Final Exam Notes

·         Sinister – left-handedness

·         Logos - Word

·         Questions from Group presentation

5) What was the song at the end credits? White Wedding – Billy Idol

2) Who’s Oprah compared to? Zeus

1) How many versions of myth? Infinite

3) The shameful  truth = title to Magus silent film

6) The characters: Pirate, irish, Viking, cowboy, Egyptian, Chinese

4)The last words – “That’s all folks!”

·         Teresa and Tori’s blogs

·         All that is past possesses the present

·         Every answer is a form of death

·         The ritual of Adonis – the death of a person at too young of an age, an occasion for mourning

·         James dean, jim Morrison, elvis Presley

·         Sacrifice – to make sacred

·         The collective unconscious

·         Eliade and the chuang chou butterfly

·         When you eat and drink think of me – holy communion

·         The god game, everything is fiction

·         Eurydice

·         Orpheus, a defined musician. Play music to overcome death

·         Bhagvada Gita

·         The swerve

·         Eschatology

·         Metempsychosis

·         Cicada – rapture of music, muses taught humans how to sing

Disney Pegasus

While kids often wish for a magic pony, a unicorn, or Santa Claus perhaps, I always wished I had Pegasus. The Disney version of Pegasus, of course. Hercules is one of my favorite Disney cartoons, but I was jealous that the demi-god got to keep him and ride him, and be his best friend! 

In case most of you didn't know, Pegasus is a winged horse and is Hercules' personal steed. Zeus described him as, "a magnificent horse with the brain of a bird". 

Pegasus was created by Zeus using clouds as a gift for his newborn son, Hercules. That night, however, Hercules was kidnapped. Pegasus did not reunite with Hercules until the now-teenager, went to the Temple of Zeus. Zeus summoned a fully-grown Pegasus, while telling Hercules of their history.

Nicholas Urfe

Drawing near to the end of the Magus, my rage was undeniable. Fowles wants readers to realize their part in reality with a heavy dosage of fiction in this book. It's almost a mind game as if..

Most of us can come to an agreement that Urfe plays this mysterious role and Fowles has been leading us on in a constant wonder. 

Just like how Sherwood mentioned in one of his posts, Urfe's reality is turned upside down and the world of myth swallows him whole. Urfe never knows who to trust from the start to the end; which I agree. 

"If Rome, a city of the vulgar living, had been depressing after Greece, London, a city of the drab dead, was fifty times worse. I had forgotten the innumerability of the place, its ugliness, its termite density.. ...It was like mud after diamonds, dank undergrowth after sunlit marble,"

Each time, Urfe attempts to "mask" himself  with a new identity, he is "reminded of the existential dictum that he is 'condemned to be free'". He goes on following "bad faith" and operate "inauthenticity" until the end, where he finally "concede" that he is helpless...

source: Jay's Analysis

A Dream

When I was younger, I was easily terrified. My family used to be very superstitious. "Don't look in the mirror at midnight because 'something' else will look back." Just plain old ghost story would do some serious "damage" on me, especially when it was time for bed. "Hey, mom! Can I sleep with you??!" Mom locks door to her room. 

hmm..

Every night when I was in my childhood years, I would have recurring nightmares. (Guess I should re-title this blog post). Nightmares which involved very dark emotions and grief. I did not understand then what they meant and why they happened. But I was so scared. I never talked about it to my parents or to anyone, because everything was better again when dawn broke. In my dreams (nightmares), I would be crying my heart out. When I finally twitch and wake up, I realized I probably didn't scream that loud, because back then, I was rooming with my sister and she slept like a log..

"She was looking at the act of looking. ..it the place where another person looking will find 'the image of himself looking',". (Calasso 209)

Now, after reading Calasso, I related it to dreams. When you are dreaming, somehow you actually are looking at yourself in that dream. It is very vivid at times and then your alarm goes off, and you realize it had always been just a dream. 

NIKE

"..while Nike fluttered around her with a crown in her hand," (Calasso 226)

Nike is one of my favorite sporting brands. Who knew it was Greek until this class, Thanks to Mythology 285!
In Greek Mythology, Nikey is the winged Goddess of victory both in battle and peaceful competition. She sat at the side of Zeus and is a mystical presence, symbolizing victorious encounters, Nike presided over history's earliest battlefields. 


