Last Words

There have been a few classes that have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think this may just be one of them.  In this class we have learned about everything and so much more.  We can now honestly say that we understand the reasons behind everything we do, and the answer is always mythology.  We know that everything is connected, and understand the importance behind ceremonies.  Most of all we know that there is no such thing as an ordinary day!

Renaming Io

         My parents have cows, so every year we have a small batch of baby cows that my sisters and I name.  This year we had four baby cows to name.  Every year I am faced with the problem of what to name the calf that is designated mine.  My sisters give their's name like Star, Sweetie Pie, Cutie Pie, Snow, Magic, and Domino.  However, I am infamous for giving mine the more unusual and strange names, such as Lover Boy, Harry Houdini, Criss Angel, Byron, El Diablo, and Diablo.  Last year I found the perfect name for this years calf, but maybe it was fate that I forgot it.  This year the baby cow that I got was a girl, and the smallest out of the four. I stuggled to find a name that was as good as the forgot one, when I remembered Ovid, and the stories of Io and Europia.  Io was turned into a white cow to prevent Juno from finding out about Jove's affair.  So I have decided that in honor of this Mythologies course, and Ovid, that my calf will be named Io.  Hopefully she will have a better life then her namesake! 

Io 

 Io and Harry Houdini and others 

My Life as a Mythic Detective

            One of the largest overlying themes of Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, is in fact metamorphosis or transformation. Every few pages someone is transformed into a flower, a tree, an animal, a star, a guy, or a girl.  Everything in the stories must undergo a transformation, but that is the story of life.  Small seeds transform into huge trees, and insignificant caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies.  What appears to be a rock can turn into a bird, a reptile, or an amphibian.  Ovid has taught me that everything must undergo transformations in order to survive and grow. 

 In order for books to be good they have to have dynamic characters, which are characters that evolve from the beginning of the book to the end.  They grow and learn and by the end of the book they are not the same people that the book started with.  At the same time the reader has changed just a little too.  Much like reading Ovid, we have all changed and transformed into someone slightly different from who we were.  We now have the knowledge about the precedent behind every action that we take.  From this class we have transformed from average university students into mythic detectives.  We know the sad story behind the peacock’s feathers, and view every tree as a person in another form.  No matter how hard we try to deny it, Ovid has affected us all.  We can no longer see the world through the rose-colored glasses we had on when we first walked through that door; instead we now see the world in a different light as it truly is.  Because of this class we have all now started our own transformation from the uninformed to the enlightened.

As humans we are forced to undergo changes throughout our lives in order to move forward and grow.  As we travel through life we are transformed from a helpless baby who depends on others, into an adult who has others depending on him or her.   None of us is the same person we were when we were twelve, or even the same person we were before we started this class.  Although our transformations may not be as elaborate as the one’s mentioned in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, they still affect us just as much.   Through Ovid we can realize that change isn’t always such a negative thing. 

  If Daphne didn’t transform she would not be remembered as the girl who turned into a laurel tree, instead she would be just another victim of the gods.  But she transformed and her name lives on through those who know her story, and through the Laurel tree as a permanent remembrance of her life and death.  For those of us who have taken Professor Sexson’s class trees will always be a reminder of those we have lost.  The same is true of the other mythic people featured in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses. If Io was not forcefully turned into a cow to hid Jove’s adultery, then she would just be another name in a long list of Jovian affairs.  Her whole story would have ended differently and it affect the stories of many others.

 A lot of the individuals featured in Ovid are transformed as a form of punishment, while only a few are transformed in order to preserve their lives.   But is there transformation really a form of punishment?  Because of their misdeeds, and their transformation into another shape, we are able to learn.  We now know that being too vain like Narcissus or too proud such as Arachne was, will only lead to our downfall and our transformation into something that we had not envisioned.  From Daedalus and his son Icarus, we know that if we fly too high we will get burned but also that if we fly to low we will die just the same.  They also show us how holding onto grief can transform us into a monster, and instead we should be thankful for the time we have.  Because of Ovid we have transformed and realize that the stories we have learn about in these past few weeks can be the stories of our lives.  We continue to make the same mistakes that those before us have made countless times, but it is necessary so that we transform into who we are meant to be and achieve.  The Ovidian stories are preserved in us, as we reenact them, learn from them, and transform.  In taking this class we are now some of the enlightened few who know this, and we accept it because we have no other option.  As others wonder as to the meanings behind their actions, we know that the answers can be found in Ovid.  As we move through life and transform into different people then we are now, we can rest assured in the fact that others have overcome the same struggles and fears.  And just as the snake transforms by shedding its skin we too shed our skin and transform. 

