Pawns in a Game

Today, we continued with the presentations. Several topics were brought up today including bad parenting in mythology and beginnings, middles, and ends in The Magus. One major theme of the presentations was the free will versus life is determined by fate debate. In Fowles' novel, Nick is like a pawn in Conchis's chess game. He thinks he's making his own decisions when in reality Conchis is always leading him in a certain direction.

On another note, I did my own presentation on the archetypes in The Magus. I thought it went rather well, and I feel confident in regards to my thesis. Hopefully, my ultimate fate on this assignment is a positive one.

Mourning for Adonis

"In the thick of stones, marble, and metal at Delphi, the visitors would think of other ghosts, of the first temples to Apollo, now no more" (Calasso, pg. 146).

Today, we began presentations about our individual essays on the subject of myth and The Magus (or some such topic Professor Sexon has approved of). There were a number of both, with some essays describing females in the book or Nick's hero path, and others discussing corrolations between Disney and Myth or Star Trek and myth, all of which were quite interesting.

My own presentation isn't until next Thursday, but i'm already working on preparing the speech. As it is, my paper's argument is that the primary characters in The Magus all represent some mythological archetype. I feel confident about it... hopefully, Dr. Sexon shares that opinion.

Lord of the Dead

"Then he explained: the girl he wanted must be the girl: Kore. He wanted her to sit on the throne of the dead, forever" (pg. 198).

In today's class, we continued with the final presentations. The first was a film revolving around the story of Hades's abduction of Persephone (also known as Kore). I thought it was rather well done, and brought together several lessons we've gone over throughout the class such as Sporagmos.

The second presentation was also an acted out performance, this time the live funeral of "Kyle Miller". I thought it was interesting that this presentation didn't just focus on Greek myth like the others did, but spanned several cultures: Egyptian, Pirate, Viking, Irish, Chinese, and Cowboy. Altogether, fantastic performances.

Myth and History

"And all at once she understood what myth is, understood that myth is the precedent behind every action, its invisible, ever- present lining" (Calasso pg. 383).

Today, my group and I gave our presentation. Its main theme is how the archtypes associated with the gods still apply to our historical figures, whether it be the Elizabeth Taylor, known for her constant affairs (Aphrodite), or the Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps (Poseidon).

We only see these figures in that one- dimensional light, but there's more to them than that as was the case with the gods. Even Adolph Hitler, evil as he was, had an artistic side. It's time to "lift the veil" and see that everyone is more than just an archetype; more than just a myth.

The Female Traitor

"She was about ten yards away, in an exquisitely pretty First World War summer dress. It was striped mussel- blue, white and pink, and she carried a fringed sunshade of the same cloth. She wore the sea- wind like a jewel. It caught her dress, moulded it against her body" (Fowles, 193).

Having finished The Magus, this passage reminds me of something it did not the first time around: the ancient Greeks perception of the dangers of female sexuality. As far as they were concerned it could not be trusted. A prime example of this was the Bachae. Female sexuality could harm you as a man, in the ancient Greeks' view. This is exactly what happened to Nick in this book. He became so enamored by the sexuality of Lily especially, but also that of Rose and Alison. It was this that led him further along into Conchis's Labrynth, and a great deal of suffering to go along with the journey.

Dead Man

Today we continued our discussion of the Ends by first touching upon the great Johnny Depp movie: Dead Man. The movie is centered on William Blake, a man who does not know he is dead, but through the help of the native American Nobody, realizes his death and accepts his own end.

There were a few key words introduced in the lecture. Eschatology (things of the ends), Logos (relative ordering of the world), and metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul). The atoms of the living form just moves on and are reconfigured. Nothing ever dies, so in a strange way, nothing ever ends.



The Great Pan is Dead

"Then Zeus, who had been just another of the Titans' children, became, alone, the beginning, the middle, and the end" (Calasso pg. 199). This is the sequence all stories must go. So far in class, we've covered beginnings and middles. Now comes the ends. This is best personified through the god Pan's death, which marked the end of the mythological world and the beginning of the religious one. However, hints of old myth carry over into the new ones. For example, it always begins with a bird and a woman. Leda and Zeus in the form of a swan, and the same story with Mary and God. Because of this corrolation, the Spiritismundi (Spirit of the World) has always will exist no matter what religious changes come to pass.

Nacirema

What is Nacriema? one may ask. It is American spelled backwards and it is part of a joke which lays out the ritual of bathroom activities. Today, we continued on with the topic of rituals, beginning with many fascinating traditions, including a retelling of an Austrailain rain- making ritual, trick- or- treating, and my own Indian ritual which involves dropping a baby from a fifty foot tower. We then went on to hear a lecture with the theme that if a ritual is done improperly, such as a burial or All Halllow's Eve, the entire order of the universe would be thrown out of balance.

The Book of the Dead

This last session, each member of the class got up and told of a certain ritual, whether of some culture or a personal one. A big one was the "entering manhood" rituals, which generally included a great deal of pain such as stabbing oneself. Another popular ritual was the ancient Egyptian mummification ritual (mummifying both the person and the pet cat). This included having one's organs taken out and placed in canopic jars, and the brain picked out through the nostrils. Ritualistic spells to help the deceased move on to the afterlife would then be spoke via the Book of the Dead, a text common througout many ancient cultures for the above purpose. As far as my Indian ritual goes, I didn't get a chance to tell it before time ran out, but I look forward to telling the story on Tuesday!

