Lawrence of Arabia

Maybe my favorite film of all time, Lawrence of Arabia follows a soldier of the british army during the first world war. I guess the events were based on an actual person and story but im sure the version i've seen is a little grander. The film stars Peter o'toole and Alec Guiness (well before Star Wars) and won a number of awards in 1967, i think.

The protagonist is stationed in the middle east as a code cracker or some such when the story starts. He is terribly bored by all the paper pushing and office work and longs to get out into the desert to see some action. It is made clear from the start that Lawrence is an above average intelligence and ability. He finally wins a commission to go out and treat with the Bedouin nomads and garner support for the British cause. He is suppose to follow orders from his superior who leads him but it becomes apparent fairly quickly that he has more ability than his Commanding Officers. There is a clear threshold crossing when they move into the desert and encounter the Bedouin who are as alien to the British at that time as Martians would be today. He quickly garners the support of the Bedouin with his knowledge of their culture and the Koran which is their guiding light. They are also a warrior people and his bravery impresses them.

His first real trial is to lead the group of Bedouin through the worst part of the Sahara desert to a raid on the port city of Aqaba (spelling). They lose one man to the heat and Lawrence is forced to execute a man for theft. His actions harden him and increase the support of the Bedouin. They finally reach Aqaba and their raid is a success.

He reports back to the normal world of the British to great acclaim but finds he only feels at home in the desert. He spends the next year or so going back and forth as Master of the Two Worlds freely moving from the zone of adventure, back to safety. Unfortunately his successes lead to him mistaking his own identity. He forgets about being British and feels he actually IS a Bedouin. This error is made plain to him when he is captured and tortured because he stood out as a white man in an "Arab" city.

This is where he forsakes his adventures completely, and like Owain wandering in the wilderness, returns to the British encampment and tries to put everything behind him. The final part of his story in "Arabia" occurs when the British army enlists his aid for one final battle. They need Lawrence to go to the Bedouin and garner support for a fight. This he does with great success also, but his motives have changed ($$$) and he appears more as a Tyrant than a Hero. Ultimately he tries to force the British to recognise the Arabs as a nation and people but fails due to the inability of the Arabs to come together and set aside their differences.

He returns to Britain and dies in a motorcycle crash soon thereafter. It seems he never reintegrated into his home culture after his experiences in Arabia.

This story points out how the hero will often experience a change in consciousness which prevents him from ever returning fully to his place of origin. Much like the weary Hobbits at the end of Return of the King who must face a Shire which seems to be full of petty and selfish people, Lawrence identifies himself more with the Bedouin than the British. This leads to all sorts of problems as he cannot carry out his duties as a soldier and be faithful to the Bedouin also. The transitions between the zones of adventure are made very plain in the film as you can actually see the differences in landscape and culture. His meeting with the goddess might be represented by his temptation to take money, which at first he refuses. He eventually ascends to the fathers role as a leader of the Bedouin armies and respected member of their community. It is unfortunate however that whenever he returns to the British they mistake his motives for action as they cannot understand the Bedouin or the world into which Lawrence has been inittiated. Like the Christ in his own time his message is largely rejected and misunderstood and he suffers at the hands of his own people because of it. This is also a common theme of mythology. The hero will often return from his adventure with a message which his own people reject or cannot understand.

Thank you for the last few weeks.  I enjoyed reading your comments and getting to know a little bit about each of you through your journals and essays.  Please be sure to hand in you final projects before Monday so i can get your grades done on time.

Return of the Hero

I'd like to discuss Owain and the Fountain a bit for today. Tommorrow we will post our hero movie review and write a brief course review for our journal entry.

Owain is an interesting story because Owain is kind of a rookie knight and hasn't really earned his stripes yet. When he hears of Kais adventure he feels he has found a task which will earn him renown. What he ends up with however is much more. Some of the obvious symbols include the huge knight they first must encounter. This seems to be the challenge of fear. Sometimes the thing you fear is not all that bad and when you confront it, like the knight it becomes a friend or ally in your struggle.

This is where Owain passes through to the very center of the zone of power. Once he reaches the fountain and summons the mounted knight, who is clearly a guardian of the threshold, he easily gives him a mortal wound and chases him right into the castle. It is very clear to the reader when he passes the threshold and his horse is cut in half. This seems to be a sign that he is entering the realm of adventure.

When he meets his supernatural aid in the form of Luned she helps him escape his capitivity but he still faces the danger of being caught in the castle. His danger is even more since he has slain the lord of the castle and will shortly come to replace him. This is clearly atonement with the father and meeting with the goddess. He eventually becomes the guardian of the castle itself and remains in the other realm, forgeting that he ever was a knight in Arthur's court.

