Tracking down that religious feeling... in the brains of nuns (via KurzweilAI.net) and in the morals of culture.
After thousands of years the clearest thing we might be able to say about the sacred is that it just defies expression. And yet mankind is still haunted by the presence of the divine, the transcendent, the mystical. As Epicurus, an ancient Greek atomist, perhaps jokingly put it, the clearest proof in the existence of gods is that every culture has them. Though he also went on to suggest that as the gods are "immortal and blessed," their lives were too excellent to be bothered by such matters as keeping the cosmos spinning or being angry if humans did not perform the appropriate sacrifices.
10.08.2007
10.06.2007
Manifesting Power: Indra’s Slaying of Vṛtra as Kratophany of the Vedic Kings
Manifesting Power: Indra’s Slaying of Vṛtra as Kratophany of the Vedic Kings
The Ṛigvedic myth from pre-Hindu India in which the god Indra slays the dragon Vṛtra has been considered the most important myth of the Vedic Indians (Frawley 31). However, even the oldest Indian scholar Yāska, writing shortly after the final collection of the Ṛigvedic texts in 600 B.C., was uncertain how to interpret this epic victory (Dandekar 142). For scholars since then, the slaying of Vṛtra has symbolized the release of rains or rivers, the Āryan tribes’ conquest of their enemies, or the creation of the world out of Vṛtra’s body (O’Flaherty 148). Though the socio-cultural context of the Ṛigveda indicates problems in each of these interpretations, they all may point to Indra as being a manifestation of creative power for the Vedic Indians, as embodied in their nobility. Mircea Eliade’s theory of kratophanies has the potential to elucidate why the Āryan tribes may have needed such a multivalent expression of power during their migration into India.
For Eliade, myth is a sacred history that narrates through the acts of supernatural beings how some aspect of reality came into existence, establishing a paradigm for all human actions (Myth 5). In this story, most prominently depicted in hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, Indra wields his divine weapon, the vajra, against the demonic Vṛtra, who is holding the waters prisoner on the mountains. After a legendary battle, the god slays Vṛtra, freeing the waters and in the process bringing forth the light. While supernatural beings and the origin of waters and light are clearly present, it is unclear what sort of paradigm this myth might represent without looking closer at Vedic culture.
Though there is some disagreement over the exact age of the Ṛigveda (Griswold 67-9), most of the hymns seem to have been composed by 1000 B.C. at the latest, by many families living around the Sarasvatī river in the Punjab region of India (Gonda 1). Before their migration, the Indo-European clans may have primarily been cattle-breeders divided between nomadic and settled life with no formal political unions, though they would usually act together in times of war (Griswold 7-10). By roughly 1500 B.C. the pre-Āryan tribes split from the Iranian branch and their shared Varuṇa-religion (Griswold 22-3) and began moving southeast from Central Asia in what is generally characterized as a “mission of conquest and colonization” (Dandekar 169). The scholar H. D. Griswold suggests that the Āryans migrated in multiple bands over several centuries, entering India through waves of both peaceful penetration and armed force against the dark-skinned natives; and though they certainly fought against the aboriginal Dasyus, the Āryan tribes may frequently have warred amongst themselves (34-6). The Ṛigveda mentions five Āryan tribes, to all of whom the god Indra belonged, and it is possible that the hostile Dasyus halted the Vedic Indians in the Punjab region until the five tribes had banded together with enough strength to make the final push towards the Ganges river (Griswold 45-7).
Vedic society eventually settled into a caste system centered around two main classes, the noble or warrior class of the Kṣatriyas, and the priestly Brāhman class (Frawley 101-2). The Vaiśya class contained the rest of the Āryan subjects, common farmers and merchants, while non-Āryan peoples under Vedic rule were relegated to the Śudra class at the bottom of the social structure (Griswold 51). However, the Ṛigveda and its accompanying religion belonged solely to the higher castes, while the masses remained spectators of the rituals (Oldenburg 206). The Vedic monarchy had been strengthened by war against the Dasyus, and many of the Vedic gods may have been patterned after the nobility, especially Indra (Griswold 47). War was portrayed as a struggle between good and evil, but it was often the priestly prayers and mantras that were thought to determine victory (Frawley 102). This is clearly shown by Indra and Vṛtra’s use of magic in the myth. Though the main rituals were already established when the Vedic tribes migrated into India, the hotar, or chief priest, composed most of the Ṛigvedic hymns under contract to the wealthy Kṣatriya class (Griswold 48). The rituals were performed in exchange for a dakṣiṇa, or sacrificial fee (Griswold 49), wealth won by the nobility in battle (Frawley 103), which sets up an interesting relationship between the warring rulers and the conception of the religious texts.
The Ṛigveda primarily focuses on the main gods and the Soma sacrifice (Oldenburg 5), and was a priestly textbook written with the practical interest of serving this ritual (Griswold, 55-6). Jan Gonda contests this view however, positing that many of the hymns were used on other religious occasions (2). Regardless, the Soma offering was the main sacrificial ritual of the Vedic Indians (Macdonell 7), and Indra was considered the main god of that ritual. The hymns praise Indra as the drinker of Soma above all the other gods and the noon Soma pressing was dedicated to him alone (Oldenburg 241). In the myth, Indra drinks three vats of Soma before confronting Vṛtra, a practice the Kṣatriya may have picked up in order to banish fear and restore vigor before battle (Dandekar 176). In brief, the ritual consisted in a portion of milk, meat, vegetables, or Soma being offered into the sacred fire with the rest consumed by the sacrificer (Heesterman, Inner 89). Fixed and spontaneous prayers accompanied the offering (Oldenburg 232) with the purpose of mediating between the sacred and profane worlds (Smith 173). J.C. Heesterman claims that battle and catastrophe had originally belonged to the essence of the sacrifice, including the slaying of Vṛtra as part of the Soma ritual (Inner 86-7), which allowed the Vedic Indiands to enact “the periodical regeneration of the cosmos, the winning of life out of death” (Inner 26).
There seems to be little evidence to connect this specific myth directly to the Soma ritual, though the immense number of hymns composed in Indra’s honor attests to his importance in the Vedic religion (Gonda 3). The Ṛigvedic text clearly shows that Indra-worship was rapidly succeeding the earlier Varuṇa-ruled religion (Dandekar 179). Beyond the offering of sacrifice before battle, in which the priests presumably called on Indra for help, the god was also invoked to bring rain, crops, cows, and strong children (Griswold 43, 207). The sacrificial poems of the Ṛigveda were recited by the hotar in order to celebrate the deeds and splendor of the god as well as to narrate the wishes of man (Oldenburg 214, 235). This praise sought to confirm or strengthen the deity (Gonda 77) and to give him the pleasure of performing new acts inspired by memories of former deeds (Oldenburg 234). Though the first stanzas of the Ṛigvedic poems often invoked the gods to the sacrifice, Gonda sees hymn I.32 as being instead a commemoration of that mythic conflict and an appeal for the god to reiterate his heroic deed (6, 11, 102). Scholars have offered varied perspectives on what Indra’s deed may actually have meant for the Vedic Indians, but like all myths this meaning may remain dependent upon subjective interpretation.
The most prevalent school of interpretation treats the Ṛigvedic mythology as a set of primitive belief that all phenomena of nature are animate and divine (Macdonell 2). From this perspective, Indra is a storm god, and Vṛtra is the withholder of rain (Griswold 88), either a personification of the droughts or dust storms that afflicted the Punjab region before the summer monsoon season (Griswold 33). The vajra is the lightning bolt (Macdonell 55) with which Indra frees the rains from the bellies of the cloud-mountains (Griswold 182). In another naturalistic interpretation, Hermann Oldenburg sees the myth as the freeing of seven earthly rivers from the earthly mountains (76). This theory relates the mythic rivers to actual geography, as the most prominent feature of the Punjab region is its seven rivers (Griswold 30), which the Vedic Indians must have relied upon to support their life in the arid Indian climate. Conversely, Alfred Hillebrandt argues that Vṛtra was an ice-giant and Indra a sun god who freed the waters from the grip of winter, making this an older myth from a northern climate, later developed into a rain mythology (vol. 2, 112-26, Griswold 181). From yet another set of perspective, B. G. Tilak considers the winning of the light to be a yearly myth reflecting the relation of the sacrifice to the solstices (Frawley 33), and in the later ritual texts of the Brāhmaṇas, Vṛtra is the moon swallowed by Indra as the sun during the new moon ritual (Macdonell 159). The Brāhmaṇas also describe Vṛtra as the darkness cleaved by sunrise (Heesterman, Ancient 100).
Problematic to these natural interpretations is that Indra’s name does not seem to designate any phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54). There were already both a rain god and a sun god in the Vedic pantheon, called Trita Āptya and Sūrya, although Indra gradually took over their functions in his rise to prominence in the Vedic texts (Dandekar 151-6). Furthermore, the Ṛigveda does not refer explicitly to the phenomena of either rain or snow (Oldenburg 76-7), and descriptions of the vajra as metallic and four or hundred-angled may be too specific to be symbolic of lightning (Dandekar 147). Though sacrifices were performed to bring rain, it seems likely that the Vedic priests and nobility had more pressing social concerns to express in their mythology.
The second major school of interpretation considers Indra as a war god conquering the foes of the Āryans. As we have seen, Indra was invoked for success in battle, and in the myth, Vṛtra is called Dāsa, another name for the dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants of India (Macdonell 64). In this perspective, Indra represents an embodiment of the imperialistic tendencies of the Vedic Indians, and his vajra is a weapon suggestive of ruthless might (Griswold 177-8). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda describe Indra as being a warrior from birth, and as having been born for the purpose of slaying Vṛtra (Macdonnel 56, 158). R. N. Dandekar even suggests that the Ṛigveda portrays Indra’s physical characteristics and excessive drinking of Soma in such human terms that the god may originally have been a Vedic hero or warlord later elevated to godhead for his miraculous deeds (160-2). This seems unlikely though, as Indra was already a deity in the Varuṇa-religion of the earlier Indo-Iranian period (Griswold 23). Regardless, Indra’s chief epithet is Vṛtrahan, the ‘Vṛtra-slayer,’ and though Vṛtra’s name may have derived from the root vṛ, ‘to encompass’ (Macdonell 60, 159), it may also have derived from the root var, ‘to resist,’ making Indra a divine power called upon to overcome enemy resistance (Dandekar 173).
