Georg Trackl (1)

Talk of Leadership can be off putting. There is something zealous, clear eyed and healthy about the phrase. We suspect that large, hidden parts of the leader are hidden just out of view, like an iceberg, waiting to sink our fragile boat. What's required to lead can seem to homogenize, to thin out the idiosyncratic. Although this essay refers to leadership sometimes in terms of large groups, its primary function is to examine a way of life that has impact, no matter how subtle. Even if it means leading yourself only, most of the essay can be read in that context. There is an unrelenting message in indeginous teachings that a defining association of leadership is knowledge of isolation, suffering and a personal wound. Trackls ‘dark eagles’ are our scouts for this part of the journey. What needs to be nourished is complicated and only half seen. To hold this perspective requires the expansive view of such a bird, to know how to avoid thin air and rancid meat.

In the myth-world Apollo is a example of a young leader contemporary society could still just about swallow. Seen in Greece as the God of the Sun, he strides about, instructing us; "Nothing in excess." His name has associations of brightness, purity, the whiteness of swan’s wings, advancement of medicines and the laying down of laws. He also rides the approval of his father Zeus, he is the favourite son. A player of the Lyre, his music was perceived to calm the most ferocious beast, to transform wildness into a passive and benign state. Every botched business decision, ecological crisis, messy break up he experiences is viewed from a cryptic distance, his feathers never get caught in the tricky glue of emotion. He is corporate man, par excellence; lacking the terrifying swings of Zeus’s temperament he remains in control, early to bed, early to rise. His love of logic and clarity are presented to us as soon as we enter nursery or primary education as a defining way of being in the world. Universities, media and industry are fuelled by a hundred million little versions of this energy field. When you imagine his face, what can you see? I see a kind of glowing and cheekbones.

When we think about Jung’s words; "Man doesn't become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious" we become grateful there are other gods in the Greek pantheon. That our psyche is more free ranging and obtuse than just this one model. The problem is though, has anyone told society at large? The characteristics of a person under the thrall of Hermes will almost always be perceived as muddy, unclear and morally dubious next to the impersonal rays of Apollo. Like a kind of mythic robocop they are enforcers of a senatorial consciousness received from their fathers. Firmly in the Descartian camp (as much as a god can be!) they can make decisions of ecological havoc. Some gods originate from beneath the soil, but not this one.

Sky men and women proliferate in leadership. Although on the one hand they possess the organizational skills, discipline and logic to succeed, we sense something terribly thin in them. It's as if their shoes are the only thing stopping them from floating several inches above the ground. They don't engage somehow. I recently gave a lecture to industry magnates from around the world on mythological thinking. As long as there were handouts and coffee, so far so good. However, when we moved into the realm of grief and loss as part of the leader’s lot, the room fell oppressively silent. Five minutes before, all were offering very informed perspectives on the subject, but when it turned inward, to intimate material, nothing.I was practically hounded out of the venue.

To admit difficulty, or confusion was to instantly lose status in the group. The branding power of potential shame was too intense to risk vulnerability. To speak openly was to appear to be ‘confessing’. Six stayed on to talk at the end of the rather fraught lecture. Given a more secure space they free ranged into a conversation of great depth and feeling; rosy-colored butterflies started to emerge from underneath their power jackets and tut at the strip lighting.

Culturally we like to see our artists (from a distance) as disciples of a very different god, Dionysus. What do we know of this character, and why is he associated with the creative spirit? Dionysus is another son of Zeus, but is cantering through rain washed valleys whilst Apollo flies overhead. At first glance, he seems almost diametrically opposed to Apollo. He is associated with the inebriation of wine, the rupture of mystical experience, the timelessness of lovemaking and spasmodic, crazed, passionate outbursts. We know at the point of his mother Selebe's death, Zeus tore Dionysus from her womb and sewed him into his own thigh, where he grew till birth. This strange, auspicious incubation points to a kind of unexpected nurture on the part of Zeus, as if such a bizarre thunderbolt could not be born in a natural way. A fascinating thought is that the name Dionysus may mean 'Zeus Limp'-his wounded aspect manifested in this particular son.

