An Analysis of The Men Who Fall From The Sky: Icarus … The Lost Story

The Moderate Voice is pleased and honored today to offer our readers the first copyrighted co-blog post written for TMV by New York Times list best selling author Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She will be posting most of her observations in a column titled I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH. You can read about her many books (and readers’ reviews of them) by CLICKING HERE.

“If one were to look for the causes of those who fall from the sky, first look to who has fathered them in self-interested, incompetent, or non-vigilant ways; those who think of unleashing mightiness rather than teaching mightiness and its ethics, those who have no clear self boundary about ‘what is enough.”
dr.e

I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH

An Analysis of The Men Who Fall From The Sky:
Icarus … The Lost Story
by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

What Makes a Great Raptor, Or A Good Man, Fall From The Sky?

Walking in the sweetgrass here in the Rockies, I found a small Icarus… I knelt down to see the little fan of wing feathers still tied to its boney-bones by dried-out strings of sinew. The size of the hollow bones meant this noble being, now minus its meat and breath, was once a young eagle weighing maybe a half stone.

There are several deadly things that make high-flying creatures come crashing down from the sky: illness or injury, lightening strike, gun-shot wound, in-family fighting, a predator greater, being sucked into a huge engine’s vortex, or, under freak circumstances, a profound disregard for the law…
–those laws which govern gravity,
–the absolute rigidity of immovable objects,
–unexpected blows from sideways wind shears;
–and ability to use good judgment in extreme altitudes.

The sad causes of raptors suddenly plummeting from great heights can affect modern women and men too. Human beings can also fall– or be pushed– when placed in overly-elevated positions… especially when urged to fly beyond their true range, especially if they are naive, reckless, or inflated about not needing wise advice, falsely believing they can fly through changing winds and weather without making timely corrections.

Like Icarus of Greek mythos, modern women and men who are awarded mechanical wings, but who also love power too much, are granted no lasting favor. Amongst human beings, there are laws that govern gravity and the rigidity of immovable objects, wind shears and lack of judgment too.

For in being wafted atop the tall clouds, moderns inevitably experience psychologically and spiritually, toxic symptoms. These approximate those literally occurring to flight pilots. When the pressure drops and one has sailed far too high, then a lethal hypoxia takes over; an oxygen starvation.

The symptoms of hypoxia in a person who flies too high? Their discernment, memory, alertness, coordination, and ability to make calculations and good decisions, all these are vastly impaired.

The one who flies so very high on such unpredictable updrafts becomes drowsy, dizzy, and either notably belligerent or else fatally rapt — instead of dependably rational.

As any old-guard, “cold nose” (flying with radar turned off) pilot knows, once deep into such severe lapses, the fall from the sky commences.

Loss of consciousness, sense of inflation, thinking one is invulnerable, loss of judgment. So it was in the mythic time of Icarus, and so it goes in our modern times too…

Primary Cause of Fall Wasn’t Flying Too Close to the Sun

Many recall that the story goes, that Icarus flew too close to the sun which melted the wax holding the feathers to his wings. Thus, he fell to his death.

But there is ‘a lost story’ too, one that is seldom told, an ancient fable for modern times. As I analyze the mythos, I see that Icarus would never have fallen from the sky if the one who bragged he would and could guide him, had not failed Icarus utterly, that is, Icarus’ own father, Daedelus.

Icarus was set up into the sky by his father. But he was also set up by his father to fall, for Daedelus was well known to have an unpaid debt of blood on his hands from previous misuses of power.

Thus, Icarus, high-flier-to-be, was not just a son of a famous father. Icarus was the son of a murderer; the son of a disrupter of kingdoms; the son of a man who tried to play both sides in stealth. Icarus was the son of a man who appropriated honors and garb normally reserved for real heroes who had earned such through brave and perilous works of great heart and soul, mind and body. This Daedelus had not done.

Icarus was not the first man that Daedelus had led to the heights but who did not return alive.

The Unpaid Sins and Cunning of A Father Who Falsely Holds Himself Out as Experienced Guide, Gives His Son No Authentic Power to Choose to Be Different or Opposed to His Father, Thereby Binding The Son Into A Small World of Unquestioning Obediance… Even When Logic Alone Would Press for Inquiries at Depth

Previously, Daedelus had murdered a young craftsman whom he envied. His victim was a truly inventive soul whom Daedelus feared would be seen as a greater master builder than he himself. He threw the young inventor from a tower to his death. The stories go that Daedelus then lied about his bald crime, saying the young man simply tripped all by himself and thus fell to his death.

But as in the affairs of mere modern humans too, there was an unimpeachable eye-witness who saw it all and who cried out the truth. Thus, Daedelus, caught in his grave falsehood, fled. He hid, exiled in more ways than one, in a prison of his own deceits.

