MYTHOPOETRY SCHOLAR

Memoir(s) As Un-forgetting
There is, throughout all times, the recognition of a certain moment, a dangerous one, upon which one catches a glimpse of how one re-turns re-membering that participates in a vision of things to come.  These very private moments are muse and such encounter with the pluralism of inner movements of soul teach us how to live a human life in the world of present times.  It is here between the world of the times and the world of the depths the soul of memoir(s) and reveries moisten our tired language and refresh our dry spirit.

Mythopoetry Scholar 2012 offers a variety of memoir and reverie narratives
this time, one of which is by Robert D Romanyshyn titled, "Living with The Dead: Re-Collections of an Unfinished Life."  Before I share an excerpt from Robert's memoir(s) I'd like to step back and step down and through an old biblical quote and old blog post written by someone else.

It seems a good deal of the spirit of the times shaping our national soul speak up founded upon biblical scripture passages. So let me begin with one you may recognize the bible teaches in John 3:8. Now there are many translations of this passage so to get a feel for the idea presented in this passage for how people get spiritually reborn go read some of these translations and then come back.

Now I want to give you the link to a remarkable blog titled, "The Way Of What Is To Come" by Heidekolb. Heide M. Kolb writes from a Jungian perspective and she has taken the title of this blog from the first section of Jung's Liber Primus. This blog reveals that Jung makes a distinction between the spirit of the times and the spirit of the depths. Most of us know Jung's Liber Primus as The Red Book. Kolb moves between reading Liber Primus for herself and also the translation provided in The Red Book to write her blog.

Heide Kolb writes that Jung suggests each era has its own unique spirit or zeitgeist and sees this as shaping the ego consciousness, one's identity and one's bonds to the national soul. But she also says that Jung indicates the spirit of depths is older and stronger and it is the vision from the depths that provides one a light of guidance to the way that is to come in a marvelous, mysterious manner whose spirit one cannot get from the language of the times in which one lives. You aren't going to find the image, "nation" marvel working from solely "soully-liberal" or "soully-conservative" thinking, in other words.

Heide likens 2012 to the spirit of the times before the close of WWI that produces the Dada movement's "pursuit of the marvelous" in aesthetic thought also giving rise to surrealism and cubism in art.  There is a marvelous account here of the birth of abstract caricature by the artist de Zayas and I mention it for the image talking in the passage that serves to in-spire re-visioning things shaping things to come.  The image the artist describes is that of a soul-catcher gathering the likenesses of the like which complete the image in the soul of a new thought; his own was for the catching of soul bringing new ideas to the world. (p32) Where the inner likeness is fullfilling itself, it catches the soul of the ego and this is where and how life takes on new life.

There is a bit of further explanation by de Zayas when the new method of abstract caricature debuts for the first time in 1913. He writes in the preface to the exhibit how he is inspired by primative art's attempt to materialize the supernatural elements believed to exist outside the individual psyche, however "elements science has proved to be natural and exist within the individual."

There is something about our dream life that constellates the spirit of the depths to go where it will gathering up enough likenesses of the like that will catch the conscious soul and bring it alive in lively and marvelously new ways. Robert's memoir(s) will tell such a tale beginning it with a dream figure and his 2011 Mythopoetry Scholar contribution, "Prelude To a Memoir." Robert shares the dream lingers for a decade and he re-collects it letting it dream itself forward again and again.

I am reminded of a kind of abstract caricature in-forming itself providing its own eidos--a spirit of depth archetypally active opening a way, re visioning a way going where it will. I think of de Zaya's image, a soul-catcher gathering the likenesses of the like which complete the image in the soul. For as Robert writes in his narrative's introduction, "In that dream, like so many others before and since it, there is a glimpse of the patterns that have woven and continue to weave together the threads of my waking life."

This is the last of my blogs for 2011. I hope you are in-spired by (de)lights of the season and look forward to the New Year and the new zine publishing January 2nd, 2012. Look for Robert's memoir(s) and enjoy the other fine contributions as you contemplate and muse on the way(s) of things to come.

MYTHOPOETRY SCHOLAR

                Revolution & Mythless Myth

One of the reasons for this three-year ezine project is to try and draw into a virtual space images of the unconscious life of the world, the soul of this world as it speaks to us today, mythlessly. What is the soul of our earth doing when we act the way we act toward each other globally and communally?

Some say the "new age", the "new millenium" began at ground zero. One can suppose the image today at work in a revolutionary manner. What manner of soul is this expression of the presence of the absence in which that moment now presences itself? The one event, depicted in the twin "shadows" lit by night, and the soul of this soul-loss carries an unknown value, a zero― a zero; soul-making "rounds"! And, may I add, still at work underneath our radar, such soul gets around!

So, too the various ways contributors present this year's theme: revolution...as in "the action for turning again" as one of our authors below suggests. David L Miller says it this way,  "The world is archetypally activist." For more on the meaning of this metaphor see David's essay, A Myth Is As Good As A Smile. Meanwhile, here are four more authors and a bit about their contributions to Mythopoetry Scholar eZine vol. 3.

Catherine Svehla

I received a beautiful painting done by cultural mythologer and essayist, Catherine Svehla called "Creation Story." Catherine will be contributing a reverie piece titled "Between the Worlds."

Catherine writes

Coyote comes and kicks the empty skull of that world. Old Man Coyote constructs a place fit for us all by deconstructing principles. Like the black dog that tugs on the loose thread in the garment of the world and pulls it apart so that it can never be completed and the weaving must continue and so the world keeps spinning.


Dave Alber
Cultural mythologer, Dave Alber wrote from China where he is teaching this term to say a little more about his contribution, "Myths and Moon Cakes: The Cosmological Symbolism of the Zhou Revolution."

The myth of Hou Yi the archer shooting down the nine suns is a polemical myth that describes the Zhou people working with the Hou tribe of barbarians ("yi") in the revolutionary overthrow of the Shang empire. The Shang, you see, had a solar calendar with a ten day week. Hou Yi shoots nine, leaving one left. Hou Yi is married to Chang-e who is associated with the moon. And so people with a lunar calendar defeat the people with the solar calendar. The Chang-e myth is known to every Chinese person as it is associated with Moon Festival celebrated every year. However, the cosmological origin of the myth has been lost. So, dare I say, I think that it would be revolutionary to publish something on the recovery of the cosmological and political threads of the myth.

Dave intends to send some great photos of Shang bronze vessels and city walls; wooden molds for moon cakes that depict scenes from the myth.

Meanwhile, the poetry section is set into the publisher and poetry submission to the 2012 zine is now officially closed. One sample of fine work is the experimental poetry of mythopoet, Richard (Ric) Lance Williams.


Ric Williams
Ric's image-idea for "revolution" appears in the title, "Revolution: The Act of Turning Again."  For me this brings to mind the image of the world soul at ground zero revealing itself in the photo as a "golden shadow" as if to say, " Now, we are two going on from two" "without value", meaning we are the door guardians of the gateless gate by which only the one who knows they don't know may pass into the realm of the unknown value to experience this shadow double's gold. You might likewise consider as do I this "golden shadow" might be a new metaphor for the soul of the soul of mythless times.


Stephanie Pope
Which brings me to one of three contributions of my own efforts to support this year's zine, "Mythopoesis in the 21st Century or 'Poetry In The Extreme.'"  The essay examines how a poetic revolution both affirms Ric's image idea of revolution as a turning action that "re" turns (aka, new and again) and reveals what gets around meaninglessness.  My thesis is that "what" indeed gets around meaninglessnesses; it isn't a substance, it is a perspective achieved through a mythic and poetic literary method.