A Greek would say, "When we go to battle and win, we say it is NIKE."


"The Nike 'swoosh' embodies the spirit of the winged goddess who inspired the most courageous and chivalrous warriors at the dawn of civilization."

MSU Bobcats!

Clumsy, trouble-maker

Yes. That was me. I was a little girl, annoying, and clumsy. I could not carry a glass of water across the living room without spilling, I could not walk proper enough to not trip on something or get caught in something and fall on my face. 


"Nice to see, good to hold; once broken, considered sold!"
Isn't that how the saying goes? When you walk into a store full of glasses, cups and other fragile items, if you touch it and you break it, YOU BUY IT! I was warned, NEVER to touch anything when walking into stores like these. I'm surprised I never broke anything in any store I've been into. But, I broke many other things I didn't have to buy...


My dad is a big fan of horses. He would have portraits, paintings and also statues of them all over the house. Sometimes he would have statues of rhinos too (the most fragile ones of course). One day, one of his rhino statues was sitting on the counter top. Being the usual me, curious and "itching" for something to grab, I went and touched it. I laid my finger on its pointed and sharp horn; and off it came, broken. My dad, in his usual response, went ballistic on me. "You are so clumsy!! You are so clumsy! Now I have to fix it! It's gonna look horrible now! You can't do anything!" ...talk about "verbal abuse". (Nah my dad loves me anyway). I was told not to do a lot of things but did them anyway.. and got definitely got in trouble..


I learned in one of my college classes that all these were part of growing. My bones were growing, my muscles were building and learning to coordinate with other parts of my body. So THAT'S WHY I WAS SO CLUMSY, DAD!

"I'm just a baby, see, too small and tender-footed for such work. And I've hardly heard of oxen. All I want is mother's milk, hot baths, warm blankets, lots of sleep. I'll even swear an oath: NOT GUILTY!" Words of Hermes, after the mess he had caused, after just being born for a day.

Earliest Memories

1.) The time when I caught the Chicken Pox in kindergarden. 


The first girl who caught the Chicken Pox; her parents clearly didn't know what it was and didn't think it was a big deal and still kept her coming to school. (On the bright side, I got to miss school for a week or more!) :)


2.) I love Barbie dolls

Those bright pink colors on their mini houses, bathrooms, closets, pink dog....
Those extremely cute tiny clothes!
I used to get extremely jealous of my classmates who had prettier dolls and cuter barbie clothes, when they bring them to class. I would save up a lot of money just to buy more barbie dolls. I remember asking my grandmother for her sewing kit when I was 7, so I could sew my own barbie clothes. (It was quite a success! My grandmother was very proud of me) :)
Eventually, I grew out of it... :(


3.) The "Baby bouncer"


The old-school baby bouncer (that consisted of a hook in the ceiling and springs that holds on to the "bouncer") was my best friend. I spent most of my toddler days and childhood at my grandparents'. After kindergarden ended for the day, that's where I took my naps. When I grew too big to sleep in the bouncer, I would still sit in it and pretended it was a swing... 

Best invention ever! (According to me)

4.) My first asthma attack


I was probably 9 or 10 when I first had asthma. At night, in bed, I would be wheezing when I sleep. My parents stayed up all night just to take care of me because my asthma was not just any regular asthma. It was the "silent killer". 

"I was to have no sense of time for the next five days. When I first woke up I did not know how many hours had passed." (The Magus 490)
What feels like just yesterday, when I was back home, living with my parents, had no worries but go to school and play. Days and years have gone by so fast; and I'm in college now playing college tennis, living my dream...

How I came to be (Retold)

I am the youngest in the family, with 2 elder sisters. When I was younger, I remembered always asking my mother, "why do I have sisters? Where did they come from?" My mother used to tell me, "Your eldest sister was found in the trash can outside the house, and your second sister was found in the flower pot, outside the house,"
Oh...... I guess I kind of put the puzzles and pieces together of how I came to be at the time (even though it wasn't the real story). But then again, it never really bothered me not knowing the truth. At one point, while watching Disney's Dumbo, my mother told me again and pointed, "THAT's actually how your sister came about". Did I come that way too?? Looking back now, I find it amusing; the stories my parents had to make up to avoid telling us the truth. 

