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Michael Chase Walker discusses the deconstruction of archetypal mythology and its application to story structure in modern cinema
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Mythology is a branch science of human consciousness
Sign Stimulus
Innate Releasing Mechanisms or IRM’S
Faculty X
Archetypal Icons
DNA Imprint
Parallel Development
Diffusion Theory
Culture Area Theory
Pseudo Historic Metamorphosis
St. Nicholas Hold Nikkor
Whenever a myth has been taken literally its sense has been perverted’ but also reciprocally, that whenever it has been dismissed as a mere priestly fraud or sign of inferior intelligence, truth has slipped out the door.
Asobase-Kotobe: Japanese play form
Creativity
Is the intense encounter between the artist and
His/her world.
Rollo May
The Courage to Create
Alan Ball American Beauty
August Strindberg’s Matches
“An eruption of emotion” Leo Frobenius
Linda Schierse Leonard’s
Meeting the Mad Woman
Meetings with Unbelievably Mad Women
Every study undertaken by Man was the genuine outcome of curiosity, a kind of game. All the data of natural science, which are responsible for Man’s domination of the world, originated in activities that were indulged in exclusively for the sake of amusement.
Konrad Lorenz
The Play’s the thing…
“Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan.”
“The Eternal Feminine draws us onward.”
Von Goethe
The great tragedy of Christianity is its obsession with what was true once as opposed to what is
true always.
Alan Watts: The Wisdom of Insecurity
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
Mythology reveals the anabasis progression of the human brain
Spinal Column/ Cerebral Cortex/ Triumvirate Brain
Reptilian Brain
Limbic Brain
The Evolved Brain/ The Future Brain/Faculty X
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Where Eastern Mysticism and Western Psychology meet:
1. All the gods and goddesses are within the human brain
2. A man’s fate is his character
3. A man’s character and fate can be altered through Brain Change
There are three pathways to Genius:
Music, Math and Myth
James Hillman
Human consciousness is like living in a vast cathedral-- few ever leave the confessional.
Lower Consciousness cannot fathom higher consciousness.
Colin Wilson
The myth is the foundation of life, the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows
when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.
Thomas Mann
Inanna opened her ear to the moaning of her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld and abandoned her
realm of heaven and earth, even her temples, to descend into the "great below". "With the me in her possession, she
prepared herself:" placing her crown upon her head, beads of lapis lazuli around her neck, sparkling stones fastened to her breast (Henderson & Oakes, p. 102) , a gold ring around her
wrist, and a royal robe upon her body. She bound a breastplate about her chest and took a lapis measuring rod
and line in her hand. Then she set out for the kur, the netherworld, with her faithful servant, Ninshubur.
When she arrived at the outer gates of the kur she commanded Ninshubur to wait for three days, and if she had not returned, to call upon the elder Gods for help.When Inanna challenged the gatekeeper to gain entry into the kur, he consulted with Ereshkigal, telling her that a giant and powerful goddess, arrayed in splendor and with signs of authority, was waiting to enter Her realm.
Brain
Intelligence
Heart
Ego
Id
Flight or Fight
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All mythology and the corresponding symbols that derive from them originate from specific regions of the human body.
1. Anus/Hell/Misogyny/Evil/Oppression,
Dragons, Jerks, Orphans, homophobia
2.Genitals/Desire/Gods/Wealth/Heaven/ Couplings.
3. Stomach/Religion/ Sacrifice/Labyrinth/ Eternal life/After life/Power
4. Heart/Love/Romance//Life/Death
5.Throat/Communication/MagickHarmony, Law, Education, Art
6. Pineal Gland/ Intuition/ Soul Omniscience/Wisdom
7. God/Genius/Wizard/Imagination Paradise/Myth/Epiphany/Enlightenment
1. Orphan/Fool
2. Wanderer/Merchant/Renunciate
3. Warrior/Hero
4. Innocent
5. Apprentice/Magician
6. Wizard/World Teacher/Monarch
Provincial World
Magical World of Journey
Return World
1 2 3
Page 1 Page 30
5 10Page 15
20
Act Two
3545
6075
90
Mid-Act Climax
90 120100 105 110 115
Emerald City, Threshold Guardian, and Glynda, Crone, and Heirophant Return World, Oannes, the fish god, Kingdom of Heaven is within you, My father’s kingdom is rent upon the earth, but none can see it. The Jewel in the Lotus, Sleeping Serpent, the awakened buddha,
Red Dragon, Dragon and the George. Silence of the Lambs.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large
brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
Albert Einstein
Where do Myths come from?
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Spirituality
God = Imagination
Soul
The dark shadow of intuition is the intuitive opportunism of the sociopath.
James Hillman
Since the beginning of civilization humankind has been
faced with one choice
For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-- deliberate, contrived and dishonest--
but the myth-- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forbearers. We subject all facts to a prefabricated
set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Whether to conform or not to conform
Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless? The deeper we sound, the
further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the
earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomably.
