Myth and the Internet

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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twokay
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Post by twokay »

I wonder if in a way the internet is a
preordained tool of myth.....
a kind of global crystal ball of sorts.....
Although it is a crystal ball of the masses...
Is there a precidence here then....
or is this as novel in a sense as the space age...
What is the mythical nature of this the internet....
Are we tapping for instance into a collective
archtype source?
Together We Can<br>

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

I envision the Internet as the Net of Indra (the Indranet?).

In the Net or Web of Indra, every where one strand crosses another sits a precious gem - and in each face of every jewel in the Net is reflected every facet of all the jewels in the Web.

Hmm ... wonderful image (especially fascinating that this mythic image is referred to as a Net or a Web ... ), not only a metaphor for the holographic nature of the multidimensional cosmos where the whole is contained in each of its parts, but for the internet itself, with it's hyperlinks and nonlinear conductivity

...or not...

but it works for me

blessed be
bodhibliss

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Bodhi_Bliss on 2004-09-29 12:09 ]</font>

twokay
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Post by twokay »

On 2004-05-19 18:42, Bodhi_Bliss wrote:
I envision the Internet as the Net of Indra (the Indranet?).

In the Net or Web of Indra, every where one strand crosses another sits a precious gem - and in each face of every jewel in the Net is reflected every facet of all the jewels in the Web.

Hmm ... wonderful image (especially fascinating that this mythic image is refered to as a Net or a Web ... ), not only a metaphor for the holographic nature of the multidimensional cosmos where the whole is contained in each of its parts, but for the internet itself, with it's hyperlinks and nonlinear conductivity

...or not...

but it works for me

blessed be
bodhibliss

Hi bodhi

Yes I've heard of the net of Indra....
I even have seen a fractle trying to depict it
I think I posted it in one of my other threads...here..
The word "cooperative coexistence" seems to spring with that thought though I'm not exactly sure what that might mean....
the internet though struck me today as be
the new footing into the space age .....
the infrastructure of the anthrosphere......
a means to share and exchange and dialogue
instead of merely debate.....
To come to consensus rather opposition......
yet the internet is a nebulus thing at times
like Castenadas controlled folly
hmmmmm

_________________
Together We Can


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: twokay on 2004-05-20 21:36 ]</font>

kadler
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Post by kadler »

Yes!

When I first came across network computing in 1988, the first thing I thought was,
"This is modern shamanism". There I was sitting in the dark with this bunch of lights flashing in my face, putting me into a trance-like state where I was talking with spirits. And the potential for psychological healing on a community level smacked me right upside the head.

And it just continues to amaze me as it shrinks the world and allows me to know people in places I may never be physically.
Kenton R. Adler

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Post by Martin_Weyers »

Kenton, every time when I am googling or yahooing or altavistying, I'm always see-sawing between two sightways: The internet - is it a bitch or a goddess or both?!

Again I like to point to one of my favourite Myth Letters, the one from July 2003. You will find the whole text by visiting our Archives section Here's a little excerpt:
This is a local god, to be sure. Those without computers will dispute His powers or perhaps His very existence, and even those who are true believers may disagree on which of the many mouths of the oracle speaks the purer truth: the sibyl of Google or Jeeves or Lycos or HydraLinks or JupiterMedia. The "god-talk" is as dense as any theological debate, as this recent parley suggests:

Speaker A: If you are using Borland's Delphi or C++Builder to develop Oracle applications, then the Direct Oracle Access component set can help you to make a seamless integration between this great development tool and database system.
Speaker B: But a direct Oracle Access application does not require middleware like the BDE or ODBC, it merely requires Oracle SQL*Net or Net8. Consequently you can deploy your application without many of the version dependency or configuration problems typically involved with middleware installation.


