From The Belly Of The Whale

"the pattern that connects"

2010-02-15T15:26:00.031-07:00

"What is the pattern that connects?" What connects the crab nebula in the sky with genes of a crawfish on earth or the genes in our bodies? The spiritual tradition proposes that the Cosmic Christ is "the pattern that connects." The ancient hymn of the letter to the Colossians states:
He is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible. . . . Before anything was created, he existed, and he holds all things in unity (Col. 1:15-17; emphasis mine).
Does it matter that our spiritual tradition has a name for the Cosmic Christ and a grounding in a particular historical person who incarnates that Christlikeness? How would a scientist respond to this naming of "the pattern that connects"? The Cosmic Christ, seen as "the pattern that connects," affirms the scientific quest for such a pattern. It offers hope by insisting on the interconnectivity of all things and on the power of the human mind and spirit to experience personally this common glue among things.

The Cosmic Christ personalizes and localizes the experience of the "pattern that connects" in a manner that is utterly nontrivial. It grounds this interconnectivity in the cosmic experience of the joy and suffering of the historical Jesus [or even Thomas A. Anderson for that matter! d.b.]: the Colossians hymn ends with a statement about the price this human, Jesus, had to pay for incarnating the Cosmic Christ. The crucial connection is made between our moral behavior and our knowledge and love of the universe. Not even scientists are exempt from acting out the wisdom of the universe. "God wanted all maturity to be found in him and all things to be reconciled through him, and for him everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross" (Col. 1:19-20). Irony and paradox are also celebrated in this passage--peace comes from violent injustice in the crucifixion of an innocent man. The cosmic pain that the cross represents is named. Our sacrifices are cosmic in size; our suffering is cosmic in scope; and the peace too is cosmic in its promise. The paradox is that this "pattern that connects" also disconnects. Continuity and discontinuity accompany one another. A violent wrenching--even on divinity's part in lettering Jesus die an ignominious death--produces cosmic peace. A death--any death--is always a disconnection. Yet this particularly ignominious and cosmic death on a cross, violent in its disconnection of humanity and divinity, of justice and injustice, of light and darkness, does in the last analysis, connect. It connects heaven and earth, past and future, divinity and humanity, all of creation: "everything in heaven and everything on earth."

The cosmic peace coming by way of the cross instructs us in a second way of mindfulness: emptying. This kenosis, or "emptying," is also connected to mindfulness and to the entrance of the Cosmic Christ into our psyches. "Only those who have dared to let go can dare to re-enter" warns Meister Eckhart (ME, 67). The Cosmic Christ hymn of Philippians also celebrates this way to mindfulness. Emptying precedes filing. "His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a salve, and became as humans are; and being as all humans are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross: (Phil. 2:6-8). Paradoxically, out of this emptying, fullness occurs. "But God raised him on high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on the earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the creator" (Phil. 2:9-11). Again the pattern connects divinity and earthiness; emptiness and fullness; suffering and accomplishment. It connects all creatures in the entire universe.

To believe in this "pattern that connects" is to start connecting once again. For all belief is about practice, not just theory. Belief is not belief if it is not launched into praxis. The practice of making and seeking connections, and of seeking even "the pattern that connects," can now begin in earnest. This enterprise will require those "new wineskins" or "new paradigms" that a living cosmology represented by the Cosmic Christ ushers in. These wineskins will offer themselves as vessels for the Spirit rising afresh among the young in all institutions of church and society; making new connections between world religions; reconnecting our lifestyles to our capacities for creativity, imagination, play, suffering, sexuality, knowledge, and wisdom itself. Embracing the Cosmic Christ will demand a paradigm shift, and it will empower us for that shift:

A shift from:

from anthropocentrism

to a living cosmolgy

from Newton

to Enistein

from parts-mentality

to wholeness

from rationalism

to mysticism

from obedience as a prime moral virtue

to creativity as a prime moral virtue

from personal salvation

to communal healing, i.e., compassion as salvation

from theism (God outside us)

to panentheism (God in us and us in God)

from fall-redemption

to creation-centered

religion

spirituality

from the ascetic

to the aesthetic.

. . . The historical person of Jesus offers a "pattern that connects" substantially different from the anima mundi ("soul of the world") tradition of Platonism, which lacks all concern and therfore connection with the anawim, the little and forgotten ones, the oppressed victims of social injustice. The Cosmic Christ liberates all persons and thus, like Moses of old, leads a new exodus from the bondage and pessimistic news of a Newtonian, mechannistic universe so ripe with competition, winners and losers, dualisms, anthropocentrism, and the bordeom that comes when our exciting universe is pictured as a machine bereft of mystery and mysticim. The Cosmic Christ is local and historical, indeed intimate to human history. The Cosmic Christ might be living next door or even inside one's deepest and truest self. The reign of God may well be among us after all(133-135). ~Matthew Fox The Coming of the Cosmic Christ

2009-04-12T12:00:00.003-06:00

From The Belly Of The Whale

Foreward. Forward! (a brief reintroduction)

Chapter 1. Welcome!

Chapter 2. convergence

Chapter 3. Eden

Chapter 4. afterword

Chapter 5. afterworld

Chapter 6. Oceanic flight 815

Chapter 7. fool's journey

Chapter 8. 8 is a gate? (∞)

Chapter 9. nirvana(?)

Chapter 10. [H{e(art)]h}

Chapter 11. the wheel

Chapter 12. dial 911

Chapter 13. let us prey

(space interlude )

Chapter 14. Leap of Faith

Chapter 15. 2008: opening the hatch

Chapter 16. "It Only Takes A Moment"

Chapter 17. 01/11/09

Chapter 18. Temperance, you guide through the belly of the whale. . .

Chapter 19. 10:01

Chapter 20. Du mußt dein Leben ändern!

Chapter 21. fear

Chapter 22. umbrage

Chapter 23. SOME THING HAS FOUND US

Chapter 24. T

Chapter 25. culmination

Easter Egg

2009-04-12T11:11:00.008-06:00

Eunus Noe is holding a mirror. Step forward to see truth.

Forward!

2009-04-12T07:07:00.005-06:00

So I ended this blog. I feel good about that too. I don't know what is next. Something new I guess. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me. It has a been a worthwhile journey for me, I hope you enjoyed it as well.

But, this is supposed to reintroduce what it was that I was doing. I was spinning the cycle. I took a lap, found the treasure, and answered my question that launched this blog, "Why is the human on Earth?"

So follow me if you like, on a seven month journey to an answer I already had!

It isn't cheating to just read the culmination. It was a fun journey though, take a look if you have time.

The sun feels good on my face.

I love you.

culmination

2009-04-10T15:00:00.000-06:00

The Answer
The Path
Decision
The End (?)
(or) The New Mythology
Define "From"
The Darkness
What is the treasure?
What is the sacrifice?
The void @ the center (of evertyhing) [is you]

culmination |ˌkəlməˈnā sh ən|
noun [in sing. ]
the highest or climactic point of something, esp. as attained after a long time : the product was the culmination of 13 years of research.
• Astronomy Astrology the reaching of the meridian by a celestial body.

The Left-Hand Path and Right-Hand Path are a dichotomy between two opposing belief systems, whose meanings have varied over time. The distinction is generally used by self-proclaimed followers of the "Left-Hand Path." Opponents often argue that these definitions improperly divide belief systems (a mislabeled or false dichotomy), or claim that many Left-Hand beliefs are illegitimate.[citation needed]
Modern definitions of "Right-Hand Path" elevate spirituality, the strict observance of moral codes, and the worship of deities. The intent of "Right-Hand Path" belief systems is to attain proximity to divinity, or integration with divinity. Conversely, the "Left-Hand Path" belief systems value the advancement and preservation of the self, as well as the pursuit of terrestrial goals.[citation needed] These goals are achieved either by seeking the guidance of one or more deities via theistic practices, or more commonly, via non-theistic uses of instincts and logic.[citation needed]

Although some sects value proximity to the divine, most followers of Left-Hand Path belief systems seek to become divinities in their own right.[citation needed] A simplified outlook would state the RHP teaches divinity through association, while LHP teaches divinity through emulation. Both doctrines ultimately lead to the annihilation (marginalization) of the old, unenlightened ego through its inferiority to the awakened genius. . . Wikipedia

The Path

One can view the dropping of Jake Chambers by the Gunslinger in two ways. The first is metaphoric. Jake is the child within the Gunslinger that must die for the Gunslinger to become and to continue his quest. This is a threshold point, and the Gunslinger understands what must be done, grows up, and continues on his quest after the Man in Black.

However, one can also view this dropping as a literal dropping of his son. He is so consumed with his goal, that there is nothing he would not sacrifice to reach this end. Would he kill his own Mother? Yes. Kill his son? Many times. This reading describes obsession. One consumed by the flames of obsession is not lead by Temperance (who Jake Kotze recently decided was personified by Kate Winslet).

