Virgin Emanations

While Campbell has spent much of the first half of the book describing the process of the hero's quest in mythology, the second portion, so far, has hashed out some of the more fascinating universal elements of mythology to me. Namely, in the first chapter "Emanations" of the second section of the book "The Cosmogonic Cycle" Campbell's analysis of myth has moved from the individuals of mythology to the structure of the whole.

Campbell begins the section with a discussion about the psychological nature of mythology, again relating myth to modern psychoanalysis, because of the connection he sees between dream imagery and mythology. The Universal Round especially embodies, to Campbell, the structure of life dreaming and waking, back and forth eternally. So go the cycles of mythological stories, the universe arises from chaos/void, assumes orderly and beautiful life, reaches a zenith, slides into dissolution, extinguishes into void, long silence, then begin again, to infinity.

This repetitious structure is quite beautiful in a strange and tragic way, but also very bizarre to me. When watching movies or reading books, I watch closely for two different underlying attitudes. One is an attitude in which the story takes itself seriously (i.e. it believes in fairies and knights and dragons and evil emperors), the second thinks of its characters and settings as vehicles for communication, with only a thin layer of effort to pump life and thought into its constituent parts. This, for me, is a major difference between good and bad narrative art. The best artists are the ones who believe in their work, who give their characters weight and thought and emotion and reality.

Hayao Miyazaki, my favorite filmmaker and an excellent narrative artist, portrays characters with striking reality. But, their reality is not in their looks, but in their actions and attitude. His films show characters constantly in the full-swing of life: they run, they dig, they climb, they cook, they eat, they tire, they sleep, they wake up and start all over. Even when they have internal conflicts, the films never belabor this, but exhibit their struggles by their responses and their interests. It is the old adage of filmmakers and dramatists, "Show, don't tell!" And, honestly, it is completely true. Showing a man have difficulty in deciding on which entree to order is MUCH, MUCH better than telling the audience that he's indecisive. While the telling may be a short hand to communicate information, showing gives a forceful impression of how a character moves and feels. It gives him the ring of truth.

This thought about hard versus psychological readings of stories keeps ringing in the background of my head. Campbell implicitly includes religions in his examples of mythology, but often repeats the problems of interpreting any of these collective stories as historically accurate; he sees them as stories we measure our lives against, as vessels to communicate values and truth. Yet, if the best narrative art is that which is believed in its telling, where the characters have a reality to them, where do belief and story meet? If it is not to be simply as a dry, pedantic blue-print for life, nor a codified encyclopedic set of historical realities, where does it fall in the middle?

To that extent, perhaps it burns somewhere between the two, in a dark forest. We catch but a whisper of its light the tree and snow, but only catch up to have it vanish before we arrive.

Most theists I know are not deeply concentrated on life-long searches for undeniable evidence for the existence of God, or for historical and geological evidence to uphold claims about the history of the world and who died and who rose. But, that is not to say they are wrong, it is to say that perhaps we simply lose our focus on what's most central. For it seems to me the central concerns of religion are spiritual formation, communal peace, justice and joy-filled life, not historical reality. So, where again is the meeting place of life and story, life and mythology?

From NASA's Godard Space Flight Center

"The illustration maps the magnetic field lines emanating from the sun and their interactions superimposed on an extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory on October 20, 2010. "

Other thoughts from these chapters: the neo-Platonist in me likes the idea of creation as a vast emanation of a grand, central being. The sculpture in Plate XX of "Tangaroa, Producing Gods and Men" is quite striking. The image of beings contorting from the essential fabric of the universe (which is the skin and organs of the great creator him/herself) is a beautiful notion of creation. It reminds me of John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

This panentheistic notion of the world's conception inside of God himself is an eloquent rendering of life, and a great way for giving an uplifting and hopeful image of a universe that can be at once beautiful and ferocious (God as Creator and Destoyer... of self?).

Virgin births: I'm not sure that I feel deeply struck by this. Campbell abstracts in this section, as you can see below.

In the Hindu myth, she is the female figure through whom the Self begot all creatures. More abstractly still, she is the lure that moved the Self-brooding Absolute to the act of creation.

This seems a projection of procreation. Let us move forward.

Departure: Answering the Divine Call

I very much enjoyed your post, and, likewise, agreed! (This may get monotonous, we'll have to argue at some point.)

On to section two: Departure. This section at once less interesting to me than the first and, in some respects, a little haunting. Campbell begins with the tale of the princess the golden ball and the frog, from Grimm's Fairy Tales, No. 1, "The Frog King." The stories action ensues from a seeming mishap, and immediately Campbell latches onto a fascinating critique and interpretation of accidents:

This is an example of one of the ways in which the adventure can begin. A blunder--apparently the merest chance--reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood. As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep--as deep as the soul itself.

