This article was downloaded by: [McMaster University]

On: 23 October 2014, At: 08:29

Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Psychological Perspectives: A
Quarterly Journal of Jungian
Thought
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upyp20

A Review of “The Hidden

Spirituality of Men: Ten
Metaphors to Awaken the
Sacred Masculine.” (2008). By
Matthew Fox
Richard Messer
Published online: 27 May 2009.

To cite this article: Richard Messer (2009) A Review of “The Hidden Spirituality of
Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.” (2008). By Matthew Fox,
Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought, 52:2, 264-268

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332920902881232

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,
or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views
expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the
Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any
losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,
and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
 indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the
Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
 264 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
VOLUME 52, ISSUE 2 / 2009
and often the meanest place, we
come out into the largest. The whale
is our self.
The wealth of spiritual quota-
tions, poems, and insights with
which Gellert punctuates his book
ultimately forces one to probe one’s
own resistance to the spirit and
teaching of this path. Here, Gellert
astutely observes that spirit is sec-
ond nature to us; it is second be-
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
cause it develops later than our bi-
ological and instinctual evolution;
and it is second by virtue of its
requirements for self-reflection, in-
tegrity, and free will—which require
a splitting of the power of instinct,
and a second nature to be aware
of this. The crux of the matter is
that we require a second nativity,
a second coming to consciousness,
and this is both the strength and
the weakness of this little tome.
We both want and resist doing
this.
Gellert’s analysis suggests that
we not only have to stop and con-
sider the values, activities, and rela-
tionships of our consciousness, but
that we also have to do something
about them. Ethics are in our na-
ture, even if they come second, af-
ter reflection on the mistake that
brought us to consciousness. Re-
sponsible awareness inevitably re-
quires a sacrifice in consciousness,
even when that sacrifice is a mere
awakening in the moment occa-
sioned by a slight reversal of fortune
or a turning around of a thought
process. To be something, Gellert
implies, is to not be something else,
and this is the dawn of reflective
wholeness. There is no getting away
from the effort and intensity this
psychological progress requires. We
create ourselves in the details of
the way in which we live our lives,
and first and foremost among these
is our reaction to the inner expe-
rience of the way we think and
feel. We cannot merely take refuge
in the holy, we must become con-
scious of our wholeness. And we do
this moment by moment, insight by
insight, action by action, story by
story. Limitation ultimately brings
freedom. Thus we become related
to our depths and to the infinite.
Michael Gellert’s small book de-
serves a wide audience and is of
great use to those who are inclined
to ask those inevitable questions
that come after insight: What can I
do about it? What should I do? What
is my responsibility? The answer
seems to lie in the details. It’s all
in the small stuff. And in that small
stuff is all the energy that gets lost
in our big containers. Our own small
world is actually one world, and in
Michael Gellert’s writing about this
we can actually have an experience
of finding our way.
THE HIDDEN SPIRITUALITY OF MEN:
TEN METAPHORS TO AWAKEN THE
SACRED MASCULINE. (2008). BY
MATTHEW FOX. NOVATO, CA:
NEW WORLD LIBRARY.
Reviewed by Richard Messer