With this conclusion in mind, I re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the other night. I enjoyed this film when it came out in 2004 and watched two or three times in the theater before I bought the DVD. I'm very familiar with its twists and turns yet still enjoyed it as I re-watched it. It did put me in mind of The Fountain though.

These movies deal with The Moment. Wall-E also dealt with The Moment. This is the unit of time that we have. It is what is authentic. The whole of The Fountain is concerned with one walk in the first snow of the season. That was the authentic moment that Hugh Jackman's character missed through his obsession with his quest.

When Clementine tried to reenact authentic moments with someone other than Joel in the film Sunshine, the moment was hollow and not real. She felt amiss. And as Joel was being erased, he was experiencing those authentic moments good and bad one after another in reverse order. He then understood the value of life as it was being taken from him.

There is an interesting little sync between these films that I found. When Joel and Clem are enjoying the fall leaves in Sunshine he wears a bright yellow Tommy T-shirt—Tommy being The Who's famous rock opera named for its hero Tommy Walker, a deaf, dumb, and blind messiah who leads people . . . out of the matrix? Tommy is also the name of the Hugh Jackman character in The Fountain. Tommy Walker achieves his freedom when he smashes the mirror of his past and is. Tommy Creo has to eventually make the same decision upon his path in The Fountain and "Finish it."

So then what is "the path"? I would describe this as the normal progression all humans have ever taken. This path of course can be illustrated by the major arcana of the tarot. The cards describe three stages and two segments.

The three stages describe that of an entire life. Childhood, Maturation, Initiation.

-Childhood is describe in cards I – VI:

I Magician – II High Priestess – III Empress – IV Emperor – V Hierophant – VI Lovers

-Maturation is the Departure, it is the building and development of one's Ego seen in cards VII – XII

VII Chariot – VIII Justice – IX Hermit – X Wheel of Fortune – XI Strength – XII Hanged Man

-Initiation is the transpersonal opening, a return to wholeness through ego death and/or physical death.

XIII Death – XIV Temperance – XV Devil – XVI Tower – XVII Star – XVIII Moon

-The transpersonal opening hopefully leads to the goal, which is "rebirth–redemption–wholeness–the consciousness of the unity of all things (67 Tarot and the Journey of the Hero)."

Know that my tarot info comes from Hajo Banzhaf's book, which I suggest to you for its completeness:

Tarot and the Journey of the Hero. Samuel Weiser, Inc. York Beach ME: 2000.

This path also takes on two qualities. The first half of the path as described by the cards is the active masculine portion of the journey. The second half of the path is the feminine portion of the journey where one must allow things to happen.

The active portion of the journey is illustrated in cards V – IX

Masculine Path:

V Hierophant: teacher

VI Lovers: crossroads/decision

VII Chariot: departure

VIII Justice: maturation

IX Hermit: threshold (self knowledge)

The Call occurs in card X, The Wheel of Fortune, and separates the masculine portion from the feminine portion of the path.

The passive portion of the journey is illustrated in cards XI – XVIII

Feminine Path:

XI Strength: acceptance

XII Hanged Man: letting go

XIII Death

XIV Temperance: guidance

XV Devil: shadow

XVI Tower: liberation

XVII Star: hope (discovery of fountain?)

XVIII Moon: return

So. My blog, From The Belly Of The Whale, has been mostly concerned with the "night sea journey". This is the portion of the feminine path from Death to the return through the Moon. Of course the word "from" is open ended. My intention was that this report comes to you from inside the belly of the whale. However, I'm beginning to think that more importantly, we are exiting From The Belly Of The Whale!

I started the blog to address The Darkness that I had been seeing everywhere in our culture for years without any proper explanation as to why or how things had gone so wrong.

"But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not straight, but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites, reminding us of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors." ~Jung

The Darkness

"Has the light gone out for you?/Because the light has gone out for me./It is the 21^st Century./ It is the 21^st Century." ~Radiohead: "Bodysnatchers" from In Rainbows.

I've wanted to write an essay about the darkness now for quite some time. I'm thinking, three or four years. A lot of people reconsidered everything about the 3^rd anniversary of the war. I did. How did we get into this clusterfuck? One looked back and the path began on one day, September 11, 2001, my mother's Birthday.

I thought about this so much, that I even had music to go with it. It is an endtime playlist that puts one in accord with "The Darkness". Perhaps this list would get us ready to consider the underworld?

1. "Things That Scare Me" Neko Case Blacklisted

2. "Sit Down, Stand Up (Snakes & Ladders)" Radiohead Hail To The Thief

3. "Song to the Siren" This Mortal Coil It'll End In Tears

4." Hold On, Hold On" Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

5. "Werewolf" Cat Power You Are Free

6. "Missed The Boat" Modest Mouse We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

7. "The Mess We're In" PJ Harvey Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

8. "Dirty Knife" Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

9. "4 Minute Warning" Radiohead In Rainbows [Disc 2]

10. "Windowstill" The Arcade Fire Neon Bible

11. "Night Light" Sleater-Kinney The Woods

12. "The Biggest Lie" Elliott Smith Elliott Smith

13. "A Wolf At The Door (It Girl. Rag Doll)" Radiohead Hail To The Thief

The Navajo believe that everything is connected. There is no coincidence to them. To achieve happiness then, one must take the middle way. Meaning that the Navajo way is the road of Temperance. A Navajo achieves harmony by staying in balance with his world. The opposite of the Navajo way is witchcraft. A Navajo witch, known as a skinwalker, or a Navajo wolf chooses to be out of balance to achieve his own nefarious ends. I'll speak more about the Navajo way in the mythology section. For now, it's enough to say that the idea of being out of balance with no coincidence helped me to become a synchromystic as I waded into the murky waters that was understanding 9/11.

9/11 was my entry into "The Darkness". And when one tries to understand what happened that day, one ends up out of balance. Suffice to say, the best way for me to understand what happened that day was by reading a book by Tony Hillerman that had nothing to do with 9/11. I even got to the book through a synchromystic route. I was reading DeLillo's Falling Man. I had been reading lots of 9/11 fiction then. Let's maybe look?

The Zero Jess Walter

Falling Man Don Delillo

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country Ken Kalfus

Fast Food Nation (audio) Eric Schlosser

In the Shadow of No Towers Art Spiegelman

The Fallen Man (audio) Tony Hillerman

Julius Caesar (audio) William Shakespeare

So to understand 9/11, I read a Navajo murder mystery about Shiprock, a holy Navajo rock tower, which had nothing to do whatsoever with 9/11. This book, The Fallen Man, synced with a book about 911, Falling Man, and it came out 9/10/1997.

I guess, where I'm going with this is to tell you one mustn't look "out" for the answers. Perhaps going "in" is the correct route.

So, the book and film No Country for Old Men asks a simple question about "The Darkness". Have things gotten worse? Were things "better" as old timers suggest? The conclusion that Cormac McCarthy comes to, is yes. His villain is the devil, and his theme has to do with fate/coincidence/luck/destiny. Basically, Cormac McCarthy comes to the conclusion that there is no order. His devil gets it in the end via bad luck. Now is this Justice? Not really.

When this film came out, it was not alone in considering darkness. There were a many films considering the darkness. Think of the "Mexican Trilogy": Pan's Labyrinth, Babel, Children of Men. No one was safe from this devil. And it was chance—yes, that was the word—that brought you in his path.

Peter Jackson fresh off the heels of battling "The Darkness" in his epic Lord Of The Rings trilogy decided to bring the shadow back to New York. I find the dates of King Kong fascinating: 1933, 1976, 2005.

1933 is the great depression, a time of darkness. And here is a giant, new building, The Empire State building. A Tower. And the darkness climbs to the top of it and is defeated. He, the devil, returns in 1976 to the top of two new towers. Again, he is defeated. After the WTC was completed, they had a difficult time filling all the space due to economic hardship, a recession caused by oil prices and the Viet Nam war. I imagine it was also difficult to fill the Empire State Building in 1933.

In 2005, the monster, our shadow, had to climb the same building he climbed in '33. The '76 tower[s] had come down. Interestingly enough, we are now in a recession. Some say that this time is going to be worse than the Great Depression: 1929-1939. Was it a massive war that returned the country to prosperity after the Great Depression?

One interesting point, to stay current, has to do with our economic times. Right now we are focused on the solvency of our national/global money-center banks—the so-called pillars of our economy. Their instability due to bad loans in the housing market is seen as the problem, but is this really the problem? I've heard from several places, most recently This American Life's Planet Money team that the real problem is debt. We are the problem. Our debt is 100% of GDP. We owe as much as we make. This country had the same amount debt in 1929 before that crash. What of other matters though?

Does our nation have any other goals other than economic ones? Was our country more rounded at one time in the past with a spiritual center and spiritual goals? Our life now seems to be concerned only with economics which leads to an over identification with material. That is why this is happening. Want, Buy, Have. We are loosing our real treasure in the pursuit of material.

