[Marianne]

Stephen,

I like that you say that Campbell regarded symbols as “an energy-evoking and -directing agent” generating a response; with some of the discussion on rituals lately, this phrase you used reminded me of how symbols are used in religious/spiritual rites–or how they can “work.” The symbol when used in ritual is charged with meaning, and it is that charge that as you mention reaches the heart. Sometimes that happens so fast it almost seems to bypass the mind and go straight to the heart or emotional “level.” Repetitive symbols/acts are recognized almost instantly, such as certain parts of a ritual that is done over and over each time. And writing or preparing to write can be such a ritual too. This post has gotten me thinking about some of the rituals I do before or during writing. I always have my coffee (and like a certain cup most when I write) by day or my tea if I am writing at night. I do not keep much on my desk because it is not very big. I like the idea of having my desk near a window–somehow I find a window inspirational for my writing. A writing instructor once told me that from one’s window or one’s backyard one can see the whole world. I think there is that saying or something similar in the Tao te Ching.

–Marianne

[Marianne]

Hi Nandu,

I am happy for you that you are getting your joy back! I hope by now you are healed from your hernia too and that your writing is going well!

I agree with what you discuss here. Even if the world is a perfect mess, we can each try to handle our own mess and if we do that then we each help make the world a little less messy!

Best Wishes,

Marianne

 

[Marianne]

Thanks, dear Shaheda,  for sharing the story and newspaper article about Campbell’s talk. Whenever I watch and hear Campbell’s lectures, there is always that sense of immediacy, as if I am in an audience in the same room with him hearing him talk. He has such a wonderful presence!

Same here as you, Shaheda, and Dennis, and as many, I came to Campbell through his Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. I rad the book before I saw or heard the TV PBS series or any audio series though–got the book from the campus library when first I heard about it.

–Marianne

[Marianne]

James,

There is much I could associate here with your search for a certain meaning of “mantle” that I hope I mention here in this thread later. For now I just want to mention how much I enjoyed your story on your search for meaning, of mantle! And so glad you found it! It is very interesting the way you sought to use it and found it. Thanks for sharing it!

“The difference between almost the right word and the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” –Mark Twain

They are both beautiful, both striking in their own way, though–what could we say here about impact or different types of impact of words and language?

Marianne

[Marianne]

James,

I just want to respond with how much your response here meant to me–it is perfect for me at this moment. I feel like I need nothing more than this thought to get me through my day tomorrow. When I have questions or try to complicate things, when things start to take on a “blue hue”  I can come here and read this Mythblast and this response of yours.

Thank you!

Marianne

 

[Marianne]

James, Shaheda, Stephen, All

I loved the conversation about Joe naming his car in lieu of Stephen’s “What’s in a Name?” and all the ways we name things. Should we add more about that here in this Mythblkast thread or go back to the “What’s in a Name?” blast?

–Marianne

[Marianne]

I can add that I first encountered Campbell while in a creative writing program at BGSU during my undergraduate years in college. It just felt right and true as I read it–true for me, in one of those eureka I found something moments! His ideas rang true for me and expanded my mind back into time and out into those ancient communities and then to bring those “truths” back into community today of today’s world and that transcendent travel back and forth feels like the universality of the human condition throughout eons of time which I marvel at. The Flight of the Wild Gander and The Inner Reaches of Outer Space are both so transforming to my life in what I felt to be a powerful inspiration. By powerful, I mean life-changing and life-affirming. It helped affirm things I had wondered about or as far as life’s mysteries as a child. It goes back to Alison’s dead bird story way back at the beginning opening of this new Forum and memories of finding a dead baby bird fallen in its nest from a tree when I was little and feeling so sad and so puzzled about death. When Campbell traces the growth of folklore historically in Flight of the Wild Gander, I can almost see and feel the emigration as if I am walking in it with the ancients across land and time.

As for Jung, I encountered Jung’s work in the same writing program. I had a prof who studied at the Jungian Swiss Institute who talked about archetypes and symbols and for me that rang true too. Encountering ideas like synchronicity were never something I found out about then had to adopt–for me what I found was that Jung’s theories had already been at work in my life throughout its entirety. His theories were things I already had sensed and experienced. I had always been interested in my dreams ever since I was little and frequently experienced synchronicity with encounters with symbols/words/events.  That is why I always say that I like to use to my personal experience of “lived experience” as it can be called or my personal myth when I write about Jung’s theories, as if my lived experience is “testimonial” to Jung’s theories, and I would add a smiley face emoji here.

 

[Marianne]

Thank you James for all your thoughts and inclusions about the right-hand and left-hand paths.

[Marianne]

Dear Dennis and Dear All,

Dennis, thank you for this Mythblast that touches upon the personal and the image of the gander and for sharing your background of how you came across Joseph Campbell. I think it is so fitting that Stephen asked you the question about your background and finding Campbell’s works due to the topic of your Mythblast on the personal.