his is a challenging book on
T several different levels. It’s
best to approach it knowing that
Matthew Fox, born Timothy James,
has written more than twenty
books, and that the three most
widely known—Original Blessing:
A Primer in Creation Spiritual-
ity, The Coming of the Cosmic
Christ, and Creativity—are often
referred to as the defining texts of
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
the movement called creation spir-
ituality.
Rosemary R. Ruether, in “Cre-
ation Spirituality: The Message and
the Movement” (Creation Spiritu-
ality magazine, Nov./Dec., 1990),
says that Creation Spirituality
. . . seeks a wholistic spirituality that
overcomes the dualism between re-
ligion and science, between spiritu-
ality and social justice and between
psyche and society. It is a justice-
seeking spirituality. It is fundamen-
tally feminist and anti-patriarchal.
The affirmation of women’s power in
religion and society is central, but
not simply in order to integrate a few
individual women into a male-defined
world. Rather, to reclaim feminine
values for men as well, in order to
create a new culture rooted in “right-
brain” capacities for intuition and
relationality.
I cite this rather lengthy quo-
tation because it suggests the plu-
ralistic nature of Fox’s work and
shows that the present book’s focus
on the masculine is a logical out-
growth of his earlier advocacy for
feminism. As he says in his intro-
REVIEWS
265
duction, “What good is it if the god-
dess returns and men refuse her
presence?”
Early on in The Hidden Spiritu-
ality of Men, the author describes a
recent dream he had depicting the
sacred marriage of the divine mas-
culine and feminine. Such a con-
summate image of wholeness and
completion makes a fitting begin-
ning for the book, and, further, may
very well signal or represent the
completion of the author’s vision of
what our age needs in order to rein-
vigorate its spiritual health.
What Fox hopes for this book
is that the materials presented will
“assist men both to authentic em-
powerment and to be true to their
truest selves.” To this end, in Part
One of the book he explores what he
terms ten archetypes, or metaphors,
of authentic masculinity, which he
believes will awaken the Sacred
Masculine: Father Sky, The Green
Man, Icarus and Daedalus, Hunters–
Gatherers, Spiritual Warriors, Mas-
culine Sexuality, Our Cosmic and
Animal Bodies, Earth Father: the
Earthly Heart, and Grandfather Sky:
the Grandfatherly Heart. Addition-
ally, in Part Two, he has a lengthy
discussion of what he terms the
Sacred Marriage of Father Sky to
Mother Earth, and of the Green Man
to the Black Madonna. He ends this
section with a discussion of other
unions: East and West, Protes-
tant and Catholic, lay and monas-
tic practices, indigenous and mod-
ern, left- and right-brain modes, gay
and straight, young and old, and,
 266 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
VOLUME 52, ISSUE 2 / 2009
ultimately, spirit and soul. There are
two appendices to the book, the
first offering exercises for develop-
ing the ten archetypes and a second
discussing the nature of rituals and
rites of passage.
Clearly, this is an ambitious work.
There is a visionary quality to it;
indeed, the prophetic element in
Fox’s writings is inescapable. (In
Germany, spring 2005, he prepared
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
95 Theses, which on the weekend
of Pentecost, he nailed to the door
of Wittenberg church where Martin
Luther nailed the original 95 The-
ses in the 16th century.) There is a
vast amount of material marshaled
in this book, all of it informed by
his belief that these are apocalyptic
times, times of personal alienation,
warring ideologies, and threats to
the viability of life on our planet. His
vision is of a world wherein we all
employ the creativity native to ev-
ery single individual, in order to dis-
cover the deeper sources of our be-
ing, thereby realizing that to survive
and thrive we must put aside our
differences and seek to identify and
nurture the various aspects of our
common humanity.
As I read the book, I was engaged
and challenged by the eye-opening
connections Fox turned up in his
material. I was prepared for the
usual historical and archeological ci-
tations concerning, for instance, the
hunters–gatherers and the mytholo-
gies of the Green Man, but he is
wonderfully skillful in relating what
might be called “standard” esoteric
or archetypal materials to contem-
porary social challenges. Particu-
larly helpful in this regard is his de-
vice of inserting, throughout various
chapters, personal interviews with
men of various ages, sexual prefer-
ences, and professions.
These “men talking about
men”—John Conger, psychologist
and bioenergetics analyst; JK, a
body worker; Mark Micholson, a
therapist in England; and others—
are all dealing with the above-
mentioned challenges in creative
ways. His interviews with them un-
derscore several central concerns
of the book, particularly the origins
and effects of men’s shame. Thus,
topics such as masculine sexu-
ality or “applied” spirituality are
examined throughout the book
from various perspectives. Each of
these metaphors/archetypes has, of
course, a shadow side. Fox soft-
pedals this shadow material. I
am not sure of the place of evil
in his scheme of things: He has
come out against what he calls the
fall–redemption “version” of Chris-
tianity. In other work he has written
of Original Blessing, as opposed to
Original Sin. But to his credit here
he speaks at length of the false
father and the shadow side of male
sexuality and aggression. Regarding
the latter, one of the most haunt-
ing questions in the book comes
early on when he asks: Why are 86
percent of the adolescent suicides
in this country boys? Why is it we
would surely react with much more
horror if 86 per cent of adolescent
suicides were girls?