A major challenge to this sociological interpretation may be in determining what waters and lights freed from the mountains may have signified for a war god. In other Ṛigvedic hymns addressing this myth, Indra is said to shatter Vṛtra’s ninety-nine fortresses when he slays the dragon, which may either refer to storm clouds (Macdonell 60) or to river bends in which Vṛtra lays (Oldenburg 75). Vṛtra is sometimes related to the mythic Dāsa warlord Śambara (Oldenburg 83), whose his ninety-nine mountain fortresses Indra destroys with a flood (Frawley 115-6). As such, the fortresses may have been river-dams built by the native peoples (Dandekar 183), but this does not fully explain why a war-god would be concerned with freeing the waters or winning the light.
In antithesis to this interpretation of Indra as a war god, the deity is often called Maghavan, ‘bountiful’ (Griswold 207), and functions to bestow fertility on the Vedic Indians just as much as to destroy their enemies (Hopkins 244). Even in the myth, Indra is compared to “a bull bursting with seed,” and the bull is sacred to the god as exemplary of his virile powers (Hopkins 243). Hymn I.32 relates the freeing of the waters to another of Indra’s deeds, in which he rescues stolen cows from the hostile tribe of the Paṇis (O’Flaherty 152). Cattle may have symbolized both fertility and wealth for the Āryans (Frawley 119), but the Vedic texts display a tendency of drawing playful connections between disparate entities (Smith 30), which makes it difficult to tell what is actually being referred to in the myth. Cows were occasionally homologous to rain clouds and sunbeams (Macdonell 59), mountains or fortresses (Frawley 119), and to Vṛtra’s mother Dānu (Macdonell 158), making it difficult to tell just what Indra freed or where he freed it from, or more importantly, what this heroic action meant for the Vedic Indians.
While the varied interpretations of the myth as portraying natural, martial, or fertile themes each might have some validity, Gonda asserts that Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra is now essentially viewed as cosmogonic, or at least demiurgic (4): “In the beginning was Vṛtra, who covered over all that the Universe needed,” both the cosmic waters and embryonic sun prior to creation (Brown, Creation 91). In this perspective, Vṛtra is cast as the shell of the cosmic egg, and Indra’s slaying of the demon breaks the shell and forces Heaven and Earth apart, allowing the sun to shine and creation to begin (Brown, Creation 96-8). The Brāhmaṇas state that after the battle, Vrṭra’s eyes become ointment and the overflowing waters become darbha grass used in the Soma ritual, while the vajra is the bow held by the sacrificer to symbolize the rebirth of the sun (Heesterman, Ancient 100). In these later texts the freeing of waters and lights disappears entirely from the myth, and it is the gods Agni and Soma whom Indra frees from Vṛtra’s belly with the use of a sacrificial cake (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 134-6). As Agni and Soma are the two other deities connected with the sacrifice (Macdonell 20), the myth may have eventually been interpreted as a discovery of the ritual (Heesterman, Inner 49). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda equate Agni directly with the fire and sun, and Soma with the flowing waters (Macdonell 91, 107). Indra also recovers both Agni and Soma during his various exploits (O’Flaherty 108, 128). Though these deeds are only briefly alluded to in hymn I.32, the Vedic priests may already have considered Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra as an origin of the sacrifice when the Ṛigveda was being composed.
If this myth indeed revealed the ritual and Indra’s victory was sometimes spoken of as a sacrifice in itself (Brown, Theories 26), it is possible to see how its recitation may have allowed the Brāhmans to reiterate the cosmogonic act. The Ṛigveda however describes Paruṣa as the sacrificial giant from whom the Universe is made, and later Prajāpati becomes the cosmic man (Macdonell 12-3), though Indra may have taken over this role as well during his period of fame. Norman Brown suggests that while some may have taken this demiurgic creation at face value, the sophisticated Āryans saw in the myth “Potenitality striving to overcome Inertia by the aid of Power… in the Universe” (Theories 24). The Kṣatriya may not have paid the Brahmans to indulge in this level of philosophic speculation while wars and society remained disorganized, but it is also possible that the nobility may have benefited from comparison to such manifest creative power.
Having examined the myth through its sociological origins and a variety of interpretations, the application of Eliade’s theories may offer yet another perspective. As stated previously, the myth may have been cosmogonic, and may also have represented a model for how the Vedic Indians acted towards the natural, social, cosmogonic, and ritual worlds. For Eliade, the sacred and religious stand opposed to profane and secular life, but are expressed in historical moments through what he calls Hierophanies (Eliade, Patterns 1-2). “Everything unusual, unique, new, perfect or monstrous at once becomes imbued with magico-religious powers and an object of veneration or fear,” an ambivalence even more clearly expressed when the sacred is revealed as a kratophany, a manifestation of power (Eliade, Patterns 13-14). As opposed to having an anthropological approach that might place the myth in the context of a specific people, Eliade is primarily concerned with how myth brings out certain patterns of meaning (Strenski 105). Theorists such as Malinowski and Lévi-Struass are more concerned with the cultural functions of myth (Malinowski 19) and its linguistic structure (Lévi-Strauss 206-7), in contrast to Eliade, who relies on the development of generalized cross-cultural comparisons that are ungrounded in sociological contexts (Strenski 105). Regardless, Eliade’s concepts may still be useful for establishing what this particular myth meant for the Vedic Indians.
Eliade at first suggests a natural interpretation, treating Indra as a sky-god concretized into the dynamic force of the storm (Eliade, Patterns 52-3). However, Hierophanies of the sky can never be reduced to meteorological phenomena and instead become expressions of power and sovereignty, epiphanies of force and violence upon whose energy life depends (Eliade, Patterns 59, 83). As such, Indra is the epitome of all energy: his weapon denotes strength, his symbol is the bull, and he rules over the Vedic gods and humans as king (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 99). Indra governs rainfall, fertility, the fields and plough, and the inexhaustible power of generating life (Eliade, Patterns 85). While his name has uncertain meaning for any particular phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54), it is commonly thought to derive from indu, ‘drop,’ suggesting not only drops of rain and pressed Soma but also the virile power of semen (Dandekar 186). Indra may not directly make the Universe, but he is a personification of the cosmic and biological energy necessary to keep life in motion (Eliade, Patterns 84-6). Of course, it may be difficult to ascribe this role of cosmic progenitor to the sky-gods of other religions, much less to the Vedic religion, without studying the specific socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, Eliade’s theory operates on the assumption that as a hierophany, myth reveals the sacred, a concept generally viewed as being transcendent and ineffable. While a culture’s mythic expressions of its daily rituals and need for origins may have arisen from functional and creative desires, it seems impossible to prove that all members of that society subjectively viewed these myths as being a manifestation of an inexpressible reality, without asking them in person.
As the progenitors of the Ṛigvedic Indra mythology, the Vedic Kṣatriya may have found it easier to rule their subjects and lead them through the hostile natives into India if their noble strength was perceived by these subjects as vital for the continuation of social and cosmic life. While trying to unite the Vedic tribes in the Punjab region, the emerging nobility may have commissioned the Brāhmans to compose new hymns to the deity who most portrayed these desirable characteristics of courage, virility, and bounteousness. Thus Indra was hailed as the Kṣatriya of the gods, and he gradually took over other deific functions that would grant him the ultimate sovereignty that the nobility required to rule.
In his role as divine king, Indra could bring the rains and daylight, win battles against the Dasyus, make the fields, cows, and women fertile, reveal the sacrificial ritual, and through all these continually recreate the cosmos for the Āryans. Hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, the epic commemoration of Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra, is exemplary of this godly will to power because it concentrates all of Indra’s creative functions into one heroic deed. The god’s victory is not simply over a draconic representation of drought, darkness, Dasyu foes, or cosmic disintegration, but may have revealed to the Vedic people that their leaders could overcome any obstacle hindering their growing civilization’s rise to power.
Bibliography
Brown, W. Norman. “The Creation Myth of the Rig Veda.” JAOS 62.2 (1942): 85-98
--- “Theories of Creation in the Rig Veda.” JAOS 85.1 (1965): 23-34
Dandekar, R.N. “Vedic Mythological Tracts.” Delhi: Ajanta Publications (India), 1979
Eliade, Mircea. “Myth and Reality.” New York: Harper and Row, 1963
--- “Patterns in Comparative Religion.” Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1958
Frawley, David. “Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization.” Reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999
Gonda, J. “The Indra Hymns of the Ṛgveda.” Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989
Griswold, H.D. “The Religion of the Ṛigveda.” Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971
Heesterman, J.C. “The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration: The Rājasūya Described According to the Yajus Texts and Annotated.” ‘S-Gravenhage: Mouton & Co,1957
--- “The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985
Hillebrandt, Alfred. “Vedic Mythology.” 1st English Lang. ed. 2 vols. Trans. Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981
Hopkins, E. Washburn. “Indra as God of Fertility.” JAOS 36 (1916): 242-268
Lévi-Struass, C. “Structural Anthropology.” Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967)
Macdonell, A.A. “The Vedic Mythology.” Varanasi: The Indological Book House, 1971
Malinowski, B. “The Psychology of Myth.”