Yet, still allying with evil, Daedelus next empowered the enchanted wife of King Minos into an unholy alliance with a sub-human creature. From this, the queen brought forth a beast-man in the form of a monster who raged overland, plaguing the innocent populace.

Daedelus next, playing double agent, built a maze that restrained this beast-man, the minotaur. Daedelus played both ends against the middle: secretly enabling the creation of a monster, and then publicly holding himself out as ‘the one’ who contained the monster, all the while pretending to be a great champion of the people after all.

Sometimes the tempests and travails of the ancient world seem to leak into present time, don’t they?…

Daedelus’ very name means ‘artificer’ the maker of artifice in order to expedite, to trick, or deceive others …

That he displayed no remorse or sorrow for taking a life, or fracturing the lives of many others, or enabling a beast that murdered many people: That he had no regret for disrupting a kingdom, nor for leading others astray… thereby the blood debt of the father Daedelus, went unpaid.

If One Were To Look For The Causes of Those Who Fall From The Sky, First Look To Who Has Fathered Them

Look for who has fathered the son in self-interested, incompetent, or non-vigilant ways; those fathers who think of unleashing mightiness rather than teaching mightiness and its ethics, those fathers who have no clear self boundary about ‘what is enough.’

Thus, it is not that Icarus only naively flew too close to the sun and thus fell. No, it was far more that Icarus inherited his father’s unpaid blood debt… and in the dark of some kind of pre-human psychology, there is thus a requirement: someone has to pay this debt of blood…or else force someone else to pay it

Thus, Icarus thereafter, misled and negligently unprepared by his father about the many perils of flying either too low or too high, the young Icarus paid his father’s old blood debt with his own life. He paid by never awakening from his own naiveté. The blinders he wore, were such soft ones.

When the Father Wants a “Like Father, Like Son” Troth for Deadly Reasons

To read or translate the words of Ovid the ancient Greek mythographer, we find that Daedelus gave a lamentation after Icarus had fallen to his death. The words are touching, yet even so, Daedelus’ sadness seems not so much for the loss of Icarus, the man.

The evil father’s lament seems more for loss of Icarus the hoped for doppelganger, the one who was expected to mimic his father’s malignant worldview, thereby binding father and son together in a grotesque power-narcosis; a fearsome semblance of ‘like father, like son.’

There were other choices, for in reality, it is seldom true that if the father bends to ill deeds, then so too shall the son automatically follow the father’s bankrupt example. That simply isn’t so.

There is no ‘must be so’ hanging over the innocent offspring’s head. It is in fact, more often true that sons, seeing their father’s neglects and abuses, try to do what is reliably good, thereby breaking away from the father’s malignant sucking orbit. The old people of our family would surmise that such a son is saying, Yo te conozco tiboron, aunque vengas disfrazado, meaning “I know you shark, even though you wear a disguise.”

Two Kinds of Sons Under the Sway of a Malignant Father In Mythos

Yet, in those sons who do try to be pleasing or compliant with their criminal father’s expectations or instructions… these sons striving for father’s favor, fall into two categories.

–One kind of son is ‘a knowing son’: he knows the father’s malfeasances, and ramps up appetite in a power lust to follow his father’s footsteps. This son sees that in ‘twinning’ with his father’s subversions and irrational acts, the son can have endless perks, riflings, pilferings and enormous invasions of others hearts and souls with impunity …for he is under his ruthless father’s protection.

–But, there is also, in contrast, another kind of son,
‘the naïve son’… those who do not know, do not realize, who were blinded early on by one of the purest affinities that exists, that is, a child’s innocent love for the father. Icarus was one of these.

Icarus did not realize the consequence of following his murderous father’s negligent instructions. Which is to say, he was like others who have since time out of mind, bowed to jealous old men who killed whomever they envied, and demanded ‘loyalty without question’ from all the rest.

The Malignant Father’s Psychological Seductions

Daedelus,
–believed himself above all laws;
–believed he was especially entitled
–and meant to be thought ‘always right,’ and unquestioned
– he believed he was not just humanly but rather divinely inspired,
–and thereby free to act in extreme and grandiose ways.

It hardly requires mention that this psychology, in reality, can lie sleeping for years in a person, and only rise up when triggered by sudden opportunities for power beyond the person’s wildest dreams. A ‘good enough’ man can turn into a monster if he doesn’t know his own shadow… his own unsanctioned and unfulfilled appetites and his own wounds and his own unconscious needs to be ‘heroic.’

There are many ways of being a father to others, including acting, for a time, as ‘father’ to a nation. As we see in malignant dictators, there is a drive to be ‘father with final say-so’ over others, so much so, that some men in power never want to relinquish their hold… for they sense they will fall into merely a pile of insignificant ashes without holding ultimate power over others.