"Now Zeus felt the crown of his skull being scraped by Athena's sharp javelin. Everything about that little girl was sharp: her eyes, her mind--now living in the mind of her father--the point of her helment. ...Athena had appeared in the crack of his skull, her weapons sparkling, ...She had climbed down to the ground and was walking away from her father," (Calasso 225-226)

Notes on The End

The "Death" of Pan
o The Great Pan is dead!


o Leda and the Swan
Visitation of a bird and a woman
Impregnated Helen and the Trojan War


o Gabriel and AMry
o The second coming
o The book of Revelation - Spiritus Mundi (Spirit of the World)
o The Yates write those poem


o The Myer Briggs Test
o Mecca Stone "Makkah"


"Mountains and Minds"


o Personality test
- thinking (Zeus) extroverted
- intuition (Demeter)
- feeling (Dionysus)
- sensation (Athena)


o Dionysus
o Carl Gustav Jung
o Psyche and cupid


- Eros, Apuleius
- Barefoot and pregnant with his child
- story of the soul "A Butterfly"
- dreams and fairies 


o Grandeur of God "The World is charged with the Grandeur of God"


o Mythos does all the work that psychology does today
o Dionysus: God of Ecstasy 

Class Notes

- To be or not to be... (Hamlet)
- Ontalogy
- page 15 Hainuwele
- To pythian Apollo
- The Earth, Mother of All


Eleusinian Mysteries


Tenemos - piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs
              - land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy   
                 precinct.


Agrarian - land developed for agriculture


Persephone - Kore.


Rituals
- Things go bad if things are not done right


- Burial of a dead man
- Antigone (sophocles)


-Horrible things happened
- Confrontation of who's following the right ritual Creon and Antigone. Who's right?
"Even traitors receive proper burials".
- Collision of rituals
Antigone protecting the rights of individuals


- HALLOWEEN: A mythological event
- feast of fruits and seed
- deads
- all souls day
- exposion of demons and evil
- Rights of Kenosis (emptying out of the year) Plerosis in German


- Tote toga: women take over the last day of the year 
> Anything goes
> Everything is legal and free
> Fasnacht festival


New year's Eve
- so many liberations
- intoxications, moment of suspension of rules
- women takes over


Nacirema (Americans) - highly developed market economy
- teeth brushing
- showering


Sororities and Fraternities Initiation was once painful
- growing pain
- joints pain
- growing too fast


- Metamorphosis


- Eleusinian mystery
Most important ritual
"I have experience death and rebirth"
"Failure of nerve"
Earth is preparation of getting out


Satyr - Half man, half goat; love dancing, playing their pickolos


> The Wind and the Willows
Piper's at the Gates of Dawn
- Pan The Great God
- Erase the memory because the experience is too much to handle 
- remember just a tiny bit
- When hearing the music of the willows, they're on the verge of remembering something important.


> Mysteries of Eleuses
Keikeyon
- Gift of immortal for Demeter's child failed.
Escatology (Eliade)
movement from middle to the End.

Class Notes 9/6/2011

Diamond - Daemons
In a place of a thing
- Conscience figure like Gimmeny Cricket
- Suffering is not necessary a bad thing

Ate - infatuation
      - no longer in control
      - God's (possessed by Gods)
      - Enthusiasm
      - theos

Michael - One's like God
Venus - Goddess of Love?
Athena - Goddess of War

# Athena
- People suffering are the ones that don't allow themselves to be infatuated

Alchemy (mythology) - My chemical Romance

Lyre - Greek stringed musical instrument invented by Hermes
Hermes - messenger of the Gods
Hesiod Theogony

Spiders - Arachre (weaver) weaved from her own body.

