ANALYSIS OF PROMISE KEEPERS

Editor-- Blessed Quietness Journal-- Steve Van Nattan:  
Please be aware that this letter was simply a BRIEF synopsis of what is coming.  This could well be one of our biggest bombs in a long time, since Mary Bee is getting at the foundation of modern Chaos and feely feely Christendom, and, by finding Jung and other snakes as the philosophical source, the author is tying the thoughts processes together.  We are working on the historic side of it and have gotten very close to going to press with a story of intrigue which starts at least with the Royalty of Europe, the UK in particular, and ends at the altar of Rodney Howard Browne.  Satan is pulling all of his servants together into one massive force, just as Daniel and John said he would under inspiration.

Update: June 2009--
This article was first posted when Promise Keepers was first started. It has peaked and waned, but it is still roaring along morphing itself into new forms and adding new vocabulary. This is the foundation of Promise Keepers, and it needs to be re-posted.

Marty Bee's first article is at the bottom of this page.  I decided to leave the previous E-Mail in place because Marty Bee discusses several thoughts there which are worthy to be retained.

From: martybee@linknet.net (Marty Bee)

To: SteveVanN@aol.com

Thanks for the invite and I will hit it this week. I  spent some time in the library looking for C. G.  Jung and Man and His Symbols which is key to understanding The Masculine Journey (although the Iron John stuff wanders more toward Bruno Bettelheim.) I also explored the whole concept of  Synchronicity, or consequences that are guided by  unknown forces (VERY Jung).

I also surfed on over to the resources you quote on Chaos. Their thing seems also to be a twist on Jung in that they are tapping out the unconscious or archetypal images. The Chaos magicians are not  interested in archetypes so much as inventing their own private cosmology as they go along (kind of like Wimber and friends, do something and if it works make it part of the religion (Wimber) or ritual (Chaos magicians.) Look up WIRED magazines on the techno pagans for more information on these guys.

Chaos theory on the other hand, with mathematics, is another bird entirely. It is looking at very large numbers or sets of patterns to find a larger "fractal" or design. Not necessarily occult in and of itself but the Chaos magicians may have "hijacked" the math for themselves.

Chaos in the ART world is very definitely an occult practice in that the sculptor is using a modified "Jungian" approach with a sort of "automatic" sculpting as the "spirit" or "demon" leads. Henry Morris says in his book on education that the arts and humanities very easily slip into the world of the mystic.

Quantum theory does delve into Eastern thought with books such as the "Tao of Physics" and the "Dancing Wu Li Masters." What we may be seeing is a whole new mindset that is able to accommodate the "magical" right along with the "scientific." Something only hinted at in a book (I can't remember the author) "The Twisted Cross." The author says that the Nazis had effectively combined science and sorcery.

So now if we take the above and apply it to what we see in PK (as a microcosm) we see truth mixed with error as far as speakers and conference goers. The group is making up their spirituality as they go along! I received the poster to go the "Sacred Assembly" from PK today, it smells of dominion thinking and the Latter Rain folks. This is a form of the Chaos magic you saw above. I don't believe that there is any call to a nation to come to a "sacred assembly" as McCartney is asking for.

Well enough of that for now (I saved this letter to add to what I write later). My best to you and my prayers are for what you are doing... I really didn't realize what was afoot until I started doing the research on the Holy Ha Ha stuff.

Marty Bee

Here is the article!!

The Masculine Journey,
the Goddess, the Phallic man and Jung

And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. (Acts 19:28)

As an Ex-Promise Keeper I can say that the thing that got me interested in the beginning WAS the Masculine Journey. At the juncture I was in my life, middled-aged, bald and fat, in what appeared to be a dead end job, the thought that this was my "wounded warrior" phase appealed to me. The thought that I would "come through" this and be more successful as a "mature man" on the other end. Nothing could be farther from biblical truth. I would refer all men going through a "mid-life" crisis to Caleb in the book of Joshua; Joshua 14:10-12 In this stirring message Caleb tells Joshua that the Lord has kept him alive for 45 years and now he asks Joshua to "give him the mountain" so he can go and battle giants. Now this is a model of manhood! Still feisty and ready to do battle at 85. That's the kind of man I want to be like. But the critique of Masculine Journey and the Promise Keeper movement doesn't stop here. In my investigation of the Holy Laughter movement it led me to the Vineyard Movement.

Of Jung and the Masculine Journey: Hicks denies being influenced by Jung but the models he presents as phases of manhood are thinly disguised versions of the same archetypes used in Jung's "Man and His Symbols." "The Wild Man" in Jung could correspond to the Adamic Male in Hicks, primitive and free; the Phallic man the "Trickster or Coyote" in Jung; the Warrior is the "Hero" of Jung, and the Wounded Warrior is the "Wounded King." Lastly the Sage is the "Wise Man" of Jung. All of these come with pictures in the paperback version of Man and His Symbols.

