Mark your calendars! It’s the June RoundTable!

So, as already mentioned, I somehow spaced on the fact that I originally scheduled the next RoundTable for May 31st. It took the most recent JCF announcement to remind me. Since I have a conflict on this date, I have pushed this RoundTable back to June 7th. We will still have the scheduled RoundTable on June 28, but I am still working out the topic.

This month’s topic: Literary Alchemy

“Literary Alchemy” is a phrase coined – as far as I know – by John Granger, theologian and writer of hogwartsprofessor.com, to describe how one can induce personal transformation through literature, especially Harry Potter. This process of transformation resembles Campbell’s hero’s journey. We are going to explore alchemy, literature and unleashing personal myth through literature (movies, television shows, etc. count, too).

The meeting will be held at the Book People cafe starting at 4:30. I will be there wearing my black JCF t-shirt with the red circle logo on the front.

Book People
603 N Lamar
Austin, TX 78703

Please RSVP by the morning of June 7th.

I look forward to seeing everyone there.

RoundTable date correction

The most recent JCF announcement made me realize that the next Austin RoundTable is scheduled for this Saturday, the 31st. Since I had completely forgotten about that date, I had already been planning on having the next RoundTable on June 7th. The formal announcement will be sent shortly. If you are not already on the mailing list, and would like to be, please send me an e-mail at priscilla@mythicthinking.org.

PS, the next topic is “literary alchemy.”

So the thought is this…

Robert Johnson, among others, cite the Grail myths – particularly Parzifal – are the myths of the modern, Western psyche. The Grail myths tell of a journey somewhere far away to find the boon of the Self. I call these masculine myths, any myth that sends the hero on a major quest to find his boon. The question I ask myself is: What is the feminine myth? My answer is that a feminine myth is one in which the hero either defends homebase (Harry Potter) or – more applicable to modern psyche – establishes and maintains roots. This means that she must marry, start a family, establish a living, etc. So what myth drives modern women? I believe it is Pride and Prejudice. Through the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth, Jane Austen shows us to be discriminating about whom we marry, encourages us to marry for love – bonus if he’s rich – and then to establish a living. Most of the women I can think of are searching for a Mr. Darcy, an engaging gentleman, and often wind up with Mr. Collins, a real doofus. So when the time comes, after years of wallowing in unhappiness, they leave and try again. What they fail to distinguish is that their Mr. Collins is really Mr. Darcy, but the power of animus projection always gets in the way.

Another way to regard P&P is that it is a feminine version of Beauty and the Beast. The masculine version is the one we all know – the Beast brings Beauty into his castle and must convince her to fall in love with him. He rips her from her family and places strict conditions upon her seeing them, swearing that his life depends upon it. P&P shows us something else: Elizabeth is at the age to marry and must find a suitable husband to secure her happiness. She does not kidnap him, but expects them to love each other based on their natural traits. Like Beauty and the Beast, Elizabeth has to learn to see beyond Darcy’s initially snobbish exterior to get at his good-intentioned interior. He affords her the room to make that conclusion on her own, rather than forcing it upon her.

In the other direction on the literary timeline, the last few years have brought us another version of Beauty and the Beast: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight, both involving a romance between a girl and her vampire. Instead of the vampire wearing his external bad-behavior like a fir coat (Beast) or a stiff-collared suit (Darcy), the vampire wears his mythology and known habits for bloodsucking. Both Angel and Edward refrain from feeding on humans – Angel robs the blood bank and Edward feeds on animal blood – and both fight against their natures. The girls fall deeply and madly in love and the ensuing drama is about protecting their lives. Both girls are high school age and are about to graduate as of right now where I stand in their stories (Season 3 of Buffy and early into the third book of Twilight).

Apparently this falls under the archetype of the demon lover, something I will be exploring further in the coming weeks.

Saying Goodbye to Old Friends

They always say to not get too attached to your stuff, because it is, afterall, stuff. It’s not a part of you, it’s not necessary for your survival, and most of all it shouldn’t define who you are. That’s all well and good, but what about forming an attachment with your stuff? Not the kind wherein you are defining yourself by it, but the kind where you look at your stuff as more of a good friend? Such is the life of the isolated introvert (me), who goes to the trouble of naming my toys and thinking they have little consciousnesses of their own.

One such toy is always my car. Ever since my first car, I have always had names for them: the 88 Mazda 323 was Connor, the NIN-mobile (after my then-current obsession with both The Highlander and Nine Inch Nails); the 89 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra was named Gandalf, because he was old and grey; the 90 Ford something-or-other was named Piece of Shit, because that’s very much what it was. And then I bought my first new car: a 04 Chevy Aveo. After a Livejournal survey, I named it The Space Egg, because the car is sort of egg-shaped. I have lots of good memories of that car. It had little in the way of abnormal maintenance; it was hardly a bother. I was driven away from my wedding in that car – it even matched my dress. My husband and I shared it for a couple years until he finally got his own.

I recently had to say goodbye to this old friend. We were driving down a curvy hill on a wet day and lost control. Poor Space Egg got totaled. I wasn’t hurt, but Space Egg went to car heaven in the process. They could have fixed it right up, but the repairs were far more than the re-sell value of the car and would have left me out of a deductible. I guess, it’s sort of like putting a pet to sleep, something I haven’t done yet and hope to avoid at all costs. I had the option of fixing him right up, but let him go instead.

So my Space Egg doesn’t define who I am. I don’t picture myself under any circumstances as a white, bubble sedan. But he was my friend, my companion, and my car-pool buddy. He knew my driving nuances, and I knew his.

