Quote of the Day from Joseph Campbell, who was one of my
first meta-physical teachers and quite kind to me on several occasions.
Metaphysical meaning reality beyond the five useful daily senses of sight, touch, taste, smell and sound. Meta meaning over, above, beyond those physical, although not infallible senses. Phor meaning to carry, as in Greek amphora.
Campbell said: "Apparently in every sphere of human search and experience the mystery of the ultimate nature of being breaks into oxymoronic paradox, and the best that can be said of it has to be taken simply as metaphor—whether as particles and waves or as Apollo and Dionysus, pleasure and pain. Both in science and in poetry, the principal of the anagogical metaphor is thus recognized today; it is only from the pulpit and the press that one hears of truths and virtues definable in fixed terms." - Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology, p. 190
OK, I looked up the complicated words:
Oxymoronic –when contradictory terms combine.
Paradox – word, or event contradicting itself.
Anagogical - mystical having a secondary spiritual
meaning: i.e. the Sabbath also signifies rest in heaven as well as Sunday or
Friday night.
Or ‘dem bums, also means a certain baseball team.
Scripta Divina also calls for loving dictionaries (especially on-line), words and double-entendres
known as puns and multi-level wordplay. I read and ask myself: What does a
word actually mean – besides what we think it means? What does a text, such as the Hebrew Bible, Christian Bible, actually mean? Is the Bhagavad Gita myth or actual? Well, my
years in Seminary taught me lots of things I never knew as a churchgoer but one
of the most important to a writer is that no text is set in stone. Something I can testify to from my
years as a publisher and even as a journalist where the news changes in a daily
show.
For
that matter, and be very certain I’m not suggesting the Christian Testament is a fairy tale,
although some do posit that theory, Fairy Tales have different levels of
meaning also. Like the biblical stories, fairy tales are archetypal: wise
women, beautiful princes, wicked rulers, magicians, dreams, omens, teaching
stories and good versus evil.
For
example, take Sleeping Beauty. Despite all those fairies bringing creative
gifts (all archetypes: beauty, wit, grace, dance, song and ability
with musical instruments.) The uninvited fairy, naturally I suppose, declares a complicated 'gift' also known as a curse. Yet, one last fairy has yet to give her gift and uses it
to partially reverse the wicked fairy's curse proclaiming that the princess
will die. To mitigate that curse, the last fairy deems that instead she fall
into a deep sleep for 100 years to be awoken by a king's son.
Just one fairy, why were they
always women, couldn’t resist, bringing a curse because she wasn’t invited –
maybe that’s why she wasn’t invited, because she was so mean-spirited at
parties. But it ended well with The Prince of Peace, oops a Prince coming,
endowed with the magic power of love. If Beauty hadn't slept so long would she have aged out, thus missing true love?
On one
level it’s a cautionary tale, always be nice to all the fairies, perhaps.
On
another it’s a coming of age teaching story. Only when the sleeping beauty was
ready could the strong aspect of herself merge.
In
Nature, the fairy tale mimics warm weather rising again after winter. Think in
Ice Age terms.
Still
another take, every gift of every fairy serves Beauty’s purpose in the story
line. I mean, in reaching a happy ending, an integrated whole person – which
was of course, a beginning of another story.
How to live in creation as an actualized,
contributing member, useful life to society and to Self. Sleeping Beauty evolved
into good news about life.
So
Joseph Campbell, a Sarah Lawrence professor teaching women; fascinater of Bill
Moyers on that well-known PBS series the Power of Myth, 1988, and as deep
expert on global myth systems, talks about the power of metaphor. What's your metaphor for today?
Garnette Arledge (c) More: http://www.garnettearledge.com/
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