Unlike Apollo he is non-competitive, and in his world travels leads a trail associated with both murder and ecstasy. He feels dangerous, conflicted, sexy and loose. Whilst uninterested in the clear path of responsibility, his personality allows him to access deeply odd emotional pathways, to have a psychic life, to create music, ritual, art, and even to break new ground in these mediums. This relationship to the muse can offer fame as a side dish. The titillation of such a personality for mainstream society is for them to act out all the barely accessed desirous inclinations of our hidden selves. We are thrilled/horrified by their behavior, the lack of boundaries, the outlandish music, the two fingered salute to convention. If talent is recognized and success arrives, the individual can incinerate quickly. We walk past an apartment party and see Joplin, Cobain and Dean sharing Brandy Schnapps as the block burns.

Pablo Neruda (5)

So, two extremes. From a negative perspective Apollo seems rigid, one dimensional, uneasy with anything fluid or subtle. On the other hand, Dionysus can appear like a lunatic dervish, chaotic and lacking form. Although we can instinctively sense which side of the river we most relate to, the truth is most of us draw closer to one or the other at different points in our lives. As discussed, it is clear that even in the Sky Realms of Industry they are recognizing the need for scouts closer to the ground, to follow sustainable, magical tributaries towards passion in the heart of the workplace, and relationship to the natural world. Some accord simply has to be struck.

Daniel Goleman talks about the necessity for 'emotional intelligence' in the workplace, that underneath the practical skills of your particular occupation is the need to be able to sense, handle and articulate both you and your colleague’s emotions. He sees the raw nerve endings in the desire for perfection, status and success, and rather than suggesting you walk away completely and join an ashram, he suggests a palatable integration of both ends of the mythic spectrum. "The ancient brain centers for emotion also harbor the skills needed for managing ourselves effectively and for social adeptness." Disturbingly, he also notes a decline in this kind of integration, that amongst young people, they are two horses pulling away from each other; "As children grow ever smarter in IQ, their emotional intelligence is on the decline. Perhaps the most disturbing single piece of data comes from a massive survey of parents and teachers that show the present generation of children to be more emotionally troubled than the last. On average, children are growing more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, more nervous and prone to worry, more impulsive and aggressive." (6)

From one angle, Goleman seems to be telling us that they seem to be further apart than ever, that amongst a coming generation a perpetual dislocation is emerging between logic and feeling, neither side handling or assisting the other.

We note that artists famed for their wild bursts of inspiration often served steady apprenticeships as draftsman or illustrators for years- Willem De Kooning and Franze Kline amongst them. To break from form they first had to explicitly understand it. It feels appropriate to also be looking at characters that have allowed Apollo’s discipline to sustain their vocation for decades, honing and amplifying it. A very different model from the late twenties burn out.

Antoni Tapies and Cy Twombly, to name but two, are turning out the most vibrant work of their career in their seventies and eighties. Their temples appear to have been built slowly, with both granite foundations and delicate little chambers ready to accommodate any peculiar bird song they may awake to. To brand them purely as Dionysus’s children is too sweeping. The kind of wildness they present, that an elder presents, is not the crazy sweeps of a double-headed axe but the lyrical steps of the capowera dancer.

It is the repetitive handling of strong energies and abiding in the thrumming, dichotomous tensions the two headed temple creates that is the very backbone that guides you through the decades. Age is partially defined by limits, by accountability, but we should not bend the back so far that we can't see the stars.

I'm suggesting now two roads towards this idea of authentic presence. They are not moderate roads, they imply a kind of excess or appetite. They include a love of performance, communication but also profound inwardness. We are trying to find ways between the tavern and the mountain and arguing for a state of being that includes both. Oratory does not just belong to the mouth of the sensualist and solitude does not just belong to the ascetic.