Snakes and Jorge

Lately we have been talking about snakes in class, and I have to admit I am not the biggest fan of snakes.  As long as their is some type of glass wall between them and me, I am fine.  However, if I see one somewhere unexpected or in the wild, I can assure you that I will become a hysterical sobbing mess in seconds.  But honestly what would you expect me to do?  I have spent my whole life in rural Southwest Montana, being warned of the dangers of snakes, especially rattlesnakes.  In elementary school we would receive lectures about what to do if we ever saw a snake, and how to react.  I have watched (from a distance) my father shoot a rattlesnake, and my best friend came home from school one day to find that her dog had died from a rattlesnake bite.  From a young age we are taught to be wary and cautious of snakes, which translates as fear.  

However, that being said, I did become the proud owner of a rattlesnake.  My mother had found one of our cats playing with a baby rattlesnake in the driveway.  She caught it and put it in a jar, and then brought it to the store, where I spent the afternoon introducing Jorge to unsuspecting customers.  Unfortunately, my parents  forced me to surrender Jorge for his sake and my own.  He was released into a beautiful field very far from my house.  

Displacement Story

The day began as every Tuesday before it had, for the past 10 years.  He sat at the same desk and drank the same bitter tasting coffee, out of the mug he always used, it promoted fire prevention by depicting small deer running away from the faded orange and red flames.  There he read the same newspaper he had loyally subscribed to 10 years ago.  The news was one of the few things that had changed over the years; the Dow was down and gas was up.

The day continued to progress as every Tuesday before it had.  He answered the phone, updated the map on the wall, and sent the only other ranger Dan, out to supervise the daily things.  When he had started working as a ranger at the park, he worked in the office with five other rangers, but now due to the changing times it was only him and Dan.  He spent most of his days alone in the office, having sent Dan off to the far corners of the park, to deal with tourists and such, which was how he preferred it.  He didn't like Dan much, he was much younger, and had no time to listen to an old man's stories, instead Dan yearned for adventure.  Dan wanted forest fires to fight, and drug dealers to apprehend.  The men who came before Dan were the ones he liked, they were cautious, wise, and always had a story to tell.  However, by now they had all retired, and spend their days with grandchildren or golfing.  He only had two years left before he could join them.

The call came in around two o'clock, a young girl claiming that she witnessed a guy starting a fire.  Since he had sent Dan away, he would have to check it out himself.  He didn't bother to leave a note, as he knew that Dan had probably decided to have a drink at the bar and call it a day.  Instead, he locked the door and started the old jeep, Dan always took the newer jeep because it had GPS.  However, having memorized the park years before he had no need for GPS, and if on the off chance that he did get lost, he knew how to read a map unlike Dan.  As he drove, along the bumpy trails, he wondered if he should even bother to respond to the call.  Most likely it would turn out to be teenagers with booze and firecrackers, however, there had been a rash of recent arson attempts in the park lately, so it was worth a look.

Eventually he arrived at the area the caller specified, only too find nothing out of the ordinary.  Then, he noticed a small curl of smoke just visible over the tree line, with a sigh and a groan he eased his way out of the jeep.  Pushing his way through the trees, his nose was meet with the harsh smell of gasoline.  Then, he saw him, the arson, Dan.  For a second they just stared at each other, then Dan with a small gasp dropped the flaming match that was just beginning to burn his fingers.  Then chaos erupted.  Dan had coated the surrounding trees with gasoline and they quickly burst into flames.  Dan ran away through the flame-less trees behind him, leaving him all alone as the flames closed in.  For a second he considered running knowing that if he could make it to the pond he might be able to survive, but a moment of hesitation was all the flames need to close off his escape.  A few hot embers flew up in his face, burning his forehead, as the thick hot smoke began to choke him.  As he began to lose consciousness, the smoke seemed to take the forms of the older rangers, Nicholas, John, Mario, Bert, Jeff, Dustin, Ian, Allen, Gavin, and Rusty.  They lurched over him, as the smoke and flames became to smother and singe him, as he screamed in pain.  Then everything went black.

