The Herod Within Us: Valentin Tomberg on Advent

King Herod and the Child-God myth in Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX

There is a story, repeated in the mythologies of several cultures and religions, that goes like this: a Child-God is born, is immediately chased by monsters who seek to devour him, but in a feat of precocious ability the Child-God triumphs over them. The Titans tear apart Dionysus, Zeus’ son, but Athena saves his heart, from which he is revived. Krishna, as a child, is chased by shapeshifting demons and monsters, all of which were foiled by Krishna’s mischievous and agile prowess. Finally, we have the birth of Christ, which precipitates a chasing down of the infant Christ by the King Herod followed by the murder of all Bethlehem boys under two.

Perennialists will use this myth to illustrate an eternal archetype, but also sometimes to deny the historicity of Christ and/or the uniqueness of Christianity. They will say that Christ, Dionysus and Krishna are the same mythically, so therefore, Christianity and Hinduism and Greek mythology are effectively the same. We’ve all heard this. Rudolf Steiner, C.S. Lewis and many others have addressed this so we don’t have to.¹ The problem is that they seem to take for granted that these stories are the same. And while yes, there are similarities, it’s the differences against the sea of familiarities that teach us the uniqueness of Christianity. If Christianity were wholly unique, having nothing to do with the symbolic and mythical landscape that came before it, we would have nothing to grab onto. It would be a sea of noise.

The story of Herod and the murder of the Holy Innocents is, indeed, different. I haven’t read the primary sources depicting the childhoods of Dionysus and Krishna, so forgive me if there are details I’m missing that have me jump to this conclusion — but it seems apparent to me that in these two stories, they are hunted down by representations of chaos, of blind, stupid rage. Monsters, demons, and so forth. This isn’t exactly true of Herod. It is true that he is “furious” at the moment he sends the children of Bethlehem to be murdered. But he is only furious because he falsely he was “tricked” by the wise men. Before then, he is “assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people.” (Matt. 2, ESV) He is consulting the wise men to find out where Christ is, so he may worship him. Instead of being stupidly aggressive and block-headed like a Titan, Herod is presented as a hyper-intellectual. He is using a committee of the smartest in the Temple to determine where Christ is prophesied to be born. He asks the wise men to gather the exact coordinates on the location of Christ. And in the end, he only becomes furious after falsely believing he was “tricked” — a paranoia of the intellect, not a blindness of rage. But the winners of the story are not of the data-gathering, of information, of the intellect. The wise men use not their brains to find Christ, but the guidance of a Star. And the Holy Family isn’t motivated to escape to Egypt through a careful calculation of risk analysis, but from a dream of Joseph. The story of this child-god being devoured is not a tale of chaos devouring order. It is almost a story of order seeking to devour chaos.

Of course, I express this as a myth fully flipped on its head, but of course the nuance is everything. It is more accurate (but less punchy) to say it this way: The story of Herod is the story of a perversion of order — the head-without-a-heart, tyranny disguised as authority — seeking to devour that which is intuitive: the following of a Star or dream that seems to be chaotic through its inability to be apprehended by the intellect, but is actually of the Logos itself. This notion is described by Valentin Tomberg in Meditations On The Tarot:

“But those who follow the ‘star’ must learn a lesson once and for all: not to consult Herod and the ‘chief priests and scribes of the people’ at Jerusalem, but to follow the ‘star’ that they have seen ‘in the East’ and which ‘goes before them’, without seeking for indications and confirmation on the part of Herod and his people. The gleam of the ‘star’ and the effort to understand its message ought to suffice. Because Herod, representing the anti-revelatory force and principle, is also eternal. The time of Christmas is not that of the nativity of the Child alone; it is also the time of the massacre of the children of Bethlehem — the time where autonomous intelligence is driven to kill, i.e. to strange and push back into the unconscious, all the tender flowers of spirituality which threaten the absolute autonomy arrogated to itself by intelligence.” (Letter XIX: The Sun, pg. 533-34)

Winter is tough. We expect a certain autonomy of our feeling, a control of ourselves, yet we are pulled by the yearly cycles of Nature. The leaves of the trees are falling and the flowers have died, so why are we always surprised when the same happens within ourselves? Winter can bring out the dark side of the intellect. We become isolated indoors, socializing less, becoming highly introspective. The flowers that grew so beautifully within us in the preceding Spring and Summer seem to be lost, all for nothing. All that’s left is Intellect, the leafless branches that remain in the winter. We long for the manger, the new hope that will grow into the fruits of next Spring. But within us also is an “anti-revelatory force” that represses the new hope, despite our longing. And often when this new hope comes, it is as lost as it is found. For within us is not only the Magi finding the divine child. Within us, also, is Herod, the embittered and fallen wretch that fails to find Christ in the manger.

In this passage, Tomberg establishes Herod not merely as a passing historical character used by Matthew to satisfy his penchant for fulfilling Judaic prophesy, but rather as something like a Jungian archetype, a tendency of the collective unconscious. This “anti-revelatory force” is “eternal,” meaning it lives everywhere and must be reckoned with. The “tender flowers” of spirituality — the fruits of Spring and Summer — are pushed into the unconscious by intelligence — that is, the winter of Advent. So, consider that Herod may have a role in your spiritual life this Advent and prepare accordingly. Follow the advice of Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle.” If solitary, keep active. If idle, do not be alone. Being both solitary and idle is the curse of the King, something that can cause his downfall if not tempered. When the King becomes solitary and idle, he becomes like Herod, overly cerebral, dependent on elites, on relayed information, and paranoid about betrayal. To Carl Jung, the King is an archetype contained within the animus of every person. It is not a thing of medieval past, or something that disappeared with the guillotine. The King — in its shadow as much as its glory — is still with us, and must be reckoned with.

Advent can be like a miniature Lent, because it is prudent that we take up a spirit of poverty during Advent. The antidote to the Bitter King within us is to supersede it with the Cheerful Peasant. The best possible thing you can do in the month leading to Christmas is to sing carols out loud while working with your hands. During the day, even if it’s cold, try to do some outdoor work. Sing hymns while doing so. Learn new hymns and carols with friends too — there are thousands! Do not feast too much, lest you find yourself confusing your identity with that of a well-fed king. Keep entertainment to a minimum. Entertainment sullies the King, giving him all the sensory stimulation in the world, yet never leading to satisfaction. Doesn’t that sound a lot like us, when we scroll Netflix for long periods of time and find that nothing seems appealing anymore?

Christ will come. It is true that, in a sense, he arrives at Christmas. But he arrives in the quietest way imaginable, slowing revealing himself throughout the year: to Simeon on Candlemas, to thousands on Easter and thousands more on Pentecost, and so on. For now, stay busy and let the angels sing. For glory is not for us, but for the newborn king.

1. Besides citing Lewis’ famous “true myth” idea of Christ, it’s also important to mention that Steiner noted lots of uncanny similarities between the life of Christ and the life of Buddha, but noted that these similarities become suspect once you notice that Buddha’s life ends at the Transfiguration, whereas Christ’s, in a sense, just begins. Read his Christianity as Mystical Fact for more.