Search found 15 matches
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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. ...
- 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...
- 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....
- 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...
- 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 ...
- 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
- 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/
http://www.sophiaperennis.com/discussio ... s-of-love/
- 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...
- 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...
- Wed May 02, 2012 6:49 pm
- Forum: Mythology and Religion
- Topic: overlooked ( Islamic ) mythic themes ...
- Replies: 23
- Views: 9687
- 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,...
- 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...