Immanence
the journal of applied mythology, legend, and folktale
FALL 2016 VOL. 1 NO. 1
immanencejournal.com
THE MYTHIC PRESENT
FALL 2016
Vision Flight. Mixed media painting on reclaimed birch by Laura Tempest Zakroff. 2016.
Immanence The Journal of Applied Mythology, Legend, and Folktale 7535 Stockton Avenue, Unit A El Cerrito, CA 94530 (925) 876-0198 Immanencejournal.com Mission: The primary mission of Immanence is to encourage a reenchantment of our relations with ourselves, each other, and the living world by publishing appreciative commentary and art on the contemporary relevance of folklore—including myth, legend, folktale, fairytale, and wondertale—as it illuminates the deep structures of personal and collective consciousness. Editorial Board: Craig Chalquist Kelly Lydick Melissa Nazario Elisa Markhoff Lola McCrary Jacqui Dziak Zhiwa Woodbury Hannah Custis
Founding Editor & Editor-in-Chief Associate Editor Production Manager, Webmaster & Contributing Editor Social Media Manager & Graphic Artist Assistant Editor Marketing Manager & Contributing Editor Columnist & Contributing Editor Blog Manager & Contributing Editor
Other contributors: Susanna Anderson Jesse Masterson Carole Standish Mora Rebecca Wyse Board of Mentors: Stephen Aizenstat Bonnie Bright Linda Buzzell Keiron Le Grice Stanley Krippner Devdutt Pattanaik Safron Rossi Brian Swimme Richard Tarnas Bob Walters Copyright © 2016 by Worldrede Academy All rights reserved Fall 2016, Vol. 1, No. 1 For reprint permissions please email us at contact@immanencejournal.com. Since submissions are accepted from around the world, common spelling and grammar use from each culture (example: honor vs. honour) is presented as written. ISSN number 2473-3865
contents from the founding editor
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feature articles
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6 The Gods Within Us Devdutt Pattanaik 10 Celtic Mythology: An Ecofeminist Approach Sharon Blackie 21 What’s in a Name: The Archetype of the Name and its Myth as Personal Calling Linda H. Mastrangelo 31 In the Footsteps of Baucis and Philemon: Mentors in Folkloric Humility Craig Chalquist 47 Urban Romulus: How the Myths Have Shaped My Life Romeo Keyes, with introduction by Dick Russell
from the academy
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62 The Phenomenology of Astrology Becca Tarnas 71 Star Wars: A Missed Opportunity Keiron Le Grice 77 The Goose that Laid the Golden Liver: Foie Gras and the Mortification of the Animal Body Sara Granovetter
these mythic times
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89 The Force Awakens Zhiwa Woodbury
mythopoetics
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96 Medusa Kelly Lydick 98 Words are Deviled Eggs Amy Katz
interview
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100 The Power of Fairy Tales Michelle Tocher
art and image
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102 On Performative Myth John S. Murphy 111 Sitting by the Fire Lisa Schouw 122 Artist Description Laura Tempest Zakroff
readers respond
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From the Founding Editor Craig Chalquist Welcome! We are proud to bring you the first edition of Immanence, the Journal of Applied Mythology, Legend, and Folktale. Why such a journal? Because there are no journals like it: a symptom, we believe, of a general distrust of enchantment. “Myth” is now something to bust, “fairytale” a romantic delusion, “folktale” a quaint antique. While some scholars help us appreciate folklore, many others chop it up instead into soulless categories. Yet folklore reminds us that, for better or worse, stories enchant. If we story each other human, our dealings are humane. If we story Earth a lump of material, we mine it to death; if a blessed abode, we love and protect it. Because of how we story them, our politics, architecture, finance, education, science, and religion lift us up, stagnate, or sink into grey disenchantment. So many activists who know what they fight against forget to offer alluring stories of what to fight for. We could also use more light on how myths and traditional tales stiffen into ideologies, oppressions, and isms. They don’t start out that way. They burst into being as dreams undeferred, visions danced or painted, fantasies spun around the fire or, today, online. What happens to them? What happens to us? Where are the sources of reenchantment? The stories know. Although Immanence is not primarily an academic journal, we hope it will reenchant the academy too, where inviting approaches to myths and märchen have languished. Journal-filling theories marching forth from otherwise rich fields such as religious studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, and folkloristics so relentlessly tie down and dissect the Goose of folklore that little remains but eggshells of faded gold. Outside of academia, however, myth and folklore have met with immense popularity. All over the world people are resuscitating their ancient tales and retelling them in every conceivable medium. The Immanence team enjoys lore, fantasy, wonder, and mystery. Like the strangers dining with Baucis and Philemon, we prefer our goose alive. We do not abjure all analysis or classification, but we insist they feed the vitality of what we examine. The tales must stay more important than the boxes they go into. Now, a folklorist of the less lenient sort will tell you that lumping together myth, legend, fairytale, and folktale is just plain wrong. This objection is akin to insisting on distinct 2 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall 2016