Here is a weird split though. Part of our problem is that we don't value anything. We live in this weird disposable time. It is the age of plastic, and we will be historically known as "plastic man". We are cheap, and inauthentic. There was a tremendous piece in Harper's about our trash by Donovan Hohn called "Moby Duck". Read it! You will understand how and why our mother cries "mermaid tears" now and forever.

Melville's Moby Dick has been my lens to this darkness. I understood our country's citizens as isolatoes on board our ship of state headed by what, for all intents and purposes, seemed like a madman driven by unknown forces toward an incomprehensible goal. That madman's term has come to an end. Strangely, in forgiving my father, I ended up forgiving our tyrant as well. They are mixed together in my mind in typical literary fashion.

I think that our night sea voyage has ended though. We've come out from the belly of the whale. I know that I'm mixing metaphors there a bit, but forgive me. So what does this mean? Well, I think that it means that this blog as it was first envisioned has reached its conclusion. To continue with a focus on the darkness would be to cultivate an obsession. Did we learn anything from our shadow? We must have.

Although the news today is dark, I do believe that "The Darkness" is over. What is coming to light is the result of our trip to the underworld. It may take some time to understand how we are different after having faced our shadow self, but perhaps our perception now will be different?

Do we see any signs of hope in film? I do seem to remember a funny little tin-man who saw the true value of an object, and who enjoyed song leading us back to paradise, back to earth. In light of this. . .

Now that our money is worthless, or going to be, we are going to have to learn to appreciate life without things, or else we will have to have another massive war to numb/trick us into continued worship of material. In God WE Trust, on our note of faith, the dollar.

New Mythology?

"Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously see himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle." ~Jung

As I mentioned earlier on another post, part of my collegiate work was a search for a modern hero, one relevant to our time and land. A country's myth serves a purpose, well actually four purposes according to Joseph Campbell. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to revisit J.C.'s ideas about the purposes of myth. It was his prompting that led me to question the relevance of Jesus to 21^st century America. Campbell believed that a country's hero must be tied to the physical land. One needed a local center to then relate to the eternal. One lives local, and thus should have a personal holy land, a sacred highest point. This is illustrated in how the Navajo live within the four sacred mountains in the southwestern US and how the heart of the monster, which to the Nez Perce is the world navel, lies in the middle of their territory in Kamiah, Idaho. Our land's hero, which by default and majority, is Jesus, is tied to the Middle East. How is he relevant to our land?

So here are the purposes of mythology according to Joseph Campbell that together create a complete mythological structure. The first function of mythology is the mystical, which is the realization that the eternal, one source, shines its light through all things. This is awakened awe. The second function of myth is the cosmological, which represents our physical world as a manifestation of this divine source. This is a metaphorical sense making activity of existence. It is how a society understands its place in the world and universe. The third function is the sociological, which defines a given people that the myth serves. It validates and maintains a social order. The final function of myth is the pedagogical, which describes the stages of life and transformations of an individual, which hasn't changed for 10s of thousands of years and which I talked about when describing "the path".

The problem then as Mr. Campbell saw it, was that our cosmological relationship had changed to the universe since Copernicus, which was never readdressed in a new mythology. Others disagree with this notion stating that although our facts have changed, our perception has not, and thus the traditional cosmological mythology is still valid. The other important change that Campbell stressed was that the world order had changed in the 20^th century with the advent of rockets and jets rendering our bordered world irrelevant. His philosophy was that the tribe that a new mythology needed to address with it social ordering function was the entire globe. The people is everyone now. There is no "other". With those thoughts in mind, I searched for a new hero to save us from "The Darkness" my senior year of college, and, I thought that I had found her:

Bridges between:

Recall the quote from Jung at the beginning? It speaks to the middle. These gals don't have a place. They lie between the black and white of the culture. Despite Campbell's desire to realize that you and the other are one, societies still have a majority and minority component. A black and white. It is the group that lies outside the in and out groups and doesn't fit into either that leads us to unity. It was my contention that the artists listed above could bring us together.

M.I.A. recently being pregnant added a level of meaning to this idea too. Could she give birth to the new age? Some think she is on the wrong side of an ugly conflict (which I don't pretend to understand). Her loyalties in this conflict were recently questioned in a piece in the Times. If both sides are dirty, as is usually the case, then we should probably look to the middle for guidance (I don't know anything about the Sri Lankan civil war, and M.I.A. might not be as middle as I perceive, bear in mind.). Women it should be said, also are between in this man's world.

But here is an interesting conundrum. Can one intellectually "find" a new mythology? Probably not. And folks say that our lack of a complete mythology might be what is wrong with the world. It seems to me like politics in this country is the stand in for mythology. Our state houses are our temples, and they give us our structure. We even have rites within this mythology. We vote.

Rite is a component that Campbell would stress. Ritual puts one in accord with one's myth. Thus, if the mythology organizes one's cosmos, then the ritual sets one in harmony with one's world. This is seen and illustrated with the Navajos. Their traditional houses, Hogans, mirror the world in their design. The cardinal mountains are built into it as well as the vault of heaven. They create the macrocosm in the microcosm. When one is out of harmony, they have a sing for him. They paint with sand on the floor of the Hogan, and create a metaphoric picture of the universe. The ill person is placed literally in the picture as to restore the person to balance with the universe.

The pre-Vatican II Catholic mass was a reenactment of the myth—something that I went to great lengths to describe in T—the sacrifice. One went to mass to participate in the myth, to be a part of the mystery.

Participating in the myth huh? Do we participate in films? Most definitely yes as youngsters. Myth is very much alive in this fashion. And the Gods and Goddesses are still with us. Maybe we don't need a new mythology at all.

But, the focus of this blog, From The Belley Of The Whale, has culminated. I set out with a question, basically wanting to know the secrets of the universe, and. I have an answer.

So, this blog is done. I don't know if I'm done as a synchromystic, but From the Belly Of The Whale is. It is likely I will start a new blog soon that has to do with participation in the myth. We have one story that is retold over and over through different heroes. Perhaps I'll nail down an American hero. Maybe Chief Joseph? Maybe Crazy Horse, or Sitting Bull. Did you know that Arthur and Beowulf became Christianized? Their stories changed as the times changed. The Gods names change, but the source doesn't. The Holy Grail precedes Christian knights, but its idea continued in and through a Christian world. Have you found it, or do you still seek it?

Questions

What is "The Treasure"?

The treasure that you seek is the relationships in your life. Your partner. Your children. Your parents. Your Friends. Your coworkers. Your community.

What is "The Sacrifice"?

The Sacrifice is your selfishness. It is your ego. Obsession with quest could cause you to loose the treasure. Acceptance. You are not your role. You only have this moment to spend with your child. Know that the only difference between the beginning and the end of the journey is perception. George Bailey changed. Nothing else. The beginning of the grail quests always started with the grail. They already had it!

The void you try to fill with food or drugs or booze is you. You can't fill a black hole. It is your center, and the center of everything. You are the void.

Why is the human on earth?

The Answer

Relationships:

-Communion (union w/ your community).

-Your family.

That is why you are here. To go any deeper would negate all this. This is why you came.

Sight. Sound. Smell. Taste. Touch.

Marvel. It is all beauty.

Enjoy.

Motion. Stillness. Breath.

Love.

Last Supper

2009-04-09T15:00:00.000-06:00

Do you feel like watching Forrest Gump & Benjamin Button after that opening sequence? Tales of time travel. Enjoy your supper and let us prey.

"Like This."

2009-04-07T01:01:00.004-06:00

If anyone asks you

how the perfect satisfaction

of all our sexual wanting

will look, lift your face

and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness

of the night sky, climb up on the roof

and dance and say,

Like this?

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,

or what "God's fragrance" means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image

about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,

slowly loosen knot by knot the strings

of your robe.

Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,

don't try to explain the miracle.

Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means

to "die for love," point:

Here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown

and measure with your fingers the space

between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.

When someone doesn't believe that,

walk back into my house.

Like this.

When lovers moan,

they're telling our story.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.

Stare into this deepening blue,

while the breeze says a secret.

Like This.

When someone asks what there is to do,

light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?

Huuuu.

How did Jacob's sight return?

Huuuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.

Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,

he'll put just his head around the edge

of the door to surprise us.

Like this.

~Rumi.

The Philosopher's Stone

2009-04-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

This book came to me at the most perfect time. I read Simon Critchley's various introductions in his The Book of Dead Philosophers today and felt psychic relief. Here is not an "answer", but definitely a way:

"To philosophize is to learn how to die." The main task of philosophy, in this view, is to prepare us for death, to provide a kind of training for death, the cultivation of an attitude towards our finitude that faces--and faces down--the terror of annihilation without offering promises of an afterlife (xv-xvi).

What we seem to seek is either the transitory consolidation of momentary oblivion or a miraculous redemption in the afterlife (xv).

