Hercules, the Animus, and Gay Desire

A great big animus is coming to a movie theater near you!

I just want to start off by talking about Carl Jung. Jung popularized the idea of archetypes, which he claimed were bundles of instinctual emotional energy. One of these archetypes, the animus, represents masculine traits.

Jung claimed that the animus appeared in different forms in women's dreams, the most primal form being the muscleman. It's obvious why a large, strong, bulging man would represent masculine energies in the psyche. Jung focused mostly on heterosexuals, but a quick look around the internet will make it apparent that the animus also appears to a lot of gay men in a musclebound form.

The word psyche comes from Greek and means soul. Unlike a lot of psychologists who take a medicalized approach to their work Jung thought he was healing the souls of his patients, not just their minds. Jung was a shaman with a leather couch and a framed degree. The soul is the focus not only of psychologists but also priests and occultists, and the primitive animus also likes to flex its muscles in the realms of religion and magic.

Musclemen appear in some of the oldest ancient myths and religious art. The Sumerians had Gilgamesh, the Israelites had Samson, the Norse had Thor, and the Irish had Cuchulain. The Greeks had Heracles, and the Romans adopted him and named him Hercules. He's been with Western culture under that name ever since, and this summer he's coming to a movie theater near you.

Hercules opens this week, and stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the muscular hero. From the trailers it looks like he performs classic cinematic Herculean feats, like fighting lions, wrestling dragons, battling armies, and flexing well-oiled biceps.



Most Americans probably just think of Hercules as that "strong guy," pure primitive male animus. The ancient Greeks and Romans did think of him that way, but also thought of him as an androgynous primordial snake god, a shamanic traveler between the realms, and a culture hero who founded dynasties and shaped the geography of the Mediterranean.

Fittingly for an archetypal male deity, they also thought of him as a sexual superhero with an unflagging libido. One myth tells how he bedded the forty-nine virginal daughters of King Thespis in one night. The fiftieth daughter who refused his sexual advances saw her sisters were having a religious experience and became his priestess instead.

Hercules was too much man to limit his affections to one gender - the Greek historian Plutarch wrote that Hercules's male lovers were beyond counting. His most prominent boyfriend was Iolaus, his cousin and companion on multiple adventures. Iolaus helped Hercules in one of his most prominent labors, slaying the multi-headed Hydra. The Greeks recognized Iolaus as an exemplar of what a male lover should be, and male couples would visit Iolaus's tomb to pledge their love to each other.

In the most popular version of the Hercules myth, Hera forces Hercules to complete twelve labors for nasty King Eurystheus as a punishment. But one variation on the myth tells another story, claiming that Hercules actually completed the twelve labors to win the love of King Eurystheus. (Like Iolaus, Eurystheus was a cousin to Hercules.) I like this version myself. After all, attraction is the guiding force of the cosmos, so it makes sense that a cosmic hero would guided by a cosmic force.

The writer Ptolemy Khennos named other men that Hercules loved, including Adonis, Jason (of the Argonauts fame), Nestor, and Corythus. Hylas was another of his lovers, a  young prince that Hercules abducted after killing his father. Hylas apparently suffered from Stockholm Syndrome and quickly fell in love with his brawny captor, even sailing with him on the Argonauts' quest. But Hylas was abducted again, this time by water nymphs on the island of Chios.

Hercules frantically searched for Hylas and refused to leave Chios until he was found. The other Argonauts eventually left Hercules behind in his grief. Hylas was never found and remained forever with the water nymphs. In historic times the people on Chios revered Hylas as a demi-god and annually performed a ritual where they searched for him.

Abderus, another of Hercules' boyfriends, also met a bad end. For his eighth labor Hercules had to steal the flesh-eating horses that were kept by King Diomedes, and Abderus volunteered to help. Hercules successfully stole the horses but asked Abderus to guard them while he fought off some pursuing soldiers. After defeating the soldiers Hercules returned to Abderus, only to find that the young man had been eaten by the horses. In a fury Hercules fed King Diomdedes to the carnivorous equines as well, who must have been very hungry that day. Hercules founded the city of Abderus in his dead lover's honor, and each year its citizens celebrated the life of Abderus with wrestling and boxing matches.

These days you don't see a lot of people celebrating Hercules or his lovers through rituals. He's not particularly popular even among modern Wiccans and pagans, but I'm not sure why. Maybe a naked, musclebound demi-god with a giant club just too blunt for modern religious sensibilities. Aleister Crowley wisely included Hercules among his list of Gnostic saints, and some New Age groups include him on their lists of ascended masters, but he doesn't get the widespread neo-pagan veneration that gods like Thor, Pan, or Lugh do. Of course, bodybuilding and gym culture is now a global activity, so he's being unofficially venerated in other ways.

