In the back of my mind all day today I tried to figure out where the title of the last post came from. "Holdfast the Tyrant" just popped into my mind as I was writing it, and I gave it no further thought until after it was posted. It sounded vaguely mythological, but I could not remember from what story. After cooking supper tonight it occurred to me it was a rather Campbellian phrase, so I dug out my well-worn copy of The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
For the mythological hero is the champion not of things become but of things becoming: the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status-quo: Holdfast, the keeper of the past. From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is great and conspicuous in the seat of power; he is enemy, dragon, tyrant, because he turns to his own advantage the authority of his position. He is Holdfast not because he keeps the past but because he keeps
Yesterday there was a message on my voice mail from Jen, after not talking to her in over a week. She just wanted to let me know that she had run into my prior girlfriend, from over a decade ago, shopping at Wal-Mart. Talk about the past! But it certainly made me think about all these old demons that refuse to let go. Except now I have a bright and shiny sword...