From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 11:04:40 GMT
I told you you had asense of humour DMB :-)LoL
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 10:18 PM
Subject: RE: MD Is the MoQ still in the Kantosphere?
> Marsha and all campers:
>
> Marsha asked dmb:
> Have you ever participated in a Nature celebration? Have you ever
visually
> experienced the moon's cycle? Have you ever danced gratitude for an
> abundant harvest? Maybe you've been at a Civil War re-enactment, but have
> you ever experienced a ritual descent of Innanna? Can you appreciate the
> returning Sun at Yule that marks the point in the year where the days
again
> start to lengthen? Have you ever sung chants to Mother Earth? Have you
> ever been in a forest grove dancing in communion with others to the
dynamic
> energy of fire. Have you experienced you heart beating through drums with
> the Earth's heartbeat? No? Pity.
>
> dmb answers:
> Yea, actually, I've done most of that stuff. In certain bohemian circles
> people know me as the most loyal member of an annual summer solstice
> gathering in the mountains of Colorado. There I am known as the honorary
> co-host, master of ceremonies and the self-appointed shaman of the tribe.
> This summer will be the 13th or 14th such gathering and I haven't missed
one
> yet.
>
> The winter solstice celebration that my wife and I attended this year was
> the 29th gathering, although we've only been to a few of those.
>
> Once, a fireside chorus of drummers made me disappear at a Rainbow
> gathering. These guys could drum, that's for sure. But in the light of
day,
> the vast majority of these so-called hippies were downright scary. I've
> never seen such a concentration of dysfunctional, dirty, addicted people
in
> my life. But maybe that because I've never been to a civil war reenactment
> or a ufology convention. ;-)
>
> Once, I found a blood-red stone hand axe in the woods, just before dawn,
> while I was tripping. I stood in the rain and marveled at it for hours. It
> may have been many thousands of years old, but I swear I could smell the
> meat it cut within my own body. I felt bad about the death of the animal.
I
> was the gut that abnsorbed its meat and was the sacrificed animal too. So,
> I'm gland that Dionysis is a friend of mine, but I think being buddies
with
> the Buddha and the Christ is even better, so to speak.
>
> I've been meaning to raise and explore the issue of patriarchal religion
and
> culture with you, and I'd still like to do that. Maybe start a new thread
> here. Until then, let me just point out the solstice is meaningful to
> neo-lithic pagans and Christians alike. And we can even talk about that
same
> thing in terms of philsophical mysticism. The Sol Stice is also symbolic
of
> timelessness and eternity as I explained to Chin earlier today in this
> thread. The sol-stice is the time when the sun appears to stop moving. It
> seems to rise and set at the same point on the horizon for two or three
days
> around the solstice and so it becomes, in religions and mythologies, a
> metaphor for timelessness and eternity.
>
> And if I can guess about the ritual descent of Innanna, which I never
heard
> of, this too would have counterparts in more developed religions like
> Christianity. Even if that ritual is unrelated, I can tell you that there
is
> a part of the Christian myth and ritual involving increasing levels of
> darkness as candles are blown out that has appeared in some form or
another
> in various religions that go all the way back to the caves. When exploring
> this line a few years back I read in an encyclopedia that "some elements
of
> this myth may even pre-date the human species itself". I realize that such
a
> statement only raises questions, but the point is simply that some
religions
> are more highly developed than others and that we shouldn't throw the baby
> out with the bathwater there either. And it seems that the baby is those
> things that persist through time and and appear in the various stages of
> cultural development while the bathwater is the stuff that comes and goes
as
> a particular local expression or otherwise demonstates its obsolesence.
>
> The kind of ritual cannibalism we see in the Catholic church, for example,
> might not evoke the unitive experience it symbolizes, but it sure beats
the
> heck out of actual human sacrifice or animal sacrifice, which was fairly
> widely practiced in pre-historic times. Campbell spent some time talking
> about the kind of relationship primitive peoples have with the animals
they
> hunt and on a very basic level it is sort of an undeniable fact that
living
> means killing. Meat is murder and so is salad. If one wishes to go on
> living, one must eat and that means something else has to be eaten. And so
> life is a very bloody affair. We grocery shoppers can hide from this to a
> certain extent, but hunter/gatherers could not. And so the animals
> themselves become the objects of religious practice and this is why we see
> those painting on the cave walls. That's why we see such a proliferation
of
> mythological figures that are part human and part animal. And then when we
> think of the Christ as a sacrificial lamb and the act of symbolically
> ingesting the body and the blood, we see that we are dealing with
something
> very old and constant in the human experience.
>
> And that's probably why I tripped so hard on that pre-historic hand axe
made
> of blood-red stone. I had eaten lamb the night before and so the find
struck
> me as a deliberately placed omen, as if the gods were trying to make me
see
> the truth by making me literally trip over it.
>
> That was about ten years ago, but it seems like this morning.
>
> I fed my boy his first lamb chop this christmas eve. He's only four years
> old so we did not thank god for the meal. We thanked the lamb.
>
> Now I forget what my point was and I need some lunch to break my fast.
>
> OK, now (20 minutes later) that I've eaten the sacrifical macaroni and
> cheese I can nearly think straight. Nearly. Anyway, I wanted to point out
> that the same theme is expressed in terms of a female deity. Campbell has
> lots to say on the topic, as you probably know already. As he tells it,
the
> distinction between creator and creature, between god and man if you will,
> does not quite appear so sharply drawn in the goddess mythologies. If we
> think of God as a mother instead of a father, then creation unfolds within
> her womb. God pictured as the father, by contrast, sets up an ontological
> distinction where the creator's generative power is cast out into creation
> by a remote figure. In the East, the myths about the sacrifice that makes
> life possible is contained within the creation myth because it concieved
in
> female terms. Here the idea is that the mother Goddess is dismembered,
> chopped up into bits in order to make the universe, not to redeem it. She
> sacrifices her self and becomes the world by dividing herself up into
> "things". And here we see a much better metaphor for the position taken by
> philosophical mysticism. She is undivided. She is DQ. In allowing herself
to
> be divided, she creates the world of static patterns, of time and space
and
> things. Here, the sacrifice and the creation are not two different things.
>
> We can read this in Christian mythology too, but it requires us to imagine
> that the tree that grew the death-bringing forbidden fruit in the garden
of
> Eden and the crucifix where the Christ gave up his life are made of the
same
> wood. But macaroni and cheese has only so much magic in it and this is too
> long already.
>
> But if you're interested,...
>
> dmb
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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