Final Exam Notes

These are the notes off the blogs that we looked at in class today. I put all of them on one blog so the notes were easier to view. Good luck on all your final exams!

• Group 1: How many versions of myth are there? -infinite
• Group 2: Who was oprah compared to? -Zeus
• Group 3: Where did group 3 get their title of their presentation, The Shameful Truth? -the title of the magus' silent film
• Group 4: What was the saying that ended group 4's presentation? -"Thats all folks!"
• Group 5: What was the song called that played during group 5's credits? -White Wedding by: Billy Idol
• Group 6: What were the different characters in group 6's presentations? -Pirate, Irish, Viking, Cowboy, Egyptian and Chinese
• Every answer is a form of death
• When a young person dies, it is an occasion to mourn. 
• The Ritual of Adonis
• The story of the Ritual of Adonis can be found at this website: http://www.bartleby.com/196/79.html

• Logos= the peoples Word
• the creative word
• Fiction= to make
• Sacri= sacred
• HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
• We end where we begin

• Chapter 45, page. 311 The Magus
• "All that is past possesses our present"
• The precedent is behind every action = All that is past possesses our present
• A person carries their past around with them all of the time they must only focus on the present and the future

• Masque
•  certain type of theatre- plays put on in peoples houses
• Quotidian
• usual, customary, everyday, ordinary
• Collective Unconscious
•  the collective is collective, impersonal; collects and organizes personal experiences in a similar way that each member of a particular species collects their experiences
• pass from a personal unconscious to the collective unconscious
• Taoism
• the mechanism that everything exists; the word Tao means way, path or principle

• Eliade 
• Speculations on Man and God: The Ultimate Reality - Chung Tzu and the Butterfly

• "Once upon a time, Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering about, enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he awoke with a start and he was Chuang Chou again. But he did not know whether he was Chuang Chou who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is called the transformation of things.

• Something becomes a sacred action when it is in remembrance of the divine

• THE END OF THE END

• The journey up is mythology

• In the god game, everything is fiction.

• Orpheus and Eurydice- Eurydice and Orpheus get married. Soon after Eurydice steps on a snake and dies. Orpheus goes to the land of the dead, he plays his guitar and convinces Hades to give him back his wife. Hades says yes but on one condition Orpheus cant look back to see if his wife is following him. Of course right before he is out of the underworld Orpheus looks back and sees his wife but she returns to the underworld forever.

• Discovering the Truth About Santa: I can't remember when I learned the truth about Santa. I just remember asking my parents if he was real and they told me that if I believe in him then he is, and if I don't then he is not. This made me mad because I wanted a real answer. Every year we still get presents from Santa and I like that because it keeps the myth alive.

• The Bhagavada Gita
• I am reading this for one of my other classes that I'm taking. The situation that started the war was over which son got the throne when their father died. The king of the land was getting old so his oldest son was supposed to take over the kingdom but he was blind, so the younger son took the throne. The blind older son was upset about this and tried to take back the throne by trying to kill his brothers family. He succeeded in getting the kingdom, but not in killing his brother. Both families fought and tried to out smart the other. At one point a member of each family gambled. The person that lost would have to go into the woods with their family and live in exile for 15 years. The youngest son's family lost and was sent to the woods. After 15 years they were supposed to get the kingdom back but when the time came the blind older brother would not give up the throne. Then the war began. Arjuna (the warrior in that video we watched in class) is the son of the youngest son. This family is know as the good family and the other family is evil. Arjuna is a great warrior and Krishna (God) is telling him that he has to fight in the war. Arjuna does not want to fight because he does not want to kill his own family members. Krishna tells him that he is supposed to fight because that is his duty as a warrior. Also, that when a person dies only their body dies, there soul lives on. Death is only a part of life. Throughout the Gita Krishna make many arguments to make Arjuna change his mind about fighting. This ends up to be a pointless act because Krishna is God and he is the one that decides who lives and who dies. Arjuna eventually ends up fighting in the war and his family wins the battle.

• All reality is fiction

• The end is always frustrating
• The tibetan book of the dead is a book about the rituals humans have to perform to get to the land of the dead.
• The Swerve- Written by Stephen Greenblatt
• The book is about a man that finds the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, in a library. The man that found the book ordered it to be copied. The manuscript was a poem talking about the idea that the universe functions without the help of the gods, that the religious fear was damaging to human life. Also that matter was made of small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in different directions. The manuscript described the way things were, it was the creation of the modern world.