Now I’m driving a new car, an 08 Toyota Yaris (sedan) named The Blue Meanie, because the paint is a really badass blue. I sort of feel as though this is the “rebound” car, but that’s another conversation for another day.

Friends appear in strange places, and it is difficult to gauge when one will appear and where. And it always sucks when they leave.

Goodbye, Space Egg. You will be missed.

April RoundTable is Postponed

Sorry to everyone, but I’ve had to postpone the April RoundTable due to some unexpected conflict. I’ve moved it to May 3rd at 2:30 pm, same Bat-Channel. Check out the RoundTable page for details.

April RoundTable

I’m always amazed by time. Suddenly, before you know it, time has passed and there’s no more to spare. Between that and a couple unexpected personal events, I have been delayed in getting this announcement out to the world, but…

It’s the April RoundTable!

Coming Home: An Examination of the Initiatory Needs of Soldiers at War

 

For this roundtable we will be exploring the experiences of war and how it relates to the liminal period so often attributed to initiation rituals. We will also be examining how story telling relates to integrating and making coherent the paradoxes of war. This roundtable is meant primarily as a starting point for a dialogue on how our study of mythology and depth psychology can help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. With this focus we will highlight the film “The Deer Hunter” and the Tim O’Brien novel “The Things They Carried”. They about intitiatory experiences and story-telling during the Vietnam War respectively. Author and Vietnam veteran O’Brien explains that “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth”. If this is so mythology may be integral to helping our heroes make the transition back to civilian life.

We will be meeting at Book People at 6th and Lamar on Sunday, April 27th at 1:30 in the afternoon. Weather permitting, we will meet on their wooden deck by the parking lot. Otherwise, we’ll snag some tables in the cafe area. Please RSVP by Saturday evening, or if you have any questions or need directions.

We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Also, as a PS #1: This RoundTable is now officially chartered by the Joseph Campbell Foundation! 

Impartiality

Before I get tied up in my nightly visual indulgences, having decided to skip the caucuses, I wanted to comment on impartiality. This week, I am sitting on a jury for the first time – enthusiastically, I might add – and the issue of impartiality kept coming up during the jury selection. I am reminded of a comment one of my professors made, which alleged to a degree that the mythologist’s role is that of impartiality in all cases. I agree and I disagree with that assertion. On the one hand, a degree of impartiality towards myth is critical for the comparative approach to work properly. If I hold onto a particular perspective, such as such and such religion is evil or primitive and therefore less worthy than my own, it will slant my interpretation of that particular religion. Any degree of slant takes the mythologist out of the realm of comparison and makes him or her more of a theologian or other specialist in that particular myth.

I can already think of at least one of my cohorts disagreeing, which is perfectly fine. There is no wrong way to approach mythology. I only speak of my perspective.

The other hand requires a degree of partiality for the mythologist to function as a citizen. If I were not partial to such and such candidate, then I would be unable to make a sound, reasonable vote in the election. For the record, I was impartial/undecided until about 2 weeks ago.

I don’t find many people pointing out that Joseph Campbell wasn’t exactly impartial himself. When reading his essays, many of them go back to the same fundamental themes: Hinduism and eastern philosophy, Native American folklore, myth and history, and the perspective that myth is dead in Western culture.

Or maybe, it’s just not being vocalized (both a mythologist’s and Joe’s respective partialities).

Sorry folks, but it’s time for my indulgences. The TV schedule isn’t going to wait for me to work this out.

On Blogging

Blogging amazes me. Once upon a time, namely when I was an undergraduate with far too much spare time on my hands, I used to sit down in front of my livejournal and just gab away, mostly about myself and things that happened during my day. That was in 2000. Now it’s 2008, and I find blogs being used for other purposes: to self-publish essays, to comment on something or other, or even to write one’s Great American Novel. It’s as though our digital age has allowed any ole person to become “published” in an alternative category of “blogger.” And you know what? There are actually professors who will accept a blog as a source (within reason of course) on a paper!

I envision my blog getting to that point someday. The day when I can self-publish some essays I have been meaning to edit or a place to comment on something or other that I find genuinely meaningful (I might make my formal Internet political endorsement once we see who gets the nominations).  I want this place to also function as my “Myth Journal” and as my RoundTable RoundUp source. But real life keeps getting in the way, so we will have to be satisfied with Meta-Blogging until I get a chance to make some life adjustments (or graduate, whichever happens first).

So in the meantime, allow me to recommend something to read/look at: Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” comics. The “Sandman” is none other than Morpheus/Dream, and the series personifies dream and myth in a way that only good storytelling can.  Imagine: the collective unconscious were controlled by a group of myth characters who call themselves the Endless. The dreams we experience each night, those powerful, symbolic, archetypal dreams Jung loved to ponder, are governed not by a pool of symbols but by a personification. What if that personification just didn’t want to, or couldn’t, operate for awhile? What would happen to dreams? What would be the boundaries between sanity and psychosis?

Axiom: Non-Commercial Entertainment

I listen to PotterCast, a Harry Potter themed podcast sponsorder by the Leaky Cauldron. It occurs to me that podcasting is allowing for a whole new category of celebrity. People with a computer and a microphone can get their talent out to the world without corporate sponsorship, expensive marketing campaigns, or even professional studios.

 Does this mean our culture is becoming so burnt out on corporate copying that we can make celebrities out of “nobodies”?

Just a thought. Now back to work.

Traveling

There is something liberating about minimizing your life to one carry-on and one personal item with all your liquid toilettries in 3 oz bottles in a 1 quart clear plastic bag. This is the point where you whittle down the creature comforts to only the essential items. This is how you determine what you actually need versus what you only think you need.