genres: that is drama, this is science fiction, that is poetry, etc., as though styles never overlap; as though clean genres exist anywhere but in textbooks. Considered mythically, the objection adorns the altar of Procrustes, the ultimate enforcer of proper fit. Although we do grasp the differences (folklore is the overall category; myths are grand and often sacred; fables are lessons; legends were once believed; fairytales and folktales were not), we are more interested in how the stories pulse within current events, social conflict, film, art, theater, our relationships, our dreams: in other words, in their “immanence.” When you’re stuck like Sisyphus repeating a folkloric pattern, it makes little difference whether a fairytale, legend, or a myth confronts you. The point is to understand what it wants of you so you can respond imaginatively, unwrapping its possibilities and dreaming it onward, as C. G. Jung suggested. Grappling thoughtfully with recurring motifs and images embodies the “applied” dimension of what our Journal intends to support. In the same spirit of polycentric inquiry, we avoid rendering down storied elements into power, ideology, custom, language, history, biology, pathology, or archetype, preferring instead to hold these gingerly as insight-magnifying lenses. Rather than interpreting our own stories or other people’s from the outside, we go deeper by approaching each telling with humble respect, saying how it speaks to us while leaving authoritative interpretations to the people from whom the stories came to us. This kind of hosting invites our growth beyond the colonial habit of appropriation and into genuinely appreciative conversation. Each edition will remind us that in the end, however dreadfully serious we wish to be with folkloric material, it consists of stories; and stories are told, not only to instruct, demonstrate, or persuade, but to entertain. As Tolkien remarked, traditional tales do not stick around if not, above all, compelling. “The nature of story,” writes Lynda Sexson in “Let Talking Snakes Lie,” “is that it seems to tell us space/time stuff; but the treachery of story is that the snake lies: space/time is annihilated into narrative consciousness, which is not an archetypal rigidity, but a dynamic of story, of aesthetic perspective.” We are also intrigued by the possibility of modern myths, of the “creative mythology” (J. Campbell) of myths being fashioned today. The mythoclastic pronouncement that the time of myth is gone, that no myth survives outside of oral cultures, and that our only option now is heaping up mere fragments of folklore grievously underestimates both human imagination and the power and reach of myth. In what Michael Meade calls “the eye of myth,” mythopoesis goes on all the time, all around us as well as inside us. We’ll see how. Our twice-yearly Journal begins with the theme of The Mythic Present. “The immanencejournal.com 3
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Gods Within Us” by Indian mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik favors a psychological understanding of myth’s continuing relevance. Changing lenses, Sharon Blackie gives us “Celtic Mythology: An Ecofeminist Approach,” followed by psychotherapist and dream worker Linda Mastrangelo’s “What’s in a Name?” to seek the mythic roots in the names we bear, and how knowing these roots can align us with our deepest sense of calling. My contribution, “In the Footsteps of Baucis and Philemon,” puts forward xenia, hospitality to what visits us, as a basic mode of appreciation toward the stories we come across and that come across us. Romeo Keyes, our youngest contributor, replies to the oft-heard question, “Of what practical use is knowing these old tales?” with “Urban Romulus: How the Myths Have Shaped My Life.” The proceeds for this first edition of Immanence go to 17-year old Romeo; when you read his remarkable account you will know why. Our offerings from the academy begin with a thoughtful look heavenward in Becca Tarnas’s “The Phenomenology of Astrology.” In “The Goose that Laid the Golden Liver,” Sara Granovetter draws on a fairytale context for studying the unconscious relationship between alchemy and foie gras production. Department chair and author Keiron LeGrice reflects on unaddressed cultural and fictional dualisms