Marianne
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Richard,
I agree with every statement you have made in your journal entry and discussion about masks as political statements and Republican tendencies as compared with the tendencies of those who are Liberal, and thank you for defining this in such a succinctly definable and readily available (and usable) way! Thanks for this!
Mary Ann
Hi Richard,
Thank you. It is so nice to meet you. I would love to hear more about Cosmology and Brain Swimme and wish I could have taken your class when you were teaching it to learn more about Cosmology and Swimme. I have read some of Swimme’s books and have thoroughly enjoyed them–love them! Perhaps you can teach us here. I am all ears! I do have a question. When I was writing about Campbell’s “Earthrise,” I was trying to find yet one more quote by Swimme that I could not find that to me so perfectly “fits” the feeling of the new myth as the new dawn and new dawn also of Earthrise. I can’t locate a book I had by Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story. He wrote about children awaking in the morning and looking at the rising sun and seeing themselves in the midst of our solar system, waking to that reality everyday, as the new myth. The way he wrote it was so beautiful I remember when I read that book for a class I read that paragraph over and over again. I tried to Google it but did not find it. Now I am wondering if I even had it in hard copy paperback/hardcover or if I had borrowed it from an online library I subscribed to–I sometimes did that as a student to save some money. In any case, I am wondering if you can off the top of your head locate that quote–I will keep trying to find it. That quote of Swimme’s and that book it is in seems like a nice sequel to the book, The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.
Hi, James,
I too think it is insane; I saw some disheartening videos on Facebook the other day about wearing masks or not consisting of confused rhetoric creating arguments that did not make sense–that is how confused people are. It is so sad. You sum it up so succinctly, yet with breadth, and give much to further consider here.
So it seems now we have a new twist on Shakespeare: “To wear a mask or not to wear a mask, that is the question.”
Thank you for your wonderful post,
Mary Ann
Hi Stephen,
I am not sure if I missed that or not; sometimes I am on the computer at “odd” hours and end up in a bit of a mind fog not seeing, or at the time thinking, of the whole picture. Lately I have been in a rush of things even though I am not working outside the home anymore. Thank you for calling this to my attention.
I did seem to notice the air being clearer here, and cleaner, just as you discussed in your post.
I also noticed the clouds were less pressed down upon our lake atmosphere here when there was less traffic and pollution. It seemed when there was less pollution and when there were clouds, they were higher in the atmosphere. Now when there are rain clouds or storms clouds they hang very low again. That sometimes looks rather ominous to me. Cloud patterns started to change here over the lake where I live (a wide open space on one of the Great Lakes, which together comprise a freshwater ocean, so the opportunity to view the cloud patterns is almost as immense as over the oceans) around 2004-2006, sometime around there. (My timing might be off, though–” I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now.”)
I hope people take heed of the pollution we humans are causing starting now, as some climate change scientists are predicting we have until 2030 before we reach our tolerance level threshold at a point when we would not be able to turn it around. I do not want my granddaughter and her friends and her future children to suffer bad air. It breaks my heart to think about it.
I loved your post and topic, Stephen. The topic thread you began is what is most immediately vital now and I am so grateful for this forum topic thread. I have enjoyed everyone’s thoughtful responses and may the gods and fates bless everyone here in the forum~I am so grateful to be here with people of like mind with whom I resonate.
Sincerely, thank you to everyone here,
–Mary Ann
Thank you, Pilgrim1 for the information here. Again, your post reminds me of two authors and ecologists I enjoy: Gary Snyder (ecological and eastern spirituality poet) and Brian Swimme (cosmologist and writer of new myth theories). Your posts go very well with my readings of these other two writers. It is sadly amazing how much of the earth and our resources we have destroyed in the last 200 years. I am not a scientist that can save the air by developing alternative sources of energy, but I do work with the wildlife where I live with a nature reserve (volunteer) to help save our ecosystem–as I would like to think that my granddaughter and her children and children’s children can enjoy the natural world around them. There are many less monarchs now than when I was a child, and many less frogs and natural streams around, less woods. Now most of it is “preserved” or “reserved,” and those places are not as rich with wildlife and indigenous plant varieties as there once were.
