mythos

What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.

I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.

Seek those images
That constitute the wild,
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child.

Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognize the five
That make the Muses sing.

Those Images ~W. B. Yeats



Someone wrote asking me: 'What do you mean by we cry out for a new myth? Please elaborate.' And I said (in a fury):

"...The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul....the psychic archetype .... take form and become accessible to understanding....But the supremely important motive power which is needed .... and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. ..."
(CGJung, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 347, par. 488)

Myth isn't mere dogma. It's vital and living. It apprehends (great word) that myth is a function of the human psyche, that a myth must fit its time or cease to work. Joseph Campbell, Jung, Culianu good resources. Myth functions in the synthesis of what EMForster called the creation in the creation; what, as Culianu reminds us so well, was classically seen as the language of the soul, creating the phantasms and emblems from which we weave our life. Best to know what lives within us--as best you can.


For example, the myth that humans were put on the ready-made earth to use as they will, the universe and all other life but a stageprop as humans sort themselves into some afterlife of heaven or hell, doesn't serve us well. It might have, briefly, in early days of carving out a foothold in existence, creating a mindset of survival of the fittest--a jumpstart that might be necessary in an unknown wilderness. But now this myth only leads to waste. To global warming and war. It rewards the selfish, the greedy, those most willing to run over grandmamma. It keeps us from living deeply, with caution and care. It cheapens existence by making it possible for irrationality and fear to rule. It keeps us from being creative; it activates old power archetypes that lock us into destruction. A better myth is Eros, to know the divine incarnates within us, that the cosmos is of a piece, that our positivism is false, our dogma a shackle. Better the humility of wonder. Better to understand and love deity as something that grows and wakes up with us in consciousness.

So many myths that fit our time better, that could help us see the big picture rather than blind us and allow us to be used.

Good guys, bad guys, the world a Wild West where we wear guns on our hip, God ruling all with his magic book like Sauron, rewarding those who follow blindly with Rapture. It's all darkness and selfishness. When will we see it is one world? Corporations do, though they keep eyes on the bottom line, ever so shortsighted, forgetting that life is a web, that we are made of stars. Corporations don't serve governments. They are multinational. Unconstrained, they function as a cancer.

Human nature, guided by its myths. And Human Nature is the biggest myth of all.

Shall we free ourselves, step back, consider? Try to see beyond the chest pounding and flag waving? Perhaps--Terrorism is a high utility myth in service of the far Right and the oil giants. A myth that allows oil--a mythic gold poison whose day is passing fast--to rule the earth. This is a horribly destructive myth. Genocide is its handmaiden. And where is justice, Justice the ancient goddess that guards the gates of consciousness and death along with the Laws of the Cosmos? Is she the B-2? Is that who we want to be ("the gods you worship are the gods you deserve"), ever doomed to carry the big stick, even if it kills everything? How do we grow terrorists? How do we grow allies? How do we shape our coming together so that the earth can thrive?

Human nature, guided by its myths.

Jung shows us again again that summond or not the gods are present. He meant many things by this, but the part that applies so strongly to the Fundamentalist forces at work in the world right now -- is this...

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together.

"Answer to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.12

Re alice's piece below: Transformation Symbolism and Mass -- is so key, most terrific and important, especially if you are or are not at all religious.

as one mike dickman said:

The Mass is not a parody of the Magnum Opus. The Mass is an exact manifestation of the Magnum Opus. Most Parisian Catholics have no idea of what they're about. They're Sunday Christians only. Many French people today are fascinated with all things esoteric. But it's only an intellectual fascination. Alchemical wisdom can not be understood intellectually but only experienced...or -better put- Alchemical wisdom can only be understood intellectually IF experienced.