Fox’s central premise is that
male spirituality is hidden in plain
view, like Poe’s purloined letter.
Men practice their spirituality,
whether they are businessmen or
athletes or priests, in their everyday
lives. But for a number of reasons
they hide it—from others and even
from themselves. Making known
what is hidden, Fox believes, will
provide positive models and awaken
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
men to spiritual growth.
For example, I think Fox would
see the recent plane accident, called
by the media the “miracle on the
Hudson,” as a prime example of
men’s (and women’s too, of course)
spirituality. The pilots, the passen-
gers, and the rescuers met their po-
tentially tragic circumstances with
great courage. But more to the
point, concerned as they were about
their own survival, most of them
acted selflessly, either putting the
welfare of others above their own,
actively helping others, or simply re-
maining calm and doing what they
could do as well as they were able.
Typically, we might cite the pi-
lot’s skill, dedication, and courage as
heroic. Fox, however, wants us to
see a little deeper. He says that, “In
fact, anyone who gives life their all
. . . is announcing his or her spiritu-
ality, which is giving life one’s all.
Biophilia. Love of life. Lovers of life.
Lovers. That is spirituality.”
Thus, truly dedicated business-
men, teachers, carpenters, engi-
neers, athletes, and so on, may be
said to have a definite spiritual life,
and they may practice their spiri-
REVIEWS
267
tuality not only in their profession
but in every aspect of their lives—
if they understand how the spirit of
service redeems any mundane activ-
ity, and if they act in terms of the
fact that all of us on this earth are
interdependent.
Fox makes a strong case for his
vision of spirituality, but the book it-
self is at times difficult reading. Its
length and its many chapters and
sections, headings and subheadings,
give it a “pasted together” smorgas-
bord quality. The thesis is pursued
along so many diverse lines that one
loses track of it. The treatments
of the ten archetypes or metaphors
listed above, his main structural de-
vice for revealing men’s hidden spir-
ituality, are, ultimately, rushed and
superficial. I know he wishes merely
to dive briefly into each one be-
cause he is interested in revealing
how they connect with the spiritual
lives of actual men today, and I feel
the connections are marvelous, yes,
but too many times I ended a sec-
tion feeling confused by the listing
of qualities and the lack of coher-
ence in the presentation.
Actually, I think it would be best
if Fox simply stuck with the word
metaphor and did not use the term
archetype. He makes clear that he
does not respect Jung’s work when
he says: “My feeling is that Jung was,
deep down, a neo-Platonist and a
chauvinistic Swiss patriarch, and for
all of his talk and theorizing about
anima/animus and male/female he
never quite got it. The ‘it’ being
the need to balance dialectically the
 268 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
supposed opposites of yin/yang, the
masculine feminine tension. The ‘it’
being the Sacred Marriage.”
This flippant comment, com-
ing late in the book, after he has
referred to Jung positively through-
out, used his concepts freely, and
quoted several well-known Jungian
practitioners, all in support of his
argument, reveals perhaps more
about his own shortcomings than
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 08:29 23 October 2014
Jung’s.
Fox’s message is that men
must identify their spirituality and
through it re-envision the world,
shaking off old habits of mind.
His mission is to inspire men, and
women as well, and move all of us
from wherever we are now to new
levels of awareness and action.
As I said earlier, his dream of a
sacred marriage with which he be-
gins The Hidden Spirituality of
Men may be emblematic of his quest
for a redeeming vision. But this
book, which grows out of that vision,
is overflowing and almost chaotic in
its abundance. It needs culling; the
embodied vision needs further re-
finement and articulation.
Richard E. Messer, Ph.D., is a poet
and teacher of writing as well as
healing.
SPIRITS AND SCALPELS: THE
CULTURALBIOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS
HEALING IN BRAZIL. (2008). BY

VOLUME 52, ISSUE 2 / 2009
SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD. WALNUT
CREEK, CA: LEFT COAST PRESS.
Reviewed by Ernest Lawrence Rossi
he author, Sidney M. Green-
T field, Emeritus Professor of
Anthropology at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has con-
ducted ethnographic research in
New Bedford, Massachusetts, the
West Indies, and most famously
since 1959, in Brazil. Over the
years Greenfield has received nu-
merous research grants and four
Fulbright awards that have enabled
him to be a visiting professor at
three Brazilian universities. He is
the author and/or editor of seven
scholarly books and has published
130 chapters, papers, and reviews
in scientific journals. He currently
lives in New York, where he is a
co-chair of the Columbia University
Seminar on Brazil.
In his prologue and introduction
to this remarkable volume, Profes-
sor Greenfield describes the scope
of his lifetime of research of reli-
gious and spiritually oriented surg-
eries among the indigenous popula-
tions of Brazil:
Over a period of two decades in
Brazil I witnessed and videotaped
scores of “surgeries” in which Spiri-
tist healer-mediums, most lacking
any professional medical credentials,
cut into their patients, sometimes in
extraordinary ways, to achieve re-
sults that large numbers considered
successful.