I should have never done it. I should have walked away from my computer and enjoyed my evening in peace. But to my horror, last night I found myself watching the 2024 presidential debate.
Writing about politics, especially American politics in 2024, is a dystopian labyrinth that can only end in madness and early death. I wouldn’t subject any of you to such a thing. So I’ll avoid the most basic of commentary on the situation which by now should be obvious to anyone who has remotely been paying attention since, let’s say, the day JFK was shot.
We don’t need any more hard facts about the desperate nature of our situation. And you don’t need me to tell you that we are in trouble. But this is the terrifyingly outlandish and heartbreaking reality: whoever grabs the reins of the supposedly “most powerful country on earth” is not a person who should be in power. Hard stop.
And, to my amazement, this sentiment finally seems to be catching on in more mainstream areas of our culture. Just watch the frenzy that was the post-debate commentary on CNN, for instance. Or don’t, actually.
I’m frightened and exhausted by all of it. And not for the first time, I find myself truly afraid for the future of our world and country. It's times like these, especially, when I turn to myth for guidance.
Michael Meade, whose fabled men’s retreat I’m finally attending this August, often says, “when nothing makes sense, mythic sense is what’s needed.”
Myth provides that “sacred third” thing that miraculously shows us a pathway where before we saw only brick walls. Myth shows me that it could always be worse. That our ancestors, in fact, had it much worse. That injustice has always been with us. That power can always corrupt. And that, despite all of this, hope can still prevail.
Mythic medicine is a balm that soothes and says, “I know it’s bad, friend. But remember, this has all happened before.” To the ancient ones, all of this has already happened, long before.
This is where we are: The fields are barren. The tower of stone burns to the ground. And rumors drift like musical notes down dry country roads, traveling from town to town, whispering the simple truth: “the king has donkey’s ears.”
There’s a story so old that no one can agree where it comes from. Maybe you’ve heard it before.
It goes like this:
Once upon a time there was a king. And once a year, this king got his haircut. But over time, people began to notice that once a year, a barber went into the king’s quarters and never came out.
That’s because this king had a secret: he has the ears of a donkey. And every year he would ask his barber if they noticed anything odd about his royal person. Not wanting to lie to their lord, the barbers told the truth, which were the last words they said before the king had them executed.
One day, a young barber was asked to come. He gave the king is annual haircut, and the king asked him if he noticed anything unusual.
But this young barber wasn’t stupid. He knew this was the castle that barbers like himself went into and never came out of. So he said nothing.
Relieved, the king let him go. The young barber left the castle gates, and walked down the road into the rolling hills, where he dug a hole in the ground. Hour after hour he had been holding in his secret, and into the hole he spoke the words: “The king has donkey’s ears!”
Well, time passed, and from that very spot began to grow a crop of beautiful reeds, perfect for making the shepherd’s pipe flute. But after this flute was made, it didn’t play any music. Instead, the sound that emerged were the whispered words of the barber: “The king has donkey’s ears!”
The flutes began to travel with their owners down the road, and soon everyone in the kingdom knew the king’s secret. Eventually, the word was out. Some say that the barber was found by the king and led him to the place where he dug his hole, and was spared. Others say that the king was simply embarrassed after his secret was let loose.
Because the earth will never hide the truth. And that is all I know.
That simple story packs a wallop, especially after the internationally televised donkey-eared spectacle I just absorbed.
Just like the flutes of the tale, this story has traveled far and wide. There are versions of this story that span all the way from Ireland, to Wales, to Greece, Serbia, Central Asia, India, and the Philippines. The details change. In the Irish version, for instance, the barber whispers his secret to a tree, which is then made into a harp which sings out the king’s secret. In the Greek version, the reeds reveal the truth simply by the wind blowing through them.
But the end always remains essentially the same: the earth gives up its secret. The king must literally “face the music.” The truth will always emerge, despite the desire of those in power to repress it.
Stories like this spread out across the world and take root into the hearts and minds of a people because of the simple gems of truth buried within it. There is something in this story that generations of peasants, indentured servants, farmers, and everyday people have resonated with as they dealt with the powerful lords or kings they likely suffered under. This story speaks to injustice and truth. And there is a reason it spoke to me now.
