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.

Why Life is Hard

This is perhaps the most appropriate title from Works and Days. Assuming we were once in an eternal state of bliss it is a far fall to where we are now. If "Works and Days" tells us why life is hard, the story of Prometheus is about the injustice of the universe. Humans are punished for the mistakes of Prometheus even though he is a Titan and we are not.

This story deftly answers one of the most vexing problems of Christianity: If god is all powerful and supremely good why do bad things happen to us?

The Greek answer is that if there is an omnipotent god (Zeus), he/she is indifferent or malevolent. This view was also shared by the Gnostic Christians who were very quickly pushed out of the Christian church.

Prometheus is also something of a scapegoat who comes between the full fury of the gods and mankind. Mankind suffers, but not nearly as much as could be were it not for the suffering of Prometheus. The scapegoat archetype is very common and is seen in figures such as Christ and Odin.  Take a quick look at the image above and tell me that does not resemble Christ.  This image however dates from 350 BC. Scapegoats suffer so that others will not have to. It was very common in early societies to practice scapegoating at the New Year. Often a sacrificial figure would be identified a year ahead of time and pampered like a king for that year. On the eve of the new year they would then be sacrificed, stoned or exiled from the town/village. This symbolic act was a ritual purge of the collective sins or evils of a community. The sacrificial individual would be suffering in the hopes that the community would not have to. It is also connected with early agricultural and hunting societies where death is recognized as an integral part of the life/death/rebirth cycle.

In the case of Christ the sacrifice was of such magnitude that is obviated the need for further sacrifices. Up until that time sacrifice was a regular practice. For more detailed explanations of the scapegoat rituals and documentation see "The Golden Bough" by Sir George James Frazer.

Another trend which is highlighted by Works and Days is the increasing distance humans have from their once divine roots. Most stories of alienation foretell a time of great hardship and strife usually right before the end of the world or a new beginning. According to Hesiod we were experiencing that time now. For a poetic version of the end-days see "The Second Coming" a poem by WB Yeats which I have provided here.

The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Prometheus is something of a champion for mankind and we recognize his heroic qualities. Prometheus is the source of civilization for humanity as the theft of fire allowed for a shift in the ways humans lived. He was the spark of inspiration that allowed for further progress.

The Golden age that preceded Prometheus is a psychological version of the womb where all the child’s needs were met automatically and there was no want or conflict. The gradual decline in that perfection represents a coming to terms with the world and its necessary evils which cannot be reversed and is only ameliorated in death; which for the Greeks was small consolation. The hope for a return to that world without want and overabundance is a desire to return to the womb.

Obviously a return to that eternal state is only possible in death which brought many cultures to revere the power of the Goddess as supreme. She is the "womb and the tomb" which we will read about for tomorrow.

Alienation from God

The focus for today’s reading is on the distance between men and the Gods and addresses questions about mankind’s relationship with nature and the divine.  As we see in the reading for today and as will be made clearer for Monday, human are connected to the natural world more closely than the divine.  In western traditions often the reason for this is some act of trickery or malfeasance on the part of man.  Eve eats the apple in the Christian tradition taking on the knowledge of good and evil.  Thus she and Adam can no longer exist in the garden where all things exists and all things meet their opposites.  They must move into the world of nature and have children and suffer and die.  This is also reflected in the Pandora story where mankind is cursed by the gods to suffer, sweat an d toil all his life. 

One unfortunate element of these stories is their scapegoating of women.  In the western cultures such as the Greek, women were literally the property of their husbands and might not ever see their families again after they were married off .  Remember that men wrote these stories and keep in mind that not all cultures viewed women as the “downfall of man.”  One of the main reasons why this may be the case is that women are more closely tied to their reproductive function than men.  When a woman becomes pregnant it is clearly visible and when the child is born, that child is still tied to the mother for at least a year or so and depends on her for sustenance.  There fore women are tied to nature and it’s cycles of fertility and productivity.  This is a common observation among agrarian societies.   Once men have played their part in the sexual act they are basically irrelevant.  If some early societies used this against women, many others did not. 

Please remember to submit your journal entries today to my e-mail at the college with the attached Word file containing all your entries.  Next week we will continue with these stories and then look closely at the importance and function of the goddess.  Enjoy you weekend and stay cool if you can.

Common Denominator

Perhaps one of the most recognized Archetypes of mythology is the tree. For our reading today we encountered the World Tree as the Norse Ygdrassil, The Iroquois Celestial Tree and the Christian Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Even non-theistic spiritual traditions such as Buddhism recognize the power of the World Tree as the central nexus of energy that brings life into the universe.  We see that Buddha gained enlightenment while sitting under the Bo tree.  

Regardless of the tradition we see the tree in it always represents the totality of power behind the universe.  If there is a fountain where life comes into the universe it is represented by the tree in myth.  Therefore any actions that take place on the tree or in its vicinity take on new significance.  Odin was sacrificed on the World Tree in exchange for powerful knowledge about existence.  At the center of the Garden of Eden sat the Tree of  Knowledge from which four rivers flowed out across creation.  This is literally life flowing into the world.  In the Iroquois, three seeds from the Celestial Tree are enough to populate the entire planet with life.  Christs Cross is also a variant of the World Tree and his sacrifice upon it, like Odin, was a universal sacrifice with great import for humanity.  Furthermore the image of the crucified man is a reminder that humanity is bound to the power that drives all life and it is part of his destiny to die and return to that source from which everything flows.

