Some of you may have noticed that there was an extra person in class today. That was my friend Starly-Jazz Thoorsell, who asked if she could sit in on the class with me. I said sure, and this is what came of it. She requested that I change font colors to present it as it is written, sorry if some of you have a harder time reading this.
Look into my eyes see my soul see my hidden secrets
Discover what makes me tick discover what sets me off
See me for who I truly am see me past my own worst enemy
Look past my self hatred and see me for who I truly am
I am not scared I am not evil I am not full of hate I am not
I am truly happy I am truly at peace in every wandering thoughts
I am truly at peace in my ever wandering heart in my ever wandering
I wander to understand life I wander to understand emotion
I wander to understand the many thoughts that pop into my mind
So look past my wall look past my defences look past what I allow show
Discover the beauty of my tears the beauty of my laugh as I let my
soul truly shine through the hate of this world
see the beauty of this hidden self see the beauty of this true person who I
never let out and learn to love the secrecy of this person who I only
let out when in love when I begin to trust whole heartedly
see me for me
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Final Day of Classes
Presentations:
Abby: Conchis/Fowles, Nicholas/reader.
IMPORTANT QUOTE FROM THE MAGUS: "All that is past possesses our present."
"All answers are a form of death.", the story goes on because Nicholas lives at the end. We need to come to terms with not knowing. We are all stupid like Nicholas.
Jessica: The Monster and The Magus.
This started with a story about Jessica's tattoo, which was very interesting as she didn't know what she was getting until it was done. The underlying theme is Nicholas trying to find the monster in his maze, only to learn that that monster is himself. Now he can no longer be human, or beast, but a hybrid.
Jennifer: The Word Made Flesh.
This started out with a memory of bone hunting out by Fort Peck, with the ultimate prize being a complete buffalo skull. A baby starts with gurgling sounds, progresses to speech, and finally the written word. God went in reverse order: The Word groaned and man sprang from the dust. With the Eucharist we do not take power (which was typical of omophagia), but give grace. We wait for the voice singing in the darkness. This last part reminded me of the part in The Magician's Nephew where Aslan creates Narnia by singing in darkness.
Wena: The origins of the Olympics.
The original, or ancient, games were done so heroes could gain power and other material things, such as land. Each sport had a mythological story behind it. Wrestling was Zeus and Kronos fighting for control of the gods. Foot races come from Hermes, while horse racing came from Poseidon. There was much feasting, drinking, and ritual sacrifices. The athletes were fighting for their own honor, as well as the honor of their lands. There was a bit right at the beginning talking about the Olympic torch and flame, which in the modern games starts at the Temple of Hera, and goes around the world to the host city. Side note about the torch: When the winter games where held in Salt Lake City in 2002, the torch passed through Billings, I got to go out, freeze my butt off, and see it. It passed (for some reason) about three or four blocks from my house. The principal of my elementary school got to run it, but he wasn't the runner when I saw the torch.
Jill: Veering to the chathonic path.
Nicholas gets abducted into "the Underworld" and is supposed to accept death and be reborn, but of course he fails to understand what is going on, so he goes through the deed, but gets none of the benefits.
Danielle: Distorted view of reality.
Fale realities are created by not knowing who you are. Conchis tells Nicholas that he can't trust the reality around him, for he doesn't know who he is.
Mary Ann: Modern Myth and Ancient Myth.
Modern myth was covered by a disgusting picture of a "real" mermaid that washed up somewhere over in Asia. There was also mentioning of a girl who has been born with the entire lower half of her body fused. I'll mention here, that there may be two, the one she mentioned is not the one I watched the TLC special on a few years ago. Usually the legs can be separated like conjoined twins, but on occasion that cannot happen. Star Wars was apparently written to be a modern mythology because George Lucas realized that there was nothing for children to look up to. Last we have Andre the Giant who suffered from acromaglia (giantism), I may be wrong on the spelling for the medical term. There are various reports on his actual height. The Ancient myths were covered by a mythology newspaper that she created.
Review:
Have your blogs in by tomorrow morning (12/9/2012).
Logos = Word, specifically creative word.
Group Questions: 1) How many different versions of myth are there? infinite.
2) Who was Oprah compared to? Zeus.
3) Where did we get the name of our project "the shameful truth"? The silent film in The Magus.
4) Darrell had two great one liners, what were they? "That's all folks" and "here we go again"
5) What song was played during the credits in our presentation? "White Wedding" by Billy Idol.
6) Who were the characters at the funeral? Irish, pirate, Viking, cowboy, Chinese, and Egyptian. In that order.
"All that is past possesses our present."/ "Every answer is a form of death." from The Magus.
The succata
Adonis ritual: when someone dies too young.
sacrifice: to make something sacred.
masque: a form of theatre.
Chung Tzu and the Butterfly
The Magus = The God Game.
Orpheus and Eurydice (divine musician).
Bhagavagita.
The Swerve toward eternity.
Eschatology
Metapsychosis
parabola.
NOTE: I may have missed a few of these things. I can only write so fast and we were going really fast. Juniper and Vittoria also have these on their blogs. Juniper said that she got all of it.
Abby: Conchis/Fowles, Nicholas/reader.
IMPORTANT QUOTE FROM THE MAGUS: "All that is past possesses our present."
"All answers are a form of death.", the story goes on because Nicholas lives at the end. We need to come to terms with not knowing. We are all stupid like Nicholas.
Jessica: The Monster and The Magus.
This started with a story about Jessica's tattoo, which was very interesting as she didn't know what she was getting until it was done. The underlying theme is Nicholas trying to find the monster in his maze, only to learn that that monster is himself. Now he can no longer be human, or beast, but a hybrid.
Jennifer: The Word Made Flesh.
This started out with a memory of bone hunting out by Fort Peck, with the ultimate prize being a complete buffalo skull. A baby starts with gurgling sounds, progresses to speech, and finally the written word. God went in reverse order: The Word groaned and man sprang from the dust. With the Eucharist we do not take power (which was typical of omophagia), but give grace. We wait for the voice singing in the darkness. This last part reminded me of the part in The Magician's Nephew where Aslan creates Narnia by singing in darkness.
Wena: The origins of the Olympics.
The original, or ancient, games were done so heroes could gain power and other material things, such as land. Each sport had a mythological story behind it. Wrestling was Zeus and Kronos fighting for control of the gods. Foot races come from Hermes, while horse racing came from Poseidon. There was much feasting, drinking, and ritual sacrifices. The athletes were fighting for their own honor, as well as the honor of their lands. There was a bit right at the beginning talking about the Olympic torch and flame, which in the modern games starts at the Temple of Hera, and goes around the world to the host city. Side note about the torch: When the winter games where held in Salt Lake City in 2002, the torch passed through Billings, I got to go out, freeze my butt off, and see it. It passed (for some reason) about three or four blocks from my house. The principal of my elementary school got to run it, but he wasn't the runner when I saw the torch.
Jill: Veering to the chathonic path.
Nicholas gets abducted into "the Underworld" and is supposed to accept death and be reborn, but of course he fails to understand what is going on, so he goes through the deed, but gets none of the benefits.
Danielle: Distorted view of reality.
Fale realities are created by not knowing who you are. Conchis tells Nicholas that he can't trust the reality around him, for he doesn't know who he is.
Mary Ann: Modern Myth and Ancient Myth.
Modern myth was covered by a disgusting picture of a "real" mermaid that washed up somewhere over in Asia. There was also mentioning of a girl who has been born with the entire lower half of her body fused. I'll mention here, that there may be two, the one she mentioned is not the one I watched the TLC special on a few years ago. Usually the legs can be separated like conjoined twins, but on occasion that cannot happen. Star Wars was apparently written to be a modern mythology because George Lucas realized that there was nothing for children to look up to. Last we have Andre the Giant who suffered from acromaglia (giantism), I may be wrong on the spelling for the medical term. There are various reports on his actual height. The Ancient myths were covered by a mythology newspaper that she created.
Review:
Have your blogs in by tomorrow morning (12/9/2012).
Logos = Word, specifically creative word.
Group Questions: 1) How many different versions of myth are there? infinite.
2) Who was Oprah compared to? Zeus.
3) Where did we get the name of our project "the shameful truth"? The silent film in The Magus.
4) Darrell had two great one liners, what were they? "That's all folks" and "here we go again"
5) What song was played during the credits in our presentation? "White Wedding" by Billy Idol.
6) Who were the characters at the funeral? Irish, pirate, Viking, cowboy, Chinese, and Egyptian. In that order.
"All that is past possesses our present."/ "Every answer is a form of death." from The Magus.
The succata
Adonis ritual: when someone dies too young.
sacrifice: to make something sacred.
masque: a form of theatre.
Chung Tzu and the Butterfly
The Magus = The God Game.
Orpheus and Eurydice (divine musician).
Bhagavagita.
The Swerve toward eternity.
Eschatology
Metapsychosis
parabola.
NOTE: I may have missed a few of these things. I can only write so fast and we were going really fast. Juniper and Vittoria also have these on their blogs. Juniper said that she got all of it.
Make-up: Presentations Day 2
Jerrod: Parenting in Mythology.
Jerrod started with the relationship of Uranus and Kronos. Kronos (Saturn in Rome) ate his children, until Zeus came along and was hidden (on the island of Crete if I remember correctly) until aided by Metis (whom Zeus will later eat), killed Kronos with a poisoned drink. We moved on to Tantalus who cooked his own child (Pelops) to feed to the gods, just to see if they'd notice. Mothers are just as bad, Gaia and Hippodyla (Pelops's wife). Essentially there are few good parents in mythology (Zeus is a good parent, compared to Kronos and Uranus).
Lucy: The Magus and fate.
Greek ate, or divine infatuation. Nicholas gets possessed by Conchis in the book. There was also mentioning of all the chess references that are made in the book, and how Conchis is a better player than Nicholas is. Nicholas and Oedipus are very similar in that they try to run away from their fate, but only manage to run into it. Conchis and his people only want to open peoples minds and reintroduce mystery.
Zach: Relationship appeals in The Magus.
Zach focused on three relationships: Nicholas and Allison (Psyche and Cupid) where Nicholas is Psyche, and doesn't realize what he has with Allison. Nicholas and Julie/Lily/Isis (Hades and Persephone) Julie is very complex, and Nicholas just wants to get away from Allison. Nicholas and Conchis (pawn and Zeus or Aptae) Conchis is a puppetteer who always tells half-truths to get Nicholas to do what Conchis deems necissary.
Sam: The Magus = The World (governed by our past).
Our society is focused on judgement. The labrinth is fed to us through Nicholas, and is always forming. We have forgotten that the gods are at work in the modern world. I also have written down the everlasting opinions of the people, which I remember as relating to myth.
Quentin: Hidden agendas and double lies in The Magus.
There is a veil covering the characters. Quentin compared Conchis to Hades because he is very deceptive in the book. Nicholas finally learns at the end, but not well enough. Life is a veil waiting to be lifted. This was inspired by the book Heart of Darkness.
Jeremy: Comparison with The Adjustment Bureau.
Nicholas has issues with his free will. In The Adjustment Bureau, a politician meets a woman, then sees her again on a bus and they exchange information and what-not. He arrives at his office, and people are there to "get him back on track" with the story that The Chairman has written for him, where he was never supposed to meet the woman again. The movie is spent trying to get away from the Adjustment Bureau. Free will is present in name only in both the book and the movie. We are all part of a huge game.
Sherwood: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: The Magus.
Beginning- Nicholas is ready for an adventure, Allison could be his new mystery if only he'd see.
Middle- Nicholas doesn't know who he is when he's in the labrinth (or really at any other part of the book). Everyone is convincing in their lies that Nicholas is stuck in the middle. He comes face to face with his own demon.
Ends- "The beginning is included in the end" or "the end is included in the beginning" I don't remember exactly how that one went. Nicholas finds himself waiting for Allison after is massive, yet incomplete, transformation.
Andy: Predestination.
Nicholas is stuck in a fog trying to figure things out, though everything is before him. Nicholas fails at his hero story, because he is a stagnant character. Unless you do something drastic, you will just get pushed along.
Tori (Vittoria): Freedom and Determination.
1) 7
2) 63
3) 9
4) 4
5) D
6) Denmark
7) K
8) Kangaroo
9) O
10) Orange.
This is a statistics exercise concerning the first thing that pops into people's minds (Question 1, concerning a number 1-10). The rest of this comes from following the instructions for the questions, and the majority of people should end up with a kangaroo in Denmark eating an orange. In the Bhagavagita Krishnu convinces Arguna to fight, but Krishnu already knew that the man would fight. For Krishnu is God, who is also compared ot Conchis, and Arguna to Nicholas.
Ashley: "Inferno": fraud and deceit are at the bottom of Hell.
Deceit is defined as the severing of bonds. Nicholas is deceitful to the women in his life. Boy meets girl. Boy pushes girl away. Boy learns. Boy begs girl back. This is a story we're all familiar with. We need to purify the cycle to start over.
Darrell: Here we go again.
Darrell compared Nicholas to many of the Greek heroes, all depending on what he was doing in the book at the time. Oedipus shows up three different times throughout the book. Only the minor details are our own, the story has been played out thousands of millions of times before. Deja vu.
Lauren: The three regimes of godly interaction with the world.
Conviviality, rape, indifference. Nicholas is an atheist, showing indifference. Adonis gets boared by a bull for rejecting Aphrodite, and Nicholas gets compared to that in the book. There is a lot of violence used against Nicholas, and he still tries to overcome divine power.
Matthew: 7 "eccentric" geniuses who were really just crazy.
Everyone in The Magus is insane. Nicholas is the most useless when he is sane. We have to embrace the insanity to be mythoogically inspired. Go check out the list of 7 "eccentric" geniuses, it was interesting.
Justin: I have noted down that he got extra credit for going ahead of his scheduled time.
Nicholas is the hero, in the mythological sense (I have noted above this that it means he does the deeds for sex and no higher purpose). Who encounters the deceitful female Julie/Lily/Isis/Rose, and the trickster Conchis. Mythological archetypes have carried over into modern literature.