Signs and Symbols

I think that to truly understand the mystery of the ten jelly jars, we must think like the son.  Due to the son's ailment of referential mania, he believes he is the subject of everything.  He thinks that the clouds and trees talk about him and that his every breath is recorded and analyzed.  Because of this he is driven to send all of his time decoding the messages, "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme."  So what would the son decipher the jelly jars to be?

Another thing is the baby bird who fell out of his nest.  Some people, believe that finding a dead bird is an omen that something bad will soon happen, or that someone you knew or loved has passed away.

"The Spinners"

On Monday and Wednesday we discussed a lot about this painting during class.  However, I would like to talk about something that we didn't cover, or maybe I am just reading to much into the painting.  Like we alluded to in class, I believe that the elderly women in front of the spinning wheel is the Goddess Athena, and the women in white with her back to us is Arachne.  But what I would like to focus on is the three helpers to Athena and Arachne (the women in the left hand corner holding the curtain, the women in the red skirt in the center, and the women to the far right).  However, I don't want to focus on them specifically but on the fact that there is three of them.

Three seems to be a very important number in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  There are three main ruler Jove, Neptune, and Hades. The entrance to the underworld is guarded by a three headed dog, and there are nine muses, which is a multiple of three.  The three Graces, the three Furies, and the Goddess Hecate is described as being three-headed or three-formed.  These are just the occurrences of the number three that I can remember, and have found by glancing through Ovid's Metamorphoses, there are many more.
If you look in the background of the painting there appears to be three more women looking at the tapestry. The tapestry itself gets its theme from Titian's painting "Rape of Europa", which features three cherubs.

Pain and Suffering (Warning: Its kind of a long story)

The other week in class we were assigned to experience something painful over the weekend, and so here is my story.

It all starts the week (Feb. 8th) before, the assignment.  I had gone home for the weekend to get the tires on my car changed, because my dad is paranoid about those kinds of things.  Some quick background, my parents own a hardware store, and on weekends and breaks when I am home I work there.  On that Saturday, I was on my lunch break in the backroom when over the speaker, I hear my mom say "Hi Paula!".  My first thought was that it couldn't be my aunt, there are probably thousands of Paulas in the world. Right? Wrong. It was my aunt.

Now some more back ground so this whole ordeal will make sense.  Paula and I do not get along at all, and its been so long that I don't really remember why.  She is actually my former aunt, having divorced my dad's brother G, when I was young, but for some odd reason my family has kept close ties with her, and she even moved to our town a few years after the divorce.  That's when our 'relationship' went down hill.  After moving to Whitehall, my sisters and I began spending time at her house because it was just down the block from our house and apparently we need more adult supervision while my parents were at work.  At first everything was fine but she had the most annoying catchphrase, "If you're going to act that way then you can leave".  But is it really a catchphrase, if she only said it to me?  One day it all changed. Paula was having a little garden party for her church friends, and I was sent with my sisters to help her get her yard ready and stuff.  Everything I did upset her, but that is a much longer story and I am already way off topic. So after about an hour of her yelling at me, she said it, "If you're going to act that way, then you can leave".  And in front of her, my sisters, and her foster daughter I said fine and left. Ever since then we barely talk to each other, and when we do its only to trade thinly veiled insults.  Then she moved and all was fine, accept when she came to visit, which is why I carefully plan my weekends home.  But in the past few years she has been really nice to me which is weird, and I have attributed it to the fact that she is now 60 and since she just became a paster to a church, I think she wants to atone or something.

