Notes 11/15/2011

Talked about the paper. The theme is focused on The Magus, unless you have talked to professor Sexson on writing something else. Be specific, entertaining, do not bore your audience!

THE END OF THE END

• masque - certain kind of theater often times put on in somebody's house
• History -> His- battles, big events 
• Personal unconsciousness is baggage or a great pressure that we carry around with us everyday
• Jung- We believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on personal unconsciousness)
• quotidian- ordinary, everyday
• The only reason for action is action itself
• Taoism- philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony 

Bourani becoming reality over actual reality?

"I only know I'm haunted, possessed by everything over there." (The Magus pg. 270)
On this page when Allison was visiting and pages and pages after that. It seems that Bourani has indeed become his reality over actual reality. Especially in this part of the book when he is not at Bourani he's thinking about it all the time and what kind of test Conchis has for him in store next. He wants to know and understand so badly what exactly he is in the middle of. It seems like the uncertainty annoys him, especially not knowing whether "Julie" is who she says she really is. I could relate with the character through out the whole book, it was confusing trying to figure out the maze that he was in. When I was reading it, I had thought of a movie that was kind of similar. The movie is called "Stranger Than Fiction" it's about this ordinary guy named Harold Crick who is an IRS agent and he starts to hear this voice that is narrating his life. Little does he know that he is the main character in a new book that Karen Eiffel is writing who is known for killing all of her main characters. You could imagine it was a strange process trying to find out what is happening to him as well.

10/27 notes

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: a waste of desert sand;
    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
    Wind 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?
from PotW.org

• It's not the thing that is sacred, if you believe it's sacred, then it is. Ex. Bible for the christian, lucky jersey for an athlete.
• Gerard Manly Hopkins - "The world s charged with the grandeur of God."
• If you see how it really is, you see how it's connected to the universe. 
• C.G. Jung- Follower of Sigmund Freud, studied typology, understood something going on in mythology and fantasy that goes along with psychology. Found that psyche is not the about the mind, but the soul. 

• Thinking(extrovert)- Zeus
• Sensation - Athena, connected to birth of Athens.
• Intuition - Demeter
• Feeling (introvert) - Dionysus God of rock and roll

• Eros and Psyche- Psyche was the most beautiful, a bit of a floozy. Ero's wanted her and Apollo wanted to have her sacrificed because Aphrodite was jealous of her beauty, this refers to Snow white when the queen was jealous of Snow white because she was the most beautiful girl in all of the land. Eros loves Psyche and took her to his castle to take care of her this also refers to Beauty and the Beast, when the beast took Bell to his castle. The only thing that Eros asked Psyche to do was she was forbidden to look at him. Then Psyche's sisters come and tell her that Eros is a monster and should be killed (because they were jealous). Psyche decides to have a look at Eros before killing him since she disobeyed the one thing he asked Eros says,"I'm going home, my mother cooks better than you do!" When he leaves Psyche tries to hand on to him, but slips off and finds out she's pregnant. She goes to Aphrodite and asks for her husband back, Aphrodite makes her do all these chores and animals help her (reference to Cinderella)....didn't get the rest of it, but that's most of it. 
• All fairy tales are to prepare women for marriage.  

Incubus!

• Referring to how when you go to a rock concert you get an out of body experience feeling, from Dionysus King of Ecstacy
• I looked up the definition of Incubus from Wikipedia, here it is:

An incubus (nominal form constructed from the Latin verb, incubo, incubare, or "to lie upon") is ademon in male form who, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have intercourse with them. Its female counterpart is thesuccubus. An incubus may pursue sexual relations with a woman in order to father a child, as in the legend of Merlin.^[1] Religious tradition holds that repeated intercourse with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, or even death

Santa Claus

So when I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real, I was probably about 11 or 12. I remember thinking about it logically and realized that it was physically impossible for Santa Claus to be able to deliver gifts to every house in the world in one night. When you're a kid, you don't really think about that stuff. It made sense, that my parents would wait for my brother and I to go to bed and when they were certain that we were asleep, they would take all the gifts downstairs and fill our stockings. I still to this day have no idea where they hid the presents. I used to make cookies for Santa and put milk out, the next morning one of the cookies had a bite in it the next morning, but it was really just my parents. Once I had found out there was no Santa, it definitely took away some of the magic of the holiday. I still love Christmas, however its not the same as when I thought Santa was actually real.