 The hero's return to the land he came from can be easy or difficult. For a time Owain refuses to return to Arthur's court and instead becomes a resident of the Countess's realm. It only when The whole of Arthurs' court come after him that he agrees to return to the land he came from, for a short time. Owain has become a great hero at this point but his return to Arthur's realm still consists of a "Flight" or "Escape" as he is bound to return in three months and cannot freely leave that land of his own accord.

Owain breaks his promise to the Countess however and suffers something of psychological crack up because of it. This is where he goes into voluntary exile, most likely to die. He has no land now and has no place to be. When the new countess finds him and places a balm on his heart, he is forgiven and reborn. This is where he takes on a new personality and shortly becomes more than a man. He must reattain his status as a knight and it is when he defends the lion from the serpent that his fate is sealed. The Lion as a symbol of the power and majesty of Christ clearly contrasts with that of the serpent.  This is also clearly used by CS Lewis in his Narnia series. Owain has aligned his soul with Christ and becomes invincible with the lion on his side. It is at this opint that he is reunited with Luned and the countess as a new and better man and is able to move back and forth between the two worlds as he chooses. Owain becomes the ultimate hero in a sense because wherever he goes, fear, tyranny, and greed are abolished and the powers which are locked up by the "dragons" are released back into the world. Owain becomes a symbol for positive change and lives out the rest of his life in peace. I think this is a great story because it follows all the changes of the hero and his missteps as well.

Broken Link

I am sorry that the link didn't work from yesterday.  Here it is: Owain and the Lady of the Fountain  
We probably won't have time to look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  So please disregard any reference to it in the schedule and instead focus on the above reading which is probably the best so far on this subject.  Please be aware that your final projects are due this weekend.  I will have your grades finished by Monday and posted for you to see.  Tomorrow we will discuss Owain and then on Friday we'll discuss your movie picks.


I'm really glad to see that things are coming together and making sense for people.  The comments posted from yesterday were really good and show that you are grasping the importance of this to myth.

In order to be able to bring a change in consciousness and return to the masses with it, it is often necessary to overcome your desire. Desire usually takes the shape of worldy things such as money, sex, power, food, whatever. When is the last time you saw a fat Buddhist monk? The hero can enjoy worldy things but not to the exclusion of his main purpose.  Bilbo Baggins (before his adventure) was a great example of a selfish fool. He would rather indulge his desires, food, smoking, sleep, than anything else. It was not until he was forced out of Hobbiton, and faced some trials that he became someone who really understood, charity, compassion, courage, etc. By the end of the novel he turned a 180 into a self actualized human being, from the infantile figure he was.

So yes, Adam taking the apple from Eve and eating amounted to Adam's choice to live with woman and all she stands for.  Earthly temptation was to great for Adam and so mankind was consigned to the earth and be a part of it forever.  This explains why we must submit ourselves to the indignity of death while still enjoying the pleasures of sex and love.  So the real choice made was Adam's; Eve was and is a representative of life.  Adam chose knowledge of the world over spiritual bliss and ignorance.


Sorry again about the broken link. 

Meeting with Goddess

Please forgive me if there are any errors. MY daughter is up early because she is teething and having a rough time. As the title of this section implies, the hero at some point must reconcile himself with his opposite. IF you are having trouble following the reading be sure to return to the Monomyth website to brush up on each stage. In meeting with the goddess the hero encounters the feminine aspect of himself. The nature of her appearance and her stature are scaled to the difficulty of the hero deed. In folk tales the goddess is represented by the sleeping princess who must be awakened to love. Usually such a tale ends in marriage showing us that the meeting with the goddess can be an awakening to love. She can also take a terrifying and powerful form such as Kali who represents the totality of life in time. Such a meeting would likely be the end for any hero who was not prepared to face such a power. While all heroes return from their journeys with some gift, the highest kind of heroes will return with a spiritual message. If a hero is not prepared for such a meeting with the goddess it is likely he will misinterpret his encounter. Such errors occur and, in my opinion, exist in Christianity with Mary Magdalene’s classification as a whore. In such traditions all the things which are associated with the feminine also become profane. As you may remember, the goddess has a great many associations including: the physical world, fertility, sex, birth, death. As you may know all these things were or are considered profane in Christianity. This is from an excessive patriarchy and too much obedience to the masculine principle of divinity.

We find very few traditions along the line of Christianity which emphasize the corruptness of the physical world and denial of its joys and divinity. Sex is dirty, birth is dirty, and death also must be scrubbed clean by prayer.

From the weekends reading we see that a new world opens for the hero when he discovers the divinity in the feminine principle which is in reality the other half of his divided self. Love is perhaps the greatest joy one can find in this world and its ability to overwhelm all other worldly obligations proves its status as sacred. Suddenly people don't care what their parents (society) think and dismiss social obligation. This is one of the barriers that faced the Buddha who also had to face lust and greed which are perversions of love. This is a huge problem today.