Thomas Mann
Tetrologu Joseph and His Brothers
All modern religions derive from three primitive obsessions
Cannibalism
Human Sacrifice
Animal Sacrifice
Interceding Images from the Right Brain
Bodhisattva
Gate, Gate, Paragate Parasam Gati
Bodhi svaha
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
The 12 Stages of Story Development
1. Theme
2. Paradigm
3. Premise
4. External Structure
THEME
What’s the story really about?
Truth/Falsity
Greed/Bounty
Love/ Hate
Slavery/Freedom
External Story Structures
Structural Archetypes
MYTH
HERO Outlaw
Sex and beauty are as inseparable as life and consciousness and the intelligence that arises from sex and beauty, as with life and
consciousness, is intuition.
D.H. Lawrence
The Magical Stranger Returns
Three Tiers of Political Power
1. Prevailing Elite
2. Marginal Bureaucrats
3. Dissident Rebel/Revolutionaries
Return
World of Story
30
Inciting Incident
Reversal
Page 60
Ghost
Betrayal Trial
Martyrdom
Miracles and Wonders
Intuition is the very fount of consciousness from which springs: Science, Physics, Math, Medicine, Art, Literature, Myth and religion. Anyone who has ever spent time with a physicist will be impressed with how much they rely upon their intuition. The fundamentalist is just as preoccupied with his intuition and is obsessed with proven how right he is at every turn as though his god’s effectiveness depended on it. Indeed, it does. He will even subvert the truth in pursuit of his intuitive correctness.
The Messiah Story
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Jesus of Montreal
Dead Poets Society
Jean De Florette
Spartacus
Always do what you’re afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Should he choose to conform,that individual is a dead man for every life decision he will make has already been determined for
him by society at large.
Should he choose not to conform he buys himself one more choice-
To become outlaw or hero.
Sigmund Freud
The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the
mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot,
indeed, must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized
avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. “Live”, Nietzsche says, ‘ as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide
the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.” Hero with a Thousand Faces
For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the moon a morality and cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man’s place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse. And the world is far too small , and men’s stake in sanity too great, for any more of the old games of the Chosen Folk (whether of Jehovah, Allah, Wotan, Manu, or the Devil) by which tribesman were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent still could talk.
22 Heroic Attributes Common to most Archetypal Heroes
1. His birth is prophesized and highly anticipated.
2. He is an Orphan.
3. His Mother is royalty and a virgin
4. His Father is a king
5. His conception was immaculate or unusual.
6. He is reputed to be the son of a god
7. At birth an attempt is made on his life.
8. He is spirited away at birth and raised by his nemesis or in order to hide him from his conspirators/assassins.
9. Reared by foster-parents in a far country
10. Sketchy Details of his childhood.
11.On reaching manhood he goes on a quest.
12. He defeats a dragon, ogre or Threshold Guardian.
13. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor.
14. He enters the Underworld/ defeats the Lord of the Underworld.
15. He returns to the provincial world
16. He prescribes laws and moral dictums
17. He later loses favor with the gods and or his people
18. He is driven from from the throne and the city
19. He meets with a mysterious, gruesome or untimely death
20. Often at the top of a hill. The Hill of his ancestors.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless he has one or more holy sepulchres.
22. His Spirit or ghost returns one day as p.
"Indeed, the great Leonardo remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way; It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries.
Sigmund Freud, 1910
Everywhere I go I find that artists and poets have been there before me.
Sigmund Freud
Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death. She spoke against her the word of wrath. She uttered against her the cry of guilt. She struck her.Inanna was turned into a corpse, A piece of rotting meat, And was hung from a hook on the wall. After three days, Ninshubur went to Enlil, God of Air, who refused to help, for the Underworld was not in His domain. Ninshubur went to Nanna, God of the Moon, who also refused to help, for he had no jurisdiction over the Underworld. Finally, Ninshubur went to Enki, God of Wisdom and Water, who originally blessed Inanna with the me of descent into and ascent from the kur. Enki was grieved and troubled. From under his fingernails he took dirt and created two creatures, neither male nor female, and gave them the food and water of life to carry to Inanna.These creatures snuck into the kur like flies, slipping through the cracks in the gates.
They entered the throne room and found Ereshkigal lying naked and unkempt, moaning "Oh! Oh! My inside!".Following Enki's instructions, they also moaned "Oh! Oh! Your inside!".Again she moaned "Ohhh! Oh! My outside!"To which the creatures replied "Ohhh! Oh! Your outside!"She continued to moan out her agony and they continued to name her pains back to her. Finally, she stopped moaning and blessed the creatures, offering them any gift they desired. They asked for Inanna's corpse, and revived her with the food and water of life. Inanna then arose and ascended to the upper world.
“A belief is not an idea the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind.”
Robert Oxton Bolt
Thirteen
13
Moons MONTHS
MENSTRUAL PERIODS
Days Years
12 plus 1
12 Jurors/1 judge
Buildings/Stories/Floors
Bar Mitzvah
Circumcision/Initiation/Catechism
13 X 28 = 364 plus 1=365Witches Coven Disciples