O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, trans. “The Rig Veda: An Anthology.” London: Penguin Books, 1981
Oldenburg, Herman. “The Religion of the Veda.” Trans. Shridhar B. Shrotri. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988
Smith, Brian K. “Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1989
Strenski, Ivan. “Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, and Malinowski.” Houndmills: The Macmillan Press, 1987
The Ṛigvedic myth from pre-Hindu India in which the god Indra slays the dragon Vṛtra has been considered the most important myth of the Vedic Indians (Frawley 31). However, even the oldest Indian scholar Yāska, writing shortly after the final collection of the Ṛigvedic texts in 600 B.C., was uncertain how to interpret this epic victory (Dandekar 142). For scholars since then, the slaying of Vṛtra has symbolized the release of rains or rivers, the Āryan tribes’ conquest of their enemies, or the creation of the world out of Vṛtra’s body (O’Flaherty 148). Though the socio-cultural context of the Ṛigveda indicates problems in each of these interpretations, they all may point to Indra as being a manifestation of creative power for the Vedic Indians, as embodied in their nobility. Mircea Eliade’s theory of kratophanies has the potential to elucidate why the Āryan tribes may have needed such a multivalent expression of power during their migration into India.
For Eliade, myth is a sacred history that narrates through the acts of supernatural beings how some aspect of reality came into existence, establishing a paradigm for all human actions (Myth 5). In this story, most prominently depicted in hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, Indra wields his divine weapon, the vajra, against the demonic Vṛtra, who is holding the waters prisoner on the mountains. After a legendary battle, the god slays Vṛtra, freeing the waters and in the process bringing forth the light. While supernatural beings and the origin of waters and light are clearly present, it is unclear what sort of paradigm this myth might represent without looking closer at Vedic culture.
Though there is some disagreement over the exact age of the Ṛigveda (Griswold 67-9), most of the hymns seem to have been composed by 1000 B.C. at the latest, by many families living around the Sarasvatī river in the Punjab region of India (Gonda 1). Before their migration, the Indo-European clans may have primarily been cattle-breeders divided between nomadic and settled life with no formal political unions, though they would usually act together in times of war (Griswold 7-10). By roughly 1500 B.C. the pre-Āryan tribes split from the Iranian branch and their shared Varuṇa-religion (Griswold 22-3) and began moving southeast from Central Asia in what is generally characterized as a “mission of conquest and colonization” (Dandekar 169). The scholar H. D. Griswold suggests that the Āryans migrated in multiple bands over several centuries, entering India through waves of both peaceful penetration and armed force against the dark-skinned natives; and though they certainly fought against the aboriginal Dasyus, the Āryan tribes may frequently have warred amongst themselves (34-6). The Ṛigveda mentions five Āryan tribes, to all of whom the god Indra belonged, and it is possible that the hostile Dasyus halted the Vedic Indians in the Punjab region until the five tribes had banded together with enough strength to make the final push towards the Ganges river (Griswold 45-7).
Vedic society eventually settled into a caste system centered around two main classes, the noble or warrior class of the Kṣatriyas, and the priestly Brāhman class (Frawley 101-2). The Vaiśya class contained the rest of the Āryan subjects, common farmers and merchants, while non-Āryan peoples under Vedic rule were relegated to the Śudra class at the bottom of the social structure (Griswold 51). However, the Ṛigveda and its accompanying religion belonged solely to the higher castes, while the masses remained spectators of the rituals (Oldenburg 206). The Vedic monarchy had been strengthened by war against the Dasyus, and many of the Vedic gods may have been patterned after the nobility, especially Indra (Griswold 47). War was portrayed as a struggle between good and evil, but it was often the priestly prayers and mantras that were thought to determine victory (Frawley 102). This is clearly shown by Indra and Vṛtra’s use of magic in the myth. Though the main rituals were already established when the Vedic tribes migrated into India, the hotar, or chief priest, composed most of the Ṛigvedic hymns under contract to the wealthy Kṣatriya class (Griswold 48). The rituals were performed in exchange for a dakṣiṇa, or sacrificial fee (Griswold 49), wealth won by the nobility in battle (Frawley 103), which sets up an interesting relationship between the warring rulers and the conception of the religious texts.
The Ṛigveda primarily focuses on the main gods and the Soma sacrifice (Oldenburg 5), and was a priestly textbook written with the practical interest of serving this ritual (Griswold, 55-6). Jan Gonda contests this view however, positing that many of the hymns were used on other religious occasions (2). Regardless, the Soma offering was the main sacrificial ritual of the Vedic Indians (Macdonell 7), and Indra was considered the main god of that ritual. The hymns praise Indra as the drinker of Soma above all the other gods and the noon Soma pressing was dedicated to him alone (Oldenburg 241). In the myth, Indra drinks three vats of Soma before confronting Vṛtra, a practice the Kṣatriya may have picked up in order to banish fear and restore vigor before battle (Dandekar 176). In brief, the ritual consisted in a portion of milk, meat, vegetables, or Soma being offered into the sacred fire with the rest consumed by the sacrificer (Heesterman, Inner 89). Fixed and spontaneous prayers accompanied the offering (Oldenburg 232) with the purpose of mediating between the sacred and profane worlds (Smith 173). J.C. Heesterman claims that battle and catastrophe had originally belonged to the essence of the sacrifice, including the slaying of Vṛtra as part of the Soma ritual (Inner 86-7), which allowed the Vedic Indiands to enact “the periodical regeneration of the cosmos, the winning of life out of death” (Inner 26).
There seems to be little evidence to connect this specific myth directly to the Soma ritual, though the immense number of hymns composed in Indra’s honor attests to his importance in the Vedic religion (Gonda 3). The Ṛigvedic text clearly shows that Indra-worship was rapidly succeeding the earlier Varuṇa-ruled religion (Dandekar 179). Beyond the offering of sacrifice before battle, in which the priests presumably called on Indra for help, the god was also invoked to bring rain, crops, cows, and strong children (Griswold 43, 207). The sacrificial poems of the Ṛigveda were recited by the hotar in order to celebrate the deeds and splendor of the god as well as to narrate the wishes of man (Oldenburg 214, 235). This praise sought to confirm or strengthen the deity (Gonda 77) and to give him the pleasure of performing new acts inspired by memories of former deeds (Oldenburg 234). Though the first stanzas of the Ṛigvedic poems often invoked the gods to the sacrifice, Gonda sees hymn I.32 as being instead a commemoration of that mythic conflict and an appeal for the god to reiterate his heroic deed (6, 11, 102). Scholars have offered varied perspectives on what Indra’s deed may actually have meant for the Vedic Indians, but like all myths this meaning may remain dependent upon subjective interpretation.
The most prevalent school of interpretation treats the Ṛigvedic mythology as a set of primitive belief that all phenomena of nature are animate and divine (Macdonell 2). From this perspective, Indra is a storm god, and Vṛtra is the withholder of rain (Griswold 88), either a personification of the droughts or dust storms that afflicted the Punjab region before the summer monsoon season (Griswold 33). The vajra is the lightning bolt (Macdonell 55) with which Indra frees the rains from the bellies of the cloud-mountains (Griswold 182). In another naturalistic interpretation, Hermann Oldenburg sees the myth as the freeing of seven earthly rivers from the earthly mountains (76). This theory relates the mythic rivers to actual geography, as the most prominent feature of the Punjab region is its seven rivers (Griswold 30), which the Vedic Indians must have relied upon to support their life in the arid Indian climate. Conversely, Alfred Hillebrandt argues that Vṛtra was an ice-giant and Indra a sun god who freed the waters from the grip of winter, making this an older myth from a northern climate, later developed into a rain mythology (vol. 2, 112-26, Griswold 181). From yet another set of perspective, B. G. Tilak considers the winning of the light to be a yearly myth reflecting the relation of the sacrifice to the solstices (Frawley 33), and in the later ritual texts of the Brāhmaṇas, Vṛtra is the moon swallowed by Indra as the sun during the new moon ritual (Macdonell 159). The Brāhmaṇas also describe Vṛtra as the darkness cleaved by sunrise (Heesterman, Ancient 100).
Problematic to these natural interpretations is that Indra’s name does not seem to designate any phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54). There were already both a rain god and a sun god in the Vedic pantheon, called Trita Āptya and Sūrya, although Indra gradually took over their functions in his rise to prominence in the Vedic texts (Dandekar 151-6). Furthermore, the Ṛigveda does not refer explicitly to the phenomena of either rain or snow (Oldenburg 76-7), and descriptions of the vajra as metallic and four or hundred-angled may be too specific to be symbolic of lightning (Dandekar 147). Though sacrifices were performed to bring rain, it seems likely that the Vedic priests and nobility had more pressing social concerns to express in their mythology.
The second major school of interpretation considers Indra as a war god conquering the foes of the Āryans. As we have seen, Indra was invoked for success in battle, and in the myth, Vṛtra is called Dāsa, another name for the dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants of India (Macdonell 64). In this perspective, Indra represents an embodiment of the imperialistic tendencies of the Vedic Indians, and his vajra is a weapon suggestive of ruthless might (Griswold 177-8). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda describe Indra as being a warrior from birth, and as having been born for the purpose of slaying Vṛtra (Macdonnel 56, 158). R. N. Dandekar even suggests that the Ṛigveda portrays Indra’s physical characteristics and excessive drinking of Soma in such human terms that the god may originally have been a Vedic hero or warlord later elevated to godhead for his miraculous deeds (160-2). This seems unlikely though, as Indra was already a deity in the Varuṇa-religion of the earlier Indo-Iranian period (Griswold 23). Regardless, Indra’s chief epithet is Vṛtrahan, the ‘Vṛtra-slayer,’ and though Vṛtra’s name may have derived from the root vṛ, ‘to encompass’ (Macdonell 60, 159), it may also have derived from the root var, ‘to resist,’ making Indra a divine power called upon to overcome enemy resistance (Dandekar 173).
A major challenge to this sociological interpretation may be in determining what waters and lights freed from the mountains may have signified for a war god. In other Ṛigvedic hymns addressing this myth, Indra is said to shatter Vṛtra’s ninety-nine fortresses when he slays the dragon, which may either refer to storm clouds (Macdonell 60) or to river bends in which Vṛtra lays (Oldenburg 75). Vṛtra is sometimes related to the mythic Dāsa warlord Śambara (Oldenburg 83), whose his ninety-nine mountain fortresses Indra destroys with a flood (Frawley 115-6). As such, the fortresses may have been river-dams built by the native peoples (Dandekar 183), but this does not fully explain why a war-god would be concerned with freeing the waters or winning the light.
