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.

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.

Finding Oz

The first thing I have written down for Thursday's class is Bozeman with the "oz" circled, and an arrow pointing to a note saying "mythical place". We spoke of the collapse of the cosmic scaffolding, and how that has lead to the decent of the ages. How life is more bouyant, but also lonely. There is oneshot at life (unless of course you're Hindu, then you just keep going around through reincarnation). Axis Mundi, or connected earth, where earth and the heavens (omphalos) were connected by a large tree that the people of earth could climb to speak with the gods. Something happened to this tree, and it is now gone, and we can no longer speak to the gods as we once did. Rape became the main means of interaction between the gods and man after the collapse of the cosmic scaffolding. We spoke of the phases that Calasso tells of in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. The phases are: 1) conviviality- out going, friendly, 2) rape-sudden invasion, plucking away of thought, 3) indiference- on all sides. We then jumped to Xenophases(spelling?), who posed the question of if cattle and horses could draw their gods, what would they look like? Cattle and horses, because that's what they know. This lead to a discussion of The Planet of the Apes. Initiation means giving up certain beliefs, and change occurs. The beginning is characterized by nostalgia. Nostos, being the root word of nostalgia, meaning homecoming. How fitting since this is MSU's homecoming week, go figure. These phases (beginning, middle, and transformation) are not things we go through in sequence. We are constantly experiencing all of them. We spoke of the Italian philosopher Vico who stated that the ages are circular. Starting with the gods, then the heros, then man, and finally chaos before the gods return. We are currently either in the age of man, or chaos. Dr. Sexson read (for the most part) the Greek creation story which can be found in the Elaide book.
"Whenever their lives were set aflame, through desire or suffering, or even reflection, the Homeric heros knew that a god was at work." p.93
We've spoken of that quote in class before. I recognized it when I finally got there myself. Normally I'm a fast reader, but I find that speed doesn't come to me if I can't engage into the story. I'm also focusng a lot of my attention on trying to get into The Magus because we have a strict time limit on that and I'm not a third of the way through it yet. We all know desire, be it a physical desire or a mental one. We are also used to suffering, or at least we should be because rising above suffering is what gives us strength in life. Reflection can be harder to define though. There is a reflection in glass or still water, but that is merely the image of the gazer. There is self-reflection, which is the likely definition in this quote, it can be dangerous though because of what my lurk in the darker corners of one's mind. I once heard, or read somewhere, that a reason we hate certain people is that they embrace parts of their personalities that we despise in ourselves. We become friends with those who embrace the parts of their personalities that we also embrace.

Elaide list

Here is, as promised, the Elaide reading list. This is for those of us who are using the online version which for some reason unknown to us does not have the section numbers that the printed version does.

Readings from Eliade  Lit 285  Fall 2011

#15: Hainuwele and Creative Murder

#32: Pythian Apollo

#33: The Earth Mother of All

#35: Demeter and Founding of the Elusinian Mysteries

#55: Mesopotamian Cosmogony: Enuuma Elish

#59: Hesiod’s Theogony

#95: Homeric Sacrifice for the Dead (Odyssey)

#147: Dionysos and the Bacchae (Euripides)

#148: The Eleusinian Mysteries

#149: Death and Initiation in the Mysteries (Plutarch)

#150: Mysteries of Cybele (Taurobolium)

#155: Mysteries of Isis (Auleius, Metamorphose)

#158: Descent of Ishtar to the Nether World

#159: Gilgamesh in search of Immortality

#181: Empedocles on the Transmigration of Souls

#182: Plato on Transmigration (Myth of Er, Republic)

#212: The Death of Orpheus

#296: Teachings of the Bhagavad Gita (IX)

Normally I'd take out the excess spaces because they drive me nuts, but I tried that in the combined post I lost, and don't want to go through that again.

