October 20th

"In Greece, myth escapes from ritual like a genie from a bottle. Ritual is tied to gesture, and gestures are limited: what else can you do once you've burned your offerings, poured your libations, bowed, greased yourself, competed in races, eaten, copulated? But if the stories start to become independent, to develop names and relationships, then one day you realize they have taken on a life of their own." -Page 279

I found this quote in Calasso to be very relevant to the topic of ritual, which we've been discussing in class. We talked about how rituals were mythological, and were offered the question which one came first myths or rituals. This quote, however, is suggesting that myth and ritual are something completely different. Most importantly, myths are not limited like rituals are. Myth is never-ending and always present.

Today in class i presented my ritual. I chose Rain-making off of the online Eliade.  

AUSTRALIA

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It is universally believed by the tribes of the Karamundi nation, Of the Darling River, that rain can be brought down by the following ceremony. A vein in the arm of one of the men is opened and the blood allowed to drop into a piece of hollow bark until there is a little pool. Into this is put a quantity of gypsum, ground fine, and stirred until it has the consistency of a thick paste. A number of hairs are pulled out of the man's beard and mixed up with this paste, which is then placed between two pieces of bark and put under the surface of the water in some river or lagoon, and kept there by means of pointed stakes driven into the ground. When the mixture is all dissolved away, the blackfellows say that a great cloud will come, bringing rain. From the time that this ceremony takes place until the rain comes, the men are tabooed from their wives, or the charm will be spoiled, and the old men say that if this prohibition were properly respected, rain would come every time that it is done. In a time of drought, when rain is badly wanted, the whole tribe meets and performs this ceremony.

October 18th

" In Greece, anyone could offer a sacrifice. And no one checked up on him. But the image of the Magus, of that cold eye watching, checking, keeping guard, would make itself felt through occult paths, building up the image of an unassainable power that exercised total control over reality." - Page 247

This quote is very interesting because it shows a direct correlation between our two books, Calasso and the Magus. We brought it up once in class and kind of talked over it. It's basically saying that without a Magus, sacrifice is oblique. With the presence of the Magus, it creates a portal from man to gods and relays the message. I'm not going to go too much in detail about the quote i just thought it was interesting to note the correlation.

In class we were given the assignment to come up with a ritual to present to the class. We were also given the assignment to go into depth about the concept of ritual. I did a little research and this is what i came up with... Rituals are in and around us everyday of our life, although some may not be aware of it. Even people who don't realize it or want to admit it go through personal rituals throught their daily schedule. We need rituals in our lives as human beings. They have a spot in the human psyche.  In fact rituals can be viewed as experiences that everybody goes through throughout their lives. Our world without ritual wouldn't be the same.

October 13th

"Once you have a double on the scene, it's like entering a hall of mirrors; everything is elusive, stretching away into a perspective where nothing is ever final."  -Page 229

I found this quote to be very interesting. The quote itself is pretty self explanatory, however i found it interesting because this is something that you can relate to Calasso, our own life, and the Magus. The qoute is basically saying that once you substitute the real thing for a fake, or a copy, you can never be one hundred percent sure that you have the real thing. Once you set the fake out into motion, one can never be sure if they posess the fake or the real. In Calasso, we see this quote pertaining to the Palladium. When the Achaeans came to take Troy, the Trojans had a copy of the Palladium made. It was a means of perception, if the greeks managed to steal the copy Palladium, Troy would not fall. We see this quote pertaining to real life in several ways. For example, in the gameshow Survivior, you see the hidden immunity faked or replicated several times. It creates a twist in the show, because the other contendors have no idea whether it's real or fake. It's elusive and never final. We can also see this quote pertaining to the Magus. Nicholaus has a suspicion that Julie has a twin sister, June, or so we are told. Hence, he feels that he is being tricked and decieved, and never feels like anything is final.

October 11th

" The story of the world was all contained in this becoming a bull, then a snake once again, to generate another bull. Told by Zeus, it was a story that began with a bull and ended with a bull. " - Page 206

I found this quote interesting because it is something that i've heard popped up in class before, it begins with a bull and it ends with a bull. I found myself confused when hearing this , but always made the conncection Europa being abducted by a bull, Zeus, was the beginning. I was confused with the ending with a bull part though. However, in this quote Calasso is simply saying that in the beginning, Zeus, a bull, mates with Demeter to generate a woman, Persephone. When he finds out that he has generated a woman instead of a man, he transforms himself back into a snake and mates with his own daughter to generate Zagreus, a bull. Hence one could say it begins with a bull and ends with a bull.