Even the sci-fi thriller Avatar capitalized on this symbol and made millions with the Home Tree which is literally the center of a living entity which consists of their entire planet.  In JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion he explores the archetype of the world tree through his Two Trees of the Valinor.  Even popular MMO World of Warcraft has numerous references to the World Tree which are all named suspiciously similar to the Norse Ygdrassil.
These are certainly intentional references but they show the extent to which these highly spiritual symbols are a part of our daily lives.  I think it is fantastic that modern consumers of popular culture are being fed archetypes as a part of their entertainment.  Maybe you've seen some world tree refernces somewhere in popular culture.  Let us know.

Theogony

Hesiod's Theogony is certainly the authoritative source for the Greek creation story today even though it wasn't necessarily in his time. I think it is important to remember that Greek culture in ancient times was highly patriarchal and remains so to a certain extent today. Women in Greek society were regarded as possessions and would pass from father to husband along with a substantial dowry. Women were often not allowed outside of the home except on holidays or perhaps to go to market. The woman's life was very restricted and the husband or father had complete control over their life or death. It is no wonder that we see these values reflected in the stories of Greek authors.

Like all creation myths Theogony charts the creation of order from chaos and the voyage from preconsciousness to life and consciousness. Often in creation stories we will see two things happening at the same time which share an inverse relationship to each other. The first thing we may see is the ordering and structuring of the world and/or universe out of a primordial chaos. The primeval darkness and chaos is symbolic of the womb from which we are all born and the darkness to which we return. Therefore the world is often associated with the mother or goddess. She contains the potential for all things and from her all things come and return. She is the womb and the tomb.

As the world becomes more ordered often humanity moves further from the source of creation and is alienated from the divine. This will make more sense when we read "Works and Days" and "Prometheus Bound". There may be a brief “Golden Age” in these stories but they eventually end in darkness. In most creation stories there is inevitably a fall from grace, a first death and birth and the beginning of "time".

The source of all creation is eternal. Eternity is a place without time and where there is unity of all things. Therefore as we have seen with Hesiod and will see with other myths; as the forms of creation drop out of eternity they split into opposites and we see the first sexual procreation and the beginning of time. This is a common theme among all creation stories and we will see the sex and death are the correlates of temporality. That is to say that a function of life in time is the need to procreate and die. Since we are no longer eternal with the Gods we must become temporary. The Greeks get started very early with this and we see Ouranos and Gaia creating children and just as quickly it seems there is a castration and release of the procreative powers of the God.

Later we see Kronos attempting to maintain control as well by eating his children in an effort to maintain his dominance and ensure that he is not supplanted. Eventually he is outwitted by Zeus with the help of his mother and the world comes to order once again under a new ruler. Zeus's control of the universe is supreme and although he is often challenged by his first wife Hera we are assured that his reign will be forever.

I'm going to skip the short blurb about Prometheus as we will spend some time on this later in the week. I'll also come back to the story of Pandora as well when we read Works and Days.

Different Approaches to Myth

The new video on the right is a teaser for what we will be looking at later this week with creation stories.  I will be providing additional videos that track the rest of the story from the Norse as well.   This first one is about seven minutes.  If you have some time to watch it i recommend it as two more shorts will accompany it later.

We haven't actually begun to read myth yet but have had a good look at several approaches to making meaning out of myth. There are of course many very literal levels upon which we could meditate when we read myths but that would be missing the point completely. Myth is like great art in that it is inspired by genius and reflects the perfection of some aspect of creation.

One only needs to look at the Romantic Movement in Literature to understand the incredible beauty and sublimity that underlies Nature’s visible forms. It was Wordsworth who was overcome by a field of daffodils in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and the moment is permanently imprinted in his soul. Walt Whitman teases the meaning of existence out of a few blades of grass in "Song of Myself". In "Ode on A Grecian Urn" Keats is so inspired by artwork on an ancient urn he writes "Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

All these artists experienced something akin to an awakening where they realized that behind the visible forms of existence lies the energy and real power of creation. The experience of this is hardly capable being put into words, but nevertheless these artists tried. Much like the metaphors these artists wield in their poems, Mythographers of the past also used metaphors to explain the ineffable, or that which cannot be put into words. In reading the material this semester it is important to remember that all the great myths are metaphors and all the gods and goddesses as well. These are all symbols which stand for some element of human nature or experience, some aspect of humanity which potentially lies within all of us.

The reading explained several ways to look at the myths we will read, but undoubtedly the Archetypal perspective of Jung with its focus on the "human" provides the most promise for those who really wish to understand the meaning of these metaphors. While we will not go deeply into Jungian psychology it will be important to understand Archetypes as opposed to other symbols and how we will read them. See page 48 in the text for a good definition of archetypes.

All of us have experience with these common human experiences and many of them have recognizable rituals associated with them. In Judaism a boy has a Bar mitzvah when he reaches the age of manhood. He is expected to learn certain things about what a man is in his culture and live up to those standards. This is an archetypal experience which aligns the boy with what it means to be a man and guides him through this transition in his life.  All boys should have an experience akin to this but as we know our society doesn’t necessarily recognize the importance of this transition.  Therefore it is important to pay attention to Myths as they are stories about bringing the spirit in line with the physical under the stresses and pressures of life and help us make these transitions and experiences in our lives easier.

Some of the myths we read will be associated with the natural cycles of the earth and seem to explain some aspect of nature. It is important not to think of these stories as primitive "science".  Science as we think of it had not been invented when these stories were written and it's rules do not apply.

Overall it is important to keep your mind open as well as your feelings and intuition when you read. Do not dismiss or disregard anything you have read until you have given time to thinking about it.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses to the video.  I will try and respond to your comments or any questions you might throughout the day, but I do have a full time job and I may not get to them right away.

For next time we will be looking at the Greek version of creation from Hesiod. I highly recommend you read the additional clarification as well.  It will help you to put things in context much better than just the reading alone.