One of Daedelus most diseased views was that he saw himself as ‘an architect of the future.’ Thus, with all his misjudgments and machinations and misbegotten acts, Daedelus introjected his son with an unsustainable inflation. He tells his son that he too can be just like dad… until his son, despite his manufactured wings, is so burdened, so imprisoned in his father’s ill lofty dreams, that Icarus falls from the sky… one could say… from the weight of his father’s conceits alone.

In Classical Mythos, as Sometimes in the Modern World, it is Not Pestilence nor War which is Most Turned Away at the Door: It is Love

Imagine what the moment of being given wings could be, if on the up and up. I think we can all see how alluring such a thing would be. It seems so validating and even tender, especially for a son who believes his father will help him and set him free.

But we see Daedelus in his wily act of making wings so that he and his son can escape the prison. We see cunning Daedelus and innocent Icarus collecting feathers that fell from the avians near the sea. Daedelus at night tearing and shaping the leathern harnesses, sticking the found feathers into their leather sprockets. Daedelus at the small cook fire, heating the wax that when cooled would hold the feathers to the frame.

Thus Daedelus made curved wings, made them with a kind of love no doubt, a love of wanting to evade accusation, a love of wishing to dispel consequence, neither of these being the love of agape nor eros.

And no doubt the wings were fashioned with a kind of hatred too, hatred of containment, of limitations, of critique, of wiser advisements, of being called on one’s own crimes.

And the wings were perhaps made too of hope, hope that Daedelus and his son might find a new place to rule again, a place where they were not yet known, where naive souls would trust them without first knowing them, and bow to their flawed and grandiose visions of the world.

Thus, Daedelus creates a ill psychological ethic that an innocent son cannot survive.

The Other Part Often Left Out of the Story of Icarus

Daedelus advised his son about flying overland from the heights, acting as consigliere to the crown prince. It is true he instructed Icarus… ‘Do not fly too near the sun… But the part often forgotten, is that Daedelus also said to Icarus, “Do not fly too close to the sea lest your wings be wetted.?

But what the father left out and why, purposely or otherwise, we only know that it was the same intelligence that some merely mortal fathers sometimes leave out, accidentally and otherwise– that is, telling the young avian-human who is fledging for the very first time, why… why not to fly near the water, why not to fly near the sun.

Daedelus’ warnings were fatally incomplete. Daedelus omitted warnings about the two things that had nothing to do with either sun nor water:
–Rapture of the deep,
–and Rapture of the heights,
both of which will alter judgment negatively and so severely that one will lose one’s wits — and then one will lose one’s life, entirely.

Thus son Icarus was sent out with 1/3 of the 3/3rds of critical intelligence needed to survive.

Some might say Daedelus was unconsciously jealous of his own son, that he had a pattern of wanting to be rid of rival men, and thereby gave Icarus urgings to fly before the young man was fit.

How does one call such a father who seems so wanting to see his son fly, yet withholds the critical fore-knowings needed, or may pretend to know what the safeguards are, but is only faking it? If only Daedelus, someone, anyone, had said, ‘Beware the rapture of power; beware so that it does not take you; do not climb beyond the rapture-line, else it will bring death.’

What Some Sons Will Try To Do To Remain in Their Fathers’ “Good” Graces

The day finally came. The wings were done, one set for Icarus and one set for Daedelus.

Then when another day came that was bright bright, the father fitted to young Icarus’ squab chest the harness, and to his thin arms his father bound the frames. The leather laces made whipping sounds and the leather harness creaked as the wings tightened onto Icarus body… and then next we see Icarus running, running and flapping, running and running, finding that his arms seem suddenly magical.

And Icarus, what wonder! suddenly lifts up and up and finds the updraft and yes, he flies– ‘Look at me Father! Look at me!’

What some sons will risk to gain their father’s love.

Icarus is flying…. but wait…. the sea is so beautiful, so deeply blue, and Icarus finds it exciting beyond life to dip down fast in a straight fall toward the sea’s waves– but then at the last moment, to pull up, to pull pull pull up into a steep climb, and then to turn and freefall downward again… almost into the waves themselves, but not quite… and so saving himself at the last moment… saving himself and showing his father he is not afraid.

Showing his father how daring he is. Showing his father he can save himself every time.

But this is how Icarus’ wings became damp and heavy from the spray of the salt waves. Now, there is drag on his wings and he begins to falter.

So, Icarus thinks to go higher up near the sun. He thinks the sun will dry the wet from his wings.

And he climbs, dodging the down drafts and finding the easy reward of the upward winds. And as he does, he becomes enamored, as though in love for the first time really, at how high he can fly.

He looks down and sees the true tinyness of all others on earth, and he feels mighty, that he alone, up there with his father somewhere off in the ether, that he, Icarus, is the emperor of the air.

