  
• Called in by king and admits to being knight
  
• Directly asks to have daughter for wife
  
• Before refused public acknowledgment
  
• But can now acknowledge
  
• Can now join with feminine after doing full masculine walk
  
• Can now show golden hair
  

Wild man and his qualities

• Has been ignored by our society for a while and feared
  
• Love of ordinary things and animals
  
• Lame Deer, native American autobiography
  
• Positive side of male sexuality
  
• His wants are to be trusted
  
• Prepares emotional body that can take grief and intensity
  
• Prefer Intensity even with risk of fall
  
• Importance of kitchen ashes work
  

Community of beings in grown man

• King
  
• Lover (garden)
  
• Warrior
  
• Wild man
  
• Trickster
  
• Mythologist or cook/magician/shaman
  
• Grief man: man's grief is unique but less allowed in culture
  

Story: wedding feast

• Parents of boy attend
  
• Iron John arrives as knight says was enchanted before
  
• Gives all his gold to boy
  
• Wild man becomes king
  

Epilogue

• Men learn to worship animals and their sorrow
  
• Wild man through the ages
  
• The animal g-d
  
• Esau hairy man in old testament
  
• Christianity antisexuality killed wild man
  

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