In antithesis to this interpretation of Indra as a war god, the deity is often called Maghavan, ‘bountiful’ (Griswold 207), and functions to bestow fertility on the Vedic Indians just as much as to destroy their enemies (Hopkins 244). Even in the myth, Indra is compared to “a bull bursting with seed,” and the bull is sacred to the god as exemplary of his virile powers (Hopkins 243). Hymn I.32 relates the freeing of the waters to another of Indra’s deeds, in which he rescues stolen cows from the hostile tribe of the Paṇis (O’Flaherty 152). Cattle may have symbolized both fertility and wealth for the Āryans (Frawley 119), but the Vedic texts display a tendency of drawing playful connections between disparate entities (Smith 30), which makes it difficult to tell what is actually being referred to in the myth. Cows were occasionally homologous to rain clouds and sunbeams (Macdonell 59), mountains or fortresses (Frawley 119), and to Vṛtra’s mother Dānu (Macdonell 158), making it difficult to tell just what Indra freed or where he freed it from, or more importantly, what this heroic action meant for the Vedic Indians.
While the varied interpretations of the myth as portraying natural, martial, or fertile themes each might have some validity, Gonda asserts that Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra is now essentially viewed as cosmogonic, or at least demiurgic (4): “In the beginning was Vṛtra, who covered over all that the Universe needed,” both the cosmic waters and embryonic sun prior to creation (Brown, Creation 91). In this perspective, Vṛtra is cast as the shell of the cosmic egg, and Indra’s slaying of the demon breaks the shell and forces Heaven and Earth apart, allowing the sun to shine and creation to begin (Brown, Creation 96-8). The Brāhmaṇas state that after the battle, Vrṭra’s eyes become ointment and the overflowing waters become darbha grass used in the Soma ritual, while the vajra is the bow held by the sacrificer to symbolize the rebirth of the sun (Heesterman, Ancient 100). In these later texts the freeing of waters and lights disappears entirely from the myth, and it is the gods Agni and Soma whom Indra frees from Vṛtra’s belly with the use of a sacrificial cake (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 134-6). As Agni and Soma are the two other deities connected with the sacrifice (Macdonell 20), the myth may have eventually been interpreted as a discovery of the ritual (Heesterman, Inner 49). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda equate Agni directly with the fire and sun, and Soma with the flowing waters (Macdonell 91, 107). Indra also recovers both Agni and Soma during his various exploits (O’Flaherty 108, 128). Though these deeds are only briefly alluded to in hymn I.32, the Vedic priests may already have considered Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra as an origin of the sacrifice when the Ṛigveda was being composed.
If this myth indeed revealed the ritual and Indra’s victory was sometimes spoken of as a sacrifice in itself (Brown, Theories 26), it is possible to see how its recitation may have allowed the Brāhmans to reiterate the cosmogonic act. The Ṛigveda however describes Paruṣa as the sacrificial giant from whom the Universe is made, and later Prajāpati becomes the cosmic man (Macdonell 12-3), though Indra may have taken over this role as well during his period of fame. Norman Brown suggests that while some may have taken this demiurgic creation at face value, the sophisticated Āryans saw in the myth “Potenitality striving to overcome Inertia by the aid of Power… in the Universe” (Theories 24). The Kṣatriya may not have paid the Brahmans to indulge in this level of philosophic speculation while wars and society remained disorganized, but it is also possible that the nobility may have benefited from comparison to such manifest creative power.
Having examined the myth through its sociological origins and a variety of interpretations, the application of Eliade’s theories may offer yet another perspective. As stated previously, the myth may have been cosmogonic, and may also have represented a model for how the Vedic Indians acted towards the natural, social, cosmogonic, and ritual worlds. For Eliade, the sacred and religious stand opposed to profane and secular life, but are expressed in historical moments through what he calls Hierophanies (Eliade, Patterns 1-2). “Everything unusual, unique, new, perfect or monstrous at once becomes imbued with magico-religious powers and an object of veneration or fear,” an ambivalence even more clearly expressed when the sacred is revealed as a kratophany, a manifestation of power (Eliade, Patterns 13-14). As opposed to having an anthropological approach that might place the myth in the context of a specific people, Eliade is primarily concerned with how myth brings out certain patterns of meaning (Strenski 105). Theorists such as Malinowski and Lévi-Struass are more concerned with the cultural functions of myth (Malinowski 19) and its linguistic structure (Lévi-Strauss 206-7), in contrast to Eliade, who relies on the development of generalized cross-cultural comparisons that are ungrounded in sociological contexts (Strenski 105). Regardless, Eliade’s concepts may still be useful for establishing what this particular myth meant for the Vedic Indians.
Eliade at first suggests a natural interpretation, treating Indra as a sky-god concretized into the dynamic force of the storm (Eliade, Patterns 52-3). However, Hierophanies of the sky can never be reduced to meteorological phenomena and instead become expressions of power and sovereignty, epiphanies of force and violence upon whose energy life depends (Eliade, Patterns 59, 83). As such, Indra is the epitome of all energy: his weapon denotes strength, his symbol is the bull, and he rules over the Vedic gods and humans as king (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 99). Indra governs rainfall, fertility, the fields and plough, and the inexhaustible power of generating life (Eliade, Patterns 85). While his name has uncertain meaning for any particular phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54), it is commonly thought to derive from indu, ‘drop,’ suggesting not only drops of rain and pressed Soma but also the virile power of semen (Dandekar 186). Indra may not directly make the Universe, but he is a personification of the cosmic and biological energy necessary to keep life in motion (Eliade, Patterns 84-6). Of course, it may be difficult to ascribe this role of cosmic progenitor to the sky-gods of other religions, much less to the Vedic religion, without studying the specific socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, Eliade’s theory operates on the assumption that as a hierophany, myth reveals the sacred, a concept generally viewed as being transcendent and ineffable. While a culture’s mythic expressions of its daily rituals and need for origins may have arisen from functional and creative desires, it seems impossible to prove that all members of that society subjectively viewed these myths as being a manifestation of an inexpressible reality, without asking them in person.
As the progenitors of the Ṛigvedic Indra mythology, the Vedic Kṣatriya may have found it easier to rule their subjects and lead them through the hostile natives into India if their noble strength was perceived by these subjects as vital for the continuation of social and cosmic life. While trying to unite the Vedic tribes in the Punjab region, the emerging nobility may have commissioned the Brāhmans to compose new hymns to the deity who most portrayed these desirable characteristics of courage, virility, and bounteousness. Thus Indra was hailed as the Kṣatriya of the gods, and he gradually took over other deific functions that would grant him the ultimate sovereignty that the nobility required to rule.
In his role as divine king, Indra could bring the rains and daylight, win battles against the Dasyus, make the fields, cows, and women fertile, reveal the sacrificial ritual, and through all these continually recreate the cosmos for the Āryans. Hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, the epic commemoration of Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra, is exemplary of this godly will to power because it concentrates all of Indra’s creative functions into one heroic deed. The god’s victory is not simply over a draconic representation of drought, darkness, Dasyu foes, or cosmic disintegration, but may have revealed to the Vedic people that their leaders could overcome any obstacle hindering their growing civilization’s rise to power.
Bibliography
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--- “Theories of Creation in the Rig Veda.” JAOS 85.1 (1965): 23-34
Dandekar, R.N. “Vedic Mythological Tracts.” Delhi: Ajanta Publications (India), 1979
Eliade, Mircea. “Myth and Reality.” New York: Harper and Row, 1963
--- “Patterns in Comparative Religion.” Trans. Rosemary Sheed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1958
Frawley, David. “Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization.” Reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999
Gonda, J. “The Indra Hymns of the Ṛgveda.” Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989
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Heesterman, J.C. “The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration: The Rājasūya Described According to the Yajus Texts and Annotated.” ‘S-Gravenhage: Mouton & Co,1957
--- “The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985
Hillebrandt, Alfred. “Vedic Mythology.” 1st English Lang. ed. 2 vols. Trans. Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981
Hopkins, E. Washburn. “Indra as God of Fertility.” JAOS 36 (1916): 242-268
Lévi-Struass, C. “Structural Anthropology.” Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967)
Macdonell, A.A. “The Vedic Mythology.” Varanasi: The Indological Book House, 1971
Malinowski, B. “The Psychology of Myth.”
O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, trans. “The Rig Veda: An Anthology.” London: Penguin Books, 1981
Oldenburg, Herman. “The Religion of the Veda.” Trans. Shridhar B. Shrotri. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988
Smith, Brian K. “Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1989
Strenski, Ivan. “Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, and Malinowski.” Houndmills: The Macmillan Press, 1987
10.01.2007
A Personal Myth (fiction)
A Personal Myth (fiction)
Before the World, all was dark, an empty voracious night called the Dream. At the heart of this Dream lay the Maelstrom, a blind crawling chaos with eight thousand hoary legs skittering out into the void. The Maelstrom had no parents, no progeny, but had woven a great Web from her womb that stretched to the ends of the Dream, and she slept in the middle of this Web, waiting, and dreaming all the possible things that might one day be. She dreamt of animals, constructions, man, and each Form she dreamt was drawn by her legs into the Web, there the Forms hung frozen in the Dream, ready for her to consume, and digest them back into chaos to be spun again.
One such dream was a man named Murphy, who likewise had no history, having just been dreamt. But on seeing that all the scattered Forms around him were being drawn slowly into the monster’s gaping maw decided that he would not be eaten and returned back to the unformed chaos. The Maelstrom’s Dream had grown so large by now that there were endless places to hide; one could wander for lifetimes in any direction through the strange frozen Forms without ever once escaping the Web. Murphy realized that if he were to combat the Maelstrom, he too would have to dream, imagining a Sword, a great Knowledge, and a Reflection of himself to act as a decoy, as food for the beast while he waited in the shadows, ready to slay her.