I've continued my reading in the Magus and have gotten to the point where myth brings itself right to Nicholas' door. He's eating and discussing with Lily and Conchis when all of a sudden a whole scene pulled right out of mytholgy is played out before his eyes. Nicholas can't make any sense of it and declares that it is all a big act with a playwrite. He says that he might appreciate it more if he knew what it meant. He also makes the connection that his relationship with Conchis is eerily similiar to that of Conchis and De Deukans.

Today in class we began our discussion with the middles. The first thing I took note of was that in the middle we are no longer dealing with gods/godesses but human beings. Also, the hero must die in the middle (sadness), and in the middle you don't know who you are or what's going on. We also talked about the hero pattern and its 22 points, and how we seem to be stuck on the overcoming of the monster as a society. We want to see the action. We also talked about rituals/initiations and were given an assignment to come up with either a ritual of our own, or a mythologicl one, and present it to the class.

Quiz Week

September 29th

"The gods were the example and model of every evil, and it wasn't fair to blame men for imitating actions the gods had committed before them."  -Page 155

I found this quote interesting because it's something that we have covered in class and it also seems to keep popping up in Calasso. This quote is simply saying that men cannot be blamed for something that they simply re-enacted. Its already happened before, so lets just blame the first person to do it, the gods. It's like when you are a child and you witness somebody you look up to doing something and so you go and do it. You have no idea what harm you're doing, you're just simply doing what you watched be done before. This is the view that Calasso has taken on in this part. It's kind of stubborn, but interesting.

I left off in the Magus with Urfe sitting down and having dinner with Conchis and Lily. Conchis makes it clear that she isn't the real Lily, nor is she pretending to be. Urfe seems to think that Lily is on his side and that they both doubt Conchis. She's just putting on an act for him. Conchis leaves the table and Urfe and Lily are left to talk. It gets quite interesting. Lily basically says that they are all actors and actresses, him and herself, and that Urfe must be patient with Conchis. He'll understand. Pretty mysterious if you ask me. It sounds like things are going to start getting interesting.

Today in class we brushed up on how fice meant to make and that sacri meant sacred. Put them together and you have sacrifice which means to make sacred. We were also told that in mythology things are weird, and unfortunately the weirder the better. We finished the class by listing the 4 ways in which the world was created. 4) God  creates by voice   3) Through the body of a goddess   2) Male in form of creature-snake    1) Female creates it by herself

September 27th

"No sooner have you grabbed hold of it than myth opens out into a fan of a thousand segments. Here the variant is the origin. Everything that happens, happens this way, or that way, or this other way. And in each of these diverging stories all the others are reflected, all brush by us like folds of the same cloth."
-Page 147

This pretty much sums up how i've been feeling while reading Calasso. You think you start to finally understand something and then it opens up into a whole different reality. I found that if I try to think too hard about it then I sometimes overthink it and end up with a headeache instead of a solution. However, I also found that if i read a certain part over and over a couple times i start to make sense of it a little more. This quote is basically saying that myth is a fan of a thousand different segments. You can never fully understand it. You just have to take what you've been presented with and do the best with it. However, there are variables throughout myth and origin seems to be a huge one. Like the quote mentions, everything that happens in all these different stories happens this way or that way and if you look close enough all stories are just mirrored throughout time. This seems to always be present in myth; a reference to a past event of similiar results. Calasso also goes on to say that if  only one version of a mythical event is present, it is like a body without a shadow, and we must do our best to trace out the shadow in our minds. Basically, myth is what you make of it, and there are a thousand different ways in which you can look at something. We just have to do our best with what we have been given.

The main portion of class today was viewing and discussing Jennifer's blog. We looked at sections where she tied together everthing from class: Cadmus and Harmony to the Wizard of Oz to The Magus. It was very interesting stuff. We also briefly talked about how all heroes want to go home (Dorothy, Odeseus). We also took note of sparagmos and omophagia, which is the eating of raw flesh. Finally, we briefly talked about abduction and metamorphisism being a constant in myth in which somebody is taken away and changed.