To Pay or Not Pay the Ferryman? (Sink Your Teeth into This Excerpt from My New Book)

Chris de Burgh’s 1982 hit “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” has intrigued listeners—yours truly included—for decades. The song tells the story of a man’s encounter with the mythological figure of Charon from Greek mythology, the psychopomp responsible for ferrying the souls of the dead over the Acheron and Styx rivers that separate the realms of the living and deceased.

De Burgh’s haunting lyrics relate the story of a man who apparently finds himself between these two worlds in an eerie riverside setting.

A deathly figure at the wheel of a riverboat shows up and offers to take him—for a fee, we’re given to understand—to the far side. Grasping who’s addressing him, the man refuses to pay the menacing ferryman and, in a most satisfying plot twist, appears to escape and run free.

“Don’t Pay the Ferryman” wonderfully encapsulates the theme of the rebellious hero on his or her ultimate journey—the shaman, alchemist or psychonaut who has taken the second road to the water’s edge and has no intention, to quote Dylan Thomas, of going “gentle into that good night.”

Anteing up your small change as your final act is to give up your last bit of loosh and place the coins on your own eyes as they shut forever on your individual existence.

This is also the moment when the vast majority of souls sign their last and most depressing tacit yet binding contract with the Dragon that requires them to return to the Matrix to do it all again!

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In this conclusive encounter with the Dragon’s chief tax collector, so to speak, you either break free of the so-called reincarnation cycle complete with its memory wipe and the loss of individuality that entails—or you accept your fate, pay the ferryman his due, and get in line to be recycled back into this loosh farm not as yourself but as somebody else, again and again, until “you” figure out how to exit this funhouse for good.

Those who arrive at the Dark Sea by the first road always pay the ferryman. Having (to put it bluntly) wasted their time while squandering their vital force that might have been put to transcendent use, they have no other viable option.

But those rebels among us who have done their shadow and energetic work know that such payment is completely optional. For rebels death and taxes aren’t the only certainties in life; for them there are no certainties. That’s what makes it so exciting to be a rebel!

The choice whether to pay is entirely yours, but don’t delay. Given the enormous amount of advance preparation required to not pay the ferryman, you might consider making your choice, like, today.

Copyright © Sol Luckman. All Rights Reserved.