in “Star Wars: A Missed Opportunity.” The Star Wars theme continues as we enter “These Mythic Times,” the debut of a regularly appearing column by editor and ecopsychologist Zhiwa Woodbury. Following this is an interview conducted by Elisa Markhoff with Michelle Tocher on “The Power of Fairytales.” Next comes poetry, with Kelly Lydick’s “Medusa” and “Words are Deviled Eggs” by Amy Katz, and art. In “On Performative Mythology,” John Murphy, director of the Seattle theatrical group The Cabiri, explores mythopoesis as it appears like magic on the stage, summoned there by performers, audience, and whomever else shows up for the occasion. With “Sitting by the Fire” we turn again to theater with psychotherapist Lisa Schouw, who explores healing from deep depression through creativity. In future editions Immanence will feature a Readers Respond column. We are keen to hear your comments on and questions about what we have offered. If you come across a tale you grew up with, feel free to let us know more about your understanding of it. Immanence thanks artist Laura Tempest Zakroff for the use of her evocative graphics throughout this first edition. Visit her website at http://www.owlkeyme.com/. I heartily thank the Immanence team for the months and months of earnest labor and dedicated reflection that gave us all what you’re about to read.
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from the academy
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Star Wars: A Missed Opportunity Keiron Le Grice Although Star Wars: The Force Awakens broke box-office records for commercial success, we might lament the filmmakers’ missed opportunity to deliver a narrative of enduring mythic significance and philosophical profundity to its expectant global audience. Had this opportunity been taken, how—in an alternate galaxy far, far away—might the storyline have begun and been developed? We can look to familiar sources for guidance. Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s influence on George Lucas is well documented: it is especially evident in the original trilogy’s portrayal of prominent elements of the hero myth. Campbell, in turn, was significantly shaped by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. Campbell saw in the Star Wars films a modern retelling of the perennial themes of the hero’s journey, populated with Jungian archetypal figures and mythic motifs, such as the battle of good and evil, the call to adventure, the Wise Old Man, and the quest to find the father—themes and adventures re-enacted almost to caricature in the latest installment. Beyond this, however, both thinkers were acutely attuned to the “spiritual problem of modern man,” as Jung put it (“The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man”), in the form of a crisis facing individuals in a secular age characterized by the loss of myth and the experience of existential meaninglessness. Exploring such matters and drawing on other insights from Jungian psychology, the filmmakers might have developed the modern myth of Star Wars to speak to the pressing problems of our time. With the presumed death of Palpatine and the redemption of Darth Vader at the end of The Return of the Jedi, the only remaining disciples of the dark side of the Force seemed to have been vanquished. We might imagine, then, that a period of universal harmony would have ensued, with the light side of the Force reigning unopposed. In such a scenario, how might the absence of the dark side have been addressed in the new film? What would be its consequences? The entire drama of Star Wars, like the drama of life, is predicated on the existence of the dark side as an absolutely necessary counterpart to the good. Light cannot exist without dark, good would not be recognized without an immanencejournal.com 71
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awareness of evil, to know peace we must have known war—Heraclitus’s insight into the dynamic relationship of opposites impressed itself on Jung, as it did on Friedrich Nietzsche before him. As Jung realized, it is only out of the tension of opposites, from the suffering and struggle created by the dark power of the Satan/ Lucifer principle, that consciousness is born. The name Lucifer, Jung pointed out, means “the bringer of light” (Mysterium Coniunctionis 114). Needless to say, without the intervention of the dark side, none of the adventures witnessed in the first two trilogies would have taken place. The heroism of Luke Skywalker and his companions would not have been called forth. Jungian psychology tells us that the dark side of human nature—the Shadow—is not only the source of evil but of the instinctual power and dynamism that give to life a vitality and authenticity it would otherwise lack. Without the imminent threat of the dark side, and the inherent tension it provides, it is entirely possible, then, that a period of spiritual and creative stagnation would set in, suggested by the mythic motif of a