Iron John: A Book About Men

by Robert Bly

As for the boy leaves for the forest, he has to overcome at least for the moment, his fear of wildness, irrationality, hairiness, intuition, emotion, the body, and nature.

The boys in our culture have a continuing need for initiation into male spirit, but old men in general don’t offer it.

If a human being takes an action, the soul takes an action. When a hair enters the water, the soul adds gold to it. That is what the soul is like, apparently. This spring water, with gold snakes and fish in it, is the soul itself which does nothing if you do nothing; but if you light a fire, it chops wood; if you make a boat, it becomes the ocean.

A young man is asked to descend into his own wounds, to climb up into the realm of “the twin,” and to expand sideways into the consciousness that is in trees, water, animals, and “the ten thousand things.” When a young man has achieved these three realizations, or completed these three journeys, his hair turns gold.

The Jungians have evoked the eternal boy in great detail; Marie-Louise von Franz’s Puer Aeternus2 is the classic book.

He uses ecstasy to be separated from grounding or discipline.