"So in Bavaria you are directed to anoint a linen rag with with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp edge upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals. Similarly in the Harz Mountains they say that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear the knife of the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (Golden Bough, p. 48-49)


So many things from one class period! It boggles Kari's tiny little mind. But Kari shall try anyway.

Important dates that must be remembered are the birthday of Corin: July 15, 1991 in St Luke's Hospital in Franklin Wisconsin; October 7, the date of the first quiz; November 9, the date of the second quiz; November 23, when group presentations begin.

For the next few weeks Creation is to be our concern. After which we will move onto the Middle(characterized by war and pain)and the End(characterized by Revelation, which is good and bad). We are also to read Mr. Sexson's essay entitled Myth: the Way we Were, or the Way We Are? It(that is to say myth) ties in very strongly with Tevye's explanation of tradition in Fiddler on the Roof: it tells man where he is and what God expects him to do. Mircea Eliade follows up with a wonderful quote(provided by Dustin on his very impressive blog about Kierkegaard and forward remembering): living a myth is "seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected."

In following with Creation, there is a great word, etiology, which is a simple explanation of how things came to be the way they are. Kipling's Just So Stories are examples of this. Imagining the way things are, to use a phrase Eliade likes a lot, in illo tempore(in that time, obviously related to 'once upon a time').

We also learned about the surprisingly long history of doubting the truth of myth(at least in the limited small 't' sense), of arguing that it must be moved past(James Frazer was certainly of this opinion). Xenophanes, around 500 BCE, insisted that the Greek gods were projections of the human mind; hence his great statement about how if horses had gods they would look like horses(this would be something of a theomorphic religon, one that uses animals as gods). Plato also contrasted the power of logos against mythos. Euhemerus argued that the Gods were "based on" historical persons, and thus coined the word euhemerism, whereby myth is exaggerated history(ie. Alexander the Great having superhuman capacites attributed to him that he did not in reality possess). Then we move on to allegory, which removes stories from myth, thereby making it safer. Hence, the Song of Solomon is made to be about God's love for his people or Christ's love for the church and the Metamorphoses is made into a collection of morality tales. Now allegory shouldn't be dismissed completely(it was after all, how these two sublime works of poetry survived throughout medieval European history), but it is a reduction of mythic proportions. The bad pun hopefully is noted.

I am now off to read more Eliade and more Ovid...