But the deep truth [about America's Christianity] is that such religious belief, complete with a heavenly afterlife, brings believers little solace in relation to death. The only priesthood in which people really believe is the medical profession and the purpose of their sacramental drugs and technology is to support longevity, the sole unquestioned good of contemporary Western life (247).

"Christianity is about nothing other than getting ready to die. It is a rigorous training for death, a kind of death in life that places little value on longevity (248)."

"As Marcus Aurelius writes, it is one of 'the noblest functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not.' Unknowing and uncertain, the philosopher walks (xxiv)."

Ash Wednesday on a Palm Sunday

2009-04-05T14:17:00.007-06:00

As I was talking to my friend Jaspal today, I was hit with an interesting sync. It is holy week, and I've been seeing 9:11 everywhere. I tried to make sense of this and could only come up with the fact that it has something to do with my mother as 9/11 is her birthday.

Keeping Holy Week in mind though, I thought of Elvis Perkins, son of Psycho, Anthony Perkins. Elvis has a brother named Oz and their mother died in flight 11 on 9/11. The album Ash Wednesday is a musical response by Elvis Perkins to his mother's death. If you recall 9/11 was a Tuesday. Ash Wednesday is also the beginning Lent, the time of repentance prior to Easter. The palm crosses from the previous year's Palm Sunday are burnt for the symbolic Ash Wednesday ashes.

Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast which always falls on the Sunday before Easter Sunday. The feast commemorates an event mentioned by all four Canonical Gospels Mark 11:1-11, Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19: the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his Passion. . . Wikipedia

One of my musing this Easter Season has been the inextricable link between sex & death in religion. Jesus is the seed placed into the Earth (mother) and is resurrected. This is the meaning of planting bodies. The earth is mother and we plant our seed in her, but the universe is also her womb. This causes me to think about The Black Hole. Anthony Perkins died before going into the black hole. I suppose I need to rewatch this film now. I thought Matrix Revolutions was enough to understand the meaning of the season, but perhaps I need The Black Hole as well. This time I will watch the robots/zombies more closely in association w/ the huddle I saw in the Will Smith films that I mentioned in my 10:01 post.

Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins and photographer Berry Berenson, whose work appeared regularly in Life magazine. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, and New York City with his older brother, actor Oz Perkins. Perkins is a great-grandson of the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and a nephew of the actress Marisa Berenson. His paternal grandfather Osgood Perkins, was also an actor. Perkins attended Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.
Perkins' father was well known Elvis Presley aficionado and thus named his son Elvis; it is not a moniker he pointedly adopted. Perkins took to music at an early age, briefly learning the saxophone before picking up the guitar in high school and taking lessons with Prescott Niles, one-time bassist for The Knack. While he played in rock bands, Perkins also developed an interest in the classical guitar, and began to compose music in both idioms. He also wrote poetry, and that gradually morphed into lyrics. After a short stint at college, he began to cultivate the idiosyncratic, highly personalized style that distinguishes Ash Wednesday.
"It's been a long journey, long in the coming," Perkins admits, when he discusses the album, and it took a serious detour on September 11, 2001, when his mother, a passenger on the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, perished in the attack on New York City's twin towers, a day before the ninth anniversary of his father's death. Ash Wednesday has been shaped in part by this tragic event and its aftermath. . . Wikipedia

Jerusalem!

son

2009-04-02T01:24:00.001-06:00

Her labor ran long. The woman's son was not an April fool but born the following day, Easter Sunday 1972.

fool

2009-04-01T10:05:00.002-06:00

A woman was told her son would be born on this day 1972.

Paper Trail

2009-03-31T23:59:00.000-06:00

March

On My Night Stand

McSweeney's #24
The Mythic Tarot-Sharman-Burke, Greene
The Mythic Image-Joseph Campbell
Discovering The Mind-Walter Kaufmann
The Hero With A Thousand Faces-Joseph Campbell
The Stars-H.A. Rey
Metamorphoses-Ovid, trans Rolfe Humphries
Vacation-Deb Olin Unferth
Remainder-Tom McCarthy
Everything That Rises-Lawrence Weschler
Reading Like A Writer-Francine Prose
Deep Economy-Bill McKibben
The Shape of Things To Come-Greil Marcus
Black Elk Speaks-Neihardt
D'Aularies' Book of Greek Myths
D'Aularies' Book of Norse Myths
State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
Paradise Lost-Milton

Actively Reading

Skinwalkers-Tony Hillerman
State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
Watchmen-Allan Moore
About Grace-Anthony Doerr
Discovering The Mind-Walter Kaufmann
I Am A Strange Loop-Douglas Hofstadter
Paradise Lost-Milton
The Mythic Image-Joseph Campbell

Listening To

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Re-Arrange Us-Mates of State
In Rainbows-Radiohead
Asleep At Heaven's Gate-Rogue Wave
Chant-The Benedictine Monks of Santo de Silos
Perotin-Hilliard Ensemble
The Verve Story 1944-1994
Gossip In The Grain-Ray LaMontagne
69 Love Songs-The Magnetic Fields
Rubber Soul-The Beatles
Abbey Road-The Beatles
Mysteria-Chanticleer

Viewed:

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The Fountain
Secrets of the Code
2001
Watchmen
Amélie
Gojira
Matrix Reloaded
The Power of Myth
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Matrix Revolutions

space interlude

2009-03-31T09:51:00.006-06:00

I didn't include these pieces within the "book", but just read them today and felt that I should offer them up in the the same spirit but as an interlude after "let us prey".

I can really see my thoughts taking shape here. Maybe it will help you on your journey?

So here is the Interlude:

(Know that I was responding to the idea of literal aliens that I wrote about in "let us prey". That is to what the "responses" pertain.)

responses:

ray of hope

2009-03-30T12:51:00.002-06:00

it's Savage

2009-03-28T21:32:00.005-06:00

Driving home this evening, I was thinking about an idea that most people have a problem with. It is the idea that Jesus was married. Now my thought really didn't have anything to do with this. My thought was that an unmarried teacher is a dubious teacher. Should one trust one that hasn't really entered into this life by binding their soul to another? Campbell said that one's three great moments were one's birth, marriage, and death or funeral (I forget).

Joseph Campbell had a real partnership with his wife. I'm told that Jung did as well. Freud was a cliché of the order that he wrote about--a triangle w/ his real connection w/ his wife's sister. "Erotic Jesus lay with his Mary's/loves his Mary's" I can get behind the idea that Jesus had a wife. He was that kind of teacher. Rush Limbaugh sure seems to have a heck of a time w/ marriage. I don't believe Eckhart Tolle is married (I could be wrong).

I suppose I think of this now because of the essays I've been reading by Brian Takle about the matrix movies 2 and 3. These essays are located here. He stresses the importance of the characters' love relationships in the films for the development of their humanity. I agree. And yet it seems that we still value the idea of the wise old man teacher. The ascetic. That is why everyone got so pissed about The Da Vinci Code. Jesus can't be human, he's God!

Probably Dan Savage is as good and trustworthy as he is precisely because he is a teacher that has been "married" now for some time. He has a wonderful piece about his decision to get married on This American Life. Of course, he is not legally married however. For Christ's sake, (and I mean that literally) could we let people Mar[r]y who they want?

Anyway, this is what I was thinking about tonight.

Hey Jaspal!

2009-03-25T09:10:00.003-06:00

I'm trying to get your attention. I don't think you have a blog proper. I see that you are well traveled in the synchromystic by-ways however.--I would probably have more luck if I called you out in a more traveled spot, like The Blob or Secret Sun or something, but that would be a bit untoward, perhaps.

Anyway, I finally started reading the essays you suggested a million years ago, a life ago! Theses essays by Brian Takle deal w/ The Matrix film series. They are beyond incredible. I don't think I was ready for them when you suggested them Jaspal. (Are you Brian Takle?) Thanks for pointing me toward these. They are helping me understand my own journey, one that I feel I've completed to a point. I think I finally dropped Jake Chambers and have left Never Never land. It has been my contention that my father's generation has had a reluctance to grow up. And this has to do with the boomer generation's selfishness and their inability to become the father. It has to do with their own relationship to their parents, ego, validation, Freud, Jung, etc. This was the big lesson in my "culmination".

I want to share this: I started reading Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop again. Incredible. I suggest reading from Chapter 3, "The Causal Potency of Patterns" the section about The Careenium that starts on pg. 45 of my version and concludes the chapter on pg. 50. It is a perfect metaphor for understanding why Synchromysticism works. Check it out!

Also I read a super piece in The Believer about video games and art this morning. Tom Bissell, one of my favorite journalists, is in conversation with the the voice of criticism for the art form of video games, Heather Chaplin. Check it out!

I have a new blog too. After Easter, I won't be making anymore posts here. Go there for further adventures.

Thanks. Glad to be a part of our little world that we all inhabit here.