Jerrod started with the relationship of Uranus and Kronos. Kronos (Saturn in Rome) ate his children, until Zeus came along and was hidden (on the island of Crete if I remember correctly) until aided by Metis (whom Zeus will later eat), killed Kronos with a poisoned drink. We moved on to Tantalus who cooked his own child (Pelops) to feed to the gods, just to see if they'd notice. Mothers are just as bad, Gaia and Hippodyla (Pelops's wife). Essentially there are few good parents in mythology (Zeus is a good parent, compared to Kronos and Uranus).
Lucy: The Magus and fate.
Greek ate, or divine infatuation. Nicholas gets possessed by Conchis in the book. There was also mentioning of all the chess references that are made in the book, and how Conchis is a better player than Nicholas is. Nicholas and Oedipus are very similar in that they try to run away from their fate, but only manage to run into it. Conchis and his people only want to open peoples minds and reintroduce mystery.
Zach: Relationship appeals in The Magus.
Zach focused on three relationships: Nicholas and Allison (Psyche and Cupid) where Nicholas is Psyche, and doesn't realize what he has with Allison. Nicholas and Julie/Lily/Isis (Hades and Persephone) Julie is very complex, and Nicholas just wants to get away from Allison. Nicholas and Conchis (pawn and Zeus or Aptae) Conchis is a puppetteer who always tells half-truths to get Nicholas to do what Conchis deems necissary.
Sam: The Magus = The World (governed by our past).
Our society is focused on judgement. The labrinth is fed to us through Nicholas, and is always forming. We have forgotten that the gods are at work in the modern world. I also have written down the everlasting opinions of the people, which I remember as relating to myth.
Quentin: Hidden agendas and double lies in The Magus.
There is a veil covering the characters. Quentin compared Conchis to Hades because he is very deceptive in the book. Nicholas finally learns at the end, but not well enough. Life is a veil waiting to be lifted. This was inspired by the book Heart of Darkness.
Jeremy: Comparison with The Adjustment Bureau.
Nicholas has issues with his free will. In The Adjustment Bureau, a politician meets a woman, then sees her again on a bus and they exchange information and what-not. He arrives at his office, and people are there to "get him back on track" with the story that The Chairman has written for him, where he was never supposed to meet the woman again. The movie is spent trying to get away from the Adjustment Bureau. Free will is present in name only in both the book and the movie. We are all part of a huge game.
Sherwood: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: The Magus.
Beginning- Nicholas is ready for an adventure, Allison could be his new mystery if only he'd see.
Middle- Nicholas doesn't know who he is when he's in the labrinth (or really at any other part of the book). Everyone is convincing in their lies that Nicholas is stuck in the middle. He comes face to face with his own demon.
Ends- "The beginning is included in the end" or "the end is included in the beginning" I don't remember exactly how that one went. Nicholas finds himself waiting for Allison after is massive, yet incomplete, transformation.
Andy: Predestination.
Nicholas is stuck in a fog trying to figure things out, though everything is before him. Nicholas fails at his hero story, because he is a stagnant character. Unless you do something drastic, you will just get pushed along.
Tori (Vittoria): Freedom and Determination.
1) 7
2) 63
3) 9
4) 4
5) D
6) Denmark
7) K
8) Kangaroo
9) O
10) Orange.
This is a statistics exercise concerning the first thing that pops into people's minds (Question 1, concerning a number 1-10). The rest of this comes from following the instructions for the questions, and the majority of people should end up with a kangaroo in Denmark eating an orange. In the Bhagavagita Krishnu convinces Arguna to fight, but Krishnu already knew that the man would fight. For Krishnu is God, who is also compared ot Conchis, and Arguna to Nicholas.
Ashley: "Inferno": fraud and deceit are at the bottom of Hell.
Deceit is defined as the severing of bonds. Nicholas is deceitful to the women in his life. Boy meets girl. Boy pushes girl away. Boy learns. Boy begs girl back. This is a story we're all familiar with. We need to purify the cycle to start over.
Darrell: Here we go again.
Darrell compared Nicholas to many of the Greek heroes, all depending on what he was doing in the book at the time. Oedipus shows up three different times throughout the book. Only the minor details are our own, the story has been played out thousands of millions of times before. Deja vu.
Lauren: The three regimes of godly interaction with the world.
Conviviality, rape, indifference. Nicholas is an atheist, showing indifference. Adonis gets boared by a bull for rejecting Aphrodite, and Nicholas gets compared to that in the book. There is a lot of violence used against Nicholas, and he still tries to overcome divine power.
Matthew: 7 "eccentric" geniuses who were really just crazy.
Everyone in The Magus is insane. Nicholas is the most useless when he is sane. We have to embrace the insanity to be mythoogically inspired. Go check out the list of 7 "eccentric" geniuses, it was interesting.
Justin: I have noted down that he got extra credit for going ahead of his scheduled time.
Nicholas is the hero, in the mythological sense (I have noted above this that it means he does the deeds for sex and no higher purpose). Who encounters the deceitful female Julie/Lily/Isis/Rose, and the trickster Conchis. Mythological archetypes have carried over into modern literature.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Final Presentations Day 1
Christine: Disney, Grimm, and the myth behind it all.
Christine compared myth to a tree, with fairy tales being a vine that grows on said tree. She also stated that no culture has it's own stories. They are combinations of what they brought with them, and the stories that were there before.
I was next (darn my last name): Mythology in Star Trek.
I covered the season 2 episode from the original series called "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Now I do understand why I always wanted to misspell it as "Who Mourns for Adonis?", which Dr. Sexson brought up at the end of my presentation. I've already put my paper up here, basically I just go over the episodes that have mythological references in the original series and The Next Generation.
Megan: Women in The Magus.
Megan talked about how the women in The Magus are deceitful, and compared Allison to Helen in that she was absent throughout most of the book but kept haunting Nicholas. The other thing I have written down for this is that women need to show men that they are powerful.
Courtney: Feminine rolls in initiation.
Women force men to look at their inner demons through betrayal. Betrayal is woman's heroic action.
Juniper: Persephone and Hades in The Magus. Persephone is Lily, and Hades is Joe. This is indicated by the Eliza Pound passage. Lily's mother is already considered Demeter. Joe's early roles of guard and Anubis, indicate a Hades like character. The relationship is presented as "right and good". This all indicates that Nicholas's view of sex and relationships needs to change in order for him to have a relationship, this costs him Allison.
Maddie: A crossover between The Magus and Stranger than Fiction.
In The Magus Nicholas hears about Bourani, and it sucks him into his own separate reality, different from the world he actually occupies. He then learns that he was part of an experiment that was supposed to better him, but did not. In Stranger than Fiction, Harold Creek starts to hear his life being narrated, he then learns that he is a character in a book, and that this story line will move forward without him doing anything. He then seeks out the author, Karen Eiffel, and reads her book, discovering that it is his reality.
Eric: Comparison of The Magus to The Lesser Blessed.
Nicholas has bipolar thoughts about Allison which starts his initiation. The Lesser Blessed is a story about a Native American (Canadian) who has a rather horrible life, and kills his father, but knows the power of story telling. Through love, the dead can live. Be aware of your surroundings.
Rosemary: The Proscenium of The Magus revealed.
Rosemary essentially retold The Magus all while handing out cards to us that had words that she had to look up while she was reading The Magus.
Kevin: Death and trickery.
Kevin compared the rolling of the dice at Bourani to the creation of music by Hermes after annoying Apollo. He also mentioned the women of The Magus as being like the Sirens from the Iliad. He mentions how Persephone is tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds.
Bailey: Board game poster.
Bailey compared The Magus to a board game where you go around the board and end up where you started. Also stating that no matter how Nicholas might have done things, it all would have ended the same.
Parker: Nicholas Urfe's lack of development.
Nicholas's view of reality is very different from the reality of the situation, he also doesn't seem to be able to recognize this. He goes to Phraxos to free himself but truly confines himself more. Conchis shows Nicholas how unrealistic he is, and how destructive this is in relationships. Nicholas is truly trying to escape from his mind.
Stephanie: Mirrors and The Magus.
Stephanie brought a mirror with her to demonstrate her point. The mirror represented the future, where Nicholas's reflection is his "future self". We change, but the mirror does not. Cracking mirrors will give different patterns, but the result is always the same. The gods explained what we could not, and though they are gone, the cracks remain for us to follow.
NOTICE: Everyone- please come to class next week. There weren't many people there on Thursday, and it'll make it harder for our test review next Thursday if we have to spend the entire time on individual presentations. Just in case we don't have many people again, those who would have gone next Thursday may want to be ready in case we have room for you next Tuesday, that will keep things rolling along quite nicely and make everyone happy. PLEASE COME TO CLASS FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTER!!!!!!!!!!! ONLY TWO MORE CLASSES!!!!!!!
Christine compared myth to a tree, with fairy tales being a vine that grows on said tree. She also stated that no culture has it's own stories. They are combinations of what they brought with them, and the stories that were there before.
I was next (darn my last name): Mythology in Star Trek.
I covered the season 2 episode from the original series called "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Now I do understand why I always wanted to misspell it as "Who Mourns for Adonis?", which Dr. Sexson brought up at the end of my presentation. I've already put my paper up here, basically I just go over the episodes that have mythological references in the original series and The Next Generation.
Megan: Women in The Magus.
Megan talked about how the women in The Magus are deceitful, and compared Allison to Helen in that she was absent throughout most of the book but kept haunting Nicholas. The other thing I have written down for this is that women need to show men that they are powerful.
Courtney: Feminine rolls in initiation.
Women force men to look at their inner demons through betrayal. Betrayal is woman's heroic action.
Juniper: Persephone and Hades in The Magus. Persephone is Lily, and Hades is Joe. This is indicated by the Eliza Pound passage. Lily's mother is already considered Demeter. Joe's early roles of guard and Anubis, indicate a Hades like character. The relationship is presented as "right and good". This all indicates that Nicholas's view of sex and relationships needs to change in order for him to have a relationship, this costs him Allison.
Maddie: A crossover between The Magus and Stranger than Fiction.
In The Magus Nicholas hears about Bourani, and it sucks him into his own separate reality, different from the world he actually occupies. He then learns that he was part of an experiment that was supposed to better him, but did not. In Stranger than Fiction, Harold Creek starts to hear his life being narrated, he then learns that he is a character in a book, and that this story line will move forward without him doing anything. He then seeks out the author, Karen Eiffel, and reads her book, discovering that it is his reality.
Eric: Comparison of The Magus to The Lesser Blessed.
Nicholas has bipolar thoughts about Allison which starts his initiation. The Lesser Blessed is a story about a Native American (Canadian) who has a rather horrible life, and kills his father, but knows the power of story telling. Through love, the dead can live. Be aware of your surroundings.
Rosemary: The Proscenium of The Magus revealed.
Rosemary essentially retold The Magus all while handing out cards to us that had words that she had to look up while she was reading The Magus.
Kevin: Death and trickery.
Kevin compared the rolling of the dice at Bourani to the creation of music by Hermes after annoying Apollo. He also mentioned the women of The Magus as being like the Sirens from the Iliad. He mentions how Persephone is tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds.
Bailey: Board game poster.
Bailey compared The Magus to a board game where you go around the board and end up where you started. Also stating that no matter how Nicholas might have done things, it all would have ended the same.
Parker: Nicholas Urfe's lack of development.
Nicholas's view of reality is very different from the reality of the situation, he also doesn't seem to be able to recognize this. He goes to Phraxos to free himself but truly confines himself more. Conchis shows Nicholas how unrealistic he is, and how destructive this is in relationships. Nicholas is truly trying to escape from his mind.
Stephanie: Mirrors and The Magus.
Stephanie brought a mirror with her to demonstrate her point. The mirror represented the future, where Nicholas's reflection is his "future self". We change, but the mirror does not. Cracking mirrors will give different patterns, but the result is always the same. The gods explained what we could not, and though they are gone, the cracks remain for us to follow.
NOTICE: Everyone- please come to class next week. There weren't many people there on Thursday, and it'll make it harder for our test review next Thursday if we have to spend the entire time on individual presentations. Just in case we don't have many people again, those who would have gone next Thursday may want to be ready in case we have room for you next Tuesday, that will keep things rolling along quite nicely and make everyone happy. PLEASE COME TO CLASS FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTER!!!!!!!!!!! ONLY TWO MORE CLASSES!!!!!!!
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Star Trek Mythology paper
Theresa Brown
November 30, 2011
LIT 285 Dr. Sexson
Final Paper
The myth of Star Trek
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise her five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”These words start the opening sequence for every episode of the original series of Star Trek. There is a surprising amount of mythology in Star Trek. There is even one specific episode in the original series where the crew of the Enterprise finds Apollo.
The episode in question, “Who Mourns for Adonis?” premiered on September 22, 1967. The episode begins with the Enterprise being captured by an energy field that appears much like a large green hand extending from the planet they are surveying. They then talk to the image of Apollo’s head, who greats them warmly enough at first, comparing the crew of the Enterprise to Agamemnon, Hector, and Odysseus, but not telling them who he is. Kirk’s defiance angers Apollo who threatens to crush the ship. Kirk relents to Apollo to save the ship; he’s allowed to bring down a landing party. Apollo requests only that Spock be left behind because “… he’s much like Pan, and Pan bored me.” Kirk, Scotty, Chekhov, McCoy, and Caroline (the archeology and anthropology/ancient civilizations officer) form the away party. Apollo states who he is after Kirk asked how he knew about Hector and Odysseus. Apollo informs them that the Greek gods were an intrepid band of travelers who had been to Earth 5,000 years ago (Star Trek is set in the 23rd century). Apollo wants the crew of the Enterprise to worship him as the ancient Greeks did. He also disables all of the technological “toys” so the landing party can’t leave. Caroline gives a basic background of Apollo after he disappears following a demonstration of his powers.
