Wrapping Up.

As always, I come to the end of the semester with mixed feelings. It's been good to blog again, though I haven't had as much time for it as I might have liked. I still haven't blogged about my boyfriend the puer eternis, or about college as a rite of passage, but that's not to say that I haven't learned a lot about those things, nor that I won't write about them later.

I will say that I'm quite impressed with all the final projects. People have been doing a really great job with them, and they've been quite a bit more interesting than most group projects usually are. It's really great to see things coming together at the end, and I hope I can pull that off with my blog as well.

I'll spend a moment or two talking about what we've learned this semester. It's been so fun to see myths popping up all over the place as I began to take the time to learn from them, and it's been fun to listen to my classmates as their in-class discussions and blogs have really taken off. Things have definitely snowballed in this class in a good way, and I think everyone's learned a lot and had fun too.

When we first looked at the syllabus, I thought the best sections would be the ones about more modern topics, like Harry Potter or Firefly, but it turned out that those chapters weren't as fun - since we didn't read or watch the actual stories they felt a bit more dry. I think it would be good to incorporate more of the actual stories into those sections, to help make the connection (particularly for those who haven't read them before, or read them so long ago that they've forgotten all the good stuff).

Just a few final thoughts as we wrap up the semester. Hope you guys have had just as fulfilling an adventure and that you keep on seeing myths wherever you go!

Lazy Teenage Superheroes

So, this is just a silly little video, but when we were talking about artificial intelligence and the way literal commands can drive artificial intelligence crazy I thought of this. There's a bit of that a few minutes in, and then at the very end. It's a short film, about 12 minutes long, with a bit of language (fair warning) and an interesting take on what it means to be a hero. Watch it here!

Drunken Epiphanies

Talking today about the word epiphany, and how that's basically the word for your god taking over you, reminded me of something else I've encountered recently. For the few people who weren't already convinced that I'm a complete nerd, a group of friends and I recently started playing a game called Pathfinder. When we were building characters, my boyfriend decided that he would play a cleric, and found that required him to select a patron deity, and complete some sort of ritual that would "reconnect" the two of them and fill the character with his deity's power. My boyfriend being the sort of guy he is picked Cayden Cailean, the god of, well, booze, who's a bit like Dionysus. That's his holy symbol up there. And of course the best way to connect with the god of freedom and wine is through happy hour. Upon going and reading the page I've provided above, it's somewhat surprising to find that Cayden Cailean, like Dionysus, was not born a god. Read the page to find out how it happened!

Original Snake

Here's another lovely image comparison for you, this one courtesy of Soul Eater. The guy with the black hair in the first picture is Death The Kid, and that ridiculous pose he's striking is a little something that he calls Original Sin Stance. Now, the first time I saw that, I thought it looked absolutely ridiculous and then I forgot all about it. Later I was having a conversation with my boyfriend about it and he mentioned that Original Sin Stance looks like it's based on Snake Stance from Kung Fu. That's what the guy in the second picture is doing. I thought that was rather interesting, especially considering that in the biblical account of the fall, one could argue that the serpent is what causes original sin to happen in the first place. I just thought that was an interesting tie-in.

Catching Fire

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-Robert Frost

I do love this poem. It's probably in my list of top ten favorites somewhere. I think the comparison that he creates with fire and desire versus hate and ice is very intriguing. People's thoughts on how the world will end in general are quite interesting to me.

(Fun fact about the end of the world that's supposed to come in December: the Mayans didn't account for leap years, of which there have been more than 500 since then. If they'd gotten the date right the world would have ended five months ago. But then you probably already knew that.)

Plus lately I haven't been able to get this poem off my mind. I'd actually been thinking about it/read it the weekend before we talked about it in class, and when I went to start my latest design project I got stuck on the idea of fire and ice. Maybe when it's done I'll show you, but it's still taking shape. Or melting. Or what have you.

The Beaver's Knife

So, in an attempt to connect with the profile of the typical female, I spent a bit of time this week watching the Twilight Saga. It was ridiculous and beautifully silly, but when I reached the third book I found something that I didn't expect. Oral myth, and from what I've found in my research since then, surprisingly accurate. A Native American legend, from the Quileute tribe, who are actually real, and surprisingly accurate. Although I had read the books over prior breaks, the difference between the oral myth and the rest of the stories didn't click with me until I saw the oral myth going on in well, oral form. Although I didn't find the actual myth they told in the movie, I did find the Quileute creation myth, and you can read it here.