Be well.

vernalis

2009-03-20T05:44:00.010-06:00

certifiable

2009-03-08T18:33:00.000-06:00

certifiable |ˌsərtəˈfīəbəl|
adjective
1 able or needing to be certified : encephalitis was a certifiable condition | little hope for certifiable progress.
2 officially recognized as needing treatment for a mental disorder.
• informal crazy : the world of fashion is almost entirely insane, the people who work in it mainly certifiable.
DERIVATIVES
certifiably |-blē| adjective

I'm sure this isn't a unique thought, and it makes perfect sense in terms of the nature of the things I'm interested in, but do you ever get the feeling that the mythic, tradition-stories that we've based our societies upon are actually about you? I can't shake the feeling that my wife and I are living the book of genesis. It's universal so yeah, but sometimes I get the distinct impression that it is "our story". Like, there really is only one moment and all of history is taking place now. The linear of time isn't. Our life and day to day is writing the Hebrew bible.

Anyway, I need to wash the dishes.

National Treasure

2009-03-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

listen

2009-03-05T10:01:00.000-07:00

T

2009-03-01T03:16:00.022-07:00

-We willing go to our death (sleep) every night. When we are resurrected (wake up) we have new life.

Notice upon what The Hanged Man hangs. It is the Tree of Life, and his sacrifice has brought forth green shoots. He hangs from his right (conscious) side, and willingly accepts his fate. He is going through the cross, which is the symbol for our material world.

I think a portion of my journey lately has been to unpack the symbols in the garden. This has been a constant theme for me: Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained. I think I'm breaking the code, but these image statements are not literal enough for most Americans to be happy with my findings.

Let's talk about Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. I think this film helped me to solidify some of the things that I've been thinking about now for a while.

-first, how about a caveat? I say much here with a level of authority that implies that I know what I'm talking about. The underworld is dark. I'm trying to understand, and I'm speaking my mind. However, I could be wrong and will likely disagree with much of what I say in three months time. I seek truth, but believe very little. This is my practice now, but I'm willing to abandon it when it ceases to work. Our images need to stay transparent to the transcendent or else we will be trapped in the images. (Can you tell I've been listening to Joseph Campbell? I have a bunch of his radio appearances from the 80's on CD. Please give him credit as well as Banzhaf for this symbolic interpretation.)

So the important statement to keep in mind about creation has to do with the nature of creation, namely that, "This Place Is Death." Life is death. Life feeds upon life. Life requires death. Creation demands a sacrifice. Jesus is a symbol of that sacrifice. There are others. This is the mystery. We are the monsters that we fear.

Naturally, we are removed in this modern age from the sacrifice. We don't have to do our own killing. We are removed. In ages past, the meal prayer thanked the key animal for their sacrifice. One didn't thank God for the meal. One thanked the animal for its death, and the tribe built their religion around this sacrifice. They worshiped the animal as god because he sustained them (and because they understood that the divinity wasn't out there, but infused in all creation.)

We are mindless killers now. Eating without respect. Again, how we eat is the most important decision we make, and it should be made mindfully. This is the sacrifice. This is the mystery. Killing our God so that we may live.

So, Aronofsky's The Fountain. It is The Tree of Life that is sustaining the astronaut. The tree of life is compared to both her (Eve) and him (Adam) in the film. There is a progression from wholeness to separation to wholeness that our cycles celebrate.

Hmmm. The death of the Rachel Weisz character and the Death of the tree are the same story. Jackman is hanging onto something that he needs to let go of. From death comes life. That was her acceptance, that everything must die, must go through the cross, a symbol for the world. To live is to die.

Let's unpack that a little bit. Campbell states of the cross that it is a threshold. We can see this as its use as a verb implies: a crossing, to cross over. It is situated between eternity and time. It represents that passage of eternity into time and, of time into eternity. The divine transcendent has come into the world of substance and time , into being and thus has accepted those limitations. On the other side of life, the individual yields his individual self to the transpersonal divine through his death. Our world (material/time) is represented by the cross, and the transcendent divine, the One, the OM is crucified by coming into the world and splitting in two, a deviation from whole. The individual goes through the cross of the world, and eventually yields his individual life of time and substance to the transcendent.

"In symbolism, the circle always represents the undivided whole, what is original, or expressed in graphic terms, paradise. But the cross or the square corresponds to--just as the associated number four--the earthly hemisphere, the world of time and space (Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 61)." Thus, the cross is between wholeness and separation. It is between separation and unity. Paradise + Paradise Lost + Paradise Regained. --Or let's express the formula as such: OM(nothing) + Thing

The + is the between. It lies between the transcendent and materiality. (But didn't Jesus and others achieve both states at once? Divinity in materiality. Wholeness in individuation. Heaven on earth? Yes, but before we are resurrected, we need to be crucified first. We have to yield!)

-Which brings us back the film, The Fountain. Time. This is the theme. My interest is the symbols. What is the tree? The first father stuff says that "he"(Jackman) is the tree. The "rings" on Hugh Jackman count the ages that he has lived on his quest, to conquer death.

How does he conquer death? And the answer? To save the world, he must die! "Finish it!" she says. But he is unwilling to let go. He is caught between The Hanged Man and Death. He is on the cross, but he will not let go. He wants to live forever, but in order to do that, he must die first. He will not yield, there is not acceptance, only fear.

The Hanged Man also corresponds to a piece of fruit on a tree that has become ripe and now must let itself fall in order to produce new life and new fruit. It experiences this act of letting itself fall as death. If it refuses to let go, it remains hanging on the tree and will gradually rot there without having produced new life (Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 126).

But death is not the end. There is much more journey left. (Am I talking literal death or metaphorical ego death? Does it have to be a physical death? Things are loose and shifting. Our ego must die, but our substance also must die too.)

The conquistador seeks the fountain of youth for his queen. This is the story that the Rachel Weisz character writes about her situation, about her marriage. The characters do correspond to the archetypes too though. The feminine has to do with nature, with the round, with cycles, and allowing things to happen. The masculine is civilization. He wants to control things, to make things square.

She allows death to happen. He wants to control it, to cure it! So his quest is for the tree of life, not knowing that this is already where he is. He wants to be with his wife so he is alone working to save her instead of with her now. He is in a confrontation with time, not understanding that the fountain of youth is located in the now, in the is, in the eternal moment. His quest leads him to eden, to paradise, to the flaming sword protecting the tree of life.

Where is paradise? New York? The Kingdom of God is within you! Central Park is an external symbol for your heart which we elaborated as the entire earth. This is paradise.

This is also your mother. Psychologically, we all (of us guys) marry our mothers, yes? So what do the symbols of the garden mean? Interesting the symbol for earth is a cross, eh? What sustains us? Or better, who sustains us?

wholeness

EVE (the mother)

earth

Now the image of Lillith makes more sense. She is the tree of life. Paradise. Wholeness. Mother. Earth. The sustainer of life. Life literally issues from her. Odin hangs upon this tree. Jesus is crucified on this cross.

So, what is the snake then? What is the apple? And are these static symbols? Maybe, but I will show some variations of symbolic meaning hopefully bringing revelation to you and to me.

Prior to this, I want to bring the Tarot back in once more to elaborate something that I've just come to understand that underscores the tree of life and the cross upon which Jesus hangs.

As you well know, I've been reading a book that elucidates the hero's journey through the major arcana of the Tarot. As noted in my post the wheel, the hero's journey is a cycle best illustrated by the sun, thus the journey traces a circle of both light and darkness creating parings of stages on the journey above and below. These pairings of stages represent opposite ends of the same pole thus communicating a relationship above and below. I described some of these relationships and linked them with their corresponding planets last time.

The parings?: Magician/Wheel; High Priestess/Strength; The Empress/Hanged Man; Emperor/Death; Hierophant/Temperance; Lovers/Devil; Chariot/Tower; Justice/Star; Hermit/Moon.

We see the Hanged Man and the Mother together. She is nature, and nature requires sacrifice for sustaining life. This then is the meaning of The Emperor and Death pairing, forming a relationship together. The Emperor's reign is limited. Finite. His end, and change revitalizes the world energies and stirs the stagnation. She, the mother, nourishes him, but she requires his death for the payment of this nourishment. So . . .