Kirk comes to the conclusion that it is possible for Apollo to be who he says he is. If Apollo is right about the Greek gods being travelers, and they came to earth they could easily be taken as gods by the ancient Greeks. Dr. McCoy found that Apollo was essentially human with minor variances and an extra organ in his chest. Chekhov compares Apollo to the electric eel of earth, in that he can channel energy through his own body without coming to harm. Apollo returns and takes Caroline away; he tells her that gods need love and admiration like people need food. She asked him what happened to the other gods. He said that they could not survive being simply memories, and that they stretched themselves so thin that eventually “only the wind remained”. Apollo had remained because he had faith that mankind would return to them someday. Apollo returned to the rest of the landing party without Caroline which caused Scotty to become infuriated (he really likes Caroline). Scotty tries to attack Apollo, who repels that, and chokes Kirk when Kirk began to argue over their treatment. After Apollo attacks Kirk, he disappears again. Chekhov notices that Apollo looked either pained or tired as he disappeared, Chekhov tells Kirk this when he recovers from being choked. The landing party plans to overwork Apollo to try to free the ship.
Caroline is with Apollo when he returns. She intervenes when the rest of the landing party tries to implement their plan. Kirk formulates another plan and talks with Caroline alone after the incident. He tells her that the only thing that she really has is the rest of humanity, and that she must remember that and spurn Apollo in order to regain their freedom. Kirk sees being forced to stay on the planet and worship Apollo as a form of slavery. Caroline returns to Apollo and spurns him by saying that she had only been studying him the entire time. The Enterprise has managed to make some holes in the energy field that holds the ship in place, so that they can destroy the temple which is the source of Apollo’s power for his “tricks”. After it is destroyed, Apollo states that he would have cherished the crew like a father would his children and wonders aloud if worship and obedience were too much to ask of them. Kirk states that mankind has outgrown the gods, and that what Apollo asked was something that mankind could no longer give him. Apollo then calls to the other Greek gods and says that they were right (specifically mentioning Athena right there) in saying that there is no more room for the gods. Then he too fades away like the other gods. The episode ends with Kirk musing “I wonder if it would have hurt us to gather just a few laurel leaves.”
This is the episode specifically related to Greek mythology, but there were many episodes that covered mythological points. In the season two premiere “Amok Time” Spock must return to his home planet of Vulcan in order to take a wife or die. There is a special ceremony performed similar to a wedding. The kun-ut-kal-ifee is the name of the Vulcan ritual, which means marriage or challenge. It isn’t stated in the episode, but it is generally accepted that Vulcans are mentally bonded to their future mate when they are seven (it’s stated in the episode that they are children, but not a specific age), and that this link will draw them together at the appropriate time to kun-ut-kal-ifee. The woman then gets the option of getting out of the arraigned marriage by issuing the kal-ifee, or challenge. Then she must choose a champion to fight against the Vulcan she is bonded to. She can choose any male present. She then belongs to the winner of the kal-ifee. It is stated that the ritual of the kun-ut-kal-ifee has been handed down “from the time of the beginning.” Spock becomes so engulfed in his need to mate that he fights, and believes he kills, Kirk in the kal-ifee. This need also weakens Spock to some extent, and nearly caused him to die.
There are several other episodes that show mythology quite well. “Bread and Circuses” shows a parallel Earth where Rome never fell and the cars are named after the gods. “Plato’s Stepchildren” shows a planet of psychics who have based their society on the writings of Plato. “Miri” shows a planet whose people tried to find immortality but ended up killing everyone who was an adult. The children did live amazingly long lives, but eventually they too would go through puberty and thus die. “Elaan of Troyus” is an episode where the leader of one planet must be married to the leader of another planet in the same solar system. She seems almost Amazonian, but she really represents Helen in the story of the Trojan War. “The Way to Eden” shows a group of people who want to return to the lifestyle of Eden, and to Eden itself. However, when they find it, the surface is so acidic that everyone who remained on it died of burns. “The Naked Time” has a strange version of Dionysus run amok on the Enterprise. This time he takes the form of a virus that has nearly the same effect as alcohol, and is spread through physical contact.
There is an episode in Star Trek: the Next Generation that involves a people who speak solely in metaphor. The problem with this is that their metaphors are based on their own epic poem, which the crew of the Enterprise-D has no reference point for. Captain Picard does manage to learn enough of the story to determine that “Darmok and Jalad at Tonagra” is meant as cooperation between people. By cooperating with the other captain, a new word is created in their language for cooperation between different species.
The Star Trek movies also have a lot of mythology in them. Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan has Spock make the ultimate sacrifice for the ship. We resurrect him in Star Trek III: the Search for Spock. We learn at the beginning of The Search for Spock, that Vulcans actually can transfer their katra, or the essence of their beings (the soul), into another person. That person is to climb a mountain on Vulcan where they have their religious center, and the priestess will return the katra to the ancestors of the deceased Vulcan. If this is not done in a timely fashion the katra could drive the carrier crazy. Star Trek V: the Final Frontier has a crazy Vulcan (Sybok, Spock’s half-brother) take over the Enterprise and try to find God, and heaven. He tries to emotionally subjugate all of the crew by “taking away their pain”. This works well until he tries to do this with Spock by showing him the scene of his own birth and how their father (Sarek) considered Spock to be “so human.” Spock indicated that he had already come to terms with that assessment from Sarek. Star Trek Generations involves a dimension called “The Nexus” which gave you everything that you most desired. However, none of it was truly real and only created a loop where time would not move forward. This creates the illusion of a paradise, but is in fact not a paradise at all.
It has been stated that when a technology is shown that is beyond the audience’s comprehension it will appear to be magic. Star Trek takes this one step further and states that to a primitive culture advanced technology like that will appear to be the power of the gods. The wielders of these powers will therefore be held as gods in the minds of the people. Kirk indicates that in general people have embraced a monotheistic culture when he tells Apollo that the world is fine with just the one god. There are various implications about how live came to be in the universe. There is an episode, “Return to Tomorrow” where they find three consciousnesses held in orbs. These were once people of a species who committed global genocide. They once had had a great civilization that had spread its seed out throughout the galaxy. They wonder if humans are one of their colonies. Kirk indicates that humans appeared to have spawned without outside help. Spock however, says that the Vulcans might be one of those colonies.
After Caroline stops Apollo from killing Kirk, he takes her away and tells her that mankind thinks it has progressed, but it has simply forgotten all the things that gave life meaning. We have lost touch with our mythology, is essentially what he is saying. We can regain our touch with mythology by recognizing how it appears in our daily lives. Kirk could easily be compared to Zeus, both by the fact that he leads, and the fact that he gets with all the women, all the time. Spock could be compared to Athena as he is the fountain of knowledge on the show, though Apollo compares him to Pan and others compare him to the devil. Dr. McCoy would have to be Aeschylus, because he is determined to heal as many people as he can.
Works Cited
Star Trek: the Original Series. ©2011 CBS Studios. Series originally created by Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek: the Next Generation. © 2011 CBS Studios. Series originally created by Gene Roddenberry
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Group Presentations Day 3
Here's what we did in class today.
Group 5: Courtney, Parker, Lucy, Sherwood, Jennifer
They also did a movie. This was based off a wedding video that Jennifer did for a friend of hers. The actual filming and editing/producing was done by a friend of Courtney's who is a film major here. He got credited at the end, but I didn't quite catch the whole name. They told the story of Persephone in a very amusing way. Courtney was Persephone, who gets abducted by Hades (Parker). We cut back to the beginning where Hades asks Zeus (Sherwood) if he can have Persephone. Hermes (Lucy) sees Hades take Persephone and runs off to tell Demeter (Jennifer), who gets very mad and causes winter. She talks things over with Zeus and demands that there be a wedding. Hades demanded that there be something in writting to bind the marriage. They were also kind enough to provide us with popcorn.
Group 6: Kevin, Andy, Juniper, Wena, Lauren, and the Viking, who I would appreciate greatly if he'd leave his name, as I'm not sure of it.
With Quentin filling in the role of a body (Kyle Miller), we went through six different funerals without ever burying the body. We started with the Irish Wake lead by Andy. We used apple juice that group six provided for our toasts. Then Lauren came in with pirate/sea burials, she was interrupted by the Viking who covered their funeral rites. He in turn got interrupted by Kevin the cowboy who told us that cowboys used cedar coffins. Kevin the cowboy was interrupted by Wena who wanted a traditional Chinese funeral. She lead us in paying our respects by bowing to the deceased, and she "burned" some incense and money. She was interrupted by the arrival of Anubis (Juniper) who demanded that we mummify Kyle Miller and have a priest present to perform the correct prayers so that he may come alive in the afterlife. It ended with what appeared to be about everyone trying to either ensure that Kyle Miller was dead, or going on with their own rites all at once. In reference to one of the Viking rituals (where they kill a volunteer from the dead guy's harem, so she can go with him) we covered seti, or the Indian ritual where the wife of the deceased jumpes into the grave with him. Wena also noted that some people burn things other than paper money for the dead, such as paper cars.
Group 5: Courtney, Parker, Lucy, Sherwood, Jennifer
They also did a movie. This was based off a wedding video that Jennifer did for a friend of hers. The actual filming and editing/producing was done by a friend of Courtney's who is a film major here. He got credited at the end, but I didn't quite catch the whole name. They told the story of Persephone in a very amusing way. Courtney was Persephone, who gets abducted by Hades (Parker). We cut back to the beginning where Hades asks Zeus (Sherwood) if he can have Persephone. Hermes (Lucy) sees Hades take Persephone and runs off to tell Demeter (Jennifer), who gets very mad and causes winter. She talks things over with Zeus and demands that there be a wedding. Hades demanded that there be something in writting to bind the marriage. They were also kind enough to provide us with popcorn.
Group 6: Kevin, Andy, Juniper, Wena, Lauren, and the Viking, who I would appreciate greatly if he'd leave his name, as I'm not sure of it.
With Quentin filling in the role of a body (Kyle Miller), we went through six different funerals without ever burying the body. We started with the Irish Wake lead by Andy. We used apple juice that group six provided for our toasts. Then Lauren came in with pirate/sea burials, she was interrupted by the Viking who covered their funeral rites. He in turn got interrupted by Kevin the cowboy who told us that cowboys used cedar coffins. Kevin the cowboy was interrupted by Wena who wanted a traditional Chinese funeral. She lead us in paying our respects by bowing to the deceased, and she "burned" some incense and money. She was interrupted by the arrival of Anubis (Juniper) who demanded that we mummify Kyle Miller and have a priest present to perform the correct prayers so that he may come alive in the afterlife. It ended with what appeared to be about everyone trying to either ensure that Kyle Miller was dead, or going on with their own rites all at once. In reference to one of the Viking rituals (where they kill a volunteer from the dead guy's harem, so she can go with him) we covered seti, or the Indian ritual where the wife of the deceased jumpes into the grave with him. Wena also noted that some people burn things other than paper money for the dead, such as paper cars.
Group Presentations Day 2- the make up blog
Ooooooppppsssssss. Break got to me. We had some order reversal last Tuesday, group four went first.
Group 4: Jeremy, Stefanie, Rosemary, Megan, Darrel, Jessica
The theme of the presentation was how our view of mythology is altered as we go through life. They started with a quote stating that myth is out there to wake us up, not for us to wake it up. We first meet myth in it's most pure form through cartoons when we are children. We think nothing of talking rabbits who are taller than people. Bugs Bunny is the trickster of the cartoon world. The media is how we initiate the youth of the world into adulthood. There was a South Park reference in there somewhere around this part. In Western culture we believe that people need to learn for themselves. I have a somewhat random line in here about the succubus=lamia (Celtic tradition)= BAD women. The succubus were the female versions of the incubus. They had fun with the men, and typically killed them in the process. I have high school is a labrynth and college is merely a continuation of that labrynth. We are our heroes in high school and college. We also meet Dionysus and Aphrodite in college, though some meet both in high school. Media feuls the narcissitic tendencies of our society. We went over the story of King Midas and how everything he touched turned to gold. Group four left us with the question: Do we lose innocense as we age?
Group 3: Danielle, Ashley, Eric, Abby, Quentin, Bailey, myself
We did a video, Mainly it was pictures though we did have some interesting videos of us asking questions of random people in the bars. I was the only one whose character was not from the Greek mythology. I was Dorothy, and we did in fact take a picture of me in costume outside the Ruby Slipper, but it didn't make it into the video for editing purposes. We had several pictures (more than were shown, and a few videoes) of Artemis (Bailey) shooting people. For those who were there and are wondering who the guy in the blue was supposed to be, Poseidon. Eric (Hades) couldn't make it that night. We had some good pictures of Zeus (Ashley) seducing Io (Abby). We did try to clear off the Yello Brick Road for my pictures, but it was also amazingly cold out that night. We had our pictures and videoes separated out by quotes from Calasso.
Group 4: Jeremy, Stefanie, Rosemary, Megan, Darrel, Jessica
The theme of the presentation was how our view of mythology is altered as we go through life. They started with a quote stating that myth is out there to wake us up, not for us to wake it up. We first meet myth in it's most pure form through cartoons when we are children. We think nothing of talking rabbits who are taller than people. Bugs Bunny is the trickster of the cartoon world. The media is how we initiate the youth of the world into adulthood. There was a South Park reference in there somewhere around this part. In Western culture we believe that people need to learn for themselves. I have a somewhat random line in here about the succubus=lamia (Celtic tradition)= BAD women. The succubus were the female versions of the incubus. They had fun with the men, and typically killed them in the process. I have high school is a labrynth and college is merely a continuation of that labrynth. We are our heroes in high school and college. We also meet Dionysus and Aphrodite in college, though some meet both in high school. Media feuls the narcissitic tendencies of our society. We went over the story of King Midas and how everything he touched turned to gold. Group four left us with the question: Do we lose innocense as we age?
Group 3: Danielle, Ashley, Eric, Abby, Quentin, Bailey, myself
We did a video, Mainly it was pictures though we did have some interesting videos of us asking questions of random people in the bars. I was the only one whose character was not from the Greek mythology. I was Dorothy, and we did in fact take a picture of me in costume outside the Ruby Slipper, but it didn't make it into the video for editing purposes. We had several pictures (more than were shown, and a few videoes) of Artemis (Bailey) shooting people. For those who were there and are wondering who the guy in the blue was supposed to be, Poseidon. Eric (Hades) couldn't make it that night. We had some good pictures of Zeus (Ashley) seducing Io (Abby). We did try to clear off the Yello Brick Road for my pictures, but it was also amazingly cold out that night. We had our pictures and videoes separated out by quotes from Calasso.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Group projects day 1
Group one: Jason, Jill, Zach M., Matthew, Christine
Group one did a "choose your own myth" powerpoint. This required class participation as we went around and chose what the character was doing. We came across several different myths, including the one where it seems that no matter what option you chose you ended up with Oedipus. We determined that there were about 4500 (according to Andrew) variations to the storylines dependant on the choices made. It was quite entertaining.