And so Murphy dreamt, and waited, and soon he had his Sword and Knowledge, and the Maelstrom’s legs reached for the Reflection to draw it into her jaws, and still he waited, at the edge of the Dream, for that moment when the Maelstrom was busy consuming his Reflection, and he would be able to strike. And as planned, she ate. The Reflection was slowly ground down in endless rows of jagged teeth into shimmering shards that were scattered to the edges of the Night, becoming Stars. All the while the Maelstrom hummed a low tuneless melody to herself, as it was all the same to her what she ate, a screaming man or his mute reflection, for she was the dark itself, which consumes all things. Then Murphy raised his Sword, its edge sharpened to pierce his toothsome foe, and he slashed down through the Web, through the Dream, and cleaved the Maelstrom in two. Each of the Maelstrom’s halves reared up to attack, one of them raked its great pincers across the side of his face so that his left Eye was torn and blinded. But Murphy was too close to the Dream’s core for the Maelstrom’s halves to grasp him.
He slashed again, and a third time, each slice further subdividing the Maelstrom until it was sundered into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than a man’s hand, eight-limbed miniatures of their Mother’s pattern, all skittering about at Murphy’s feet. The Hero, for that’s what he had become for this half-formed Dream, summoned his great Knowledge and called the creatures “Spider,” a grave insult he had overheard in the Maelstrom’s sleeping murmurs. Murphy banished the Spiders to the edges of the Dream, where they might bide in the dark corners in their own small webs, but never come back together to overwhelm the Dream. With his foe thus fought, and her remnants dispersed, Murphy planted the Sword in the darkness beside him. And then he smiled, which was like a glimmer of Light for the first time striking the dark World. The battle had made him tired, so gathering the cut strands of the Web around him like a blanket, he laid in the center where the Maelstrom had lay, and had a Dream of his own.
As he slept, Murphy grew, until his body filled the void. His ribs became the rocky earth, his fingers blossomed into flowers and trees, and his blood flowed into rivers and seas. He dreamt that his head would become a castle, but it continued to expand until it was a mountain whose peak brushed the Sky and looked down over the whole young World. His Eyes took flight, and chased each other around the Sky, the whole one shedding such a glorious Light that it illuminated everything below, and the torn Eye reflecting as best it could, following the glowing orb as a sullen moon. And above their orbit, his haughty brow formed the dome of Space, and his hair tangled with the Stars of his shattered Reflection. And so the World came into being and was quickly populated with Murphy’s imagination, all life a Dream to stave off the uncertainty that lies in the darkness of night.
Murphy had but one law for his newborn Dream: that whatever could happen would happen, with as much glory and wonder as might be brought forth into the World. However, being only a young World, he was mightily alone, and could dream only those Forms that he had seen hanging in the Maelstrom’s Web. The next day, Murphy’s strong Eye arched over the whole World while his other Eye struggled to catch up, shedding its meager gaze through the night. Murphy reflected on the Forms he had seen and how he might make sense of their disorder, all chaotic from being hung in the limbo of the Web. Murphy took one Form into his hands, and called it a Book, and when next his Eye illuminated the land, he transcribed what he saw into the Book. Later, as he lay in his castle on top of the mountain, he reflected over what had been written, naming the Forms and sorting them out into Classes and Orders: those that moved and those that were rooted, those that had no life, and those which were invisible, spirits or forces he could only see by their affect on the others; that which stirs water, that which melts snow, that which weighs on beasts and reduces them to bones. Murphy watched his World, and wrote, and soon filled the whole Book, which he closed with another bright smile, feeling that he had now ordered everything in its right place.
Yet when next his Eye rose Murphy looked closer and was shocked, and looked closer still at his World. For he saw that where there had been only enough Forms to fill a Book, now there were Details, each Form its own small World of infinite variations. And Murphy realized that he would have to write another Book, several Books, a Book for each Form, which he started at once, each day focusing his Eye on all the Details of just one Form. He wrote intensely, setting each finished Book on a shelf in his keep, but soon realized there would be little room left to sleep, and he would have to do something with this endless library. Being ever resourceful, as this was his own Dream after all, Murphy erected another story to his castle, and another story after that, filling each with Books and moving his bed ever closer to the Sky.
But still he had but scratched the surface of recording everything in his domain, and rarely going down to the lowest stories of his castle anymore became afraid, that he might forget something that he had written, that he might accidentally record something twice. This thought filled Murphy with much confusion, over what a doubling of Forms might mean (for he felt still somewhat guilty for casting his Reflection into the Maelstrom’s jaws). So one night he hurried down the Book-lined stairs, determined to take note of what each volume contained, and if possible devise a catalogue, an Order of Orders, which was more work and Words, but he had an eternity to fill with Words, his only companion. So he descended and descended and somewhere on the second story he began to notice Webs, thick draping dust which sent a chill down his spine. Having built his knowledge up to the Sky, Murphy had left his earliest words to rot and ruin. For roping up his earliest tomes, and shredding them back into chaos, was a Spider, still a slivered reflection of its Dark Mother’s horror. Had it not obeyed his banishing Words? He called it Spider again, but still it spun a web that threatened to tear his Words asunder and reduce them back into unknown Forms.
Murphy rued that he had planted his Sword on the roof of his castle, where it had grown to be a Tree of enormous girth, whose branches gave shade and sweet fruit to his whole World. If only he had the Sword now he might slay this intruder. But at the very thought of his dark, dividing blade, the Spider trembled and turned and straightaway leapt towards Murphy, its jaws snapping wide to avenge its Mother’s murder. Unarmed and in profound terror, Murphy turned and fled, scattering stacks of precious manuscripts in his flight. Up story after story he fled, racing to the top of his tower, with the Spider eating his every footstep, not more than a pace behind and growing larger as it climbed, filing the entire castle with its chaotic binds.
Once upon the roof Murphy didn’t dare stop, but climbed right up the Tree, what had once been his Sword, struggling up the branches towards the overhanging void of the Sky. In his haste the branches were stripped bare and became bones, their fruit made quick into beating organs. But Murphy had no time to marvel at this transformation, for the Spider was rapidly gaining. Glancing back, Murphy swore that it was a Spider no more, but the Mother, the very Maelstrom herself come back to torment him, to finish what she started when she first spun his Form. So Murphy climbed, and wondered that the Tree had no end in sight and seemed to breathe and sigh as he rushed up higher. Indeed it rose so high that its branches pierced the Sky, and Murphy clambered out through this hole into another World, where at last he stopped and looked down below.
The Maelstrom had now webbed the entire Tree, the ropey tendrils almost obscuring its natural growth. Murphy gasped, for there was his sought for Order of Order, not the linear branches he had written in his Books, but a sprawling Net that connected each Form to all others. He could embrace the Maelstrom if it wasn’t his sworn Nemesis, so instead he smiled, and at his joy the Maelstrom was reduced, turning back into a Spider that cowered in the branches, rattling the bones of Forms that lay caught in its Web. Gasping, Murphy stepped back again. For he had not climbed up the Tree and out of a hole in the Sky at all, but had emerged from the head of another Form, one he had not seen before yet was the loveliest in this entire World. This Form was familiar, in a way his own body was familiar, but different in certain appealing ways. He called the Form Woman, and lay down like the Sky over the Earth to gaze into her eyes, which slowly opened with an equally radiant smile.
The Woman called herself Mata, and told Murphy she had just woken from the most peculiar Dream, in which a small man had climbed up from out of her insides, frightened and chased by his own frail Shadow. Murphy listened and wondered what this could mean, for hadn’t it been his World, his Dream, that was now this beautiful Woman? Perhaps there were several Worlds, endless Dreamers, of whom he was only one, and Murphy wanted to set out at once to find them all, to record all the Forms of all the Dreams that might be. But Mata grabbed his hand with such force and held him to her, so that Murphy decided to be content in her sweet embrace. And that is why the Sky rests above the Earth and does not go running off at the slightest whim and wonder. And so they lay like this, with his Eyes gazing over her entire body, learning her Details that still contained all the Forms he had studied before.
And all he saw was beautiful and wondrous, though sometimes behind Mata’s Eyes, when she was gazing off at a distant storm, Murphy thought he saw a darkness unfurling, the spinning Form of the Shadow he had left behind in that other World. For somewhere the Maelstrom was still inside her, biding its Time and weaving its Order of Orders that would inevitably consume his Books and Words. He called that Shadow Death, and though it made him deeply sad, Murphy loved Mata even more for that chaos she bore inside her chest; the necessary uncertainty of living that drove off boredom and forced him to act his best. For on the day it might strike and finally take him back into the darkness of night, he wanted to be as full of love and wonder as it was possible for a man to realize in this life.
And so Murphy and Mata lived like this, reveling in their shared Dream, and occasionally other Dreamers wandered by, whose Dreams Murphy wrote down in his Books and added to his own. And they were happy and as full of love and wonder as it was possible for them to be, and before long Mata gave birth, her body heaving with great tremors which shook the entire Earth. From between the mountains of her legs a bright being shot forth, a boy of such vigor and mirth that he might have glory over the entire World. Murphy named him Will, writing the name down on the first page of a new Book. But Mata was not done, for in her labors still struggled a second son, who after many more hours crept slowly into the World. This boy seemed weak and woeful, trembling at life and almost unable to survive. Yet Murphy saw a gleam in his second son’s ryes, a deep understanding immediately applied when the boy crawled over to the Book and began reading what had been written inside. So Murphy called the boy Wise, and that night, Mata dreamt that her youngest child would grow to take care of his father’s library, ordering all the Dreams in all the Worlds, a task of which Murphy thoughtfully approved.
As for the first Twin, Will was wild, and so full of life that they could never predict what he would get into. He was always found running around and building forts from unfinished Forms, or inventing games and songs for the children of the other Dreamers to play, who all worshipped him for his bright smile and exuberance. He even carved a Sword like his father’s and went around stabbing at dark corners, saying that he was hunting the Maelstrom, which touched Murphy’s heart, though he didn’t know what this act boded for the boy’s future.