Return to regular classes

"' Nothing beautiful or charming ever comes to a man except through the Charites'" p. 84 The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Let's try this again. Originally I had the Elaide listing in here too, but something got really screwy with the typing of this post. I only hit backspace, I don't know what happened there. I'll have to put that up in a separate post. For some reason my Elaide listing went to my student account, when every other email I've had in this class has come to my regular Gmail account. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except I logged in this blog under my regular, so I have to sign out of that to get to the other inbox to open the attachement to get the list.
Jason told his creation story today, which was the same one that Andrew told us last Tuesday. We stated that etiology is how to be, and that ontology is the study of being. We also spoke of Hamlet's sililoquey (I highly doubt I spelled that right). We spoke of the evolution of the names Zeus and Jupiter. It all started with Dyaus which went to Dayeus, and then to Zeus, then to Ju with Piter for father. The last one ended up being spoken, or at least written as only one word, and so it became Jupiter. We spoke of the three phases that this class will go through. The first phase being beginnings or separation, which we are in now. The second phase is initiation, the middle, and will be focusing on pain. The third phase is transformation, the ending. Dr. Sexson drew three circles on the board to demonstrate his point. The first circle is whole, the second is split in two, and the third loods whole but is perferated. To understand these circles is to understand the class. We spent some time sharing some people's earliest memories. I swear that my very first memory is either getting in trouble for taking off the eye-patch, or some vague memory about lying on a couch in semi-darkness while people sat talking at the dining room table behind the couch, where it was well lit. I told the eye-patch story in class. We talked about how all early memories are the same (or similar) and congregate about the communal beginnings. The snake also gets a very bad reputation in mythology, for some reason he is always a trouble maker. Dr. Sexson did go over the list in class, but as I knew about the forthcoming email I didn't write the list down.
I've been trying to get into The Magus, but it's still slow for me. That's the book I've been trying to focus on because it has great potential, but is taking a very long time to get the ball rolling. Dr. Sexson has encouraged us to use online resources for reading Calasso's book, because it is very difficult going. I've read stuff on this level before, but not as a story book. This is much closer to a text book than I had thought. It does have some great thinking sentences. What are the Charities? Why must everything beautiful and charming come through them? But then it is a sign that there is good in the world, for good gives extras.

