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

10/27/11

"'Not all powers have to be discovered, some have to be regained.'" (pg. 191 The Magus)
Nicholas is reading the Society for Reason pamphlets that Conchis gave him to read. The pamphlet this quote came from is the On Communication With Other Worlds, which talks about telepathy. Which basically talks about how everyone can have a telepathic experience, they just have to relearn what they "already" know. The person must be aware of their own conscious beings to rediscover telepathy.

Class Notes:

• When the words, "The great Pan is dead" were spoken, the whole mythological world died too.
• When one story ends, another story begins.
• Every 2000 years a new story is started that involves a bird and a woman. The bird visits the woman and then impregnates her, which produces a child that changes the world.
• Mary was impregnated by a bird (the holy spirit) 
• Mentomony- end of mythological phase

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

       THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

• Revelation- The End
• Sprites Mundi- spirit world; sprit of the world
• The Nature of Secrecy- it is not the thing that is sacred- names something and it becomes that
• The strength of belief creates the thing

• The Black Stone is a Muslim relic which according to Islamic tradition dates back to Adam and Eve. The stone became a place of worship during the pre-Islamic pagan times. The ritual is to rub and kiss the stone. If they cannot reach the stone then they point at it each of the seven times they walk around it.

Gerard Hopkins (1844-89)                         7. God's Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

• The Mind has Mountains

• We need to change the way we see things, they way we think, they way we say things, the way we do things and the way we hear things. We are without depth, mythology is gone.
• Looking and seeing are two different things.
• Myers Briggs Personality Test
• Extraverted- the exterior world
• Thinking
• Sensation
• Introverted
• Intuition
• Feeling
• Zeus' story is very extraverted. He represents thinking (up). He gained knowledge and wisdom when he hate his wife. He also figured out how to keep his position as head god and not get overthrown by his children.
• Athena represents sensation (out). She is connected with the birth of Athens.
• Demeter represents intuition (in). The secret of the mother and the daughter- Eleusinian Mysteries
• Dionysus represents feeling (down). Moist, liquid, here today and gone tomorrow, deepest bodily needs, stop thinking, intoxication, god of the double door (Dionysus was born first from a woman and then Zeus' thigh), part of something that is not you. Dionysus drives you out of your mind when it is time. If you don't do what he says then you will go crazy. Always go with Dionysus.
• Ecstasy- possessed

• Carl Jung was a student of the soul. He came up with the theory of typology, which is a type of human behavior. It is based on behavioral tendencies. 
• Soul
• dreams 
• fantasy
• Cupid and Psyche
• there story shows up in a lot of disney movies such as: beauty and the beast, snow white and cinderella
• Psyche- the study of the soul

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”.