Then one day Murphy and Mata’s neighbor, an old man named Kairos, who was said to be the most ancient of the Dreamers, older perhaps than the Maelstrom herself, came and told Murphy that he had caught Will stealing the apples from his garden. At his father’s displeasure, the youth said he only wanted to hold a Feast for the other children, especially those who did not have apples of their own, which eased some of Murphy’s anger. But Kairos was not so easily appeased, and working himself up into a divine frenzy began to prophesy that what the boy needed was to go on a Quest. But first, he cried, eyes rolling wide and foot stamping on the ground, there would be many trials. A great flood would descend, heralding the Maelstrom’s return, and all the Dreamers would have to set sail towards another Dream, filled with stone Towers hung with Webs and strange Machines, where in their tears they would forget that they were dreaming. And after several generations this dark Dream would be overcome by Wars and Flame, and only then would Will be called to his Quest: to find the Key of Remembering how to dream, to slay the Maelstrom again, and to lead the people through the Flames towards a Feast with which they would found a new Dream. And only then would the theft of the apples be atoned.
Will did not believe the old man’s Words, thinking them the raving of a madman, and promptly forgot, running off overjoyed to have evaded punishment. Murphy himself was not so unconcerned, but even he felt Kairos’s predictions to be rather absurd. He could easily have repaid the apple’s theft and then they could all continue to dream in peace, but just in case he decided to dream of a Ship that night. Wise, who had been listening quietly this whole time, wrote down the old man’s Words the way he wrote down all Words, as if they were the Truth. And then he closed his book and bound it tight, for as Mata cried over her son’s cursed fate, it had quickly began to rain.
Before the World, all was dark, an empty voracious night called the Dream. At the heart of this Dream lay the Maelstrom, a blind crawling chaos with eight thousand hoary legs skittering out into the void. The Maelstrom had no parents, no progeny, but had woven a great Web from her womb that stretched to the ends of the Dream, and she slept in the middle of this Web, waiting, and dreaming all the possible things that might one day be. She dreamt of animals, constructions, man, and each Form she dreamt was drawn by her legs into the Web, there the Forms hung frozen in the Dream, ready for her to consume, and digest them back into chaos to be spun again.
One such dream was a man named Murphy, who likewise had no history, having just been dreamt. But on seeing that all the scattered Forms around him were being drawn slowly into the monster’s gaping maw decided that he would not be eaten and returned back to the unformed chaos. The Maelstrom’s Dream had grown so large by now that there were endless places to hide; one could wander for lifetimes in any direction through the strange frozen Forms without ever once escaping the Web. Murphy realized that if he were to combat the Maelstrom, he too would have to dream, imagining a Sword, a great Knowledge, and a Reflection of himself to act as a decoy, as food for the beast while he waited in the shadows, ready to slay her.
And so Murphy dreamt, and waited, and soon he had his Sword and Knowledge, and the Maelstrom’s legs reached for the Reflection to draw it into her jaws, and still he waited, at the edge of the Dream, for that moment when the Maelstrom was busy consuming his Reflection, and he would be able to strike. And as planned, she ate. The Reflection was slowly ground down in endless rows of jagged teeth into shimmering shards that were scattered to the edges of the Night, becoming Stars. All the while the Maelstrom hummed a low tuneless melody to herself, as it was all the same to her what she ate, a screaming man or his mute reflection, for she was the dark itself, which consumes all things. Then Murphy raised his Sword, its edge sharpened to pierce his toothsome foe, and he slashed down through the Web, through the Dream, and cleaved the Maelstrom in two. Each of the Maelstrom’s halves reared up to attack, one of them raked its great pincers across the side of his face so that his left Eye was torn and blinded. But Murphy was too close to the Dream’s core for the Maelstrom’s halves to grasp him.
He slashed again, and a third time, each slice further subdividing the Maelstrom until it was sundered into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than a man’s hand, eight-limbed miniatures of their Mother’s pattern, all skittering about at Murphy’s feet. The Hero, for that’s what he had become for this half-formed Dream, summoned his great Knowledge and called the creatures “Spider,” a grave insult he had overheard in the Maelstrom’s sleeping murmurs. Murphy banished the Spiders to the edges of the Dream, where they might bide in the dark corners in their own small webs, but never come back together to overwhelm the Dream. With his foe thus fought, and her remnants dispersed, Murphy planted the Sword in the darkness beside him. And then he smiled, which was like a glimmer of Light for the first time striking the dark World. The battle had made him tired, so gathering the cut strands of the Web around him like a blanket, he laid in the center where the Maelstrom had lay, and had a Dream of his own.
As he slept, Murphy grew, until his body filled the void. His ribs became the rocky earth, his fingers blossomed into flowers and trees, and his blood flowed into rivers and seas. He dreamt that his head would become a castle, but it continued to expand until it was a mountain whose peak brushed the Sky and looked down over the whole young World. His Eyes took flight, and chased each other around the Sky, the whole one shedding such a glorious Light that it illuminated everything below, and the torn Eye reflecting as best it could, following the glowing orb as a sullen moon. And above their orbit, his haughty brow formed the dome of Space, and his hair tangled with the Stars of his shattered Reflection. And so the World came into being and was quickly populated with Murphy’s imagination, all life a Dream to stave off the uncertainty that lies in the darkness of night.
Murphy had but one law for his newborn Dream: that whatever could happen would happen, with as much glory and wonder as might be brought forth into the World. However, being only a young World, he was mightily alone, and could dream only those Forms that he had seen hanging in the Maelstrom’s Web. The next day, Murphy’s strong Eye arched over the whole World while his other Eye struggled to catch up, shedding its meager gaze through the night. Murphy reflected on the Forms he had seen and how he might make sense of their disorder, all chaotic from being hung in the limbo of the Web. Murphy took one Form into his hands, and called it a Book, and when next his Eye illuminated the land, he transcribed what he saw into the Book. Later, as he lay in his castle on top of the mountain, he reflected over what had been written, naming the Forms and sorting them out into Classes and Orders: those that moved and those that were rooted, those that had no life, and those which were invisible, spirits or forces he could only see by their affect on the others; that which stirs water, that which melts snow, that which weighs on beasts and reduces them to bones. Murphy watched his World, and wrote, and soon filled the whole Book, which he closed with another bright smile, feeling that he had now ordered everything in its right place.
Yet when next his Eye rose Murphy looked closer and was shocked, and looked closer still at his World. For he saw that where there had been only enough Forms to fill a Book, now there were Details, each Form its own small World of infinite variations. And Murphy realized that he would have to write another Book, several Books, a Book for each Form, which he started at once, each day focusing his Eye on all the Details of just one Form. He wrote intensely, setting each finished Book on a shelf in his keep, but soon realized there would be little room left to sleep, and he would have to do something with this endless library. Being ever resourceful, as this was his own Dream after all, Murphy erected another story to his castle, and another story after that, filling each with Books and moving his bed ever closer to the Sky.
But still he had but scratched the surface of recording everything in his domain, and rarely going down to the lowest stories of his castle anymore became afraid, that he might forget something that he had written, that he might accidentally record something twice. This thought filled Murphy with much confusion, over what a doubling of Forms might mean (for he felt still somewhat guilty for casting his Reflection into the Maelstrom’s jaws). So one night he hurried down the Book-lined stairs, determined to take note of what each volume contained, and if possible devise a catalogue, an Order of Orders, which was more work and Words, but he had an eternity to fill with Words, his only companion. So he descended and descended and somewhere on the second story he began to notice Webs, thick draping dust which sent a chill down his spine. Having built his knowledge up to the Sky, Murphy had left his earliest words to rot and ruin. For roping up his earliest tomes, and shredding them back into chaos, was a Spider, still a slivered reflection of its Dark Mother’s horror. Had it not obeyed his banishing Words? He called it Spider again, but still it spun a web that threatened to tear his Words asunder and reduce them back into unknown Forms.
Murphy rued that he had planted his Sword on the roof of his castle, where it had grown to be a Tree of enormous girth, whose branches gave shade and sweet fruit to his whole World. If only he had the Sword now he might slay this intruder. But at the very thought of his dark, dividing blade, the Spider trembled and turned and straightaway leapt towards Murphy, its jaws snapping wide to avenge its Mother’s murder. Unarmed and in profound terror, Murphy turned and fled, scattering stacks of precious manuscripts in his flight. Up story after story he fled, racing to the top of his tower, with the Spider eating his every footstep, not more than a pace behind and growing larger as it climbed, filing the entire castle with its chaotic binds.
Once upon the roof Murphy didn’t dare stop, but climbed right up the Tree, what had once been his Sword, struggling up the branches towards the overhanging void of the Sky. In his haste the branches were stripped bare and became bones, their fruit made quick into beating organs. But Murphy had no time to marvel at this transformation, for the Spider was rapidly gaining. Glancing back, Murphy swore that it was a Spider no more, but the Mother, the very Maelstrom herself come back to torment him, to finish what she started when she first spun his Form. So Murphy climbed, and wondered that the Tree had no end in sight and seemed to breathe and sigh as he rushed up higher. Indeed it rose so high that its branches pierced the Sky, and Murphy clambered out through this hole into another World, where at last he stopped and looked down below.
The Maelstrom had now webbed the entire Tree, the ropey tendrils almost obscuring its natural growth. Murphy gasped, for there was his sought for Order of Order, not the linear branches he had written in his Books, but a sprawling Net that connected each Form to all others. He could embrace the Maelstrom if it wasn’t his sworn Nemesis, so instead he smiled, and at his joy the Maelstrom was reduced, turning back into a Spider that cowered in the branches, rattling the bones of Forms that lay caught in its Web. Gasping, Murphy stepped back again. For he had not climbed up the Tree and out of a hole in the Sky at all, but had emerged from the head of another Form, one he had not seen before yet was the loveliest in this entire World. This Form was familiar, in a way his own body was familiar, but different in certain appealing ways. He called the Form Woman, and lay down like the Sky over the Earth to gaze into her eyes, which slowly opened with an equally radiant smile.