The ability to inspire through language, to draw us into realms of excitement and wonder for centuries was a pre-requisite of leadership. We still detect this in some Iranian speakers and the wild, rousing speeches of a 1950s Che Guevara. You sense character, emotion, gravitas and flamboyance. A distrust of this in the West, and desire for just the facts are noted and fought against here by Thoreau;

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may

not wander beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to

be adequate to the truth of what I have been convinced. I am convinced

I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a

true expression...why level downwards our dullest perception always,

and praise that as common sense. The commonest sense is the sense of

men asleep, which they express by snoring...while England endeavours

to cure the potato rot, will any not endeavour to cure the brain rot,

which prevails so much more widely and fatally?" (10)

What is wrong with us? It's like being presented with a cornucopia of exotic meats, wild salad, freshly baked breads and a good shiraz and choosing a motorway service sandwich instead. Beauty has become reviled or seen as shadowy, artificial-almost a kind of spin doctor. At least with a monosyllabic fact repeater we think we can take it at face value. It may not raise a reaction or even a pulse, but at least we got the company stats read out at the weekly meeting. Harking back to Maxwell again; "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." (11)

When was the last time you actually stood feet away from a politician or leader in a market square or hall, actually feeling their energy? The subtle dislocation of technology, the flatness of a television screen denies us this, and so the psyche struggles to make up its mind. This isn't some obscure cosmic idea, this is simply about our own humanity.

I know through working with people in positions of leadership that public speaking is often their number one fear, especially the anxiety of coming 'off script' publicly. It is almost as if to speak up risks being 'found out' in some way, of not matching up to the position they occupy. We know from history that voice is seen to carry the resonance of your life experience, your

medicine.This terror of flow, of letting your hands move in the air around you when you speak, of trusting animation, is to be far from the instinctive body.

I am not proposing exhilarating speech is all there is to leadership, but to be frightened of it is to lack the key of ignition and inspiration to those who work with you. It reminds me of the endless baptism speeches of new converts to any particular religion, 'If I hadn't found.....I’d be dead or in jail.' The fear of the experimental makes us associate anything but the prescriptive route as playing with madness. 'Surely I’d end up like some kind of Satanic Allen Ginsberg, smoking crack, reading De Sade and forgetting my pension payments'. Our perception of spontaneity, of wildness, can be so limited that our way of dealing with its absence is making it so extreme it's dangerous. That way we can leave it alone, 'for the good of the kids.'

There is also a point where the ascended arc of affirmation and gold stars simply won't do anymore, there has to be something more, something deeper. Voice can be a vehicle for enthusiasm, literally meaning 'the breath of God', it can lift us and reorientate us, point us towards more profound implications of the life we make. Ghandi, King and Kennedy are all radically different examples of that gift. It seems for those of us asking these questions, our approach to voice has to be twofold:

1. To reinhabit gesture, dynamic range and powerful articulation to bring the words into the wider body, not just the rattling brain. The anti-talking head.

2. To allow a door of listening and fluidity to emerge for the integrity of the moment, so it's more than a polemic.This can be scary because it involves being able to sense the mood of a room and to bring that into the dialog.

In seventeenth century Wales this kind of vocal power could bring hundreds out onto hilltops to listen to "theire harpers and crowthers singe them songs of the dooings of theire ancestors...and they ripp upp theire petigres at lenght howe ecehe of them is discended from those theire ould princes. Here alsoe they spende theire time in hearinge some part of the lives of the intended prophets and saincts of that cuntrie." So these Minstrels used their speech to make wild links between the ancestors, their own 'royal' background and the religious ecstatics of the region.

Metaphor, often a component in good oratory, is a tricky horse for many modern leaders to ride. It points towards complex connections, grey areas, extended possibilities, many miles from Bush's 'Evildoers' rhetoric. It's just possible it may send an arrow back into the conscience of the potential voter rather than out into whatever 'other' they happen to be attacking at the time. This would be suicidal if you play by conventional politics, you may start losing your 'white knight' kudos.

