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Buffy as modern Mythology?

  
  

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Closed for Business Time
17:01 / 08.02.09
Like you, I don't give away shit for free. Try thinking about it. It helps.
 
 
alex supertramp
17:12 / 08.02.09
"The problem with choose-yer-own-pick'n-mix chaos paradigms, as I see it, is the same as with hardcore relativism"

Listen man, I'm just saying you're kind of making a false assumption here. If you refuse to back it up, then that's your deal.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
17:13 / 09.02.09
"because I took a boatload of drugs and Papa Gheude kicked my ass"

Alex Supertramp and Darth Daddy: This comment perhaps suggests significantly more about the nature of your own practices and experiences than it does about mine.

I think there is a certain approach to deity work within chaos magic that positions it as a souped-up version of working a sigil or launching a servitor. You do a one-off ritual that you think might be fun, maybe invoking Thoth or Baphomet, maybe invoking Yoda or Buffy. You may or may not utilise "a boatload of drugs" in order to accomplish some sort of communication, and if you get a sense of something a bit weird happening you have had a success. If you ask the deity to do something for you, and you get the results you are looking for, this is even more of a success. I'm not and have never been disputing that you can get results of this nature from working with fictional characters. I know you can, as I have been there and done that.

However, experiences like that are really just the first bars of the opening refrain of what you can actually get out of deity work, as I've encountered it in the context of Voodoo and other traditions of spirit work. As an example, at the moment I'm reading a book called "Ars Philtron" (I know, it sounds a bit like "Arse Filter") by Daniel Schulke. It's about potion making. Going into the woods, building relationships with the spirits, gathering ingredients and making potions for various magical uses. I've never seen anything quite like it in print, and the depth of practice that sings off every page is nothing short of vertiginous. It's obvious that this is someone's life's work and labour of love.

It's not very often that I find myself feeling a bit awed by a book on magic, but it's clear that this is a treatise written by a master of this particular field of operation. I thought I knew a bit about working with the spirits of the woods and making up my own gear - but the first fifty pages of Schulke's book reveal how superficial my own explorations in this area have actually been to date.

The principle deities of his witchcraft tradition are Cain (who is presented as an Eshu-esque crossroads figure) and Lilith (who in this context is Goddess of the Moon), along with various undines, land spirits, and the intelligences of plants, trees and herbs. The spirit work aspect of it is essential to his craft of potion making, and its apparent that his account of this work has arisen out of and been largely informed by direct relationships and communication with nature spirits and the deities of his tradition.

What I'm trying to get at here is how developing relationships with spirits and deities, such as what Schulke describes, can open the door to such richness and depth that you could easily spend a lifetime exploring it and still feel you have barely scraped the surface. That's really what I get out of my Voodoo practice. I've been working with Ghede for ten years, but I feel as if I've hardly even begun to get my head around the politics of the boneyard or the complexities of boneyard sorcery. It's a life's work, and every hour you put in just takes you deeper.

If I came across a book that expressed the same depth of practice as "Ars Philtron" but in the context of pop culture magic, I would instantly revise my opinions of working with fictional icons. So far I haven't really come across anyone who has taken a relationship with Buffy or Yoda and been able to run with it to those sorts of places. Perhaps more tellingly, I've never come across anyone working pop culture magic who has been able to grasp from their practice that such possibilities might exist. The accounts I've seen are invariably more in the mode of "take a boatload of drugs one night and have a funny experience", which is not really what I'm talking about at all. Magic, and spirit work, is far richer and stranger than the rather tedious and pedestrian model of it that your posts suggest you are confined by.

I see being free from dogma as "choose-yer-own-pick'n-mix", instead of strictly adhering to one set of beliefs, believing that set is the one true set, more "real" or "valid". I don't think age or amount of followers over the generations denotes any more validity.