This god is all-knowing and blurs the distinctions of past and future, for like the Akashic Records, all human knowledge can be accessed at the portal of the present Now. As the ancient sybils inhaled the aromatic fumes to go into trance in order to receive the word of knowledge, so the flickering screens of our local interface with the godly ones seduce us into stupors where time itself melts away and we surf into realms beyond the ordinary, leaving the body behind in our other-worldly adventures. This god satisfies all whims and urges, from the bestial to the most noble, letting His sun shine on good and bad alike.

His temple has many doors -- or rather "windows" -- and anyone can enter and seek the holy words and images. This God has overcome the obstacles of locality by learning to speak all languages and adopting as true all local superstitions. Anyone may be a prophet for $19.95 a month and assail the cyber-pilgrims with promises of redemption for entering their particular portal. For small sacrificial offerings the devotees may gaze upon images of the guru and have access to the holy hyperlinks, all within the sanctuary of their own home.


The gaming spirit of this god is still strong and many believe that the universal language will be the next great player in the Promethean promise of self-sovereignty, but forces of darkness are on the horizon: those who would divide and conquer this brave new world by requiring policing and policy-making of the free-frolicking populace; a fencing in of the Dionysian frenzy of free access to information and communication. But the mystical prophecies predict that the critical mass of linked mental energies has almost reached its cyberean jump-point, and that a radical transformation of the planet-being called Gaia is nearly upon us. The new mythology is being written on a million new webpages and the horizon is almost here....
Works of art are indeed always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

twokay
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Post by twokay »

Ahhh
Tis sad in a way.....
I was wondering what Dr. Campbell
would have made of or done with or done
on the web......
In a way he certainly used the old media well
and he gave very good presentations...
yet he would simply have been another minion
*opps* here in the great oracle.....
Although he was a humble wise man....
perhaps his spirit resides as a "ghost in the works"
then at times ....
I know when I first came to the Campbell site
that seemed to be the case of sorts.....
or was that simply technical glitches needing to be worked out......
post would disappear mysteriously before they were sent... page up and down.... etc etc.
yet it was one of the first "forums" proper that I came accross on the web and a good application of the technology..... It was a coup then for the foundation and a tribute as to their asuteness on the nature of the beast......
It is interesting too how each site or forum etc..... can take on a certain character or "spirit".....
Has anyone else noted that?

Together We Can<br>

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

On 2004-08-31 06:08, twokay wrote:
I was wondering what Dr. Campbell
would have made of or done with or done
on the web......In a way he certainly used the old media well and he gave very good presentations...
On the one hand, Joseph Campbell seems very much old school - conversant in several languages, intimate with the classical works of philosophy and literature and art, a writer who preferred a sharp pencil and a yellow notepad

and yet there is an evolution in his presentation over the years. The visual element emerges, moving into a central role. Slides appear in lectures, not just augmenting, but anchoring, the discussion

(an apocryphal story has Campbell finding his slides have somehow been placed in reverse order by an assistant - so Joe simply gave the lecture in reverse, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning - and still wowed the audience).

Campbell's early books were straight text - his elegant prose highlighted with a few sketches drawn from ceramic vases and urns and inscriptions ... but then, in The Mythic Image, Campbell realizes the value of the visual component of myth - so this volume is built around the actual images, pictures that draw the reader into the world of myth and dream

... and by the time the first portions of The Historical Atlas of World Mythology are published, the pictures are what count. Colorful images of shamans and masks and rituals, pictures of cave-paintings and dances and deities - the text unobtrusive - a few pages of commentary dense with powerful ideas and deft leaps of imagination, along with the actual myths themselves in relation to the pictures.

It looks like a coffee table book,
but the effect is visually arresting.

This evolution in Campbell's approach is not a change in belief - the image is always what counted for him, the basic vehicle of myth - but it is an embrace of the technology available.

In his final years, Campbell developed a relationship with the computer. Fascinated by the "hierarchies of angels" contained in a computer chip, he realized that using a PC opened up a world of possiblities that had not existed before.

Alas, Joe passed before the Internet became part of the fabric of life - but i too wonder what form his books would have taken, how the presentation of his lectures might have changed, or what might have manifested had Campbell's imagination intersected the internet.