Anyways, my mother neglected to mention that she was stopping by to stay for a few nights, and visit her favorite nieces (i.e. my sisters, not me).  So she went to the house, where my sisters were and I stayed at the store trying to enjoy my last few minutes before it all began. Then around 4 o'clock, I was trying to solve the case of the missing power tool box, when someone came in the front door, I looked up and it was my dad's brother, my Uncle M. This was not the same uncle who Paula had been married to but a different one.  My dad has five brothers and sisters, so its all really confusing.  But Uncle M took Uncle G's side in the divorce, and hasn't had any contact with Paula in over 10 years.  So Uncle M and his wife Aunt T, were only passing through on their way to Yellowstone to go skiing, but they wanted to get lunch with me the next weekend in Bozeman with two of my cousins who live in the area.  They left with promises to call, never even knowing that Paula there.

So I survived the weekend with Paula, by claiming that I had a paper to type, and instead watched movies in my room.  The next weekend I decided to go home again to avoid the lunch, only to discover that my dad's other brother E, and his wife K were visiting. You have no idea how weird this is three of my dad's siblings/ex-wives, all stopping by within one week of another. Usually we can go years without seeing any of them, other than Paula, who visits at least once a year.  So then I had to endure a weekend of Uncle E and Aunt K, and their son Ethan.  And Uncle M never called for lunch, but I talked to one of my cousins and he was invited, he didn't go but they told him that my other cousin they were planning on getting lunch with already agreed to get lunch. So basically my uncle stood me up before I could stand him up. And to make everything better it was a three day weekend, with Uncle E and co. who are well they are just plain strange.  I know that's a harsh thing to say but its the truth. Ethan who is only 11 years only already is over 200 pounds and told me how he has only been really drunk a few times, and his parents completely allow it.  His parents also decided to pull him out of school and home school him, which he only does when he feels like it, and neither of them have jobs at the moment.  However, I did find out from my dad, that they only visited to check out the town and see if they could get jobs if they moved here, so I guess I am now house shopping in Bozeman so I won't have to go home ever again.

You know how they say that every family has a black sheep, well I think my family is the complete opposite, all black sheep and I am one of the few white sheep.  Or maybe they think we are the weird ones.
Sorry its such a long and probably boring post.

Quiz #1 Studying

Actaeon (page 65)

• Grandson of Cadmus
• hunter
• Sees Diana bathing and is turned into a deer as punishment.  He is then mauled and killed by his own dogs and fellow hunters.

Callisto (page 43)

• Raped by Jove in Diana's form. 
• Attempts to rejoin Diana's group of girls, but is kicked out when they discover that she is pregnant. 
• After giving birth to her son Arcas, Juno turns her into a bear as punishment for Jove raping her. 
• Years later, Arcas is hunting when he comes across his mother Callisto as a bear. 
• They are both saved by Jove who places them as stars in the sky. 

Semele (page 69)

• One of the daughters of Cadmus and Harmony.
• Semele and Jove are carrying out an affair when Juno finds out and tricks Semele to ask Jove for a favor. 
• She asks him to revel his true self to her, and Gods can not go back on their promises, so Jove does.  This causes her to burn up and die. 
• Jove, however, takes her unborn child and places it within his thigh where it develops and is born as Bacchus/Dionysus. 
• Dionysus takes Hestia's place in the 12 Olympian gods, making him a god. 

Cadmus (page 61)

• After his sister Europa, is taken by Jove, he is sent to find her and told not to come back without her. 
• Unable to find her, he asks Apollo what to do and is told to follow a cow and build a city where it lays down. He then builds the city Thebes, and kills the dragon/serpent that threatens his city.  He plants the monsters teeth from which grow into soldiers. 
• Marries Harmonia and they have four unlucky daughters.

Tiresias (page 71)

• Sees two snakes copulating and puts his staff in between them, this changes him into a woman. 
• After spending seven years as a women he comes upon two more snakes, and separates them again, causing him to change back into a man. 
• Juno and Jove later come to him, wanting to know who has more fun making love, men or women. 
• Tiresias says women do, which enrages Juno causing her to blind him. 
• Jove then gives him the gift of prophecy because he can't undo Juno's work. 