Without metaphor we get the mythology of an infant, a flattened culture that is choosing to only partially see the old stories. In politics it's about defeating Yaga, not eating fragments of her dress and teeth. Shadow myth is a stripping down to base, fearful emotion and then pouring the affirmation of god and country onto that incendiary mix. God appears to be a mightily useful figure to invoke in a time of national outrage, despite seeming rather abstract the rest of the time.

In our own lives, no matter how small our circle of influence, it can be nourishing to roll language around our mouth, to spit out unexpected peals of lightning when at a coffee morning, to allow some dense idea to sprout mad flapping wings when in conversation with a friend. When you do this, something scuttles out from behind the sofa and across the brightly lit lounge. For every soul paralyzing sound bite we need roughly twenty six great poems, three rituals involving tawny Owls, no sleep and one huge story, preferably from Scotland or the Hindu Kush.

As you can see, I’m having fun with this idea but am heading towards somewhere serious. It isn't enough to just to be conversant with creative, strange concepts, the authentic Elder is still attempting to handle through their Initiation experience the sharp light of critical discernment and the intuitive. With the balance so heavily weighed in rationalities favour though, we have to make an attempt at redressing. It's interesting that when a culture that prides itself on intelligence draws on myth or religion for support of a polemic it presents such base understanding of it. All unowned emotional intensity pours into its simplistic position. It's a peculiar blind spot.

Someone needs to be speaking up for Kingfishers, small English hedges and lightning storms over New Mexico, and not just in the loud shout of an ecological protest rally. Some sweetness has to come too, some beguilement, some enchantment. Ecological disaster statistics are effective, but also bring apathy or panic as bedfellows. We need people 'with the tongue' to touch the soul as well as the adrenalin ducts. The mythology of wilderness needs to be articulated as the mythology of ourselves. That requires a certain type of education and long periods moving and sitting in the wild.

Bashing a drum of complaint and stats can still be a shrill sound, no matter how well intentioned, and I don't think the old nature gods are overly impressed either. Grief has a watery quality that they seem to enjoy, it’s like us sending clouds of feeling back to the sea. Handled well and ritually sanctioned, they seem to eat it.

Inherited suspicion can cultivate distrust of an inner King or Queen that can radiate both passion and blessing. Robert Moore calls this fear of the ‘Shadow King: the Tyrant and the Weakling’. This is the one in thrall to something devouring, the twisted road of excess. The one that shuts down small book stores, wears only grey and can’t stand to negotiate. Anyone with a conscience will swear never to be that Caligula,that Herod, and will distrust the robes of office and those who inhabit it.

But this is only one strand. The challenge is to find the models of health and generosity in leadership, to somehow pin those images to your breast and work from them. In a culture of manic abdication and usurption of power to hold a position of genuine service is remarkable, and its effects wide ranging.

The Shadow Queen is to be tackled by a gradual sifting to consciousness of your own carnivorous appetites, not pretending she doesn’t exist. You learn to catch her flapping black tongue quicker, to say ‘aha! There goes the dribble eyed, skull smashing Queen of my own blackness. What called her out of her cave? Touch her arm, clean her eyes and give her a pidgeon to eat. The Media will attempt to convince you that that which is noble, affirming, grand and connected to the King and Queen will always go the way of the Shadow, the Tyrant and the Weakling. It’s simply not true.

Myth tells you to know that those beings move through the forest biology of your own being: simply acknowledge them, be conscious of them, and keep looking for Camelot.

The paralysis of language is the paralysis of the imagination. When words are overly cautious or clipped it speaks of damage. To witness the mercury of imagination in oratory is to be raised past the debris of our mind clutter into new possibility. In the meadow of that possibility you must lower the bag and sew the most exquisite seeds you can find. There is no excuse for an empty bag.