Or Culianu:

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful
coexistence between the conscious and unconscious when coexistence is under
attack. ~Ioan Couliano

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Individuation.... one X one. from alice

CREDO LXV
Sacrifice

The word sacrifice comes from the Latin and means ‘to make holy’. It was a concept that I struggled with for many years. During Lent, the idea was to give up something one especially liked. At one point in an English boarding school in Italy, I decided that my favorite food was bread. So I gave up bread only to be placed in a double-bind by the Lord’s Prayer in which we pray “Give us this day our daily bread”! So I gave up giving up right then and there and decided sacrifice made no sense. In addition, the custom in olden times of sacrificing great numbers of animals to God smacked to me of bribery and cruelty. None of it seemed logical. That is until I read Jung’s magnificent essay on “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass”. This is a piece that I have reread several times over the years and which I plan to reread this Lenten season.
Somewhere Jung solves the purpose of sacrifice in the following way: we cannot offer up something we do not already have. So in the symbolic and psychological sense, it is in sacrificing that we become conscious of what we have. That makes sense to me and puts my confusion to rest.
The giving up of food is an act of self-discipline carried to extremes of fasting, especially in Islam. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims deny themselves food and drink, from the moment before dawn when one cannot distinguish the color of a thread to sundown, with exceptions for children and the sick. Catholic Christians used to be obliged to give up meat on Fridays, generally, and during Lent , except for Sundays.
I remember the agony my father’s father, a Bostonian agnostic, put the Irish family cook through by ordering her to roast beef on Good Friday! I found her in tears in the kitchen fearing she was committing a mortal sin. It did not endear this grandfather to me at the time. My mother’s father, an Episcopal priest and a vessel of kindness, would never have dreamt of doing such a thing. But Grandpa Billy seemed to relish her discomfort as she carried in the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but it took away my appetite.
There is, of course, another way of looking at the whole matter. How can giving up something material make it holy? The act of self-denial is more a matter of self-discipline. But what if were to give up a fault or a destructive habit, some negative psychological tendency, like anger or gossip or criticism? By giving up these, we would be transforming them by making them conscious, thus perhaps making them a holy offering. One could start by examining one’s unconscious projections such as labeling other people or defaming them..........
Well, today is Mardi Gras, so I now will go in and have lunch and enjoy every bit that at my age I can chew and before nap, I will commence the great pleasure of rereading Jung’s Transformation Symbolism in the Mass. As he was a Swiss Protestant, it is a remarkably profound explanation.
Jung had a fascinating ‘complex’ it seems with Rome. He could not bring himself to go there and yet, he studied and commented extensively on Roman Catholicism and carried on an extraordinary and lengthy correspondence with Father Victor White. It seems, on one occasion Jung and Toni Wolff visited Ravenna when the following incident occurred:

Even on the occasion of my first visit to Ravenna in 1913, the tomb of Galla Placidia seemed to me significant and unusually fascinating. The second time, twenty years later, I had the same feeling.... We went directly from the tomb into the Baptistery of the Orthodox... There were four great frescoes of incredible beauty which, it seemed, I had entirely forgotten. I was vexed to find my memory so unreliable. The mosaic on the south side represented the baptism in the Jordan; the second picture, on the north, was of the passage of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea; the third, on the east, soon faded from my memory. It might have shown Naaman being cleansed of leprosy in the Jordan; there was a picture on this theme in the old Merian Bible in my library, which was much like the mosaic. The fourth mosaic, on the west side of the baptistery, was the most impressive of all. We looked at this one last. It represented Christ holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking beneath the waves... I recall the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter sinking, and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the blue of the sea, individual chips of the mosaic, the inscribed scroll proceeding from the mouths of Peter and Christ which I attempted to decipher.”

I went to Ravenna, and the mosaics made a deep impression on me. MDR pps 286-288]

Jung then goes on to say that later he asked a friend to send him postcards of the mosaics. The friend responded that he was told that no such mosaics existed! And yet both Toni and he saw them in a strange blue light! This combination of events: the vision and the inability of Jung to travel to Rome during his lifetime suggest, to me, some traumatic event perhaps in a previous life connected to the Roman Catholic Church. I am so struck by this that I am hunting down an article by A. Plaut titled Jung and Rebirth. Perhaps Plaut had the same idea.

It is now almost a week since Mardi Gras and I have decided I am becoming conscious of a tad of negative scrupulosity! It comes in the form of dealing with all my sins of omission! The things I ought to have done and have not done! This is one of the psychological abysses. Another, as I may have mentioned before, is the little phrase “If only..........” Aaaaaaaaargh!

We are in the midst of a mega-snowstorm – actually beautiful to look at through a window in a warm house, but bad news for all who drive.

lovingly,

ao

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deb:

Had an email this morning--

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 2:20 AM, Left Behind wrote:
Having trouble viewing this email? Click here.