Here are some thoughts that come to my mind as I read this Mythblast on the personal myths and the gander.

Dennis writes, “Campbell’s storytelling gene is a part of all of his utterances, but especially when he works a concept by morphing it into a narrative.” From this, I reflect how Campbell’s writing is pleasant to read and perhaps it is because he has a storytelling quality to his writings in general. When he gives us facts about various mythologies, it still feels like he is telling us Myth’s story. It has that personal feel somehow.

Reading onward, with the following quotes from Dennis in this Mythblast, “the crack, the gap, the thin membrane that allows him to glimpse and discern the symbolic, transcendent nature of the world winking back at us with not a little seduction, through the mask of the sensate realms of the human- and world-body in their fragility and mystery” is where I think of the egg and hatching egg, or the Orphic Egg, and the gander taking its first peek from out of the egg at the “nature of this world.” Inside the egg (as in a womb) is still a sensate world, but it is a whole new sensate world outside the egg (or womb). This is the first time I have ever thought of the yogi as a hatchling, for when the gander cracks through the shell to emerge into this world it is “passing from the sphere of waking consciousness. . .to the unconditioned, nondual state ‘between two thoughts,’ where the subject-object polarity is completely transcended. . .”

I also think of Madame Blavatsky’s books, Isis Veiled and Isis Unveiled; I read these years ago and found their style much more tedious than Campbell’s style. I can almost feel the fireplace hearth whenever I read Campbell. I am reminded of them only because of the idea/symbol of the veil and because her writings were based on concepts from the Eastern world combined then with her form of occult mysticism.

I also want to mention how much I like this description of Campbell’s work that Dennis gives us: “Syncretistic, gathering and clustering, then ultimately clarifying the connective tissue between disciplines to uncover the vast complexity of the human and world psyche on their arc towards unity. He is both hunter and gatherer.” People from all ‘walks of life’ find a core or foundation in their work and philosophy thereof in Campbell’s writings. Musicians, visual artists, deep sea divers, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, poets, anthropologists, historians, teachers, other mythologists, psychologists, etc. all find inspiration from Campbell as we find or seek to find our bliss, enter the caves we are afraid to enter, and find doors where there were only walls and read about Black Elk’s vision of White Buffalo in Flight of the Wild Gander and seek to find our own visions. For these reasons, there is a touch of the mystic in these articles as shamanic and shamanic guide that inspire us to shamanic thought and travels whether in mind or spirit or body. Reading Campbell, I might go back in time in my mind to the days of the buffalo roaming the Great Plains or I might be inspired to travel to modern-day Greece to see the ancient temples. Reading Campbell, I gain insight for living my own life. We see how the personal microcasm can reflect the microcosm, or the little chicken in the egg reflect the archetypal symbol of the Orphic egg.

Then the ““Syncretistic, gathering and clustering, then ultimately clarifying the connective tissue between disciplines to uncover the vast complexity” like the gander or the yogi being formed inside the egg, the tissue connecting…

I very much enjoy Dennis’s metaphor of the jacket lining and the turning of the sleeve inside out to see the hidden myth, the hidden lining. I imagine a golden silk lining because I get such a precious image from that.

That metaphor brought me a memory from my personal myth: That image I received from that metaphor above then became the image of my mother’s coats with their satiny linings hanging in the coat closet where I grew up; from that image,  I can smell English Yardley lavender bar of soap she always kept in that closet. I still have the last bar that ever was in that closet.

From there I think of Shaheda and her story about her uncle’s perfume, from her personal myth.

Thank you for this Mythblast,

Marianne

[Marianne]

What dark topics. I have a few thoughts and ideas I have heard I will share. I will start with one of those “I have a friend who has a friend…” or “I have a cousin who…” story. In my case, it is a “I have a cousin who…” story.