• Death is a problem for the family. The world will not concern the person anymore, the spirit of the dead will return back to where it came from.
• All of life is a preparation for death.
• Read: The Movement of Death as Described by the Upanishads found in the Eliade book.
• Myths help us realize what we are supposed to do when a person dies.

• Eschatology- last or final events of the history of the world or of humankind; a belief concerning death, the end of the world or the ultimate destiny of humankind
• Metempsychosis- the soul can never be destroyed or killed
• Parabola- quarterly print magazine about the study of the myths, rituals, symbols and arts of the worlds spiritual traditions; the story which is told to illustrate a certain point and deconstructs the point which is wanted to be known
• The transmigration of the soul- Eliada
• The person you thought would help you in a time of need didn't. This is the side of the parabola: the attack on the structure of your expectations

• Gasang Ist Dasein- song is existance

• The Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper

• We are here in order to see, hear and say things. The grasshopper enjoyed the summer and played the fiddle rather than preparing for winter. The ant gathered food for winter all summer and had no fun. The moral of the story is that hard work pays off.
• Cicada
• The muses taught humans how to sing. The people sung forever and forgot to eat, drink and sleep. The people died from starvation. The god felt sorry for these people, so he decided to turn them into cicadas so they could sing forever.

12/6/11

    Final Paper

Freedom and Determinism

        Life is a constant act of making decisions. These decisions are made according to a person’s freedom. Occasionally a person’s actions are based on a previously determined circumstance. Determinism is the theory that all the actions we decide to make, everything that happens in life, are all determined by what has previously happened (Freedom). Everything that a person does in their life is, without exception, determined. Freedom, on the other hand, is the idea that a person has freedom if and only if, that person could have done something otherwise (Freedom). A person is held morally responsible for any and all actions that they take. There are three main positions on the debate of freedom. The first, hard determinism, says that determinism is true and because it is true, no human action can be free. Second, libertarianism states that all human actions are free, so determinism is completely false. Lastly is the idea of compatibilism, which says that freedom and determinism can work together (Freedom). John Fowles’ famous protagonist from The Magus, Nicolas Urff, was cast into a labyrinth specially built for him. While Nicolas quickly learned that those around him were following scripts, he remained confused about the presence of reality, acting in a play that he did not know existed. Was Nicolas free to make his own decisions during the God game? Or, was he a pawn, fated to commit to another’s will, with no real freedom?

        “The Lord Byron School, Pharoxos, Greece, requires in early October an assistant master to teach English. Candidates must be single and must have a degree in English. A knowledge of Modern Greek is not essential” (pg. 20 Fowels). Nicolas accepted the job in Greece to get away from Alison’s inquiry for marriage and the dreary England weather. “I began to hum, and it was not a brave attempt to hide my grief, but a revoltingly unclouded desire to celebrate my release” (pg. 48 Fowels). Four days after leaving England Nicolas found himself in beautiful Greece. As quickly as Nicolas fell in love with the idea of Greece, he began to hate it. His only release from the dull, “claustrophobic ambience of the Lord Byron School”, was to go on walks in the mountains of Greece (pg. 51 Fowels). Nicolas was overwhelmed with the beauty and simplicity of nature and Greece and began writing poetry again. This of course did not work out and he found himself returning to the mountains and taking in the beauty of the landscape. 

        In the natural landscape of the Grecian countryside, Nicolas was lonely and was searching for someone independent and different to interact with. Time and time again, Nicolas made an obvious attempt at gaining attention from the mysterious beings that lived in the villa. After taking a relaxing swim at the beach of a hidden village, he stumbled upon a towel that was laid out on the beach, on which rested a a familiar book, “one of the commonest paperback anthologies of the modern English verse”(pg. 69 Fowels). He assumed it was a woman’s and immediately wanted to find her. He was addicted to the idea of a physical relationship and he was always seeking a person to be with, needing constant admiration from women, without which he could not function. Aware of the feeling of being watched Nicolas read the marked passages that were only to familiar to him and the book’s owner, and was delighted with the shared knowledge that he and the mysterious woman possessed. While Nicolas was constantly and purposefully putting himself in situations hoping that an admirer would arrive, Conchis was exploiting this behavior to set a trap which he knew Nicolas would fall into. Conchis knew that Nicolas would wander the country-side, and eventually be drawn to the beach, and the book smelled of perfume which ignited Nicolas’ desire for affection. This fabricated curiosity got the best of Nicolas and he eventually made his way to Conchis’ door step. “Before anything else, I knew I was expected. He saw me without surprise, with a small smile, almost a grimace, on his face” (pg 79, Fowels). Nicolas needed the feeling of acceptance and he loved the idea that someone was out there waiting for him to make the right move. His longing for the perfect woman made him vulnerable to Conchis’ plan, and when he was given a reason to believe that she existed, he quickly decided he would do anything to find her.