Ultimately the woman can represent a temptation to the hero, in the form of worldly pleasures, which may cause him to forsake his spiritual adventure for physical comfort.

To spend a minute with the slaying of Fafnir I'd like to point out two important things about that story: 1. the dragon is a symbol of avarice in the west. He accumulates great wealth and spends none of it. This is why it is a typical trial for a hero to face. Do you take the money to give up your quest? 2. Sigurd performs excellently well in this story as he gives the treasure away. Had he stayed and kept the wealth he would have supplanted the dragon and ceased to be a heroic figure.

For tomorrow please look at the following reading: Owain and the Lady of the Fountain
This reading very clearly identifies the different parts of the hero cycle and is a great example of the monomyth. Finish for Wed. if you need to.


For Friday please read: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we will discuss a bit every day until Friday. You should be able to get through about 10 pages a night.

Crossing the Threshold

I have been reading your comments over the past couple of days and they are really good. I am glad to see that we have made some connections between story and life. As a student of literature, i have always seen this connection in what i read. In myth however, the connections are much more pronounced.

I read Kevin's positng about his brother with sadness. My own step brother has been on three tours himself in Iraq. Luckily he has returned intact both mentally and physically from those dangers.

The foriegn wars we have conducted throughout our nations history are great examples of typical hero stories. The most pronounced threshold crossings appear in these stories of folks who travel by air or water to a foriegn land. They have clearly passed through to the zone of adventure and often are thrown directly into the Belly of the Whale. In the military this would be the first battle, where you are certain that there is no easy way out. Your home and safety are far away and return is uncertain.

Little Red Cap by the Grimm brothers and Jonah and the Whale are great examples of the transiion to the zone of transformative power. The reemergence from which marks a clear change in the protagonists consciousness.

In the piece from the Volsung Saga the Supernatural Aid appears clearly in the typical form of Odin, which was the model for Gandalf in Lord of the Rings who also serves the same purpose to the characters of those stories. From his interaction with Odin he recieves a fantastic steed which will help him on his journey.

For Monday we will examine the Road of Trials, and more specifically the Meeting with the Goddess and Woman as Temptress.

Trials: Slaying of Fafnir

Meeting with Goddess: Meeting with Brynhild

A folk interpretation of the Meeting: Sleeping Beauty

Woman as Temptress: The Temptations of Christ

Supernatural Aid

This image presents Odin as the "Grey Wanderer" who appears to Aid Sigurd in the Volsung Saga.  Incidentally he was the basis for JRR Tolkiens' "Gandalf the Gray"

As we saw with the reading for today, the refusal to answer the call of your own destiny can lead to being permanently "bound" in a state of inaction and stagnation.

The princess and the frog highlight the seeming insignificance of the Call to Adventure. The princess' golden ball seems to roll into the well by accident. In actuality it is the forces of life moving her toward her future. This reminds me of Lindsey's story that she posted yesterday.  It was no accident that her friend pushed her to go out and meet some handsome stranger.  It was life and destiny calling her forth from her shell of life negating pity and depression.  

It also worth noticing the symbolism of the golden ball and the well. Gold, as well as the circle or sphere, are symbols of perfection and the Well is a symbol of the unconscious mind. When the ball falls into the well we are immediately aware that the girl has moved into the realm of unconscious action and that something significant will happen.  Namely she has lost the beauty of her childhood, to the growth which is necessary for all of us to become adults.  Take a look at Dylan Thomas on the subject of childhood in his poem Fern Hill and you will see the beauty and wonder of childhood recreated there.

It is at this moment where the frog appears from the well with the ball. This leads us to believe that he is a messenger of her destiny that, because of his repugnant form, is an unacknowledged part of her own unconscious. In this story the frog is her other half, the male aspect of her own nature which she must come to terms with in order to become a woman.

Daphne represents the extreme case of the princess, as she rejects wholly the message that the time has come to be a woman, apart from her father. She clings to her infantile notions of male/female relationships and thus becomes an image of life in suspension. Nevermind Apollo's grief, Daphne's suspended state requires a real hero to break. If we remember sleeping beauty it was the prince who won through and woke the princess to the wonders of life as a woman. Until then she was merely sleeping and not awake to her own life cycle.

If the call is accepted, the hero will usually encounter a beneficial figure who gives aid to the hero in order to enable his success. History is rich with Supernatural Aid figures such as Merlin, Athene, Yoda and others. It is often this figure who helps the hero cross the initial threshold and reach the zone of adventure. The great hero Jason from greek myth had Medea to facilitate his success and as we find out he is not much of a man without her.