This sense of two directions is worth pursuing. It brings us back into that druidic framework of retreat and engagement, that one naturally follows the other. We think of extended periods in the forest of Caledon or the hard coasts of Anglesey, but also the reciting of tribal histories, feeding a community through a fierce winter with cycles of old stories. The beauty is the mutual interdependency, an understanding of a kind of wild introversion/extroversion that exists within us, no one is entirely one and not the other.

It is no longer the function solely of a religious order to hold this balance. It is a rebel act, even 'practice' as the Buddhists say, to explore roads between deep quiet and expressive articulation. I say 'rebel' because both activities create anxiety to the middle road of society that expect oratory as entertainment or soulful nourishment to be contained in a church. We know that Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha all sought wilderness at the beginning of their teaching work. Heading out into the forest indicates both independence and vulnerability.

The vulnerability is useful because it sensitizes us, allows the strangeness of our character and intensity of our feelings to emerge. When you add the element of fasting to that it grows again. In the empty space often filled by muffins, alcohol and light entertainment we find a bizarre tree of whirling memories starts to grow, often within several days of getting to the wild. Trees have twigs, sometimes thorns and for those to grow in your soft gut can be painful. This soul tree’s foliage is wrapped around your head and its leaves enter you as dreams-often peculiar, occasionally rhapsodic. Its twisting trunk pushes against your stomach lining during the waking hours, refusing you rest, like a hawk and a worm.

This inner work is vital. To repeat a sentence I used previously, "The mythology of wilderness needs to be articulated as the mythology of ourselves." We have to become familiar with our own depths to re-see the natural world, to recognise its mirrors. It can be a time when visually, very little appears to be happening. To friends you could appear as a waning moon, if they visit you at all. It can be scary, whether in wilderness or simply alone, to step out of the roles you are defined by, to let hitherto unseen emotional currents pull at your waist. But this way lies knowing. Anyone engaged in a public life/face would benefit from weighing the scales back with this kind of reflection. Not the extremity of self loathing half cut on gin, but designated time away from the emphasis on solely human community.

The clues to handling the whirling tree will be seen in the nature around you. Bird flight, digging squirrels, sheep carcass, a wall between mossy gullies, these are the teachers now. Basho tell us;'The temple bell stops. But the sound keeps coming out of the flowers.' It's in silence and reflection that we get to access a much wider perspective, the little 'i' of 'i require this to feel valued' becomes the big 'I' of 'I am connected, I can help'. We have to be exposed to greater vistas than just the slurry of our own ambition.

Mary Oliver (12)

In an attempt to legitimize passion in leadership, and in our lives in general, it is well to see this reflection as a kind of underbelly to any form of public life. With it comes a natural joy of words, heat, animation, discourse. Culture never looks more inviting than after retreat from it. (Culture that is, not the hiss of media technology.) To emerge back into 'outer' life can be vital after a period; we think of Machado, " In my solitude I have seen many things that are not true." To keep fasting after the four days and nights is missing the point, we need to change gear again, re-approach the tension of our human neighbors.

An interesting association in these two roads is the fact that for many hundreds of years, wild remote places could be the gathering spots for important meetings, they didn't all meet in the town square. On my homeland of Dartmoor in Britain, Crockern Tor was the gathering point for representatives of the four moorland towns. It was another kind of liminal space, between realms, where laws and boundary issues were debated. We can only speculate at where the wind, granite and otherwordly location took these debates, but we know there were established wilderness gatherings for centuries.

In Ramon Lull’s text Libre del ordre de cavayleria we find a meeting place of these two roads, or disciplines. The story begins with a young squire on his way to the High King’s court, where he is to become a Knight. Whilst journeying through a great forest the young man gets lost and comes to the cell of an ancient hermit. The hermit actually turns out to have been a Knight himself, and had spent a lifetime in service to the ideals of chivalry. As their conversation deepens, it becomes apparent that the squire has little understanding of the connotations of the position, being only fixated on the external aspects of it. The hermit produces a small book that contains an extensive combination of duties that the squire ends up taking with him to court as a kind of blue print for potential knights to come.