One of the things that I find the most frustrating about this sort of dialogue is statements like the above that want to reduce the debate to a clear-cut "choose-yer-own pick'n'mix" versus adhering to strict dogmatic belief systems, or creativity versus stuffy traditionalism. The core of my own practice involves relationships with the Lwa and Orixa, so I'm happy to describe it with the umbrella term "Voodoo" for convenience sake; but I also have interests in areas as diverse as witchcraft, European folk magic, the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Tantra, martial arts, and so on, all of which influence my work to one extent or another. Voodoo, even in its more orthodox Haitian forms, isn't exactly a monolithic centralised organisation issuing strict dogma that must be obeyed, and even less so in its New Orleans incarnations. I actually find that I have much more flexibility in Voodoo than I ever felt I had when I identified as a chaos magician, and my work with the Lwa is definitely infused with more creativity than my chaos magic stuff ever was. Just listen to some Lukumi drumming, or look at some Haitian ironwork or some New Orleans altars, and tell me there isn't any creativity there.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
19:41 / 09.02.09
Magic, and spirit work, is far richer and stranger than the rather tedious and pedestrian model of it that your posts suggest you are confined by.

Oh dear. That was a bit close to the bone and unnecessary wasn't it. Apologies. If there were any moderators left I would put in to get that ammended. Please read that as if the words "tedious and pedestrian" were taken out.

All I'm really looking for here is a sense that someone, somewhere is doing something interesting with pop culture magic that goes beyond the rather glib and superficial stuff that I've seen. I'm just trying to prod away in the hope that I might come across something that impresses me and makes me revise the opinions that I've developed about working with fictional characters. Nobody seems capable of delivering anything that I find genuinely exciting within this field of work, so I remain sceptical.

Alex Supertramp and his big song and dance signifying nothing is just further evidence of the seeming redundancy of pop culture gear. That actually pisses me off a bit. I want Alex Supertramp or somebody else to be able to turn around and slice through my arguments like a hot knife of inspiration through the cold Lurpak mass of my scepticism about this area. I want to hear about some really awesome pop culture gear, every bit as immersive as what I've encountered in Voodoo and elsewhere. Something you could spend a lifetime getting your teeth into. I want to see a spin on this stuff that gets me really excited about it and makes me want to dip back into it myself.

But I never get it. At best I get some flimsy accounts of a one-off ritual someone once did based around a comic book that produced a few subjective results, and at worst, I get the sort of inarticulate evasiveness and inability to engage with criticism that Alex continues to demonstrate in this thread. I was actually a bit sceptical about the tradition that Daniel Schulke is a proponent of when I first picked up his book, but after dipping into it, it was obvious that this is someone who really has something quite extraordinary going on. Regardless of tradition, there is no mistaking solid experience of magic when you encounter it.
 
 
alex supertramp
20:47 / 09.02.09
TY for your comment Gypsy, little busy at the moment, just wanted to ask:

"Oh dear. That was a bit close to the bone and unnecessary wasn't it. Apologies. If there were any moderators left I would put in to get that ammended. Please read that as if the words "tedious and pedestrian" were taken out."

You apologize for being kind of insulting, but not really, only to go on to be much more insulting in the same post? Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but merely saying that my argument is inarticulate isn't really refuting it with an argument of your own.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
20:58 / 09.02.09
ALEX S, may I ask you - do you at all understand what I meant when I said that the chaos magic model of "everything goes that floats your boat" is in important respects similar to certain forms of hardcore ontological relativism, which in my opinion is an unsustainable, if not downright illogical and self-contradictory position to hold?

That is not, as you seem to think, an assumption I'm expressing. It's an argument I'm making, and so far you haven't come up with a single coherent argument against it.
 
 
alex supertramp
22:04 / 09.02.09
"do you at all understand what I meant when I said that the chaos magic model of "everything goes that floats your boat" is in important respects similar to certain forms of hardcore ontological relativism"

Yes, I am asking you to elaborate on the "important respects" (did you mean aspects?) of chaos magic that are similar to ontological relativism. how do those "important respects", present (according to you) in both chaos magic and ontological relativism, lead to Nihilism? Somewhere in there you lost me; I think it was when you just started asserting that

"The problem with choose-yer-own-pick'n-mix chaos paradigms, as I see it, is the same as with hardcore relativism: You end up sawing off the branch you're perching on. Which leads straight into nihilism, which again just cries out for absolute apathy and/or suicide."