The Woman called herself Mata, and told Murphy she had just woken from the most peculiar Dream, in which a small man had climbed up from out of her insides, frightened and chased by his own frail Shadow. Murphy listened and wondered what this could mean, for hadn’t it been his World, his Dream, that was now this beautiful Woman? Perhaps there were several Worlds, endless Dreamers, of whom he was only one, and Murphy wanted to set out at once to find them all, to record all the Forms of all the Dreams that might be. But Mata grabbed his hand with such force and held him to her, so that Murphy decided to be content in her sweet embrace. And that is why the Sky rests above the Earth and does not go running off at the slightest whim and wonder. And so they lay like this, with his Eyes gazing over her entire body, learning her Details that still contained all the Forms he had studied before.
And all he saw was beautiful and wondrous, though sometimes behind Mata’s Eyes, when she was gazing off at a distant storm, Murphy thought he saw a darkness unfurling, the spinning Form of the Shadow he had left behind in that other World. For somewhere the Maelstrom was still inside her, biding its Time and weaving its Order of Orders that would inevitably consume his Books and Words. He called that Shadow Death, and though it made him deeply sad, Murphy loved Mata even more for that chaos she bore inside her chest; the necessary uncertainty of living that drove off boredom and forced him to act his best. For on the day it might strike and finally take him back into the darkness of night, he wanted to be as full of love and wonder as it was possible for a man to realize in this life.
And so Murphy and Mata lived like this, reveling in their shared Dream, and occasionally other Dreamers wandered by, whose Dreams Murphy wrote down in his Books and added to his own. And they were happy and as full of love and wonder as it was possible for them to be, and before long Mata gave birth, her body heaving with great tremors which shook the entire Earth. From between the mountains of her legs a bright being shot forth, a boy of such vigor and mirth that he might have glory over the entire World. Murphy named him Will, writing the name down on the first page of a new Book. But Mata was not done, for in her labors still struggled a second son, who after many more hours crept slowly into the World. This boy seemed weak and woeful, trembling at life and almost unable to survive. Yet Murphy saw a gleam in his second son’s ryes, a deep understanding immediately applied when the boy crawled over to the Book and began reading what had been written inside. So Murphy called the boy Wise, and that night, Mata dreamt that her youngest child would grow to take care of his father’s library, ordering all the Dreams in all the Worlds, a task of which Murphy thoughtfully approved.
As for the first Twin, Will was wild, and so full of life that they could never predict what he would get into. He was always found running around and building forts from unfinished Forms, or inventing games and songs for the children of the other Dreamers to play, who all worshipped him for his bright smile and exuberance. He even carved a Sword like his father’s and went around stabbing at dark corners, saying that he was hunting the Maelstrom, which touched Murphy’s heart, though he didn’t know what this act boded for the boy’s future.
Then one day Murphy and Mata’s neighbor, an old man named Kairos, who was said to be the most ancient of the Dreamers, older perhaps than the Maelstrom herself, came and told Murphy that he had caught Will stealing the apples from his garden. At his father’s displeasure, the youth said he only wanted to hold a Feast for the other children, especially those who did not have apples of their own, which eased some of Murphy’s anger. But Kairos was not so easily appeased, and working himself up into a divine frenzy began to prophesy that what the boy needed was to go on a Quest. But first, he cried, eyes rolling wide and foot stamping on the ground, there would be many trials. A great flood would descend, heralding the Maelstrom’s return, and all the Dreamers would have to set sail towards another Dream, filled with stone Towers hung with Webs and strange Machines, where in their tears they would forget that they were dreaming. And after several generations this dark Dream would be overcome by Wars and Flame, and only then would Will be called to his Quest: to find the Key of Remembering how to dream, to slay the Maelstrom again, and to lead the people through the Flames towards a Feast with which they would found a new Dream. And only then would the theft of the apples be atoned.
Will did not believe the old man’s Words, thinking them the raving of a madman, and promptly forgot, running off overjoyed to have evaded punishment. Murphy himself was not so unconcerned, but even he felt Kairos’s predictions to be rather absurd. He could easily have repaid the apple’s theft and then they could all continue to dream in peace, but just in case he decided to dream of a Ship that night. Wise, who had been listening quietly this whole time, wrote down the old man’s Words the way he wrote down all Words, as if they were the Truth. And then he closed his book and bound it tight, for as Mata cried over her son’s cursed fate, it had quickly began to rain.
9.30.2007
deepening returns
I decided since I haven't touched this blog in ages, and have been trying to post more online at my livejournal regarding my current studies on myth, symbol, and ritual for school that I really should just start another "real" blog.
So I direct anyone who stumbles here to...
The Absent Narrative
So I direct anyone who stumbles here to...
The Absent Narrative
bees in birds and bugs in brains
Seussian nightmares.
The other day I was walking up the street and looked down to see a dead bird in the gutter. This wasn't disturbing in itself, even with its guts splayed open to the morning sun, but there swarming about in the bird's chest was a handful of bees, not just flitting about with an idle buzz but actively digging into the avian. It was actually kind of beautiful, and if I hadn't been so shocked and on my way to school I would have gotten my camera to take a picture of it. In hindsight it seemed an odd thing for bees to be doing, last time I checked I didn't think bees ate flesh, and beyond colony-collapse disorder I wonder just how else the environment is effecting wildlife.
Perhaps more disturbing was a news report I stumbled on (via posthuman blues) about brain-eating amoebas that have killed 6 people in southern lakes this year, an unprecedented spike in the number of deaths by the brain-eating amoeba, which if you splash in a still, algae-covered lake and get water up your nose, will crawl up to your brain and eat till you die, in two deliriously painful weeks. That this is real disturbs me, that the amoeba's thrive in hot water and the scientist studying them thinks we'll only see more of this as global warming continues disturbs me. That the symptoms of having your brain eaten by an amoeba are a stiff neck and headaches disturbs me (because that's how I've been feeling for the past week, though I think I'm suffering more from spending too much time looking back and forth between my computer and books for this research paper). I think what disturbs me the most is trying not to imagine these creatures somehow getting into a city's water supply. Actually I am more frightened by the possibility of spiders crawling into my ears and laying eggs, which I'm not sure is really possible but I still don't know what happened to that big mother who was crawling around the corners of my room all last week.
I actually have more important things to say, but they are being quietly consumed by the massive amount of research I'm doing to interpret the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛta for class. Having not done a research paper in years I'm actually quite excited. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle using information as the pieces, and with no final picture but what you want to make it. Of course, I also love organizing information, a trait that seems to run in my family, and hopefully I'll actually get around to writing the paper before it's due in a week and a half.
The other day I was walking up the street and looked down to see a dead bird in the gutter. This wasn't disturbing in itself, even with its guts splayed open to the morning sun, but there swarming about in the bird's chest was a handful of bees, not just flitting about with an idle buzz but actively digging into the avian. It was actually kind of beautiful, and if I hadn't been so shocked and on my way to school I would have gotten my camera to take a picture of it. In hindsight it seemed an odd thing for bees to be doing, last time I checked I didn't think bees ate flesh, and beyond colony-collapse disorder I wonder just how else the environment is effecting wildlife.
Perhaps more disturbing was a news report I stumbled on (via posthuman blues) about brain-eating amoebas that have killed 6 people in southern lakes this year, an unprecedented spike in the number of deaths by the brain-eating amoeba, which if you splash in a still, algae-covered lake and get water up your nose, will crawl up to your brain and eat till you die, in two deliriously painful weeks. That this is real disturbs me, that the amoeba's thrive in hot water and the scientist studying them thinks we'll only see more of this as global warming continues disturbs me. That the symptoms of having your brain eaten by an amoeba are a stiff neck and headaches disturbs me (because that's how I've been feeling for the past week, though I think I'm suffering more from spending too much time looking back and forth between my computer and books for this research paper). I think what disturbs me the most is trying not to imagine these creatures somehow getting into a city's water supply. Actually I am more frightened by the possibility of spiders crawling into my ears and laying eggs, which I'm not sure is really possible but I still don't know what happened to that big mother who was crawling around the corners of my room all last week.
I actually have more important things to say, but they are being quietly consumed by the massive amount of research I'm doing to interpret the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛta for class. Having not done a research paper in years I'm actually quite excited. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle using information as the pieces, and with no final picture but what you want to make it. Of course, I also love organizing information, a trait that seems to run in my family, and hopefully I'll actually get around to writing the paper before it's due in a week and a half.
9.15.2007
Faster than a Speeding Pharisee
I finally nerved myself up to talk to Dr. Clothey in person, which if anything will allow me to finally get some sleep and stop imagining what I might say to him. Admittedly I was a bit surprised by how unresponsive he was to the work I've done and plans for studying dreams and myth, but perhaps that was mostly due to being a bit more nervous than I expected to be and not presenting myself clearly. And when it comes to dreams, Clothey claims to not treat them as all that important, rather looking down on Jungian ideas (as well as on Campbell, for the understandable reason that Campbell has tried to draw too many broad parallels in myth without considering individual cultural differences).
However when I started asking specific questions Clothey got much more animated, particularly when it came to the topic of modern myth. I was surprised and a little pleased later to find him recycle much of our conversation into his class discussion, even touching briefly on eschatological myths. As far as modern mythemes that are active in the American landscape (his term, I'd perhaps say mindscape, or symbolscape), he tried to draw a thread from the Mesopotamian myth of Marduke slaying Tiamat and creating the world from her body, a justification of war, land ownership/division, and the concentration of power in the city-state, to our modern mythology of manifest destiny. John Wayne and the Wild West, the demonization of nature and Native Americans, the valorization of war and concretization of power in a figurehead, as we see with George Bush and Iraq, one more conquering saint against his draconic nemesis. Also interesting was Clothey's insistence on the modern myth of the "incompetent male," where once men where supposed to be like John Wayne, now they are portrayed in the media as idiots, yahoos, sexually and culturally impotent, with recourse only in "viagra and guns." Which of course made me want to consider what other sorts of mythemes might be at work to counter such a grim Babylonian vision of America. The environmental and anti-war movements were his two suggestions, though I imagine there could be much deeper mythological themes that could be brought to bear, and may be necessary in order to reorient the direction our culture is heading in...