I suppose it is also necessary to address the question of Destiny, what it is and its purpose.  Destiny is referred to often in reference to these Hero stories as a force supporting the Hero.  As far as i can tell Destiny amounts to that Dionysian impulse of life that resides within each of us and guides our actions.  If we are psychologically and spiritually aligned with it there is nothing we cannot accomplish.  But Destiny also ties us to the greater stories that we have been reading.  If you remember the Thomas poem i posted earlier; "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age" is the force that connects and binds everything.  Destiny is tied to this and makes the mundane magical.

Here is a selection from the Volsung Saga which became Wagners greatest Opera. This outlines Sigurd after he accepted the call. Sigurd

Another classic hero tale that illustrates the "Belly of the Whale" literally is Jonah. Jonah and The Whale

Note the similarities between the Jonah tale as a cosmological myth and the folk tale Little Red Cap or Little Red Riding Hood.

The Call to Adventure

No matter who the hero or his stature he/she will at some point reach the limits of his living environment. This is a situation where he is bored and longs to see new things or where he is simply exhausted the possibilities of his current way of living. This is typicaly when the hero is "called" to adventure. For most of us this probably happens the first time we move away from home or go off to college. The world we lived in for the first 20 years of our lives has grown to comfortable and predictable and we need to be cut open by a new experience to discover the joy of living once again and grow. The call can take many forms but in fairy tales it is often in an unfamiliar or scary form.

Eventually even if the call is not answered the hero may be pressed into action by cicumstances beyond his control.

Here is a classic tale to read: The Frog Prince


The classic tale of Daphne and Apollo also highlights the Call to Adventure and the Refusal of the Call:
Refusal of the Call Daphne and Apollo

Even the Buddha was forced by destiny to uncover his eyes, despite the intervention of his parents.  Be sure to read through the second page.

If you want, take a look at the video on the right which covers the call to adventure in Star Wars.  In this clip he also meets his Supernatural Aid/Spiritual Advisor.

Take a look at these stories for tomorrow and we will discuss their importance. Then we will review Supernatural Aid, Crossing the Threshold and Belly of the Whale.

The Assignment

While you finish up watching the video and reading the outline of the Hero Cycle on the linked web page, I thought we could spend today discussing your final project. This is an open ended project without a lot of constraints for you. My goal is to hopefully spark your creativity and allow you to pursue an idea in any way you see fit. I've had students write poetry, create music,and even fashion My Space pages for deities such as Zeus. There is always the option of writing a longer research paper but I'd prefer you settled on something a bit more interesting. You may want to ask yourself how your interests intersect with the Hero Journey. What am I good at and how can I express this? I don't expect perfection today, but I would like you to share some ideas you might have in your blog posting today. Please try and have a final idea to me this weekend. We only have one more week before the course is over and that doesn't give you a ton of time to complete your project. I look forward to reading your ideas. Stay cool.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Ignore the link in the title.  It does nothing and I cant fix it.   This link however, will take you to a page on the stages of the Hero Cycle as described by Campbell.  As you watch the video its relevance to all mythology should become plain.   This is a way to interpret some of the great hero stories as well the great myths that we have already read.  In addition Campbell's Hero Journey has a direct connection to the lives of "ordinary" folks like us and gives us a way to translate the important experiences in our lives to a spiritual plane the way myth does.

During the course of the video he mentions George Lucas and the Star Wars series of films. Campbell was actually an advisor to George Lucas on those films and that is probably the reason why they came out so good. The focus on the hero myth also brings the cosmological scale of mythology down to the personal scale. I believe it was Campbell who said that "myths allow us to live a good life in any time". This is shown to be true in Star Wars as well as Arthurian Legend and even farther back into what we have already read. Tommorrow i will discuss the Stages of the Hero Journey (from website) in more detail.

Finally, I would like you all to begin sending me ideas you have for the final project.  Please send me at least one idea in the next few days.  Also remember that the second part of your American Gods essay is due this weekend.   Enjoy the film.

Transition

The Bacchae highlights the mutability of Dionysian power and the aspect of godhood that we spoke of before. Namely that "God" encompasses all opposites and makes them one. This is demonstrated in Pentheus' acting out of an effeminate role. Dionysus wakes whatever is suppressed or hidden and brings it to the fore of your consciousness. Pentheus' death represents his own inability to come to terms with his "anima" or opposite in God and he suffered a crack-up because of it.

What most people find interesting about this story is it's parallel with the story of Christ. It seems pretty intriguing that the story of Dionysus written by Euripides, about the time of the Buddha, possesses many common elements of the story of Christ.
Both of them are regenerative gods who die and are reborn. Both gods are the son of an ultimate male power, both are also represent a gospel of sorts and have very dedicated followers. Both of them also follow the typical hero cycle in their rise to power. They are "virgin births" who later were called to adventure, wen tout into the wilderness and returned to share life renewing message.