You've stated you think there are similar problems, or "important respects", between chaos paradigms and ontological relativism. What you haven't stated is the exact similarities between these two completely distinct things. You've just said "the problems are the same", without really elaborating, beyond to say "Alex, you don't understand what I'm sayinig!"

Also, having read a bit on ontological relativism via my lord and master Wikipedia, I don't really agree with you on your point that it "leads straight into nihilism, which again just cries out for absolute apathy and/or suicide". If you could substantiate some of this with the logical processes you went through to come to these conclusions, I might be able to understand you better.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
07:45 / 10.02.09
Put as simply as possible (and half cribbed from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online): If you, as a chaos magician, holds that nothing is really true - then how can you defend the truth value of that proposition? Surely that statement must include itself, leading to an infinitely regressing paradox. And if you don't have any truths, how can you have values? If you don't have any values, why should you care about anything? If you don't care about anything, why bother living?

Hence my statement that if you wanna play the real relativist/chaos game, you're sawing off the branch you're perching on.

Much more here.
 
 
Quantum
15:32 / 10.02.09
Ignoring most of the posting from the last week, I'm coming back to Trouser's post;

What I was trying to say was that - living out of the premise that everything is divine (and real) - and in seeking to remember that through the all different ways that I relate to other parts of the world (i.e. relating to people, trees, computers, whatever in fact, is in my immediate experiential field) then I do not compartmentalise one form of interchange from another - because to do so is to lessen my opportunities for joy and wonder - through which I experience the immediate presence of Lalita.
...
If I encounter something which wants to relate to me in some way, I may well pursue that relationship, not quite knowing where it may lead in the way it presented itself. What I am saying is that if something offers me the opportunity to do this, I don't care whether its a human being, a character in a book, or a deity.

I've been thinking about the whole issue for a couple of weeks now, discussed it with friends etc. and my opinion is sort of firming up.
I have two contradictory impulses, the one being that you can find the divine anywhere as Trouser eloquently expresses above, the source is unimportant as it is the experience which is paramount- which seems to support Buffy as modern mythology.
The contrary belief I cannot shake is that some things are more mythic than others, as I initially said in my first post, IMO Buffy characters simply don't have the depth of mythology.

SO I was thinking about this while looking at the full moon last night, and it makes a good example to explain my position. Let's say I love looking at the moon and develop my own relationship with it, complete with rituals and the other trappings of deity work. In my opinion that could be just as powerful as any other sort of relationship with a deity-type-thing, after all magic has been described as a religion of one.
On the other hand if I do something very similar but with a *photograph* of the moon, in my opinion that is very likely to be a less powerful relationship, as the actual-real-live-moon is more impressive, has more grandeur, is *better than* a picture.
(I'm skipping the philosophical issues about representation and signifiers, Magritte's pipe and the nature of art etc. as it's not really relevant- if you don't like it please substitute something else in place of the picture, perhaps a piece of cheese)

Buffy to me is like a picture of the moon, compared to mythic figures like deities who are like the moon. That's why I find myself agreeing with those who talk about a deeper connection with deities than with pop culture figures, because I think there really is something really real there, and that it's not Buffy.
To draw another comparison, it's like the difference between the work of HP Lovecraft and August Derleth. HPL is better, the moon is better than a pic of the moon, Diana or Ix Chel is better at being godly than Buffy.

So I agree with Trouser anything *can* be the object of worship or something you can forge a relationship with, but I strongly believe some things are more magical than others.

What I *don't* believe is that it's the oldness or popularity of something that gives it power, or that I know which things are valid and which aren't. Like Gypsy's book on potions, I am quite open to being convinced any particular thing is great practice, and what convinces me is a narrative of rewarding and affecting practice;

Regardless of tradition, there is no mistaking solid experience of magic when you encounter it. Gypsy Lantern.

Trouser's description of divinity-as-Lalita is an excellent example of that experience coming through.
 
