Donate to the project

I know, you've heard it all before - but generating content takes time and money - and until I have the next series of books, comics, films etc that I'm working on released (which could take a solid year of work if not more), I'm living off the dole and a prayer as I was in my mid-20s. So I'm putting back up a donate button. By all means, don't feel pressured if it'd hurt you to chip in some, but it's always appreciated. And whether or not you do, I'm going to be moving a short distance soon to a place where I believe I can focus more on these projects - exclusively - and I hope that you might be able to join for our housewarming party when the time comes. Supposing you don't piss on the furniture.

On that note, I'm getting back to work.

Immanence of Myth: Editor's Introduction

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITIONTo Be Published by Weaponized June 2011. 

Myths and legends die hard in America. 

We love them for the extra dimension they provide, 

the illusion of near-infinite possibility 

to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. 

Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions 

exist as living proof to those who 

need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final.

Hunter S. Thompson

    My essays for this book, though varying in scope and content, all deal with the overarching concepts of myth and art, and all of the issues that invariably are tied into them: from the nature of representation to issues such as that of initiation and its psychological and social roles.
    Much of this material expands on the ideas I first presented in “Living The Myth,” my contribution to the Generation Hex anthology, published by Disinformation Press in 2005. The idea of “living myth” implies at once two interpretations: that myth is in some way alive, and that we can live it. These two are, to use a cliché, like two sides of a coin. This idea underlies everything else that is to follow.    
    This is a concept that has guided all of the creative work I have done. However, as I have collaborated with other artists over the past decade, I came to realize that I was not at all alone in a mythic approach to art, even if all of our processes differ somewhat. (Ed. note: throughout this book I often use the word “artist” when I mean to include filmmakers, writers, musicians, and so on all under that term, because there is no better common term. The same is true for the term “art” which could just as well mean any myth with an intended aesthetic dimension.)
    This book began as a purely solo endeavor, a collection of essays based around the issues and ideas that arose naturally as I worked on various collaborative, mythic art projects. Eventually, it dawned on me that I should open this process up to others who might contribute their own thoughts on the subject of modern mythology. In retrospect, it is almost self-explanatory that an anthology such as this one would need to come about.
    In many ways this is a sideways glance at an art movement possibly already well underway, which, even with the release of this book, will likely remain somewhat in the shadows. “Man's world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold,” Walter Kauffman writes in the prologue to his edition of Buber's I-Thou. “What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.” It is for this reason that I expect there will be some who find this exploration frustrating, as I do not present final solutions in any sense. If anything, I seek to open up the floor for more possibilities. Myth is never closed; it is the enemy of intellectual or ideological tyranny, even if it is a tool often used by tyrants.
    Perhaps it has always been underway. All art, except the exceptionally conceptual or technical, is at least partially mythological. Yet, to be blunt, much of the modern art world has lost touch with a conscious sense of this mythological foundation. Instead it wanders endlessly in a hall of mirrors, a kind of neurotic self-analysis. Perhaps it all comes down to a misunderstanding of Duchamp's urinal, “Fountain.” The urinal is not art, unless everything is. The message of the urinal is: the art world is a farce. If you place a piece of garbage in a gallery, it has been magically transformed into art. This comments on the nature of galleries and how we view art as a commodity far more than it does on the actual nature of art. In much contemporary, abstract art, signifier and signified are externally decoupled; the piece becomes completely self-referential, a conceptual ouroborous with no real entry or exit point back into personal experience.
     A piece such as “Fountain” also raises the question, “why does something require a point?” Right now, an artist I live with is building a four foot tall pink penis in the living room. This became the spring-board for the gonzomentary series “Clark.” Everyone is drawn to ask what the motivation behind something like this might be, what purpose does it serve? On the surface, its point is perhaps that it has no point. There is an argument to be made that much art in the past fifty years asks this question, “why do I need a purpose, an underlying narrative? Why can't I just be?” This changes nothing: we still mythologize these pieces and the lives of the artists that make them, even if they exist entirely without inherent purpose or narrative. A purposeless piece of art without a surrounding myth can be of interest to no one. Additionally, no work of art can actually be purposeless any more than any utterance can be. The subconscious plays a key role in the creation process. We'll discuss this at length later.
    An art world quarantined from everyday life is also a myth that may have outlived any imaginable purpose that doesn't have to do with art industry. As I discovered in my gonzo journalistic forays while working as editor of Alterati in 2007, much of the “real” art scene is isn't happening in the galleries. It is often occurring on the street, in seemingly abandoned factories, or behind closed doors in small studios. Art needn't be obsessed over either self-commentary or being terrified into proving its worth in the face of blind industry. There is much more to explore in the psyche, which is where art excels. If there is a universal bias in this work about the nature of art, it is that.
    Though I've gone through an editorial process with contributing authors, and editorial involves some amount of re-writing, I've attempted to preserve their ideology rather than make sure that everything coheres into a single system. As you will quickly discover, that approach would be entirely contrary to our position. Our methodology, tone, the very mission of this work is at once singular and multiplicity. It may be at times too scholarly for the average reader, and at others too congenial or crass for the average scholar. Maybe it was written by and for iconoclasts, although that was not the intent. It is my sincere hope that for many, it reaffirms and expands what you already know, and perhaps gives you a little more courage in the pursuit of your own myths.
