Odysseus & the Oar: Healing After War and Military Service

Odysseus and the Oar was written for military members, veterans, their loved ones, and those who counsel and serve them. Using Homer’s Odyssey and the experiences of today’s veterans, he explores the processes of homecoming, healing, and transformation. This is ＂the archetype of the warrior’s return,＂ a phrase coined by Magers that corresponds with the archetypal patterns seen in myths about returning warriors worldwide. Honoring these timeless patterns, Magers argues, is essential for veterans to heal and recover the meaning, vitality, and purpose of their lives.

Odysseus and the Oar’s novel interpretation of the Odyssey is possible because of the author’s experiences in combat, his conscious exploration of his post-war dreams through his own Jungian analysis, and because of his expertise in Jungian psychology and mythology. Commentaries on the Odyssey have been written in dozens of languages over hundreds of years, and yet this book goes into territory never before explored, illuminating Homer’s myth in new ways. Magers shares the storyline as an inner, archetypal reality. We learn that the archetypal imagery in the Odyssey and the dreams of modern combat veterans have an uncanny resemblance to one another because they depict psychological processes and content that is universal, and if we are to help veterans ＂come home＂ from war, this must be understood.

At once entertaining and instructive, readers will find that they’ve taken a journey through ancient Greece, war, the painful process of homecoming, and even into new territory within their own souls. After Odysseus successfully navigates his immediate postwar trials, he is called ＂to carry an oar far beyond his home, to a land where people do not use salt with their food (whose lives lack flavor) and who do not even know the sea.＂ He has a mission to share the truth of healing that he himself has integrated.