kingdom asleep, with its people wholly absorbed in the comforts and pleasures of life. We might imagine further that the population, in its dull happiness, might come to forget the Force entirely, and fall into ignorance. Even the spiritually inclined Jedi might not be immune to the decay. As seems to happen to many religions, a literal rendering of its teachings might become an unquestioned orthodoxy, even empty dogma, such that the living connection to the Force (or whatever name is given to spirit) becomes all but lost, as happened, in the view of Jung and Campbell, to Christianity in the modern era. We can imagine that young Padawans, Jedis in training, would themselves be excessively bound by this dogma, inhibited by the great history that had gone before them and by the time-honored rules of the Jedi order, seeking only to emulate Skywalker or Yoda rather than growing into their own spiritual authenticity. In a variant of the imitatio Christi, the aspiration to imitate the ways of Jesus, such imitation would fail to deliver genuine spiritual realization or promote psychological growth (individuation, to use Jung’s term). If not succumbing to dogma and imitation, it is also conceivable that spiritual practice might become excessively concerned with mystical transcendence, removed from the messy complexity of the immanent reality of the world—a critique raised by James Hillman. In its neglect of the material realm, as the example of the Christianized West suggests, an otherworldly spirituality might in turn bring forth crude materialism and hedonism—its polar opposite. Without the necessary outlet for heroism and 72 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall 2016
Apóstoles entorno al Sepulcro. Alberto Piazza. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
spirituality, the culture would in time inevitably fall into decadence, frivolity, barbarism, and ruin, as happened to ancient Rome, and as we see increasingly in our own time. With no genuine life adventure to be lived, people might fall prey to atavistic yearnings or indulge in the fabricated adventures offered by consumerist society. With this kind of situation as an alternative context and background for the new Star Wars, the film’s hero would then perforce be the one who upsets the status quo, who breaks free of the old myths of Jedis long ago, in search of new, authentic experience. The hero would, in this scenario, need to overcome the patterns of archetypal repetition, breaking the “eternal return” of the same themes and stories, playing out over and over again in similar ways in different historical periods—a repetition all too evident in and perpetuated by The Force Awakens.
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Crucially, perhaps the hero would need to embrace rather than conquer the dark side, and retrieve from the Shadow the passion and power necessary for the reinvigoration of the galactic civilization. What intriguing and compelling viewing it would be to explore the integration of the light and dark, good and evil, within a single individual. Rather than the projection of the dark power of the Shadow onto overt enemies, such as Darth Vader and Palpatine, as before, the latest film could have explored how the dark side could be faced and assimilated by a hero able to go beyond facile distinctions between good and evil. With this integration, we would have to see a new kind of Jedi emerge, perhaps one not unlike Nietzsche’s vision of the Übermensch, the Overman, or suggested by Jung’s notion of the Self as the universal “great man.” This new Jedi would leave behind outmoded spiritual ideals and second-hand religious truths, going beyond moral conceptions of what is conventionally understood as “good,” to assimilate the long-repressed power of the instincts, the body, and the earth. In remaining wholly on the side of the good, it could be said that Jedis fail to come to terms with the primitive, uncivilized emotional and instinctual energy of the dark side. The implication is that Jedis have overcome such emotions, but only through attaining a condition of detachment and equanimity by which they are able to resist the lure of the lower nature. In this state of seemingly imperious detachment, however, the dark side remains unredeemed, and the denied Shadow energy that has no place in the life of the Jedi then manifests destructively through the evil deeds of those with the misfortune, or the courage, to embrace the darkness. The Jedi attains supreme spiritual mastery and purity. But the Jungian Self represents wholeness rather than spiritual perfection. It is a wholeness that is only possible when the dark side has been integrated into conscious experience. There is no place in the Jedi experience for the complex of qualities suggested by the mythic figure of Dionysus. As the archetype of “unbridled and unbroken Nature” (Symbols of Transformation 401), Jung describes Dionysus as “the abyss of impassioned dissolution in the animal psyche” (Psychology and Alchemy 90) an experience that can either obliterate or transform human consciousness. Closely related to Dionysus is the archetypal-mythic figure of Wotan, god of storm and frenzy, and the alchemical god-man Mercurius, the spiritus vegetavius or chthonic power that, as the tail-eating serpent or dragon (the uroborus), consumes itself in its own transformative power (Mysterium Coniunctionis 225). The energies symbolized by such figures have no place in the Jedi experience or in the ordered life of civilization, and thus tend to manifest unconsciously and often destructively. 74 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall 2016