I suspect, though, that he would have embraced this technology with open arms.
It is interesting too how each site or forum etc..... can take on a certain character or "spirit".....
Has anyone else noted that?
Absolutely. Each site seems to have its own gestalt, a reflection of the group mind, perhaps. Indeed, the internet demonstrates that personality need not be confined to a "person," as such. It allows - no, it demands - that we actively mythologize what we encounter in the recesses of this vast labyrinth.

Of course, i'm not sure y'all ain't just a figment of my imagination

... or maybe i'm a figment of yours ...

in which case, whatever you do, please don't hit delete!

blessed be
bodhibliss

twokay
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Post by twokay »

On 2004-08-31 12:05, Bodhi_Bliss wrote:
On 2004-08-31 06:08, twokay wrote:
I was wondering what Dr. Campbell
would have made of or done with or done
on the web......In a way he certainly used the old media well and he gave very good presentations...
On the one hand, Joseph Campbell seems very much old school - conversant in several languages, intimate with the classical works of philosophy and literature and art, a writer who preferred a sharp pencil and a yellow notepad

and yet there is an evolution in his presentation over the years. The visual element emerges, moving into a central role. Slides appear in lectures, not just augmenting, but anchoring, the discussion

(an apocryphal story has Campbell finding his slides have somehow been placed in reverse order by an assistant - so Joe simply gave the lecture in reverse, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning - and still wowed the audience).

Campbell's early books were straight text - his elegant prose highlighted with a few sketches drawn from ceramic vases and urns and inscriptions ... but then, in The Mythic Image, Campbell realizes the value of the visual component of myth - so this volume is built around the actual images, pictures that draw the reader into the world of myth and dream

... and by the time the first portions of The Historical Atlas of World Mythology are published, the pictures are what count. Colorful images of shamans and masks and rituals, pictures of cave-paintings and dances and deities - the text unobtrusive - a few pages of commentary dense with powerful ideas and deft leaps of imagination, along with the actual myths themselves in relation to the pictures.

It looks like a coffee table book,
but the effect is visually arresting.

This evolution in Campbell's approach is not a change in belief - the image is always what counted for him, the basic vehicle of myth - but it is an embrace of the technology available.

In his final years, Campbell developed a relationship with the computer. Fascinated by the "hierarchies of angels" contained in a computer chip, he realized that using a PC opened up a world of possiblities that had not existed before.

Alas, Joe passed before the Internet became part of the fabric of life - but i too wonder what form his books would have taken, how the presentation of his lectures might have changed, or what might have manifested had Campbell's imagination intersected the internet.

I suspect, though, that he would have embraced this technology with open arms.
It is interesting too how each site or forum etc..... can take on a certain character or "spirit".....
Has anyone else noted that?
Absolutely. Each site seems to have its own gestalt, a reflection of the group mind, perhaps. Indeed, the internet demonstrates that personality need not be confined to a "person," as such. It allows - no, it demands - that we actively mythologize what we encounter in the recesses of this vast labyrinth.

Of course, i'm not sure y'all ain't just a figment of my imagination

... or maybe i'm a figment of yours ...

in which case, whatever you do, please don't hit delete!

blessed be
bodhibliss
A wonderful presentation in itself .....
Thankyou Bodhibliss
Together We Can<br>

Anand Rahasya
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Post by Anand Rahasya »

Aloha :smile:
<img src="http://www.blissness.org/images/cybershamanism.jpg">

I´m 29 now. In the age 12 to 15 I had an intense time of Computergaming and that was my first contact with the virtual myth.

Hours hours and hours I spent in the virtual worlds playing different heroes being on my quests. If you play a couple hours you really get into a Trance state and and Trance shot me into a even deeper mythic space that blended into the offline worlds and I integrated the heroes that I played in my daily life.