Rosemary doing Dia De Los Muertos

Ritual presentation

The ritual I'm going to be presenting is called Rain Making and it comes from the Karamundi nation from Australia

Mircea Eliade "From Primitives to Zen":RAIN-MAKING

It is universally believed by the tribes of the Karamundi nation, Of the Darling River, that rain can be brought down by the following ceremony. A vein in the arm of one of the men is opened and the blood allowed to drop into a piece of hollow bark until there is a little pool. Into this is put a quantity of gypsum, ground fine, and stirred until it has the consistency of a thick paste. A number of hairs are pulled out of the man's beard and mixed up with this paste, which is then placed between two pieces of bark and put under the surface of the water in some river or lagoon, and kept there by means of pointed stakes driven into the ground. When the mixture is all dissolved away, the blackfellows say that a great cloud will come, bringing rain. From the time that this ceremony takes place until the rain comes, the men are tabooed from their wives, or the charm will be spoiled, and the old men say that if this prohibition were properly respected, rain would come every time that it is done. In a time of drought, when rain is badly wanted, the whole tribe meets and performs this ceremony.

When I think of ritual, I think of tradition. When I think of tradition Christmas automatically comes to mind. I have always loved Christmas time, spending time with my family, putting Christmas lights on the house, decorating the tree, and everyone seems to be more jolly around that time of year. The way Christmas day would go in my family is on Christmas Eve, I remember being excited for what Christmas day would bring. So I would never really get much sleep that night and would always be up early the next morning. Most times when I was younger my mom had to work on Christmas, so my brother and I would be anxiously waiting for her to get home. So Christmas could really start. As soon as she got home we would all open our gifts, we would always start with our stockings which would be filled with candy and all kinds of good stuff. Then we would open our gifts and I remember always being happy with what I had gotten. Most of the rest of the day was spent together as a family appreciating what we have and how good we have it. Of course, part of that day was spent preparing Christmas dinner. Christmas dinner was not like dinner on normal days, we would have a festive table cloth on the table, nice plates put out, some kind of Christmas decoration in the middle, and candles. Our Christmas dinner gave us a chance to appreciate our company and be thankful for our lives and what has been given to us.

My own personal understanding of ritual, is something that you cherish and look forward to every year or however often the ritual is done. Whether it be a tradition that was created by your immediate family or something your family has done for generations. Tradition is meant to bring people together and celebrate life.

notes 10/18

Middles - battle, muddle
*Post the ritual that you are going to talk about.
Hetus is more powerful than Zeus. Hetus can't beat Zeus. Kronos ate all the children except Zeus was hidden away.
Zeus- How am I going to prevent my children from over powering me?
 End rebellion, he did not push the children back in the mother, didn't eat the children, but ate the mother. (Metis the mother Godess of wisdom and deep thought).
Book of revelation- end of times three horseman of apocalypse one will be riding a white horse and it will be death.
All the great stories are family stories. 
Blood crime- killing someone who is in your bloodline.
The furies- (Google them) disgusting women story of the middle, last part of the story erinyes or the kind ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erinyes
*chthonic- of related to the underworld
Aphrodite born of sea foam, the furies born from the foam.
Origin of trial by jury? Ans. Orestes
Model of mythology- precedent behind every action
*archtype- the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based ;a model or first form; prototype
Senator- Senex > the wise man > often found as the impotent old man
Origin of the west legal system? Based upon the story Orestes, Athena voted for Orestes.
Peitho- goddess who personifies persuasion
*Make blog entry on your understanding of ritual
-Homer...Illiade and Ulysses Leopold Bloom.... anything but ordinary, but he's a hero.Wrote Ulysses with this in mind we are all heroes, things you do in everyday life are heroic. There's something mythological and heroic in everybody's life.
-Ground hog day- about myth of eternal return whoever wrote this movie knows his mythology and religion.
The ordinary is extraordinary.
-Ulysses ch. 13 Sirens....women that sing and make men jump over the boat....they are there, but it's not obvious.
-Obsessive compulsive disorder- everything has to be done exactly this way. You have have obsessive thinking to really be considered obsessive.
-Blessed are those that have performed this ritual, then you are a member of the elect.
temenos- holy precinct, that has been cut off and assigned as an official domain
Elusinian Mysteries- of all the myesteries celebrated in ancient times , these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. Mycenean period. The decent, search, and accent. Rituals are done for the coming back of persephone. Story of how Persephone got taken into the underworld by Hades.
Rain, conceive
Persephone also known as Kore- the secret between mother and daughter, only someone wise can really understand the relationship.

