10/25/11

"' My dear Nicolas, man has been saying what you have just said for the last ten thousand years. And one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever returned an answer'" (pg. 185 The Magus).

Nicolas had just watched the performance that was put on by Apollo and a goddess that kills a satyr because it is chasing a girl through the forest. He asks Conchis the meaning behind the play and of course Conchis doesn't answer the question. Like Nicolas, I also don't understand what that event means or if it was real or what was going on. I am starting to get into the book but it is confusing in parts.

Class Notes:
Ritual stories continued:

• Justin- Baby drop in India
• Abby- Kurnai Australian Initiation 
• Megan- Indian Stupa Story
• Zach- Rain Making
• Jeremy- Trick or treat
• Juniper- Strange Burial Ritual

• you need to do the thing exactly as prescribed or else the world will be disturbed; terrors will reign down upon you
• things will be very bad if you dont perform ritual and do them correctly
• hero burials and other burials have to be perfect
• Antigone- buries her brother by pouring some dust on his body, she was not supposed to do this because he was a traitor. He was her brother so she thought it was her duty as a family member to bury her brother no matter what. The king thought otherwise so lots of bad things happened to her for going against what the king had said. There is a collision between two things that need to be done; a collision of rituals

• Rites of Kenosis- empty out the evil; clean out, get everything bad out
• Tote Tage- day of the dead
• anything goes, no rules applied
• Plerosis- fullness or fulfilling
• Liberation from the rules
• the return of the world to chaos

• Nacirema- the house and the bathroom
• americans spend to much time in front of the mirror in the bathroom, changing a persons face or appearance
• everyone performs rituals

• Initiation
• you were once and now you have become that
• a journey from A to B changed you a lot and it was probably a painful process
• metamorphosis
• Metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa
• transformed into a giant insect-like creature

• Eleusinian Mysteries
• death and rebirth
• failure of nerve
• you want to live somewhere else and to get away from the difficult life with pain and suffering
• Pan- god of nature- Sader- dance and play flute
• happy is the person who performs a ritual

• Assignment: Read all of Chapter 4: Death, Afterlife, Eschatology section in Primitives to Zen Book

10/20/11

“Their living reality became a matter of technique, of realism gained through rehearsal. It was like being earnestly persuaded an object was new by a seller who simultaneously and deliberately revealed it must be a second-hand: an affront to all probability” (pg. 127 The Magus).

Nicholas is thinking about Conchis’ story about his life and the war. They had just rolled the die and it landed on six and Conchis ate the tooth with acid in it.  Conchis’ actions and the others that were involved in the war were living each day the same as the last. The men played this game and the die always landed on six. 

I really like how the book is written in a way that Nicholas tells the story. Like we talked about in class a little while ago, stories are alway much more exciting when told in the first person. It is easier to relate to.

Class Notes:

Today we told our ritual stories.

• Eric C- Karamundi Rain Making 
• Stefanie Herrara- Mourning dead cats
• Cortney Bury- Egyptian Mummification Process
• Christine Balsley- Aztec New Fire Ceremony
• Lucy K. -Smudging Ritual
• Jerrod M. -Blood Initiation--Shamonic
• Sherwood Nyhart- Rain Making
• Zachary Mayer- Bullet Ant Gloves
• Matthew Snaglik- Nacirama- Political Races
• Jason O.- Taurbolium
• Bailey G.- Mayan Ritual Human Sacrifice
• Darell Schwartz- Spartan Marriage
• Jessica Thomas- Seppuku Japanese Ritual Suicide----Mishima
• Jenny T.- Mary Month of May--Corona--Coronis
• Rosemary C.- Dia De Los Muertos: Day of the Dead
• Jill Yoder- Eastern Star Ritual
• Madison Cole- Rain Making
• Parker Dunn- Bridger Whale
• Sam M.- Beolwulf Funeral
• Theresa Brown- Bear Ceremony
• Andrew O. -Irish Wedding Ritual
• Kevin Ebert- Phuket Vegetarian Festival
• Wena T.- Chinese New Year
• Ashley R.- Family Tradition/ Night Before Christmas

Frozen Dead Guy Days.