Today Sophie asked if comic book superheroes might be part of our modern mythology, an idea that I've been pondering for years. She suggested that maybe they related to Nietzsche's idea of the 'superman,' which I thought more suggestive of the Taoist 'supreme man,' a state of self-transcendence. A good number of superheroes on the other hand repair to this world in order to save humanity or establish a new order or morality. The story of Superman paralleling the myth of Jesus, even down to them dying, extolls the need for an external salvation. Of course, many other superheroes were normal people who somehow became more than just that, and in doing a spot of research I came upon a review of a book called "The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture," where one of the essayists actually does compare Batman as the Nietzschean 'ubermensch,' and as mythologically important for the modern individual. We are asked to be no longer John, but Bruce Wayne.
Ironic, or synchronistic to all this was an odd dream last night of attending Sophie on some sort of similarly superheroesque quest she was on, complete with a large number of costume or disguise changes. Also during class yesterday Sophie called just as we were discussing the creation mytheme of demiurges and all the incarnations of the goddess Sophia.
[Edit: I'd get some sleep if I wasn't now too busy trying to track down obscure Easter Island and Aztec mythologies to figure out what to focus my paper on. No rest for the curious.]
However when I started asking specific questions Clothey got much more animated, particularly when it came to the topic of modern myth. I was surprised and a little pleased later to find him recycle much of our conversation into his class discussion, even touching briefly on eschatological myths. As far as modern mythemes that are active in the American landscape (his term, I'd perhaps say mindscape, or symbolscape), he tried to draw a thread from the Mesopotamian myth of Marduke slaying Tiamat and creating the world from her body, a justification of war, land ownership/division, and the concentration of power in the city-state, to our modern mythology of manifest destiny. John Wayne and the Wild West, the demonization of nature and Native Americans, the valorization of war and concretization of power in a figurehead, as we see with George Bush and Iraq, one more conquering saint against his draconic nemesis. Also interesting was Clothey's insistence on the modern myth of the "incompetent male," where once men where supposed to be like John Wayne, now they are portrayed in the media as idiots, yahoos, sexually and culturally impotent, with recourse only in "viagra and guns." Which of course made me want to consider what other sorts of mythemes might be at work to counter such a grim Babylonian vision of America. The environmental and anti-war movements were his two suggestions, though I imagine there could be much deeper mythological themes that could be brought to bear, and may be necessary in order to reorient the direction our culture is heading in...
Today Sophie asked if comic book superheroes might be part of our modern mythology, an idea that I've been pondering for years. She suggested that maybe they related to Nietzsche's idea of the 'superman,' which I thought more suggestive of the Taoist 'supreme man,' a state of self-transcendence. A good number of superheroes on the other hand repair to this world in order to save humanity or establish a new order or morality. The story of Superman paralleling the myth of Jesus, even down to them dying, extolls the need for an external salvation. Of course, many other superheroes were normal people who somehow became more than just that, and in doing a spot of research I came upon a review of a book called "The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture," where one of the essayists actually does compare Batman as the Nietzschean 'ubermensch,' and as mythologically important for the modern individual. We are asked to be no longer John, but Bruce Wayne.
Ironic, or synchronistic to all this was an odd dream last night of attending Sophie on some sort of similarly superheroesque quest she was on, complete with a large number of costume or disguise changes. Also during class yesterday Sophie called just as we were discussing the creation mytheme of demiurges and all the incarnations of the goddess Sophia.
[Edit: I'd get some sleep if I wasn't now too busy trying to track down obscure Easter Island and Aztec mythologies to figure out what to focus my paper on. No rest for the curious.]
9.11.2007
Jodorowsky on Life
I wanted to write something about psycho-spiritual crises, about my reasons for dreaming, studying myths and literature, about what I am looking for in myself, in the world...
...but Alejandro Jodorowsky's words (from a recent interview) might have to suffice.
...but Alejandro Jodorowsky's words (from a recent interview) might have to suffice.
"Do you pray? And if so, to who or to what?"
No, I don’t believe in praying to an external god, but I think in the interior of ourselves, we have what I call the interior world. A world which is a clear point of light, which is not you, but it is the fountain of life within yourself. When they discovered America, there was a fountain where you wash and get young – the fountain of youth. The fountain of health is inside you. And every night, I try to approach there. That for me is to pray, to make emptiness and to come to the centre of yourself, to try to go there.
...
You have no fear of death?
Not anymore. I am completely prepared to die – spiritually, not corporally. My body wants to live. The body always wants to be immortal, not to die. And the soul accepts death - that is good. But it’s not good if my body wants to die, because my life is shorter. You menace me with a knife, and I will defend myself, I will ask somebody to protect me, no? Even if I say [to myself], “I can die.” I understand that.
Do have any beliefs about what happens afterwards?
Why? Why be curious about what will happen, it will happen anyway, it will happen! Either I’ll go there or there – everything will happen. It’s fantastic – the future is fantastic! Anything that will happen will happen!"
what I meant to write earlier, but didn't have the heart
Sophie got back from Boston yesterday and we got together after my classes, talking late into the night about what's going on in our hearts, our minds. I mostly tried to articulate the many questions that have been circling for days, about community involvement, my reasons and goals for studying myth and literature, the somewhat existential crises I was feeling Sunday night, walking up the back streets of Bloomfield alone, with the dark looming rain clouds and Sigur Ros in my headphones, seeing the sunset reflected in dirty windows and a feather on the edge of a puddle that sent a shiver through my heart. But I was feeling totally ungrounded, adrift in the world, cut loose from community, my dreams, any truly revealing or opening experience. According to Charles Long (whose book Alpha I am reading for class) describes myth as a symbolic ordering which makes clear how the world is present for man, and though I haven't had as clear recall on my dreams these past weeks, they are one of the most consistent places where my world is revealed to me, further deepened by my love of literature, stories that speak to broader realities and make life make sense, the same way Sophie said she finds such peace and place in poetry. But community can do likewise, talking and playing music with other people in a way I haven't in a long time, social rituals which I miss and should seek out, in our ideas for a personal salon, in looking at joining some student organization. But it runs deeper, I have constantly through my life sought out experiences that broaden my reality, which put me in deeper touch with mystery, awe, what is possible. Experiences that are more fully real, with that existential quality of utter wonder and terror, beauty and pain, balanced into one moment. I wonder, is it possible to find such moments of transcendence at all times, a total irruption of the sacred? That mindset of the continual "Yes!" which finds this sacredity not in some external "Other" but in the identification of the self with the whole world, in each indescribable moment...
In all my classes the question of duality keeps coming up, Plato's two causes of Reason and Necessity, Barthe's "Doxology"- cultrually instilled beliefs that cast differences in terms of conflict, even Evolutionary Psychologists trying to find proof for differences in sexual proclivities. In Critical Reading we had the Deconstructionist critique explained as one that tries to get beyond artificial dualities, and in myths we have abstract, primal dualities, a coincidence of opposites, that are necessary to the symbolic ordering of the world, but are ultimately transcended. Kinds of academic or epic yoga, in short. The question aside (for the time being) of how this is all related to sexuality, which has also come up in all these classes, I still fail to see why reality has to be expressed in dualistic terms, or how it is possibe to percieve it otherwise. Certainly there are always grey borders and ambiguities between concepts, certainly I have had many moments that have stretched my consciousness past any individual identification, an acceptance of being intimately part of the whole. And yet, I still hide in my room, don't talk to most people, look for differences, still feel isolated and alien even in groups of joyous and close friends. I still can't grasp how two such primaly opposed forces as Night and Day can be rectified, much less to speak of Life and Death, when they just seem so phenomenologically distinct. Sure, life is a dream, but one tha tfails to convey the same symbolic depth, that sense of chaotic possibility, except in those rare moments of lucidity or hallucination, whereas the death of sleep, even in its most mundane moments, is utterly profound with psycho-spiritual implications. Life of course can also be profound, it does not just have to be these routines, this profanity, the dead hands of history and binary logic, it can be awesome, Real, the day too can show us, and quite symbolically, how we are present in the world. I am not quite there yet though, and most of the time just want people to be quiet so that I can read in peace, and go back to sleep.
In all my classes the question of duality keeps coming up, Plato's two causes of Reason and Necessity, Barthe's "Doxology"- cultrually instilled beliefs that cast differences in terms of conflict, even Evolutionary Psychologists trying to find proof for differences in sexual proclivities. In Critical Reading we had the Deconstructionist critique explained as one that tries to get beyond artificial dualities, and in myths we have abstract, primal dualities, a coincidence of opposites, that are necessary to the symbolic ordering of the world, but are ultimately transcended. Kinds of academic or epic yoga, in short. The question aside (for the time being) of how this is all related to sexuality, which has also come up in all these classes, I still fail to see why reality has to be expressed in dualistic terms, or how it is possibe to percieve it otherwise. Certainly there are always grey borders and ambiguities between concepts, certainly I have had many moments that have stretched my consciousness past any individual identification, an acceptance of being intimately part of the whole. And yet, I still hide in my room, don't talk to most people, look for differences, still feel isolated and alien even in groups of joyous and close friends. I still can't grasp how two such primaly opposed forces as Night and Day can be rectified, much less to speak of Life and Death, when they just seem so phenomenologically distinct. Sure, life is a dream, but one tha tfails to convey the same symbolic depth, that sense of chaotic possibility, except in those rare moments of lucidity or hallucination, whereas the death of sleep, even in its most mundane moments, is utterly profound with psycho-spiritual implications. Life of course can also be profound, it does not just have to be these routines, this profanity, the dead hands of history and binary logic, it can be awesome, Real, the day too can show us, and quite symbolically, how we are present in the world. I am not quite there yet though, and most of the time just want people to be quiet so that I can read in peace, and go back to sleep.
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