notes 10/13

• Unusual ritual >Carpe Diem rituals> go into natural places and do what comes natural
• Bear rituals....bears would be cut up and given to the bear. Had to kill the thing that was provided for you.
• Shirley Jackson, The lottery (sacrificial ritual)
• Delphic oracle > calasso ch. 6 > three leg stool
• Sacred rituals > agricultural prosperity
• Deus ex machina- "God out of the machine" problem suddenly solved with contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object
• Ritual- set of actions, performed mainly for symbolic value
• when you make decisions, you are really a puppet on strings...
• myth and ritual are components of religious practice
• precision and repetition are part of rituals
• Calasso pg. 39, 163-164
• Jeffery Eugenides- middle sex, the marriage plot
• When you purify/go to confession and rid your sins, you put your sins on something else.
•  cere in ceremony is talking about Demeter the goddess of harvest...when you eat cereal in the morning you are doing a morning ritual.
•  sac in sacred means to make sacred
• homeopothy > effigy> representation of a person ex. voo doo dolls
• God priapus > God of procreation > origin of maple > rejoicing return of summer
• pg. 260 Calasso, The initiation

notes 10/11

• middles....going from gods/goddesses to humans. Sadness and pain generally is part of the middle. 

The Hero Pattern

This pattern is based upon The Hero: A study in Tradition, Myth and Dreams by Lord Raglan 

Incidents which occur with regularity in hero-myths of all cultures: 

1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres. 

Click on the name to see the pattern applied to the life of :

Mithradates VI of Pontus (22) / Krishna (21) / Moses (20) / Romulus (19) / King Arthur (19) / Perseus (18) / Jesus (18) / Watu Gunung of Java (18) / Heracles (17) Mohammad (17) / Beowulf (15) / Buddha (15) / Czar Nicholas II (14) / Zeus(14) / Nyikang, a cult-hero of the Shiluk tribe of the Upper Nile (14) / Samson (13) / Sunjata, the Lion-King of Ancient Mali (11) / Achilles (10) / Odysseus (8) / Harry Potter (8) 

Individuals are listed in the order in which they fit the pattern. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of pattern points which apply.

• Oedipus fits most points in the pattern.
• In mythology we like to hear hero stories over and over again.
• middle is the muddle
• Referring  to The Magus, there seems to be something significant, but you don't know what it is. Also just referring to middle in general. 
• Initiation- basically going through pain
• A ritual is something we do
• We say, "What are we supposed to do?" because we're missing rituals from our parents, grandparents, ancestors etc.
• Iron John by Robert Bly...Der Eisenhans(probably didn't spell it right) from Brothers Grimm
• Story about pain you go through....makes it very easy to identify with the character.
• Read Taurbolium (important, in primitive to zen)
• Elusinian- something was seen, something was done, something was said.
• Dramenon- >To do something> drama
• Rituals are prescribed rules given by people in everyday life.
• Ex Jessica's ritual of leaving the house....1) brush the cat 2)check all doors and windows 3)close the door 4)check the garage 5 times
• A true baptism is death and bringing back to life > imitation of death and rebirth

Rituals, notes, quotes among other things.

"But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and, although I couldn't have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery." (The Magus 19)
I found this quote to be very interesting because, I know I'm interested in mystery wondering about things that I don't know about. I often wonder how things would be different if I were living somewhere else and how my overall my life would be different. I could definitely relate to the character in this way.

Rituals....so I sort of thought of a weird ritual that I do, every morning I wake up I take my pill, along with a vitamin C vitamin, dash for the shower (I live in the Suites and there's only one bathroom for 4 girls), finish getting ready, make sure all the lights are off, and check to make sure that I have my key and cat card once inside then once later.

notes to come later....

notes 10/4/11

• For notes look at Theresa's, Lauren's, and Juniper's blog

Need to know for the test:
From Eliade book (Primitive to Zen):

• Hanieuwelle
• Apollo 
• Earth mother of all
• Enumelish
• Hesiod's theogony

Calasso:

• pg. 5- the basket
• pg. 15- etiology- Why do men have slim hips?
• pg. 39- goats
• pg. 81- etiology- Who has more fun making love?
• pg. 94- ate- know what it means
• pg. 383- definition of myth
• pg. 52- look at Megan's blog- rape
• pg. 176- Calasso telling how it all came about. Who was Peolops?

