Our Father(s) Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Names

By Sadhika on

The chaos unleashed by the death of the father figure is unmatched by the death of the father, especially when the former precedes the latter.

As per Jungian analysis, the father archetype takes the form of the judge, the tyrant, the king, the wise old man, the benevolent God, the guardian, the provider, the leader, and the executioner. It is an embodiment of law and order, strength, resilience, discipline, rationality, inspiration and perseverance. To find that one’s biological father is not representative of the archetypal father (or less representative thereof than is ideal) leads to the death of the father figure, which is a painful realization, especially to arrive at in childhood. It leads to a collapse in truth and faith in authority figures, disappointment and subsequent loss of respect for one’s father, a collapse in structure, and a questioning of moral values. 


Depravity and incompetence elicit disgust, and when the child is privy to the depravities and incompetence of his father, disgust and respect create an inner conflict. When the father is no longer worthy of imitation, it is then that the child must search either for a better father figure elsewhere or succumb to the claws of chaos and evil within. The son grows by imitating (at least in part) his father, and his father grew by imitation of his father, and so on. As Jordan Peterson says, we have been imitating a pattern of fathers from the time of our ancestors, and that pattern has become codified into the archetype of the patriarch. 


To fathers of the world: A good father must strive to never let the father figure die before the eyes of the child, even if the father himself dies. It might save the soul of the child from moral corruption. 

To sons of the world: Be your own father. Repair your fractured narrative. Save your soul.


An intuitive belief: An archetypal idea running across a lot of literature and mythology is the hero who rescues his father from the chaos. I think the “father” here represents the potential locked up in our genetic buildup. At the risk of sounding Lamarckistic, I would say that we can unlock bits of that potential by exposing ourselves to situations of learning, which trigger neurons to alter our DNA, which will be passed onto our offspring. For what else is DNA if not a summation of all that was worth conserving of our ancestral forefathers? We hold immense genetic potential within us. That is the father we have to save.

Explore more:
1. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung.

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