The Seba library treats Eroe in 7 passages, across 3 authors (including Hillman, James, Rank, Otto, Rohde, Erwin).
la differenza tra il Vecchio Re del potere e della estroversione — profano stadio finale del Puer-Eroe — e il Vecchio Saggio della conoscenza e dell’introversione — sacro stadio finale del Puer-Messia
Hillman distinguishes two terminal forms of the Puer archetype — the Puer-Eroe resolving into extraverted worldly power, the Puer-Messia into introverted sacred wisdom — thereby splitting the Hero from any single developmental telos.
, Puer Aeternus, 1967thesis
The truly heroic element then consists only in the real justice or even necessity of the act, which is therefore generally endorsed and admired; while the morbid trait, also in criminal cases, is the pathologic transference of the hatred from the father to the real king
Rank defines the essence of the heroic as the socially ratified enactment of parricide fantasy, distinguishing it from its pathological double — the anarchist’s displaced aggression — by the criterion of psychic necessity and communal endorsement.
, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 1909thesis
Per forza il Puer è debole sulla terra, perché il Puer non appartiene alla terra. La sua direzione è verticale; gli inizi delle cose sono lampi di genio
Hillman explains the structural fragility of the Puer-Hero figure through its constitutive verticality — a direction toward transcendence that renders it inherently unstable in the horizontal world of action and endurance.
, Puer Aeternus, 1967supporting
la redenzione dalla dipendenza nei confronti della storia profana potrebbe ottenersi con il medesimo metodo… collocando la sofferenza psichica nel contesto della favola di Eros e Psiche anziché della tragedia di Edipo
Hillman proposes displacing the heroic-Oedipal framework with the mythic paradigm of Eros and Psyche as a means of reorganizing archetypal memory and liberating the soul from clinical-historical determinism.
, Puer Aeternus, 1967supporting
Delphic Oracle, regulates expiatory rites; authority of, in the cult of Heroes
Rohde situates the hero cult within the religious-institutional framework of Greek antiquity, showing that the Delphic Oracle served as the normative authority regulating hero veneration and thus linking the Hero to chthonic soul-cult.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
Prima che homo faber, homo ludens o homo sapiens, prima che Senex o Puer, siamo sognatori immersi nella realtà psichica, immaginatori
Hillman subordinates all typological categories — including the heroic — to a prior ontological condition of imaginal dreaming, suggesting that the Hero is a secondary elaboration of a more primordial psychic substrate.
, Puer Aeternus, 1967aside
Come il Puer è suicida, Saturno presiede all’autodistruzione. Entrambi evidenziano l’assenza del femminile
In mapping the Puer’s shadow affinities with Saturn, Hillman indirectly illuminates the self-destructive underside of the heroic archetype — its suicidal tendency and its structural exclusion of the feminine.
, Puer Aeternus, 1967aside