Group two: Sam, Tori, Justin, Madi (Zach B. was supposed to be in this group but I believe worked out something different with Dr. Sexson. I heard them discussing it before class started.)
Group two did a powerpoint where we matched celebrities with Greek gods/goddesses. We had Charlie Sheen as Dionysus, Micheal Phelps as Poseidon, Elizabeth Taylor as Aphrodite, Usain Bolt as Hermes, and Oprah Winfrey as Zeus. Then they moved on to stereotypes of people. We covered the Clintons and adultry, Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, Andrew Jackson the war hero, Napoleon Bonaparte not the movie, and Marie Antoinette. The French never did like her, if I remember right her marriage to King Louis XVI was for political reasons. We also watched a great SNL skit where the gods were trying to figure out who was the God of Finances. It was quite hilarious. Dr. Sexson added a clip from Suddenly Last Summer which is an Elizabeth Taylor movie where there is a specific scene where she rises from the ocean, very much like Aphrodite.
Groups three and four present on Tuesday.
Group one did a "choose your own myth" powerpoint. This required class participation as we went around and chose what the character was doing. We came across several different myths, including the one where it seems that no matter what option you chose you ended up with Oedipus. We determined that there were about 4500 (according to Andrew) variations to the storylines dependant on the choices made. It was quite entertaining.
Group two: Sam, Tori, Justin, Madi (Zach B. was supposed to be in this group but I believe worked out something different with Dr. Sexson. I heard them discussing it before class started.)
Group two did a powerpoint where we matched celebrities with Greek gods/goddesses. We had Charlie Sheen as Dionysus, Micheal Phelps as Poseidon, Elizabeth Taylor as Aphrodite, Usain Bolt as Hermes, and Oprah Winfrey as Zeus. Then they moved on to stereotypes of people. We covered the Clintons and adultry, Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, Andrew Jackson the war hero, Napoleon Bonaparte not the movie, and Marie Antoinette. The French never did like her, if I remember right her marriage to King Louis XVI was for political reasons. We also watched a great SNL skit where the gods were trying to figure out who was the God of Finances. It was quite hilarious. Dr. Sexson added a clip from Suddenly Last Summer which is an Elizabeth Taylor movie where there is a specific scene where she rises from the ocean, very much like Aphrodite.
Groups three and four present on Tuesday.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Nicholas Urfe, meet Theseus--- he's in the mirror
"It was partly at the thought of meeting Julie, partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe. Now I really was Theseus; somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited; and perhaps the Minotaur." (Fowles, p. 313)
Let's break this down shall we? Pagination is from the copy the bookstore had (the white cover with the woman stripping, or getting dressed I can't tell for sure, in the O in Fowles, it's always disturbed me a little.)
"It was partly at the thought of meeting Julie," It being the pounding of his heart faster than it should. I left that sentence out because I didn't find it necessary. Usually when one's heart races at the thought of meeting someone, there is some strong emotional attachment between the people. This attachment may be one-sided, but it is there. Now we all know that Nicholas falls in love with Julie (or whatever her real name is), and it probably started here, this is one of the first signs that he admits to.
"partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe." Most of this is obvious, mazes are by nature mysterious, especially when we weren't fully aware that we're entering into one. Mazes mesmerize us not only because of their complexity, but also that we do not know what we will find within the maze. This being a metaphorical maze makes it that much harder. You can't go back and try a different branch if you find yourself at a dead end, you are completely reliant on the people who are creating the maze around you to guide you though it. I once went through a physical maze in a manner similar to the metaphorical maze. I was at a church camp, and an area was set aside and there were several balls placed within the area in random locations. The person going through the course was blindfolded. Each person had a partner who gave them directions through the course. If you stepped on a ball you would die and have to start over from the beginning. About six people were on the course at one time, and there was a counsellor walking about in the course being the voice of the Devil and would try to get us to step on the balls. When one partner successfully completed the course the roles would reverse. The world is full of voices, and we have to learn to listen to the right one. We can't just use the voice of the other guides, their partners are in different locations, and so their information doesn't apply. It has to be the voice that is aimed at you.
"Now I really was Theseus;"As we discussed when we were covering the middles, we are our own heroes. It wasn't just right then that he was Theseus, he always was, he just wasn't aware of it. He could have given the name of any hero he wanted, but it would be the same. He is the hero of his story, he just has to realize it. We all have to realize that we are the heroes. We can't wait for someone to be our hero.
"somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited;" Ariadne of course referring to Julie of course. If we are the heroes of our stories, it makes sense that the people we meet and interact with are the other characters of our story. From reading Calasso, we know that things didn't work out between Theseus and Ariadne, which lead up to her being ditched on a beach somewhere to be found by Dionysus. As I still haven't actually finished The Magus, I don't know if we are quite that bad to Julie, but I think that we are truly that bad to Nicholas.
"and perhaps the Minotaur." All good stories require a protagonist (hero), and an antagonist (bad guy). The Minotaur is Theseus's, but who is Nicholas's antagonist? It seems to be Conchis, but I have no clear idea if that is true. Conchis seems to actually be trying to help Nicholas by opening his eyes to the reality that he carries mythology around with him. By reading the book, in part or in whole, we get the same realization, without the high price that Nicholas payed.
Let's break this down shall we? Pagination is from the copy the bookstore had (the white cover with the woman stripping, or getting dressed I can't tell for sure, in the O in Fowles, it's always disturbed me a little.)
"It was partly at the thought of meeting Julie," It being the pounding of his heart faster than it should. I left that sentence out because I didn't find it necessary. Usually when one's heart races at the thought of meeting someone, there is some strong emotional attachment between the people. This attachment may be one-sided, but it is there. Now we all know that Nicholas falls in love with Julie (or whatever her real name is), and it probably started here, this is one of the first signs that he admits to.
"partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe." Most of this is obvious, mazes are by nature mysterious, especially when we weren't fully aware that we're entering into one. Mazes mesmerize us not only because of their complexity, but also that we do not know what we will find within the maze. This being a metaphorical maze makes it that much harder. You can't go back and try a different branch if you find yourself at a dead end, you are completely reliant on the people who are creating the maze around you to guide you though it. I once went through a physical maze in a manner similar to the metaphorical maze. I was at a church camp, and an area was set aside and there were several balls placed within the area in random locations. The person going through the course was blindfolded. Each person had a partner who gave them directions through the course. If you stepped on a ball you would die and have to start over from the beginning. About six people were on the course at one time, and there was a counsellor walking about in the course being the voice of the Devil and would try to get us to step on the balls. When one partner successfully completed the course the roles would reverse. The world is full of voices, and we have to learn to listen to the right one. We can't just use the voice of the other guides, their partners are in different locations, and so their information doesn't apply. It has to be the voice that is aimed at you.
"Now I really was Theseus;"As we discussed when we were covering the middles, we are our own heroes. It wasn't just right then that he was Theseus, he always was, he just wasn't aware of it. He could have given the name of any hero he wanted, but it would be the same. He is the hero of his story, he just has to realize it. We all have to realize that we are the heroes. We can't wait for someone to be our hero.
"somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited;" Ariadne of course referring to Julie of course. If we are the heroes of our stories, it makes sense that the people we meet and interact with are the other characters of our story. From reading Calasso, we know that things didn't work out between Theseus and Ariadne, which lead up to her being ditched on a beach somewhere to be found by Dionysus. As I still haven't actually finished The Magus, I don't know if we are quite that bad to Julie, but I think that we are truly that bad to Nicholas.
"and perhaps the Minotaur." All good stories require a protagonist (hero), and an antagonist (bad guy). The Minotaur is Theseus's, but who is Nicholas's antagonist? It seems to be Conchis, but I have no clear idea if that is true. Conchis seems to actually be trying to help Nicholas by opening his eyes to the reality that he carries mythology around with him. By reading the book, in part or in whole, we get the same realization, without the high price that Nicholas payed.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The end of the end
We started with some general housekeeping about our individual presentations, papers, and blogs. Dr. Sexson discouraged us from just reading our papers, or playing by ear. We should look like we are playing by ear but not actually playing by ear. Powerpoints are great, but we should check with Andrew about any technological things so we don't waste time trying to get it set up.
We then moved on to The Magus, starting with a quote from chapter 45: "All that is past possesses our present." This is essentially the definition of myth, just in different wording. We carry the entire past of the human race, we are just not aware of it. Jung called this the collective unconcious (now if I can get my mind to stop trying to make a Borg reference out of that....) stating that the way that we organize our personal experiences is exactly like everyone else, and everything else since the formation of the nervous system. This is where my notes get disjointed, because we went and covered several people's blogs. We defined the word quotidian as occuring everyday, or domestic.
When we covered blogs I wrote down things that I found really striking. Darryl had put down something about every culture has a Creator, a Preserver, and a Destroyer. I agree, sometimes they are three entities, sometimes they are one. Sometimes you get something like the Holy Trinity of Christianity: ever three and ever one. I described it once as a three-way Vulcan mind-meld, or the merging of three minds into one, but the identies of the three remain separate.
We talked about the end of The Magus finally. I see why people were annoyed with it (still haven't gotten there...), I wrote down that it ends like The Lord of the Rings. I was mad the first time I read it through, I wanted to know what Valinor looked like, but the end is Sam returning to Bag End and picking up his child (Eleanor), and saying "I'm home." That's the end. You can't get a more precise ending without the world ending, like C.S. Lewis with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle. By leaving Nickolas and Allison alive (which I thought she commited suicide, so I'm lost in that regard) alive and at a crossroads, we are free to imagine whatever we choose about their fates.
Someone else's blog (I don't remember who), came up with Nickolas wanting the magic to continue, but is left in reality with all the magic gone. I wrote down that magic is like a drug, we want it to continue but reality must reassert itself. When this happens the world seems emptier/duller than when we left it. There seems to be no mystery once we have tasted magic.
We went over Krishnu telling that prince person (see last blog) that you shouldn't do a thing for the fruit (rewards) that it'll bring. I wrote down: "The work is reward enough" ~ Sherlock Holmes. Holmes often would give all the credit to Scotland Yard even if he did all the work because he didn't do it for the fame, that just brought more clients to him. He did it out of a sense of justice and duty to the people. He also did it to keep himself sane, he needed the puzzles for his mind to work properly.
We then moved on to The Magus, starting with a quote from chapter 45: "All that is past possesses our present." This is essentially the definition of myth, just in different wording. We carry the entire past of the human race, we are just not aware of it. Jung called this the collective unconcious (now if I can get my mind to stop trying to make a Borg reference out of that....) stating that the way that we organize our personal experiences is exactly like everyone else, and everything else since the formation of the nervous system. This is where my notes get disjointed, because we went and covered several people's blogs. We defined the word quotidian as occuring everyday, or domestic.
When we covered blogs I wrote down things that I found really striking. Darryl had put down something about every culture has a Creator, a Preserver, and a Destroyer. I agree, sometimes they are three entities, sometimes they are one. Sometimes you get something like the Holy Trinity of Christianity: ever three and ever one. I described it once as a three-way Vulcan mind-meld, or the merging of three minds into one, but the identies of the three remain separate.
We talked about the end of The Magus finally. I see why people were annoyed with it (still haven't gotten there...), I wrote down that it ends like The Lord of the Rings. I was mad the first time I read it through, I wanted to know what Valinor looked like, but the end is Sam returning to Bag End and picking up his child (Eleanor), and saying "I'm home." That's the end. You can't get a more precise ending without the world ending, like C.S. Lewis with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle. By leaving Nickolas and Allison alive (which I thought she commited suicide, so I'm lost in that regard) alive and at a crossroads, we are free to imagine whatever we choose about their fates.
Someone else's blog (I don't remember who), came up with Nickolas wanting the magic to continue, but is left in reality with all the magic gone. I wrote down that magic is like a drug, we want it to continue but reality must reassert itself. When this happens the world seems emptier/duller than when we left it. There seems to be no mystery once we have tasted magic.
We went over Krishnu telling that prince person (see last blog) that you shouldn't do a thing for the fruit (rewards) that it'll bring. I wrote down: "The work is reward enough" ~ Sherlock Holmes. Holmes often would give all the credit to Scotland Yard even if he did all the work because he didn't do it for the fame, that just brought more clients to him. He did it out of a sense of justice and duty to the people. He also did it to keep himself sane, he needed the puzzles for his mind to work properly.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Is there a Santa?
We started by reiterating that we were not going to give away the ending of The Magus. Dr. Sexson did however give us a translation of the Latin at the end: "May those who have loved, love again tomorrow. May those who have not loved, find love tomorrow." I may not be exact with that one, because we kept going. We have an assignment to blog about a specific paragraph in The Magus, a deep discussion about said paragraph. We went over the three parts of the mythological journey (separation, initiation, and return/transformation). We mentioned that one can go up (like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz), or down (like Alice in Wonderland). We mentioned also the story of Orpheus whose wife died from a snake bite at their wedding. Orpheus went into the Underworld, and played his music (he was amazing), and Hades allowed Orpheus to take his wife back. I didn't get the wife's name written down. This lead to a mentioning of Truly, Madly, Deeply, which is a movie where the husband dies, and either he doesn't want to leave her, or the wife doesn't want him to be gone. He ends up a ghost either way, and discovers other ghosts who are threatening the wife, so he must pass on in order for her to be safe. We mentioned a piece of poetry "Until the Fire and the Rose are One", or at least you can find it that way. We spoke about how at the end of The Magus we see that the guy needs to be changed, and not the other way around. I have written that I don't like Urfe because he's an idiot, and for no other reason. We mentioned "Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus", and The Painted Veil. We then watched a YouTube clip from Peter Brooks movie adaptation of Mahabharuta (please check the spelling before using that), the specific scene where Krishnu is speaking to this prince and states what he is. It states the essence of wisdom. This lead to the Oppenheimer quote when the atomic bomb was being tested: "I am become death destroyer of worlds" which comes from the Krishnu speech. When we weren't covering this we were telling stories of how we lost our belief in Santa. There were some great stories (including revenge by telling younger siblings). Catching them red-handed is always amusing as well. However I have (though I lost Santa 11 years ago) proof that there is in fact a Santa:
This is from an episode of Granada's Sherlock Holmes series. It's actually Mycroft Holmes (the older brother of Sherlock) creeping on an English Lord he suspects of stealing a precious gem. The episode is called "The Mazarin Stone" it's on YouTube if you want to check it out.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Double post day post 2- dreams
I'm just getting this one over with. We're supposed to blog about a dream we have. Well, I've had some dreams since the assignment was listed out (I have that written somewhere in this blog). I however, cannot remember any of them to save my life. Well, there is the fragment memory I have of Basil of Baker Street climbing up Sherlock Holmes's arm, but I don't remember the rest of that. Life points to whoever actually gets either reference in that sentence, double if you get both. I also have fragments of dreams that involved my family, which I deemed not worthy to share with you guys. I do get some pretty strange dreams that I remember the whole way through. I may do a reprise of this blog post if I get one of those.