Hercules has been much more successful in modern pop culture, manifesting in countless movies, TV shows, and comic books. This week's movie is the second Hercules film this year - one starring Kellan Lutz appeared in January. In general these productions ingore his man-loving ways in favor of action and adventure, but still consistently portray the demi-god as musclebound, half-naked and glistening. That's what I expect from the Rock's film. I'll be completely surprised if there's any overt queer content!

Regardless of the medium or particular production, Hercules's body is consistently presented as an object of admiration, if not worship. Whether he's an archetype, a god or an action hero Hercules' inherent nature as an erotically charged male force remains obvious to those who look.

I'm Obsessed with Orphism!

I have been working very long hours the last few months, and my brain is feeling a little overheated. That may be why I've become obsessed with Orphism! When the spirits come calling they need to be acknowledged, hence this post. Maybe it will help my brain cool down.

Orpheus by Karoly Ferenczy, 1894

Orphism was a strain of Greek religious philosophy supposedly founded by Orpheus, the mythical bard. Orpheus was considered an expert on all things religious because he had descended to the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, and learned the secrets of life, death and the universe while he was down there. After failing to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living Orpheus founded an all male religious movement in Thrace. This outraged the Thracian woman, who wanted their men back, and they tore Orpheus into small pieces. His head continued to sing and prophesy after death, however, until it was finally buried by the Lesbian (and lesbian) poetess Sappho. As if this all doesn't make Orpheus sound queer enough, he also supposedly was the lover of Calais, the winged son of the North Wind.

My recent obsession with Orphism started when I was poking around the Web for information about Hercules. I've been interested in Herc ever since I was a child. He's most familiar to us by his Roman name, but the Greeks called him Herakles or Heracles, and he's appeared in many forms. He's a mortal hero who gained immortality, he's a constellation, he's a god on Mount Olympus, he's a shamanic figure (according to scholar Walter Burkert), he's syncretized with the Phoenician god Melqart, and he's one of the Daktyls, the divine helpers of the great mother goddess Rhea Cybele.

And, according to some Orphic texts described by a writer named Damascius, he was also a primal god who gave birth to the universe. According to these texts, in the beginning of time there existed only water and dirt. These two mingled to produce slime, and from the slime was born unaging Herakles, also known as Time. This version of Herc was a giant snake with three heads, those of a bull, a lion, and a god. Some accounts also give him a pair of wings growing from his shoulders. Nice!

Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, with egg, in one of the 1980s Luigi Cozzi Hercules films.

This primordial Herakles is described as bisexual, or hermaphroditic. He's a big musclebound snake deity, so naturally he makes love to himself. Be honest - wouldn't you do the same it you were the only being in the universe? This act of divine self-love produces a gigantic cosmic egg, which is filled with so much Herculean super-cosmic love power that it explodes into two halves. The upper half becomes the sky, or Ouranos (Uranus to the Romans) and the lower half becomes Gaia, the earth.

The Orphic creation myths then continue in a vein similar to the standard mythic creation described by Hesiod. Ouranos and Gaia make love and give birth to the Titans, including Rhea and Kronos. Kronos eventually castrates Ouranos and declares himself king of the universe. To prevent his children from castrating him, he eats them as soon as his wife Rhea gives birth. Rhea is not too happy about this, and tricks him into eating a stone rather than her last child Zeus, who she raises secretly in a cave. Zeus defeats Kronos and the Titans, and kicks them down into the deep underworld of Tartarus. And then....

Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1823

And then, the Orphic creation myths deviate from the standard Greek myth. In a big way. According to a recently discovered parchment called the Derveni papyrus, Zeus is aware of prophecies that he too will someday be overthrown by a son. But he figures out a way to avoid this fate! The giant severed phallus of Ouranos, "the phallus who had first ejaculated the brilliance of heaven," is still flying around in the atmosphere. Zeus grasps it and swallows it down. By this act of cannibalistic oral sex he absorbs the universe's generative power into himself and becomes the supreme god.You see, Kronos was simply eating his divine offspring, but Zeus actually eats the generative source of all the gods and goddesses. He's not just going to be another player in history - he's going to be history itself.

Well, my brain feels a little cooler after getting some of this down in writing. I think you can see why Orphism is interesting to me as a gay man. It was founded by someone who loved men, and the original lesbian has a role to play as well. A giant, hermaphroditic, serpentine version of one of my favorite deities creates the world through some self-pleasure. And Zeus absorbs the power of the universe through oral sex. It's a fantastically queer view of religion and the universe, and I can understand why it was so popular in the ancient world.

