[mythistorian]

Thank you so much for your responses and thoughtful questions. It always gives me great pleasure to engage my readers and the thoughts that may have been provoked by our mythblasts. Of course, that there are artists among our readers is all to be expected given that myth-making is, after all, our very trade.

So, to be sure, Allison, that feeling in the solar plexus being physically involved is totally right on point, the point at which an overlap between body and psyche glows with excitement. I think the effect Art has on our psyche shares the same “psychoid” (a term Jung proposed to designate this curious overlap between matter and spirit) origin that inspired the artist to create the piece. But I also think that this is always true of living bodies as such (as opposed to dead matter)—both much more a part of our everyday experience and a miracle that defies comprehension at the same time…