    We will be exploring this subject from many angles, through articles, essays, and interviews from a variety of people actively engaged in mythic work and research. As our exploration progresses from chapter to chapter, we will move from a rather abstract view of myth as an existential dimension to increasingly specific instances of personal myth. Much as with the experience of viewing a painting, at twenty feet, ten feet, five feet, and up close, our experience will vary. It may even seem that the painting changes forms, as you'd see with an impressionist like Monet. This methodology and format will also shift to match our ongoing change of perspective. Keep this shifting scale in mind as you read through, as it should provide a frame of reference.
    The book is broken into four parts. In part one, we will take on a big picture exploration of immanent mythology as a philosophical concept. Many of these investigations will come from the initial materials I prepared for this book. In part two, we will take a look at  examples of modern myth in a variety of fields. Part three will open up yet more personal perspectives on immanent mythology, and the final section of this book is composed of conversations that I've had with artists and other would-be myth-makers.
    As you progress, you will likely discover that many of us have similar perspectives, framed in slightly different ways. Some of us may, on the other hand, flat out contradict one another. (Though, amongst the contributors of this volume, this happened so infrequently that it seems worthy of note.) Though the purpose of this introduction is to comment on the book itself, rather than myth, it seems an opportune moment to make this preliminary point. Variety is the nature of myth. Myth is naturally idiosyncratic. No one can expect a truly homogeneous tradition to arise, as myths naturally do, from life experiences in one location, and then another. The task of building a homogenized syncretism from a diverse tradition like Hinduism is not a mythological impulse, even if it's the bureaucrat's dream.
    All of this answers why I organized and wrote this material. Next, of course, is who is it written for? That's where you come in. The Immanence of Myth was written for anyone who wants to explore the possibilities myth provides, but especially for creative artists who, like myself, wish to inform their work with knowledge of the internal world that myth connects us to. It is this internal current that I hope to both amplify and emphasize. Together we will explore some of the endless possibilities provided by myth as a creative dimension, even if an essay must necessarily remain in the field of didactics. For those that work in some creative medium, it is my intention to assist you in shaping genuinely mythic experiences for your audiences.
     The next and final question that follows from our reportorial trinity: what is mythically inspired art? What is myth? That's a great deal more difficult to answer. At the outset let me say this: let's propose that everything we know about myth is wrong, or at least, subject to re-interpretation. Mythology is itself a myth. Admittedly, this is putting the cart before the horse, but it is the only way that we can resurrect what so many seem to consider dead.
    We are nowhere with this word “myth” until we can determine what its personal and cultural function is, and where the points overlap between these various elements. In other words, we need to build a map of a cognitive terrain that is not necessarily a “where” or even a “when," and so this book is dedicated towards exploring an ideological topology of myth. You might even say that such a topology might serve as a rough map of the potential elementary ideas of divinity. Even if, to that extent, a book such as this can only serve as a doorway rather than a destination. From these fragments we can begin to piece together the Gods of our image.
    It is worth noting that many books already exist which provide a systematic philosophical analysis of the history and function of myth. Though in various ways this work is indebted to those, my ultimate mission is not to explore what myth has been, except inasmuch as that can shed light on what its function is at present, nor is it to merely further the thesis of these works.  Indeed, there is no system at all. Rather, it is my aim to continue a movement already well underway, namely, the re-legitimization of myth and myth-making as one of the principal — if not the principal — means of human creative representation. (Borrowing in part from the scholarship of many that you will find quoted and alluded to throughout this work, including Jung, Campbell, Eliade, Kerenyi, and many others.)
    The approach we take nevertheless flies in the face of the majority of scholarly works in comparative mythology in the past. That is, in part, because the intention of this book is contrary to a historical, anthropological approach to the subject. It is invariable that some will encounter this work and write it off much in the same way Jaan Puhvel writes of Claude Levi-Strauss,
"The obvious danger is that the approach is by nature generalist, universalizing, and a-historical, thus the very opposite of text-oriented, philological, and time conscious. Overlaying known data with binaristic gimmickry in the name of greater “understanding” is no substitute for a deeper probing of the records themselves as documents of a specific synchronistic culture on the one hand and as outcomes of diachronic evolutionary processes on the other. In mythology, as in any other scholarly or scientific activity, it is important to recall that the datum is more important than any theory that may be applied to it."
    This leaves no room for differing intentions, and presupposes only one method of inquiry. His research in Comparative Mythology has been of use to me, but this is a different endeavor. I am not interested in a broken record written in cuneiform on a block of clay unless it can be used to shed some greater light on who we are right now, and furthermore add a deeper understanding to our own understanding of the world. It would appear that most of the contributors to this volume would agree with me. The chronological view of comparative mythology is not the only approach one can use to engage in a study of myth, though it is a valuable one.
    What you have before you is something quite different: an unconventional whisper in a dark room or the amplification of a movement. Only time will tell.