Creation Myths day 2

"The hawks that flew over Delphi would drop turtles on the rocks to break their hard shells."- The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony p. 157
This class has finally done something that all of my other classes have failed at: making me use three pages for notes. Zach was up first with his rendition of the Norse creation myth, Ymir is the giant's name. Apparently a cow created a man by licking an iceblock, and that man proceeded to have kids, who became the Norse gods. Bailey told us of the banana and the stone. God sent down a rock to man and woman on a rope, the people rejected the rock because they saw no use for it. God sent down a banana in the same way, which they gladly ate. Then God told them that they should have chosen the rock because it gave immortality, but since they chose the banana we would die as the next generation comes in, which is how death came to us. Rosemary retold the Weeping Woman tale, as I speak no Spanish whatsoever, I'm not putting the Spanish name on here. I apparently got it really wrong in my last post so here it is again. Maria was beautiful, but poor, and married a man with a lot of money. They had two kids, then the husband began cheating on Maria, she found out, and got mad. While possessed by a demon she drowned her children in the river, on her way back the demon left her. She drowned herself in the river, and her spirit haunts the rivers looking for her children, and carrying off children she sees by themselves. She would also take away misbehaving children, thus bringing us to the term:warning stories. Jessica told us of how people used to shed their skins. Men could do this as they walked, but women must bathe in order to shed their skins. One woman left her child in their hut to bathe and shed her skin. The child didn't recognize her when she returned, and it upset her so much that she ran back and put her old skin back on. While we could shed our skin we lived forever, this one act brought death to us. Zachary told an "origional" story, apparently similar to a Japanese creation story. It spoke of four seeds that became two women, and two men. One woman took her eyes out and threw them into the sky where they became the sun and the moon. Kara and Mundus became lovers and Theos envied their love (these are the other three). I have written that Theos cried them an ocean (not how it was stated in the story, but you can get the idea). Clay swelled up to make the earth. The lovers wanted to go on a spiritual journey, and Theos got them to kiss one last time, so he could steal the diamonds from Kara's eyes. He ran off into the skys. The lovers created life and Kara tought everything to love, Mundus died, and created land. Kara in anguish tought everything to hate as well. Theos ran into the skys and swore to unite with Kara at the end of time, so he created time. He also spread the eye-diamonds  into the sky creating stars. Lucy and I ended up with the same story. I'll put it up at the end of this post. Jeremy told the story of Genesis 1, where God created the world through his voice, and on the seventh day he rested. Christie told us of elves. God visited Adam and Eve, and they had several children, some of which were clean and presented to God, others were dirty and hidden. God can see all of course and turn the dirty children invisible, now we can only see elves if they desire for us to see them. Kevin gave us the Creation of Earth and Flood from Ovid. 1 god took chaos and made it into a ball creating land, then he used matter to make the animals. Man was created by a divine seed. The first two ages everything went along well, with some decline in the second age. The third age just got bad, and Jove wanted to throw thunderbolts at the people. Poseidon won out in the end though, and we got flooded. A single boat with one man and one woman survived to land on a mountain and started humanity over again. Jarod told a death story, where once we lived below ground, then women found a way to the surface. The men followed, but apparently one followed too closely to the women, so he was killed by the other men and buried. He then realized he was just underground again and could return to the surface, but the magpie made sure he stayed under the ground. Sherwood told a Comanche story, which I only have that there was swirling dust and that people came out of it, and that a shapeshifting demon came with them, and that the Creator banished it into a bottomless hole. Stefanie told us how elephants got their trunks. In the beginning they had stumps for noses, then one elephant child was too curious for his own good, and asked a crocodile what he ate for dinner. The crocodille stated that he was going to have baby elephant that night, and caught the elephant by the nose. The elephant turned his head away and got his nose stretched out. It was about here that Stefanie pulled out the visual aids. He soon found out how usefull his new nose was, and the other elephants were jealous, and stupid, enough to go get their noses stretched out by the crocodile. Abby told a creation by thought story, this is typical among the Native American tribes. Earth Father realizes that he has limbs, crys oceans, and realizes thoughts create things. That's all I have down. Courtney told us how the snake lost his legs. Apparently he had them once, and was quite boastful of them, it was cheetah that was without legs. One day Snake challenges Cheetah to a race, of course Snake wins. Then the gods tell Snake he's being a bad boy and give his legs to Cheetah. Danielle told us a Native American story of the creation of man. Once sun and earth were married, and moon and stars were there as well, living as people. One day sun, moon, and stars ditch earth. The Old One came and made earth as we know it, and charged sun, moon, and stars to remain with earth. He then breathed life into people. Quentin told us about the first lyre. Hermes stole Apollo's cows, and kills a tortoise, stringing it with cowgut. Hermes gives Apollo the lyre to end the fight between the two of them. Darrel told us how the Old One took five hairs and turns them into women, whom he ditches. One woman says she wants to be earth, the second wants to be water, the third wants to be fire, fourth wants to be greedy and have children, fifth wants to be valiant, noble, kind, and also have kids. So good and bad people arise from the children of the fourth and fifth. The third page of my notes is a near verbatim quote of the preface for the second chapter thing of From Primitives to Zens. It concerns the different catagories of creation stories.
Here is the story that I did for creation myths: "Who Can Say Whence if all Came and How Creation Happened?"

1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existance,

There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.

What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?

Was there then cosmic water? in depths unfathomed?

2. Then there was neither death nor immortality,

nor was there then the touch of night and day.

The One breathed mindlessly and self-sustaining

There was that One then, and there was no other.

3.At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.

All this was only unilluminated water.

That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,

Arose at last, born of the power of heat.

4. In the beginning desire descended upon it-

that was the primal seed, born of the mind.

The sages who have searched their harts with wisdom

know that which is, is kin to that which is not.

5. And they have stretched their word across the void

and know what was above and what below.

Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.

Below was strength, and over it was impulse.

6. But, after all, who knows, and who can say

whence it all came, and how creation happened?

The gods themselves are later than creation,

so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

7. Whence all creation had its origin,

he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,

he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

he knows or maybe even he does not know. 