 
Quantum
15:36 / 10.02.09
To put it another way- I do compartmentalise one form of interchange from another, in the same way I classify one thing as better and another thing worse.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
15:54 / 10.02.09
I was actually a bit sceptical about the tradition that Daniel Schulke is a proponent of when I first picked up his book, but after dipping into it, it was obvious that this is someone who really has something quite extraordinary going on. Regardless of tradition, there is no mistaking solid experience of magic when you encounter it.

I'm skeptical as well, but all the reviews speak very highly of Ars Philtron. At the very least, he certainly seems thorough in his research. It's a field I've had about as much interest in as the tradition it comes from, which is to say not very much at all, but looking into it has been rewarding so far.

Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but merely saying that my argument is inarticulate isn't really refuting it with an argument of your own.

It's funny, Alex, but I haven't seen you actually put forth any arguments, only opinions.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
16:40 / 10.02.09
you can find the divine anywhere
...
The contrary belief I cannot shake is that some things are more mythic than others

I agree strongly with both statements, and don't understand how they would be contrary.

the tiny slice of divinity you might find in your Buffy shrine might not only be genuine, it might be exactly what you need right now.

that doesn't mean that it's just as big a slice of that divinity as Artemis.

sometimes - in fact, for most people, most of the time - it's inappropriate to tap into a major power line. sometimes all you want is a 9 volt battery.

the idea that if two things are both useful at times, they must have to be "equal", seems poor logic.

the idea that if one thing is bigger or more mythic than another thing, it must be "better", and anyone not using it is lesser, also does not seem to follow.
 
 
alex supertramp
17:40 / 10.02.09
I think maybe Buffy has become an unfair example of a modern mythology to worship. I could be wrong, but I do not think any of us posting on this thread are young girls. Could a young girl, coming of age, find a deep magical connection with the Buffy mythos? I don't really know for sure, but I would argue that she would find a much stronger connection with the modern mythology of Buffy, than that of Athena or Diana which are so removed from modern experience. Buffy speaks to a modern experience, whereas Athena or Diana, I would conjecture, does not speak as well to a young girl in today's world.

I'd like to throw out the idea that we start a new thread more along the line of "Modern Mythologies VS Ancient Mythologies". I think we can all agree, in the absence of anyone who actually cares about the show, that talking about Buffy has outlasted its usefulness. That having been said, I think there are plenty of other modern mythologies more worth our time. For example, what do people think about treating Neil Gaiman's Dream and the Endless, from Sandman, as a pantheon?
 
 
darth daddy
19:28 / 10.02.09
I was suggesting something a bit more radical in my post. Most understanding of our perceptions of God, the Loa, Hindu Gods, Tantric Gods, are initially obtained through stories, tales told of Gods aspects and adventures. Most religious stories, like so-called "memoirs", have narrative structures identical to fiction. Faith is the determination that you have made that "this story is true". Whenever you describe an experience to another their determination of your veracity depends on the others faith in you and your truthfulness.

The "truthiness" of something is in a certain aspect irrelevant. Whether I believe in the Holocaust, for example, does not affect whether it did or did not happen. My belief in the actuality of the event has a great deal to do with my psychological response to the story.

Much of what we process as narrative events is constrained regarding our understanding of the truth or actuality of the narrative events. The Bible is not the same if it is merely a collection of stories of a fantastical guru. Similarly, Castaneda's books, while to my view entertaining, are not the same if you see him as a anthropology major portraying fiction as fact.

As I do not have faith in the actuality of religious stories, taking an agnostic view, I evaluate the utility of such stories the same way I evaluate good fiction, whether it is entertaining or evokes emotion. Please don't whine that I have insulted your belief system; I'm just giving mine. Once you start seeing the number of fantastical and imaginary mental constructs included in one's worldview, including your view of yourself, it is a short trip to re-imagining your "fictional" constructs, via different religious stories or NLP or whatever. I view tantric imagery as an effort to use the imagination to combat attachments or fictional constructs which are causing misery, ie: I must have money to be happy, I must have this relationship to be happy, etc... It simply never ends.

This does not mean that I question whether the divine exists; I believe in this. I simply do not believe hook line and sinker in the stories about the divine. This, to me, is the basis of Buddhist philosophy and the key to freedom. Obviously if Papa Ghuede came up and kicked my ass, with or without a boatload of drugs involved, I may change my belief system. As intelligent creatures we need to be like Doubting Thomas and ask to feel the spear hole before drinking the Koolaid.
 
 
electric monk
20:00 / 10.02.09
None of the posters who've put time and thought into their posts are asking anybody to "drink the Koolaid". Rather, it seems to me that most everyone is speaking directly from experience and are consistent in their expectation that others do as well. This is, in fact, a huge part of the problem that some of us are having with alex supertramp's posts. He is making very general assertions without supporting evidence or personal experience (such as the one above regarding teenage girls, Buffy, and Athena) and expecting to be taken seriously. If anyone could be said to have swallowed a dubious belief system whole, it'd be alex. IMHO.

More on Buffy, Athena, and their applicability to these modern times later if I can work up the energy.
 
 
darth daddy
20:35 / 10.02.09
I think what Alex is getting at is that a teenage girl would look at Buffy as a story differently than a grown person might. The proper evaluation of the use of a "Pop" mythology is extremely individual, and not prone to a standard esthetic judgment. My point was that if all religious stories are treated as essentially fictional, why not use fiction that appeals to you?
 
 
alex supertramp
21:34 / 10.02.09
"I think what Alex is getting at is that a teenage girl would look at Buffy as a story differently than a grown person might. The proper evaluation of the use of a "Pop" mythology is extremely individual, and not prone to a standard esthetic judgment. My point was that if all religious stories are treated as essentially fictional, why not use fiction that appeals to you?"

Exactly my point, darth daddy, although articulated much better. This is an example of what I disagree with:

"the tiny slice of divinity you might find in your Buffy shrine might not only be genuine, it might be exactly what you need right now.

that doesn't mean that it's just as big a slice of that divinity as Artemis."

From my practice, I've discovered that the size of the "slice of divinity" is not already inherent in whatever entity I choose to worship; its imbued by me. What I mean by that is that Buffy does not appeal to me or my worldview, really in any way. So there is no slice of divinity. however, Athena doesn't really appeal to me either. So there's no divinity there, either. I could imagine that a teenage girl would disagree with me, possibly on both points. I don't really know, just guessing on that end.

Let's put forward a hypothetical situation, similar to the one described above with Artemis and Buffy. Let's say that I worship Darth Vader, and Lucifer, two distinct characters whose stories have a very similar fictional structure. Ambition for power, rebellion, and eventually fall from grace. I believe that if said person were to worship Vader and Lucifer, I disagree with the notion that just because he found divinity in both characters "that doesn't mean that it's just as big a slice". If both characters are equally fictional, then there should be equal divinity to be found in characters invented 40 years ago or 4000.

Lucifer and Vader are both masks for the same idea. Its the IDEA that has divinity, not the mask. Saying that because Lucifer is an older character, he has a bigger slice of divinity, is mistaking the mask for the idea.

The experiences that have led me to this conclusion stem from my work with both pop culture entities and ancient entities. What I have found is that across cultures, you will find the same gods and motifs in different dressings and guises. This is because the ideas that these corresponding stories represent across the world are the same; it is the cultural differences that make up the very different masks.

So if one were to worship Buffy and Artemis, there's no reason Artemis should have a "bigger slice" of divinity. If we are to assume that both Buffy and Artemis are masks for the same idea (which is a huge assumption, I know little to nothing about both characters), then their slice of the pie should be equal. The point is you cannot compare apples and oranges; the ninja turtles are obviously not masks for the same idea as the guardians of the universe.
 
 
Princess
21:56 / 10.02.09
I think you are assuming an equivalency of deities that doesn't really play out. Even when comparing very, very similar deities like Baccus and Dionysus, they are evidently not just different masks on the same mystery. Each deity has several mysteries. Yes, they may both share the mystery of "drunk", but there other mysteries do not correspond. If we are looking at modern iterations of the drunk motif, we could talk about Duff Man. Duff Man is just drunkness. Maybe also the shallowness of advertising.

Duff Man = Baccus = Dionysus just doesn't seem to be the case. Even if the gods are just masks, and I'm not saying I agree with that, the mystery behind the mask is not the same.

Dionysus is blood in the earth, crossdressing, ritual sacrifice, taking it in the wrong'un, damaging desire, Otherness, freedom from society, wildness, music, dance, theatre *AND* being drunk.

Baccus is not all of the above, he overlaps a lot, but it's a different lens.

Duff Man is *just* the drunkness.

Yes, I could labour like hell and try and put Duff Man on the QBL or something. But why bother? I could dig a massive pit and wait for water to flow in, or I could just go swimming in the sea. Same with Pop-Culture and deity.
 
 
alex supertramp
22:07 / 10.02.09
This is an example of what I mean by the deity being a mask for a larger idea:

"a connection between sex/fertility and death is made in many mythologies from the most ancient past down to the present time. Nergal in Mesopotamia, embodied as a bull (a widespread symbol of virility), was notorious both for his sexual activity and also for dragging mortals off to the underworld; Sucellus, the "Good Striker," in Celtic myth had a hammer which he used both to strike plenty from the ground and to hit dying people on the forehead to make death easier; Ghede, originally the Haitian god of love, was in later voudun belief amalgamated with Baron Samedi, the dancing god of death who was often questioned via blood sacrifice on questions of fertility."

link

Why is it that the gods of death are also the gods of life across so many cultures? I believe that it is because there is one idea these many different deities represent, and it is that idea that is divine, not the separate deities themselves.

Following that reasoning, why couldn't I make up my own Sex/Death Goddess? Let's do it right now. She's super hot. The perfect female form. She kills lots of guys, mercilessly. Sex. Death. Did I come up with something original?

No, not really. There are countless other examples, of course. I might consider the character Patrick Bateman from American Psycho as a similar representation of Sex/Death.
 
 
alex supertramp
22:13 / 10.02.09
"Duff Man = Baccus = Dionysus"

Is this REALLY a fair example? What about this:

"Morrison claims that the myth of Dionysus provides the inspiration for his violent and explicit graphic novel Kill Your Boyfriend"

I think it would be more fair to say Grant Morrison's charactter=Baccus=Dionysus than DUFFMAN, but I also feel very uncomfortable using equal signs. Superman = Apollo is not a fair equation, but I do think it is plausible that they are masks for the same idea, albeit DIFFERENT masks. Using an equal sign implies the masks are the same, which they obviously aren't.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
00:31 / 11.02.09
I think it would be more fair to say Grant Morrison's charactter=Baccus=Dionysus than DUFFMAN, but I also feel very uncomfortable using equal signs.

Hmmm, that's the thing though, there's no character in Kill Your Boyfriend that's supposed to be a "mask" for Dionysus, or for whatever Dionysus is a mask for. The story is about what Dionysus stands for. I think it's a similar deal with Buffy--whether or not she could be a stand in for Athena with a lot of work and preparation is not the issue, the whole fiction she's involved in is a take on...well, I never really watched the show, so I can't say.

I think Quantum's got it with the finger-pointing-to-the-moon analogy, actually.

From my practice, I've discovered that the size of the "slice of divinity" is not already inherent in whatever entity I choose to worship; its imbued by me.

So there is nothing divine apart from yourself? Are you really willing to admit that?
 
 
alex supertramp
00:48 / 11.02.09
No, I didn't say that.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
02:38 / 11.02.09
But if the divinity is not a property that x contains, if it is only granted by you, then where is there divinity in the universe apart from you? If you're saying that there is such a thing that has divinity apart from yourself, why are you and it somehow in possession of the divine but not divinities?
 
 
alex supertramp
03:41 / 11.02.09
"From my practice, I've discovered that the size of the "slice of divinity" is not already inherent in whatever entity I choose to worship; its imbued by me. What I mean by that is that Buffy does not appeal to me or my worldview, really in any way. So there is no slice of divinity. however, Athena doesn't really appeal to me either. So there's no divinity there, either. I could imagine that a teenage girl would disagree with me, possibly on both points. I don't really know, just guessing on that end."

What I meant when I said this was that there is divinity in the idea Buffy represents. Buffy herself has no divinity, at least not for me, unless I can accept her as a viable representation, mask, or whatever for that larger idea. The idea still has divinity, but Buffy does not, because I as an individual person do not really see the character as a useful representation of the larger idea. So, I can't really use Buffy as a means of communicating with the larger idea, rendering her divinityless. heh. None of this is to say someone else couldn't use Buffy as a viable representation of the larger idea.

I guess imbue was bad wording, I don't transport divinity from within myself to Buffy, or what have you.
 
 
Quantum
08:59 / 11.02.09
I could dig a massive pit and wait for water to flow in, or I could just go swimming in the sea. Same with Pop-Culture and deity.

Excellent metaphor from Prncss there. Yes, you *can* experience the divine through pop culture characters just as you can make a hammer out of cheese but why reinvent the wheel?

Slipping out of my habit of ignoring supertramp, when he says about Buffy in the absence of anyone who actually cares about the show he clearly has not seen my season eight comic collection DVD and VHS Buffy and Angel library and fan memorabilia. I care deeply about the show in an almost maniacal way and defend the Whedon with terminal intensity, teleparabalise it regularly and happen to think the show has produced some of the finest moments of TV ever made (cf. the Body, Hush, the Zeppo, Smile Time...) and I know I'm not alone.
But just because I love it doesn't mean I think the characters are mythic. I also love dark chocolate but I don't think that it's a deity.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
13:03 / 11.02.09
Let's say that I worship Darth Vader, and Lucifer, two distinct characters whose stories have a very similar fictional structure.

except that Vader, even inside the Star Wars mythos, is a guy with telekinesis, and Lucifer is believed by millions of people to be the literal source of all evil on Earth.

I'd say that distinction is not trivial.

If both characters are equally fictional,

a huge "if". you (or was it darth daddy?) have said that, for you, these stories are all the same. for many of us, they are not the same.

and that's fine, but keep in mind that telling us they are all the same based on your experience is equally as silly (and potentially insulting) as us telling you they are not the same based on our experience.

then there should be equal divinity to be found in characters invented 40 years ago or 4000.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up age. my belief has very little to do with how old the story about an entity is. I don't believe anyone here would say "if something is older it must be better!"

if we have implied something like that, it's in an attempt to describe some characteristic these entities have for us which is not easily put into words. saying the only difference between Darth and Lucifer is age is silly. saying the only reason *we* believe there is a difference is age, is very silly.

Lucifer and Vader are both masks for the same idea. Its the IDEA that has divinity, not the mask.

I have no problem agreeing with this statement.

Saying that because Lucifer is an older character, he has a bigger slice of divinity, is mistaking the mask for the idea.

saying that because two things are, from some point of view, both masks for a deeper thing, they must be Equivalent - again, this does not follow. a mask, to perhaps overuse this metaphor, can be bigger, or heavier, or more lifelike, or have more moving parts, than another mask.

I'm not talking about "different but equal", like green is different than red or Vader is different from Maul. I mean something on a different level. like the Emperor is different than some guy who wanders through the frame for half a second and gets no name in the credits.
 
 
Quantum
13:28 / 11.02.09
masks for the same idea. Its the IDEA that has divinity, not the mask

Hmm? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype#Jungian_archetypes
 
 
Princess
13:59 / 11.02.09
My point, Alex, was that the *ideas* behind Baccus, Dionysus, Duff Man and drunken-god-x are not the same. Dionysus and Baccus are not just different masks for the same idea. They have radically different, even opposing ideas behind them. Both Dionysus and Christ have mysteries of sacrificial blood, rebirth and wine. But to claim that there is no difference between the Messianic Jew and the Queer Nature God, in practice, is stupid. You will notice the lack of Catholic Maenades.