There was a man named Bredo who was born and raised in Norway. He loved painting, fishing, skiing and hiking in the mountains. In 1989 he died from a heart condition. Bredo was a strong believer in the practice of cryonics. Cryonic is the science of human preservation at very cold temperatures. Right before Bredo died he wished to be frozen to preserve his body in hopes that future technology would be able to bring him back to life. When Bredo died his body was packed in dry ice and shipped to California where his body was put into liquid nitrogen. Four years later he was moved to Nederland, Colorado to be stored in a tuff shed in his daughters back yard. Every month there is a new shipment of liquid nitrogen delivered to his daughters house to fulfill his wish of being frozen. His daughter, Aud, lived in a house with no pluming and no electricity. She received an eviction notice but she was so worried that if she left her frozen father he would thaw and everything would be ruined. She told a local news reporter about her father. The story became a worldwide media sensation. Aud was allowed to stay and keep taking care of her frozen father. In 2002 the town of Nederland started an annual festival celebrating Bredo, who they now call Grandpa. The festival is called frozen dead guy days. Every year, Friday through Sunday on the first full weekend of March they celebrate. The festival includes a polar plunge where they cut a hole in the ice and people jump in and its a contest to see who has the best costume and the best entrance into the water. There is a huge parade and lots of parties. There is a lookalike contest, snowshoe races, snow sculpture contests, coffin races and there is also a big dance called “Grandpas Blue Ball”.

10/18/11

"On their wedding day, young and radiant, Cadmus and Harmony had arrived standing on a chariot drawn by a lion and a boar. Now, thrown out of their own home, these two old exiles climbed on a cart pulled by a pair of simple oxen and loaded with memories. When the cart rolled off, Cadmus and Harmony sat down side by side, and the Thebans saw the couple's backs knot together in the scales of a single snake. Cadmus and Harmony road away, twined snakes below, heads held high" (pg.390 Cadmus).

It's sad that they get kicked out of their city that they made. They had to leave because Pentheus, Cadmus' grandson was the king and only thought of Cadmus as a good for nothing old man. Pentheus decided to mess with Dionysus and ended up getting torn apart by his own mother. Everyone knows not to quarrel with the gods. Thebes has changed and so Cadmus and Harmony must now leave.

Class Notes:

• The middles are all about the rituals.
• Assignment: put on blog what ritual you decide to tell in class
• Beginnings are the creation of the world, its what makes us the way we are.
• The middles are all about moving from the world of the gods to the world of the heros. The heros are associated with battles and wars. Achilles is a commonly known hero, a war hero.
• Vomative- Coronis puked up Zeus' brothers
• All the great stories are about families. Hatfield and McCoy feud
• The furies or erinyes are born from the dripping blood that comes from Coronis' cut off genitals.
• Chthonic- of or related to the underworld



This is a picture of Orestes being chased by the furies right 

after killing his mother, Clytemnestra. 

• Where is the origin of our jury system?
• It comes from the story of Orestes and his trial that he went through because he killed his mother. Athena cast the tie breaker vote and Orestes was let go. They argued that a woman is only there to house a child and feed them once they are born but after the child is old enough they don't need their mother anymore. 
• Archetype- 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
• Senex- wise old man- impatient- not a compliment
• Zeus and Athena don't like circles/cycles. They like straight lines and things that proceed forward and don't repeat.
• Metis- Zeus ate Metis and ingested wisdom from her. This act put an end of the cycle of vengeance. This is how Athena was born from Zeus' skull.
• Peitho- persuasion
• Ulysses-Roman name for Odysseus. Book by James Joyce
• The book shows us that we are all heros, every day of our lives we do something heroic without even knowing it
• The heros of the ancient world are us
• Menial concerns, repeating events every day
• Ground Hog Day the movie is about a guy who lives in an ordinary town and on an ordinary day, ground hogs day, something happens and the day is repeated until he gets it right.
• The ordinary is extraordinary
• The Eleusinian Mysteries- initiation ceremonies held every year in honor of Demeter's visit
• Rituals are obsessive acts
• Decent
• Search 
• Ascent
• Temenos- holy precinct a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god
• Decent of Ishtar- decent into the underworld
• Persephone= Kore= daughter of the corn

