“The merest breath decides everything...”
p. 341 The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by: Calasso
Or the lack of breath. The second-to-last group to present a week ago did an interesting portray of funerals conducted throughout history. They began with an Irish Wake, which involves lots of drinking and placing a bottle of whiskey at the head and foot of the corpse. The Vikings had an interesting boat-on-land funeral service where instead of sending the dead off to sea, they burned the boat on land instead with the head slave woman who kills herself so she can be laid by his side. As the teacher pointed out, this relates to the Indian Funeral, “the right of seti”, where the wife would throw herself in the grave of her husband and be buried alive with him. And all willingly. I'm sorry, but I don't know about you, but I don't care how much I love my future husband, but I don't think I'd ever be willing to launch myself in his grave pit only to be buried alive. Pirate funerals were mainly “ship to sea” funerals. The Egyptian mummification was talked about, but not focused on the tearing the brains out of the nose with a piece or wire, but the strict ritual process that had to be made and the numerous items that were entombed with them. The Chinese funeral has the burning of money so to buy the soul out of the underworld. I think Wena said that this is fake money burnt now. And they even touched on the funeral process that I'm sure most of us wouldn't have even thought of doing. I know I wouldn't of! The cowboy way of doing them. The poem was really great. Actually, any of the poems or writings used were pretty neat. Anyway you guys could post those? (I know there's less than a week left.)
The Myth and Marriage film was pretty funny. They did a pretty dang awesome job at linking the marriage of Persephone and Hades with the current traditions in a great hilarious manner. Kudos at the great work to all of the groups!
On Thursday the individual projects began. I was surprised to see that there were quite a few related to women. Well, then again, this doesn't really surprise me. The book was focused just as much on the women in Nicholas' life as it was on Urfe himself. Here's a brief summary of those who went that day:
- me → Disney, Grimm, and the Myth Behind it All : basically compared fairy tales to myths
- Theresa → Star Trek and Mythology : she discussed an episode of Star Trek with the myth we've been learning about in class, the episode suggests that gods/goddesses are aliens and they died without the love and worship of human beings
- “Mourning for Adonis” → I searched this and not much came up
- Megan → Womens' Role in the Magus : pointed out how women were the powerful creation
- Cortney → Feminine Role in Initiation → heroes kill monsters to complete their initiation, women kill men
- Juniper → Lily = Persephone, Joe = Hades : Good and Right, a relationship that was meant to happen
- Madison → Labyrinths & Life : related The Magus with the movie Stranger Than Fiction
- Eric → Angles & Initiation : related a book he had read (missed the title, something about Blessed) which made the sexual scenes in the Magus seem not near as mind scarring
- Rosemary → The Proscennium of the Magus Revealed : created a whole summary of The Magus by using terribly impossible words to even pronounce, let alone define, found within the book; the two words I received were
- “apophthegm” - short, pithy, instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism
- “palimpsest” - parchment or like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text
- Kevin → Death in the Magus : Nicholas as Persephone
- Bailey → The Magus as a Game Board : turned the book into a board game which begins and ends in the same spot and had different levels which were quotes from the book
- Parker → The Magus : talked about how what Nicholas thought he wanted was not truly what he needed
- “The Magus like The Tempest by Shakespeare”
- Stephanie → The Magus, Myth and Mirrors : mirrors represent many things, but mainly fate
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