"Tim LaHaye's books always entertain, educate and thrill but Thunder of Heaven takes it to a new level. I never thought the End of Days would cost me so much sleep!"

LaHaye has a new left behinder novel coming out. How timely. His partner wrote me that left behind was just a story, but Jung would mention self fulfilling prophecy. At least they aren't selling the special Tribs membership online for kids anymore (yes, they really did).

Question. When one's faith becomes one's reality, how is this not psychosis? Reality to the John Hagee point, the Michele Bachmann point, where it will shape policy?

The old road to hell, as my dad used to say.

wise beyond hope

~MStillman

Many are the awesome things but nothing more awesome than man
This being on the stormy surface of the gray sea goes, through the roaring
swells making his way.
Of the gods the highest, Earth unfailing, untiring, he wears away with the ploughs' passage, year by year with the horse-like breed tilling.
The fickle clan of birds he traps and directs, and the tribes of beasts and the sea kin of the deep in his mesh-woven nets, ingenious man.
He controls, with his devices, of the wilderness beast the mountain-going, the hairy-necked horse he breaks with harness about its neck, and the bull, ruler of the mountain
Speech and wind-like thought and city-ruling desires he learnt, and from
chilling frosts and harsh rain's clear-aired arrows to shelter, always ingenious.
He goes into nothing unprepared for what may come.
From Hades alone he will not avoid but he has made himself an escaper from incurable diseases.
Cleverness in ingenuity, something wise beyond hope, sometimes moving him to harm and sometimes to good...
Respecting the land's laws and the gods' oath-bound justice, he is of a high city but an outlaw is he for whom the dishonorable is companion because of his audacity.
Never by my hearth nor in agreement of thought may anyone who does such things be!
SOPHOCLES Antigone

2

Harper's, June 07

Many things are formidable, and yet nothing is quite so formidable as man.
Over the gray sea and the storming south wind,
Through the foam and welling of the waves, he makes his perilous way;
The Earth also, highest of the deities, who never shows fatigue, nor exhaustion, nor decay,
Ever he furrows and ploughs, year on year, with his ploughshare, muzzles and horses.
The light-seeking birds of the air he stalks and traps, the wild beasts of the forest, and the salty brood of the sea, he catches with his richly woven net–
He, the cunning one,
And by his arts he achieves mastery of the savage game, of the creatures who
wind their way upon the heights, tamed through his wondrous art,
And the defiant steed he bends to his will under the bit.
Speech and wind-driven thoughts and emotions form the foundation upon which he builds the city,
All of this he has taught himself; and to take shelter before the inhospitable torrents of the heavens, and the freeze of the winter sky.
He is prepared for everything; against nothing does he want for protection.
Even against once perplexing ailments he has developed an escape.
Only against death has he at last no refuge.
Supplied with cleverness of every imaginable type,
He ventures once towards evil, and then towards good.
If he honors the laws of the land and the right attested by the Gods,
Then may his city prosper. But homeless shall he be if he boorishly debases himself.
–Sophocles, “Antigone,” Chorus (lines 340-380) (S.H. transl. after Hans
Jonas)

3

Wonders are many, yet of all
Things is Man the most wonderful.
He can sail on the stormy sea
Though the tempest rage, and the loud
Waves roar around, as he makes his
Path amid the towering surge.
Earth inexhaustible, ageless, he wearies, as
Backwards and forwards, from season to season, his
Ox-team drives along the ploughshare.

He can entrap the cheerful birds,
Setting a snare, and all the wild
Beasts of the earth he has learned to catch, and
Fish that teem in the deep sea, with
Nets knotted of stout cords; of
Such inventiveness is man.
Through his inventions he becomes lord
Even of the beasts of the mountain: the long-haired
Horse he subdues to the yoke on his neck, and the
Hill-bred bull, of strength untiring.

And speech he has learned, and thought
So swift, and the temper of mind
To dwell within cities, and not to lie bare
Amid the keen, biting frosts
Or cower beneath pelting rain;
Full of resource against all that comes to him
Is Man. Against Death alone
He is left with no defense.
But painfull sickness he can cure
By his own skill.