10/13/11

“After that remote time when gods and men had been on familiar terms, to invite the gods to one’s house became the most dangerous thing one could do, a source of wrings and curses, a sign of the now irretrievable malaise in relations between heaven and earth. At the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Aphrodite gives the bride a necklace which, passing from hand to hand, will generate disaster after another right up the massacre of the Epigoni beneath the walls of Thebes, and beyond. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, failure to invite Eris leads to the Judgment of Paris in favor of Aphrodite and against Hera an Athena, and thus creates the premise for the Trojan War. Lycaon’s banquet, where human and animal flesh are served together, brings about the Flood. Tantalus’s banquet, where little Pelops is boiled in the pot, marks the beginning of a chain of crimes that will go on tangling together ever more perversely right up to the day when Athena casts the vote that acquits the fugitive Orestes” (pg.387 Cadmus).

Everything happens for a reason. “The gods ruin our relationship with them but sets history in motion” (pg. 387). The gods make life worth living because they make things interesting. They are there to give the humans experience and mess things up to make good stories. Life is a series of chain reactions. If Aphrodite hadn’t given Harmony the necklace then massacres, wars, floods, etc would have never happened. Yes, these are all bad things but, everything does happen for a reason.

Class Notes:

• Rituals are sometimes horrifying or grotesc
• Carpe Diem- cease the day
• Gods provide the food for the people
• Dark side of mythology- the short story “The Lottery” http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html
• Dont know how rituals start
• People perform rituals to make something else happen
• Deus Ex Machnia- hero formula- god out of the machine
• Goat- Icarious- Ritual
• Ritual- set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value
• Origins of Tragedy
• Myth and Ritual
• Myth is the story part of what is done- ritual started with myth-Precise, repatition
• Ritual Stories in Cadmus and Harmony:
• pg.39- Icarious Wine
• pg. 160- Charila
• pg. 260- Initiation

• What is behind all of this?
• What is the precedent behind every action?

• Delphi is based upon the rotting corpse of the python that Apallo killed
• Put the sin on something else- expel him/her from the city = scape goat
• Ceremony- Ceres is the roman name for Hera- the goddess of the harvest
• Eating cereal is performing a ritual to the goddess Ceres
• Don’t do rituals unless you understand why it is performed
• Effigy- voodoo doll, representation of a person
• Homeopathy- doll must have something  of the other persons on it to make it work
• Rite-Ritual-Ceremony-Initiation
• May poll- axis mundi
• Pryapus- garden god- god of procreation
• Calasso has no fondness for the spartans
• Dont eat anything when you go to the underworld

• What is the ritual that the people of Eleusis perform for Demeter?
• They have to build a temple for her where the initiated should celebrated her mysteries

10/11/11

“For all 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. We kill to eat, to assimilate; and we kill to separate, to expel. In every other respect the two gestures are different” (pg. 291-292 Cadmus).

Sacrifice is a very strange thing. I feel like it is a pretty selfish act. A person kills a virgin or an animal to get something out of it, nothing else. The person or animal being sacrificed has no choice if it or they want to be sacrificed. For example, Iphigenia was scarified only because an oracle told her father that if he wanted to fight the trojans he had to sacrifice a virgin to sail over there. Agamemnon wanted to fight the trojans more than he wanted to keep his innocent daughter alive, so he killed her.

Class Notes:

• Immortality- gods dont die
• Saddness- part of the middles

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 sepulchers. 

• Oedipus is the closest to earning all 22 hero points
• Some other heros are superman, sigfred and luke skywalker
• The real hero or any story, is you!
• Middle:
• the story of heros
• the muddle- you don’t know who you are or where you are going
• labyrinth
• significant but dont know what it is 
• INITIATION

• Assignment due on October 20^th
• tell a ritual or initiation story (formulaic, structured and repeated) to the class

• A ritual is something we do, they are very organized and precise, things that are done, rid of sin
• to see
• to say
• to do
• DO- it is every human beings biggest challenge

• “What am I supposed to do?”
• People can relate to stories better when they are told in the first person
• The Tarbolium #150 in Eliade book
• Taurus- bull
• Dromenon- things that are done (Drama)
• Jessica’s Rituals that she does before leaving the house every day
• Brush cat 
• check all doors and windows to make sure they are locked
• check in rear view window five times to make sure the garage door is closed
• Baptism- imitation of death and coming back to life
• hold down underwater until the person squirms
• Assignment: write on blog what kinds of rituals we do
• Every morning I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, pack my lunch, put everything in my backpack that I will need that day (double check that I have my bike lock), eat breakfast, leave my house, lock the door, make sure the door is locked and then I ride my bike to school. That is how things usually go in the mornings before school, but not always.
• “Have you been washed in the blood of the lamb?”
• purified
• devotion to faith
• Imitation of what you want to be done- homeopathy- James G Frazier

10/6/11

“They were the first to train naked and grease their bodies, men and women alike. Their clothes became ever more simple and practical. They were the grim forebears of every utilitarianism. They kept their helots in a state of terror, yet were compelled to live in terror of their helots. They carried their spears with them everywhere, for death might be lurking at every turn. Not at the hands of their ‘equals’ but at those of the endless mutes who served them, before being mocked and decimated” (pg.251 Cadmus).

The spartans acted in a way to bring happiness to the greatest number of people in their community. They were very different form the rest of the world in how they dressed, acted and trained their warriors. They were ready for anything and everything all of the time. 

Today in class we took the first test.

10/4/11

“Initiation involves a physiological metamorphosis: the circulating blood thought patterns of the mind absorb a new substance, the flavor of a secret wisdom. That flavor is the flavor of totality: but, in the Spartan version, it is the flavor of the society as totality. Thus we pass from the old to the new regime” (pg. 250 Cadmus).

In order to become a true spartan warrior a person has to go through a series of initiations to give them experience and teach them lessons. Initiations changes with time but it is still based off the original practice. An initiation changes a person and teaches them lessons about themselves. 

Test Review:

Elliada Book

• Hainuwele- bore and the coconut and girl that was born from the coconut
• apallo
• earth mother of all
• enumelish
• hesiods theogony 

picture: saturn devouring his children

Calasso Book Info. page numbers that questions will come from

• pg. 5 the basket
• pg. 15 etiology- why to greek men have slim hips
• pg. 39 goats- Rigory and her father, Eurigone (his discovery of how grapes ferment and become wine) origin of tragedy and understanding of Dionysus- tragedy is the song of the goat
• pg. 81 etiology- who has more fun making love? the man or the woman (woman have more pleasure) Hera blinds Tiresias
• pg.94- ate: infatuation (know what it means) divine infatuation a life with out divine infatuation is not worth living even though it brings a certain ruin- No life is worth living without divine infatuation 
• pg. 383 definition of myth- “the precedent behind every action, it’s invisible, ever-present lining” essence of mythology- modeling something that has already been done (IN ILLO TEMPORE-in the beginning or in the great time or in the dream time or once upon a time)
• pg. 52 megan’s blog: calasso’s major theme- constantly declining as a culture 

1. conviviality
2. rape
3. indifference

• pg. 176 Calasso telling us how everything came about- all the people went to war the problem was Pelops- Who was Pelops? gave name to Pelaponesian people- son of Tantalus: something you want but you cant get it, Tantalus cut up his son, Pelops, and fed it to the gods. Demeter took a bite out of his shoulder. Tantalus would eternally be hungry and thirsty in the underworld. Wouldn’t have the Trojan war or anything if it werem’t for Pelops
• lada and the swan W. B. Yeats: Online Literature- the poem http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/865/
• zeus took the form of a swan- the trojan war would have not happened if Zeus had not raped Leda

Mythos (story) Logos (truth): Mythologies are trues stories

From Primitives to Zen, By: Mircea Elliade- Creation of Myths page 83

1. Ex Nihilo is the creation out of nothingness. High beings create everything by thought or by word, or by heating himself in a steam-hut. The words that are said have the power of becoming real.
2. Earth diver myths god sends down aquatic birds or amphibious animals, or dives down himself, to the bottom of the primordial ocean to bring up a particle of earth from which the entire world grows.
3. The creation by dividing in two a primordial unity (one can distinguish three variants: a. separation of Heaven and Earth, that is to say the World-Parents; b. separation of an original amorphous mass, the 'Chaos'; c. the cutting in two of a cosmogenic egg)
4. Creation by dismemberment of a primordial Being, either a voluntary, anthropomorphic  victim (Ymir of the Scandinavian mythology, the Vedic Indian Purusha, the Chinese P'an-ku) or an aquatic monster conquered after a terrific battle (the Babylonian Tiamat).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

multiple choice questions

1. Which of these four things was the mother of the Muses? Mnemosyne
2. What was Persephone doing before she was abducted by Hades? picking flowers-Narcissus (flower of self regard) 
3. The suggestion that we are all prisoners chained to a wall watching the shadows and thinking    of them as real? Plato- The Myth of the Cave
4. The landmass now known as Europe was named after which person? Europa
5. Who arrives appears unexpected and possesses? Dionysus- when a person drinks to much, no longer themselves 
6. What is the meaning of the mythological root of: enthusiasm? en-theos: the god inside you, possessed by the god
7. Who says “one more time Athena, love me, as much as you can”? Odysseus
8. Abduction is always followed by what? metamorphosis
9. Who was born form the the dismembered parts Uranus? Aphrodite- born from the foam; the goddess of love
10. Who was the mother of the Minotaur? Pasiphae 
11. What word that means the tearing of limbs and ripping of the flesh? Sparagmos
12. The great desire of the hero is to...? arrive where they started, go home
13. Define Anamnesis.
14. recollection. according to plato we know everything but we just forgot and the purpose of  a teacher is to remind us of what we have forgotten
15. What does the word “Apocalypse” mean? take a veil off to show the real appearance of the world
16. What does Eschtology mean? the study of ends
17. What in the greeks story was housed in the labyrinth?  the minotaur
18. Who was the destroyer of the delights? death
19. Zeus took what forms to seduce women: Cloud- Io, Bull- Europa, Swan- Leda, Shower of Gold- Danae, Normal everyday mortal- Semle
20. When a god agrees to something they can’t ever take it back...
21. What does Zeus show to Semle? himself as he really was

9/29/11

“Everything repeats itself, everything comes back again, but always with some slight twist in its meaning: in the modern age the group of initiates becomes the police force. And there is always some tiny territory untouched by the anthropologists’ fine-tooth comb that survives, like an archaic island, in the modern world: thus it is that in antiquity we come across the emissaries of a reality that was to unfold more than two thousand years later” (pg.249 Cadmus).

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

History repeats itself. People have to learn from history to know how to prevent things from happening again. For example in the story of Charila, there was a famine throughout the land. Charila asked the king for food because he had given it all to the rich people. The king threw a shoe in her face and wouldn’t give her any food. So, she left the city and hung herself. The king finally went tot he oracle to ask for a way to end the famine. The oracle told him appease the young virgin Charila. They finally found Charila’s body after a while of searching for it. It was still hanging from the branch she hung herself from. They buried her body near the tree. The king  then gave food to everyone rather than just the rich. He to throw his sandal again but this time in an effigies face. They took the effigy to a tree, hung it and then buried it. The famine then ended. They started this ritual that they performed every eight years. This kept famines from coming to the land but after a few hundred years people would begin to forget this ritual and history would then repeat itself.

Class Notes:

Sybyl

• A person has to make their own discoveries.
• sacrifice = to make sacred
• “fie”- to make
• “sacra”- sacred 
• Disassemble any structure of order, intoxication and wine = Dionysus
• The Sybyl- Oracle
• Rape- not just literal rape but also of the mind; psychological rape
• “gon”- birth
• We have an assignment to write about a dream we have
• Dreams are great sources for mythological stories
• Become the thing you partake in- you are what you eat

• Two parts to life with the gods

1. Abduction
2. Metamorphoses 

• Four common ways for the creation of the world

1. Female who created the world from herself
2. Created by a female and her side kick a snake (snake sheds skin)
3. Creation from a goddesses body
4. God creates by voice (biblical)