Double post day, post 1- class notes
This is Stefanie's blog site. Dr. Sexson apparently had issues getting this link:stefanieherrera-1991@blogspot.com
We got our tests back at the beginning of class. The first thing I have written down is that we truly have until next week to get The Magus done. We are to start blogging about it in earnest (for those of us who haven't) at that time. We are also either to write a paper about The Magus, or some other topic approved by Dr. Sexson. We watched the end of Dead Man, and a trailer for it that was really good. It's all on YouTube for those of you who didn't make it to class. We covered a bit about the Tibetian Book of the Dead which prescribed certain rituals to prepare for the journey to the afterlife. We mentioned The Swerve by Steven Greenblatt. It covers how an ancient manuscript (The Nature of Things) is rediscovered and it changes philosophy in the Renaissance era. Going back to Dead Man we discussed the quote "Where all the spirits come from and all the spirits return." That might not be an exact quote, but it's close enough. We mentioned that we have lost touch with myth and cannot perform certain things properly, like the proper way to handle a death. We defined eschatology as the ground (or study of) death and final matters We mentioned Metem psychosis which is the passing of the soul, in certain takes into another enity, or nothing ever dies. Then we covered parabolas, and not the mathmatical ones. We mean that which comes from the side as a form of attack against what we consider to be probable. This word of course lead to parable, and a discussion of the parables of Jesus. Specifically the story of Mary and Martha, though not a parable, did come up as important. Then we came to gesung is das sein, though we found it as gesung is das ein, I think it's sein, because it translates to singing is the being, or in better English "Song is life". The word ein in German simply means a or one. This is from the sonnets to Orpheus. We learned that cicadas were originally people who died because they became blind to anything but singing. Zeus decided that death would not be the end of their song, so he turned them into cicadas.
We got our tests back at the beginning of class. The first thing I have written down is that we truly have until next week to get The Magus done. We are to start blogging about it in earnest (for those of us who haven't) at that time. We are also either to write a paper about The Magus, or some other topic approved by Dr. Sexson. We watched the end of Dead Man, and a trailer for it that was really good. It's all on YouTube for those of you who didn't make it to class. We covered a bit about the Tibetian Book of the Dead which prescribed certain rituals to prepare for the journey to the afterlife. We mentioned The Swerve by Steven Greenblatt. It covers how an ancient manuscript (The Nature of Things) is rediscovered and it changes philosophy in the Renaissance era. Going back to Dead Man we discussed the quote "Where all the spirits come from and all the spirits return." That might not be an exact quote, but it's close enough. We mentioned that we have lost touch with myth and cannot perform certain things properly, like the proper way to handle a death. We defined eschatology as the ground (or study of) death and final matters We mentioned Metem psychosis which is the passing of the soul, in certain takes into another enity, or nothing ever dies. Then we covered parabolas, and not the mathmatical ones. We mean that which comes from the side as a form of attack against what we consider to be probable. This word of course lead to parable, and a discussion of the parables of Jesus. Specifically the story of Mary and Martha, though not a parable, did come up as important. Then we came to gesung is das sein, though we found it as gesung is das ein, I think it's sein, because it translates to singing is the being, or in better English "Song is life". The word ein in German simply means a or one. This is from the sonnets to Orpheus. We learned that cicadas were originally people who died because they became blind to anything but singing. Zeus decided that death would not be the end of their song, so he turned them into cicadas.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Review for test 2
Calasso: p. 209-212, the quadternity stories. These are the ones involved in the personality profile bit we talked about last Thursday. Zeus is thought, Athena is sensation, Demeter is intuition, and Dionysus is feeling. Also on p. 209 is the story of the abduction of Persephone, or Kore. There was mentioning of the triple goddess- the mother, the daughter, and the crone.
p. 225-226, story of Athena.
p. 244, Eleusis according to Calasso.
p.336, what is Homeric theology? It gives power to the visible.
p. 359, "Why do we suffer?", and "this is the work of the gods".
p. 383-391, definition of myth and the relationship between humans and gods.
p.387, "a life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living". Cadmus founds Thebes and gave the Greeks the alphabet.
Eliade: Taurbolium, the Bachi Dionysus, Eleusinian Mysteries. Dr. Sexson said he'll check the list of what we were supposed to have covered from Eliade. Those were what we were able to name in class.
Our questions: What does spiritus mundi mean? spirit of the world/earth.
What two animals pulled the chariot at Cadmus and Harmony's wedding? a boar and a lion. This question was debated.
What country are the Nacirema from? America
Which of the three events in the Eleusinian mysteries was the origin of drama? the thing that was done. (diomonan=drama)
What is "the study of the soul"? psychology
P. 204 of Calasso? Persephone. This question was confusing at first, and Dr. Sexson said he would work on it, but Persephone is the answer.
What is the story of the origin of the judicial system? The story of Athena and Orestes.
What is the name of the night where women can do what they want to men without fear of retribution? Totetag (Day of Death in German)
What is the animal associated with the Taurbolium? the bull
What makes something sacred? we make things sacred through rituals.
Who is the real hero according to our instructor? We are, me is acceptable as an answer too.
James Joyce's novel covers the events of the ordinary day of an ordinary man, but who was it really about? Odysseus, don't cheat and use Ulysses.
According to W.B. Yeats history cycles, and starts with a bird visiting and empregnanting a woman.
What is the Greek image of the soul? a butterfly
Metis was eaten by Zeus and Athena was born. This is going to be rephrased into a question somehow.
Which word best describes a place carved out of the world? temenos, there was more to this question, but that is the gist of it.
Who is the god of the double doors? Dionysus. This lead to a discussion about dithyrambos which means twice, and that Dionysus was born twice.
What was said to end the Pagan world and initiate the religious age? The Great Pan is Dead.
What is the fundamental difference between gods and heros? Heros die.
How do you piss of a Fury? commit matricide (kill your mother), or a blood murder.
What is the religious signifigance of Cupid and Psyche? The psychological development of the female
Which ritual came up several times in the ritual presentations? the Karamundi rain making ceremony
What is the name of the girl who had a sandal thrown at her? Charila, this can be found on p. 163 of Calasso, and will be rephrased.
There was a question posed that was similar in clarity to the Persephone question. The answer is Antigone, and will have something to do with a play and fighting against something in society.
What term gave us the word senator? senex
What does archetype mean? Primordial images often arising from mythology
There may be a question refering to maypoles and other fertility rituals.
There may also be a question referring to the 22 point hero formula, most likely involving Oedipus.
In this class, what Christian ritual covered death and rebirth? baptism.
Why was Demeter putting the child in the fire? To make him immortal.
Who is the archetype of a "daddy's girl"? Athena
p. 225-226, story of Athena.
p. 244, Eleusis according to Calasso.
p.336, what is Homeric theology? It gives power to the visible.
p. 359, "Why do we suffer?", and "this is the work of the gods".
p. 383-391, definition of myth and the relationship between humans and gods.
p.387, "a life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living". Cadmus founds Thebes and gave the Greeks the alphabet.
Eliade: Taurbolium, the Bachi Dionysus, Eleusinian Mysteries. Dr. Sexson said he'll check the list of what we were supposed to have covered from Eliade. Those were what we were able to name in class.
Our questions: What does spiritus mundi mean? spirit of the world/earth.
What two animals pulled the chariot at Cadmus and Harmony's wedding? a boar and a lion. This question was debated.
What country are the Nacirema from? America
Which of the three events in the Eleusinian mysteries was the origin of drama? the thing that was done. (diomonan=drama)
What is "the study of the soul"? psychology
P. 204 of Calasso? Persephone. This question was confusing at first, and Dr. Sexson said he would work on it, but Persephone is the answer.
What is the story of the origin of the judicial system? The story of Athena and Orestes.
What is the name of the night where women can do what they want to men without fear of retribution? Totetag (Day of Death in German)
What is the animal associated with the Taurbolium? the bull
What makes something sacred? we make things sacred through rituals.
Who is the real hero according to our instructor? We are, me is acceptable as an answer too.
James Joyce's novel covers the events of the ordinary day of an ordinary man, but who was it really about? Odysseus, don't cheat and use Ulysses.
According to W.B. Yeats history cycles, and starts with a bird visiting and empregnanting a woman.
What is the Greek image of the soul? a butterfly
Metis was eaten by Zeus and Athena was born. This is going to be rephrased into a question somehow.
Which word best describes a place carved out of the world? temenos, there was more to this question, but that is the gist of it.
Who is the god of the double doors? Dionysus. This lead to a discussion about dithyrambos which means twice, and that Dionysus was born twice.
What was said to end the Pagan world and initiate the religious age? The Great Pan is Dead.
What is the fundamental difference between gods and heros? Heros die.
How do you piss of a Fury? commit matricide (kill your mother), or a blood murder.
What is the religious signifigance of Cupid and Psyche? The psychological development of the female
Which ritual came up several times in the ritual presentations? the Karamundi rain making ceremony
What is the name of the girl who had a sandal thrown at her? Charila, this can be found on p. 163 of Calasso, and will be rephrased.
There was a question posed that was similar in clarity to the Persephone question. The answer is Antigone, and will have something to do with a play and fighting against something in society.
What term gave us the word senator? senex
What does archetype mean? Primordial images often arising from mythology
There may be a question refering to maypoles and other fertility rituals.
There may also be a question referring to the 22 point hero formula, most likely involving Oedipus.
In this class, what Christian ritual covered death and rebirth? baptism.
Why was Demeter putting the child in the fire? To make him immortal.
Who is the archetype of a "daddy's girl"? Athena
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Great Pan is Dead
Let's try this again, it didn't want to post my first try for some reason. We started the ends on Thursday. Stating that it is nothing more than the end of one cycle, and the beginning of another. This seems to happen every 2,000 years. So something is going to change in the near future if this pattern continues. Mythology gave way to religion. We're not sure what religion will give way to. We brought in a stone from outside and made it the holy stone of Mytholgy 285. We passed it around the room to warm it up. We covered ideas in poetry concerning the end. How the cycle is always started by a bird impregnating a woman. We need to change our perceptions of the world. To be inside the temple is to see versus being outside the temple where we can only look at the same thing. We spoke of introverts and extroverts, where I have myself labeled as an introvert, and one of my friends labeled as an extrovert. thinking is personified by Zeus, sensation by Athena, intuition by Demeter, and feeling by Dionysus. When Dr. Sexson was describing Dionysus, Fabio popped into my head. I also have Dionysus summed up in three words: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and roll. I guess the argument could be made that that was actually four words, but only if you count rock and roll as two different words, which I don't.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Rituals part 2
We completed our ritual presentations on Tuesday. Here they are:
Justin: Indian baby dropping (?). They take a 1-2 year-old child and drop it from the top of a 50 foot building onto sheets that are being held there by other people. This is supposed to bring prosperity. It's now illegal in India.
Abby: An Australian manhood rite. The women leave, and the young men are blindfolded, then the older men scare them and threaten harm to the women. Then the young men are either circumcsiced or have their hair/teeth pulled.
Megan: Buddhist purification rite. I didn't get this one down very clearly. I have written that the stupas or relics of the Buddha, and depict scenes from his life. The rituals are done at night with lanterns and the burning of insence.
Zach: The Karamundi Rainmaking Ceremony. See last post.
Jeremy: Modern American fall festival. Carve a face into a pumkin and give candy to strange creatures who come to your door and say "trick-or-treat".
Juniper: Ests death ritual. A man would die and his friends would separate his money from his treasure. With the money they would buy beer and party with the body until the money was gone. Then they would take the treasure and divide it up by placing a large amount well away from town, another pile closer, and on down the line until there wasn't any more. As you got closer to town the piles got smaller. They would hold horse races to see who would get the most treasure. Then they burn the body with whatever remains over. This could go on for months.
After that we had a great discussion about Halloween. Halloween being the American-ized version of All Hallow's Eve (as we heard it from the Scots). This is related to the rites of kenosis (kenosis meaning an emptying out). This is like Totetag in Germany, or the Feast of Fools which is mentioned in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I was reminded of the Swiss carnival festival which is called Fasnacht. People dress up in costume, and there is much music and dancing as everyone pretty much goes crazy. This is to purge the town of demons, similar to the original idea of Halloween, which as actually a celebration.
Then we covered the Nacirema tribe. They seem quite obsessed with what we call the bathroom, and I think would be quite offended if they knew how much we know about what goes on in there.
My notes kind of go haywire right about here. Where we picked up the Eleussinian Mysteries again. Since we spoke of them elsewhere I'm not going to cover all of it again. The early Christians found the Mysteries as an attack on their own rituals. Initiation is meant to take you from one thing, and turn you into another thing. You won't look different (like Georg in Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis), but you will be different. There will be unconditional joy from having gone through this initiation.
Justin: Indian baby dropping (?). They take a 1-2 year-old child and drop it from the top of a 50 foot building onto sheets that are being held there by other people. This is supposed to bring prosperity. It's now illegal in India.