        Nicolas needed temporary companionship and he needed appraisal. It was his own narcissism that consumed him and caught him in the labyrinth of Bouroni. 

“The events of the week-end seemed to recede, to become locked away, as if I had dreamt them; and yet as I walked there came the strangest feeling, compounded of the early hour, the absolute solitude, and what had happened, of having entered a myth; a knowledge of what it was like physically, moment by moment, to have been young and ancient, a Ulysses on his way to meet Circe, a Theseus on his journey to Crete, and Oedipus still searching for his destiny. I could not describe it. It was not in the least a literary feeling, but an intensely mysterious present and concrete feeling of excitement, of being in a situation where anything still might happen. As if the world had suddenly, during those last three days, been re-invented, and for me alone” (pg. 157 Fowels). 

Driven by the idea of fate bringing him in contact with a beautiful woman, Nicolas became more and more interested in coming back to Bouroni every weekend. That first weekend at Bouroni, Nicolas happened upon a beautiful woman. “I had to know the owner of that young, intelligent, amused, dazzlingly pretty North European face” (pg. 157 Fowels). Nicolas fell in love with the beautiful woman, not knowing who she was, but that she had to have been the owner of the book on the beach. This idea swept Nicolas off his feet. He was lured further into the labyrinth every weekend by the dazzling woman’s secretive life and sensitive personality. Because of her he lost all sense of reality, becoming more and more lost in the labyrinth every week. When he finally realized he was being tricked, it was to late. He had dug himself into a deep hole that he could not climb out of.

        Nicolas’ story was one already told, and his entire destiny was to follow the pages that had already been written for him. Conchis knew of Nicolas’ past so well that he could determine the rest of his life. “All that is our past possesses our present.” (pg 311, Fowels). Freedom is the opportunity to do otherwise, the ability to act otherwise based on an accurate and thorough understanding of the situation. The question of whether a person has freedom to do as they choose or if all of their actions are determined, is a question that has been asked for centuries. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, God, tries to convince Arjuna, the warrior, why he should fight in the war. This act of convincing Arjuna turns out to be pointless because Krishna is God and he decides what happens. He tells Arjuna that he has already killed everyone and Arjuna simply has to be the instrument in the war and act out the part Krishna has created for him.

“Though continually performing all actions, his refuge is in me, and through my grace he attains the

eternal, imperishable home. 

Having surrendered in thought all your actions to me, holding me supreme, depending upon the yoga of intelligence, be ever thinking on me.

For thinking on me, you shall by my grace sail past all obstacles; but if, falling into egoism, you pay no heed, you shall perish” (Verses 56-58, Johnson).

Krishna is the puppet master and Arjuna and all the other warriors are simply the puppets on the end of the string. They are forced to act out the role Krishna had designed for them.

Not only does the question of freedom and determinism arise in religious texts and books through out history but the question is prevalent in todays modern society. The media and advertising companies lure people into doing things these corporate powers want them to do, such as what to buy and how to vote. The common people are tricked into thinking what the big corporations want them to think. In a way, this could be thought of as determinism because the companies are running the peoples live and telling them what to do and what not to do. Like Conchis and Krishna, the corporations are the puppet masters and like Nicolas and Arjuna, the rest of the common people are puppets on the ends of the strings. These people are given the impression that they are free to make their own decisions, but in reality, they are subject to many forces beyond their control. Unfortunately, there is no clear or easy answer to the freedom and determinism debate. Personally, I don’t believe we will ever be able to answer the question. I don’t think we will ever know whether we are all puppets or if we are truly free to do as we choose.

Work Cited

Johnson, W. J., trans. The Bhagavad Gita. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Ch. 18

Fowles, John. The Magus. Boston: Little, Brown and, 1965.

"Freedom and Determinism." Career Account Web Pages. Purdue University. Web. 06 Dec. 2011.           

              http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~curd/Free.htm.