Underneath the somewhat lurid mythology, Orphism also has things to say about the nature of the human soul and how we should all act in the world. Hopefully I'll get to write about those aspects of it soon.

H.P. Lovecraft: Psychically Sensitive or Merely...

I confess! I love the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, the seminal early twentieth century horror writer. I'm an irredeemable Lovecraft nerd!

Lovecraft had very limited relationships with women (a short marriage to a New York milliner which they both agreed to end), hung around with gay authors like Hart Crane and made another, the anthropologist R.H. Barlow, his literary executor. Naturally, there is some speculation that Lovecraft may have been gay himself. 

"Mom and Dad, this is my friend H.P. Lovecraft!" Lovecraft (l), R.H. Barlow, and Barlow's parents.

 

The Barlow connection in particular is suggestive and redolent with connections. Lovecraft stayed with Barlow and his family in Florida when Barlow was a teen, and Barlow's family even built Lovecraft a cabin on their property. Barlow later became a professor at Mexico City College, where one of his students was William S. Burroughs. Sadly, Barlow killed himself when a student threatened to out him. 

Lovecraft wrote several letters to friends claiming he was revolted by homosexuality, but perhaps he was just covering something up. Lovecraft was a notorious xenophobe and wrote disparagingly of Eastern Europeans and Jews, but his wife was a Ukrainian Jew. To paraphrase the Bard poorly, maybe Lovecraft protests too much?

If Lovecraft were gay, he'd probably appreciate this fetish outfit inspired by his writings created by artist Bob Bassett.

Of course, we'll never know if Lovecraft was really gay or not but there is a definite queer sensibility to his fiction, even if it seems like a self-loathing one. For example, look at this passage from The Dunwich Horror that describes the body of strapping hillbilly wizard Wilbur Whateley (sort of a demonic Yankee Lil' Abner) after his clothes are torn off by a dog:

Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply.

 

Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat... 

Poor demonic Wilbur dies, and his body shrivels up (Lovecraft uses the suggestive word "shrinkage"), leaving behind "only a sticky whitish mass.." Someone get a paper towel! 

Or think about the plot of the wonderfully titled The Thing On The Doorstep, where a bookish young man marries a young lady only to find out her body harbors the soul of her sorcerous father, who wants to take over his body next - because a male body suits his magical purposes better. It's a delirious piece of trash that is either misogynistic, homophobic or both. And isn't The Shadow Over Innsmouth a coming out story where the hero discovers he's gay evolving into a giant fish monster?

When I was a kid Lovecraft's stories terrified me, but now that I am older I can appreciate them on many levels. I love his relentless use of adjectives to describe the indescribable, and also his humor. Dare I say these stories can be read as camp? Just this week I was laughing at this dialogue from The Dunwich Horror where a gossipy country housewife discusses, in a ridiculous faux backwoods dialect, some supernatural shenanigans. It reminds me of that old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs chatters away while giving a manicure to a monster. 

'An' he says, says he, Mis' Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth's caows, frightened ez he was an' faound 'em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil's Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on 'em's clean gone, an' nigh haff o' them that's left is sucked most dry o' blood, with sores on 'em like they's ben on Whateleys cattle ever senct Lavinny's black brat was born. Seth hes gone aout naow to look at 'em, though I'll vaow he won't keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley's!... They's allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich - livin' things - as ain't human an' ain't good fer human folks. 

 

FYI - I've lived in New England my whole life and never heard an accent anything like that!

I also appreciate Lovecraft's stories because although he was an atheist and a staunch materialist, he is obsessed with religion, art, magic and encounters with the sublime. I'm interested in all those things as well, but while I view them as mostly positive forces for Lovecraft they are invariably sources of horror and madness. When his characters encounter the numinous it kills them, maddens them, or transforms them into a monster. No one said enlightenment is easy!

I recently performed a little thought experiment. I decided to read Call of Cthulhu as if Lovecraft really were gay. I was surprised at how many times the word "queer" shows up in this story of evil cultists, cephalapod deities, and rough trade sailors. I know the word queer had a different meaning in the 1920s, but just imagine if Lovecraft really had magically projected his mind into the future and actually wrote the story for modern queer men. It takes on a completely different meaning!

For example, here's how Lovecraft describes Henry Wilcox, a young artist whose dreams have been disturbed by strange forces:

He called himself "psychically hypersensitive", but the staid folk of the ancient commercial city dismissed him as merely "queer." 