This is a good transition into the last two weeks of the class where we will examine the hero deed in detail; using Campbell's monomyth as the model. Campbell s basic premise was based on a departure, an initiation and a return. This model is used often to describe the hero journey and crosses cultural barriers. It describes all kinds of hero acts, from the personal to the cosmological and everything in between. This is where mythology gets really personal. Take a look at the video i posted as well as the webpage link i posted. We will cover these in more detail later.

This link will take you to a page that describes each stage of the hero's journey briefly. This will be important for the next two weeks.  The author of that page also decided to outline the Harry Potter story according to Campbell's Hero Cycle.  Its Quite interesting.

Bacchae

The Bacchae is a great example of how much the Greeks loved Dionysus and how they recognized that there is a time for everything. Even though they worshiped Apollo and Athena for their reason, wisdom and ability to structure society, they also recognized the opposite in Dionysus and how important it is. Just as it is important to inflate the ego of your society to be proud of its achievements; it is just as important that you not take your self too seriously. This was highlighted in Medieval Christendom through the use of the "Fool" or court jester. A parody of the king himself; the court jester was a constant reminder to those in power what their eventual fate might be or could have been. The jester might deliver a parody of the kings decrees or mimic his actions and we see that in Shakespeare mighty kings such as Lear could have done well to listen to the advice of their fools.

Because Dionysus represents the hidden aspects of our unconscious mind and the taboo aspects of society he has the power to do much harm to law and order and our ego. But this only holds true if we refuse to acknowledge him. Our American society is such a one as this. We turn a blind eye to the poor, the sick, and less fortunate. We marginalize gays and lesbians much as we used to black and Asian people. We ignore genocide in Rwanda and the Congo because it "does not affect us". We turned a blind eye to the injustice occurring in Afghanistan until it we were forced to recognize it in the heart of our American ego; New York.

There is an old saying that "your enemy hides in the shadow you cast". This is certainly very true for us as our society, a great one, casts a very large shadow. In that shadow our enemies take shape, but Dionysus would have us know that they are products of our own greatness. Dionysus prompts us to recognize and come to terms with our shadow, our opposite, before it consumes us quietly from within.

Medea

Medea is a representative of those who live at the fringes of civilization. Like the wolf, her intelligence, ferocity and ability to live outside the bounds of civilized society strike terror in the hearts of regular man as well as kings such as Creon. Her association with Hecate affords her further status as an outsider much as the Maenads and Satyrs who compose the retinue of Dionysus.

As Hecate was often a protective figure, it makes sense that Medea was able to protect Jason. Unfortunately the methods that Medea used further alienated her from her family and any other representatives of civilized society. It is also ironic that her willingness to achieve victory at any cost is seen as negative, especially when it is an honored trait of other heroes such as her husband.

The crimes that Medea finally commits in the pursuit of her revenge seem to be against nature as well as the laws of man and would make an audience of any time shudder. Her unyielding focus on revenge finally overcame her mother's heart as she killed her own children to spite her husband. Medea gets away in the end of the play and that may seem unfair; but remember that she is allied with the gods and seems to have different set of rules to play by. Overall it seems more cautionary towards oathbreakers such as Jason. He was really only a hero by the help of his wife Medea and her powers. Without her and her aid he is just a man, and not a very good one.

What makes this play a tragedy is the emphasis on love denied or unfulfilled between Medea and Jason as well as between Jason and his new wife. Also of great importance is the finality of the deaths that occur here. We know that these children as well as Jason's new wife all met a a terrible end and there is no consolation for that. Overall the tragedy is obsessed with dissolution, loss and grief. Ultimately it is the shattering of life's temporal forms here that causes such intense grief because of the intensity of our attachment to children. In the classic sense this is a tragedy because of Jason's fall from a state of high position and happiness to his ultimate end in obscurity. It is my opinion that the mythological perspective of the tragedy here is really more relevant to most readers. Most readers probably don't feel much sympathy for Jason as it seems he brought his troubles down upon himself through his own poor judgement and selfishness.

Regardless of the interpretation, it is a chilling remindder of the power of the goddess to destroy as well as create. It also shows the fear that most people have of such a remoreseless killing. So it sometimes is in nature that the mother cat will devour her kittens or leave them to die. It happens in the natural world and this play reminds of that destructive power the goddess holds.

Medea

What do you think of Medea so far?  What about Jason??  There is no doubt that this play is unique and without equal in the ancient world.  Perhaps the Welsh counterpart to Medea would be a goddess such as Ceridwen.  She was a powerful woman who possessed great knowledge and was able to create and destroy.  She was the creator of the famous bard Taliesin which means "Shining Brow" in Welsh.  He later had adventures with other heroes and found himself intertwined with Arthurian Legend. 