In Class Presentation

10 Questions

Krishna showing Arjuna his true self

1. Think of a number from 1 to 10
2. Multiply that number by 9
3. If the number is a 2-digit number, add the digits together
4. Now subtract 5
5. Determine which letter in the alphabet corresponds to the number you ended up with (example: 1=a, 2=b, 3=c,etc.)
6. Think of a country that starts with that letter
7. Remember the last letter of the name of that country
8. Think of the name of an animal that starts with that letter
9. Remember the last letter in the name of that animal
10. Think of the name of a fruit that starts with that letter

Are you thinking of a Kangaroo in Denmark eating an Orange?

http://www.mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/Issues/mn8901/MOW2.php

• The website above is where I got the 10 questions game

• I compared The Magus to the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna, is God and he tried to convince the warrior Arjuna to fight in the war, but all the trouble of trying to convince Arjuna was pointless. Krishna had already determined what Arjuna was going to do.

12/1/11

"I knew that at last I began to feel the force of this super-commandment, summary of them all; somewhere I knew I had to choose it, and every day afresh even thought I went on failing to keep it. Conchis had talked of pints of fulcrum, moments when one met one's future. I also knew it was all bound up with Alison, with choosing Alison, and having to go on choosing her every day. Adulthood was like a mountain, and I stood at the foot of this cliff of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Thou shalt not inflict unnecessary pain" (pg. 641, The Magus).

At the end of the book Nicolas finally realizes what he has to do. He understands that Alison is the one for him and he must win her back. He knows he must wait for her and choose her over all others. Nicolas separated himself from Alison and England. He traveled to Greece in search of something better but found Conchis instead. He went through the initiation of the God game that Conchis created to make him change. After making it through the game and he went back to England to find the girl that he turned away in the beginning. By accepting his destiny he had transformed.

After all this time
In class today we started the individual presentations on the final papers that we wrote.

• The Ritual of Adonis
• http://www.bartleby.com/196/79.html

• Insidious- intended to entrap
• Despot- a king or ruler with absolute and unlimited power

11/29/11

"Had the trial happened? Had anything ever happened? But the savage pain in my arms told me that everything had happened.
And then, out of that pain, the sheer physical torture, I began to understand. I was Iago; but I was also crucified. The crucified Iago. Crucified by... the metamorphoses of Lily ran wildly through my brain, like maenads, hunting some blindness, some demon in me down" (pg. 530 The Magus).

Iago

Iago is one of Shakespeare's most complex villains. In the beginning of the play Othello, Iago seems to be pure evil but as the play moves on you realize that he is not an immoral person, he just lacks all sort of feeling. Iago became envious of Cassio's newly acquired position. Iago feels that he is the only one worthy of the position. He cheats, steals and kills until he gains the position he desires. Only a person that does things without feeling or thinking of the consequences can commit such terrible acts.

Nicolas feels like he has been the trickster throughout the God game but at the trial he is shown that in actuality, everyone has bamboozled him. Nicolas realizes that he hasn't been the one running the show and this bothers him a lot. He is so caught up in how smart he is and how he thinks he can never be fooled, that he lets Conchis and all of his followers deceive him. Niclolas' narcissistic personality exposed him to ridicule and put him in a vulnerable spot. Being so smart, he could not comprehend the fact he was tricked. The "truth" about Lilly was so devastating. Nicolas explains that the idea of Lilly raced through his brain like the maenads. The maenads were the followers of Dionysus. These people were often in a state of a delirious craze which occurred from being quite intoxicated while dancing around. These people would lose all sense of self control. They would shout uncontrollably, engage in sexual activity, and even sometimes commit the ritual of hunting and tearing animals and humans to pieces. Dionysus' followers became possessed by him and would lose all sense of reality, which apparently Nicolas felt like. He could make no sense out of what had happened to him for the last couple of days. He was drugged multiple times and only had what Conchis and others told him, to believe as reality.

11/22/11

"Once more my mind wandered, in a grey silences of the night, not to Julie, but to Alison. Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken like, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a smudge like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper" (pg. 441, The Magus).

Alison was sent to Greece to show Nicolas what he actually wanted but he didn't realize it. He seemed to enjoy his time with Alison while she was there, but I don't think he wanted to accept the idea of liking Alison better than Lilly/Julie. The plot of the play took a sharp turn when they decided to "kill" off Alison. Now that Alison, in Nicolas' eyes, was truly gone, he couldn't stop thinking about her. He was confused about how he felt about her. He thought she was just another girl to mess around with but finding out that she was dead was difficult for him to deal with. I think this was a pretty crucial event to happen in the book. It made Nicolas regret how he treated Alison. They made her fake death seem like it was his fault. It was interesting how much her death made Nicolas think about the times he spent with her and how much he would actually miss that.


