the sky cracked its poems

The Sixties went into my blood and has never quite gone away. Many years later after reading Jung and Hillman I began to reflect on my encounter with the Sixties from an Archetypal Perspective.

I have James Hillman’s book Senex and Puer at home. According to Glen Slater in the foreword, Jung(and Hillman) use the Latin terms, senex and puer for ‘old man’ and ‘youth’. They personify the poles of tradition , stasis, structure and authority on one side, and immediacy, wandering, invention and idealism on the other. The senex consolidates, grounds and disciplines, the puer flashes with insight and thrives on fantasy and creativity’.

That reminds me of the Sixties, which in some ways was like a clash between the ‘óld man’ and the youth. Between their two different ways of seeing the world(and apprehending the world). ‘A polar division between senex and puer is all about us outside in the historical field’ says Hillman. A polar division was all about us in the Sixties, between the ‘óld man’ who embodied the traditional spirit and it’s stasis, structure and authority, and the long-haired Sixties youth and their wandering, idealism and their creativity.

When I look towards the Sixties, it is the puer eternal ‘winged’ youth that I see most. The Sixties Adventure was like a puer adventure, in many ways. The adventurous free spirit. It was like the rise of the puer. It was in the self-exploration and discovery of the youth in Sixties language. The puer long haired Sixties youth were carrying the new spirit of the times.

It was there in ‘The Times they are a Changin’, when the eighteen year old Bob Dylan asked the old senators and congressmen ‘not to stand in the hallways or block up the doorways’’. According to the Sixties youth, it was the ‘old man’ who was in the hallways of power was standing in the way of the new spirit of the times. But the Sixties youth who were now being led by the more freewheelin Bob Dylan were carrying the new spirit.

And the Sixties youth had a nose for the telltale signs of the senex. In the slang of The Sixties subculture ‘Square’ and ‘Straight’ were referring to negative aspects of the ‘old man’. According to the youth the óld man’ had a devotion to the past, a rigid conservatism, a heavy Saturnian style and taste, an authoritarianism(an authority that couldn’t be challenged), a fixation on ‘law and order’. But to the Sixties youth there was something in the air, and there was a new spirit rising up, whether the ‘óld man’ liked it or not.

But just to mention the long haired Sixties youth could send the ‘'óld man’' into a rage. He was making charges against the youth and pointing towards their moral degeneracy. He had heard about ‘Sympathy with The Devil’ from the Rolling Stones and that was enough. He had heard about ‘The Summer of Love’. According to the ‘old man’ the Sixties youth needed to forget about the Jimi Hendrix Experience and ‘cut their hair and get a real job’.

Further Reading

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