Abby: An Australian manhood rite. The women leave, and the young men are blindfolded, then the older men scare them and threaten harm to the women. Then the young men are either circumcsiced or have their hair/teeth pulled.
Megan: Buddhist purification rite. I didn't get this one down very clearly. I have written that the stupas or relics of the Buddha, and depict scenes from his life. The rituals are done at night with lanterns and the burning of insence.
Zach: The Karamundi Rainmaking Ceremony. See last post.
Jeremy: Modern American fall festival. Carve a face into a pumkin and give candy to strange creatures who come to your door and say "trick-or-treat".
Juniper: Ests death ritual. A man would die and his friends would separate his money from his treasure. With the money they would buy beer and party with the body until the money was gone. Then they would take the treasure and divide it up by placing a large amount well away from town, another pile closer, and on down the line until there wasn't any more. As you got closer to town the piles got smaller. They would hold horse races to see who would get the most treasure. Then they burn the body with whatever remains over. This could go on for months.
After that we had a great discussion about Halloween. Halloween being the American-ized version of All Hallow's Eve (as we heard it from the Scots). This is related to the rites of kenosis (kenosis meaning an emptying out). This is like Totetag in Germany, or the Feast of Fools which is mentioned in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I was reminded of the Swiss carnival festival which is called Fasnacht. People dress up in costume, and there is much music and dancing as everyone pretty much goes crazy. This is to purge the town of demons, similar to the original idea of Halloween, which as actually a celebration.
Then we covered the Nacirema tribe. They seem quite obsessed with what we call the bathroom, and I think would be quite offended if they knew how much we know about what goes on in there.
My notes kind of go haywire right about here. Where we picked up the Eleussinian Mysteries again. Since we spoke of them elsewhere I'm not going to cover all of it again. The early Christians found the Mysteries as an attack on their own rituals. Initiation is meant to take you from one thing, and turn you into another thing. You won't look different (like Georg in Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis), but you will be different. There will be unconditional joy from having gone through this initiation.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Rituals Day one
I was amazingly busy yesterday, and lazy today. These are the rituals we presented in class Thursday:
1) Eric: the Karamundi rain making ceremony from Australia. A man cuts a vein, and catches his blood in a hollowed out piece of bark. Then he adds gipsum (I think is how you spell it), and mix until it creates a paste. This paste is sandwiched with another piece of bark. Then it is placed in a river or lagoon, and rain will come after the paste has dissolved. During the time that the paste is dissolving the men must stay away from the women.
2) Stephanie: Egyptian cat mourning. A pharoh stated that cats were demigods because they hunted rodents, and their bodies were treated similarly to humans. They were mummified like humans, and the family would mourn their loss, typically by shaving their eyebrows. This was included in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
3) Courtney: The human mummifcation process of Egypt. They would remove all of the organs, except the heart so that the person could enter into the afterlife with a heart. The brains were removed through the nose. These were placed in special jars. the body was placed in a sarcophagus for forty days, packed in salt. Then the body was removed and wrapped before being returned. She mentioned the exact amount of cloth used for the wrappings, but I didn't catch all of it in time to write it down.
4) Christine: Aztec new fire. At the beginning of their whole year (every 52 years) all the fires in a town would be put out. The priests would go to the top of a mountain and at midnight make a human sacrifice, using that sacrifice to light a fire, and then all the fires of that village.
5) Lucy: Native American, smudging ceremony. One lights a bundle of herbs (different herbs for different occasions) is this was done with a person, the smoke was to be centered over the heart. If this was done with a place, one was to move clockwise around it.
6) Jerrod: Papua New Guinea blood initiation. This is a manhood ceremony. Young men stand in a mountain stream, and the elders demonstrate the three things they must do. First being that they must take canes, and shove these canes in their throats. Then they remove the cane and vomit into the river, this is to remove the taste of woman's food from them. Next they took sharpened reeds to their noses and bleed from their noses into the river. This was to remove the sent of women from them. Finally they took small bows and arrows which they shot into their tongues. I don't remember exactly why that one was done.
7) Sherwood: Also did the Karamundi rainmaking ceremony. He also added that hair from the man's beard is added to the blood and gipsum mixture.
8) Zach: Brazilian manhood ritual. The young men go out, and gather what are known as bullet ants. The shaman drugs the ants, and weaves them into gloves. The young men then must dance for about half and hours with these gloves on their hands. The ants are so named because apparently the sting of this ant is like being shot.
9) Matthew: American political ritual. Canidates are selected, then tour the country, then the people write something mysterious on a piece of paper in a box located at a public area on a certain day, and a new president is elected.
10) Jason: Taurbolium. A priest is placed in a hole in the ground with a wooden cover on it. This cover has several small holes poked into it. A bull is lead to stand on this wooden cover, and is killed. The blood pours down in a shower that the priest cleanses himself in. Then he drinks some of it as well.
11) Bailey: Mayan human sacrifice. They would stand at the top of a pyramid, and rip out the sacrifices heart. Then the body was decapitated, and pushed down the pyramid. People at the bottom of the pyramid would bury the body. This was done to keep up communications with the gods.
12) Darryl: Spartan marriage. The bridesmaid would dress the bride in men's clothing, and leave her on one bed. The groom would show up, and take her to another bed. They do what people do together in bed when not sleeping. And the groom would then have to run back to his barrracks before dawn. Sounds like a one night stand to me.
13) Jessica: Seppuku. Warrior enters a public/common place, writes and performs his death poem. Then he takes his sword and stabs it into his abdomen, makes one cut from right to left, and then two upward cuts. At this point the warrior bends forward over his sword, and a trusted friend decapitates him.
14)Jenny: The Mary Month of May. This was a personal story that she wrote down and read to us. It involved the Catholic school she went to. The sixth graders had a tradtion of selecting one girl to place a crown of lillies on the statue of the Virgin Mary. Her sister got the honor because the nun who was teaching them pulled strings. Normally it would have been one of the rich, popular girls.
15). Rosemary: Mexican Day of the Dead. This is a mixed form from the traditions of the native peoples (who did this for the whole month of August), and the Spanish (who moved it to the end of October, and shortened it to three days). People wear masks with the names of the people in their families who had died, and then they go light candles in the graveyards and cemetaries.
16) Vittoria: Frozen Dead Guy Days. Some Norwegian guy believed in cryogenics enough that he went and got himself frozen in liquid nitrogen. His daughter had to pour more on him every month. She eventually had rent problems, and the media got involved, and now it's a major celebration in Colorado. It includes several races, and Grandpa's Blue Ball.
17) Jill: Eastern Star Ritual. These are the female Masons. The initate goes to the Eastern Star location in a white dress and meets with five women. One stands at each point on a star. I believe that the people represent obedience, devotion, love, charity, and faith. I'm sure of a few of those, but not which woman they correspond with. This is the Eastern Star initiation ritual.
18) Madison: also did the Karamundi rain making. The elders say that as long as the ritual is respected it'll work everytime.
19) Parker: Bridger whale. There is a wooden whale that can be seen on the side of the road on the way from Bozeman to Bridger. You are not supposed to look at it on the way up, or risk a bad day. On the way back you are supposed to salute the whale in order to keep good luck.
20) Sam: Beowulf death ritual. People make a funeral pyre, and heap it with the deceased's possessions. Then they sing songs, and say euligies. Twelve people circle the grave after the ashes were buried.
21) Me: I did the bear ritual of the Anuri (Eliade, I may not have that name completely right), really I did the version used in the novel The Clan of the Cave Bear. The host clan would capture a bear cub and raise it as Clan. It'd be moved to a wooden cage outside the cave when it got too big. People would feed it and play with it. Then every seven years, and the Clan Gathering, the bear would be killed. Two young men would be selected to bring the bear before the people who would torture it, and then kill it. The head would be removed with the rest of the skin attached. Then the meat was prepared. A cup of the bear's blood, and some of it's prepared meat would be presented to the head of the bear. The person who captured the bear would then speak to it saying how it was a good bear and should tell it's parents that so the cycle could be repeated.
22) Andrew: Irish marriage tradtions. This takes place from Halloween to Lent. There are several different ways for people to determine who they should be with. There was one about initialed nuts in a frying pan and if they stay together or not.
23) Kevin: Thai vegetarian ritual. The people would go completely vegan, celebit, and without alcohol. Celebit meaning without sex. This is done for a certain time, based on the story that this was done for some Chinese people who got malaria. They stick sharp objects in their bodies to be closer to the gods at this time.
24) Wena: Chinese New Year. 15 days. 10 days before the house must be completely cleaned to ward off evil spirits. Kids get money on the first day of Chinese New Year, and you shouldn't wash your hair. The 15th day is the Lantern Festival.
25) Ashley: Chrismas Eve. Her grandfather would read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then the doorbell would ring and something would be at the door.
1) Eric: the Karamundi rain making ceremony from Australia. A man cuts a vein, and catches his blood in a hollowed out piece of bark. Then he adds gipsum (I think is how you spell it), and mix until it creates a paste. This paste is sandwiched with another piece of bark. Then it is placed in a river or lagoon, and rain will come after the paste has dissolved. During the time that the paste is dissolving the men must stay away from the women.
2) Stephanie: Egyptian cat mourning. A pharoh stated that cats were demigods because they hunted rodents, and their bodies were treated similarly to humans. They were mummified like humans, and the family would mourn their loss, typically by shaving their eyebrows. This was included in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
3) Courtney: The human mummifcation process of Egypt. They would remove all of the organs, except the heart so that the person could enter into the afterlife with a heart. The brains were removed through the nose. These were placed in special jars. the body was placed in a sarcophagus for forty days, packed in salt. Then the body was removed and wrapped before being returned. She mentioned the exact amount of cloth used for the wrappings, but I didn't catch all of it in time to write it down.
4) Christine: Aztec new fire. At the beginning of their whole year (every 52 years) all the fires in a town would be put out. The priests would go to the top of a mountain and at midnight make a human sacrifice, using that sacrifice to light a fire, and then all the fires of that village.
5) Lucy: Native American, smudging ceremony. One lights a bundle of herbs (different herbs for different occasions) is this was done with a person, the smoke was to be centered over the heart. If this was done with a place, one was to move clockwise around it.
6) Jerrod: Papua New Guinea blood initiation. This is a manhood ceremony. Young men stand in a mountain stream, and the elders demonstrate the three things they must do. First being that they must take canes, and shove these canes in their throats. Then they remove the cane and vomit into the river, this is to remove the taste of woman's food from them. Next they took sharpened reeds to their noses and bleed from their noses into the river. This was to remove the sent of women from them. Finally they took small bows and arrows which they shot into their tongues. I don't remember exactly why that one was done.
7) Sherwood: Also did the Karamundi rainmaking ceremony. He also added that hair from the man's beard is added to the blood and gipsum mixture.
8) Zach: Brazilian manhood ritual. The young men go out, and gather what are known as bullet ants. The shaman drugs the ants, and weaves them into gloves. The young men then must dance for about half and hours with these gloves on their hands. The ants are so named because apparently the sting of this ant is like being shot.
9) Matthew: American political ritual. Canidates are selected, then tour the country, then the people write something mysterious on a piece of paper in a box located at a public area on a certain day, and a new president is elected.
10) Jason: Taurbolium. A priest is placed in a hole in the ground with a wooden cover on it. This cover has several small holes poked into it. A bull is lead to stand on this wooden cover, and is killed. The blood pours down in a shower that the priest cleanses himself in. Then he drinks some of it as well.
11) Bailey: Mayan human sacrifice. They would stand at the top of a pyramid, and rip out the sacrifices heart. Then the body was decapitated, and pushed down the pyramid. People at the bottom of the pyramid would bury the body. This was done to keep up communications with the gods.
12) Darryl: Spartan marriage. The bridesmaid would dress the bride in men's clothing, and leave her on one bed. The groom would show up, and take her to another bed. They do what people do together in bed when not sleeping. And the groom would then have to run back to his barrracks before dawn. Sounds like a one night stand to me.
13) Jessica: Seppuku. Warrior enters a public/common place, writes and performs his death poem. Then he takes his sword and stabs it into his abdomen, makes one cut from right to left, and then two upward cuts. At this point the warrior bends forward over his sword, and a trusted friend decapitates him.
14)Jenny: The Mary Month of May. This was a personal story that she wrote down and read to us. It involved the Catholic school she went to. The sixth graders had a tradtion of selecting one girl to place a crown of lillies on the statue of the Virgin Mary. Her sister got the honor because the nun who was teaching them pulled strings. Normally it would have been one of the rich, popular girls.
15). Rosemary: Mexican Day of the Dead. This is a mixed form from the traditions of the native peoples (who did this for the whole month of August), and the Spanish (who moved it to the end of October, and shortened it to three days). People wear masks with the names of the people in their families who had died, and then they go light candles in the graveyards and cemetaries.
16) Vittoria: Frozen Dead Guy Days. Some Norwegian guy believed in cryogenics enough that he went and got himself frozen in liquid nitrogen. His daughter had to pour more on him every month. She eventually had rent problems, and the media got involved, and now it's a major celebration in Colorado. It includes several races, and Grandpa's Blue Ball.
17) Jill: Eastern Star Ritual. These are the female Masons. The initate goes to the Eastern Star location in a white dress and meets with five women. One stands at each point on a star. I believe that the people represent obedience, devotion, love, charity, and faith. I'm sure of a few of those, but not which woman they correspond with. This is the Eastern Star initiation ritual.
18) Madison: also did the Karamundi rain making. The elders say that as long as the ritual is respected it'll work everytime.
19) Parker: Bridger whale. There is a wooden whale that can be seen on the side of the road on the way from Bozeman to Bridger. You are not supposed to look at it on the way up, or risk a bad day. On the way back you are supposed to salute the whale in order to keep good luck.
20) Sam: Beowulf death ritual. People make a funeral pyre, and heap it with the deceased's possessions. Then they sing songs, and say euligies. Twelve people circle the grave after the ashes were buried.
