this is from my good friend (anabel's husband - for
the liverpool crew) michael, a failed uni student
(like myself) but a true scholar.
"The question has arisen whether there is anything
especially alienating about our cultural mythology and
magical traditions, iconoclastic with respects to
magic and myth in our world. We dont have to look very
far to find them. But perhaps the best place to look
for them is in the cosmography of the universe which
no longer sees the earth at the centre of the
universe, the seat of astrological observation to
which they refer as their optical centre of
understanding and in relation to which they discover
their singular significance....rather the centre is
now a kind of mathematical point within it.
(unlike the copernicus system, events like solar
eclipses and planetery allignments have immediate
significance in the Ptolemic system, whereas under the
Copernican system they are reduced to statistical
phenomena which are incidental and no longer
essential).
Also, our experience of the irrevocable divide between
the exteriority of waking states and the closed in
upon itself realm of dreaming, an impasse which Jung's
concept of 'syncronicity' is offered as a solution.
Also, the situation of death, of the land of the
dead, in life: the church graveyard is no longer the
heart of the living community as it once was from
Roman times up until the 17th century when graveyards
in Germany and England were moved to the periphery of
the cities and towns outside their walls, along with
prisons and madhouses, which replaced the Leper colony
in the haunted landscapes of European countryside.
All these can be seen to be unique dimensions of our
cultural life. The abolition of pan-psychism and
poly-theism is another way in which the participation
of the divine on earth has been shut out and precluded
from its cultural life: the church recognized 'the
mystery of the cross' as the only inlet of the divine
in a god forsaken world, and sanctioned only it. The
question of the alienation of mono-theism has been
raised before, by many others, so I hardly need to
repeat it here.
A vision which is our vantage point in the
archaeological depths and mysterious frontiers of
time: Keplers 'thought experiment' (in 1602) which
sees man removed from the earth, his seat of
astrological observation to which they refer as their
optical center of understanding, standing upon the
queen of the heavenly bodies, the moon, to see the
earth rotating in the heavens and thus see the truth
of Copernicus revolution. Le Voyage dans la lune (The
trip to the moon, adapted from Verne and Wells, made
in 1902), sees scientists sipping wine as they
celebrate the embarkation of the voyage which will
take man to the moon. H.G. Wells Things to Come (1932)
sees man endure the war about to overwhelm Europe and
go on to build a giant 'space gun' to shoot man to the
moon. 2001 a space odyssey, infinity and beyond, sees
mans conquests over the machine as the condition of
possibility of his spiritual unity with the cosmos.
Tarkovsky's Solaris, space station earth, shows the
madness of alienation verging upon the infinite depths
of the ocean of the cosmos (the only thing that makes
human sense in the absurd space of the metallic ship
is the pot plant, which is the last thing we see
before we leave the space station and return back to
planet earth).
Of course, the image of man standing on the moon and
of the earth in the sky over the lunar horizon are
iconic images of the space age. Keplers vision of
Copernicus Universe realized.
We need only bring within the purvey of our
perspective Jungs (and Mckenna's which echoes his)
writings in the 50s, admist the frenzy of the ufo
phenomena, about U.F.O's as emblems which carry the
meaning and significance of our experience of
alienation, signs which presage the reinsertion of
Gaia in time.
These things are parables..."
Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
www.yahoo7.com.au/mail
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
