Search found 15 matches

by charlesupton
Mon May 21, 2012 1:01 am
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

All the great myths that Joseph Campbell presented to us have creation stories; few if any have evolution stories. I believe that evolution is true if we define it as the change of species over time, their disappearance and replacement by new species. But I don't believe that the Darwinian mechanism...
by charlesupton
Sun May 20, 2012 7:25 pm
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

To many, their particular religion is indeed "local". But if you get to the depth of your religion, you will understand it as a necessarily unique rendition of universal themes. These themes apart from any particular cult are universal on the intellectual plane, but you can't realize them existentia...
by charlesupton
Sun May 20, 2012 1:59 pm
Forum: Mythology and Religion
Topic: overlooked ( Islamic ) mythic themes ...
Replies: 23
Views: 9687

Has anyone expanded on the myth of al-Khidr, the Green Man, who appears in the Qur'an in the surah of The Cave -- the immortal prophet, patron of the Sufis, who has been identified with Elijah and (by the Eastern Orthodox Christians) with St. George? Or on the Companions of the Cave from the same su...
by charlesupton
Sun May 20, 2012 1:25 pm
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

Dear JamesN, So the metaphysical sense, that is an inalienable part of the human makeup, is being veiled, the effect being that WE NO LONGER KNOW WHAT A HUMAN BEING IS. The major (final) destruction of the old order of perception began, or immensely accelerated, during the First World War. I agree. ...
by charlesupton
Sun May 06, 2012 10:44 pm
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

Of course historical development is a huge factor in folk songs, and I certainly share your lament that history is no longer being taught, outside of ethnic history, women's history, etc. And the History Channel seems to be concentrating on the history of technology and industrial processes, as if o...
by charlesupton
Sun May 06, 2012 3:30 am
Forum: Exploring Your Personal Mythology
Topic: The problem found with this topic being presented
Replies: 4
Views: 1852

'Yes, Infinity becomes an object of the finite subject, this being the origin of all idolatry. But that Infinity reduced to the object of a finite subject is also what Ibn al-'Arabi called "the God created in belief", which is a necessary bridge to the God Who is beyond all subjectivity, all belief....
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 6:14 pm
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

It's certainly possible that the First Composer of a true song, working in a living Tradition, might not fully understand what he or she has written; I had that experience many times in my career as a lyric poet: my words knew more than I did, which was a pretty painful place to be in....but if we c...
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 6:01 pm
Forum: Mythology and Religion
Topic: Can Christianity be recreated to work as a metaphor ?
Replies: 96
Views: 29713

My wife Jenny says: "Christianity was understood as a metaphor from day one" -- by the "pneumatics", that is, not the "psychics" or the "hylics". It was a metaphor that was lived out in the flesh, as all metaphors (for good or ill) ultimately are. Jenny says: "Go back to the medieval concept of the ...
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 5:44 pm
Forum: Exploring Your Personal Mythology
Topic: The problem found with this topic being presented
Replies: 4
Views: 1852

Gnosis, jnana, ma'rifa is not to know Infinity, but to know that Infinity KNOWS US, to become objectified before the face of the Absolute Witness.
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 5:40 pm
Forum: Exploring Your Personal Mythology
Topic: Personal Mythology
Replies: 55
Views: 13247

OK, here's that link to the short epic poem "The Wars of Love", a fall-and-redemption cycle, a contemporary apocalypse:

http://www.sophiaperennis.com/discussio ... s-of-love/
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 5:33 pm
Forum: Exploring Your Personal Mythology
Topic: Does religion help a hero in his journey ?
Replies: 126
Views: 22349

If you are serious about your religion you will not simply pour yourself into the external mold of it, but make it your own. God has given us forms that allow us to contact Him, but your struggled for, chosen and destined encounter with Him is necessarily unique, because He is the Unique. As the Suf...
by charlesupton
Sat May 05, 2012 5:18 pm
Forum: Exploring Your Personal Mythology
Topic: Personal Mythology
Replies: 55
Views: 13247

Dear Samantha, "Personal myth" , to me, is an ambiguous concept. Myth is supposed to take us beyond ourselves, to the great archetypal themes; is seeing yourself living one of these themes a "personal myth", or something else? My poetic mentor, Lew Welch, lived out the myth of the "warrior-son of th...
by charlesupton
Wed May 02, 2012 6:49 pm
Forum: Mythology and Religion
Topic: overlooked ( Islamic ) mythic themes ...
Replies: 23
Views: 9687

Maybe you were held in that city by, among other things, the tomb of Ibn al-'Arabi.
He was buried in the family tomb of the Banū Zakī in the small beautiful district of Al-Salihiyah at Jabal Qāsiyūn.
by charlesupton
Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:19 pm
Forum: The Conversation with a Thousand Faces
Topic: some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays
Replies: 15
Views: 4143

some traditional folk songs are really metaphysical essays

Greetings to my associates. I decided to join JCF partly in order to present the main thesis of my book FOLK METAPHYSICS: MYSTICAL MEANINGS IN TRADITIONAL FOLK SONGS AND SPIRITUALS, which is that SOME traditional folk ballads – virtually every one with a riddle in it, for example – are, or began as,...
by charlesupton
Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:05 am
Forum: Mythology and Religion
Topic: overlooked ( Islamic ) mythic themes ...
Replies: 23
Views: 9687

Dear Dr. Ghazzawi, Greetings, and asalaamu alaikum. As you probably know, the Sufis have been studying Islam metaphorically (AS WELL AS morally and legally) for a thousand years. Much of this research is collected in the 15-volume SUFI SYMBOLISM by Javad Nurbakhash, and many other works by many othe...