As long as these qualities remain exclusively personified by the protagonists of the dark side, they cannot be integrated. Yet such energies provide the very instinctual power necessary to grow beyond an insipid spirituality of detachment and unruffled tranquility, and to redeem the wasteland of a culture out of touch with the animating wellsprings of life.
Ouroboros. Engraving on an alchemical emblembook entitled De Lapide Philisophico. Lewis Jennis. 1625. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In periods of spiritual decay and creative stagnation, when the world has become stale, Jung believed that individuals, and cultures, must return to the source for rebirth and renewal. In myth, the source is often personified in the figure of the Great Mother, a symbol of the unconscious psyche as the matrix of all existence and source of the Dionysian archetype. In Jung’s view, the alienated individual, cut off from the waters of life, desires reunion with the Mother that he or she might drink again from the fountainhead of life and redeem the wasteland of the alienated state. The Star Wars films have thus far placed primary emphasis on the Father or the role of the Wise Old Man as mentor. But what of the archetypal Feminine and the Great Mother? Whereas the archetypal Father is the “representative of the spirit,” differentiated into good and evil, and adjudicator of the law, the archetypal Mother immanencejournal.com 75
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represents primal life energy before any distinction into ethical categories (Symbols of Transformation 261). The Mother embraces all life, just as nature cannot be said to be inherently good or evil. How might the film have depicted the Great Mother as source, as the very origin of the Force, and thus addressed the paradox that the dark side and the light side are mutually implicated expressions of a single energy? How, furthermore, might Star Wars have explored the realized unification of the two aspects of the Force? These are complex considerations, of course. And while such a scenario would likely not be as readily assimilated by its audience as is the stock fare of action-adventure in The Force Awakens, this drama has relevance to the situation we face in our own time, confronting the unprecedented challenge of the ecological crisis. For it is arguably the unredeemed and integrated energy of the dark side—the human Shadow—that drives unconscious patterns of consumption and denial, and that causes us to ravage the earth and plunder natural resources as if they were inexhaustible. How valuable it would have been if the film, with its staggering global outreach, had explored the necessary integration of the chthonic, material, and instinctual into the spiritual ideal of the Jedi. The culture might then have awakened to the force of our collective Shadow. Like many millions of others, I suspect, after watching The Force Awakens I left the cinema superficially entertained by a fast-paced action film rather than bearing witness to the shaping of a myth that would prove insightful and illuminating for our current world situation and moment of history. The opportunity remains, however, in the next two installments, to demonstrate that the franchise’s remarkable talent for merchandising can be matched by a skill for mythmaking. Works Cited Jung, Carl Gustav. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1989. ---. Psychology and Alchemy. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1993. ---. “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.” In Civilization in Transition. 2nd ed. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1989. ---. Symbols of Transformation. 2nd ed. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Repr., Princeton UP, 1976.
Keiron Le Grice is a professor of Depth Psychology and chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies specialization at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He is the author of The Rebirth of the Hero, The Archetypal Cosmos, Archetypal Reflections, and Discovering Eris, and founder and former editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. 76 Immanence Journal Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall 2016
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