Fate or Calling?

James Hillman writes: “The Greek idea of fate is that: Events happen to people. But fate causes only events that are unusual, that oddly don’t fit in. Not each and every thing is laid out in a superior divine plan. The Greek word for fate, moira, means a share, a portion. As fate has only a portion in what happens, so the daimon, the personal, internalized aspect of moira, has only a portion in our lives, calling them but not owning them. Moira derives from the root smer or mer, meaning to ponder, to think, meditate, consider, care. It is a deeply psychological term, requiring us to scrutinize events with respect to the portion that comes from elsewhere and is unaccountable, and the portion that belongs to me, what I did, could have done, can do.

Fatalism holds that everything is predetermined. “It’s all in the stars; there is a divine plan; whatever happens, happens for the best in the best of possible worlds (Voltaire’s Candide). Catching the sly winks of fate, however, is a reflective act. It is an act of thought, while fatalism is a state of feeling—abandoning thoughtfulness, details, and careful reasoning.

“The acorn seems to follow just this sort of limited pattern. It does not indulge in long-term philosophies. It excites, calls, demands—but rarely does it offer a grand purpose. The pull of purpose comes with force; you may feel full of purpose. But just what it is and how to get there remains undetermined. Purpose does not usually appear as a clearly framed goal, but more as a troubling, unclear urge with a sense of indubitable importance.

“Let’s say the acorn is more concerned with the soul aspect of events, more alive to what’s good for it than to what you believe is good for you. This helps explain why Socrates’ daimon told him not to escape imprisonment and execution. His death belonged to the integrity of his image, to his innate form.

“What matters is not so much whether an interference has or does not have purpose; rather, it is important to look with a purposive eye, seeking value in the unexpected. The purposive eye starts from the assumption that events can indeed be accidents. The world is run as much by folly as by wisdom, as much by order as by chaos, but—and this ‘but’ is huge—these accidents may still intend something interesting.

“Wisdom in Greek is sophia, as in our word ‘philosophy,’ love of wisdom. Sophia had a most practical meaning, referring originally to the crafts of handling things, especially to the helmsman who steers the boat. The wise one steers well; the wisdom of the helmsman shows in the art of making minor adjustments in accord with accidents of water, wind, and weight. The daimon teaches this wisdom by constant appraisals of events that seem to pull off course. This is also philosophy: the love of making little corrections, little integrations of what seems not to fit in.

“This idea of continual, moving adjustments is nothing new or strange. As far back as Aristotle the soul was conceived to be both the form and the motion of a body. The form is given with beginnings as the image of your lot, and it shifts as we move. This form, for which we are using many interchangeable terms—image, daimon, calling, angel, heart, acorn, soul, pattern, character—stays true to form.

“A serious accident demands answers. What does it mean, why did it happen, what does it want? Continuing reappraisals are part of the aftershock. The accident may never be integrated, but it may strengthen the integrity of the soul’s form by adding to it perplexity, sensitivity, vulnerability, and scar tissue.

“Remember Plato’s tale: The goddess Ananke, or Necessity, sits on her throne amid the Fates, her daughters, companions, and aides. But it is she, Ananke, who establishes that the soul has selected for its lot to be necessary—not an accident, not good or bad, not foreknown or guaranteed, simply necessary. What we live is necessary to be lived.

“When something doesn’t fit, seems odd or strange, breaks the usual pattern, then more likely Necessity has a hand in it. Though she determines the lot you live, her ways of influencing are irrational. That is why it is so difficult to understand life, even one’s own life. Your soul’s lot comes from the irrational principle. The law it follows is Necessity, which wanders erratically. Little wonder that we readers are drawn to biographies and autobiographies, for they offer glimpses of how irrational Necessity works in a human life. Although Necessity’s rule is absolute and irreversible, this determinism is indeterminate. Unpredictable.

“By claiming that Necessity has laid its hand on each of the decisive moments of my life, I can justify whatever I do. It appears as if I can slip the harness of responsibility—it’s all in the cards, or the stars. Yet this unyielding dominatrix of a goddess makes me quaver over each decision, for there is no predictability in her errant irrationality. Only in hindsight can I find certitude, saying it was all necessary. How curious that life can be foreordained, yet not foretold.

“Then where are the errors? How can one go wrong, and why feel guilty? If all that happens is necessary, what about remorse?

“Since necessity incorporates whatever decision I make as necessary, then necessity must be imagined as an inclusive principle that adjusts the image of each life to include all its actions one by one, whatever they may be. We are still collared, but the collar is adjustable. Necessity’s yoke produces the feeling that we are always somewhere caught, somehow a victim of circumstances, longing for liberation. I may know that what had to be, had to be, yet nonetheless I feel remorse. Necessity, says the remorse, too, is necessary as a feeling and belongs to your yoke, but it does not refer to what you actually might or should have done otherwise.

“To understand necessity in this way makes mistakes tragic, rather than sins to be repented or accidents to be remedied. It takes a large heart to accept the tight collar. Most times we reject the odd irrational events that come down on us. Most times we try to ignore disturbances—until the heart calls our attention to them as possibly important, possibly necessary. The mind is the last faculty to submit, and there is usually a tug-of-war between the heart’s calling and the mind’s plan, a conflict within each human replicating Plato’s two principles of nous and ananke, reason and unreasonable necessity.

“Sure, the mind can postpone the call, suppress, and sell out. You will not therefore necessarily be punished and damned. The daimon is not necessarily a pursuing demon, a Christian hound of heaven. Revenge is not one of Necessity’s daughters. Necessity, in fact, refers only to that which could not be otherwise, or that which you could not escape. Escape is not a sin, because Necessity is not a moralist. Escape can belong just as well to your soul’s lot and its pattern, as can facing the music and taking the arrows in the chest

“The truer you are to your daimon, the closer you are to the death that belongs to your destiny. We expect the daimon to have prescience about death, calling on it before an airline flight or during a sudden attack of sickness. Is this my fate, and now? And when the demands of our calling seem undeniably necessary, again death appears: ‘If I do what I really must, it will kill me; and yet if I don’t, I’ll die.’ To be the calling or not to be, that still and again seems to be the question.

“Perhaps this intimacy between calling and fate is why we avoid the daimon and the theory that upholds its importance. We mostly invent, and prefer, theories that tie us tightly to parental powers, encumber us with sociological conditionings and genetic determinants; thereby we escape the fact that these deep influences on our fates don’t hold a candle to the power of death. Death is the only complete necessity, that archetypal Necessity who rules the pattern of the lifeline she spins with her daughters, the Fates. The length of that line and its irreversible one-way direction is part of one and the same pattern, and it could not be otherwise.”

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, 155-213.