What is a Ritual?

A ritual is something done for the sake of something else. For example, there are numerous ancient fertility rituals. There are also rituals to help the dead into the afterlife. The ritual I plan on sharing on Thursday seeks to give young children good fortune. This is an Indian ritual in which a child (usually aged one or two) is dropped from a 50- foot tower to land on a sheet handled by several men. The child is then handed to his or her parents, and they are expected to live a good life. Apparently, surviving a fifty- foot drop means you have great luck on your side.

Goat Song

"A person who has experienced a knowledge invisible from without and incommunicable except through the same process of initiation" (Calasso pg. 260).  In this lesson, we continued our talk on the Middle, this time focusing on the initiation aspect of it. We discussed the Fertility Rites: rituals performed in Spring, to help the harvest, a couple of examples of Calasso's rituals (such as the origin of tragedy-- dancing around in goat skins around a mangled corpse... doesn't get more tragic than that), and finished with a talk on ceremonies. The word comes from Ceres, which was the Roman name for Demeter, goddess of the harvest. As previously mentioned, there were many rituals performed to help the harvest grow with the assistance of the gods.

Patterns and Rituals

"Equality only comes into being through initiation" (Calasso pg. 250). A child only becomes equal to a man once he has proven himself through initiation. This is a ritual done over many generations. Rituals and patterns exist all throughout mythology. One of these pattern's is Lord Raglon's twenty- two points of a hero's life.

1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Granted, heroes do not always follow this list to the "T". Even Superman only made it to point eleven: figting monsters and other assorted villains.

Finishing The Magus

"But this reprieve didn't last long. Even when they were white they terrified him, more than before maybe, and they never stopped following him" (Calasso pg. 191). This seems an accurate description of Nick's life in The Magus. No matter how much he escaped Conchis and his fellows, the older man appeared to have a constant presence, if only in Nick's mind. It was this that triggered the ultimate fallout between Nick and Alison. One could almost say the whole situation was akin to the days when every bad choice a person made was due to the presence of a god inside them.

All in all, the book was rather interesting.... and then I came to the end. I was warned, but it did not fail to infuriate me all the same. I may not have been willing to burn the book, but tossing it out my ten- story window and watching as it was run over by a truck, followed by dancing over its mangled remains would have sufficed.

The Magus and Ancient Greek

The last week, I have made it four- hundered pages into The Magus. I admit it had a bit of a slow start, but now I am quite perplexed. There are constant twists and turns. I'm not sure which of the characters are being deciteful and honest. I also noticed a certain correlation between this story and the tales of ancient Greece; namely that of sexuality. The body and its interactions with other bodies was such a big thing in ancient Greece, as well as the tales of full- grown men taking sexual advantage of boys. This was also implied in The Magus, when Nick was saying how the boys at his school offered a more tantalizing sexual vibe than the women. The difference was that Nick, unlike the ancient Greek gym teachers, did not follow up on this feeling.

In other news, we reviewed for our exam in class. Pieces from all the texts except The Magus will be fair game, though we were gratefully offered about sixty percent of it. Some of the subject matter ranges from Hesoid's Theogony to questions regarding first six chapters of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and questions such as which goddess was created from Ouranos's dismembered sexual organs (Aphrodite) and what does il lorro tempre mean. For future reference, it means "in the beginning".

A Twist of Fate

"It was the will of Zeus, she said: Europa was to be an Asian girl carried off by a stranger"- Calasso pg. 5





In mythology, fate is inescapable. Many times it is gods like Zeus who say how things are going to be. Even more powerful are the actual three Fates (see above picture) who decide life- and- death. We discussed fate a great deal this last lecture, using stories such as Oedipus and how he fuflilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and have intimate relations with his mother despite him doing everything in his power to avoid it.

It is this moment, when one meets his or her fate, that they go through their transformation, or their final phase. However, long before that phase is the seperation. That is where I am now in The Magus. Nick, a very unlikable character best known to readers as a bit of a womanizer, recieved a teaching post in Greece. This is where he will enter his initiation, and as inevitable as fate, a transformation.

Relations of Gods and Man

"For Apollo, possession is a conquest"- pg. 145. Possession of something or someone is a common theme in Calasso's work. This is most often shown through the act of rape. One such instance was mentioned in my previous blog; Apollo turning into a wolf and raping a woman. Transformation also seems to be common during these scenes of rape. It solidifies the fact that the gods and mortals are very different.

Rape is the second stage of the relationship between god and mortal, according to recent lecture. The first is conviality: a wonderful friendship between the divine and mortals. Once the Axis Mundi (the tree that connected our world with the divine) fell down, the connection was broken. It eventually led to the third stage, Indifference, in which there is no relationship between the two sides.