—James Curcio, March 21, 2010. 

The Immanence of Myth  

Mexican police ask spirits to guard them in drug war

Police running scared from drug gangs in one of Mexico's deadliest cities are using bizarre rituals involving animal sacrifice and spirit tattoos to seek protection from raging violence on the U.S. border.

(Article)

The Way of Transformation by Karlfried Graf von Durckheim

The man who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a "raft that leads to the far shore." Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of practice is not to develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted, broke and battered--that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let go his futile hankering after harmony, sure ease of pain, and a comfortable life in order that he may discover, in doing battle with the forces that oppose him, that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites. The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life and encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When this is possible, meditation itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise from the unconscious--a process very different from the practice of concentration on some objects as a protection against such forces. Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation, can our contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns whole-heartedly to confront the world that threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened. (from the book: The Way of Transformation by Karlfried Graf von Durckheim)

Looking At The Impact Of Symbols 3: Lilith, Babalon, Kali

(Read more Personal myth posts)

By way of another example of how symbols can enter and effect our lives, I wanted to touch on another fairly volatile image: Lilith, and the similar Thelemic Babalon, based in part on Crowley's drug-induced imaginings of the Whore of Babylon. (For those interested in exploring the psychological & historical history of the image, I suggest the book you'll find through that link.)

There are many interpretations of this symbol. As with all mythological symbols, she is a mirror; and it isn't my point in this post to follow its myriad permutations through time. Most to the point, her origins are not as a Goddess but as an air or desert demon. The distinction between Demon and God is somewhat in the eye of the beholder; it isn't so much a matter of power as of function. To quote a little from the Fallen Nation screenplay I've been working from, told by the present incarnation of Lilith in that script:

Women told tales of me...I would steal the men away from them. I would devour their children. I was an abomination. I lived inside mirrors to seduce the vanity of nubile girls. Can you imagine?

Lilith, the first Eve, has a positive element as a defier; she is another anti-patriarchal symbol. But to compare her to Dionysus, one might compare the Lust to Art or the Devil cards in Tarot. (Refer to the Book of Thoth.) In the terms of those symbols, her craft is most likely to lead to the Blasted Tower than any kind of immediate synthesis. Not even Lucifer has such a defiant nature. This is one of the things that distinguish Lilith from a "dark mother" symbol like Kali. Kali represents a synthesis. In Qabbalistic terms, you could say the entire tree is contained within her. In other terms, it is enough to simply consider the linkage of the womb and the tomb, of sex and death, of time and eternity. Kali may appear frightful from within the field of time, but she is a synthesizer. Alchemically, psychologically, synthesis is a process of union. Lilith is precisely the opposite: she divides, even seemingly without point. This too serves an important psychological / alchemical purpose, but it is often a destructive one. Perhaps synthesis is the result, but that is up to the individual. She certainly isn't going to do it for you-- she'll be on to the next mark. 

Enough with abstractions. My most obvious first contact with Lilith came through my relationship with my ex-wife. This was quickly became an intentional endeavor: our first music project together was called Lady Babylon. We changed the name to simply Babalon with a new lineup. Most of our music dealt with our relationship, and our relationship dealt in great part with our art, our dreams, and our magick workings. They bubbled one into the other. At a point I don't have any idea what meaning those songs had for anyone else, because they were so internally motivated; but there is no doubt, what we were invoking was potent, and it had teeth.

I mentioned in my first post in this series that symbols of these kind can actually obscure our genuine relationship with the person that evoked them. This was quite true with us, I think. I have the benefit of hindsight now. At the time, I couldn't make the distinction. In the process of bringing up such a potent, and destructive archetype, our relation ran constantly between explosive fire and torpor. I can only imagine that, whatever our conscious motivations in bringing such a symbol into our lives, we were truly yearning from a release from prior "karma." This is where her role and Kali remain somewhat the same. When the fire has burned everything to the ground, you are finally at a point where you can truly leave the past behind and begin anew- supposing that you survive the process with something intact.