Creation stories day 1

We started our creation stories on Tuesday. Before we did that though we did recieve a rough schedule Dr. Sexson will send out an updated version in a mass email to the class. It lists what days our tests are, and the final will be at 8:50 pm, on Thursday the 15th of December. Business out of the way, creation stories began. We are snaking our way around the room, or trying to. I didn't copy down the names of all the stories, but I will give the summaries that I have. Justin was first and told the story of death and the moon. The moon would resurrect the dead people along with itself every month, but an old man struck a bargain with the moon so that the people would remain dead, but the moon would continue to return to us each month. Megan told an African creation story, it spoke of how black people were made out of black mud, white people out of sand, and brown people out of brown mud from the Nile. The people were formed around the idea that they would be farmers. Lauren told a Hopi creation story, where there was water (with animals living within it), and the sky (with people), and The Great Chief of the Universe lived with his pregnant wife, she once had a dream about uprooting a tree that was in the sky with them. The Great Chief of the Universe uprooted the tree and she unbalanced while looking in the hole. Some birds caught her, and a muskrat dove to the bottom of the water to retrieve land, and placed it on a turtle's back, and thus created the earth. Juniper told a Scandinavian version of Lauren's, where the sun god changed into a duck and retrieved seeds from the bottom of the water for his father to create earth. Sam told a Himalayan story, where Mother Nature and Father Winter created the world. A village was beset by devils who destroyed everything, and the poeple prayed. Then five clouds descended upon the village, and turned into five goddesses who healed the village. Then the most beautiful of the goddesses had a fling with Father Winter, and created Mount Everest. Wena Tsan told a Hispanic story, which I have summed up as Maria is a stuck up woman, who marries a wild man, has two kids, then he ditched her for a more elegant woman, and whe drowned her kids to spite him, he still rejected her, and she commits suicide. She can still be heard by the river crying for her children. Andrew a Native American creation story, where there was water, a tree with a nest and six animals living inside of the nest. Eagle decided to make land, and killed some ducks in the process of retrieving some mud. They mixed the mud with some seeds, and wolf shouted to cause earthquakes. Cyote decided he could shout too, but not much happened when he tried. Jennifer told the Native American story of the lady's slippers. A young girl lived with her family, and her brother was the village messenger, one day the village became ill, and she went in a blizzard to the next village to retrieve some sacred herbs to heal her village. She went because her brother was ill. She got the sacred herbs and made the trek back to her village. At one point the snow nearly swallowed her, and she lost her moccasins. They were never found, but where her feet had left bloody marks from the snow, a flower grew, hence the lady's slipper. I nearly forgot, I went after Sam. I tried, and failed, to remember the poem "Who Can Say Whence it all Came and How Creation Happened?" it is a very difficult philosophy to try to explain, and comes from India. Ashley went ater Jennifer and she told the Iroquis creation story. This is similar to the Hopi story. There is a lady who dreams of a tree that gives light to the heavens, and she wants to uproot it. So she does, and the light goes away, the men get angry and shove her down the hole, a seahawk catches her, and the world was created on a turtle. Maddie told the Cherokee story of how medicine began. At one time humans and animals got along well, then the humans began to kill animals for purposes beyond food. The animals plotted revenge, and the plants chose to side with the humans, making themselves usefull to resolving the problems set on the humans by the animals. Lisa told a flood story, where an eagle and a crow landed on a stub. They were best friends, and would fish all day and share their spoils at night. One day they found a duck, and convinced the duck to dive for earth while they fed it fish. The eagle and the crow became competitive, and when the waters recieded the Sierra Nevadas where the results of their dirt piles created by the duck. Vittoria (am I spelling that right? If not, apologies) told a Norse creation story. There were two villages (not sure how to spell them at all), with two rivers between them, There was a giant named Umers who lived in between the rivers. He had children, Odin, Ville, and Vay (I think), who are Norse gods, they kill Umers, and made the earth from his body. Man, they made from trees. We live in Midgaard and they live in asgaard. There was also a prediction about the end of the world. Jill told the Suoix story of Devil's Tower. Two naughty boys wandered away from their camp, and turned around for four days, then were chased by a grizzly bear, the boys prayed to their creator to save them, and Devil's Tower was created. No one knows how the boys got down, or if they did. Parker told the Crow creation story of Old Man Cyote creating the earth. Old Man Cyote was lonely, and found some ducks to retrieve land for him, where he created the world and all things living in it. Sarape (Old Man Cyote's brother?) encouraged war and weapons, so there could be the stealing of wives and great honor and glory. Old Man Cyote asked about what wives are better,the ones you steal, or the ones you don't steal, and in the end it didn't matter because his wife was good under the buffalo rug. Mathew told the story of the lamppost from The Magician's Nephew which is a prequel to the rest of the Narnia series. Aslan created Narnia, as the other characters are either frightened, or confused. The Witch has part of a lamppost she broke off to use as a weapon during a fight in London, and she threw it at Aslan, it hit the ground where it sprung as a whole lamppost from the ground. There was some explination for that in the book, but I don't remember it clearly.
Several of these stories became classified as "Earth-diver stories", meaning someone (usually some form of animal) dives under the water to retrieve earth for the creation of the earth. I have been greatly neglecting to read either of our books, which is bad because Dr. Sexson expects us to be done with The Magus by November 8th. I may still make that deadline, but it may come at the cost of Calasso. I'm trying for that not to be the case, but it may be so. Calasso has no definite plot, and simply confuses me. I get into a story of sorts, only to have it trumped at the next page break. I think this would be easier to read of it were set up like The Canterbury Tales where each story arc gets its own chapter. However, I still need a quote: "But how did it all begin?", p. 4. It seems the most fitting quote considering the topic of this blog post. I'll try to find a different quote for next blog because we are going to try to finish our creation stories Thursday in class.