Narcissus and Echo (page 72)

• Narcissus was incredibly proud and disdained those that loved him. Nemesis saw this and drew him to a pool where he fell in love with his reflection. Unable to leave his reflection, he wastes away and dies. 
• Echo was a young girl who fell in love with Narcissus's looks, and after being rejected by him she wastes away until she is nothing but a voice repeating the last things it hears. 

Pentheus (page 83)

• Laughed at the gods
• King of Thebes
• Dionysus came and began to insight chaos in the city, causing Pentheus to order his arrest. However, Dionysus makes the guards believe that they are leading a bull into the prison.  
• Pentheus then asks Dionysus for a favor, he wants to know what goes on at Dionysus women only celebrations. 
• Dionysus agrees, and convinces Pentheus to dress up as a women.
• At the celebration the other women realize Pentheus is a man and attack him, Sparagmos - the act of sacrifice by dismemberment. 
• His head is taken by his mother, a daughter of Cadmus. 

Class Notes February 4th - February 6th

The Four quartets  by T.S. Elliot 

• "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring...."
• http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html
• arrive where you've started, but its a different place
• you've changed, initiation 
• Homework: presentation on the subject of initiation 
• needs to included an element of pain, suffering 
• Eliade "Rites and Symbols of Initiation"
• initiation associated with pain/suffering

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

• Natural way the world came into being, draws from Lucretius, who also influenced Ovid

etiologies - how things came to be 

Apocalypse - end of world, removal of the veil 

February 6th

Death, Afterlife, and Eschatology

• study of the end of days/end of time

Ritual - repeated in a formal orchestrated way 

myths in everyday life 

sacrifice - to make sacred, sacra/fice

myths of ritual involve passage through 

Test - What to Know

Apollo and Daphne

Io

Callisto

Europa 

Cadmus

Actaeon

Simile 

Tiresias 

Narcissus

Pentheus 

Orpheus

Pygmalion

Myra and Adonis

opening cosmology

question of first days

Class Notes Jan. 16th - Jan. 25th

Class Notes Jan. 16th - Jan. 25th

January 16th 
Asklepion - healing,

• a building with many rooms, each containing a bed.  Patients are left alone in a room and expected to sleep and have a dream.  In the dream if either asklepius or a snake would appear the patient would be healed. This was a free healing center. 

Asklepious - god of medicine, symbol caduceus

January 18th
recursive structure - stories within stories with people telling another story
                             - Arabian nights
"Leda and the Swan"  by William B. Yeats

• tells the story of Helen's mother Leda and Jove in the form of a Swan

Sundays and Cybele french movie

• importance of trees, a story about trees 

George Burn Shaw 1912 play/film Pygmilion

Synchronicity - several unrelated events or events that are unlikely to occur by chance, but are experienced occurring together in a meaningful manner.

Albert Camus Myth of Sisyphus

January 23rd

Cave of Forgotten Dreams - Documentary movie about cave drawings

Shakespeare Sonnet 73

Trees

• Biblical - Noah's ark - dove returns with olive branch symbolizing land therefore trees
• Lycidas by John Milton 
• daphne turns into a laural tree (page 15)
• first line of Milton's poem is about laurels 

etiology - the study of causation or origination

Joseph Cambell The Hero with a Thousand Faces (inspiration for George Lucas's Star Wars)

Frederick Turner - Epic 

Mircea Eliade

• 4 basic creation myths 
• Creation ex nihilo - out of nothing 
• Earth diver
• Dividing in two
• Dismemberment of a primordial being

January 25th

Creation Myths 

• in illo tempora - event out of time 
• once upon a time 
• all time references
• creation is order brought about from Chaos
• all myths are etiological 
• "Enuma Elish" - creation through dismemberment 
• axis mundi - navel of the world - tree center of world
• Circles 

Egyptian Creation Myth

Here is the link to the website where I found the Egyptian Creation myth that I presented (Atem).  You have to scroll down quite a bit to get to the actual myth but the introduction is interesting too. 

http://www.egyptartsite.com/crea.html

As we discussed in class a majority of the creation myths were of the Earth Diver category.  In it the world is all water and an animal dives down to the bottom and brings some earth up with him/her, which is then molded into the world.  This has made me curious as to whether a majority of cultures in the world feature Earth Divers in their creation myths or if the class is just biased towards those types of cultures?  It also made me interested in whether the animal that finally brought up the earth, was revered or considered sacred in the culture or not?  If it was revered do the cultures still find it revered today or what? 