That is very much what happened. The band and our marriage went up in flames. While I clung to the personal element, I was stuck in a downward spiral. All your attachments will be burned away, one by one, until you learn to truly let go, or there is simply nothing left. I eventually did let go, and, though many new trials have followed, I have become who I am today as a result. I very much believe that without having performed the working that we did - difficult as it was - I would in some way still be stuck where I was psychologically, still a child. In that way it was my initiation. And I think many Americans never get that, and are stuck in a kind of perpetual psychological limbo: not quite a child, not quite an adult. They yearn for an initiation, brought about by this symbol or another, but often don't even know what they're yearning for.

Dionysus may be a patron of sorts, but Lilith was my initiator. I bear her little love, but plenty of respect.

At this point - and I mean this quite genuinely - I am thankful for everything that happened. Nothing subtle could have helped me grow. It is only when nothing short of personal apocalypse can shake up the status quo that a sane individual would call upon a symbol like Lilith, certainly not with such regularity.

Looking at the impact of symbols (part 2, Dionysus)

 read part one

My initial contact with Dionysus was probably not especially atypical. I was part of an "enrichment" program at my HS that included an English class that mixed in a great deal of mythology. In a way I feel pretty thankful for that; though we were mostly working with Bulfinch's, our teacher was especially passionate about the subject and repeatedly tried to get it into our heads that these were psychological metaphors. At the time I was mainlining Mountain Dew and fixated on most of the things adolescents fixate on, but it must've gotten in. Dionysus was portrayed as something of a sideline divinity in most of those texts; his real role in the pantheon or in my life wasn't at all clear.

Not long after, I became obsessed with Nietzsche- there's something about his writing that seems particularly attractive to young, intellectually-oriented outsiders. Especially, though not exclusively, males. (The same could be said of Crowley.) His framing of the Apollonian / Dionysian dichotomy in art was really compelling to me, but still, the symbol remained fairly intellectual. It did lead me to a class in college on Dionysus, which framed the Dionysian in the context of creativity, rather than the more mundane Roman rendering of the image as Bacchus. (Not the same image at all, but the distinction is often lost.) We read artists like Artaud. I remember a number of classes with particular amusement, like when the professor came in, clearly with a stiff back, and offhandedly commented that he'd injured himself during Tantric sex with his wife.

It started to gel at this point that there was something about the image of Dionysus that kept pulling me back. There are many approaches to creativity and the arts; Dionysian creativity in many ways is about getting out of the way of yourself. This is is one of the reason that drug use is so tied in with this current, for better and worse. Certain substances lessen the pull of the conscious self, letting what lies underneath to rise to the surface. The creative is a medium, the body is the point at which the upward and downward triangle of aspiration and the force of gravity meet, out of which alchemical transfiguration can occur. That sounds pretty high-minded and abstract, but it directly influenced my earliest approaches to writing, visual art, and music- diving in, often in chemically charged, manic binges. The result was characteristically intense and unfocused. There's no evaluation in that place. This is the creativity of the fugue, or channeling. Art has to be wed to this process through restraint, that comes with practice. The danger of the Dionysian approach is the complete lack of valuation; you will produce gems, but they'll be mixed in with the shit. You simply can't distinguish between the two, and later, in editorial, you may discover that they are very hard to separate from one another, as if the insights are connected to the dross through some invisible organ system. Kill the body and the head will die.

There was a more personal side to this connection, too. From my earliest memories on, women have always served a central role in my life. This is unsurprising, given that my parents were always women- my Mother, and her girlfriends. I didn't have a real male friend until I was thirteen, most of my early socialization was with girls- more out of preference than anything else, as well as the fact that the boys always seemed to sense something "other" in me and have a strong desire to attempt to squash it, like a bug. The most common insult from their quarter was always to call me "a girl." Even at the time I remember finding this curious. The insults stopped when I began meeting every slight related to this supposed insult with violence, but it always confused me: why was being a "girl" such an insult, when it seemed to clear to me that, before society had its awful way with them, women were closer to nature? Perhaps I didn't consciously think this last part just yet, but the feeling was there. I still remember it clearly. And even when the insults stopped, I still remained somewhat other, at least until the social dynamics of HS took me in for a while.

For those that are familiar with the Dionysus myth, this should be very familiar. For those that aren't, by the time he has attained the status of a deity, the first sign of his appearance is in the form of the bacchante, the wild women of Dionysus; in his earlier life, he was alternately hidden by his mother Semele from the wrath of Hera- he was raised by nymphs in seclusion- or he was hidden by Zeus "in his thigh." This is not to say that I was raised by nymphs, but the psychological significance of this element of the symbol is there. These symbols always must be read psychologically. In some ways I have grown further from him as my life has gone an, even as I've learned more about him and become mentally closer; I can only imagine that this is because of the effects of living in the society that I do. But the current is there, even when not clearly apparent. Still waters run deep.