Multiple Choice:

• Which of these four things is the mother of the muses? Mnemosye 
• What was Persephone doing when she was abducted by Hades? Picking a narcissus flower
• Suggestion that we are all prisoners attached to a wall, refers to what myth? Allegory of the cave, Plato
• Question about what happiness brings about regarding ate.
• Who was always described as deceitful, beautiful, and thought to be a phantom? Helen
• Who was Europe named after? Europa
• Who arrives unexpected and possess? Dionysus
• What is the mythological root of enthusiasm? En-theos meaning God possessed
• Who says,"One more time Athena, love me as much as you can"? Oedisius
• Abduction is always followed by what? Metamorphosis
• Which Goddess was born from Erono's dismembered body? Aphrodite also known as Goddess of Love
• Who was the mother of the Minotaur? Pasiphae
• What word means the tearing of flesh? Sparagmos 
• The great desire to arrive where he started. Ans- Return to the beginning
• Define Anamnesis. Ans- Recollection- forgotten anything of importance, the teacher reminds us
• What does the word 'apocalypse' mean? Removal of the veil
• What does 'Eschatology' mean? Study of the end of time
• What in the Greek mythology was housed in the labyrinth? Minotaur
• Who was the destroyer of delights? Death
• Zeus came in many forms: Io, form of cloud, Europa, form of bull, Leda, form of swan, Danae, form of gold, Semele, everyday mortal(shows his real self)

notes 9/29/11

• What does our teacher want with our blogs? Make our own discoveries
• The cosmogenic egg is associated with creation stories and beginnings 
• Sacrifice: sacra- means sacred, fice- means make up/fiction
• When we were talking about labyrinths...we got on the topic of when Theseus killed a minotaur and Ariadne put him in a labyrinth. She gives him a string to escape, then he leaves  her on the island. 
• Mental invasion categorized as rape, but a different kind of rape
• homeopothy- light produces light
• Marduk killed his monster grandmother. He's known for defeating the monster, creative hero, and solves problems of beginnings. When he defeated the monster half was turned into heaven and the other half earth.
• These four creation stories are important to know: God creates voice, Goddess body, females created bad rep for snakes, female alone created the world alone.

"Go out and get weird"

 

So I was thinking about the last class when we were talking about labyrinths or mazes. When the professor said, "We are all entering a labyrinth" Does this mean that everyone is in somewhat of a maze of life? All our lives are planned out supposedly, destinies, prophesies, etc. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Robert Calasso is a maze of different characters and stories, its difficult trying to keep everything that is happening straight. For instance the quote "How did it all begin?"(Calasso pg. 4) gets repeated several times in the first chapter because that's what Calasso thinks happened. Every time it is said, he's telling a different part. "Stories never live alone: they are branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward."(Calasso pg. 10)  

notes 9/27/11

• When the story changes it actually confirms the story.
• By trying to escape your fate you run right into it.
• Procrustean argument - arrange facts to make it shorter or longer then your original thought.
• Fin- means means end, dead, kick the bucket.
• Wake- is the end of a funeral and waking up.
• Myth is the precedent behind every action.
• Example from Wizard of Oz, Dorothy meets Amagus(magician), then she goes home. 
• Everything you need in mythology you can find in the Wizard of Oz.
• Harry Potter! Rowling recast events that happened already with Mythology. 
• There's no story unless conflict exists, because after all how interesting would a story be with out conflict?
• Mythology is the machinery behind the events that happen.
• Jenny Thornburg's is an example of what to do with the blog
• Sparagmas- Dismemberment ancient Dionysian ritual when an animal or human is sacrificed by dismemberment. 
• Omophagia- eating of raw flesh of the one dismembered. 
• Eucharist- bread represents body of Christ and the wine represents the blood of Christ
• How Calasso thinks it began...pg 5. 3rd paragraph
• 2 words make sense of Calasso: abduction and metamorphosis

9/22/11

"For all the variegated multiplicity of its forms, the practice of sacrifice can be reduced to just two gestures: expulsion (purification) and assimilation (communion). These two gestures have only one element in common: destruction. In each case the victim is killed or devoured, or abandoned to a certain death." (Calasso 292)

Bozeman, is actually a mythological place! It has Oz in it, from the Wizard of Oz.

Axis mundi - center of the world.
One way or another we have lost contact with Gods
Man's relationship had gone through two regimes and currently in the third regime(You can find this at the bottom of pg. 52 and first sentence of pg. 53)
1)Convivality - or friendly relationships
2) Rape
3) Indifference - "Gods have already withdrawn, and, hence, if they are indifferent in our regard, we can be indifferent as to their existence or otherwise."
Rape addressed! Rape - sudden, obsessive invasion that plucks away the flower of thought.
Beginning- nostalgia about beginning. Example, Old people talking about old times and how they were better. Nostalgia comes from nostos, meaning separation.
Polytropos- "men of many turns"
Creation of the world according to Greeks:
1) Has to do with creative murder
2) Eros - divine force

9/20/2011

"The woman;s face gazed steadily at the god's while with her other arm, behind which trembled an imense wing, she stretched out toward the farthest extremity of everything: and where the tips of her fingernails reached, there Everthing ended. They were a royal and motionless couple: they were Time-Without Age and Anake." (Calasso 200)

Here's the url for the Origin of Medicine Myth:
http://www.indigenoutspeoplenet/origmedi.htm
If anyone wants to read the whole thing.

