The Peg-leg and the Parrot: ATU's literary game

blue moon wrote:

eddie wrote:Perhaps I should read this again ? I remember tackling it in my teens and not getting very far with it (unsurprisingly, given my age at the time) The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer.

I nosed through it like a bloodhound when I was hunting information on myths and rituals.

One thing I do seem to recall from my teenage attempt at The Golden Bough was my near-alarm, as a not-so-good Catholic boy, on learning that the death and resurrection of priest-kings predated Jesus by thousands of years. The Nazarene was simply this year's model.

Have you read this, Moony?:


The Death and Resurrection Show by Rogan Taylor.

It covers something of the same territory as Frazer but the focus is specifically on Performance and it takes in every shamanistic act from James Brown to Harry Houdini.

eddie wrote: One thing I do seem to recall from my teenage attempt at The Golden Bough was my near-alarm, as a not-so-good Catholic boy, on learning that the death and resurrection of priest-kings predated Jesus by thousands of years. The Nazarene was simply this year's model.

Have you read this, Moony?:
The Death and Resurrection Show by Rogan Taylor.

It covers something of the same territory as Frazer but the focus is specifically on Performance and it takes in every shamanistic act from James Brown to Harry Houdini.

...now you're talking

^

I've started a thread on the subject in the Theatre/Performance section.

...I've just returned from there.
...I wanted to post there about the performance of samburu dancers, and comment that a common feature of shamanistic initiation is to be dismembered and reassembled (whilst in a trance)...but it's decades since I read about those things and my memory is atrocious and my notes are lost...I'd like to prattle on regardless but risk being shot down in flames

...but I'll give it a go tomorrow.

blue moon wrote:I wanted to post there about the performance of samburu dancers, and comment that a common feature of shamanistic initiation is to be dismembered and reassembled (whilst in a trance)...but it's decades since I read about those things and my memory is atrocious and my notes are lost...I'd like to prattle on regardless but risk being shot down in flames

Who's going to shoot you down in flames? Not me.

My only (entirely subconscious) hands-on experience of shamanism consists of certain strange events that happened on stage many years ago. There are certain "trance states" into which one sometimes enters in the course of a performance, during which very odd things do- and did- happen.

I nearly died as a child (from pneumonia)- which is apparently one mark of a shaman- but really I'm as much in the dark as you about such matters.

...hey eddie. i know you'd never gloat if I should post something that turned out inaccurate due to my inexact memory...but the odd flamethrower does turn up at this site. I'll direct further comments on this topic to the other thread

blue moon wrote:...hey eddie. i know you'd never gloat if I should post something that turned out inaccurate due to my inexact memory...but the odd flamethrower does turn up at this site. I'll direct further comments on this topic to the other thread

Well I've enjoyed this very interesting exchange and I look forward to your post, Moonie!

I read The Golden Bough in college, and this easy synopsis of Jung. I've still got both books somewhere.

But I don't know anything about Tarot. Too spooky.

...hello Constance. It is an interesting subject. 'Man and his Symbols' was the first book I read on the subject of symbols. Jung seemed quite taken with symbolism in the tarot and the synchronicity that often appears evident in the I Ching...I wish I still had all of the books I've gathered to consult...most have them are lost...but I remember that in Jung's 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' he states his interest in oriental philosophy and recalls experimenting with the I Ching with remarkable results, which led him to ponder how the psychic and physical worlds are connected (I wish he'd arrived at an answer...he said the subject so fascinated him during the experiments that he forgot to take notes (where's Andy when we need him!).

^

Have you read Jung's introduction to the I Ching?

(Yes Constance, I prefer it to the Tarot as an instrument of divination because its imagery is based on Nature and is consequently calmer, less lurid.)

My half-formed theory about the act of shuffling a pack of cards (the Tarot) or casting yarrow stalks/coins (the I Ching) is that the ritual, at that particular moment of time, delivers a kind of cross-section through the apparent randomness of the universe- from which it's possible to make certain interpretations.

Here's a good example:

Twelve and a half years ago, joining the London Underground was one of several options I was considering in order to make some much-needed regular money for a while. I consulted the I Ching and came up with the hexagram The Well, the text of which read something like "The city changes over the decades but the well remains the same...(and so on)..."

Well, this didn't mean much to me at the time but, on the entirely trivial grounds that the mouth of a well bears a superficial resemblance to a Tube tunnel I joined the company and was posted to the East London Line. It took about 18 months before the penny finally dropped: my station (ShadWELL), I eventually learned, means literally "The Well of Shadows", so named because the whole area was once nothing more than a series of evil-smelling drainage ditches- and some would say that nothing has changed to this day. It's a ghastly place.

That's the trouble with Prophecy in general, as Macbeth- for one- learned to his cost: it comes true, but not in the way that you imagine it's going to. Who'd have thought that MacDuff was born by Caesarian section, or that Malcolm's army would employ the boughs of Birnham wood as military camouflage?

...which is why I haven't consulted any form of oracle for a decade or more. If things get REALLY bad at work, though, it's always an option.

...I don't believe in the prophesying power of the tarot or the I Ching, but I am open-minded. Perhaps the confusion you had in understanding the hexagram, eddie, is why people turn to shamans and fortune-tellers for their interpretation...I think Jung was endeavouring to interpret both tarot and I Ching in the light of his study of universal myth...because many are universal is one of the reasons he developed his theories of archetypes, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity (about which I am still confused).

Maybe Jung thought that myths that are almost identical and that sprang up throughout cultures that had no contact with each other were surging from some limbic well that words couldn't contain or explain...they transmitted through symbols...I think his voracious research on symbols was an endeavour to learn the 'language'.

eddie wrote:Have you read Jung's introduction to the I Ching?

...I'll read it now.

...here's the link...Jung's introduction to the I Ching

eddie wrote:^Twelve and a half years ago, joining the London Underground was one of several options I was considering in order to make some much-needed regular money for a while. I consulted the I Ching and came up with the hexagram The Well, the text of which read something like "The city changes over the decades but the well remains the same...(and so on)..."

...now, eddie, the symbol for that trigram carries the legend: 'The Superior Man' encourages the people with advice and assistance'.

Would you have made the same choice with the image of this servitude in mind?

blue moon wrote:the symbol for that trigram carries the legend: 'The Superior Man' encourages the people with advice and assistance'.

Theoretically at least, that's a perfect description of my job.

EDIT: Muttered remarks such as "Why don't you boil your head, you fucking imbecile?" tend to be expressed sotto voce.

...I know...the travelling masses can be so tiresome...

But anyway...where were we? Ah, yes:

eddie wrote:

...please let it be 'Othello: the Moor of Venice'

blue moon wrote:
...please let it be 'Othello: the Moor of Venice'

...a novel

...it wouldn't be 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith, would it? (don't think so though...it's a singular tooth)

... Jack London's 'White Fang'?

blue moon wrote:
... Jack London's 'White Fang'?

...a novel