Mythology day 4

"'So men love women even when they are made out of stone'" p. 83
I had some things I needed to do for another class I'm in, so I was about 20 minutes late for class yesterday. Not proud of it, but things had to get done. I came into class about where we were talking about Plato, and in illo tempare- in the beginning. The discussion then went to Plato's idea of anamnesis which is inate knowledge. The theory essentially states that we are born knowing everything we need to know, and that we have simply forgotten it. Making the teacher's duty to remind students of how things work. We briefly touched on the idea of nurture- babies are blank slates whose lives are influenced by everything around them. Most psychologist believe in a mixture of nature (anamnesis) and nurture. That is why we don't know exactly the same amount of knowledge. Our environment (nurture aspect) will influence what innate knowledge that you can retrieve. Or at least that's how I understand things to work currently in the world of child psychology. We told the tale of the myth of the cave, which is attributed to Plato. People are chained in a cave so that they can't turn around, and then see shadows before them. It's people behind them that they can't see, and one person figures it out, but gets killed by the other people for stating this theory. The suggestion that the world isn't real, is a big philosophical point for Plato. However, this story also shows humanity's xenophobia. We fear that which is new, that which is different. These people kill someone, simply because they can't make the same leap in logic as the other person. There was mention of an idea stating that our immortal souls flew with wings that became too heavy and we fell into the human condition. When things like love find us, we start to grow our wings back, and that is why our shoulders itch when we see someone we like. We repeatedly mentioned a tribe somewhere (I think initially this story was told before I got there), and how they urinate. The men urinate in the same fashion that their mythology dictates their gods urniated after creating the world. We spoke of the
Babylonian creation story, where Marduk killed his grandmother, Tiamot, and cuts her in half, taking one half to make the dome of the sky, and the other to make the bowl of the earth. We spoke about what will be on the test, next Thursday. We need to know Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, and classic dramatists. The classical dramatists being: Euripides, Aeschyles, and Sophocles. These three were under mandate from the government to write dramas about mythology. At the centers of these dramas was sparagmos, which means tragedy. Tragedy started with the mutilation of a goat, and they weren't allowed to talk about current (for them) events. We nearly told the whole story of the play Oedipus Rex. I don't know if we'll get the chance to finish it because we are doing our creation story readings on Tuesday, and then the test on Thursday. We also took apart the word "apocalypse" and explained that it's meaning truly is "to take off the veil", and see the world as it really is.
That took longer than I had expected. We also talked about quite a bit of stuff, I took quite a few notes for having come in about 20 minutes late. I had basically just read the quote abouve before putting it on here. It would appear to be a parable about friends arguing over sexual desires. For as I thought, there is much unnecessary sex in there, but not as explicit as I feared at the beginning of the book. Calasso is really too confusing to have much explicit stuff in there. There are major hints to what I can only describe as homosexuality, or the ancient Greeks were all pedophiles. I only refer to those two things because there is much mentioning of adult men getting it on with young boys. This comment was made after a story was told to three men explaining a stain on a statue of Aphrodite. A young man had spent the night alone with that statue, and apparently had his way with it for he was madly in love with Aphrodite. He has never been seen again according to the story. So the one friend states the quote above, and the other states that the same stain proves his point about young boys being better for that activity. The second man points out that the stain is in the back of the statue, meaning some crazy young Greek man had anal sex with a statue. He stated that the statue was taken like a young boy, so it wasn't quite how I just put it. I thought it interesting that some people fail to see clues that are right in from of them. People do crazy things when they are in love, no matter how they are oriented sexually. Sometimes, it leads to anal sex with statues of Aphrodite, other times it leads to less publicly embarassing things, like writing love poetry.