Surpassing belief, the device and
Cunning that Man has attained,
And it bringeth him now to evil, now to good.
If he observe Law, and tread
The righteous path God ordained,
Honored is he; dishonored, the man whose reckless heart
Shall make him join hands with sin:
May I not think like him,
Nor may such an impious man
Dwell in my house.
trans H. D. F. Kitto

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The city state and individual. The gods and the mortal. Fate and choice. Genius and self/ego. Rocks and hard places.

Down the road a bit, off in the sand:

"I am the light, and create the darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things." (Isa. 45:7)

That's Yahweh being very clear, little concerned for the tireless who so endlessly feel obliged to apologize for his darkness. How impious of them.

Bless paradox. Bless us all who find a way to live with bend not break, the deep message of Antigone.

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"Listen, Moirai (Fates) ... hear our prayers ... send us rose-bloomed Eunomia (Good Order in civic government) and her bright-throned sisters Dike (Justice) and garland-wearing Eirene (Peace), and make this city forget its heavy-hearted misfortunes." - Greek Lyric V Anonymous Fragments 1018 (from Stobaeus, Anthology)

Karen Gillian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_cahQdr9So

The Will to Survive

Have a listen. JMU alum. http://www.purevolume.com/TheWilltoSurvive

alchemy in reverse

Great piece here on our changing climate. I wish she hadn't used the term Biblical proportions, but that's just my knee-jerk filter, afraid as I am of the Michelle Bachman / John Hagee endtime enthusiasts and their special foreign and domestic policy agenda. How effective a filter eschatology has been through the ages. The same goes for the sex/devil filter. Which is really the same filter, snake and his power. Thousands of years of these filters. Even before we started burning hydrocarbons.

Funny, those cute little dinosaurs of the 1950's, plastic and colorful, sold in sets complete with plastic rocks, palm trees, and cave people. Plastic. Hydrocarbons are miracles when it comes to building things, even in producing life-saving vaccines, antibiotics, and the syringes used to squirt them into our bodies. We need them. But we don't need them to keep transporting us and heating us when they create such havoc, are in limited supply, and are both politicized and the force behind self-perpetuating technologies. Think of the electric car and how it was first received. Think of the failed (because dismantled) energy programs Congress crafted in the 70's. Think of Reagan smiling as he took down the solar panels on the White House roof.

By manipulating a myth (and religion) of a free-market, owners of Oil have long worked to dig our social and technological trenches deeper. That was Bechtel that built the interstate highway system -- at tax payers cost, while rail and public-transit paid their own way. Hence the suburbs and all the trimmings. The manicured lawns, ever-growing to accommodate the even bigger houses, status symbols enforced by vigilante neighbors watching out the window. A life style defined by commerce, the car as one's self-definition.

And now it continues, pedal to the metal, the blatant thwarting of alternatives embedded in political parties and whole media networks, religious crusades sold to us, and will continue be as sold to us as long as the sweet crude flows in the Biblical deserts. Obama, whose stimulus was centered on a revolution of developing alternative energy, has been literally demonized and castrated by it. Stimulus money still sits unspent, and no one seems to know that, though I suspect projects will be rolled out in time for the Party of No to take credit for them.

Worst of all -- worst of all -- the fracking has begun, sold quietly behind the scenes, unwatched. How lucky we are, discovering our own stash of hydrocarbons right beneath our feet! Why throw tax-payer money at wind or solar? At all costs, we need to pay down the deficit, let the mighty keep their taxes low, for everyone knows they "give" you your paycheck! Never mind that work doesn't work without workers.

And it's not just the US. The myths rule, and the creditor nations rule all. Krugman wrote yesterday

What I guess I’d say is that the creditor-oriented mindset permeates the whole world of men in suits sitting around tables talking policy. And the world will suffer for it.

Black gold, that's what oil has been. Civilization as alchemy in reverse.

Hello Sweetie.

Stephen wrote:

.... If you consider the developmental movement inward, because the biological/primal fact is we--men and women--are issued from mothers, this asymmetry comes into relief. So, the movement for a woman is via the integration of the discriminating, penetrating animus (or logos brought into consciousness,) is to arrive at the feminine soul, whereas for man, it is via his anima, and, in effect "back to" his feminine soul....