In class we presented group projects.

11/17/11

Group Presentation:
Group 2

Intro: 

We have talked about in class how myth is found in the the present even though it is only thought to be in  found in the past. The problem is most people have forgotten about myth and they think it doesn't exist anymore. The problem with this idea is that myth is found in every day life and it has shaped the way we think.

Education , society and media has shaped the views of the world.  History and mythology both tell us that our past creates our future, so how have we lost sight of that? If we don’t know anything about the past then we are doomed to repeat it.

People that are higher in the society are compared to the gods. Their positions in the community are looked at like being impossible to attain for the “normal” person. People such as athletes go down in history as immortals, but obviously they are just as mortal as the rest of us. There life is portrayed by the way they spend their time and what they accomplish in their lives. These athletes ways of living seems unattainable to the normal human being. 

Infatuation is the belief that a person is no longer in control of a situation. This “obsession” with stereotypes have changed our perception of reality. We now don't think that mythology exists in present day life. Myth is the precedent behind every action, and all that is past possesses our present. Mythology is a big part of our past, present and future. 

Ice Breaker: We are showing pictures of actors, actresses and athletes of today and we want to compare their stereotypes to the ancient greek gods and goddesses

Charlie Sheen: portrayed on TV as an alcoholic womanizer. We related Charlie Sheen to Dionysus. Dionysus is known for possessing the mind. This could be comparable to the affect drugs have on a persons brain. These figures are two completely different beings, but both are seen as immortals. 

Michael Phelps: he is the god of the swimming pool. We compared him to Poseidon because he is the god of the ocean. Phelps a world record breaking gold medalist in the Olympics. The things he has accomplished in his life are thought to be impossible for the normal person to attain.

Elizabeth Taylor: We compared Taylor to Aphrodite. Aphrodite is known as the goddess of lust and love. Aphrodite was married to Hephestus but had many affairs with Ares in particular. Taylor was known for being very lustful. She played characters that were always the center of every mans attention. In real life Taylor was married about eight times and during her marriages she had many affairs.

Usain Bolt: Hermes and usain bolt do have similar personality characteristics in that both are cocky, and work towards the benefits of themselves. Usain is the fastest man in the world right now and he keeps breaking his own world records. 

Oprah: Queen of talk. We compared her to Zeus, the king of the gods. She is wise and very powerful. Both Zeus and Oprah are very powerful and have a lot of influence over the people that look up to them.

Our society has come up with these steryotypes based on what we learn in school and what the media tells us. These people have a big influence on how we act now. We learn from their mistakes and success. Historical figures have an even lager influence on our lives. These people have changed the way we act, say and think.

Andrew Jackson: Andrew Jackson- 7^th president of the United States. He is know for his heroic acts in the war, especially the war of 1812. He was a tough man that had an aggressive personality that helped him defeat his opponents. He did not defer to Congress in policy- making but used his power of the veto and his party leadership to assume command. He was a very rich slave owner. His biggest feat was the indian removal act which was the plan to move all native americans west of the mississippi river.  Thus, came the trail of tears. People advocated and supported the total extermination of the native americans. The Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 Cherokees died. 

Jackson was responsible for molding the modern presidency. He was the embodiment of the belief that the president was the only official who represented all of the American people.

Conclusion: 

Over time the stories of historical people have changed. What we know of them now is only their stereotype that was created. Now all we think of when we think of certain people is just their stereotype. These historical and modern day people that we think of as god like are only known for what people want to remember them by. All these people are more than just their exemplified archetype.

The ancient gods and these historical and modern day people are all looked at the same. The gods are high beings but they mingle with the mortal beings on earth all of the time. It is the same with these historical figures. Time has only made us think of them as gods, but in all actuality they are just like the rest of us. They led regular lives just like everyone else. Before and after that person became president, queen, an actor or an actress they were just the same as every day people. Michael Phelps is only portrayed as god like when he is swimming during the olympics. But once that is over he is no longer a god, he is just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life. 

Mythology is a huge part of modern day society because it describes why people do the things they do. Life is a cycle of separation, initiation and transformation. The point of life is go back to the beginning but the beginning is different than it was when the person separated. A person is transformed by they experiences of life when they make the journey back to the beginning. Someday people will realize that mythology lives on in the present, it is the precedent behind every action. We do the things we do because of Myth.

11/15/11

"The room stank of ritual; and I have always loathed rituals of any kind" (pg. 499 The Magus).