Hasn't the same been said of so many of us?

A Brief History of Gay Werewolves: Part 1, the Ancient World

I have to confess, one of my favorite movies of all time is The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf.

I can't explain it, but something about this supremely cheesy movie really connects with me on a deep level. Maybe it's the basic premise - 1980s B movie superstar Sybil Danning is Stirba, the queen of the werewolves and she's hell-bent on world domination! Maybe it's the authentic Transylvanian settings combined with the low budget Hollywood faux punk rock fashion. Or maybe it's the catchy theme song, performed by a band called Babel. The howling punk rocker in the wrap around glasses really takes me back to my youth.

One thing very memorable about The Howling II is that it features a bisexual werewolf menage a trois between Stirba and a male and female minion. That's not something you'll see in any of the Twilight movies!

Hollywood generally portrays werewolves as physical monsters and lycanthropy as an infectious disease. One minute you're walking along the moors, minding your own business, and then - bam! You're bitten by a werewolf, strange hair grows on your body, and you start running around naked and attacking people. Sexual metaphor, anyone?

The real origins of the werewolf lie in ancient male initiations and in shamanic practices. Many all-male societies throughout history have identified with the power and strength of predatory animals. The leopard men of West Africa, and the berserkers ('bear shirts") and ulfhednar ("men clad in wolf skins") from Norse societies are just a few examples.

Shamans and witches across the world are able to travel in animal form, although it is usually their soul that is roaming abroad as an animal, not their physical body. For example, Norse legends tell how warriors' spirits would battle in the shape of bears or walruses while their bodies slept at home. In folktales, many witches meet their doom when their animal soul is accidentally killed by a hunter. And in 1692, a Livonian man named Thiess confessed he was a werewolf, but claimed he and the other werewolves traveled to Hell to battle evil witches for the fertility of the crops. Clearly, some ancient shamanic practices for a long time.

Werewolves make their earliest appearance in Greek mythology when King Lycaon of Arcadia murders his son Nyctimus, and then tries to feed him to Zeus in an attempt to discredit the god. Outraged, Zeus resurrects Nyctimus and turns Lycaon and his men into wolves. There may be a hidden gay theme here because in many Greek myths resurrection is a metaphor for homosexual initiation. For example, in a very similar story, King Tantalus kills his son Pelops and tries to feed him to the gods. They resurrect Pelops, but when he comes back from the dead he's so incredibly handsome that Poseidon takes him for a lover. Did something similar happen between Zeus and Nyctimus? The myths don't say, but I have my suspicions.

Lycaon turned into a wolf! Is the naked guy Nyctimus?

You would think the Arcadians learned their lesson, but it was rumored they still practiced human sacrifice in historic times.  A small piece of human flesh would allegedly be placed into a large pot of stew, and the man that accidentally ate it would be transformed into a wolf for nine years. If he abstained from eating human flesh during that time he would regain his original form. Around 400 BC, a former werewolf named Damarchus was declared the champion boxer at the Olympic games. I have no evidence that Damarchus was gay, but the Greeks did celebrate homosexuality and athletes competed naked and covered in oil. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Naked men and wolves also featured heavily in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated in mid-February each year until the Roman church outlawed it in the fifth century AD.

To celebrate this winter holiday, the Romans sacrificed a dog to the wolf-god Lupercus. This happened in the same cave where a she-wolf suckled the orphans Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome. Afterwards, young noblemen ran naked through the streets, striking women with bloody strips of dog skin to promote fertility.

Hercules and admirers.

The Romans had observed for Lupercalia for centuries, but weren't quite sure why they did it nude.  The sassy poet Ovid had an answer - it was ordained by the god Pan (who may have been Lupercus by another name).

According to Ovid, in the distant past Pan lusted after the voluptuous queen Omphale. One night he crept into a tent where she was sleeping with her love slave, Hercules. But when Pan ran his hands up under Omphale's dress, he got a surprise: Hercules and the queen had engaged in some cross-dressing, and he was really groping Hercules. Not being fond of rape, Hercules literally kicked Pan out of the tent. Pan skulked off into the hills.

Since that time, Pan has demanded his worshippers be naked so he wouldn't be surprised at what he was grabbing. Strangely, this Roman holiday of blood sacrifice, nude road races and drag queen musclemen gradually was transformed into our modern Valentine's Day.

So, in the ancient world there were wolves, werewolves, gay sex, and gender variance. Surprisingly, it's in the Middle Ages where all these things come together and gay werewolves have their heyday. I'll discuss that in my next post.