While this is basically the notion of the Freudian slip, it seems deeper and more meaningful when put in the context of a story, and since stories mirror life, I'm sure this has its basis in life. Campbell says, "The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny." This is a concept that's mirrored in the arts. Often, artists speak of mistakes as actually being the doorway to creation. My ceramics professor used to refer to the Japanese term らく "Raku" which means "enjoyment; ease" and identifies special tea cups used certain tea ceremonies. Yet, the Raku ware is special because each piece is hand molded and then fired at a low temperature and then put through an oxygen reduction process that gives a black or charred look to the piece and leaves it quite porous. There are special glazes for these, and there's a sense that there's some chaos and randomness in the process which may lead to mistakes in the process, but they are "happy mistakes" ones that can be enjoyed in the final product. The oxygen reduction gives the glazes a shiny look, too, or at least at first. These are some from my class.



Anyway, I like the concept of mistakes and blunders as being evidence of much deeper roads, and of these connecting desires to destiny. Also, when you're in a story, this is the kind of thing that you cannot see, but as a viewer or in hindsight, becomes quite clear. The chance meeting between destined lovers or getting lost and stumbling upon a forgotten kingdom. But, mistakes and blunders are part of a larger set of elements, elements that break the regular course of life and act as the catalyst to the hero or protagonists awakening to an understanding of a higher realm/reality.

So, in the adventure, there is first the call to adventure. It can come quickly or over a long period, but it always comes, whether through mistake, mishap, tragedy or awakening, it comes. Campbell then talks about a disconcerting notion for all would-be-adventurers:

Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to the other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or "culture," the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless--even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! That is a frightening and poignantly accurate paragraph. Depth and purpose in life come at a price, and refusing the call means only becoming obsolete. As he says, one "loses the power of significant affirmative action." This seems like a nightmare scenario to me, and, not too divulge too much, an active fear of mine. Granted, when transposing the elements of life into narrative, one may use the same proportional mythic framework to speak of something as big as liberation from an evil tyrant or as small as waking up on time. As you wrote, myths and symbols help us find our place in life, and help us navigate its perils. Thus, the call unanswered can mean giving up on one's lifetime chocolate factory goals, or simply not asking a girl out. I'm struck with the idea that human beings are full of multiple mythologies and stories occurring simultaneously. Clearly one can perceive all of one's various activities under the umbrella of a single narration, but one also shifts and changes roles throughout the day, and thus, taking part in a number of various plot-lines.

Campbell even softens his critique of the call unanswered by adding:

Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. So it is that sometimes the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves to be the occasion of a providential revelation of some unsuspected principle of release.

I feel like my interpretation of multiple plot-lines fits with this analysis. As we forsake or fail in certain courses of action, the psychological structures we've created to pursue them decay, rot and are overgrown by the undergrowth of the human unconsciousness (uh-oh, I'm starting to slip into the psychoanalysis camp, better keep an eye on that). It is like buildings in ghost towns broken and retaken by weeds, trees and grass. Then, we build something new. Birth. Life. Death. Rebirth.

Likewise, Campbell's next note made me even happier. I like to think I've done some of this, but I may only be skirting the edges:

Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. it drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control.

Granted, I like to think of being the latter rather than the former, for obvious reasons. Psychosis is not my creative ideal. It seems vaguely anti-productive. Anyway, I found this an intriguing and eye-catching section. Campbell is now speaking of facing the journey inwards. It is the adventure inverted with the road leading into oneself, searching the depths of one's being to face the monsters inside and transcend to a higher level of awareness. It reminds me of a saying from the great science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert (a tale of epic and mythic proportion in and of itself). The Bene Gesserit rite:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

This is an excellent sentiment for undergoing the passage within. For, within ourselves lies our greatest battles and struggles, our greatest threats and fears. We are our own worst enemy. And passing through it means passing through self, dying to self, as it were, to become the authentic and true self.

After this Campbell talks about supernatural aid. The old man or old women helps point the way for the hero, or the fairy or Jinn comes to the hero's aid. Hero crosses the first threshold, the trials to prove worthy of enlightenment. Then the passage through the belly of the whale or the journey through Hades, through death itself, to achieve one's goal. There's a lot here, but I feel as though much of it is fairly obvious and prima facia when looking at stories or even life. We get help from those older than us in all aspects of life. Apprenticeships, internships, mentoring, etc. These are more intentional and sought out than the examples Campbell's talking about, but it seems similar to me. We need help in finding our way.

Concerning the first threshold and its trials, I really like the story of Sticky-Hair and Prince Five-Weapons. Such courage! Also, I think I'm vaguely jealous that the man's name is "Prince Five-Weapons." I imagine you make a lot of rumors with that name. I guess he's also the Future-Buddha in a past incarnation, Campbell explains. So, he's got five weapons and he's super smart/wise/compassionate.

I'd like to end with a short piece of animation that reading this has reminded me of. It definitely incorporates all of these aspects: call to adventure (though, more of an inner calling), supernatural aid, trials and thresholds, initiation, transformation/enlightenment and so forth. Made by a small animation company Red Kite Animation, this 15 minute short film is called The Green Man of Knowledge. (I'm not sure how to embed it, so you'll have to follow the link.)