1995 I became addicted to the web and traveling with hyperspeed along the Hyperjumps, reading Information bits in ever faster speed put me in another Trance state. And in that space I could feel and taste Information and their memetic myths connected to their central ideas...

Just a couple years later I experienced the first "webpathy" empathy through the web.
I could feel the real people behind the avatars they use in Online Communities etc.

14 days ago I moved into a Cyberretreat to go on a vision quest. ( can be read at http://www.blissness.org )
In black light, lava lights, ethno decoration, non stop Webradio with DJ´s streaming Trance and Beats (for about 10days non-stop)I moved into another Trance state.
I called it Xdays:
<img src="http://www.blissness.org/images/10days.jpg">




Sometimes I can feel the Web and the Information bits like a kinestetic dreamtime.

I wish I could read the first thread while I´m posting this, but that´s an old version of phpBB, to bad :wink:

I think we created the Internet as a technological metaphor for the INNERNET.
In a materialistic oriented world that´s the best way to induce mainstream globalisation, grassroot journalism, science, media an akasha to touch, etc.

In many years we might get rid of the technomyth "Internet" cause it´s metaphor kicks us back to our "Innernet" and the capacity to share, commune, evolve as a global culture with an inner technology that´s far beyond everything the outer Technology could ever bring us to.

Ra :smile:







Anand Rahasya
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Post by Anand Rahasya »

http://www.jcf.org/new/forum/viewtopic. ... &forum=2&0

is a mythic Internetproject for Teenager and fits with this topic

Siddha
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Post by Siddha »

Anand,

BTW, I really like your images/art!

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

On 2004-05-19 08:51, twokay wrote:
I wonder if in a way the internet is a
preordained tool of myth.....
What is the mythical nature of this the internet....
Are we tapping for instance into a collective
archtype source?
Imagination has long envisioned communication ranging far and wide, but until we had the technology, no dreams could have yielded the mystery inherent in this medium. There have been the drums of Africa, the smoke signals of Native Americans, the runners in ancient nation-states, but nothing quite like this!

It is a dreamcatcher, transforming consciousness and opening minds everywhere to the vast richness that is our existence.
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by Siddha »

And also a sess-pool of spam! :wink:

I think that if everyone who is surfing and creating the net was "following their bliss" then it would be all that and more.

Long distance communication used to be quite laborious, you had to build a fire..., run 100km... Now it is all just a mouse click away. I hardly envision a Native American sending pictures of princess likes-to-bathe-naked over smoke signals, or an ancient Greek running for days with a message that said "today only, 30% off all rugs..."

Mind you I do have faith that all this noise and hyper-creation of information for the sake of just creating more will frustrate people to the point that they will begin to ask themselves "is there more to life then this" and words like "follow your bliss" will hit the intended target.

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Post by CarmelaBear »

One of the scientists at Sandia National Labs here in Albuquerque told me that if one starts a new mailbox and never enters any other website from the mailbox (eg, by typing addresses in instead of using a link from the mailbox), spam doesn't get in. Replying to a commercial e-mail has the effect of linking your mailbox addy to any number of spam lists.

The scientists use what they call "proxy mailboxes" to answer commercial e-mail or surf the web more freely. You can expect spam, but you can be very picky about what commercial sites you use.

I've tried it. It works. I've got several yahoo and hotmail boxes. Some have never had any spam at all. They're virgin boxes.
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by rmccain »

In 1994, I participated in an original theatrical production entitled "Vlad Dracula in the year 2000", shown at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Two years later, we developed a web site (now at http://www.vd2000.com) based on that work.

The major theme was: a virtual entity (Vlad) seeks world domination via the Internet.

Other than the lack of an identifiable individual (whether virtual or physical) coming forth at this time to claim credit, many of the predictions seem to have come true. Spam, viruses, worms, phishing, etc. are overwhelming us, natural disasters rock our lives, and military actions shame us.

Is this really life as usual? Were we once sheltered from the raging waters by information isolation? Now, more than ever, we seem to need the lessons of myth to guide us through these turbulent times.

Locked