Project Proposal - Applied Mythology
Vera Faria Leal
9/29/14
I was much inspired by this Course, It gave me a lot of excellent material and sharing to reflect upon.
If myths are sacred stories told as narratives, they have the power to link different dimensions and levels – within and without, above and below, Kairos (psychological mythical time) and Kronos (chronological time), the sacred, and the initiated and the profane and non-initiated. As that web, they hold the invisible space-time matrix we call reality “for us”, providing us with precious tools to de-codify it and to cooperate with the unfolding intelligence, beneath the “Myth making process”.
I believe that apocalyptical times (personal and collectively), are characterized by the “losing of the memory of paradise” and that myths, as storytelling, poetry and the arts, have the power to restore that missing link. In this sense, myths are essential to becoming whole again into a new synthesis of paradigms (or of myth and counter-myth).
In these times, myths are beacons that throws enough light into the darkness so that we can envision and imagine a future. New and fresh, because wholesome and more soulful. And the times summon each one of us, to become bards of those new tales, starting with our own personal mythology, I think.
PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY
This course helped me to identify the unfolding personal mythologies along my life processes. I started as the tale of the “ugly duck” (that in the end wasn’t a duck but unfolded into a wonderful black swan)) which I pretty much link with the Orphan archetype: do not belong, rejection of self, devaluation, loneliness. In a deep level, I believe is the disconnection between ego and soul: the lead and the potential gold of the alchemists. “Underlying” my life I feel I Iived the myth of Exodus: being outcast from the Promised Land and the return to that Promised Land, the place of a new more unified consciousness that can be that blissful nurturing place my souls dwells and longs for. Then I lived Cinderella and the long journey to recognize and integrate consciously my animus.
Then I lived the heroin’s journey, with the leaving “my father`s house” – which is also literally the patriarchy values and looking for another mythology. Joseph Campbell`s Hero`s journey is different from the Her(a)in`s journey, as the first is solar and the latter is the Moon`s daughter. The Herain, in her descend –life crisis, she has to face, to meet Goddess. After having mundane success, I felt sick with exhaustion and severe anemia, and had to learn how to come home to myself, being initiated by “Goddess” into another level of embodied soul consciousness, so to speak. As in the Earth rising from the moon, and the image of Virgin of Guadalupe, my stand point in life gradually moved from being the sun (left brain, analysis, rational thinking), to being the moon (right brain - I am an Aquarius left handed - synthesis, intuition, dreams language, life of the soul. I became Priestess of Goddess. “Gods and Goddesses, as the sacred structural principles of Earth, matter and cosmos”, can (and should) be connected to with reverence and love. By my daily practice, I feel I am also “reimagining” Goddess, recalling Her and Her attributes. And the primordial Goddess is Aphrodite, or Sophia, or Isis, She who has the power to attract and hold things together. As you said (I found brilliant), the modern name for the quantic universal matrix /foam.
“Reimagining Gods as archetypes”… Jung
Old Myths made Modern: the Myth of descend, of Inanna and Erershkigal
This extremely interesting myth of descent is rich in very important clues to the shadow integration process. Inana is a queen Goddess that one day, decides to redeem her shadow-sister living in the underworld. She advises two creatures, her servants, that if she doesn’t come back within three days, they should go and rescue her. Then has she goes for her deep descent to meet Ereshkigal in the uterus of the darkness, she passes along seven gates or portals; in each one of these passages, she has to take out, to let go, to give away some ornament, jewel, cloth or personal item. It is the peeling off of the old skin-identity-paradigm; it is the sacrifice of the old person-mythology-being. The Latin root of the word sacrifice is sacred oficio: sacred labor. It is indeed a work of labor, pains of the labor of giving birth to own soul. The descend is also the myth that I associate with depression, and I believe that the resistance of letting go of what is no longer useful for the process of “death and reborn”, the non-acceptance of that peeling off can cause people to remain in that limbo. The resistance to sacrifice has a punishment from the gods, and has we can`t be “neither hot nor cold”, we are spited from the psychological place where blissful possibilities can arise from conscious commitment with the process. Chronic depression became wide spread in several countries of Europe, and is usually “treated” with pills. I do not know yet, about any “consciousness pills” available in the market.
Returning to the myth, she passes through the initiatic seven gates, where she yields from her previous self, until she finally arrives at the navel of darkness where Ereshkigal waits in rage – after all, she embodies shadow – and great labor pains. She furiously hangs Inana by the back of her neck, on a hook, and lets her agonizing for three days. This myth is told to be 5.000 years old, maybe more – the first crucifixion and resurrecting on the third day was in the feminine. This is the alchemical nigredo, the blackening, the putrefactio or putrefying of the psychic elements that must die, transforming into the humus that will feed new life.
Inanna’s faithful servants –the creatures made by the dirt under her fingernails – run into the darkness to rescue their Queen. The dirt is the clay, the earth, this chthonic vital energy that connects us to the life force. When they get there and see Ereshkigal agonizing in labor pains, they help her giving birth to a boy. So a new masculine is being born out of the darkness – like the son of Persephone and Hades, symbolizes that deep connection with the unconscious; maybe a daymonic re-conetion. When we meet the contents of the unconscious, they meet us half way and all parts are transformed. And we can certainly do things differently, after being initiated by the dark night of the soul. We can individual and collectively become more soulful, and the symbolic psychic descend prevents the literal descend to Hell/Hades.
Ereshkigal in return of their help, agrees to liberate her sister from the above in one condition: she should go and find another to replace her in the darkness. She then goes up into her kingdom and discovers her husband has become corrupt in her absence and turned into a treacherous king. She then orders him to be arrested and send into Ereshkigal`s underworld kingdom of death and darkness. In order to become whole, we always have to surrender something, to sacrifice something of the old paradigm, to be able to engender a new one, new solutions, and new ways of being, of doing soul, community and ultimately, civilization.
I must say that this journey with you all has been wonderful and fruitful, and hope to merry meet again! I let you with this song from John Lennon – as an Aquarian, the archetype of the seeker and the prophet – I am very much sensitive to the new visions for our extraordinary world. May we all envision and dream the new world that in my soul I know will come one day. And today is a good day to start dreaming.
Love and blessings,
Vera Faria Leal
Replies