“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" says David in Psalms 23. I imagine David wrote this while on the run from Saul, a man who would have taken his life and a man whose life he wouldn’t take out of respect for his crown. One bent in destruction, one guided by righteousness.

I heard a preacher preach once about David and he said that when David’s mighty men were asked what David was like. They would assume he was bold, brave, charismatic. The mighty men's response would be that he cries a lot.

The bible describes Saul, however, as having an evil spirit of the lord come over him. This condition was most commonly brought on in the presence of David. I imagine Sigmund Freud would say that Saul’s Desire for life was broken giving way to a death drive that was fixed in jealousy toward David which would lead him to his death spiritually long before his life was gone. God had moved away from him in favor of David, and left there in his abandon his mind unraveled, sanity coming undone till his reign did end in blood. David, protected by the mercy’s of God, wrought his own sins in the name of desire and while not immune, destruction was wrought all around him leaving him mourning, for this spirit of death that dwells within us and, always finds it’s way to us touching everything around us. In Japanese culture it is called the Shinigami which means “death bringer” or, “God of death” which invites humans toward death or possess them for the same purpose. In Buddhist culture a demon called Mara is responsible for making humans want to die.

In the pantheon of Greek Gods Ares was the aggressive aspect of war, the piercing sound in the war cry, the clanging of sword on shield as each step advancing across the field of battle was taken. His sister, Athena, on the other hand, the Goddess of intelligence, was the smooth tactic guiding this aggression where it need be tactically. Together their action drew the Keres, female death spirits, they were the darknesses, and the pain in quiet clutches of doom felt in the tunnel vision of a mind whose lights were going out.

If I were to entwine these archetypes of Greek mythology into a psychological concept based on the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis, I would say the Ares is the desire summed up in aggression toward the pleasure principle or to its opposition in the death drive. Athena would be the mediating principle balancing the desire toward the will to live as best as possible and, if Athena failed and the desire for destruction ran rampant, then the Keres', these dark sisters looming, laying in wait like vultures that they may pick at the bones of violence would be there to darken the abode of intelligence and take that soul away.

One way or another, however, we get there. We are born to do just that. Icarus into the sun, the serpent swallowing its tail citing that the most balanced of us walk the fine line between Eros and Thanatos so that the product of our karma comes to fruition with each incarnation.





Salutation pending

Johnny R Draper