Tree hugging and other things

Thanks to my roommate who took this picture. Random tree near Sherrick hall, over by the duck pond. Yesterday in class we discussed that there are three parts to our story: a beginning, a middle, and an end. We were also asked to become three-year-olds again. Sounds easy enough to me. We spent much of the beginning of class discussing our assignment to find a creation story that we could present to the class. I already found mine, but I'm not sure how I'm going to present it yet. Thanks went out to Danielle for figuring out how to bookmark everyone else that is on blogspot. I have already added the blog list to this blog. We discussed that Calasso isn't easy to read, but he does give good food for thought. We discussed the tree hugging, and that daimons live in trees which are good spirits, similar to geni (who are liberated in some fashion). Daimons were alternate personalities/conciousense ( I can't spell very well), We discussed ate ( I'm not going to fight the system to get the accent marks for it, pronounced ah-tae). which means divine infatuation, or obsession. There was also a side about the word enthusiasm and what it's meaning is. We named the god and godess of desire (Aphrodite and Eros). There is also a line about suffering isn't necessarily a bad thing. We have all gone out of our minds (been possessed by the gods) at some point in our lives. Infatuation/suffering is how life is, we can't have grandeur without it. We briefly spoke of the first musical instrument (the lyre) and how it came to be (Hermes played some joke on Apollo, who got really angry, and Hermes created the lyre to placate Apollo). We were also told of why spiders are called arachnids (Arachne challenged Minerva to a weaving match, and won). We were asked to consider etiology-- how did it all begin?
As I forgot before, here is my The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony quote for this blog: Heraclesdeserves the compassion of the moderns, because he was one of the last victims of the Zodiac."p.63
I know, that's supposed to be at the top, but whatever, it's here today. The Zodiac, which do they mean? I assume that they mean the one that says my sign is Virgo because I was born on the 6th of September. I was amused by the reference to my astrological sign in Calasso. But how can one be a victim of the Zodiac? I'm not sure. I don't even have an idea really to throw out there. I like the question though. Was it something astrological? Did the stars really control Heracles' fate? There are many constellations out there, and I think Heracles (or the Roman spelling "Hercules") is one of them, but I am by no means certain of this. I shall continue to puzzle over how one can be a victim of the Zodiac. I know they don't mean the Zodiac Killer from whenever that was. I did a research project once on him for high school Psychology, but that was some time ago. An interesting use of the mythological term, perhaps he wasn't fully aware of what he was invokiing.

Theresa Brown Day 2

"From first to last Ariadne's story is woven into a crown." - The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

We were mainly focused on housekeeping things today.We talked about the Eleusinian initiation, where something was said, done, and seen. A metamorphisis would then take place, and when others would ask these people would respond with "mystos" which gave rise to the word mystery in the English language. What they were trying to say was that you must go through the experience in order to understand what had happened to them. This course (and The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony) is structured along the lines of in mediares which means starting in the middle and working one's way to the ends of a story (either beginning or end). We learned that Mnemosynein (memory) is the mother of the muses. We discussed that abduction is a very common theme in mythology. We discussed how we look, but do not see, and that to see we must look through a mythological lens. I also have a note about how laurel leaves gained their signifigance from a story of Apollo chasing a nymph and she turned into a laurel tree. We were also more specific about what is supposed to go into these blogs (notes, visual enhancement, a quote, insights/discoveries. Other specifics on this are in the syllabus.

I haven't read much again in the books. I did find a creation story that I liked, and thought we were going to share with the class today. I was just listening to a song playing on my roommate's computer that stated that "it's already written, so baby come on". I believe the song is about a guy encouraging his girlfriend to agree to marry him, but everything that has happened will happen. I just happened to think of how it related to our notions of mythological influence in our lives (much of which nowadays is written), so in a very real sense (from our perspective) it is already written, and will happen again. The guy is encouraging his girlfriend to live out her story. One of us mentioned in a blog that Europa carried a basket with her destiny on it, which lead to the part about we look but do not see. This reminded me of Sherlock Holmes (who repeatedly says something similar to that), and how we must observe, but that is not enough. To observe the cow in the sea on the basket may not have actually been a connection to Io, it was but the knowledge of Io's fate would be needed to make that deduction. So one must have the knowledge in order to make the deductions making our observations informative. Was that geeky enough for everyone?