Nicholas disliked rituals of any kind. If a person does not perform rituals then bad things will happen. Nicholas was obviously in a bad situation. He was drugged for a few days and then finally hand cuffed to a throne dressed like a cyclops. He put himself into bad situations for not believing in things. He never took anything serious which then put him into some pretty serious situations. He was very narcissistic so if something was about him or he was the center of attention then he kept doing that thing to keep the attention of everyone on him. He liked being in the trial and part of all of that because he was the star of the show. He was constantly thinking about how to act so they wouldn't expect the action he decided to do. Going against the expected makes him be the center of attention. The way he acted during the trial bothered me. I hated that he was always trying to make situations about him by making a scene and doing "unexpected" things. He loved being apart of Conchis' experiment because everything was about him and all of those people were working together to set up a situation or scene up for him.

Class Notes:

• Assignment- 3 Page paper- in depth, specific about the book (The Magus) and mythology

• Fiction= to make
• Sacri= sacred
• HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
• We end where we begin

• Chapter 45, page. 311 The Magus
• "'All that is past possesses our present'"
• The precedent is behind every action = All that is past possesses our present
• A person carries their past around with them all of the time they must only focus on the present and the future

• Masque
•  certain type of theatre- plays put on in peoples houses
• Simian
• like a monkey
• History
• his story
• Quotidian
• usual, customary, everyday, ordinary
• Collective Unconscious
•  the collective is collective, impersonal; collects and organizes personal experiences in a similar way that each member of a particular species collects their experiences
• pass from a personal unconscious to the collective unconscious
• Taoism
• the mechanism that everything exists; the word Tao means way, path or principle

• Eliade 
• Speculations on Man and God: The Ultimate Reality - Chung Tzu and the Butterfly

• "Once upon a time, Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering about, enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he awoke with a start and he was Chuang Chou again. But he did not know whether he was Chuang Chou who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is called the transformation of things.

• Something becomes a sacred action when it is in remembrance of the divine

• THE END OF THE END

11/10/11

"'Humor is a manifestation of freedom. It is because there is freedom that there is the smile. Only a totally predetermined universe could be without it. In the end it is only by becoming the victim that one escapes the ultimate joke-which is precisely to discover that by constantly slipping away one has slipped away. One exists no more, one is no longer free'" (The Magus pg. 437-38).

Happiness comes from other peoples suffering. From peoples suffering we get stories and music, which are both enjoyable things. Conchis is saying that if a person is without a smile or happiness they are not truly free. If everything is determined for a person then they cannot be free and therefore they cannot be happy. This makes sense because if a persons life is already determined for them then they don't have any freedom to choose if they want to do something or not because their actions are already determined for them. In most cases these people with predetermined lives don't feel free. A person can loose their sense of reality if things are already planned for them.


Class Notes:

• The journey up is mythology
• Transformation is a different place from where a person came from because that person went through the experiences of life, which changed them.

• In the god game, everything is fiction.

• Orpheus and Eurydice- Eurydice and Orpheus get married. Soon after Eurydice steps on a snake and dies. Orpheus goes to the land of the dead, he plays his lyre and convinces Hades to give him back his wife. Hades says yes but on one condition Orpheus cant look back to see if his wife is following him. Of course right before he is out of the underworld Orpheus looks back and sees his wife but she returns to the underworld forever.

• Assignment: Find a passage in the Magus and talk about it

• I can't remember when I learned the truth about Santa Clause. I just remember asking my parents if he was real and they told me that if I believe in him then he is, and if I don't then he is not. This made me mad because I wanted a real answer. Every year we still get presents from Santa and I like that because it keeps the myth alive.

Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,

And it but mimic all we would believe

With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear

And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave

Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.

I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,

For his lost heart was tender, things to love,

But found them not, alas! nor was there aught

The world contains, the which he could approve.

Through the unheeding many he did move,

A splendour among shadows, a bright blot

Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove

For truth, and like the Preacher found it no

• The Bhagavada Gita
• I am reading this for one of my other classes that I'm taking. The situation that started the war was over which son got the throne when their father died. The king of the land was getting old so his oldest son was supposed to take over the kingdom but he was blind, so the younger son took the throne. The older son was upset about this and tried to take back the throne by trying to kill his brothers family. He succeeded in getting the kingdom, but not in killing his brothers family. Both families fought and tried to out smart the other. One time a member of each family gambled. The person that lost would have to go into the woods with their family and live in exile for 15 years. The youngest son's family lost and was sent to the woods. After 15 years they were supposed to get the kingdom back but when the time came the blind older brother would not give up the throne. Then the war began. Arjuna (the warrior in that video we watched in class) is the son of the youngest son. Arjuna is a great warrior and Krishna (God) is telling him that he has to fight in the war. Arjuna does not want to fight because he does not want to kill his own family members. Krishna tells him that he is supposed to fight because that is his duty as a warrior. Also, that when a person dies only their body dies, there soul lives on. Death is only a part of life.

