Myth, the Universe, and Everything

In an earlier entry, I mentioned being asked about sacred objects and passed along the questions for general consumption. I did not post my own answers, since I didn't want to pollute anyone else's brainstorm. However, Randy Hoyt from Journey to the Sea and others mentioned wanting to know what I'd come up with, so here's my original answer, in all its brainstormy glory.

1. An object given to a hero to see the future.

Persian king Jamshid was said to own a seven-ringed wine cup, which was filled with an elixir of immortality and allowed him to see the future.

A dangerous location in Welsh mythology is Cadair Idris in the Snowdon mountains. The location is said to look like the seat of a giant (Idris being the giant in question). Men who spend the night there are either given the gift of prophecy, blessed with the gift of poetry (which is sometimes the same thing), or go stark raving mad.

This one isn't given to a hero, sadly, but is interesting -- Tezcatlipoca, one of the four creator gods of the Aztecs, is also called "Smoking Mirror." He's related to obsidian (which is what the Aztecs used to make mirrors), but he's also often depicted with a mirror in place of the foot he lost during the creation of the world. There's an association between the mirror and seeing all of the world, or seeing the future, depending on the source.

2. An object given to a hero that allows him/her to step into a new world/realm.

I can mostly think of fairy tales that fulfill this sort of requirement, as far as objects go -- and even then, it's usually a boat or a horse or some other vehicle with the potential to cross between the world of men and the world of the fae/the dead/some particularly difficult to reach location. In "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," for example, the heroine is given a horse; in at least one of the stories in 1000 Nights and One Night, there's a flying horse that travels faster than any living creature (and may be mechanical, if I remember correctly); and one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain (from Welsh tradition) is the chariot of Morgan Mwynfawr, which could instantly transport the driver to the location of his desire. There's also the flying carpet, which does similar things, but doesn't really cross *realms* -- just makes travel to human-world locations much faster.

3. A structure/entrance that acted as a gateway to a new world.

There are three major categories I can think of for this -- it's a trope that appears pretty frequently. In the British Isles, particularly (and probably along parts of continental Europe), fairy hills are all over the place. They're typically sites where archaeologists have found ruins of hill forts, and such, but local tradition dictates that the hills are entrances into the Other world. One of my favorite of these is Glastonbury Tor, which is topped by St. Michael's Tower and is beautifully iconic.

The second category are caves, which can connect either to the Other world in that same fairy sort of tradition, or to the land of the dead. I believe Orpheus begins his journey to Hades in a cave, and I know there are cave entrances in Ireland that have a connection to the Other world. There are urban legend sites that mention associations between caves and the opening to the world of the dead in Latin America, as well, but I don't know how good the mythological basis is for that.

The third category is just the shoreline. At World's End, in Cornwall, for example, at certain times you're supposed to be able to look out and see the drowned land of Lyonesse, apparently accessible through the mist if one could just get there. Odysseus in the Odyssey communes with the spirits of the dead, consulting with Tiresias, after having beached his vessel. Shoreline is liminal space -- space where things aren't quite one thing or another -- so the idea of the shore as a crossing point from one world into the next is a pretty common theme. (To use Jungian analysis, it's also the place where the conscious meets the unconscious!)

For a stretch, you could say that a pok-ta-pok court (the Mayan ballgame playing ground) is an entrance into the underworld, as well, given the way that the gods of the underworld tend to summon people from one of those courts. Along those lines -- as far as a stretch goes -- there are lots of man made sites, such as tholoi or some pyramids, that are built with the intention of transporting a *spirit* to the other world. The Treasury of Atreus is a very cool looking one of these.

4. An object given to a hero to help him/her find his/her way out of the labyrinth (or a general state of confusion or blindness).

The easiest of these, is, of course, Ariadne's thread, which Theseus used to find his way back out of the Labyrinth of Crete. Fairy tales offer other options, as well -- the traditional marbles, bread crumbs, or pebbles that children or heroes leave behind them to find their way back. There are also stories about various liquids enabling a person who smeared them on his eyes to see the Other world -- dragon's blood, fairy spit, etc., etc., -- but a lot of those are literary conventions, I think.

5. An object used in storytelling ceremonies that gives the holder permission to speak to the group.

This seems to me to be most commonly a Native North American tradition, and, of course, the most common item is the "talking stick," which I'm sure you're familiar with! Some things I've read posit that the "peace pipe," feathers, or even wampum belts could be used for this same function.

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A few of the things that readers mentioned in comments that I hadn't: Orpheus's lyre, herms or hermae as crossing points between worlds, traditional fortune telling devices such as crystal balls and tarot cards, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (as an effective transport from Eden to the human realm), Coyote running toward a village with a firestick in his mouth and being chased by smoke spirits, pools of water and caves of prophecy, and literary examples like the AURYN amulet from The Neverending Story, the palantiri from The Lord of the Rings, and Adaon's brooch from The Black Cauldron.