Dionysus himself is considered effeminate, though I'm not aware of any direct reference to homosexuality that isn't juxtaposed there. We simply assume he is effeminate, bivalent, surrounded by wild female energy- there must be an element of homosexuality in the image. Perhaps there is, but it always struck me as something else. Certainly the consciousness represented by his symbol is beyond pairs of opposites in the social sphere, so there is a strong current of pansexuality throughout the symbol, but not strictly homosexual. And, as I said, this rarely enters into the traditional portrayals of the symbol.

I have an explanation for this. Dionysus is the mythological necessity of a feminine current that seeks to return a society divorced from nature back into accord with her, even if it is the nature that Lord Tennyson refers to, "bloody in tooth and claw." In Western mythological terms the male, solar energy is necessary to give the lunar, female energy light; you can read this as the sexist statement of an aeon of male dominated mythology, but there is a sense to it if we consider the meaning of the symbols themselves outside the context of human society. To whit, it is the lurking sense that the "passive" is "weaker" than the "active" that is the coloration of a male dominated mythology, rather than the meaning of the symbol. Is the negative pole or a magnet "weaker" than the positive? Perhaps the Chinese Yang and Yin are preferable; they mean "sunny" and "shady" side of the hill, which is to say two states of the same thing, the active and receptive. When you consider that Dionysus is a bull God, this inversion of roles gets even more complicated, but I'll save that for a later post as it wanders back into the historical rather than personal interpretation of symbol.

To get back to the point, Dionysus is a necessary symbol, in mythological terms, to focus the counter-patriarchal, counter-order forces of nature, nature being closer in many ways to the female energy than the male. In the screenplay and novel for Fallen Nation I deal with this a lot, the character Dionysus says "I am an agent of chaos." This is what he means. Not the chaos of the anarchist but the chaos of natural order, of Tiamat, existing before the discriminatory force of reason slayed that dragon and made a sensible world from her corpse. This idea shows itself nicely in the Garden of Eden as well, when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, what happened is they became self aware. They knew shame because they had become divorced from nature, from themselves, by reason. This is the cost. The benefits we know all too well-- as I sit here in a cafe, typing this out on a laptop, music paying from a digital disc in the background-- none of these things could come to be without having stepped outside of the Garden. But at what cost? The Dionysian current attempts to lead us back to that primal source. Maybe we can wed the last 2000 years of our development with what we lost in the process: that would certainly be a step towards Nietzsche's deleteriously conceived ubermensch. But there should be no mistake, this path is a dangerous one.

All of these ideas are central to understanding the significance of the Dionysus symbol, though hopefully I explore that more successfully in my fiction than I could here. Should the screenplay make it to screen, and or comic book, I certainly hope you come along for the ride.

Looking at the impact of symbols (part 1)

I want to start to explore a couple symbols that have been reoccuring themes in my life here on Modern Mythology. They are symbols I've dealt with on here many times before but I want to take a look at how they played into my life, hopefully to serve as a sort of example. By "symbols" I'm actually referring to entire constellations of symbols that most people refer to as Gods- like Dionysus- or demons, like Lilith. I like the word "symbol" better because it is more open ended, and passes no real judgement on the nature of what's being symbolized. I don't want to get into a discussion of what is "real" or not. Let that play out in the rendering. Our lives are real enough, or if not, then nothing is.

I'll be talking about past events, though I'll not be using people's full names. It's all done to serve as part of that example. I've finally reached a point in my life where my past no longer lures or haunts me, even if I still have something of an ongoing struggle with my expectations of the future. The story isn't about them, it's about me. Maybe this is probably the first point to make about symbols like this- they reflect us, and they can even obscure other people in their place. Jung noted this about the anima and animus. We can be so overtaken by the symbol evoked by an individual that our internal relationship becomes entirely with the symbol; our relationship with the person behind that symbol atrophies, if it was ever there at all. There's a lot I could say about that, but it'd lead me far off course. Hopefully I'll remember to return.

There's also an extent to which these themes reoccur because we pick them out of the lineup- there are countless mythological symbols out there, but only certain ones stick out to us, almost as if the others didn't exist. This speaks volumes about us, but little else. I think a lot of damage has been wreaked throughout history as a result of people being overwhelmed by the power of an image that appears to them, followed by the miopic assumption that the presence, significance, reality of that symbol was an imperative for everyone else as well.