I'm beginning to realize just how much of some of these legends we're missing when we don't get to hear them from a storyteller. The repetition is a lot less tedious when somebody's telling the story. Surprisingly enough, I find myself less likely to say "Hurry up already!" It's a welcome change, because lately the stuff we've been reading has gotten pretty tedious at times.

But back to the Quileute legend. One of the things that I like about Native American myth is that they always seems to come up with very creative ways to explain why all different sorts of creatures look and behave the way they do. Like the Beaver with the knife in his tail, or how the Deer got his antlers. I was particularly intrigued by the people who walked on their hands instead of their feet. I have to wonder what that is supposed to represent...perhaps people who don't believe in the right way of thinking? It left me curious, at any rate.

There didn't seem to be any appearance of the Four Ages in this particular myth, but then it was a pretty short one. Barely a single page. My guess would be that the part of the story we read is the dawn of the Golden Age, since everyone is learning how to hunt and take care of themselves, and the rules are just getting set up.

Here's a picture of the tattoo that some of the members of the Quileute tribe get in the movie. I thought it was interesting as you didn't get to see a close-up in the movie. Obviously the wolf is very significant in the saga, as many of the Quileutes are capable of taking on the form of a wolf. However, if you read the original myth (or listen to the origin story in the series) you learn that the Quileutes are supposed to be descended from wolves, so even in real life the tattoo makes sense. So that's cool.

Prompt for Week Seven

Tell and analyze the creation myth—including "four ages"—of our nation, a town, or a cultural institution.

Jung's Cookie

So it took me a while to settle on a fairytale that had enough characters while not being incredibly long and convoluted. Eventually I decided that the Gingerbread Man was as good a story as any. We'll see how this goes.

With the Gingerbread Man as the dreamer:

• given life by the old lady, who starts out as a positive anima in bringing gingy into existence.
• old lady quickly becomes a negative anima when she decides that gingy would make a good snack.
• encounters the husband (shadow) in escaping from the old lady, and the old man joins in the pursuit. at this point the gingerbread man still believes in his ability to defeat the shadow rather than embracing them.
• next encounters the cow (shadow) who also desires the end of mr. gingy's life and his being brought completely into the shadow.
• the horse is the next shadow the gingerbread man encounters. once again he denies the shadow's power and thinks himself to be invincible.
• then the gingerbread man runs into a whole party of people (shadows) and invites them to test his mettle. he still doubts that the shadow is stronger than he is.
• next the gingerbread man encounters the fox (shadow), whom he invites to join in the chase. the fox denies his interest, and even promises him safe travel across the river, making himself seem to be the self in the story. maybe he really is. in the end the fox's trickery ends in the gingerbread man's demise, though the question remains whether he's being absorbed into the shadow or transcended into a higher plane. is there really even a difference?

With the Old Lady as the dreamer:

• creates the gingerbread man as an extension of her Self (since a cookie is fairly gender-neutral the differences of sex aren't too big of an issue)
• gingerbread man escapes, expressing her desire for freedom.
• follows after it in order to be more human, to inhibit herself properly.
• husband (negative animus) tries to catch the gingerbread man and inhibit her freedom.
• the cow (shadow of responsibility) begins to chase the gingerbread man in order to draw it back to the kitchen.
• the horse (shadow of diligence) joins in the chase.
• the party of workers (shadows of community, sameness) also join in the chase to bring the old lady back to the familiar.
• the fox (seemingly a self) offers help to the gingerbread man, tantalizing the woman with the taste of freedom and then taking it away just when hope seems brightest. the poor woman is stuck. ouch.

Posted in response to the Week Four prompts

Prompt for Week Five

Week Five: How do you see mythos (mythic thinking) present in the world today? In politics, current events, social attitudes? How might these observations help you form motivating questions for further research and learning about mythology?

Piercing the Heavens

Meet Simon.

He's the main character in an anime series called Gurren Lagann. I thought of him this morning when we talked about autochthony. You see, at the beginning of the series, Simon is just a normal boy living in a small village...several miles under the surface of the earth. He dreams of going to the surface, but it is not until he finds Lagann (a mecha) that he is able to escape and come to the surface to defeat the forces that were keeping humans hidden under ground.

It's kind of a complicated series and it moves very fast - though it's only two seasons, by the end they are throwing galaxies at each other...like I said, complicated. Anyways. I mostly wanted to point this out. First time in a while that I've sat down to post something without hearing the words leaking out of my ears as I did so. Hopefully it sticks.