I have a cousin who is a fundamental Christian minister. She has told me that in her studies the reason that fundamental Christians will show the cross but not a cross with Jesus hanging on it is because it shows the violence of the crucifixion and that that is (in her words) Satan’s glory to see Jesus crucified on the cross, that Satan loves nothing better than to see this. That is interesting to me that the crucifixion was there to kickstart humankind’s compassion. She has also mentioned to me the idea that when Jesus was crucified it was intended for the purpose of there being no more human sacrifices necessary–that Jesus shed his blood for all our sins (including previous human sacrifices for which there will be no more need of, we might assume). So then we have to wonder if people have compassion only when they themselves somehow equally receive it? Such as in the Our Father prayer, “forgive us our trespasses/ as we forgive those who trespass against us.” People are told that Jesus who died on the cross for us has forgiven us of our sins and has therefore sacrificed his life/shed his blood for us. I often do wonder how children tolerate or absorb this image and the gruesome story of Abraham who was going to sacrifice his own child until he suddenly heard God’s voice tell him not to. Also, one wonders if part of the reason in this Bible story that it is written that God at first told Abraham to sacrifice (kill) his own son is so that children might learn to fear God. One would think that Abraham’s son would never want to walk anywhere with his father ever again in case God (or his dad) might change his mind again. I now feel inspired to in the future write about how those takes may have affected children in Catholic school back in the day–including myself. They always sounded a but surreal to me or as if some madness had overtaken people’s minds. It didn’t even sound or feel real or “human.” When I thought of Jesus dying on the cross I thought it was because people were short-sighted and mean. I did not think of it as human sacrifice–but as a sacrifice that people would have to make by imposing upon themselves the sacrifice was really how terrible their own loss of a holy man and healer in their lifetime. Another sacrifice, I thought, was the guilt they would probably live with to know they could do such a thing to someone who did nothing to hurt them except to go against the political grain of the time.  I always thought these stories too gruesome to share with my daughter when she was young. She heard them later from her Christian and Catholic friends and family members and when she got old enough she could make up her own mind about religion and/or spirituality. (I also did not expose her to certain fairy tales when she was young if they were extremely violent.)

Like Martin, I also wonder how the ripping out of a human heart can bring compassion to a tribe, but I did like Norland’s explanation of this. While on one hand I find it difficult to see how they could feel/believe that a “sacrifice of one for the many” can evoke compassion when it is such a gruesome act leaving people to wonder who would be next, more likely identifying with the victim in first and foremost fear that it could have been them or that it could be them next time, on the other hand perhaps people would feel compassion for the heart once removed from the body while it is still beating (as I have read about this actually happening). So now I am waxing gruesome imagery too.

I can probably truthfully say that for the most part I would rather not be thinking about this stuff; however, as Norland tells us it is an important part of our human history to understand.

In shamanic/pagan circles sometimes symbolic sacrifice is done with things like offerings to the gods like certain herbs in the incense or like food or wine or juice. As people in the ritual take a sip of wine or juice from their own cup they also give a libation for the gods and give some libation back to the earth from whence it came that gave to us. In this way those in the ritual share and appease the powers that be by being generous and by acknowledging them for the gifts of the earth that the earth/cosmos brings to offer. Some churches see the sacrifice as offerings of money–such as when people tithe–many Christians believe that in order to receive “good” amounts of money you should sacrifice a certain percentage of your weekly paycheck. Catholics practices include observing Lent in which time while waiting for Easter and the resurrection of Christ all sorts of sacrifices are made not considered symbolic but considered real but just not all that dire: one person might sacrifice/giving their time to a cause or someone in need, another person might give up eating sweets for the time being, whereas monks or holy people such as priests, popes, or nuns might engage in either symbolic flagellation (beating oneself as Christ was whipped before he was crucified as in the Passion) or actual, actually drawing blood. A very small minority of people other than those in holy orders also cause self-harm actually or symbolically to be considered a sacrifice. I have always thought this extreme for our times in my humble opinion. You can read more about this here:

Why do people still find it necessary to make such sacrifices? Maybe Lent is a good excuse to finally begin that diet or do that exercise you have been wanting to do. I am not sure why people make these sacrifices. Many Catholics stopped observing Lent by not eating meat on Fridays way back when, when I was growing up. In my family we did not eat meat on Fridays but had to go without or eat fish. Some people explained this as on Good Friday it was better to identify not with the flesh but with the spirit as if meat were more “grounding” than fish which would be less like our flesh and blood. We acknowledged to stay away from food items that were of blood sacrifice. We all loved fish and lived on a lake, so none of us ever felt like it was a sacrifice–except we knew the reasoning of staying away from food that was bloody. (That is rather gruesome or gross again.)

What other types of sacrifices can people in these forums mention, whether symbolic like libations (which can be regarded as actual by some people, as if the gods will really be watching and hearing and somehow partaking) or actual such as giving up a certain food or a certain amount of your time to help out a cause? I guess the point is to somehow give some gift away and go with less or else to even suffer somehow. Maybe a mother has somehow sacrificed a lot for her children. Maybe you sacrifice a day off work if get called in for someone who is sick and can’t go to work.

I had some other thoughts when reading the posts but for now I will end this response.

