The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [214]
When she saw that it was not that I would not speak but that, dumbstruck, I could not, she gently laid her hand on my breast and said "It is nothing serious, only a touch of amnesia that he is suffering, the common touch of deluded minds. He has forgotten for a while who he is, but he will soon remember, once he has recognised me..."
The clouds of my grief dissolved and I drank in the light'.
Boethius meets Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, in De Consolatione Philosophiae
Again and again in the storytelling of the world we meet two mysterious and haunting figures. They are not like any of the other characters we see constantly reappearing around the hero and heroine in stories. When either or both these figures appear, it is not so much to take a direct part in the action as to play a kind of guiding role from the wings. They may appear at critical moments to offer advice. They may intervene when things are going wrong, to bring the hero or heroine back to the right path. They can give vital help. Their chief concern is that the goal should be reached. One is male, the other female. They often appear in some way together, or in alliance. These are the archetypal figures identified by Jung, from his experience of seeing them emerging to the human imagination in myths, folk tales, dreams and paintings all over the world, as the Wise Old Man and the Anima.
We have already glimpsed the Wise Old Man a good many times in the course of this book. He appears as Teiresias in the Odyssey, as Anchises in the Aeneid, as Prospero in The Tempest and as the Duke in Measure for Measure, as Platon the old peasant whose wisdom transforms Pierre's life in War and Peace, as Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, as the magistrate Porfiry in Crime and Punishment, as Father Tikhon in The Possessed, as Merlin in the Arthurian legends, as Obi Wan-Kenobi in Star Wars. In the next chapter we shall see him as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, as Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster of Harry Potter's Hogwarts, as Sarastro in The Magic Flute. He may even not be human in his appearance, as when he appears as Aslan the lion in C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, as Rafiki the monkey in The Lion King, or as Mantis in Bushman folklore. But the essence of the Wise Old Man is always the same: he is a male figure who represents a state of complete maturity. He is someone who has travelled the full road of personal inner development (he may not even be particularly old, although he is certainly not young). In fact, although outwardly a man, he represents the masculine and the feminine in human nature in perfect balance. He is strong, autonomous and authoritative. There is no doubt about his masculinity. But he also, to a marked degree, embodies the inner feminine qualities of protective feeling for others and intuitive understanding, the ability to see whole. The most usual physical attributes he is given (apart, often, from an imposing beard as a mark of his age and authority) are his keenly penetrating eyes. The word `wise' comes from the same root as `vision'. It means the depth and breadth of that inner vision which transcends the distortions and wishful thinking of consciousness centred only on the ego, and is able, from long experience, to see things and people for what they really are. The Wise Old Man has a more or less supernatural aura because he is somehow connected to the mysterious totality of life, beyond superficial or transitory appearances. He can see into the past and the future because he rises above the confines of the immediate present and knows the hidden rules of growth and decay which govern the outward transformation of things. He is in touch with some dimension of ultimate reality which transcends time and the physical world altogether.