Like the primordial waters of creation, Medea has the power to create, transform and kill; a famously female role in myth.  Because of their powers these women became the archetypal witch or hag lurking in the shadows dealing in petty evil.  Remember the beginning of Macbeth with the three hags, or if you have seen Clash of the Titans, Perseus must face the three sisters with one eye between them.  Clearly there has been a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of their function and power for these great women to be so maligned.   The aged woman who has lost her beauty or "hag" has moved fro the realm of generativity and creation of life to post menopausal sterility and becomes in her wisdom a threat to men in western culture.  Her domain is that of death.  Thus she is feared and reviled in our culture.  Others would revere her wisdom and the natural function she represents and serves.

Remember, there is no journal entry today but be sure to do the one for Medea tomorrow.

The Tragic

For tomorrow you will get a little break as you will be exempt from the journal entry.  Please make a comment here on how the reading is going but no journal necessary.

I felt we needed to continue with tragedy here because it is the realm if Dionysus and directly inspired by him. The tragic stories we will read emphasize the suffering attached to the human condition as opposed to comedy which focuses on the human spirits triumph over suffering. It is very interesting to think about Medea as a heroine, albeit a tragic one. She was prone to lose control as we will see, but her power as a woman was not respected. There were definitely two sets of rules for men and women. Medea was not the usual character depicted by the Greeks and her bold action would even catch attention, and possibly scorn, today.

As you begin to read the play keep in mind that the Greeks did not allow violence to occur onstage. Therefore the gruesome acts you read about are embellished simply because they cannot be shown. As the text suggests, this allows violence to retain its noble character when the context is "appropriate". However, in this case the descriptions you will read will hardly ennoble anything or anyone. In fact the story of Medea remind a little of the story of Job who could not catch a break by following his heart. Sometimes heroes are ahead of their time, or even not of this world and their actions attract censure because they are not understood. We will get more into that next week when we begin our exploration of the monomyth and talk more about Joseph Campbell and his work.  For now, keep your eye on Medea and stay focused on tragedy.

Also think about why this might have been as popular as it was: The festival of Dionysus attracted as many people as a modern NFL game would attract. This was thousands of years before flush toilets, modern food convenience etc. Why would people come from all over Greece for this festival and to see this theater?

Dionysus

The sculpture above is called Michelangelo's Green Man and is one representative example of Dionysus in art.The two images below are also folk representations carved into Christian churches by the non-Christian stone workers in early Britain.  Most of the churches built in the first millennium in western Europe are covered with such images which are all folk interpretations of a god similar to the Greek Dionysus.  The natives never really gave up their old ways of worshiping nature and the unconscious aspect of man.

Maybe one of the least known and most misunderstood of the Greek gods, Dionysus is a god whose influence most of us have first hand experience of and enjoy greatly. As the god of the vine, grapes, wine and all the things that result from its consumption, i thank Dionysus every night when i sit down with a glass of Cab or Shiraz. Somehow that long, bad day at work seems a little less bad, my spirits rise, and the world seems a bit brighter. My neighbors also seem to enjoy the Dionysian things in life and much to my detriment as they stay up late partying and keep me awake.

The loss of control facilitated by alcohol was one of the trademarks of Dionysus and his retinue. The Maenads would often reach a spiritual ecstasy through dancing and loss of control. In this Dionysus is the opposite of Apollo. One way of gaining the religious experience is through structured ritual, prophecy and following the rules (Apollonian), the other way is through a complete dispensation of any type of rule and an embrace of the irrational. Through giving in to unconscious desire and impulse, Dionysus allows the taboo acts which are normally forbidden to be acceptable. St. Patrick's Day or New Years Eve, are perfect examples of times when the usual rules of polite society do not apply. One can get drunk, wear a lampshade and the next day face fellow office workers with little more than a smirk.

If Apollo is the god of civilized society and the conscious and rational mind, then Dionysus is the patron of the wild forest where the unconscious mind is free to play out its own agenda of conflicts. Most fairy tales mirror this convention, placing the realm of unconscious action in the forest which is historically representative of the unknown. Dionysus would have you "know your self" through this avenue rather than Apollo who would have you "know your place".

Because Dionysus is a vegetal god he is also a god who is capable of resurrection and his rites very closely resemble those of Christianity. He was destroyed and resurrected and his followers eat of his flesh and drink his blood in similar rites to attain the mind and mystery of God. If you look back at page 284 in the text you will find a great comparison sheet between the two makes clearly links their stories and worship.

For the coming week we will be looking deeper into tragedy and getting a sense of its importance to myth and life. We will start be revisiting a tragic female figure in "Medea" and then move further into the story of Dionysus in "The Bacchae". Since the theater of Dionysus allowed for the creation of the Greek stage, (different from our modern stage) it was a great vessel for the collective purgation of negative emotion. It seems as though it was a natural creation in the progress of a healthy society.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorite of the gods, and we'll see you tomorrow for review of tragedy.