My Earliest Memory

One of my earliest memories was when my family went to my aunt's house, for my cousin's high school graduation.  I was around five years old at the time.  While we were visiting, my aunt decided to take my mom and me to visit her friend who owned an ostrich farm. Yes you read that right an OSTRICH FARM.  So the lady showed us all of the ostriches which were kept in this huge enclosure in the yard.  Compared to a five year old, ostriches are huge scary birds, but luckily there was baby ostriches which were a little bit closer to my height.  There was one baby ostrich which stayed near the fence where we were standing, and the lady was telling us how he was sick and would probably die.  I decided right there that I was going to adopt the ostrich and nurse it back to health.  Then together my ostrich and I would reenact the scene in The Lion King, where baby Simba rides the ostrich while all the animals are singing.  However, then the larger ostriches got spooked by something and decided to stampede and terrify me to death.  Imagine about 20 ostriches running past you with only a fence separating you.  On the plus side after I freaked out, my aunt gave me a small bag of Cheetos to calm me down, because I was scaring her. That was the end of my dreams of having my own pet ostrich, and I credit it to being the source of my completely ration fear of birds, because we all know Hitchcock was right.

This is an ostrich in case you missed 'Birds of Death Day' in second grade.

Dream

This is a dream that I experienced a few nights ago.  I was in Missoula and I was walking along this long winding sidewalk with large fields of grass on both sides.  It is an unspoken rule between me and the other people on the sidewalk, not to walk on the grass.   In the distance I could see my father sitting on a park bench in front of tennis courts waiting for me. But the sidewalk is crowded who are all walking at different speeds, making it difficult to move at a brisk pace.  I know that I have to hurry or my father will leave, so I start running weaving in between the people and stopping occasionally when the crowd is too thick.  However, no matter how much progress I make the sidewalk just grows longer and longer, and with it my father moves further and further away.

Class Notes Jan. 9th - Jan. 14th

January 9th - Introduction to Class
Terms

• mythos - Greek - story
• myth - the precedent behind all actions
• what comes before a story
• stories before the story
• original - go back to the origins
• logos - the word
• mythology  
• mytho/logy - combination of mythos and logos
• truth and story, truth of stories, truth about stories
• in ilo tempore - in great time 

January 11th 

• sparagmos - tear, pull to pieces, the act of tearing or mangling

Introduction to From Primitives to Zen by Mircea Eliade 

http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/ 

January 14th

• Call to adventure - first stage in the hero's journey 
• Bacchus - God of wine and merriment 
• monomyth - the hero's journey 

All fairy tales are generative or diluted myths.

The importance of women in myths. A woman is behind every hero. They are the primary forces in stories.

Name Origins

Several other people are writing about the origins of their names, and I thought that I would do the same so here I go.
My first name is Patricia, which is derived from the Latin word patricius.  This term was used in ancient Rome to refer elite noble families, over time the meaning grew to include high council officials, and then it became an honorary title.  During the medieval ages, the English translation, patrician, was a term used to describe members of the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. The given name Patricia didn't become popular until it was used for one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters.  However today it seems to have lost some of its popularity, as I have only met one other girl born after the seventies with the first name Patricia.
My last name is Morse, which according to my father originated on the Scottish-English border around late 1500s.  Now the details have been lost to history but one of the more popular stories is that a wealthy man of German decent moved to the area. The man's last name is unknown but it is believed to have been pronounced similar to Moo (yes like a cow). He then changed his last name to Morse.  The Morse family came to the New World around the time of Jamestown, because they were kicked out of England for poaching on the King's land.