And as Icarus’ climbs in altitude, and unaware, enters the thrall of the tall clouds more deeply, he becomes drunken– not on his own abilities for he has never been truly tested –but drunk on the updrafts that have carried him there, drunk to be so above it all, drunk to feel that ‘Yes! this utter dominion over all ground and gravitas, this is where and what I was meant to be.’

Against all reason, he pumps even higher. And in his drunken state, the son cannot feel the feathers loosening in his wings, for the harness is as tight as ever.

And his father is so self-concerned with flying his own trajectory, that toward this son whom he has called beloved, Daedelus pays no heed. He does not cry out to save Icarus, nor fly underneath his faltering son to save him.

Daedelus is not the first leader to turn his back as his ‘chosen one’ falters, way up ‘over his head.’

Even as Icarus’s primary feathers loosen by the fistfuls and waft down over the sea… even then he pays no attention. In his now asphyxiated mind, he is dreaming a mad dream that he is impregnable, not only because he is young and naive, but because his father has told him he comes from invincible blood.

But the effects of the altitude, and having been promoted and touted beyond his true competence, these have poisoned Icarus thoroughly.

Unable To Wrest Free from Being Spellbound by Power, and Instead, Simply Being a Follower, Brings The Demise

As Icarus flies nearer the sun, more feathers loosen and blow downward. It is not until he flaps and gains no altitude, not until he flaps and flaps and makes no gains— but in fact he stalls, right in mid air, as though levitating, as though walking in thin air. His feet kick and kick, his arms flap and flap… but it is over.

There are not enough feathers left to sustain, not enough ‘wing and a prayer’ to support his flight. He begins to fall. He falls and he falls, all the while trying to aright himself, flapping and flapping, crying out, protesting, ‘Noooo! This cannot be true, this was not meant to be, surely someone, something will come to save me.’

But, gravity is a relentless law. The air currents that once took Icarus upward, now open like a gigantic sieve. And Icarus, isolated from all real help, falls through. He falls through, he falls through the air and plunges so deep down underneath the sea that all breath is pushed out of him. Still leagues under the heavy water, Icarus runs out of life before he can emerge. He is out of words, out of reasons, out of all reason.

Then, only so quietly, his body still tangled in his flying harness, surfaces, eddying there– sans spirit, sans soul, sans mind, sans everything, save what the fishes and fowl of the air will soon carry away and put to other uses.

And thus Icarus, the so-called favored son who tried to fly using the father’s faulted vision, is sadly no more.

Often, “The Fall” is The Beginning of Transformation to a Life More Considered and Grounded

Though some blame Icarus’ death on his own inflation, those of us who are sometimes older than the sun and yet younger than the fog, lay the deed at the feet of the father, the one who had a history
–of taking the lives of young men who showed such promise;
–of taking them up to and then causing them to fall from heights too high;
–of saying the victims ‘tripped’ when in fact they were forced to fall;
–of making truth into lies, and lies into truth;
–of giving no real instruction about limits and perils;
–of making mere mortals believe they could act as God.

Here in the Rockies, we do not bury the little Icaroi we find in the fields; those raptors and others of beak and feet that have expired.

Instead, we leave the feathers and sinew and bones on the ground where they have fallen, for other innocent creature will make of those bones, some part of a roof or wall for their homes, and some will carry away the feathers to line a nest, others will eat from what there is to eat, and the rest will return to the earth.

And next summer where there was once just feathers and bones, there will be new clover and new shoots of sweetgrass and tiny yellow tangleweed flowers in the groundcover overall… and the ground of our lives and our nation’s times often turn like this too.

New days and new ways unfold, and they arrive not with precision, but in messy ways most often….

New can rise from what was barely left after all had so fallen down….

Perhaps it’s in the midsts of turmoils that remind us most, that no matter what vaunted things we might build, or allow to be built, or not be able to prevent from being built atop the fertile land— that yet, no matter how many bags of concrete are poured, no matter how grand or humbly any one people or regime tries to build their version of ‘the shining city on the hill’ —

that the underlying green and fit wisdom of our deepest and best minds will ever take back whatever has been overbuilt or built wrongly.

The law of checks and balances is not a law originated by human beings The law of checks and balances is, first and foremost, a law of Nature.

—————————–
“I Put The Culture on The Couch: The Men Who Fall From The Sky – Icarus – The Lost Story.” Copyright ©2007, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. All Rights Reserved, (from mss in progress, Only the Dead Have Seen an End to War, by same).

UPDATED TO: (I did not realize there was this secondary sort of distribution notice until I had been blogging for a few months. This one supercedes the one above: “I Put The Culture on The Couch: The Men Who Fall From The Sky – Icarus – The Lost Story.” Copyright ©2007, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. All Rights Reserved, (from mss in progress, Only the Dead Have Seen an End to War, by same). This version is printed here under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.