Jason had presented his creation myth today and it was on the creation of the world.
Even though that particular creation myth was told several times, everybody has their own way of telling it. A change of style is a change of subject.
Etiology- To be.
Ontology- Study of being.
We were given a list of myths to read from Primitive to Zen that was sent to our email.
Started talking about creation of music, The word music comes from the muses.
Separation- first phase, life is good.
Initiation- second phase, full of pain and suffering.
Transformation- third phase, "The end".
Everything in mythology can be drawn by three figures.

5th and 6th class

"We live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their molds. In the beginning was the mold"(Calasso 175)

Went over the reading and important dates schedule. Read 2 chapters every week.

We presented the creation myths. Plenty of earth diver and native american myths.

All creation myths can be channeled into a certain myths.
Myth of creation and origin:
Cosmogenic myth(creation of everything)
1) Exnihilo- from nothing, creation story from beginning of the Bible.
2) Thought- creation by thought.
3) Earth diver motive- God sends amphibians/himself to being up particles of earth from which earth is created.
4) Creation by separation
a. Heaven and earth
b. Separation of things out and in(chaos)
c. Cutting into a cosmogenic egg
5) Creation of dismemberment of primordial being
(not sure if I wrote down the right thing for b.)

4th class

"The power of the abstract begins as a rejection of that epic encyclopedism where every element, whether it be a comment on the power of the gods or instructions on how to fix the axles to a cart, has the same importance, the same impact on the mosaic surface of the narrative."(Calasso 153)

Etiology- explanation of how something came to be.

Mythology- system of total explanation.

People do things the way we do them because, that's the way it was done in the beginning and why people do the same thing. That's what was taught.

Went over what we need to know for the test:
1200 BCE Homeric-Iliad and The Odyssey
                  Hesiod-Gods and Godesses and how they became that way.
                  Homeric Hymns
                  Classic Dramas-Euripides, Aesclulous, and Sophocles
                  Trojan War-Big deal with the Greeks
                  Exodus-Big deal for Hebrews
                  Orestes

3rd class

"And the ambiguity of that crown is the constant, never articulated heart of tragedy: the misunderstandings, recognitions, and double meanings that tense the tragic nerve all derive from the primordial double meaning contained within the crown."(Calasso 107)

Learned how to bookmark on blogspot.

ate- infatuation, no longer able to control actions because God is inside you. The word ate gradually became the meaning of ruin because the invisible incursion often brought ruin.

Talked about Aphrodite/Venus- The Gods of Love

Story of arachne:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne

2nd day of class

"The divine fire devours those venturing outside the human sphere, whether they be betraying a good, bringing a man back to life, or seeing a god bereft of the cloaking veil of epiphany."(Calasso 59)

Mythology of hearing, seeing, doing are rituals we do everyday.

Talked about Elusinian about the abduction of Persephone.

Started talking about fairly tales and how they coincide with myth and are very similar.

Christmas break: Read Where are you going and where have you been?
By Joyce Carol

We were given an assignment to hug a tree, because it could be a spirit or being that that was turned into a tree. I had never thought of a tree that way. It's not to say that I don't appreciate trees, trees produce oxygen so we can breathe and I couldn't imagine the world with out trees...

Mythologies 285

"As she walked down toward the flowery meadows near the sea, what Europa was carrying, embossed in precious metals, was her destiny" pg. 6 in Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Robert Calasso. What I think of this quote is that she has all the pieces put together and it will tell her or show her what her destiny is. What did I think of the first day of class, well I found out Michael Sexson is the professor; who clearly is very passionate about mythologies and isn't afraid to make a class challenging...

As far as the book goes, I was very confused reading the first chapter I wasn't sure what was going on. It was like trying to solve a puzzle and figure out the right order of everything. The second chapter, there was plenty in there about love, lust, anger, and violence. When I think of Gods, my first thought is that they get everything they want, because they're supposed to be controlling everything. There's obviously multiple Gods and their specialty is in different areas. I quickly found out that the Gods don't always get what they want and they don't have perfect lives.