Both personal development and spiritual development are demanding that you deal with aggression. At one point, you will have to face it and you will have to give your answer. Dealing with it properly on a personal level will give you the strength for your personal success. Or, on the contrary, giving wrong answers will lead you to lack of self confidence and failure. Dealing with it on the spiritual level will give you courage and strength for true transformation. Actually, there is no spiritual transformation without it. But there is nothing more unpleasant to deal with. People have tried and always will try to avoid it. How to overcome this repugnance? How to approach aggression in such a way that you can benefit from it?

Understanding always brings change

The utmost in efficiency that one can achieve is to able to understand. Understanding is by far much more than knowledge. When true understanding comes, it changes you, it transforms you. And also it transforms what was misunderstood or not understood before. Understanding transforms poison into medicine.

Understanding aggression transforms it into a force that will help you. It will not weaken you any more, but will give you the strength that you’ve always wished for.

Recognizing the nature of aggression is essential

As stated before, the true nature of aggression is not violence. It is a complete misunderstanding to identify them. Aggression is one of the essential principles that is present in our lives. By its nature, it is always present whether you are aware of it or not. There are destructive manifestations of it, but also, there are harmless and constructive forms in which it shows up.

Few psychological orientation truly help us in understanding aggression. One of them is the analytical psychology founded by C. G. Jung. He realized that the forces that are influencing us unconsciously can be approached by discovering the collective dreams of mankind. These collective dreams are presented through myths and often even through fairy tales. Here I am going to draw your attention towards the possibilities that mythology reserves us in order to comprehend the principle of aggression.

The two archetypal facets of aggression

Although we are accustomed to look at aggression as a masculine manifestation, the ancients recognized its feminine side too. For modern people this might be something surprisingly new. Both of the facets were disliked and feared. The masculine facet was called Ares by the Greeks and Mars by the Romans. The feminine facet was given also the name of a male god - will explain it immediately - Hades by the Greeks and Pluto by the Romans.

Mars - the masculine archetype of aggression

In the myth, Ares is son of Zeus and Hera, an unloved child from the very beginning. Unruly, disobedient, boisterous, Mars was unloved not only by gods, but also of men. God of war, but not the one who incites wars, not a moral factor. He is representative of the passion for conflict as such, without taking sides.

The rejection Mars faces from the very beginning shows us the lack of understanding towards the principle of aggression. This is the most obvious sign that no other approach will work with him besides understanding. Let’s stop here with Mars for now and get an introduction to Pluto.

Pluto - the feminine archetype of aggression

The overwhelmingly patriarchal ancient Greek and Roman society gave us the feminine principle of aggression in form of a male god. In other mythologies on the contrary, this principle was accepted as feminine, ex. goddess Hel in the Old-German mythology.

Hades is the god of the underworld, his name means “invisible” or “to make invisible”. He was so feared that when the Romans actualized him to their own system of gods, they gave him a new name, Pluto, thus becoming also god of the riches under the earth.

Understanding this archetype is much more difficult than the one of Mars. We can say that it is somewhat new in the general consciousness. An arguable but significant argument here is that even the planet Pluto was quite recently discovered. And there is still an ongoing debate on whether it should be considered a planet. But this is not important for the perspective of getting familiarized with the archetype by the name Pluto.

The main characteristic which differentiates Pluto from Mars is its withholding and hidden presence. Instead of exposing and showing off, it is oriented towards the interior, towards itself. It is much more insidious and perfidious. Its destructive power is much bigger than the one of Mars. By the time Pluto was discovered as a planet, there was also discovered the element called Plutonium used for the most destructive bombs ever made by men.

But Pluto also has its constructive and beneficent aspects. As god of the underworld it represents the immense energies hidden within our unconscious. It represents the potential of complete and effective transformation.

For now, I really hope that you enjoyed this short article on approaching the principle and archetypes of aggression. In the future I intend to develop more the topic as it constitutes part of the framework of vertical thinking and of Vertegram.

Instead of closing conclusions, I am living this open with a few questions:

• How do you think these principles are present in the actual warfares around the globe?
• Can you recognize significant differences between the different warfares carried through in our current days?
• Can you recognize beneficent, positive manifestations of these principles? Can you give examples?

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