It becomes apparent in Lull’s text that the Knight is beholden to a morality as well as the accolades and splendour of his position. He is to eschew pride, idleness, lechery and aspire to wisdom, charity and loyalty. Top of the list is courage; "For chivalry abideth not so agreeably in no place as in noblesse of courage." (13)

Any potential Knight was also subjected to a study of how he had carried himself through life thus far, that the life matched the ideals. If he got through this then Lull insists on an all night vigil before the day of their Knighthood. We feel the pull of this kind of thoroughness, that it would be possible to admire, even trust someone that had gone through this process.

We can say that the Hermit represents the road of Solitude and the Knight the road of Voice; to carry both we abide at the crossroads.. The encounter in the forest is also an encounter with service, that the squire is accountable to greater, divine sources than his own ambition.

It’s just possible that if handled consistently and slowly over a long period of time that some kind of trust could start to be radiated back towards individuals in authority. But it has to be earnt.

In this discussion of how to ground but also support the idea of authentic leadership, we have looked at two distinct images: one is the temple at Thebes and the other is the crossroads where we find both the Road of Voice and the Road of Solitude. Neither suggest meet'n'greet or autocues. Both propose examination of the our wounded paw, our underworld descents. This is not the simple confessional of a talk show, this is the gritty and complicated work of letting something real surface in our lives, something that feels true.

In the earliest myths we find pursuit of otherworldly treasures, rejuvenating potions, magical animals-all somehow enhancing the wider arch of the community. The symbolic world was activated and abided in the land beyond the village gates. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries some of this energy got caught in the gorgeous vocabulary of the Troubadours and turned inward, cultivating the intimacy of heart knowledge: love and moral self-improvement, independent of the Christian model.

As the centuries progress we could say that an aspect of this pursuit leaps out again into the flurries of intellectual and empiric expansion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the Quest shifts like sunlight hitting the scales of a fish. In the twenty first century we are dwelling in the debris of this process, and feeling the collapsing legacy of that rapid expansion. It feels appropriate to be looking inward again-psychological and mythological thinking are helpful in this attempt. The large and difficult question we are left with is 'What am I questing for? What remains just out of view that I long for?'

The image of the hero as a generic defender of cultural sanctions is actually tribalistic slander. It's a kind of Hollywood whitewashing of a much older, rawer picture. In the ancient tale of Gilgamesh, we come across him as the regent of Ur, a champion that wanders society taking what he wants. To temper this, the gods create Enkidu, a wild man conjured from mud to stand up for the women Gilgamesh has violated. When they meet in combat an affinity develops and the champion and the hero become friends. The mundanity of applause has no weight for Enkidu and he refuses to fall into the regulations of society. When he dies Gilgamesh senses the authenticity of his friend’s life and falls into grief. We could say that Enkidu rose to challenges but was not hypnotized by collective cause. He continually refers back to

a psychic independence and intimacy with the divine that is not to be bought. Carrying the elemental energies of the woods with them, we find Enkidu's relatives emerge through the centuries; Herne the Hunter, Robin Hood, John Barleycorn. So something of the hero’s independence relies on connection to wildness, to fresh strange ideas and an eye upwards towards god. The champion is the one that rolls out endlessly to battle, not the hero.

The roots of the hero stories are found in pre-literate mother cultures like Herappa in India, Minoan Crete and the Magdalenian area of southern France-they are not wheeled out to support a patriarchal order. Sometimes, like Anga in the Serpent and the Bear, or Cuchullain with Scathach, they serve an initial education with a woman. One of their distinct masculine traits is their desire to achieve mastery over rather than integrate into, certain obstacles, and it is here that the vulnerability lies.

The sorcery of history has the capacity to take this root energy and attempt to separate it from its connection to nature and the feminine. It is a great achievement for bad people when we can't detect the difference between champions and heroes anymore. We abdicate heroism because we don't know what it is, and then we wonder why we don't have the energy to vote.