Apollo

Anyone who has ever suffered from "middle child syndrome" will most likely become a Red Sox fan and hate Apollo nearly as much as the New York Yankees. Apollo is the favorite son of the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon. He was also one of the most beloved by the Greeks themselves. The god of music, prophecy, rationality and civilization, Apollo embodied many of the qualities the Greeks emulated in themselves. He was held up as a paragon of society and what the social order stood for and was rightly embraced.

Apollo's unusual birth circumstances are something he shares with most figures who are destined to be great. Hera decreed that he could not be born on land or sea and so with some help from the gods Leto is able to deliver Apollo on the "floating" island of Delos.

One of his first great deeds, as is normal with patriarchical systems, is to slay the serpent Python. Python is of course a symbol of the old religion that existed before his arrival and is most likely a goddess worshiping tradition. This solidifies his rule as the major deity in the region.

It is a bit troubling though that he basically kidnaps sailors to serve as the tenders of his temple.

As the god of prophecy Apollo was very important to the life of Greeks . He was the conduit the Greeks had to the realm of Olympus and becomes an attenuated version of Zeus. I will leave to you the question of his failure in love. It seems probable that the kind of release in letting go of your inhibitions to embrace love wholeheartedly would be impossible for him.

Other Goddess Archetypes

The reading for today gives you a view of what some of the other goddess archetypes look like in the Greek mythology. While these "types" may not be present in all religions in the exact form they are in the Greek, they are usually represented somewhere in the greater mythology.

Before we moved into discussing the gods exclusively I thought it would be important to review the complex relationship between Zeus and Hera. These two are destined to run into conflict with each other and Hera is also destined to be the perpetual loser. Even though Zeus is the iron fisted ruler of Olympus, like other Olympians he is susceptible to the power of other powers such as Eros who frequently compels him to commit adultery on his wife Hera. It should be understood that the concept of love as we know it today was an invention which started in the middle ages and slowly evolved into the 20th century to become an emotional/spiritual bond between a man and a woman. The Greeks had no such concept of love; instead they had the sexual yearning and compulsion of Eros to push them forward. Zeus is often a victim of Eros and creates many illegitimate, yet powerful offspring, some of which become powerful heroes like Hercules. Other of his offspring suffer from Hera's interference and come to no good end. One such woman Leda is the subject of another Yeats poem entitled:

"Leda and the Swan"
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?


As you may know it was this coming together that created the beautiful Helen of Troy.
This brings us to Hera. As the goddess of marriage, and the sanctity thereof, she was unfortunate to be married to Zeus. What may appear as meddling on her part amounts to an obligation to fulfill her role in the Olympian pantheon. In order to enforce the bonds of matrimony, she must attempt to punish the transgressions of Zeus or, as she frequently does, prevent his offspring from being born. This present a very human family on Olympus, beset by all the moral failings of humanity.
Another goddess and maybe the most interesting is Aphrodite. She fulfills an interesting role in that she initiates a lot of rule breaking in terms of the gods and men. First off, she married to the witty, yet misshapen Hephaestus, the only parthenogenic child of Hera. Hephaestus' handicap is a result of Hera's attempt to create life outside of Zeus' realm of influence. She attempts to circumnavigate his role in creation and comes up with a cripple. As his wife, Aphrodite proves as constant as Zeus does to Hera. Rarely is Aphrodite really punished by her dalliance with gods and mortals, but those mortals always end up in trouble.
For the Greeks sex and power went hand in hand. They saw the world in terms of power relationships with a dominant power and a passive power present. In their world, the gods were always in a superior power position to mortals and so the mortals who dared to aspire to their status are always punished. One other rule the Greeks held was that by nature men dominated women. So when Zeus had affairs with mortal women all the "rules of nature" are are still being upheld: Zeus, the male is dominating the female; and Zeus the God dominates the mortal.
You can see where Aphrodite might throw a monkey wrench into those plans. She was almost always the dominant power in her sexual relationships. In her affairs with Ares she outwits him and manipulates him. To mortal men however she was a deadly attraction. The Greek notion of sex that the male dominates the female cannot hold up in her affairs with mortals. The men cannot usurp the power of the gods and so (unlike Zeus' mortal partners) Aphrodite’s mortal partners all came to a bad end except Anchises whose son Aeneas becomes famous in the Trojan War.
The last and maybe most important of these Goddesses in Athene. She is a very powerful figure for mortal heroes and champions the cause of many such as Odysseus. While she was born was Zeus' head there is no known link, as opposed to what the book says, between that and her power as a tactician. The Greeks did not have any idea that the brain was associated with thought, and like the Egyptians believed it to be a useless mass of goo. She was what I think of as the female Apollo and a splendid example of how contradictory the Greeks could be.