–Mary Ann
James wrote, The idea of “Gaia” or Earth Mother principle would be one since we are now talking about the planet as a biological entity; (especially since the Coronavirus is a biological species and could be seen as an agent of change). ” I find my mind wrapped up around this as I keep thinking of both Joseph Campbell’s and Brian Swimme’s ideas of the “new myth.”
Campbell:
Earthrise is a symbol that is working its way slowly into our consciousness. One sees it in many places. CBS News used it for a long time on Walter Cronkite’s program. Strangely enough, it is being used — set afire, however — to publicize the movie “The Late Great Planet Earth.” That is a fire‐and‐brimstone account of the end of the world in literal biblical terms. That use of earthrise seems a good example of the resistance you describe to the space age and its central metaphor.
The sense of apocalypse is very widespread and I believe it is a rejection of this new age. That is why there is so much interest in disaster. It’s more than just the thrill of the movies. It is evidence of how deep the notion of the apocalyptic moment is. We hate ourselves so much that we take delight in the destruction of people. It is like reading the worst of the prophets in the Bible.
[…]
The mystical theme of the space age is this: The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in‐group: That is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. Our divided, schizophrenic world view, with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and unconscious, that is what is coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth, that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the Kingdom?
(Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/15/archives/earthrise-the-dawning-of-a-new-spiritual-awareness.html)
After reading Jame’s thoughts and feelings about fearing this pandemic, and I feel fear as well, I just hope that we do not find out too late that the “Kingdom” is this earth. In thinking of everyone’s posts in this thread, I think of the following quotes. I have not been feeling very self-expressive lately, so forgive how sloppily I may be at trying to stitch these quotes/thoughts together here:
This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebuds, giraffes and humans.
–Brian Swimme
With the above quote, I think of how many new myths we might make out of the Earthrise myth. I also associate this with Pilgrim’s response about the scientific components of the air we breath and then his mentions about how music is needed in these times.
“The earth was once molten rock and now sings operas.”
― Brian Swimme, Canticle to the Cosmos, 1990And the mouth opening to sing the opera is like the first utterance of any human on earth; it is an opening:
“It was out of the dynamic of cosmic celebration that we were created in the first place. We are to become celebration and generosity, burst into self-awareness. What is the human? The human is a space, an opening, where the universe celebrates its existence.”
― Brian Swimme, The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story
But now it seems not enough are heeding the dangers of this virus, and that now we are damning that existence. Here we could perhaps ask, and what is this virus? Is it too a space? Is it here to fill our space? It is filling our air and then our bodies. During the shutdown, the air was cleaner. The human openings that we are just had to rush and open things too soon and we gave COVID-19 its second wave; we needed our free energy so badly we threw caution to the 4 winds.
“Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun.”
― Brian Swimme, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era–A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos
And now I am thinking of James wrote: “Jung’s ideas to me are one thing he brought forth that for me represent hope; so does anyone else have something to throw into this discussion?”
Jung, in one of his seminars, stated that humans have two basic instincts: The instinct (will) to live and the instinct (will) to die. The first time I ever read this, it spiraled my mind far outside of myself into numerous almost unutterable thoughts. I could understand an individual body’s death instinct when it has after all exhausted itself; however, it seemed rather unfathomable that humans as a species and collective psyche would have a death instinct of its own species. I did some writing about this a few years back, about human ecological destruction; it seemed bad enough back then with all our self-made pollution in the air to cause disease; and now, with this virus in the air and in our psyches, we children of the earth so dependent on its fate, just like an ideal school art project, hope has become an open-ended assignment.