Separation to Transformation

"To have her surrender her virginity without regrets, Apollo chose one of his most secret forms: the wolf"- pg. 152. It was this that led Apollo to having a child with this female companion. Such creates a new beginning, which was the main topic of my most recent class. First is a seperation from the peace of that beginning, then comes the initiation which brings the character to the middle of their life (and with it a great deal of pain), and finally there's the transformation, in which the person is no longer who he or she was in the beginning.

Going back to Calasso, I was surprised at how racy Greek myth can be. Apollo becoming a wolf and raping a woman is just one example. It's rather interesting how Greek culture contrasts our modern one. Then, men having sex with young boys and animals (who, to their credit, were gods) was a walk in the park. We've taken a great deal from Greek culture... though thankfully, we have also left some things in the past.

The Moon and Death

"She was hostile, and dead; everything Achilles loved in a woman"- Pg. 120. Achilles, like all heroes, thought himself great above imagining, and as a result thought he could have anything or anyone he wanted, including an Amazon woman who died in the fight to kill him. Achilles would never admit it, but there are much more amazing things in mythology than him. An example is the death- origin story I told in class. Every night, the moon would ressurect people from the dead, until an old man demanded it stop; people should remain dead. The moon obeyed... all except for itself; a moon that came back from the dead every night. Such is a feat not even the great Achilles could accomplish.

Origin Myths

"To me, you are not the cause, only the gods can be causes."- Pg. 93. This reiterates a point I made in an earlier blog; people at this time weren't made to be responsible for their actions because those actions were encouraged by a god or two. That excuse certainly worked for Helen of Troy. In fact, in mythology, the gods are the cause of practically everything, including (as we learned in class) the creation of the Earth. One of the most popular myths is the earth- diver myth, which generally includes a deity or very capable animal diving into the ocean and creating land from the dirt below. Dr. Sexon noted in class how coincidental it was that so many different cultures had this myth in common. I find it is much the same as reincarnation; cultures ranging from Ancient Egypt to the native Americans believed in it, despite having nothing to do with each other. It will be interesting to discuss in class how it works that unrelated cultures have so much mythology in common.

What Myths Can Tell Us

"A mythical event can mean a change of landscape."- pg 64. This is quite an understatement. A mythologlical event can change an entire life. For example, a god falling in love with a human certainly alters that person's life from what it could have been, more than likely ending in a gruesome death. But then, as we learned in class, every story must end some way, and what is a life but a breathing story. They all start with creation, life symbolizes the middle, and then comes the apocalpse. There are many stories to be told, and many of them are told in "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony". Fascinating stories they are. I've come to the point where I couldn't help but notice that practically everyone in these stories, god and human, appear to be bisexual, or more specifically what we would call pedophiles today. It is interesting how through a book of myth, we are able to see the evolution of what is deemed acceptable in society.

A God Made Me Do It

"He had dared to bring a dead man back to life, so Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt." - pg 59. In the ancient Greek religion, hubris was among the worst laws you can break. To think oneself above a god could very well lead to your demise. As I continued reading "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" and took notes in class, I often found the gods to be a very selfish bunch. They're prone to fits of jealousy, often killing or transforming the lovers of a rival god, or really anyone that crossed them, such as Arachne did with Athena. They also think nothing of using humans in rather deadly ways to obtain a goal. For example, what started as a beauty contest between three goddesses led to the Trojan War. The theme of literature pertaining to the religion of ancient Greece was that the gods were dangerous whether they loved you or hated you. In fact, the only good thing about them was that if some normal human strife went wrong, there was usually a god to blame.

The Friendly Tree

"The craziest type of people are those who scorn what they have around them and look elsewhere/vainly searching for what cannot exist." - Calasso pg. 59. This is a good description for many characters in mythology. A great deal of them shoot for the greatest, both in career and in romance. This is not neccesarily a bad thing in my view, but it is a risky road, especially when one attempts to woo a god. As was mentioned in the previous entry, romantic interests of gods often perish. Others are turned into things, whether they be animal or even a tree. We were told to hug a tree in class for this very reason. The spirits are, after all, human, and so need affection.

This was not a very intimate embrace. It was, after all, our first meeting, and I did not wish to be too forthcoming so as to scare her into retreating further into her trunk. So, for now, a friendly, one- armed hug as a photo is taken will do nicely.

Intro to Mythology

"These things never happened, but are always."- Saloustios. This quote best describes today's first Mythology class. All of these myths have lasted for ages, and will continue to exist; they exist as stories of how the world came to be and the adventures that were had in times passed. They were also fictional stories. This is what we talked about in class. Myths are but stories told generation after generation, whether they be Ovid or Homer.

Speaking of stories, I read the first couple chapters of The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. When I read it, I saw the gods as I have seen them so many times before, so I was unsurprised at their personality traits (selfishness and dangerous) being brought forth here. I did find an interesting theme through these first couple chapters: the gods, powerful though they are, are a great danger to the humans they claim to care about, and even love. The boy Dionysus loved came to a tragic death, leaving the god of wine in mourning. Then there was all the woman Zeus abducted to satisfy his needs. The view ancient Greeks clearly had on the subject judging by these stories and many others is to worship the gods, but to keep them at a safe distance.