World Goddesses

If you get an hour to sit and watch the video i have posted I highly recommend it.  In this video Joseph Campbell, not Mr Bell, discusses the power of Love and the feminine in mythology.  It is a transformative  experience to see true love in action where the importance of the other eclipses the self.  


The reading for today was intended to make you consider the cosmic significance of the goddess and the universal association she has. The first thing to consider is the similarities between the stories of Innana, Isis, and Demeter. Here we have very close association of deeds and significance. These stories all contain an association between sex and death as the correlates of temporality. The life we have is only possible with the death of others. The goddess becomes an all encompassing figure that contains all the possibilities of life and death. Many traditions separate these aspects of goddesses divinity but a few bring them all together as well. Kali from the "Hindu" tradition is a good example of the goddess of all existence. She carries a sword to cut life down, an open hand affirming life and a drum to tap out the minutes and hours of time.

In the case of Isis we see many parallels to Demeter in her story and function.  In agrarian societies the goddess is the earth and so she is very important.  In many images Osiris can be seen sitting on a throne with Isis in the background.  This is not because she is less important but because she is IS the throne upon which he sits.  She is all of creation and he is living upon her as a representative of human society.  One further note about that story:  Campbell once stated that in the older versions of the Isis and Osris story the birth of Horus occurs when Isis is morning the loss of her husband on the river and she actually has sex with his corpse and conceives Horus.  Most of the stories we read will make reference to Isis laying down with his corpse or some other vague reference to this act.  This simply shows that, as we noted earlier, sex and death are closely bound and we cannot have one without the other.  Furthermore, Horus becomes an important god, the patron of Pharaohs and the arch-nemesis of Set, his fathers murderer.
 

If the goddess is the material of life, the god is the one who moves it into action. The god creates reality out of possibilties. It is through the god that we find that even though we may be reluctant to bring life forward "life must be". He (as the text notes) is "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower".

Consider this poem (a favorite of mine) as we continue:


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Dylan Thomas

Demeter and Persephone

For several thousand years the goddess has been in decline. As we will see tomorrow, much of the decline of the goddess can be attributed to cultural factors. In very patriarchal societies such as our own, and to a greater extent the Greeks, the goddess gets shotgun instead of the drivers seat. Her importance in myth cannot be overstated however. Goddesses such as Demeter are central to the existence of all life and particularly human life. The text does a good job in covering the importance of this story in etiological and psychological terms and it does address the importance to the feminine psyche.

I found this myth to be a good guide to a woman's life and importance in society. This story tracks Persephone as maiden, Demeter as mother and life giver, as well as the crone. They may possess incredible potency to give life but it is constrained and directed here by the prerogatives of the patriarchy or social function.

The first glaring example of social duty is Persephone's marriage to Hades. While she is clearly not happy with the match it demonstrates the typical marriage a woman could expect. She would be married to a much older man who would likely appear a monster in her innocence. Much has been written on this subject and it appears in folk tales such as Beauty and the Beast where the young girl must learn to recognize the male not as the "other" but as the other half of her own divided self.

Eventually Persephone comes to an acceptance of her limitations in regards to marriage and becomes an adult woman operating within the bounds of society. While this explains the seasons etc. it also prepares young women for the transition to adulthood and the recognition of their own power as women. Their power may not be (primarily) to make policy and war but they have the gift to deny life, or allow it to continue. Observe the play Pygmalion by Shaw and the earlier Greek myth. The power of life is locked away like a princess in a tower. It takes either a hero's penetration into the restricted zone of her life giving powers to win her over, or the eventual realization on her part that she is is now not a girl but a woman. Earlier societies did a much better job of introducing women (and men) to their new lives of maturity and responsibility than we do today.

Demeter's grief over the separation is presented as somewhat excessive here but highlights the mother's need to relinquish her children to the social order as well. The better Greeks states had compulsory public education for male children starting at the age of 6 or 7. The child was usually removed from the home for a number of years and returned only when his studies were finished. He might be allowed visits home, but his mother no longer had any access or power over him. He had migrated to another realm where she could not reach him.

Demeter as the crone still holds impressive power. Take the example of Demophoon buried in the fire in an effort to grant him immortality. The mother is unable, as a mortal, to comprehend the fire of immortality and sees it only as a threat. Most people fear what they do not understand, (observe the rise of fundamentalism currently going on all over the world) and the young mother mistakes the crone, Demeter's intentions. As we will read later Hecate is the archetypal crone figure and has powers associated with the realm of death. She is the patron of Medea, Jason's wife and exhibits her power to destroy through the maddened woman. The crone is the tomb into which we all must pass.