Immanence of myth: submission review

Now that I've wrapped up the first draft of the Fallen Nation screenplay, I have until April to pretty well tackle the submissions for the anthology and get everyone working on their second drafts, or other necessary writing or re-writing. I think a couple writers were a little taken aback by the fact that first drafts don't go straight to copy-editing-- frankly, I don't know a single writer who can pen a first draft that's ready for print. And I know some good writers. This is a labor of love, there's simply no other good reason to do it. It's not even about how good one is as a writer; the more we reflect on the subjects we are considering, the more refined the final result will be. I'm happy to see that so many of the contributors so far have understood that and are working to rise to the occasion.

While those pieces are being worked on, between now and mid-May, I'd like to offer an opportunity. I have a couple ideas for articles that I'd like to see penned, so I want to offer these as suggestions to the public. Even if they don't drop on your head like that apocryphal apple that whacked Newton on the skull... maybe something else will be shaken out of the tree. 

Yeah, an iffy metaphor but it's 5:15am here so bear with me: 

First, a piece on the mythological connection between sex and death. This is a well documented link, clearly seen in figures as disparate as Baron Samedhi and Kali. However, less explored is the significance of this link in our personal lives. If the link isn't strictly the result of a fairly obvious observation about the nature of reproduction, time and death, then what is it? How deep does it go? Most importantly -- and this is something to try to bring in to any piece written for this book -- how does it impact our lives? Bataille's Erotism might be a good place to start in terms of reference material, but as this belongs in the "personal myth" part of the anthology, if it starts and ends with one's personal experience of sex/death, it will work best. 

A look at the mythology behind a specific animal or activity. For instance, beekeeping. Apiaries go back to ancient Egypt, possibly before, and the bee / hive has obvious mythological significance that can be interpreted in both psychological and social ways. Look at the behavior of bees and conflate those behaviors to metaphors, that is, mythologize them. There's also something interesting about the relationship of bees to beekeepers, which I think is ripe for some interpretation, along the lines of thoughts about all symbiotic relationships in nature.

The myths of class and race within America obviously define our perspective of politics within this country. I think a solid look at this issue through the lens of mythology and symbol could be very interesting.

I've received a few pieces about working with specific divinities, and interpreting those symbols in ways that are both psychologically potent and practically useful. They have all done so in a way that is very persona, but also refer to the historical / mythological record. However, I'd really love to see this for a few more divinities / symbols. The point of this diversity, among other things, would be to help demonstrate that it can really be anything that speaks to you, that the methods of interpreting these symbols and the way they can impact our lives is as diverse and unique as we are, even though they refer to archetypical images. So more along these lines would certainly be appreciated.

I could write some of these pieces but I feel like the more voices that we can fit between the covers, the better. 

Also, if any of you have a piece ready between now and May, please feel free to pass it my way. Keep in mind that the closer to May that it is, the closer to "out of the park" it's going to have to be. So hit it hard! 

Trololo: Christoph Waltz, Russian legend, and amyl nitrate

Just going to show that myth is always a key element in meme-making, this video has been popping up all over the place recently. Brooke Burgess pointed this out to me, as I've apparently been living under a rock the past couple weeks working on Immanence of Myth, a script, and several other things. This video is -- I imagine -- something like doing amyl and DMT at the same time, without the machine elves and anal relaxation:



The recent spike seems to have preceded this absurdity:

Although Google Insights returns a years-long trend for “Edward Hill” it should not be assumed that they are all for this Edward Hill, as the name refers to a number of historical figures. However, searches for “Edward Hill” and “trololo” have shown a marked increase in Feburary of 2010.

However, the source of the video's popularity might not be quite so recent.

As those who frequent this blog regularly know, normally I would provide some context or analysis on how the myth ties into the more recent outcropping of the media. But in this case, I've got nothing on the connection between a Russian folksong about the returning hero and this. It's something like a synchronicity that pops up thirty times during your day, after ten instances of the number thirty one or ravens you start to wonder if the universe is telling you something, but what the hell are you going to make of it? Maybe I should try that amyl and DMT thing. I'll let you know if anything comes of that...

Y: AN IMMERSIVE MEDIA EVENT

We encourage all good citizens to sign up for the show. You will be housed within a wonderful Haze Treatment Facility and undergo unique psychological treatment, which will clear away the illness of individuality. This reprogramming will be broadcast to the eyes and ears of citizens in our New World, populated with previous contestants and patients. This is a reality show unlike any other!

There is a secret that haunts Haze01, the original treatment facility. Two patients, locked deep within its walls, contain archetypes that reject all reprogramming. They channel portents and omens of another future, a world where myth and divinity remake reality, manifesting a planet fit for Gods.

In this season of the Y show, the doctors of the facility make their final attempt to process these two patients, before they break free and unleash total anarchy. Tune in.

