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