Barbers in the ancient world were known to offer much more than a simple haircut. More like traveling doctors and surgeons, ancient barbers would perform simple medical procedures and often prescribe health treatments, however questionable they may have been. Barbers assessed people’s health.
Without a doubt, both of the men I saw last night were unwell. One man was in the grips of a malignant narcissistic personality disorder bordering on archetypal possession, the other appeared in such a state of cognitive beffudlement that he couldn’t even complete his sentences. Something is very, very off about these “kings”.
The sick king is also an archetype known throughout myth and folklore. I often think of King Theoden in Lord of the Rings, bewitched by the dark wizard Saruman. But Tolkein no doubt knew about the older versions of this character.
The fisher king, also called the Grail King in the story of Perzival, is one such being. He suffers from a “wound that would not heal,” located somewhere in his groin or thigh. The topic of wound itself is worth another post entirely. But the point is that, because of the king’s wound and therefore unending suffering, the land cannot prosper, and nothing will grow. In the myth of Perzival, and many others, the “wasteland” is a symptom of a kingdom cut off from the life giving energies of the true Solar King and Lunar Queen.
When the king is sick, or mad, things begin to fall apart. Writing from my home here in Portland, I don’t have to look hard to see the wasteland all around me, as homeless camps, addiction, and destruction have become an omnipresent reality for nearly every city on the West Coast.
Today, all of us are subjected to the increasingly unhinged song and dance of the political machine and media pretending that our collective situation is somehow acceptable, or retains any trace of normalcy. Culture wars takes our attention away from the fact that our political leaders are not capable, honorable adults. The outrage de jour distracts us from the unfathomable gulf of wealth inequality. And political infighting (looking at you, progressive friends,) obscures the fact that our planet is on the brink of destruction.
Just avert your gaze from the obvious fact that the king has donkey’s ears. Scream it into the hollow earth.
You and I both know that normal left the building a long time ago, at least in this country. But somehow it feels to me like we are all being asked to hold our tongues and stifle the truth, just like the young barber. Or rather, by way of technology, our culture has been corralled and hoodwinked so badly so that everyone is indeed speaking their useless little truths into the hole that is the internet.
It feels useless to share my truth to my friends, on social media, or even here on Substack. Tonight, as I write this, I feel like I am speaking something deeply troubling into a hole in the ground. And perhaps I am.
But I wonder. Did the barber in our story not feel the same? I have to trust that this feeling of helplessness is part of what this myth speaks to. When looked at in the right light, this story can become medicine for that very feeling.
This myth also speaks to the fact that the earth has a justice all her own, a topic covered beautifully in a recent episode of The Emerald Podcast. There is a natural law at play here, which is encoded into lore - a suspiciously similar word for another way that truth is articulated. Myths and folktales (lore) are often depictions of universal truths, or laws, that emerge whether we like it or not. Myths speak to a cosmic, or planetary law that asserts itself to bring balance back into life.
The law is this: whatever human culture wishes to deny, nature will always remind us of.
This truth is beyond the sphere of culture, beyond the sphere of the human intellect. Just like a reed singing out the unbridled truth that the earth could no longer hold onto.
Regardless of what happens in this next election, we’re all in trouble. Because all of us are the barber being led into the castle, beholding the shocking truth laid bare before us. We’ll be asked to remain calm, to not talk about what we’ve seen. Maybe we’ve made promises like that before in our life. And all of us will speak our truths into our private little holes in the ground.
But eventually, in the words of Bob Dylan, a hard rain's a gonna fall. And reeds and trees will sprout, each resounding with the hidden truth that the earth can never hide for long.
My book, Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair, is now available for pre-order!
Order your copy here or through my favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s Books. It means a lot to new authors like me.
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Love this Simon - thank you for bringing it down to the mythic layers.. It's reviving me from that early-death-via-watching-american-politics you speak of.
Well played brother, well played. This rose the dead and fed the Holy in unlikely ways. I too have been wrestling with The Fisher King and seeing his unhealed wound mirrored about these mad mad days. Myth is medicine and you offered it to us well. Thankyou.