• All reality is fiction

11/8/11

"Come live with me, and be my love;             

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks, 

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks 

By shallow rivers, to whose falls 

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses 

And a thousand fragrant posies; 

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle 

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool 

Which from our pretty lambs we pull; 

Fair-lined slippers for the cold, 

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds, 

With coral clasps and amber-studs: 

And if these pleasures may thee move, 

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing 

For thy delight each May-morning: 

If these delights thy mind may move, 

Then live with me and be my love."

This poem is found in the England's Helicon written by: Christopher Marlowe. The poem is called: The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.

Nicholas reads this poem after finding out that Alison had killed herself. Nicholas seems a little upset by Alison's death but at the same time I felt like he seemed a little relieved that she was gone and he didn't have to deal with her anymore. The news of Alison's death was kind of shocking. She didn't seem like the type of girl that would care about being turned down by a guy. 

I liked how Nicholas chose to read this poem after hearing about Alison. It kind of relates to the last experiences that the two of them had together. When they hiked the mountain, sat at the top of it, saw the shepherd with his sheep and swam in a pool with a waterfall. 

Class Notes:

• The end is always frustrating
• The tibetan book of the dead is a book about the rituals humans have to perform to get to the land of the dead.
• The Swerve- Written by Stephen Greenblatt
• The book is about a man that finds the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, in a library. The man that found the book ordered it to be copied. The manuscript was a poem talking about the idea that the universe functions without the help of the gods, that the religious fear was damaging to human life. Also that matter was made of small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in different directions. The manuscript described the way things were, it was the creation of the modern world.

• Death is a problem fro the family. The world will not concern the person anymore, the spirit of the dead will return back to where it came from.
• All of life is a preparation for death.
• Read: The Movement of Death as Described by the Upanishads found in the Eliade book.
• Myths help us realize what we are supposed to do when a person dies.

• Eschatology- last of final events of the history of the world or of humankind; a belief concerning death, the end of the world or the ultimate destiny of humankind
• Metempsychosis- the soul can never be destroyed or killed
• Parabola- quarterly print magazine about the study of the myths, rituals, symbols and arts of the worlds spiritual traditions; the story which is told to illustrate a certain point and deconstructs the point which is wanted to be known
• The transmigration of the soul- Eliada
• The person you thought would help you in a time of need didn't. This is the side of the parabola: the attack on the structure of your expectations

• Gasang Ist Dasein- song is existance

• The Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper

• We are here in order to see, hear and say things. The grasshopper enjoyed the summer and played the fiddle rather than preparing for winter. The ant gathered food for winter all summer and had no fun. The moral of the story is hard work and foresight. The ant prepared for winter and once winter came, the ant was prepared and the grasshopper had fun. But what is life really about? Having fun and enjoying life or is it all about working and suffering to gain something in the end? What should life really be about? 
• Cicada
• The muses taught humans how to sing. The people learned how to sing and sung forever and forgot to eat, drink and sleep. They died from this and the god turned them into bugs so they could sing always and forever.

11/3/11

"I was like of of Ulysses' sailors - turned into a swine, and able now only to be my new self" (The Magus pg. 279).

Nicholas is talking about having to accept that the situation he is in and that is has changed him forever. Alison told him that he shoulnd't always expect that Conchis, the girls and the house will all be there the next time he goes to visit. He should come back to reality and accept that whatever is going on at Conchis' house is not reality and she is. Nicholas thinks that Alison doesn't get it because she is not experiencing what he is. He believes that he has changed to much to ever be with her again. The book is about Nicholas going through experiences that were planned ahead of time. The whole point of this is for him to learn something. He doesn't seem to care for the experiences, all he wants is this new girl that he knows nothing about.

Today in class we took the second test.