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Projection in psychology and myth

I've been thinking a lot today about the nature of psychological projection, and the role it plays in mythological thought and imagery. This was probably set off by an essay by Alan Dundes on the subject, Projection In Folkore: A Plea For Psychoanalytic Semiotics, which is a great deal more interesting than the title might imply. Dundes is in many ways a master essayist, portraying fairly complicated thoughts in a very straightforward manner, and making what could be very dry subjects interesting. So I will directly turn to a couple of his thoughts on the subject as I continue to process what I've read today:

"In psychology, projection refers to the tendancy to attribute to another person or the environment what is within one's self. What is attributed is usually some internal impulse or feeling which is painful, unacceptable, or taboo. The ascription of feelings and qualities of one's own to a source in the external world is accomplisehd without the individual's being consciously aware of the fact. The individual perceives the external object as possessing the taboo tendancies without recognizing their source in himself. I might mention Charles S. Peirce was aware of the existence of projection. He wrote, 'I think it is probably true that every element of experience is in the first instance applied to an external object. A man gets up out of the wrong side of the bed, for example, attributes wrongness to almost every object he perceives. This is the way in which he experiences his bad temper.' Despite the triviality of the example, the aptness of the insight remains valid. Of course, Freud said it too and with specific reference to folkore: 'As a matter of fact, I believe that a large portion of the mythological conception of the world which reaches far into the most modern religions is nothing but psychology projected onto the outside world.'"

It is funny to me that today, after reading this section, I got into a conversation on Facebook about this very tendancy and its role in myth, and following that, went to yin yoga class and our instructor commented repeatedly on the nature of projection, and how the negative sensations that we might experience in our daily lives arise within ourselves, even if they are triggered externally. This is further emphasized by the fact that one can contort their body, and experience an unlocking of energy (of one kind or another), that triggers these latent or "trapped" emotional responses. In fact that reaction can be so intense and surprising to many beginning practicioners that they assume something is wrong with them, and cease practice immediately!

This is really worth emphasizing. It is essentially impossible for any external event to in itself cause anger, grief, happiness, despair, or any other emotion that exists in the continuum of possible human emotions. Impossible. What is triggered is MY anger, MY fear, or desire, or so on. Yoga is especially direct in its ability to throw this in our face, but it is certainly not the only process whereby one can slowly, inch by agonizing inch, peel back the curtain obscuring this psychological sleight of hand. Doubtless completely removing this process would make us something other than human. But making us conscious of it-- that is part of what distinguishes the "sleepers" from the "awake." (To that, for my part, all I can claim is: I'm working on it.)

Celebrity Culture (via Aeolus Inc)

I recently came across this blog care of a potential contributor to the Immanence of Myth anthology. This post touches on something I wrote about recently, so I wanted to point you towards his blog, Aeolus Inc.:

"Stars are success personified. They represent a modern, coarse version of the old mythic narrative of the Hero achieving his rightful place as King against insurmountable odds and almost insuperable obstacles. Yet stars do nothing as or by themselves, and certainly nothing heroic (unless a ruthless determination for success at any cost can be considered heroic). They are actors who play heroic roles. The shaman-adventurer enacting his quest for the tribe from a place of Knowing, allowing others to share in his experience of gnosis, has become Arnold Schwarzenegger killing Arab terrorists and saving New York City from nuclear holocaust."

(Full article.)

Hillbilly tantra sex magic on the cheap

Today I want to share an article I wrote back in 2003, which was published in Immanion's Magick On The Edge, and several other magazines and zines in the years since,

"Erotism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death... If a precise definition were called for, the starting-point would certainly have to be sexual reproductive activity, of which erotism is a special form. Sexual reproductive activity is but only humans appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity. Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest independent of the natural goal." -Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1986.)

Imagine two sexual encounters, on the surface identical in every way. You went through every possible posture permutation in the Kama Sutra. All the paint on the walls is now clumped under your fingernails. Your neighbors hate you passionately.

However in the first encounter, both people’s energies are depleted as a result. Perhaps they feel like a dog that keeps getting scratched in that one spot and can’t keep it’s leg from twitching no matter how it might try. Now the alcohol has worn off as they slink into a dark hole somewhere to listen to The Smiths until the mascara has run so badly they look like they just did nine rounds with Muhammad Ali.

In the other case, they feel energized, more in synch with themselves and those around them. A feeling of being personally reborn accompanies it, a new springtime in the soul whether or not it was a tryst or the beginning of an extended engagement.

What is the distinction between these two events, absolutely indistinguishable on the surface?

Of course, to a certain extent, the answer must be specific to the context of the interaction. The “context” is merely the environment, the factors that play into creating a mood and state of mind that we find pleasurable. However “context” also includes elements like ideas, emotions, our past histories, and all of the minutiae that make up the subtext of our everyday reactions. So we can see the distinction between good and bad sex is subjective, and thus in no way moralistic. Well and good, but none of this does a whole lot to answer our question.