As to the idea of Jesus being a "phallic kind of guy." The only image that comes to my mind is from the "Villa of the Mysteries" in Pompeii. Here the partially clothed female postulant is cowering from the whip blows that are being delivered by a winged female goddess. What is seldom seen is the left half of the image, there in a winnowing basket is the "sacred phallus" of Dionysus being uncovered by the priestess. It is this image that I find very hard to reconcile with the Jesus of the bible. But apparently Jung didn't. Jung seems to prophesy the coming the of the Hyper- Charismatics in this quote from Richard Noll (The Jung Cult):

"I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what the once were - a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal." (pg 188, The Jung Cult, Richard Noll, 1994 Princeton University Press)

*****

It is in this quote that we see the link between Jung and the Charismatics. The drunken feast of Joy is nothing more than the Toronto Blessing/Pensacola Revival. This is perhaps the most important link I found in my research into the Toronto Blessing.

*****

By reducing Jesus to a "phallic kind of guy" Hicks comes close to making him into a sort of Dionysius, or just the kind of god of the vine that Jung is describing. That in and of itself may not be dangerous but when this is combined with the strong wine of the Vineyard charismatics I think we have a fulfillment of Jung's prophecy. And it may be coming to a stadium near you!

Jung's pantheon of archetypes is completed out somewhat in The Feminine Journey from what I have read of the reviews. The Goddess is there in her three incarnations; "Virgin, Whore, and Hag. (although Cynthia Hicks has given her nice Christian names)." There is another model for the same type of "seasons of a woman" in Robert Graves' "The White Goddess." In this book Graves reveals the Venus (who is also Astarte and Asherah of Canaanite fame in the bible) as appearing in 3 phases; the Virgin (young woman), the Whore (delightful beauty), and finally the Hag (wise woman). It is this book that the popular rock tune "Stairway to Heaven" was written about in 10 minutes after Jimmy Page read Graves' book. Some in Christian circles spent quite a bit of time ruining perfectly good records spinning them backwards for the "Satanic" message when front wards it was quite bad enough (see the "Hammer of the Gods" or the story of the band Led Zeppelin, be advised it is X-rated in sections). Cynthia and Robert Hicks have then made a complete set of Jungian archetypes in their books but now good Christian men and women read them and find themselves in the same company as Led Zeppeling and Aleister Crowley (one of the band's heroes.)

So what's the problem with Jung? According to Richard Noll, Jung's ideas of archetypes and the collective unconscious are all "borrowed" part an parcel from nineteenth century occultism. The archetypes and the unconscious were respectively: 1) the steps of initiation 2) the Land of the Dead.

The steps of initiation would take the seeker to higher and higher levels of knowledge or "gnosis" until he realized true "illumination." This illumination was not as one would expect a "union with the divine" but a realization that only the individual was responsible for his own redemption. In the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" (delivered by occult means directly to Jung) Jung preaches to the dissillusioned Christian dead. He tells them not to seek redemption in any means but themselves. There is an inner star that they must rise to. Finaly at peace the souls rise to find enlightenment. (pg 243, The Jung Cult). There is another more darker spin on illumination that was alluded to by Robert Anton Wilson in a book called; "Notes from the Underground." Here Wilson gives the true goal of the occult practitioner, to gain dissillusionment with all methods, rituals and paths and finally seek only himself. The seeker is then "illumined." There is more on this when you delve into Chaos magic and its "saints."

The Land of the Dead and the Collective Unconscious are not addressed in the book by Hicks (thankfully). But one could imagine another book is being penned out there as we speak which will adapt this Jungian concept to the Christian world.

So when respected Christian publishing houses like Nav Press put out stuff (like the Masculine Journey and the Feminine Journey) with that kind of baggage we have to wonder "did anyone READ this before it was approved?"

As a final thought, I was discipled by the Navigators and spent a good 4 years ministering with some very godly men and leaders at a military base in California. It saddens me greatly to see such a good ministry go astray. I have completed my "journey" back from this Masculine Journey. It was really a bad detour. My hope is that others will not soon get lost on the same highway.

This is just a followup to what I sent you earlier.

In reviewing the material please feel free to edit out any material you feel may not stand up to the proper scrutiny. Since I was working from the reviews of "The Feminine Journey" (by Lynn & Sarah Leslie) It may not carry as much weight as what I was talking about in the Masculine Journey.

I am of the opinion that both of these sets of archetypes make up the "sacred couple" of the pagans. They are Baal and Asherah, husband and wife. Robert Graves, in the White Goddess, gives the entire outline clearly. The Male is the "wounded king" or warrior and the Female is seen as the sacred prostitute.

Jung is the bridge between these ancient ideas and our modern world. By making myths and fables have a concrete meaning in psychological analysis, he has brought back the dead gods. These are the same gods that Israel was sent into exile over in Babylon.

marty bee

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