I was reading Robert Bly’s book Iron John and this book has many great details that could be explored. Bly talks about there being some distinct stages in a man’s life. Now, these stages won’t always be in the same order but it appears most men go through these stages or they get hung up on one stage or another for a while. Now I can’t go through in detail as to what the stage is but I will give a brief overview of the stages I remember,
There is the initial breaking away from mother. This is something all men have to do eventually. Now there are feminist groups that believe this is the source of men’s pain and suffering. Which is not the case. In the story, this is the boy stealing the key from under her pillow.
From here the boy takes off with the wild man Iron John. Here he is faced with a series of challenges. Many people would say he failed. Yet because of these failures, he received 3 gifts. A golden finger, a golden hair, and a golden head of hair.
After the trial, he was sent from the forest and had to live a life of poverty. While he was away he became a cinder sweeper for a castle kitchen. From here he entered another stage of the garden. From the garden, he learned the power of might and finally won the princess.
The two phases that most men get caught up in are the stages of being the cinder sweep and the garden. The cinder sweep was what actually caught my attention. This is because of my own journey and what I have seen through the last 10 years of my life. The power of ash.
The Cinder Sweep phase
In Iron John our boy hero is working as a cinder sweep and this equates to teenagers having to start growing up. In the story, the boy is a cinder sweep until he defies the king’s order to take off his hat. The boy doesn’t take off his hat because he has this golden hair. In the story, the Golden hair can be equated to a man’s talent.
When we are teenagers our Talents are often things that we hide from other people. We call them stupid and downplay their meaning to us. The same as the boy does in Iron John. He hides his talent under his hat and doesn’t show anybody.
Yet the time that he spends in the kitchen also has a lot of meaning in itself. Robert calls this ash work. He talks about Cinderella and the Cinder Biters of the Norsemen. Both have great similarities to The Iron John story.
The Kitchen
Men have to spend time in the proverbial kitchen. Learning about themselves. When you hear about the kitchen what do you think of it? You may think of old medieval kitchens in the basement of the castle. They were dark, crowded, hot, with people yelling and slamming things around. Sound familiar? Teenagers are often emotional. They are broody. They still have a bit of the child in them so they stomp around when they don’t get their way.
The kitchen is also dangerous. There are parts of you that can get cut. You can get burned from the hot soups and the open fires that you are having to tend to. Then you have to mess with the ash. You are separating the hot coals from the ash so that ash doesn’t get into the food. Ash is light and easily disturbed and it gets everywhere.
We have to shed our old ways
When growing up, the teenage years are tough. You want to hold on to your old ways of being. Yet you are wanting your independence. So you have to make a choice. Do you want to grow up and move out and be a man, or do you want to stay? You have to make a choice.
Many boys these days want to stay in the kitchen. They try to stay among the ash because it is comfortable. Ash retains heat so it can be warm and comforting. Yet if you want to be a man you have to stop being a cinder-biter and leave the ash of your past life behind you.
When we are in the kitchen we have to work with the ashes of our old life. That isn’t fun, it can be messy and you will be coated in ash and soot. If you have ever tended a fire you have to cut the wood and keep the fires at the right temp. Too hot and the wood burns too fast. Too cold and you can’t cook your food right and stay warm.
We have to Work in the Ashes
As you grow up and as you struggle you go through many fires. You are a lot like steel that is getting tempered or clay pottery where you eventually have to be fired to have any use. Those fires are not nice; they burn and strip old useless parts away.
This is you holding on to old pains and traumas that keep you from being the person you are needing to be. Your old self is hindered from becoming better because you hold on to the old life. After all, that is all you know. This looking in the past is likening to a chain. It binds your growth and keeps you playing small. To cut the chain you need fire. You have to do the ash work of separating the useful coals from the ash.
This ash work is gathering the pain and hurt, the frustrations that you experienced in life, and applying it to other parts of your life. Were you abused? Sure you were but that abuse isn’t you. You are the person who doesn’t let abuse hold you down. You go past that abuse and see that the fire you went through made you a better person. If you are willing to work in the ash, take the stuff that was burned away and use it for other purposes.
Your life is the life you were supposed to live. You can look at it as a poor me situation or it can be a Look at me dammit! Become like Starkad the Norse Cinder biter who languished in the cinder way past his time.
To understand this let’s step back a bit and look at what I understand about how the Vikings lived. The Vikings had longhouses and the hearth would be built in the middle of the house. The Hearth would often be long and match the house. Next to the walls were the beds. The youth would sleep on the floors between the beds and the hearth. Now once the children got to a certain age they would take on certain responsibilities and become contributing members of the village thus earning a proper bed next to the wall. Yet some boys would hang out in the youth area way longer than they were expected to. These youth would be ridiculed and often called cinder biters. One famous cinder biter is Starkad. According to Robert Bly, he lounged around and was in the way of the other people in the longhouse, till one day his father told him to come on an expedition with him.
With that, he stood up, cleaned himself up and became one of the greatest warriors in the village. He needed a reason to go to the next stage of his life. For the rest of us, we also need a reason to get up and pull ourselves away from the comforts of our family. To step out and do manly activities. It could be our dad tells us it is time to go and be a man or we may just decide that sitting in the ashes of our past just isn’t fulfill
Ashes are Useful
Many people today see ash as just a by-product of fire. It is the stuff that you find in a fire pit or wood stove that is. It gets everywhere when it’s inside a house. It is blowing in the wind and gets in your coffee. It can be viewed as just dirt.
Yet wood ash has lots of uses from helping a garden grow to melting ice. The ash of your life isn’t useless either. It is our past and yeah our past is important yet it isn’t who we are. We have the heat from our lives, fires that help take away the useless and unneeded parts of our life and allow us to stand in assurance that we are our true beings. We are tempered and strengthened from the fires. We have a choice as to whether we move the waste product or we apply the ashes to other parts of our lives.
Much like wood ash, our ash can be used to fertilize the lives of other people. We can take our experience and enrich the lives of those around us. Ash, can also be used to melt ice. Much like your ash can be used to melt the emotional walls of those around you.
You have to be able to stand and take the cap that is hiding your talent off and use the ashes of your life to be able to help those around you. To allow you to become the man you are needing to be. You have to leave the comforting side of your mom being willing to experience learning moments in your life. So you can be the rock for your wife and children to hold on to.
Your ashes aren’t the ruins of your life, they are the fertilizer for others to grow.