As Stephen discussed, we cover our mouths with our masks and at a time when George Floyd could not breathe, neither can we. That is terrifying. In all its terror, it is the unfolding of the archetype of breath, first the fire-breathing dragons of the forest fires in the West, and the green-dragon (Swimme) myth now as we make up our myths about the corona virus, and at this some have failed to get the “meaning of the myth” as Campbell would often say, and next what types of operas will we write? What type of music will we sing? Who will write our new lyrics? Who will participate in the making of the new melody of the uni-verse? When the first wave hit, we kept hearing/seeing ads that “we are all in this together,” and then we saw how truly together we are/how catching the covid* is and then we seemed to split apart into factions of half and half fractions of who will wear a mask and who will not wear a mask, and then considering ourselves as one is not always such a favorite thing to consider when, as James wrote so poignantly “reaching out to a closed fist is not very encouraging when people all around you are sick and possibly dying.” So now we are left with our memories of the good ol’ days which were only almost yesterday.
So what are the new songs, the new openings, the new myths? And do we have some myths to close first, shutting things down again? Or to close down the virus altogether with the much anticipated vaccine? Some are creating the myth that the invisible Dragon Covid barely exists since it cannot be seen; some create the myth of going to the Covid party because the knight believed that Covid was a hoax but then sometime in the night sea journey the knight got sick and died; some believe this is the end of the world we have all been waiting for, saying the Mayans were only 8 years off (from their predicted 2012); some don’t care–they believe in heaven anyway and have no kids or grandkids here on the planet; many didn’t care about the 7 generations before them let alone the 7 generations after to follow; some will retreat to their bomb shelters and be the last earthling alive; some will blast out into and colonize space (if only they could already); some will search for a cure and make up myths about the cure; humans become covid-breathing dragons while others wear not just gas-masks but covid masks; some will continue to wonder if Gaia did not produce this virus to shut us down to clear the air long enough to provide us an opportunity to develop alternative energy sources we would actually quickly put to use before 2030, and some of us open our eyes just so we cannot bear to see what we see when our eyes are closed, our grandchildren left suffering here on earth when we are long gone from its surface. Others believe in and await a new dawn:
We must live as though we are setting the pattern for the future. At any moment, we may be. How the present period of human inflation ends will determine whether the stable period that is coming will be dark and repressive or will nurture the human spirit. It may sound terribly overwhelming and even unfair that so much responsibility for the future rides on every decision we make. But no — this way we live large. This is what it means to matter to the universe. Like the ancients who felt there was a bridge between their acts and the invisible beyond, our generation’s choices will have power over times and size-scales that we can hardly imagine. If we take on the cosmic responsibility, we get the cosmic opportunity — that rarest of opportunities for the kind of transcendent cultural leap possible only at the dawn of a new picture of the universe.
—Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams, The View from the Center of the Universe, 2006
*covid: a word (a name for a virus) I prefer to usually not capitalize
Hi, James,
I like and follow all your thoughts you write on this. My biggest hope in all this, as it has been for many others, aside from the virus going away and saving as many lives as we can, is that during this time of social isolation humankind might work harder and faster to come up with more alternative fuels that would not pollute our earth. I don’t have the links right now, but I did see how pollution levels were going down in some major cities without so many cars on the roads, and it worried me that as soon as the lockdown orders were lifted that people would just go on doing what they did before rather than taking it as a sign. This could have been a very positive sign and good for us now but especially for our children and grandchildren and the “7 generations” we are supposed to be kind to think about. Where I live, I do not think it was just my imagination or wishful thinking that the air looked and smelled cleaner with barely any traffic on the road. Now the cars are back all over the place–and I feel somewhat disappointed. Another thing I was able to do during this time of the stay-at-home was to begin a new ecological project to help endangered species of our local wildlife here–some have mentioned why work with animals when humans are suffering, but I am not a nurse, I am high-risk to both get corona and not survive if if I get it, and as Stephen and so many others have expressed here, we are all linked. There is no break in the net/web of the universe that holds us all together. I loved the writing about how we all breathe the same air, and anything that helps the environment helps us all in this balance of ecosystem.