The First Ever Myth Presentations

13 September 2011.

1.) The Moon and Death
2.) Megan - A tale of African Origin
3.) Turtle Creation Story
4.) The Saga of the Legend of the Stag
5.) Origin of Mt. Everest
6.) Eliade page 56
7.) La Llorona
8.) Beginning of the World
9.) Legend of the Lady Slipper
10.) Beginning of the Earth
11.) Origin of Medicines
12.) Flood Creation Myth
13.) The Norse
14.) Legend of Devil's Tower
15.) Old Man Coyote creates Earth
16.) Narnian Lamp post
17.) Japanese Creation of the Earth
18.) La Llorona - Rosemary
19.) The stone and the banana
20.) the cast skin
21.) How the night sky got its stars
22.) Who can say where it all came from
23.) Creation Genesis 1
24.) Origin of the Hidden People
25.) Creation of the Earth and the Great Flood
26.) Origin of Death (a cruel bird)
27.) Commache creation myth
28.) How the Elephant got its trunk
29.) Creation by thought
30.) How the snake lost its legs
31.) Thompson Indian - creation of man
32.) The first Lyre
33.) Creation of Everything
34.) The creation of the World

Christmas and Santa

Aren't we all so very excited for Christmas now that it is coming soon in 3 weeks!! Back at where I'm from, my family and I, we didn't celebrate Christmas. I learned about Santa Claus when I was a kid from watching way too much television. I also never got presents on Christmas day. Although my family and I do cherish that day to spend time together and have a reunion dinner with other relatives. Which I think is extremely important. My family may not celebrate Christmas, but my days before Christmas were spent watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas carols. That's what I love about this holiday. Somehow doing just that puts a smile on my face for quite a long time.

"merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!" Santa.

'Hubris'

Two words: Pure genius!

What I am talking about here is the final presentations. This presentation is about our final paper for Mythology class. This is one of my favorites so far. Rosemary presented her paper with a twist! Talk about VOCABS! The Magus is the one book that contains words that are just complete "symbols" to me. We all had the AHA moment when Rosemary said "My friend, Webster Dictionary.." Loved it! :)

"In the light, in the alley between the trees. And everywhere, a darkness beneath. What it is, has no name." (The Magus 460)


Hubris: Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance 

The Magus take 1

As much as I love reading, especially those thick, 500 hundred pages ones, The Magus was just... What's the word.. ridiculous?? I didn't like how it started. It definitely did not give me a good impression that it was going to be good book to read. But I went on reading it anyway.. Urfe was mysterious, arrogant, "Mr-too-good-for-anyone", complicated..


"I wrote a letter in reply to say that I had been expecting her letter, that she was perfectly free. But I tore it up. If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her," (The Magus 55)


And you wonder why Urfe is the way he is. He posed as a strong man, untouchable and unbeatable. Perhaps, he was afraid to get hurt. Vulnerability was never the go-to gift. He has been preparing himself since he was a child. There was barely a father figure because his father was hardly ever seen. When you start giving in to vulnerability, chances of getting hurt by a loved one are 50/50 in my opinion.. 


"Time can heal almost everything".

Mourning for Adonais

"From time to time, the heroes would get together for some common adventure: a hunting party, a conquest, a war. They are a magnificent sight, the heroes lining up in disciplined ranks on the benches of the Argo, muscles glistening like flames." (Calasso 323).


So yesterday, just like my regular day, I was surfing the web to see what I can discover about the mourning of Adonais. The only knowledge I know about Adonais came from the old TV series, Star Trek. I then came to discover more. (Ah, the magnificent world of the Internet..) It is a poem. A poem of 495 lines and in 55 Spenserian stanzas. It is also known as a pastoral elegy written by  Percy Bysshe Shelley for the death of John Keats.


It is a sad poem yet, very moving at the same time. "He is not dead," she says. "But it is the living who are dead,". We hardly ever come to realization that this quote is in fact true. We seem to always think that we will be here and present the next morning. So, we continue to take our time for granted. We always forget that time waits for no one. God's will does not tell time, and when that takes place, it only happens for a reason. Whether we know it or not..


Here, below, are some parts of the poem, that caught my eyes and my mind, which I feel the need to share;

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
He hath awakened from the dream of life
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! — Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.