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.