And when we all meditate and relax, I am thinking now (and want to mention this to Stephen), the more we can all either meditate or do what gives us joy such as gardening or walking that cleanses our thoughts and feelings, the more we send positive thoughts and vibrations out into the collective psyche that can help heal humanity and the collective as well as help heal Gaia. I think that a lot of the hatred that goes around are partly from people’s own hatred of their lives when they are not loving life, and the natural world around us has a tendency to absorb and cleanse what troubles us.
Best and Bliss!
Mary Ann
P.S. I mean peace in the midst of these troubled times–kind of like being in the eye of a hurricane. I did not mean to imply that it is entirely fine and peaceful.
–Mary Ann
Hi Stephen,
Thank you, and you are welcome–I am glad you enjoyed my retelling. I love seeing archetypes in the old myths in new myths, their patterns. Thank you for sharing more about sun-goddesses and Amaterasu.
Mary Ann
Stephen,
Thank you for this Mythblast, for connecting the dots between the Corona Virus and Joseph Campbell’s ideas and quotes, and I enjoy hearing your thoughts on Corona, as well. I like what you did with the image in Campbell’s quote of the Spaceship Earth and saying we are all in the ship together. Maybe that is the Call to Adventure!–Where we will blast off to from here, where will we direct our ship, what will we discover there? I am thinking that I realize how hard it is to think of an uncertain time such as this one as an exciting adventure; however, sad as all this is, at the same time, the virus presents us with a wonderful opportunity to help the environment heal and get healthy again as we too all seek to be free of this virus ‘polluting’ our air, nasal passageways, and lung passageways. There are so many ways through which the virus can pass to our lungs (or settle in other areas in the body, such as in the cases in children similar to Kawasaki disease) and there seems these days so many other passageways to travail in order to settle so many things of various global and community challenges.
Odd as this may sound, I have found that for me the pandemic has been strangely peaceful–but not right away. At first, all I could think of was the virus and what if I and/or anyone in my family contacted it, wondered about chances of survival–and humanity’s survival. At first, I “phobed out” over it. I didn’t want people even just stepping into my yard, let alone 6 feet away, without a mask. It seemed I was more cautious than most people I know who were showing up at my door without bringing a mask with them, and I found myself having to set boundaries with people, to make my stance known. As the days went by, I began to relax into this isolation overall into what felt and still feels like in some ways a vacation. I checked into Hotel Home, felt less pressures of having to perform in the outer world. At first I missed my out-of-the-home job, but I could still do some of it from home (and I always did some of it from home, so that was not a huge transition for me). Then, I began to feel even more ‘at home’ at Hotel Home: I went through old file boxes of old old manuscripts I had abandoned years ago–I suddenly felt the time and thus the peace and freedom to write more of my own creative writing than I had in years. I began sorting old poems into book manuscripts, began working on a novel I hadn’t touched much in years (having just dabbled with it here and there about once every several years). This was accompanied by the fear that if I were to catch the virus I might not be able to complete the things I had always wanted to finish in my lifetime. Some people are now having to reassess their jobs or career paths and make decisions as to how to best move forward with their businesses; for me, I already knew what I wanted all my life to do but never felt enough time all the time to focus on my writing the way I wanted to. So for me, the adventure was in the writing, the travels in my mind–what adventures would my characters venture on next in their hero’s journeys. I also watched some old movies I had not seen in a while, such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and old Tarzan movies, King Kong, and old Star Trek episodes. I even had some movie marathons some days.
I did pay attention to my breath. I spent time in TM and other meditations; I walked nature paths and breathed, and I walked the beach and breathed. I payed attention to my steps and my breath. And now I write when I feel like it, walk when I feel like it, eat when I feel like it, and nap if I feel like it. I am finding a new natural rhythm in this. The pressure is off in many ways–I can relax: Relax and breathe, breathe and write, breathe and do more gardening. I have had a lot of work to do too at times, but not in the same blocked time frame of Monday-Friday. I don’t much miss the money (yet), and know this cannot last forever.