21) Me: I did the bear ritual of the Anuri (Eliade, I may not have that name completely right), really I did the version used in the novel The Clan of the Cave Bear. The host clan would capture a bear cub and raise it as Clan. It'd be moved to a wooden cage outside the cave when it got too big. People would feed it and play with it. Then every seven years, and the Clan Gathering, the bear would be killed. Two young men would be selected to bring the bear before the people who would torture it, and then kill it. The head would be removed with the rest of the skin attached. Then the meat was prepared. A cup of the bear's blood, and some of it's prepared meat would be presented to the head of the bear. The person who captured the bear would then speak to it saying how it was a good bear and should tell it's parents that so the cycle could be repeated.
22) Andrew: Irish marriage tradtions. This takes place from Halloween to Lent. There are several different ways for people to determine who they should be with. There was one about initialed nuts in a frying pan and if they stay together or not.
23) Kevin: Thai vegetarian ritual. The people would go completely vegan, celebit, and without alcohol. Celebit meaning without sex. This is done for a certain time, based on the story that this was done for some Chinese people who got malaria. They stick sharp objects in their bodies to be closer to the gods at this time.
24) Wena: Chinese New Year. 15 days. 10 days before the house must be completely cleaned to ward off evil spirits. Kids get money on the first day of Chinese New Year, and you shouldn't wash your hair. The 15th day is the Lantern Festival.
25) Ashley: Chrismas Eve. Her grandfather would read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then the doorbell would ring and something would be at the door.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Rituals, feuds, and other crazy things
The very first thing I have written down is that we have an assignment to do a blog entry on rituals, and we are to start with the one that we are presenting on Thursday. I'm about to put several blog posts up so that people don't get confused with what I'm talking in each one. We spoke of the Hatfield and McCoy feud, and how it related to the death of Agamemnon and his family. Agamemnon was killed by his wife and her lover, and she was killed by her son, who was chased by the Furies for commiting matricide. The Furies being chthonic (thonic) beings, or from/related to the Underworld. Orestes (Agamemnon's son) goes to Athens, and Athena puts him on trial. This is where our justice system stems from. Apollo won the case by saying that women are inferior to men. Athena agreed because she essentially had no mother figure. This was because Zeus ate her mother (Metis, a titan) have he got her knocked up. We spoke of archetypes which are the original pattern, or model for something. We spoke of the meaning of the word senator, which comes from senex meaning mentor, or wise man, who was also impotent (according to the Romans). Zeus used persuasion (peitho) to control his children. We spoke for awhile about Ulysses by James Joyce. It's suggested we read it, but not alone. The essential part of the book is like when we were told to find Oz in Bozeman: mythology is everywhere. We are the heros, and everyday is a heroic adventure. We then spoke of the Eleussinian Mysteries. Eliade uses quotes to speak, essentially, of the after effects. Which all come around to the idea that those who go through the initiation are blessed and in general better off than those who haven't been initiated. Much of the initiation went on in the temenos or holy precinct, which has been cut out and designated for rituals. The initiation rituals here are concerned with the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades. Because this religion was based on secrecy, the actual rites are lost to time. We are fairly certain that fertility rituals started the initiation, outside. Then they moved into the temenos and something was seen (an ear of corn), something was said ("rain, concieve"), and something was done (likely a renactment of the abduction of Persephone). Then the initiation was complete. We don't see the importance of it because we have not been through it ourselves.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Rituals
Thursday's class was all about rituals. We spoke of several different varities of rituals, and basic criteria for our ritual presentations this Thursday. We can use personal rituals, and even ficticious ones, the more grotesque the better. We mentioned corpediem (I think), which means "sieze the day" and was a ritual from Elizabethan England. People would get together, go out to the woods, and let nature take it's course. We mentioned how prehistoric hunters offered bear meat to the bear because they reverred it as a diety. I have a notation in my notes about a book called The Clan of the Cave Bear which is based in prehistoric times and involves several odd rituals. We talked again about the sacrificing of virgins. I made a rant somewhere in these blogs involving how idiotic that is. Child rape would skyrocket because then they wouldn't be virgins and therefore, couldn't be sacrificed. This time virgins were sacrificed for a harvest festival. We mentioned the short story "The Lottery" and read it in class (or at least the gist of it). I'm fairly sure there was a play done of it as well, and that I saw it in high school. We mentioned deus ex machina which was a crane type thing that was used in ancient theater to pull the hero out of trouble. Myth is tied to rituals, the myth is the written or spoken part of a ritual which is what is done. We went through the ritual involving Charilla which is in Calasso and we cannot be used for ritual presentations. Thaere is a note about one should only do rituals when they know what it is about, otherwise the ritual loses meaning. We mentioned effigies, which are images of people, that other people to horrible things to. Dr. Sexson claims to have been hanged in effigy several times. I have a note in parantheses saying that Mr. Franklin was burned in effigy in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that he admits that the time referenced in the book was not the first time that they had done so. My last note is that the middle equals life.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Lord Raglan's hero pattern
As I am one of the about six people who will put stuff like this on my blog for the sake of the rest of the class, here is the promised Lord Raglan's hero pattern:
1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.
1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.
The beginning of the middle
With the middles we are talking about heroes, who are human and therefore mortal. We touched on the topic of Lord Raglan's 22 points, which I'll post in a secondary posting like the list of the Eliade readings. I have middles leading to muddles leading to labrynth leading to initiation. I use leading to because it's an arrow pointing to the next word in the list. I mean that they are synonyms. Rituals are things that we do, and we are to look up either a ritual or an initiation to present one week from Thursday like we presented our creation stories. I was hoping to do the hero story, because I already had mine picked out. We learned that the word drama comes from the word dramenon which is Greek for to do things. I have that rituals are very precise things. I didn't write any down but we had a discussion about secular (non-religious) rituals we do everyday. Jessica noted that she has a routine that has to occur before she can leave her house. I noted that I label my notes in the same fashion everyday, for every class. I also came up for having my to do list written in the upper left corner of my notes. I was then encouraged to read them in class. I nearly skipped over the countdown until the arrival of my deerstalker cap from Amazon.com. I felt that was overly nerdy of me, but it's not the first countdown I've held in my notes. We discussed religious rituals, mainly baptism. Dr. Sexson believes that the only true baptism is full-emersion. The majority of Christian churches do not follow this practice anymore. I know the Baptists do, but they are the only ones I'm sure do that. I don't even think the Catholic church does that anymore, please correct me if I'm wrong on that point. I find it interesting that I answer almost all of the religious questions, including how to start Confession which is something the Methodist church does not do. I almost started the Lord's prayer, and then we jumped to the Hail Mary, which I don't know. Only the Catholics use that one. Dr. Sexson was very clear that we are not human if we don't go through these rituals. Another one I have is I write in a journal every night before going to bed, and I only allow myself one side of one sheet of paper in the journal for the entire day. Sometimes it's easier to fill than others. We talked about how rituals are a representation of what we want. This is how drama started, with rituals to provide us with what we desired. The example we used in class was the idea of wanting a successful bear hunt, so we acted it out the way we wanted it to go. Homeopathy is the idea that like produces like. It was the last thing we touched on before breaking into our groups.
Friday, October 7, 2011
The Magus: p.195
Normally I'm a very fast reader, but this book seems to be dragging in my opinion. It hasn't quite dragged me into it yet, but I can see the potential there. I was just slightly offended in fact by the line that Sherlock Holmes would have been baffled by Lily's palm. I like that Nickolas would try to "read" her palm that way. Holmes, however, didn't read palms, but the person in general. I don't know what Holmes would have deduced from Lily, but he would definantly have learned more than Nickolas does. I'm only going off about this because I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan. I've been trying that style with the books, and it actually works well for Calasso. That's more because with Calasso you need to connect the threads to make sense of the reading. Holmes' method to solving crimes is in fact connecting the effect to the cause by creating the chain of events from the thread of the clues that he finds. 
Here's a random Holmes picture from The Sign of Four, from 1987 with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. The scene is set in either a library, or the records of The London Times which was mentioned in the case presented him in the movie based off the second novel by the same name.
There's my rant about The Magus. I may have another at the end, whenever I get to it.
Sorry the picture is a little blurry, I used the Microsoft snipping tool while watching this movie on YouTube.
Here's a random Holmes picture from The Sign of Four, from 1987 with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. The scene is set in either a library, or the records of The London Times which was mentioned in the case presented him in the movie based off the second novel by the same name.There's my rant about The Magus. I may have another at the end, whenever I get to it.
Sorry the picture is a little blurry, I used the Microsoft snipping tool while watching this movie on YouTube.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Test review
We had a very full class getting ready for our test on Thursday. From Eliade we need to understand Hainuwele, Apollo, Earth mother of all, Enume elish,and Hesiod's theogony. These along with the intro paragraph about the creation stories (to be found on Jill's and other's blogs), are the six things to know from From Primatives to Zen, or Eliade. Dr. Sexson was kind enough to give us the page numbers, and the things from those pages that are important in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, or Calasso. On p.5 we need to remember the basket. The etiology of Athenian men's slim hips from p. 15. The story of tragedy, involving the song of the goats from p. 39. More etiology from p. 81, this time concerning Tiresias, and wether men or women have more pleasure with sex, he apparently gave the wrong answer to Hera and was blinded for the rest of eternity. We need to remember ate from p. 94, there are likely to be two questions on that. Inserted here is a note that we need to be able to define in illo tempore, acceptable answers are in the beginning/great time/dream time, or once upon a time. Megan's blog, along with p. 52 in Calasso brings us conviviality, rape, and indifference. Calasso tells us how it all came about on p. 176, where we need to know of Tantalus, Pelops, and that Agamemnon, and Menelaus were the big players for the Trojan War. We also need to remember the different types of creation stories. Then we got into our questions:
1) Which is the mother of the muses? Mnemosyne
2) What was Persephone doing when she was abducted? picking flowers (Narcissus flowers to be precise)
3) Who wrote the alegory of the cave? Plato (This one went through quite the discussion, and that is the simplest version of how that discussion ended.)
4) Who was always describes as decieftull and beautiful, and also considered a phantom? Helen (there was a brief mentioning of a description of Helen as "the face that could launch a thousand ships, but that won't be on the test).
5) Who was Europe named after? Europa (I actually have the word Deutsch written down, because that's what they still call the continent.)
6) Who arrives unexpected and possesses? Dionysus
7) What is the mythological root of enthusiasm? en theos, or god possessed
8) Who says "One more time, Athena, love me, as much as you can." ? Odysseus
9) Abduction is always followed by ____ in Calasso. metamorphosis (that makes more sense then how it is written down in my notes.)
10) Who was born from Uranus' testicles? Aphrodite (goddess of love, name means born of the foam.)
11) Who mothered the minotaur? Pasiphae
12) What means "tearing of limbs"? sparagmos
13) What (typically) follows sparagmos? omophagia
14) Great desire of the hero is? To return home
15) Define anamnesis. recollection, innate knowledge (this is a Plato thing)
16) Define apocalypse. to unveil (not to violently end the world, I don't know if any zombie references would do you any good)
17) Define Eschtology. The study of ends (we swear it's somewhere in our notes.)
18) What was in the labrynth? The minotaur
19) Who is the Destroyer of Delights? Death
20) This one is harder to write down because we got off on a tangent here. The origional question posed was what form did Zeus take to seduce Io? referencing the cloud incident. We then went off and listed pretty much every disguise that Zeuse ever used. I didn't write them all down but Andrew did, and is should all be up on his blog.
The reason the goddess of love part was added in paranthesis on the Uranus question is because we wanted to have another easy question (besides #5), and it was who is the goddess of love?
We were placed in our groups today, our group assignment thing is to describe the way in which myth can be found in everyday life, and we are encouraged to be creative. We were supposed to be given five minutes at the end to get into these groups and exchange contact information. As it is we got sidetracked with #20, and only got a minute to do this. My group (the 3s), simply made a list our names and contact info. One of us has the list, and will email it to the rest of us.
1) Which is the mother of the muses? Mnemosyne
2) What was Persephone doing when she was abducted? picking flowers (Narcissus flowers to be precise)
3) Who wrote the alegory of the cave? Plato (This one went through quite the discussion, and that is the simplest version of how that discussion ended.)
4) Who was always describes as decieftull and beautiful, and also considered a phantom? Helen (there was a brief mentioning of a description of Helen as "the face that could launch a thousand ships, but that won't be on the test).
5) Who was Europe named after? Europa (I actually have the word Deutsch written down, because that's what they still call the continent.)
6) Who arrives unexpected and possesses? Dionysus
7) What is the mythological root of enthusiasm? en theos, or god possessed
8) Who says "One more time, Athena, love me, as much as you can." ? Odysseus
9) Abduction is always followed by ____ in Calasso. metamorphosis (that makes more sense then how it is written down in my notes.)
10) Who was born from Uranus' testicles? Aphrodite (goddess of love, name means born of the foam.)
11) Who mothered the minotaur? Pasiphae
12) What means "tearing of limbs"? sparagmos
13) What (typically) follows sparagmos? omophagia
14) Great desire of the hero is? To return home
15) Define anamnesis. recollection, innate knowledge (this is a Plato thing)
16) Define apocalypse. to unveil (not to violently end the world, I don't know if any zombie references would do you any good)
17) Define Eschtology. The study of ends (we swear it's somewhere in our notes.)
18) What was in the labrynth? The minotaur
19) Who is the Destroyer of Delights? Death
20) This one is harder to write down because we got off on a tangent here. The origional question posed was what form did Zeus take to seduce Io? referencing the cloud incident. We then went off and listed pretty much every disguise that Zeuse ever used. I didn't write them all down but Andrew did, and is should all be up on his blog.
The reason the goddess of love part was added in paranthesis on the Uranus question is because we wanted to have another easy question (besides #5), and it was who is the goddess of love?
We were placed in our groups today, our group assignment thing is to describe the way in which myth can be found in everyday life, and we are encouraged to be creative. We were supposed to be given five minutes at the end to get into these groups and exchange contact information. As it is we got sidetracked with #20, and only got a minute to do this. My group (the 3s), simply made a list our names and contact info. One of us has the list, and will email it to the rest of us.