 

[Marianne]

Norland and Stephen and Robert and All,

I am wondering where I have heard this story before about the logs and the boy and girl being killed under them, but I did not recall the part about the cannibalistic aspect of that ritual. And thank you Norland, also, for telling us more about yourself and the difficult and dark times you have been through and your family and community, along with your Mythblast. It is a good reminder that not all our current “Newer Age” practices, whether being meditation or shamanic or pagan reconstructionist type groups or solitary practitioners, come from such a light place as many people might like to think they did. We often like to glorify those days of old thinking how “magically mythic” life might have been back then, but then there is the dark side too. And while this is not directly pertinent to the subject matters of this Mythblast, I also want to say that in saying the “dark side,” I do not feel or think that all darkness is of course evil–we have beautiful darkness of a night of a romantic crescent moon or the brighter darkness of a beautiful full moon or the moon’s reflection on water or snow and so many ways in which the dark can be beautiful or good and not evil. But sometimes, it is ugly, hideous.

And Robert, I enjoyed your lists of questions about the possible symbolism in the ritual–so many of those meanings you give seem to also say at the root that there is a death-in-life aspect and a life-in-death aspect in this world we know around us and even in the cosmos if we study the life of–the start and stop–of stars. In the life celebrating summer solstice, since light is already at its height and longest day of the year, right after that high point, the longevity of the days will start decreasing down to the death of that height finally on the winter solstice or shortest day of the year and as the shortest day of light of the year, it will from that point on also increase again in its “reborn” or “”life-in-death” aspect until the summer solstice again bringing us back to the death in life aspect. I suppose anyone could switch those around depending upon how they would like to look at it–we could say that the life in death and the death in life are in both solstices.

I also appreciated the following commentary on personal myth which Stephen wrote about helpful to describe my own feelings about writing about oneself or background:

Joseph Campbell did not like to dwell on his personal history and resisted writing a memoir, believing that one’s body of work matters more than one’s biography (ironically, in his lengthy, detailed Introduction to The Portable Jung he spends considerable time discussing aspects of Jung’s life that played a role in his personal and professional development); it took the concerted efforts of multiple friends to persuade Campbell to agree to participate in the documentary The Hero’s Journey: A Biographical Portrait.

My sense is very different – I believe one’s background and experiences inform one’s work, especially in the creative sphere. One needn’t know the intimate details of Picasso’s complicated relationships with Dora Maar, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and other lovers to appreciate his work, but such awareness does add a layer or two to one’s understanding.

I feel this way too. My own writing about Jungian depth psych comes most usually from my own experience. I love to write about my own hardships as well as my dreams–which are sometimes one and the same! I feel as if in many ways my life can “testify” to the theories of Jung and then what I love about Campbell is the beauty of the mythology that he can add with his ideas and writings on myths. And with that combination I feel I am often swimming in the ecstasy of bliss that Campbell would tell us to find and follow–or actually as he would tell us it finds us, that we find it has been waiting for us all along, as he says.

I think my psyche needed to mention something about bliss!–not to ignore the awful darkness completely, but only for now, for now I am signing out for a while at 4:30 AM to get some sleep.

–Marianne

 

[Marianne]

Norland,

I am also reminded in your last sentence of the above response that sacred is the word scared all jumbled up, as if being scared can be the result of witnessing/experiencing something sacred–I love to call these “Word Scrambles.” When I have pondered this, I often feel that the word scared must have had many layers of meanings and not always just fear. Of course, it has the word scar in it, like anything that might leave a scar on our psyches, which may go along with what you write about the crucifixion never being able to undone. Certain things we see can never be unseen it seems.

–Marianne

[Marianne]

Stephen, I don’t recall what I have been doing wrong with the links again, but I apologize that when I was trying to include links tonight they did not work–I thought I was by now able to include the links directly using certain icons. Due to my errors my posts are “awaiting moderation.”

[Marianne]

Stephen, thank you for your kind and wonderful response to my response. I love how you wrote that you write to find meaning. That sounds like s simple statement but I find it profound. It turns writing into an adventure of discovery instead of a duller study of what a person or writer might already know and express–much like that sorting out and ordering of the soul regarding the museum writer’s article. I also sure loved hearing about you being once in possession of Campbell’s journals for a while when you to transport them–that sound so marvelous as in its root word of an actual “marvel,” something to marvel at! I look forward to the new book coming out that you are editing! I love the Campbell quote you include–about the two types of writing, not good or good, and then his remarkably wonderful definition of the Muses: “The Muses are the personifications of the energies of that unconscious system that you touch when you sit down as a writer. You just have to find them.” So pro-found! Thank you for all this. I am loving this thread. Very inspirational!

–Marianne

[Marianne]

Thank you R3 for the image of the water bird–be it gander/goose, or duck, it is beautiful.

I do want to add that some academics are artists as well as academics and some artists are academics as well as artists! Some academics may appreciate a pun whether artists or philosophers! Also, I appreciated and enjoyed the information you included here about Hamsa, Miriam, and Fatima–thank you! Very interesting also to those who are enchanted by palm readers and palm reading–it is not really just reading the palm but reading the hand–including the five fingers and for some, the wrist.

–Marianne

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