I've asked to see the eventual logo that sparked these questions for the design team in the first place, and should I be allowed to, I'll share it here. In the mean time, what fun hunting for mythic objects!

Quick reminder: tomorrow is the last day to enter this week's contest. The Blue Fairy Book could be yours!

Randy Hoyt, the editor of Journey to the Sea, and I have been talking back and forth for awhile about some of the concepts that come up in my blog entries here, particularly, recently, the difference between what a thing *is* and what a thing *means.*

Let's start again.

In our modern consciousness, we tend to think first about what a thing is -- its physical components, its solid substance -- without thinking much about any sort of cosmic significance the object might have. I immediately recognize my cell phone as my cell phone -- it's plastic parts in a pretty green color that I picked because it was the "green" environmental phone and is also lime green. It's back lit, has a screen, has some programs in it. It has the function of being a device for communication, something I completely take for granted these days, as compared to when I was in college and calling home was still an expensive thing to the point that I bought phone cards that had cheaper rates after 9 p.m.

In a more mythic consciousness, at least the type depicted by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearance, all of those features are far less relevant than what a thing means. Meaning is kind of a vague and bogus (V&B) word, so I'll try to describe a little better, again relying on the master. Barfield writes that a mythic consciousness doesn't think of metaphors the same way a modern consciousness does. When they talk about blood as life, or the stars guiding fate, they're not being poetical. Real blood isn't those cells wandering through your body passing oxygen around. Real blood is life force, is family, is connection, is all of those things that blood symbolizes in a modern consciousness. The symbol, in this context, is the real meaning -- not the physical liquid that shows up when I cut myself. (In a more mythic consciousness, I'd first identify my cellphone's most important quality: it is my bridge to those who are far away, the cord that allows me to connect beyond the local distances.)

Randy wrote some mythic interpretation of Neil Gaiman's Batman comics, collected in What Ever Happened to the Caped Crusader, which hinges on the idea of subjective vs. factual experience. It ties in very nicely to the ideas he and I have been batting about, some of which I touch on, very briefly, in my photo essay on Arthurian sites that will be up on Journey to the Sea on Saturday. He's also written and published some great essays on the idea of "myth beyond words" (in an issue to which I contributed) and wrote a great essay on mythos vs. logos, which I think is worth a read.

In the meantime, Randy brings you Batman!

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In the last year or two, I have become fascinated with storytelling mediums that use more than just words to communicate narratives or recall them to mind. The great myths and legends of humanity have long been depicted in non-narrative works of art like marble statues, stained-glass windows, and totem poles. I have recently become fascinated with a much newer form of narrative art: the comic book.

Comic books combine images and words to tell stories. These could be stories of any kind, though stories about superheroes seem to have dominated the medium. My recent interest in comics got sparked late last year when I heard that Neil Gaiman was writing two new comic books about Batman. I knew Neil Gaiman as an award-winning fantasy and science-fiction novelist, but I had just discovered that he began his writing career with comic books. (His popular comic series The Sandman, seventy-five issues that ran from 1989-1996, has been reprinted in eleven volumes that are still in print.)

Gaiman was slated to write his two new issues about Batman's death, which certainly surprised me at first. But Batman would have to die, I suppose, and his death would be an important part of the overall Batman story. The two Gaiman comics came out in the spring, and I could not have been more impressed with them. The setting is Batman's funeral. The wide range of guests at the funeral includes Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, the Penguin, and even Superman. Batman's spirit is somehow there, as well, observing his own funeral.

Some of the guests come forward to pay their respects. Catwoman speaks first, recounting their meeting and describing how Batman died in her pet shop. Alfred speaks next, describing how young Bruce responded to his parents' murder and how that led to his death -- but I should quickly point out that Alfred's story is completely different than Catwoman's story! Seven other characters also tell different stories of Batman's untimely death throughout the two issues.

Gaiman's comics resonated with my interest in and study of myth on two counts:

• First, storytellers throughout history have incorporated elements from other stories into their own or retold existing stories with alterations to produce new versions. Gaiman is telling a new story that obviously incorporates existing characters and events created by others. But Gaiman is also re-imagining some of these existing narrative elements. Alfred's story in particular is wickedly clever, in which Alred reveals that he was somehow the Joker. (I believe this story is original to Gaiman. But since I'm not familiar with all the existing Batman stories, please correct me if I'm wrong.)





• Second, the approach to the world that produces myth and art often concerns itself with the subjective experiences of meaning and significance rather than with objective facts. By using a frame narrative to place the accounts of Batman's death into the mouths of characters in the story, Gaiman puts the emphasis on these subjective experiences. All nine stories discuss what Batman's death might mean or signify, and they all ring "true" in their own way -- even if they could not all be factually accurate.

You can find these two new issues at your local comic shop by asking for Batman #686 and Detective Comics #853. DC Comics last month released a hardcover book containing these two issues (along with three earlier Batman comics written by Gaiman), which is available at Amazon and other booksellers. I would highly recommend these two issues, even if, like me, you have had little previous exposure to comics.

