The Father Thing

By Colin E. Davis
(Originally published on Facebook 4-25-2016)

The Tyrant aspect of the Great Father archetype is well known to us. We know it as Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Saddam Hussein, Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, etc. It is the result of the imbalanced King energy in the male psyche. In Greco-Roman mythology it was represented as Saturn-Cronus, the jealous and angry father god that ate his children to stop them from ascending to his throne. We can see him in the Old Testament god and in every mythology of our civilization.

We obviously see the tyrant in angry, control freak bosses at work, in brutal judges and government agents, and all examples of overreaching men who use their power to destroy. We remember the ages past where people were burned and tortured for expressing themselves in ways not acceptable to the angry father gods of the culture. But this energy is not just held by a few powerful men, its present in all of us. Its a program of the collective psyche. It's invisible to the eye, but as real as the ground we walk on. We see the effects but we rarely understand the cause.

In early life we experience this when our own fathers do not recognize our genius or even feel jealous and envious of us when we start to show it. When a child, boy or girl, is truly seen and mirrored by a balanced father, they inherit a program inside that says "I am worthy and lovable. I am allowed in this world". When the imbalanced "father thing" is present in the household, the children grow up in fear of authority, in fear of their own genius and eternally in fear of rejection by others. They develop physical diseases and self and world destroying patterns that keep them from realizing their highest potential. Then they move on to be father (or mother) things themselves or to be the eternal victims of this energy. It’s a virus of the collective psyche. You can see how prevalent this is in our society. In fact it may be the most powerful source of cultural destruction we are dealing with.

If your own father could not see you for what you truly are, you will have inherited a disease that will forever try to bring you down from the inside. It's a parasite program of the mind that you will have to learn to deal with, or if you are heroic, take apart and remove from your psyche. In my own work with Melissa Mari, we have studied this self and world destroying psychic program that we call The Father Thing, after a Phillip K. Dick short story. Its a real entity of the collective unconscious. It's in every one of us, eternally challenging us. It's in the laws, the schooling, the media, the workplace, in the family, and in the personal psyche. There are other destructive programs as well but this Father Thing is a master parasite of our civilization. It is the master representation of the imbalanced patriarchy. Only the one who comes to know the reality of the psyche, and the reality of the destructive forces within it (shadow), will have a chance to surmount or dispel the curse.

If you would like to know more about how we have been working with this destructive psychic entity, comment below.