I would like very much to hear more from Stephen and everyone in this forum about the myth of breath and look forward to reading more. I wish everyone health, wealth/sustenance, and happiness. We have a great group of people in this forum and it is a great place to all be together in this, thanks to the Joseph Campbell Foundation and to Stephen and Michael for hosting this forum and those who contribute to it. I just want to say I wish everyone well.
Peace and Breathe, Be Well,
Mary Ann
Stephen,
Your
Your post and your question (“[…] “it would be fascinating to consider how that fifth function applies to contemporary society. What do we in “first world” societies not see about ourselves due to the default setting supplied by our dominant mythologies?”) remind me of the concept theory of “participation mystique” from its various angles. Here are some links of definitions about it. (Next I would try to think of specific examples from our first world culture.)
Please excuse/forgive the first link which is Wikipedia–I realize that as a source it is not always accurate or completely accurate, but it makes for a good starting point at times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_mystique
While some seem to say or imply that participation mystique is a type of ignorance that is negative, I think there are also positive/beautiful instances of participation mystique in the sense of participating in the mystique of a ritual or nature–or a natural rite (so sometimes both nature and ritual), especially when one is informed or knowledgeable as to the meanings and the symbols of the rite such as its mystical elements, or as magical elements, such as in the use of sympathetic magic in rites. Some people have looked back upon such rites of tribal or indigenous people around the world as pre-Christian (pagan) and ignorant. Yet the medicine man or woman is in the know to bring rain to the tribe through an object like the rain stick that mimics the sound of rain. People connect with the object because of the beauty of the sound. This seems to go along with what you wrote elsewhere about beauty of rhythm that myth is, or mythic pattern, whether in sound of other way. With so many people being disconnected with the natural world today, neo-pagans seeking this connection might pick up the rain stick to connect to the archetype of rain. The mystique of the participatory moment(s) can enchant, like another form of meditation though considered magic, and though considered magic, is the energy of the archetype behind the archetypal image–so whether one believes in the gods (or God) or not, the ceremony is one example of a pleasant and not negative form of participation mystique in my opinion–whether polytheistic ceremony (generally pagan/neo-=pagan) or monotheistic. There are times in the myths and in magic when identification is sought after on purpose and not in ignorance. Who is to say when and when not a collective unconscious not only exists, but manifests. Sometimes we hear the expression “the air was so think you could cut it with a knife,” and that seems to me like the collective unconscious becoming conscious almost as if psychoid material which is then consisting of both mind and matter–it is then that commonality of sympathy is so strong or imbued. Whether it is Cakes and Wine in a pagan/neo-pagan rite or whether it is the act of Communion in the Catholic Mass, all are participating in a mystic and/or magical rite.
As for the negative projections, our first world culture seems full of them lately, in all the myriad ways that people project their Shadows onto the so-called “other.” I guess one would be a religious ego of superiority, someone saying/thinking “My religion is better than your religion and my religion is the true one with the true idea of God,” then treating the other as less-than through ridicule, shaming, banishing/banning from a church or organization, and even judgement getting so strong sometimes it can become in some people an obsession and then even lead to violence. But then most of us know this because we see it in the news, so it can become conscious.
“Changing Images of Man”–I hope this changes soon.
I did my best to not get political.
I did not touch upon all aspects of participation mystique–just a few ideas including one of my own I have pondered for quite some time (when participation mystique is not dubbed “ignorant” due to common images of “primitive” as if lacking awareness. In the positive sense I feel that participation mystique can be a heightened experience of the moment, a moment of transcendence. It is for me when the world feels most enchanted when it feels (when I feel) most alive in bliss. Likewise when I am immersed in my poetry or fiction-writing it is my bliss when I am utterly ensconced in it, its mystique. I will skip the politics here about other types of writing in our culture.
Hi Mars,
I read your responses a while back ago. Then my computer was acting up and soooooooo slow, and then finally crashed. So finally I am getting back to you. I agree with what you said that something can be different for different people. That no two people will see things exactly alike. It is within the polytheistic nature of the myths that any one thing such as the idea of “god” can be seen/interpreted/regarded in a myriad of ways. I too believe then that there can be more than one truth and and that any one thing can be two or more things at once–without there having to be a right or wrong or correct or incorrect. I like this quote of Jung, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are” [emboldened emphasis mine].