Tree Of Life

Adam

Eve

Adam + Eve

Paradise Regained

Tree of Life

The Fountain

Paper Trail

2009-02-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

February

On My Night Stand

McSweeney's #24
The Mythic Tarot-Sharman-Burke, Greene
The Mythic Image-Joseph Campbell
Discovering The Mind-Walter Kaufmann
The Hero With A Thousand Faces-Joseph Campbell
The Stars-H.A. Rey
Metamorphoses-Ovid, trans Rolfe Humphries
Vacation-Deb Olin Unferth
Remainder-Tom McCarthy

Tarot and the Journey of the Hero-H. Banzhaf

Everything That Rises-Lawrence Weschler
Reading Like A Writer-Francine Prose
Deep Economy-Bill McKibben
The Shape of Things To Come-Greil Marcus
Black Elk Speaks-Neihardt
Your Code Name Is Jonah-Edward Packard
Parzival-Eschenbach

D'Aularies' Book of Greek Myths
D'Aularies' Book of Norse Myths

Actively Reading

The Mythic Tarot-Sharman-Burke, Greene
Tarot and the Journey of the Hero-H. Banzhaf
McSweeney's #24
Remainder-Tom McCarthy
The Stars-H.A. Rey
State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
Paradise Lost-Milton
Skinwalkers-Tony Hillerman

Listening To

Radio Retaliation-Thievery Corporation
Dear Science-TV On The Radio
Sound Of Silver-LCD Soundsystem
Begin To Hope-Regina Spektor
Kala-M.I.A
Dark Side of the Moon-Pink Floyd
Ziggy Stardust-David Bowie
In Rainbows-Radiohead

Viewed:

Wall-E
Garden State
Adaptation
East Of Eden
Cloverfield
Slumdog Millionaire
Frida
The Fountain
Australia
City of Ember

Culture:

Aimee Bender

keep looking up! (the deal)

2009-02-22T14:22:00.010-07:00

Mercury

Here we meet the god Hermes, guide of travelers, patron of thieves and liars, ruler of magic and divination, and bringer of sudden good luck and changes in fortune. He is called the Trickster because he is deceitful and ambiguous, yet he is the trusted messenger of the gods and the guide of souls into the underworld. In Greek myth Hermes was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the mysterious nymph Maia, who is also called Mother Night. Thus he is the child of both spiritual light and primordial darkness, and his colours--red and white--reflect the mixture of earthly passions and spiritual clarity which are part of his nature (21).

~The Mythic Tarot. Sharman-Burke, Greene. Fireside, New York: 1986.

"Mercury, the God of Roads, who was also know in Greek mythology as Hermes Psychopompos, which means he was known as the guide of souls, and is shown in the Hierophant (V) as the educator and guide in the outer world, and in Temperance (XIV) as the actual guide of souls through the night (191)."

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero. Banzhaf. Samuel Weiser, York Beach, ME: 2000.

Venus

"Venus, the Goddess of Love, is reflected by The Lovers in her light aspect. Her dark pole is shown in the passionate entanglement of The Devil (191)."

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero.

Lucifer |ˈloōsəfər|
noun
1 another name for Satan . [ORIGIN: by association with the [son of the morning] (Isa. 14:12), believed by Christian interpreters to be a reference to Satan.]
2 poetic/literary the planet Venus when it rises in the morning.
3 ( lucifer) archaic a match struck by rubbing it on a rough surface.
ORIGIN Old English , from Latin, 'light-bringing, morning star,' from lux, luc- 'light' + -fer 'bearing.'

Mars

"Mars demonstrates his springtime power in the departure of the hero on The Chariot (VII), whereby The Tower (XVI) reflects his overturning force, but primarily his warlike and destructive aspect, which can lead to either ruin or breakthrough (191)."

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero.

So, am I the only one who thinks that The Chariot on the Mythic Tarot looks like George W. Bush? It really fascinates me and makes reality all the more tenuous. Then consider that Mars (who is Ares, the God of War, in the Greek system, cheating w/ Aphrodite on Hepaestus) has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. And the meaning of those two names? Terror and Fear. Amazing. The Tower is an archetype linked inextricably with George Bush. Many wanted to call him The Devil. Pan? The Great All? He is connected to the Labyrinth and the tower, but I don't think so. Not the Devil. He is Mars.

Here we meet the war-god Ares, who was said in myth to have been conceived by Hera, queen of the the gods, without male seed. As god of war, Ares reveled in fighting. His two squires, Deimos (Fear) and Phobos (Terror)--sometimes said to be his sons--accompanied him on the battlefield. Unlike the goddess Athene, who as a war-deity represented cool strategy and foresight, Ares was in love with the heat and glory of battle itself, and with the exultant unleashing of his strength to challenge the foe.

Ares was in many ways an unappealing god because he was associated with conflict and bloodshed, and Olympian Zeus and Athene disliked him for his brute strength and lack of refinement (39).
~The Mythic Tarot.

Jupiter

"Here we meet great Zeus, king of the gods, whom the Greeks called All-Father, creator of the world and sovereign of both gods and men. In myth, Zeus was the youngest son of the Titans Cronos and Rhea (27)."

~The Mythic Tarot.

"In classical antiquity, Jupiter was considered to be the highest judge over gods and human beings, in Heaven and on Earth. This is expressed in Justice (VIII), which stands for the laws of the world, as well as The Star, the symbol of the laws and wisdom of the cosmos (191)."

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero.

My idea of Jupiter as expressed in Justice/The Star is bound up with the American system of government in its three branches. Zeus/Jupiter represents our systems of power as seen in both its sacred and secular authorites. Laws of men and laws of the universe, or of God. Think of the King (or emperor) his power to rule is sanctioned by God and by man. I can't help but think of gangsters in regards to this. It is the western/patriarchal view of power.

So to deconstruct this. Firstly, It is interesting that The Magician, Hermes, is expressed in both a male and female aspect. The Goddess, Venus, which I read as The Magician's counterpart, The High Priestess, is expressed mostly in a duality: love/[d]evol. Jupiter is not expressed in a m/f duality. His two aspects are both feminine. Depending on my decks and sources, Justice is either Athene or Dike--Roman: Justice. The Star is Themis, Dike's mother. The mother represents heavenly or divine justice and her daughter corresponds to earthly justice.

I want you to know that with most things there is never a perfect 1 to 1 ratio. Symbolic meanings are loose and shifting. Often times I think that there is only one card and the "other" cards address its polar opposites in varying degrees. So, in the past I have called Obama The Star. I have also attributed The Star as the light half of one's Anima, one's guide through the underworld. Now it is supposed to be a branch of government? Maybe. So let's think about this. It would make sense that the President is the leader that is expressed in two aspects, the law giving and law interpreting bodies. That doesn't really fit with heavenly and earthly justice, but oh well. America does lean heavily on the feminine iconography. So Justice is blind is the Judiciary, and her "mother" is the legislative, is the star, is The Mother, is Isis located on top of the Capitol Building? Sounds good.

I suppose the important point is to remember that Zeus/Jupiter/Yahweh is The Father. That should probably be the title on the card. God, The Father. And his son is the sun, the savior, thus making The Emperor, The Godfather. So who is the Godfather's father?

Saturn

"In its light aspect, Saturn shows himself as the wise old man in The Hermit (IX), whereby his difficult side that lets fear arise from constriction corresponds to The Moon (XVIII). And this card represents the last test on the path (191)."

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero

All I want to say is that I found it so very fascinating that John Locke encountered Christian Shephard holding a lantern in the episode, "This Place is Death". John met him at the threshold, just before he pushed on the frozen donkey wheel (wheel of fortune).

"Cronos was banished, some say to the depths of the underworld, but others say to the blessed Isles where he sleeps, awaiting the beginning of a new Golden Age (52)." ~Mythic Tarot

Time to come home Dorothy!

Cloverfield Monster

2009-02-20T09:37:00.001-07:00

SOME THING HAS FOUND US

2009-02-16T09:50:00.018-07:00

clover |ˈklōvər|
noun
a herbaceous plant of the pea family that has dense, globular flowerheads and leaves that are typically three-lobed. It is an important and widely grown fodder and rotational crop.

• Genus Trifolium, family Leguminosae: many species, in particular red clover ( T. pratense) and the creeping white clover ( T. repens).

PHRASES
in clover in ease and luxury : if your sister married the old codger, we could be in clover.

ORIGIN Old English clāfre, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch klaver and German Klee.

Mostly, this is an update post. What am I up to? I am just letting you know what I've been thinking about. I've been fascinated by the Kaguya moon probe. I note with interest the study of the "far side" (what is often called "dark side").

I'm interested in Revolutionary Road. It plays into a theme I talk about at the bottom of this. One reason I'm interested is Jack and Rose back together. The Titanic is one of those egg shell cracking "mega rituals" that the blob was discussing recently. I would argue that every time our faith in material is unwavering, the tower archetype comes down.

I saw Cloverfield a few nights ago and can't get it out of my head. Amazing! It adds to what I've been working on, which will be the subject of a very large post that I've actually unknowingly been working on now for two years. It is a consideration of the darkness with the idea of finding a new hero. Joseph Campbell challenged me more or less with the idea that Jesus is irrelevant due to time and space. A hero needs to be relevant to the land he is the hero of--the literal actual land, and to the time/cosmology he is hero of. Since Jesus, we've had the Copernican revolution, an entirely new cosmology. With that in mind, I set out my senior year of college to find the new mythology. This coming comprehensive post that I've subconsciously continued to research since I presented my findings in my senior thesis several years ago will present this hero. It will take some time though. Before that post, I will have another foray into archetypes using a planetary model. This will be similar to my earlier journey.