Getting ready for the trip, I'm back to reading Barfield, hoping I'll be able to finish it before I meet up with the students in the airport, since they'll all be much fresher with it than I am. I've also been thinking a lot about subcreation from the perspective of Tolkien, since that's one of the topics I'm writing about soon for Journey to the Sea, and have been pondering my long WIP (the one I just started randomly and haven't yet gotten back to), in which some writers can exert their will over reality.

All of these thoughts were in my head when I picked up Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin on my lunch break today, and the first few paragraphs hit home, so I wanted to share them here. I've long admired Le Guin's work (one of my favorite essays in college was a response, in Le Guin's style, to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"), though I've not read as much of it as, perhaps, I should have. At any rate, here is the opening; I hope you'll see why it intertwined so easily with my thoughts.

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I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I write. I'm not sure of the nature of my existence, and wonder to find myself writing. I speak Latin, of course, but did I ever learn to write it? That seems unlikely. No doubt someone with my name, Lavinia, did exist, but she may have been so different from my own idea of myself, or my poet's idea of me, that it only confuses me to think about her. As far as I know, it was my poet who gave me any reality at all. Before he wrote, I was the mistiest of figures, scarcely more than a name in a genealogy. It was he who brought me to life, to myself, and so made me able to remember my life and myself, which I do, vividly, with all kinds of emotions, emotions I feel as strongly as I write, perhaps because the events I remember only come to exist as I write them, or as he wrote them.

but he did not write them. He slighted my life, in his poem. He scanted me, because he only came to know who I was when he was dying. He's not to blame. It was too late for him to make amends, rethink, complete the half lines, perfect the poem he thought imperfect. He grieved for that, I know; he grieved for me. Perhaps where he is now, down there across the dark rivers, somebody will tell him that Lavinia grieves for him.

...and I'm back! Thanksgiving and the following week have been very busy here as we've moved and have been unpacking boxes and trying to find the floor under our piles of books. But this week, I had a real live guest blogger, so I had to make sure to return by Friday!

I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Randy Hoyt, who introduced me to the idea of "freelance scholarship," at MythCon this year. Randy had started an electronic journal for myth related articles called Journey to the Sea, which he was happy to tell me about, and which I've been following devotedly since. In the current issue, I also had the privilege of being a contributor--after seeing what I'd been writing about here, Randy asked me to talk a bit about mythology and role playing games. (The discussion after the article has been as much fun for me as writing the article itself!)

Without further ado, here is Randy's guest blog, discussing what drew him to start Journey to the Sea.

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My first memorable encounter with mythology came in my eighth grade world history class. We read many different creation myths, and the differences and similarities among them fascinated me. I remember in that class developing a particular fondness for the stories and rituals of ancient Egypt: I even briefly wanted to be an Egyptologist when I grew up. I have since spent considerable time since getting acquainted with the gods and goddesses of Greek and Norse mythology, the adventures and battles in the epic poems of ancient India, the delightful legends of Native American tricksters like Raven and Coyote, and many more stories from other great mythological traditions around the world.

Although I first discovered what anthropologists would describe as "myths" in middle school, a similar reaction had been evoked in me earlier by another type of narrative: fantasy fiction. I read quite a bit as a child, but stories like Redwall and The Chronicles of Narnia had a much greater impact on me than more realistic novels. These fantasy stories carried me away to other worlds, to long-forgotten pasts of legends and magic, and filled me with powerful images of joy and heroism, of sorrow and loss, of longing and hope. My imagination was overwhelmed when I finally saw Star Wars in high school, years after most of my peers, and I knew that I would never be the same after my time in that galaxy far, far away.

I have continued to be delighted and nourished by these stories over the years, all of which I classify as "mythic narratives" or "myths." A little over a year ago, after reading a couple of books on mythology by Joseph Campbell, I decided to put forth greater effort in reading, studying, and writing about these stories. Being a web developer by trade, it was natural for me to channel that effort into a new web site called "Journey to the Sea" that I describe as "an online myth magazine." Since launching the site last summer, I have been publishing new issues monthly; each issue contains three or four semi-scholarly articles from various contributors about mythic stories.

In the first six issues, the articles have already covered a wide array of very interesting material: disobedience against the divine in such stories as Paradise Lost and the Greek story of how the turtle got its shell, magic in the imagined America of Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, and the appearance of secular Aesopic fables in the religious writings of the Sufi master Rumi. The latest issue looks at a variety of works like stained-glass windows and comic books that use more than just words to communicate myths or to recall them to mind, and Alana has contributed an excellent article to that issue titled "Games As Interactive Storytelling." I hope you'll come by and visit the site at [http://www.journeytothesea.com]; I'm sure you'll discover exciting new myths or find some new ways to look at myths you thought you already knew.