Symbol Watcher

Last weekend I saw Will Smith’s new movie “Hancock.” At first I thought I was watching just another fantasy superhero movie, but as the relationship between between Smith’s character (Hancock) and Charlize Theron’s character (Mary) unfolded, I realized I was watching an aborted “mystical” or “divine” marriage — a failed attempt to bring the archetypal masculine and feminine together as one.

Hancock and Mary are the last remaining god and goddess on Earth. They have been living here for hundreds of years, assigned by their creator to be each other’s eternal mate. Being godlike, they are immortal, possess superhuman strength and they can fly. It also seems, judging from the scene in which Mary and Hancock are fighting in the street, that Mary’s moods can affect the weather.

The problem their god gave to Hancock and Mary (and evidently to all celestial couples who came to Earth before them) is that whenever they are close to each other for any length of time they begin to loose their omnipotence. And if they are together long enough, they become mortal and can die from the same injuries and illnesses as the rest of us. The minute they pull away from each other, they regain their strength and power.

So Hancock and Mary have spent most of their time on Earth locked in a painful tug of war, on one level, wanting to unite but knowing that doing so will eventually bring their death.

The struggle the universe has given to Hancock and Mary is very similar to the struggle found in ancient texts. The mystical marriage described in these writings is not a uniting of flesh and bone, man and woman, but a uniting of masculine and feminine energy — either within our own individual psyche’s to achieve wholeness — or within our universe. This mystical marriage is often symbolized in historical/alchemical art as the uniting of the king and queen or the sun and moon. If the two sides of the marriage actually culminate into a new, blended third, then the union is often symbolized as a hermaphrodite.

The mystical marriage, in psychological or symbolic terms, is a lengthy and difficult process. There is much tension between these two opposing forces (as is the case with Hancock and Mary when they first reunite). Neither wants to give up their ego standpoint, if you will, yet they are inexplicably drawn together.

If the coupling continues to advance toward a true divine union, the two sides must deflate their individual hubris and come to an important realization: one is necessary for the existence of the other. For instance, the masculine sun tells the feminine moon she needs his light to be seen. In turn, the moon tells the sun that he would be of no use if he didn’t have her to shed his light on. In the movie, we see this type of tender recognition of the other’s contribution when we learn that Hancock has saved Mary’s life many times and when Mary tells an amnesia-stricken Hancock the origins of his godliness.

The mystic marriage is a new and unique life energy; the male and female parts as they were previously known will die. The goal is the union, bringing the masculine and feminine together to create a whole that did not exist before.

And it is at this crucial point in the divine marriage process that Hancock and Mary fail. At the movie’s climax, they are right on the brink of this death before new life. Hancock is being attacked and Mary feels each pain of his injuries. They are becoming a new “one.”

But, instead of dying and letting the spirit of god (wholeness) enter into them, they take every last bit of energy they have to pull away from one another.

That same predicament we see described in the ancient texts, is the same predicament Mary and Hancock’s god presented to them: If you want to experience profound love and the light of knowing, you will have to sacrifice yourself as you are. Remember that Mary tells Hancock that all the god and goddess pairs are drawn together so they can know love.

But the movie doesn’t have a hermaphroditic conclusion. In the end, Hancock remains the omnipotent earth hero and Mary a superhuman suburban earth mother. They could not trade their one-sided existence for the greater gift of remaining in the love and knowing of the other.

Of course, each character’s self-induced separation did not extinguish their longing for the masculine or feminine side of the other. It’s obvious in the movie’s closing scene: Mary remains joined to her mortal husband (played by Jason Bateman) in a kind of secondary, surrogate union, while Hancock is drawn to writing messages on the feminine moon.

For more information on mystic marriages, I suggest Marie-Louise Von Franz’s Alchemy An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology.

–Writeye

Posted on July 10th, 2008 under Jungian Psychology, Movies • Tags: "Hancock" the movie, divine marriage, mystical marriage. •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback