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