I do want to talk about Cloverfield, but think that I should save that material for later. Well maybe a little commentary. My wife experienced this movie almost purely as a 911 film. And I can't disagree w/ this. The intention behind Spielberg's War of the Worlds was probably the same. 911 might have even been Cloverfield''s inspiration, but I read it differently. It is our now. The monster is in eden. It destroyed the bridge. This is our financial crisis. New York is the financial center, and it has been abandoned/destroyed. Some associations: central park, the heart of New York? Movie starts and ends there. Monster is in the heart. "Beth" looks like Jennifer Connelly from Labyrinth(we've been watching this a bit again lately). Central Park is where The Happening began. The heart of this movie is a love story. Paradise Lost is the theme right now. Genesis and Revelation are connected. Beginning is ending is beginning. It is important to know why you are here.

umbrage

2009-02-13T14:21:00.005-07:00

Our stock in trade here in our space (synchromysticism) is film, and I take these pretty seriously. When asked to "define" myself once through movies that I like, I answered doubly. I said that the best film is probably Citizen Cane, but my favorite film is It's a Wonderful Life.

A recent opinion in the New Yorker's "Talk Of The Town" besmirched George Bailey, and got it wrong, completely wrong. The piece, by Adam Gopnik, was thinking about hope in that space between Christmas and Obama. The focus of the piece had to do with the financial crisis that we are all beginning to think about now every second, every day.

Basically, he blamed the current crisis on George Bailey and The Building & Loan. For some reason, this really bothers me. The little guy is not our problem. George Bailey did nothing but promote a local ethic. He lived and thought locally. He shopped and ate locally.

I think there was a bit of inherent classism in this piece, intimating that a small business owner like Mr Martini would be better off renting or wasn't good enough to own. How much money does one need before they are not allowed to fail? People make bad decisions, but George Bailey created a web of community connections building strength and relationships into the community. He was a hero of the people.

Mr Potter is an emblem of what is wrong with this county. Dollar first. More. Better. Cheaper. Faster! Money is the top priority. We do what we do with profit as our guiding light. George Bailey put people first. He was not motivated by greed. He would have nothing to do with subprime lending, and it is insulting to have this film read this way.

Our problem is our identification with material. We will not find happiness in material, and we will lose our real treasure in this quest for material. Think on this difference again from my 10:01:

I understand George Bailey. He wants to be a "Big Man." But by not being a "Big Man" he ends up becoming bigger. So maybe it is better to have and be nothing. Know what you serve.

Remember that you vote everyday with your money. And the most important decision you make is how you eat. Live and eat local. Instead of more, better, cheaper, faster, try seasonal, fresh, local, organic--in that order. Don't support Mr Potter. Make him irrelevant. Be a part of your unique community. Grow something this year. Grow the New Earth.

It's a good life!

2009-02-11T10:32:00.007-07:00

I mentioned in an earlier post about those of us with a tenuous grip on reality. How do we respond to a world that seemingly breaks down when we begin to examine the "weird stuff" as Jake Kotze did recently over at The Blob?

In response to that, I wanted to share a classic Twilight Zone. This is an episode that comes to mind when I'm feeling like the black hole at the center of the universe. I can't think of the word to capture this feeling. (There is a good clinical/psychological diagnosis of this condition, I'm sure) Being the center of everything. The God in the middle. It explains the Book of Job. How can God have so much power, and yet still be so flawed?

fear

2009-02-04T10:01:00.003-07:00

Fear and constriction are two closely related worlds. Astrology connects these experiences with the planet Saturn, the guardian of the threshold. Saturn is considered to be the wise old man, as shown of The Hermit (XI). But the card associated with The Hermit . . . , The Moon (XVIII), corresponds with the threshold that Saturn guards. It is the threshold of fear. It exists everywhere in the outside world where we must do something unfamiliar and enter into a new land. But we also experience it at least as intensely within as soon as we enter into the world of The Hermit. Many people become afriaid when they are suddenly toatlly alone in the stillness of a secluded place. At night, without any recognizable external reason, this fear can even take on panic-like characteristics. Seen in psychological terms, this is the fear of the unconscious that forces its way through the threshold of consciousness, from which we run away to the extent that we flee from stillness and loneliness [l ife out of balance!](198-199).

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, Hajo Banzhaf (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 2000).

-I do want to say a little about the fear that is out there. There is darkness. We are not out of this whale yet. Recall what I said recently in 10:01:

It took me three days to watch I am Legend. I get scared pretty easily, and when I would reach a spot (where the fear of the monsters was too great, not the monsters, just the fear mind you) I would stop for the night. I watched The Happening last night. Boy, what a horrible movie, eh? It was interesting though. Like an anti-zombie movie. All we can do is stand in horror and watch as these unconscious zombies destroy themselves. Kinda the point of the movie though. The zombies usually come for us, but not these. They are us, and we are destroying ourselves.

It is the dark time. This is an expression my daughter would use for night. Anyway, I've joked a bit before, but wonder now if capitalism isn't really dead. I recently received what amounts to an economic analysis of the end times from my CPA. The view is dark. End of empire. End of dollar. End of hope? End of everything?

I have to say this though, if we are not our bodies, or our thoughts, then we are certainly not our economy!

Here is an image from Art Young in 1907 that sums up the reaction of the U.S. (us) to the economic news:

"The task here is to not lose heart, not to become discouraged by the darkness, but to follow the longing and sincerely take the path of fear with courage and trust in order to reach what is authentic behind it (200)."~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero.

I do want to leave you with something positive. I like the idea of hope instead of focusing on the fear. I don't want to read about "retail in an age of scarcity". I want to write about love in an age of abundance. It isn't even monsters yet. It is the idea of monsters we fear. We are creating a self-sustaining shitstorm. My worry is that much of this isn't anything but reaction to fear, like I'm going to take my daughter out of dance now because I might not have money for her to take dance in April. (?) If we run out of money, we can deal with that. No dance, but do we have to be reactive?

Anyway, I watched as much video of Slavoj Zizek as I could last summer. I tried to read him, but this level of philosophy is above my pay-grade. I should try again.

He is a Marxist and a Communist, and so his investment in our western, capitalistic system is minimal. His side completely lost. They have to play the game on "our" terms now, meaning that the left is in a right world.

Last summer, I was watching him talk about the death of capitalism (I think) and I'm pretty sure he said that we don't have to dream up a solution to the problem. The gist I got was that the new system would rise from the ashes of the old in a utopian fashion. I haven't been able to find this, and I don't remember what context it was in, so I don' even know where to start looking for the quote. This is hope though. Don't worry about tomorrow. Live today.

Don't react to the fear. Act. Be the hope. Be the star. But if we are going over the edge, jump!

If It's time to let go, let go. (Think of a blue fish and take your leap!)

Paper Trail

2009-01-31T23:59:00.002-07:00

January

On My Night Stand

McSweeney's #24
The Mythic Tarot-Sharman-Burke, Greene
The Mythic Image-Joseph Campbell
Discovering The Mind-Walter Kaufmann
The Hero With A Thousand Faces-Joseph Campbell
The Stars-H.A. Rey
Metamorphoses-Ovid, trans Rolfe Humphries
Vacation-Deb Olin Unferth
Remainder-Tom McCarthy
Tarot and the Journey of the Hero-H. Banzhaf
Everything That Rises-Lawrence Weschler
Reading Like A Writer-Francine Prose
Deep Economy-Bill McKibben
The Shape of Things To Come-Greil Marcus
Black Elk Speaks-Neihardt
Your Code Name Is Jonah-Edward Packard
Parzival-Eschenbach
D'Aularies' Book of Greek Myths

Actively Reading

The Mythic Tarot-Sharman-Burke, Greene
Tarot and the Journey of the Hero-H. Banzhaf
The Godfather-Mario Puzo
McSweeney's #24
Remainder-Tom McCarthy

Listening To

Radio Retaliation-Thievery Corporation
Atlantic Rhythm And Blues: 1947-1974
Next Stop Wonderland
Discovery-Daft Punk
In Rainbows-Radiohead
Dear Science-TV On The Radio

Viewed:

Vanilla Sky
The Stepford Wives
The Fisher King
Hello Dolly
Tropic Thunder
Hell Boy II: The Golden Army
Pineapple Express
Lost in Yonkers
King Kong (2005)
Mr. Mom
City Slickers
Mamma Mia
Burn After Reading
The Happening
The Wrestler
Meet The Fockers

Du mußt dein Leben ändern!

2009-01-31T10:01:00.009-07:00

Luc Viatour www.lucnix.be

So, If you read my Temperance/soul guide post, you might have come to the conclusion that my guide (anima) through the belly of the whale is Nicole Kidman or Audrey Tautou with their role determining which pole: The Star or The Moon. But I've thought about this, and that isn't quite right. For the most part, they are both "Stars". I picked and chose to go with Audrey Tautou because of the novelty of both she and Nicole Kidman being The Chanel models. I've thought about types though, and clearly Audrey and Nicole are both "Stars".

