From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 08 2005 - 01:03:42 BST
Marsha and all MOQers:
Marsha said:
Your paper was very good. You might even be said to have some of the lyre's
touch. But your telling of the Orphic story was very shallow. The story is
much older and much deeper than your telling. The story is about something
lost. The important question is: What's been lost??? What has been lost in
our patriarchal, anthropocentric lives and culture? It's our connection to
the FEMININE, the creative and dynamic experience. Until there is cohesion
between the masculine and the feminine humanity will remain lost.
dmb replies:
Very Shallow? Ouch.
If you're trying to goad me into bragging, it worked. Pirsig had the very
opposite reaction. He opinion was that I went "very deep" in that paper. I
feel a little ashamed to report this myself, but there was a video camera
rolling at the time and there were a lots of witnesses so I guess its not a
big secret. Why does it feel so wrong to tell? Hmmm. I don't know. Maybe its
just too ego driven. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
I'd argue that the absence of any reference to patriarchy in my paper is not
due to a lack of depth. Its simply not what I was doing. As a matter of
fact, I think its interesting to read the myth as a depiction of that
transition period between the displaced matriarchial cultures and the
incoming Hellenic gods. I mean, it would be relatively easy to make a case
that the attempt to rescue Eurydice symbolized the longing for that, at
least partially, displaced culture. Myths are like that. They can be read on
many levels and interpreted in many ways. They're multivalent. And I do
mention the fact that versions of the myth go way back into the primitive
myths in that paper. But I focused on the pre-Socratic version of the myth
because that period plays such a central role in ZAMM. There were Orphic
priests among the Sophists and rhetoriticians that Phaedrus so closely
identified with.
See, I was trying to render a hero that MOQers and other philosophical
mystics could love, one whose journey somehow resembled Pirsig's. (And,
sister, did I ever get lucky there.) I only had so much time to get the idea
across. You should see all the other stuff I didn't include. I realize this
is likely to come across as mere pride, but I really don't think it was
shallow. It was just a matter of having to focus on that idea, on that kind
of hero.
Thanks for reading the paper and for the kind words,
dmb
Marsha began this message with a quote from 'The WOMAN'S DICTIONARY of
Symbols & Sacred Objects' by Barbara G. Walker:
>
>Pre-Hellenic Mother Goddesses often appeared holding lyres, both as a
>symbol of the alter *horns*, and as a reminder that the musical sounds they
>invented were said to have initiated the birth of the universe. According
>to Scipio the Elder, the seven-stringed lyre was directly connected with
>the heavens: "The spheres . . . produce seven distinct tones; the septenary
>number is the nucleus of all that exists. And men, who know how to imitate
>this celestial harmony with the lyre, have traced their way back to the
>sublime realm. One of the men most frequently credited with this ability
>was the highly popular savior Orpheus, whose cult was a serious rival of
>early Christianity and a model for many of its sacraments. Orpheus
>descended into the underworld and returned, like Jesus, bearing the
>revelations whereby his followers could achieve resurrection. The classic
>myth of Orpheus's descent in search of his bride Eurydice was a red
>herring, designed to conceal the fact that Eurydice was only another name
>of the underground Goddess, Persephone, to whom Orphics prayed for a happy
>afterlife. The Orphic Mysteries taught that the Goddess would make each
>enlightened one "god instead of mortal." The *head* of Orpheus was
>supposed to reside in a sacred *cave* and produce oracular speeches and
>songs, like the head of Osiris at Abydos. The lyre that served as his
>instrument of transcendence was placed in the stars, as the constellation
>Lyra, which contains the brightest star of the summer, Vega. That the lyre
>first produced the seven-toned "music of the spheres" became embedded in
>European tradition and contributed to the formation of the present musical
>scale.
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