11/1/11

Test Review:

Calasso

page. 209-212 the four stories that make up the quaternary (personalty profile by briggs that has to do with feelings, sensation, intuition, kore means pupil

zeus-thinking (up)

athena-sensation (out) community, goddess of the city

dionysus- feeling (down) pure unadulterated feeling, incubus, chthonic- of the underworld, disassemble social identity to get you away from all real feelings

demeter- intuition (in)  mother and daughter

page 209: persephone being abducted by hades; narcissus flower; narcissist- obsessed with themselves. to look at the very acting of looking at yourself

calls persephone Kore

triple goddess represented by three women: mother, daughter and krone 

page. 225-226 athena, hephestus chops open zeus’ head to release athena

page 244- mysteries of eleusis, greeks respect it more than anything else

pg 336- how would you define homeric (that is all you get, what you see) theology?

“what we call homeric....supremacy of the visible”

• theology( religion-that what we see) that gives power to that, that is visible to you
• When you can no longer see you have nothing (daylight and light)
• everything is done in the sun, in the light

chapter 11 pg. 359- “how do the heros....extinction...destiny for us...bards”

• why do we suffer?
• we suffer to sacrifice ourselves for the happiness of others
• “this is the work of the gods....future”

chapter 12 pg. 383-391

• definition of myth
• marriage of cadmus and harmony
• last time the gods and humans got together for dinner
• the gods were an invasion of the mind and the body when they hung out with the humans
• what conclusions can we draw? ....no stories” pg.387
• cadmus is the founder of Thebes- greatest disaster cadmus gives to the world is the fly’s feet “vowels and consonants....” gave the humans the alphabet 

calasso ended the book with how he started it

Eliade book:

Homeric Sacrifice for the Dead #95
Initiation of the Warrior #145
Dionysus and the Bacchae #147
The Eleusinian Mysteries #148
Death and Initiation in the Mysteries #149

The Taurobolium #150
The Decent of Ishtar to the Nether World #158

rites and rituals

Questions:

1. What does spiritus mundi mean? the spirit of the world

1.   At the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, what animals draw the chariot?  the bore and the lion
2. What country are the Nacirema tribe from? America
3. Which of the three things in the Eleusinian mysteries was the origin of theater? the thing done becomes the the origin
4. What is the study of the soul? psychology- the study of the soul
5. Who at birth was her beauty only appreciated by her father (she had two faces, four eyes and horns)? persephone page 204
6. What is the origin of our legal/judicial system? the story of orestes-athena
7. What is the term where a women take over the night where they can do whatever they want to do to men, with out any consequences?  Der Tote Toge (day of the dead)
8. What is the animal that is associated with the Taurobolium? a bull
9. What makes something sacred? giving it a name, ritualize our thinking to make it sacred, something is made sacred it is not sacred at the beginning
10. According to your instructor who is the real hero? me, us; we are all heroic
11. James Joyces novel which talks about an ordinary man and an ordinary day. This story is modeled after what greek hero? Odysseus
12. According to the irish poet WB Gates in his poem the second coming....history is composed of two thousand year cycles; which comes from the visitation of a _______ who impregnates a _________? bird and a woman
13. What is the greek image for the soul? image of a butterfly
14. Who did Zeus eat and gained wisdom? Metis
15. Which word best typifies a space carved out in which sacred rituals are carried out? Temenos
16. Who is the god of the double (dithyramb[os]) door and what does it mean? Dionysus- was born twice: mother- simile, father from his leg- zeus
17. Someone heard a divine voice at the end of the pagan world that said ___________? The Great Pan is Dead
18. What is the fundamental difference between the god and the hero? morality- the gods don't die. the heros life is more fun
19. When do the furies get pissed? kill your mother; dont kill anyone in your blood line
20. What is the religious significance  of the story of cupid and psyche according to your instructor? the psychological development of the feminine 
21. Which ritual came up 4 times or more during our presentations? rain making ritual
22. What is the name of the girl that the king threw a sandal in her face? Charila What aspect of this ritual involves a thrown sandal?
23. What greek play shows the clash between tradition and the state? Antigone This is the play in which a young woman buries her brother even though her burying her brother is punished by death?
24. What is the latin root that we get the word senator? Senex
25. Which of these definitions would be the best for archetype? an ancient or primordial image which is found universally in mythology; fairy tale and fantasy
26. Which Eleusinian mystery pertains to fertility during a certain month? maypole
27. The 22 points of the hero formula. Who covers most of the points in hero formula? Oedipus
28. In this class which christian ritual did we discuss that had to deal with death and rebirth? baptism
29. Why did Demeter put the baby in the fire? to make him immortal
30. If you have someone in your family who is a daddies girl, whose archetype is she modeling? Athena

the great pan is dead

WB yeates: the second coming