MOON

STAR

The sun, the heavenly role model of all heroes must reverse directions at these two points every year [Cancer/Capricorn]. The same applies to all the heroes, who cross a threshold at both points. If the journey through the night started after The Hermit. . . , The Moon means emerging from the water depths and returning to the light. Since ancient times, Saturn, who astrologically corresponds with this card, has been seen as the guardian of this threshold.

The Moon card is frequently misunderstood today because we primarily connect the moon with romantic images. But here it means darkness, night, and the deep exploration of the the inner spaces [emphasis mine]. The Moon has pushed itself in front of the sun and darkened the light (= eclipse of the sun), a natural phenomenon that was usually considered to be a bringer of misfortune and has always been experienced with fear and unease (195).

The card shows a ford, the place of a possible crossing that is always dangerous, and a narrow path that leads to the gray towers which were first seen on Death. They are the heralds of the heavenly Jerusalem, symbol of the highest good we can attain.

However, the path there is difficult and dangerous. It is guarded by a dog and a wolf. While the dog (as already seen on The Fool) represents the friendly and helpful forces of the instincts, the wolf embodies their dangerous and destructive aspects. It corresponds with Cerberus, the hell-hound of Greek mythology, whose task it is to make sure no soul escapes from the underworld. Although the goal, the place of redemption, the heavenly Jerusalem, is already within reach, an extremely difficult tightrope walk must be survived (196). [It is easy to get to hell, to the underworld, but more difficult to return home.]

The corresponding danger on the path of the hero lies in becoming enslaved to the dark aspect of the anima, and therefore being led into lunacy by the inner female guide. [Watch out Jake! Which aspect is Robin?] Particularly as it is the actual nature of the unconscious to be bipolar and ambivalent, the guide of souls also behaves in quite a paradox manner (197).

~Tarot and the Journey of the Hero. Banzhaf, Hajo. Sameul Weiser, Inc. 2000: York Beach, Maine.

Let's see what we've got here now, and try and remember what It was I was going to say. Saturn. Moon. (Titan) Apollo. Star. Anima. Guide. Sword Bridge.

Mostly, I was interested in showing you my "other" type:

So this is my "moon". This would be the polar opposite to my "light" Australian "star" (Olivia, Nicole, Naomi). She is my "dark lady", my sin .

I'm not crazy about Katie Holmes to continue w/ the Tom Cruise theme, but it is interesting how much she looks like her in this photo:

I guess this post is about temptation. That is the message I got as I went back over it again. To make our return we will have to resist this temptation, and remember what Jesus said, enter through the narrow way for broad and great are the ways that lead to destruction.

We have to make our way over the sword bridge is what I'm saying. Speaking of bridges, there is another one in my life that I just realized. [-update: I also noticed tonight 2/1/09, that Wall-E lives on a destroyed overpass, another bridge to Nowhere.] I've been watching a ton of Jeff Bridges movies lately from Tron to Iron Man. I'll work that up soon. Cross back carefully!

10:01

2009-01-26T08:07:00.003-07:00

A Collection of Associations/Synchronicities

I saw these two movies next to one another at the local video store and it made me pause. I probably need to see There Will Be Blood again. It did a nice job of laying capitalism bare. What did he have at the end? Or, what did Charles Foster Kane have at the end of his life? Everything? Nothing? What was the treasure that Indy discovered?

Bridge To Nowhere

"The bridge connecting New York with Brooklyn hung delicately over the East River, and if one half-shut one's eyes it seemed to tremble. . ." ---Franz Kafka, Amerika

So this was a theme that was coming at me a bit. I kept seeing this image of a destroyed bridge. Both sides were connected to nothing. I'll see if I can find an image. I found the destroyed bridge. It is the Brooklyn bridge. It is our connection to eden, and it is destroyed. What does that mean?

Contrast this idea with my recent "jumpers". Do they add up to something? Does the bridge to nowhere indicate that we must jump? I haven't seen Cloverfield, and probably I should. I know that the B.B. gets destroyed in that movie too. I have some more associations. Let's begin with Will Smith and I, Robot and I am Legend. It is amazing how similar these two films were.

In both of these films Will Smith is haunted by his past in flashbacks and dreams. Both feature a song he listens to when he wakes up: Bob Marley: "Three Little Birds", Stevie Wonder: "Very Superstitious". The number 10:01 seems to resonate with both films. Both films are about the awakening of consciousness.

"The huddle" in both films really stuck with me. The Zombies huddle together in the darkness, and we see this as Will Smith chases his dog (!!!) into the darkness of the apartment building. The outmoded robots huddle together in the darkness of the shipping containers. The darkness needs to be made conscious. Will Smith is the light (he's Hancock after all). He is bringing the light of consciousness to us (united states). We are the robots and zombies huddling together in the darkness.

It took me three days to watch I am Legend. I get scared pretty easily, and when I would reach a spot (where the fear of the monsters was too great, not the monsters, just the fear mind you) I would stop for the night. I watched The Happening last night. Boy, what a horrible movie, eh? It was interesting though. Like an anti-zombie movie. All we can do is stand in horror and watch as these unconscious zombies destroy themselves. Kinda the point of the movie though. The zombies usually come for us, but not these. They are us, and we are destroying ourselves.

Both of the above Will Smith films feature the broken bridge motif as well as the 10:01 (if memory serves), but the still that floored me when I saw it sometime last summer was this:

This is Times Square, and Will Smith is the last man on earth. This is an idea that resurfaces. What's interesting about this image though is the melding of the Superman and Batman logos. They are antithetical. Superman is the "sun god" and Batman is the "dark [k]night". The logos (a word which means the word of god, also a ship in the Matrix) together are a union of opposites. Will Smith is ALone in Times Square. He is the union of opposites. He is the saviour, the Christ (a word which means anointed--think of any other folks like this?)

Before I speak about our new president (precedent), I want to share a few more associations. Toward the end of the summer, I was reading the first Octavian Nothing book. At that same time, I was being pummeled with 8's, patriotism, Boston, founding fathers, revolution, etc. I didn't see Hancock until the Fall, but it was part of this.

Hancock, Will Smith, is the Christ, again. He is the union of opposites, Superman & Batman, and he will lead us to the center, out of our sins, toward the authentic, if we follow. The rising sun is the illuminated self. It is enlightenment.

Where I'm going with this is toward a question. Does art imitate life, or life imitate art? And guess what? This question is totally irrelevant. One can't separate the two because they are one. It is all the same moment. Our films are a reflection of our moment. They could be viewed as our collective dream, but what are dreams? Most films have one message. Wake up.

Tom Cruise arrives at this moment in Vanilla Sky. His life is an illusion. He can't keep reality and his dreams straight. Here we see a similar image: The last man in Times Square.

Of course, his means for exiting the matrix is not a good message for those of us with a tenuous grip on our reality. Standing under "the vanilla sky" with the twin towers in the background, Tom Cruise's character is prompted by all the people in his life to jump. That is the exit from the false reality, and the dream (!).

Since we switched gears to Tom Cruise, I noticed an interesting connection of his characters to masks

For good measure:

persona |pərˈsōnə|
noun ( pl. -sonas or -sonae |-ˈsōnē|)
the aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others : her public persona. In psychology, often contrasted with anima .
• a role or character adopted by an author or an actor.
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: Latin, literally 'mask, character played by an actor.'

Logos |ˈlōˌgōs; -ˌgäs|
noun Theology
the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order, identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ.
• (in Jungian psychology) the principle of reason and judgment, associated with the animus. Often contrasted with Eros .
ORIGIN Greek, 'word, reason.'

How to end this unruly deal? One of the reasons for this post was the cover the most recent New Yorker. It prompted me into thinking about Octavian Nothing. The pictures are not as close as they were in my mind, but does illustrate a connection:

So Hancock, eh? Revolution. A new country. An end of the nightmare? Waking up? Maybe. Could Barack Hussein Obama be the union of opposites? Is he the reflection of the Will Smith characters? Maybe. What does that have to do with Tom Cruise? I dunno. Does that make Obama, the Sun? His logo[s] attests to that.

Did you notice the music at the close of the neighborhood inaugural ball on abc? It was the Zion rave music from the matrix series. Interesting.

-final note: I think it took me a while to figure out what the "bridge" was saying.

The Bridge To Nowhere

I remembered some wordplay I saw on a reader board.

Is this, the bridge to No Where?

Or, the bridge to Now Here?

From The Belly Of The Whale

"the pattern that connects"

Table of Contents

Easter Egg

Forward!

culmination

Last Supper

"Like This."

The Philosopher's Stone

Ash Wednesday on a Palm Sunday

son

fool

Paper Trail

space interlude

ray of hope

it's Savage

Hey Jaspal!

vernalis

certifiable

National Treasure

listen

T

Paper Trail

keep looking up! (the deal)

Cloverfield Monster

SOME THING HAS FOUND US

umbrage

It's a good life!

fear

Paper Trail

Du mußt dein Leben ändern!

10:01