The Souls Code and Tiger Woods

If you've read The Soul's Code then this statement by Earl Woods to Sports Illustrated in the summer of 1996 about his son Tiger will make sense. If you haven't read TSC, than you'll probably think he's a nutcase.

"I was personally selected by God himself...to nurture this young man....Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."--Earl Woods

Hillman makes the argument in The Souls Code that our daimon chooses our parents before we come into this world. So, I think in a sense Earl Woods is onto something. It may not necessarily have been God that selected him, but Tiger's daimon. It knew Earl would be the one to nurture it.

It's also interesting to note that I read this about Earl Woods in ESPN magazine a few months back.

"After two weeks of swinging his plastic club lefthanded (this is, again, according to Earl) Tiger apparently grew dissatisfied with the motion. As the father looked on, in the part of the tale that always engaged Earl the most in the telling--switched his hands, moving the right below the left, intuitively finding the proper grip. Earl called to his wife Kultida, elsewhere in the house: 'We have a genius on our hands!'"--ESPN Magazine, Pg.76, 2/4/13

Tiger was about a year old when he did this. He was simply copying Earl's swing, so the story goes. But that's not why I mentioned the quote above. The reason why I did is that Earl recognized Tiger's genius. I think a lot of people go through life without their genius being recognized by anyone. Perhaps it takes a trained eye to see it, the problem is we live in a culture where most of is don't even think it exists.

Our Secret Companion

"What I am calling the 'angel' that was born with us and is our secret companion, Socrates called his daimon, who guarded him from wrong moves. The same figure appears in German thought as the Doppelganger and in ancient thought as the genius. Our birthday celebrations with cake and candles originate in a ritual honoring, not you, but your genius who was born with you. You are never a genius, can never be a genius, but you are guided and protected by a genius, and your life must be led so that the genius is not damaged. Damage to it through wounded reputation (and Cassio uses the language of wounding as Gaunt uses the language of shame) reflects especially on the family, for one's genius derives partly from the family and is generated in the family marriage bed (lectus genialis). Your genius or angel is concieved with you, descends into you through your generators and like an invisible twin at birth, part of your psychic inheritance."--James Hillman, pg.138, Kinds of Power

Understanding the Acorn Theory

More quotes out of James Hillman's "The Soul's Code." This will be the last day of the parenting and adulthood thread. Also, there are more quotes then usual in this post partly because it is in memory of Mr. Hillman who passed away at the end of October in 2011.

He's speaking to adults here:

"I want us to envision that what children go through has to do with finding a place in the world for their specific calling. They are trying to live two lives at once, the one they were born with and the one of the place and among the people they were born into." [James Hillman, Pg. 13, The Soul's Code]

"So this book is about children, offering a way to regard them differently, to enter their imaginations, and to discover in their pathologies what their daimon might be indicating and what their destiny might want." [James Hillman, Pg. 14, The Soul
s Code]

"A child defends its daimon's dignity. That's why even a frail child at a 'tender' age refuses to submit to what it feels is unfair and untrue and reacts so savagely to abusive misperecptions. The idea of childhood abuse needs to be expanded beyond the sexual kind--which is so vicious not principally because it is sexual, but because it abuses the dignity at the core of personality, that acorn of myth."[Hillman, Pg.27 The Soul's Code.]

He explains what the acorn theory or "acorn of myth" is here:

"The acorn theory proposes, and I will bring evidence for the claim that you and I and every single person is born with a defining image. Individuality resides in a formal cause--to use old philosophical language going back to Aristotle. We each embody our own idea, in the language of Plato and Plotinus. And this form, this idea, this image does not tolerate too much straying. The theory also attributes to this innate image an angelic or daimonic intention, as if it were a spark of consciousness; and, moreover, holds that it has our interest at heart because it chose us for its reasons."[James Hillman, Pg. 12, The Soul's Code]

I like the idea the it has chosen us and has our interests at heart. If you ever want to read a good autobiography that supports this idea pick up "Providence", by Daniel Quinn. I think he did an amazing job at showing how his daimon guided him throughout his life.