But now, I would like to share with you and with anyone else here the experience of synchronicity that befell me not too long after you wrote the following–along with your response about the mummy and the bird:
Times now are muddy. How to wade to the shore from phatomless pristine depths? Follow the currents to where they bring the next promise afloat or ashore? Lifted by roaring thundergods into its heaven temporarily, to smashed to the ground again next hailstorm? Al born innocent, all faithfull, all on internet, all temptations, all true yet only personal trues. All diminishing horizons. “I’m hungry now. Feed me!” But there is no fast food for the mind. Gut their body with saturating holy sugars until filled, but it does not feed. Funny cat movies are cute, but there is only one. Hollow people. Hollow world.
I had an out-of-town appointment. Just as I was almost home, I switched to the most local radio station and heard that a storm was on its way with 70 mph winds. I pulled in my driveway and decided to bring my plants on my patio indoors; just as I was bringing them through the door,extremely large raindrops, but few and far between, began to fall. Soon as I and the plant were in and I shut the door, the wind came through like a tornado. Huge tree limbs fell all over my yard and my garden. The electricity went out. Some houses in the area caught fire–lightning or maybe fallen wires. The roof blew off one of the buildings downtown and one its walls tumbled down in the wind. When it was over, all the neighbors were out and we were all cleaning up all the yards. As I lifted several tree limbs to drag them into a pile, I saw dead birds all over the place, all over my yard. A baby bird landed with broken wings under my bench in front of my porch. Its eyes were not open yet. I tried to help it, save it, but could not. It had bones sticking out of its wings at its shoulders, and all I could do was try to make it as comfortable as possible. I called a local wildlife rehabilitation centers, its animal rescue service. Their phone lines were down and by the time they got back to me the next morning, the baby bird died. I talked to it, and it moved its head each time I did in my direction. So, the mummy and the bird, the bird and the mummy. There is more to this story–much more–I hope to share another time. Thus is, at times (it seems), “the symbolic life.” It seems there is often more to it than what we read into it., that sometimes the marvelous happens –such marvels. It was not long after I saw the dead birds and then the injured baby bird that I thought of the words you said and the previous posts about mummies and trying to save a bird. I believe these events are the things myths are made of, seeing the story within events, seeing the connections in a way that events are not just a bunch of empty facts of any happenstance, but imbued with meaning–whether personal meaning and personal myth or cultural meaning in cultural myths.
I have to add that the dead birds were smashed–smashed under branches, smashed on my concrete stone patio. Some were absolutely flattened.
Hi Mars,
I enjoy the poetic quality of your response here, the poetic language. Meanwhile, I have the following thoughts:
I consider that the experience is different for different people. It seems to me that I have spent my life in the activity of experiencing things and ‘revelating’ my life in/with that experience ever since I can remember as if reflection of this sort is simply in my nature. I live a lot of my moments on earth in retrospect, review, memory, memoir, and building upon them. I don’t always will it so–often it just so happens, even while I am busy surviving, as you say. The symbols in life often re-occurring with their re-occurring themes, as Stephen noted here in his responses.
Nothing more, nothing less–it comes natural to me to think and ‘revelate’ /reveal. I think this is a common urge and way of being for those people who enter a mythic forum like this one–isn’t it that we are all in one way or another constantly unpacking things? All these relics to unwrap! All these mythologems!
Then, perhaps, in the arts!
A stroke of thought becomes a stroke of revelation becomes a brushstroke! Or a stroke of thought becomes a new line in a poem becomes a stanza and there is that revelation of the moment! Life being full of revelation, always telling us each a story about this earth and its creatures or elements or aspects of life! A stroke of thought becomes the urge to hear a certain song we love! Or to respond here in the forum upon reading someone’s post!
Blessings,
Mary Ann