Friday, September 30, 2011
A spiral with nine turns
We looked briefly though some of the really good blogs. We now have the assignment of actually commenting on each other's blogs, starting a conversation. We also have an assignment stating we are to blog about our next dream. We looked at a picture on a blog (sorry didn't write the name down) that was an egg cracked in two, reminding us that several creation stories center around the idea of a cracked cosmic egg. We will also be set into groups on Tuesday, when we review/create the test. We broke down the word sacrifce to reveal that it means to make sacred. We had a great discussion about the reference to labrynths in connection with The Magus. Life is only interesting when we are in the labrynth, if you've seen the David Bowe movie, then you know that to be true. We spoke of the minotaur and his labrynth that virgins were sent into for him to hunt. I have written in parantheses there "Why is it always virgins? Don't these people know their screwing themselves?" If we sacrifice all the virgins, eventually everyone else will be too old to have kids, and the virgins would have to get younger and younger as parents force their kids to have sex so they won't be virgins, and therefore uneligible. I'm reminded of the book and movie Dragonslayer, where there was a lottery for virgin girls to be sacrificed to the dragon terrrorizing the town. One family (the blacksmith no less, but not the dragonslayer) disguised their daughter as a boy so she wouldn't be in the lottery. This works with a mideveal type time setting because births happened in the home, often with the help of a midwife who could be paid off to not tell anyone the gender of the child. There was also the high likelihood that the child would die before they were a year old. We mentioned that Dionysus breaks everything down which is why he is the god of wine/intoxication. We spoke of Sybil, the woman who had (I believe) 14 different personalities. Her name was another term for the oracles. We went to Andrew's blog where he has the Eliade readings posted outside of the rest of the online book. We read the first one, which the only part I remember is Henuwelle who was born of a coconut tree, and killed by men in a dance floor. Her father went to a godlike person, who drew a spiral with nine turns, and summoned the murderers. Those who made it to the center became humans, the rest became animals. Dr. Sexson wondered aloud what a spiral with nine turns might look like. I'm no artist, but I decided that I could make the attempt to draw a nine turn spiral. I take turn to mean one time around the open circle (making a spiral). So it looks something like this:
I'm having issues getting this picture where I want it to go, and work with the text. You can see this one isn't very good, I even labelled it "bad version". That really is my handwritting, and for anyone who can read that the "4-5 test Fragen" refers to test questions that will come from the foreword from the Eliade text that Jill has posted on her blog. A&E refers to Abduction and Metamorphesis, I don't know where the E came from as an abrevation. I drew a better version of the nine turn spiral in the margins of my notes. I have also taken a picture of that, I'm trying to fill the space to the bottom of the first picture before putting that one in: I didn't realize I'd taken that sideways until now. You still get the idea of I took more time on that one. I also erased it when my lines got crossed over, but I doubt you can see that part of it. The other drawing-thing is a doodle I did before class. The numbers refer to the order of creation stories that we talked about at the end of class. And we talked about the Enuma elish which is where the rest of the writing came from. Now aren't you all happy that I put a comprehensible version of my notes on here? I'd feel sorry for you guys of I didn't translate it out of my personal shorthand. I have a reference that got cut out of the pictures pertaining to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which is about one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. It is mythological in the sense that Sybok (our main bad guy) is looking for Shaka-Ri, which for some reason he believes is this planet just outside our galaxy. Shaka-Ri is supposed to be the source of all life (going by IMdB's plot summary), but when they get there, Sybok says it's like finding heaven for humans, Shaka-Ri being the Vulcan version of things (and there is in and of itself a mythological reference to the Greek god of the forge, this time refering to an alien race of telepaths that Sybok belongs to). He also mentions the Klingon name for it (which translates typically into something like The Black Fleet, or some other word I can't remember where honorable warriors go when they die with honor), and regrets that the Andorian word is unpronounceable. We seek to go back to the way things were when the cosmic scaffolding was still in place. Star Trek, as a franchise is very mythological. We have Apollo in one episode, a race of people who ahve based their entire civilization on the writings of Plato, and a version of Earth where Rome never fell, and Christianity didn't start until much later in technological developments. I'm actually a major Trekkie, as you will all see when we do the pictures of our rooms for the blogs. It may show up in the dream one, but I don't have any control over the contents of my dreams. Most of the time they get very strange. Either they are really strange, or I don't remember them. I definately don't want any of them to come true, the world would be a very messed up place if any of them did.
"In the girdle of Aphrodite, in the crown, in the body of Helen and of her phantom, beauty is superimposed over necessity, cloaking it in deceit." p.114 The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Beauty being placed before need, hmmm. Doesn't that lead to economical downfalls? If one is more concerned about one's look, and places that above the need to say, eat, or bathe, things are going to go bad for that person. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is a saying I've heard of before, we all have our own ideas. We shouldn't actually be able to place beauty over necessity in our own lives because we cannot function if our basic needs aren't met. I can't even really think of a way to impose that quote on another's life. Social interactions are higher than the need to feel safe, which above the basic needs. For those people who haven't taken any form of Psychology, I'm refering to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Any good Google search will bring a picture of it as well as an explanation. It essentially states that all of our needs are built on the fulfillment of basal needs. The bottom tier of the pyramid diagram that goes with this theory is the basic needs of food, shelter, water, heat. The basics to keep a person alive. One can live in a dangerous situation, which is why safety and comfort get their own tier, right about the basal needs of life (which I just now remembered includes elimination). The third tier is the one about loving and being loved, and not just in a romantical sense. This is our social needs tier. The top of they pyramid is self-actualization, which most people never actually reach. This is because self-actualization refers to the recognition of one's role in society, and acceptance of that role. One also has to truly fulfill the other three tiers in order to try for the last one. As society changes, and people change, it becomes almost impossible to truly fulfill tier three. If you don't believe me, read Dear Abby in the paper, or something like that.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The ordinary world
"Every sudden heightening of intensity brought you into a god's sphere of influence." p. 95
We spent much of Tuesday's class going over Jennifer's blog and how she is connecting the dots between the readings and what we talk about. There was also Jerrod's story about running into the guy on the sidewalk because they both chose to change to the same direction at the same time. Thereby doing what they sought to avoid. This is reflected with Oedipus when he leaves Corinth to avoid the fate told to him by the Oracle at Delphi, but only making it actually happen. This is why people should tell their children if they are adopted, then they can make better decisions concerning their prophecies from the Oracle. We mentioned that in 1001 Nights Death is referred to as the destroyer of delights. Dr. Sexson told us the story of the appointment in Samarra. We got around to Scrion who is mentioned in The Magus and how he was a highwayman, or thief. Then we spoke of Procrusties and his hotel where everyone had to fit the beds, perfectly. If a person was too tall, he cut off their feet. If they were too short, he'd stretch them out, probably using some form of rack. This somehow got converted into a philosophical problem. We spoke of rewards, and how they don't come from things that are easy, but as a sign of victory over something difficult. We mentioned Jacob wrestling with the angel during the night, and how his reward was to become the father of Israel, which also became his name. We mentioned the fate/curse of man is to fall. We retold Humpty-Dumpty, in both the general nursery rhyme version, and Finnegan's Wake version. Somewhere about this point in the class, I had some minor revelation. I say minor, because when I failed to write it down, I forgot it. I remember the feeling, but not what caused that feeling. I was hoping it would come back to me when I looked over my notes, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Everything that happens in this ordinary plane, also occurs in the mythological plane. All hero's want to go home, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Oz is created out of what we know, our own worlds which are different from everyone else. Somehow we got around to sparagmos which is a Dionysian ritual, that involves a human sacrifice, and typically omophagia, or cannibalistic eating of the sacrifice. Which lead to a discussion on the Eucharist. Somehow it landed upon me (a Methodist) to explain what the Eucharist is. While the Methodist church doesn't keep with many of the Catholic teachings, we are not unfamiliar with them. For anyone not in class, the bread is the Body of Christ, and the wine (or grape juice) is the Blood of Christ. Most churches follow the tradition of eating the bread, and then drinking the wine. The Methodist church uses something called intiction which is nothing more than taking the bread, dipping it into the wine (juice), and consuming as one. The Catholic church, when my dad was one, considered the layman (nonclergy) to be too dirty to handle the Body of Christ themselves, and the priest would place the wafer into the mouth of the layman. The congregtions objected to this treatment, and eventually that got changed, the priest only hands over the wafer now. There is also an amusing side note involving what happens with leftovers from the Eucharist. The bread may be stored in a special container, but the wine cannot be stored. This probably has to do with the body can be preserved, but the blood is lost in this process. The wine must be completly consumed, so one can sometimes find drunk priests and nuns in the back of Catholic Parishes after Communion (the Eucharist) because they had to finish off the wine.
That was a really long paragraph, but I'm not too worried about my grammar in this. The content is much more important. I'll add an extra space between my paragraphs so we don't get too confused. When we went through the twenty-two points a hero must go through, which I didn't list above because we'll go over them again. The person I thought of immediately was Sigfried. Sigfried is the main character in Die Niebellungenleid which is the national epic poem of Germany. I speak German as a second language, and have read a watered down version in German during my senior year of high school. That was a lot harder than people might think. I then read the last half of it in an English class the same year, I was the only one in my class who could correctly pronounce Niebellungenleid. This is actually where my URL came from. My high school German teacher was pregnant my senior year. We (the 3rd and 4th year class) decided to name the baby. We liked the name Fafnir (the dragon that Sigfried kills) over Sigfried. Then we learned that our teacher was having a girl. We then altered the name to Fafnina so it was appropriate. She actually named the baby Sydney (like Australia, not Montana).
The quote above is reflective of my revelation, that I can't remember. There was a heightened sense of clarity about something that wandered across my mind. Considering the mentioning of the two planes, ordinary and mythological, "To tell a story meant to weave thoser two series of parallel events together, to make both worlds visible." is found at the end of the paragraph that my opening quote starts. Our ordinary world influences the events of the mythological world, and vice versa. This ordinary world seems so boring, but one must look beyond the surface, to find the references to richer, grander things than just a tree. The tree is alive, it is a nymph. The world makes itself complex, and then we see the simplicity in its design. Mythology shows us the simplicity through the complexity.
We spent much of Tuesday's class going over Jennifer's blog and how she is connecting the dots between the readings and what we talk about. There was also Jerrod's story about running into the guy on the sidewalk because they both chose to change to the same direction at the same time. Thereby doing what they sought to avoid. This is reflected with Oedipus when he leaves Corinth to avoid the fate told to him by the Oracle at Delphi, but only making it actually happen. This is why people should tell their children if they are adopted, then they can make better decisions concerning their prophecies from the Oracle. We mentioned that in 1001 Nights Death is referred to as the destroyer of delights. Dr. Sexson told us the story of the appointment in Samarra. We got around to Scrion who is mentioned in The Magus and how he was a highwayman, or thief. Then we spoke of Procrusties and his hotel where everyone had to fit the beds, perfectly. If a person was too tall, he cut off their feet. If they were too short, he'd stretch them out, probably using some form of rack. This somehow got converted into a philosophical problem. We spoke of rewards, and how they don't come from things that are easy, but as a sign of victory over something difficult. We mentioned Jacob wrestling with the angel during the night, and how his reward was to become the father of Israel, which also became his name. We mentioned the fate/curse of man is to fall. We retold Humpty-Dumpty, in both the general nursery rhyme version, and Finnegan's Wake version. Somewhere about this point in the class, I had some minor revelation. I say minor, because when I failed to write it down, I forgot it. I remember the feeling, but not what caused that feeling. I was hoping it would come back to me when I looked over my notes, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Everything that happens in this ordinary plane, also occurs in the mythological plane. All hero's want to go home, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Oz is created out of what we know, our own worlds which are different from everyone else. Somehow we got around to sparagmos which is a Dionysian ritual, that involves a human sacrifice, and typically omophagia, or cannibalistic eating of the sacrifice. Which lead to a discussion on the Eucharist. Somehow it landed upon me (a Methodist) to explain what the Eucharist is. While the Methodist church doesn't keep with many of the Catholic teachings, we are not unfamiliar with them. For anyone not in class, the bread is the Body of Christ, and the wine (or grape juice) is the Blood of Christ. Most churches follow the tradition of eating the bread, and then drinking the wine. The Methodist church uses something called intiction which is nothing more than taking the bread, dipping it into the wine (juice), and consuming as one. The Catholic church, when my dad was one, considered the layman (nonclergy) to be too dirty to handle the Body of Christ themselves, and the priest would place the wafer into the mouth of the layman. The congregtions objected to this treatment, and eventually that got changed, the priest only hands over the wafer now. There is also an amusing side note involving what happens with leftovers from the Eucharist. The bread may be stored in a special container, but the wine cannot be stored. This probably has to do with the body can be preserved, but the blood is lost in this process. The wine must be completly consumed, so one can sometimes find drunk priests and nuns in the back of Catholic Parishes after Communion (the Eucharist) because they had to finish off the wine.
That was a really long paragraph, but I'm not too worried about my grammar in this. The content is much more important. I'll add an extra space between my paragraphs so we don't get too confused. When we went through the twenty-two points a hero must go through, which I didn't list above because we'll go over them again. The person I thought of immediately was Sigfried. Sigfried is the main character in Die Niebellungenleid which is the national epic poem of Germany. I speak German as a second language, and have read a watered down version in German during my senior year of high school. That was a lot harder than people might think. I then read the last half of it in an English class the same year, I was the only one in my class who could correctly pronounce Niebellungenleid. This is actually where my URL came from. My high school German teacher was pregnant my senior year. We (the 3rd and 4th year class) decided to name the baby. We liked the name Fafnir (the dragon that Sigfried kills) over Sigfried. Then we learned that our teacher was having a girl. We then altered the name to Fafnina so it was appropriate. She actually named the baby Sydney (like Australia, not Montana).
The quote above is reflective of my revelation, that I can't remember. There was a heightened sense of clarity about something that wandered across my mind. Considering the mentioning of the two planes, ordinary and mythological, "To tell a story meant to weave thoser two series of parallel events together, to make both worlds visible." is found at the end of the paragraph that my opening quote starts. Our ordinary world influences the events of the mythological world, and vice versa. This ordinary world seems so boring, but one must look beyond the surface, to find the references to richer, grander things than just a tree. The tree is alive, it is a nymph. The world makes itself complex, and then we see the simplicity in its design. Mythology shows us the simplicity through the complexity.
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