Definitely agree with you there Cindy and iam not thinking it either but it is those times when the shadow of science and society comes and reminds me that non existence motif thats why i think the "old" rituals are important no matter how cruel they seem in our eyes today. They really did help the individual to connect with the world. It is those experiences that define our character and how we react in events to come that shows us who we truly are. Maybe I am talking from a completely subjective point of view, i dont know.I've never had such a fear. Hmm...perhaps Freud would say that I have a death wish, you think? (Actually I view death as an inevitable stage of life, so why worry about it? Living has its shares of worries enough to address.)
Cindy
Clemsy iam just gonna give you a quote here from one of my favorite artist Walt Disney "Our work must have a foundation of fact in order to have sincerity". I think he meant movement but he was a great storyteller so it must have another layer of meaning in the field of story. Myth is that place i think where reality and imagination blend together to create the organic feeling of life.How many Christians see the baby in the creche and see the myth and not the history?
Maybe iam trying to compare different things here but i really think rituals that help connect the individual with his/her environment are really important. I remember reading some years ago a paper written by Claude Levi-Strauss and i might be paraphrasing it but here it is. The main conflict he said that of human in comparison to nature is that we tend to think in terms of black and white, earth and water etc but in nature there is no clear line of things, where its day in one place there is night in another, where is water and earth there is also something in between a mixture of things. I think rituals help us realize that connection and iam not talking about marriage or the Christmas tree here these are merely traditions in my eyes iam talking about that ritual that makes you experience what this thing is all about. The old tribal way.Our journey into the "forest adventurous without way or path" should bring us to an individual understanding of each function and result in a sort of evolved individual who doesn't need his model of the functions to be perfectly reflected in everyone else around him.
In such a scenario, what is the purpose of rite and ritual which are the enactments of the common myth?
For example the ritual of marriage holds no magic anymore at least for me because it has been governed by the idea of men laws so what should have been a ritual for understanding what this unity is about is a ritual that enhances the security of the bond in legal terms in a society we live in and it has lost its universal meaning. Can we evolve? and still not lose our humanity in the way i dont know. In other words where is that sense of awe and horror, fascination and recognition in that kind of scenario?
I think this is true. Take as an example church today as an institution can we see any relevance with what Christ said and died for? I think not.Point being that once an idea becomes institutionalized, it takes on a life of its own.
Exactly my feelings jons but for how long can this substitute the real experience of being alive. Sure is emotional you do care about the character you do feel the pain of loss and the realization that come after it but if you are not experiencing the forest can this be considered to be a substitute? Can we reach the same level of awareness as when there were rituals to support the myth?I am able to see the "larger" concepts of Tolkien's mythology and relate it to my own experiences in some way. If I am touched by a story in an emotional way, I am connecting with the mythology, right? Even if I am not the one walking into the forest. Another example of the emotional connection created in modern work, to stay with the above-mentioned possibilities, is Harry Potter. During the film The Order of the Phoenix, if you care at all about Harry, you feel the strong pang of pain and sorrow he experiences when his godfather, Sirius Black is killed. You feel Harry's pain because you have grown with him and the story.
Its like JD quoted from "The Hero's Journey"
and jd i have held faith in those mythologies for a long time they seem to guide me to a way i was eager to follow but like in every positive there is a negative. Campbell addresses this in Myths to Live By p.49It must then show you yourself that you are similarly transparent to transcendence. And finally, in a mythologically organized society, all of the rituals are organized in such a way that they help you to experience yourself, the world, and the social order of which you are a part, in this mystical way.”
And he goes on... the myths are going to be only as good as society renders them i guess.It is in the fields of arts that the reductive, life-diminishing effect of the loss of all sense of form is today most disquieting; for it is in their arts that the creative energies of people are best displayed and can best be measured....