That really gels the meaning, doesn't it. And as we live as individuals, that's where the soul work takes place. Can also marry it to the Apollonian Dionysian continuum.

Funny. When I write fiction -- long works in which you embed seem necessary for me -- I find my sword wielding animus is taking over less. It took almost a decade to finish the last novel, and I understand why now. I was changing. My relationship to my animus was changing. Reading it now, it comes clear. Makes me smile. That's Jung's active imagination.

Observing the collective -- well, just so much conflict going on between the unconscious and the commercial filters (especially re our old fbuddy snake). Public lives, forbidden fruit, droves of classy call girls employed by upstanding righteous leaders. "Suicides" of DC Madams. The internet, so full of perfect strangers. What a crazy culture we have. Interesting years. And we know things are simply changing, growing, working their way out. The filters can interfere in this as it tends its way toward equilibrium, as they always have -- just as they also help slow things down so we can analyze them. But it's the bubbles that filters can erect that keep things apart and thwart growth. The table-ready schemata with super-sized helpings of finger-licking-good confirmation bias. With so much manipulation, I hope the telomeres are strong!

We choose the reality we lean toward. All of us, works in progress.

Best,
Deborah

ps.

Don't know if you watch Dr.Who, but this year's episodes have been about a girl and her animus! The past few years, it's been the doctor appreciating his anima.

Long live Sarah Jane!

an interstitial aside

elvis costello says you have to learn to write in the dark so you won't forget what comes to you there. my legal pad this a.m. said:

1. growth is the holy
2. we are our ideas
3. the past is initiation
4. community fosters the growth of the individual

given: we live our lives as individuals yet ^

in a balloon off to side:

why the fascination w/ mysticism (e.g., say, late antiquity's neoplatonic revival): what is in the time that...? ---> (circles back)

community is to ideas
as
body is to mind

propaganda a manipulation of conscious thought through unconscious thought.
uc: space of thinking
Jung: uc space of Self

---> religion ---> rules that shape thought, know the rules, shape the action. war of ideas: ideas of war.

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and so dark was saying what?

Meanwhile... the word Triumph traces back to mean Dionysos / Bacchus. Really.

merikan heritage dictionary:

INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: tri·umphed, tri·umph·ing, tri·umphs
1. To be victorious or successful; win. 2. To rejoice over a success or victory; exult. 3. To receive honors upon return from a victory in ancient Rome. Used of a general. NOUN:1. The fact of being victorious; victory or conquest. See synonyms at victory. 2. A noteworthy or spectacular success. 3. Exultation or rejoicing over victory or success. 4. A public celebration in ancient Rome to welcome a returning victorious commander and his army. 5. Obsolete A public celebration or spectacular pageant. ETYMOLOGY:Middle English triomfen, from Old French triumpher, from Latin triumph[Image]re, from triumphus, triumph, from earlier triumpus, ultimately (probably via Etruscan) from Greek thriambos, hymn to Dionysus.
[Image]

NOw, go google thriambos
(as in: they're doing it again.)

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speaking of Dionysos
what is the space btwn inner and outer? where is it? that space the two share is the stage where the Greeks met their gods, a physical statement, a place where all can meet. fixed in time, moved by eros, theatre the meeting of mortals and immortals.

film is this too, but film is not married to time. which both limits and expands what it can do.

the temple is the eye of the polis. and so is the stage.

analogs:

the physical timespace manifestation of that personified messenger, the daemon Hermes / Dionysos... your birth star... all of these.

novel is an inner / outer meeting space, a "stage" for the daemon.
unfixed in time and space.

So it's almost a year ago. mine in english, my daughter's in her beautiful greek, a tearful supplication: Thank you.

TO DIONYSUS
I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud- crying god, splendid son of Zeus
and glorious Semele. The rich- haired Nymphs received him in their bosoms from the lord his
father and fostered and nurtured him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of
his father he grew up in a sweet- smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals.
But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began he to wander
continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed with ivy and laurel.
And the Nymphs followed in his train with him for their leader; and the boundless
forest was filled with their outcry.

And so hail to you, Dionysus, god of abundant clusters! Grant that we may
come again rejoicing to this season, and from that season onwards for many a year.

+++++++++

blessings.

Protest the Hero No Stars over Bethlehem guitar cover