There is an organic dimension as well, and this may tell us more. Though the Kama Sutra puts a great deal of attention into the more physical side of this, how lovers can be trained to give each other more pleasure, a more crucial and subtle element that leads us to match or mismatch is electro-chemical. This of course includes the electro-chemistry of our brains, but as you explore this in practice (and as we will later see), the fact that consciousness is a field is part and parcel of the boundless bliss that some experience through sexual contact with others. Many relate experiences of unity, lack of a sense of anything but Self, the slowing or even stopping of time, and many other things which we associate both with religious experience and the pre-formative stage of human development before Self and Other is clearly demarcated. During this stage, magical thinking has also been largely untouched by cultural boundaries and definitions.

This is what we are hunting for, and why there is any sense in speaking of “sex magick” at all. I have experienced “it” many times myself, so I’m not going off what I’ve read in books here. At the same time I can honestly say I’m still trying to piece together exactly what “it” is.

A dissatisfying experience results when there is no transition of energy on both sides. There is harmonic dissonance between the “fields” of the participants. When there is harmonic congruence, and these flood gates do open, there is an active interplay in both directions like the Taoist yin-yang symbol which leaves each participant forever changed, touched in part by the divine presence of the Other, whether the event was the beginning of a long relationship or a so-called one-night-stand.

So we’re driven to have this experience, yet many personal and cultural factors block us from this bliss which is our birthright.

How do we begin?

(PDF of full essay.)

philosophy art and commerce

 There is a common misconception within the myths perpetuated by capitalistic culture, which claims that art and philosophy are useless endeavors – at best, a mental exercise, at worst, an activity for criminals and dilettantes. They forget that all of the great periods in human history, leaps of progress in terms of science, mathematics, and other disciplines that produce more "tangible" results, have occurred side-by-side with paradigm shifts in the arts and philosophy. It is impossible, and irrelevant, to definitively argue which came first. Art and philosophy, without trade, commerce, and application, is sterile and masturbatory. Similarly, trade and commerce is brutish and miopic when it isn’t applied with the sensibility that comes from in-depth philosophical and artistic debate. Both are crucial to cultural evolution, but only when applied together. This misconception is one of the dangers of prevalent capitalistic myths. It is possible that this misconception has actually further divorced these two currents, rendering art into the purely theoretical, a navel-gazing reflection upon itself. This in part came about through the hands of the art world itself, in the formation of the "art world," a world of happenings where nothing happens, of canvases painted white, and music performances where nothing is performed. Which is not to say that there has been no value produced, for instance, by John Cage's 4'33", but there can be little argument that this movement has unintentionally furthered the capitalist myth that art is purely masturbatory.
    What cannot be commodified cannot be useful, cannot be meaningful. In a Capitalistic society, the qualities of what cannot be quantified are irrelevant. Max Horkheimer deals with this in The Eclipse of Reason, for example:

"...the transformation of all products of human activity into commodities was achieved only with the emergence of industrialist society. The functions once performed by objective reason, by authoritarian religion, or by metaphysics have been taken over by the reifying mechanism of the anonymous economic apparatus. It is the price paid on the market that determines the salability of merchandise and thus the productiveness of a specific kind of labor. Activities are branded as senseless or superfluous, as luxuries, unless they are useful or, as in wartime, contribute to the maintenance and safeguarding of the general conditions under which industry can flourish. Productive work, manual or intellectual, has become respectable, indeed the only accepted way of spending one's life." (pg. 40)

    However, Horkeimer attributes this to the "subjective reason" which to his thinking performed a coupe d'etat of both so-called "objective reason," on the one hand, and the mythological impulse on the other. I would instead argue that this end result, which he is quite correct about, was not arrived at through the overthrow of objective reason, but it is instead its ultimate conclusion. It is the inevitable evolution of a specific mythology heritage, which gave birth to reason, which gave birth to the nation-state, which, through many other turn-abouts, gave birth to blind industry. Zeus consumed his own father, Kronos. That is not to say that he wasn't born by him. The same could be said of Horkheimer's objective and subjective reason, as presented in the Eclipse of Reason. No return to objective reason is possible: we are living in its aftermath. At the same time, it is arguable if it existed, save as an ideal, in the first place. Instead, the alternative can only come to life through the culture, embodied in the form of new art, and new myths.

Nothing Is Sacred - early design

Nothing Is Sacred - early design
Originally uploaded by agent139

Present tweaking the album art for the upcoming MTW album. This'll likely sit until we're further into mixing, at which point I'll revisit it.

Input welcome, though as always I reserve the right to ignore it.