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.