Pele and Vesta both look after fire. But fire-in the mountain and fire-in-the-hearth are different personalities. Pele is fierce fire as woman, Vesta is tame fire as responsibilty of woman. Do you not see the difference?

And, at it's core, I think you either get the difference or you don't. Can you get magical results out of anything? Yes, pretty much. But do you get that feeling of dancing, of fucking, of singing when you offer a cookie to Batman, no, not really.

God's speak to me, pop icons only entertain me. God's are more complex than I am, I could knock out a pop-culture deity in an afternoon.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:26 / 11.02.09
What are they teaching people these days? DUFFMAN is not (not) Bacchus. He is (not) Liber.
 
 
alex supertramp
17:59 / 11.02.09
My apologies to Quantum, I'm sure Buffy is a great show, I've just never been that into it. Before my time, I guess.

"Lucifer is believed by millions of people to be the literal source of all evil on Earth."

OK, so it's not about age, it's about amount of believers? One entity is more divine because there are more people who believe it's actually real?

"My point, Alex, was that the *ideas* behind Baccus, Dionysus, Duff Man and drunken-god-x are not the same. Dionysus and Baccus are not just different masks for the same idea. They have radically different, even opposing ideas behind them. Both Dionysus and Christ have mysteries of sacrificial blood, rebirth and wine. But to claim that there is no difference between the Messianic Jew and the Queer Nature God, in practice, is stupid. You will notice the lack of Catholic Maenades."

OK, I really feel you're putting words in my mouth. I made a pretty clear distinction that while some masks might be representing the same idea (Lucifer/Vader, Superman/Apollo, Buffy/Artemis, etc), they are in no way the same thing. If you read a bit closer, you'll see I say:

"I also feel very uncomfortable using equal signs. Superman = Apollo is not a fair equation, but I do think it is plausible that they are masks for the same idea, albeit DIFFERENT masks. Using an equal sign implies the masks are the same, which they obviously aren't."

Now, having seen that I specifically say DIFFERENT in italics and bold, let's see what you think about I'm saying:

"But to claim that there is no difference between the Messianic Jew and the Queer Nature God, in practice, is stupid"

I never claimed there is no difference! I just said that there is no difference in the idea, or divinity, these masks represent. Your claim that the idea is very different between Baccus and Dionysus seems a little flimsy, considering they have the same page on wikipedia, there's no separate page for Bacchus and Dionysus. The masks themselves, thus the presence (at least in my experience) you feel, is different. Its like if you filter light, a red filter gives you different light then a blue one, but the original source of light remains the same.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:24 / 11.02.09
Dude, please stop using Wikipedia as a reference. You will need to at college. That goes for everyone else also. And please start using HTML to reference quotes, please. It makes text far easier to read, and a child could master it. I linked to a guide earlier.

Otherwise, the comparisons being made - Vader/Lucifer, Buffy/Artemis - highlight some of the problems here, because they are not very functional comparisons. More exactly, they help to identify that generic elements do not make for identifications. Where, for example, is Annakin Skywalker's defining lust for power? Insofar as his motivation is in any way coherent, he falls because he wants to protect his godawful wife and spawn, and is the most credulous tosser ever. Where, conversely, is Lucifer's love interest? One of Artemis' defining characteristics is her virginity. Buffy is a very sexual person. And so on. What implications does this have for an archetypical core? Well. They might just be bad examples, but what does this archetypical core actually do for one? What is it for, functionally?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
20:12 / 11.02.09
What I meant when I said this was that there is divinity in the idea Buffy represents.

What idea is that, exactly? Wouldn't you be more or less choosing to put an idea behind her, the way you'd be choosing to use cheese to hammer nails (to use Quantum's metaphor)? For what purpose would you be doing that, and wouldn't be easier to use constructs that have developed far more thoroughly? Like Haus notes above, what are you using these archetypal cores for, and wouldn't an established tool or vehicle for doing so be far more useful?

"But to claim that there is no difference between the Messianic Jew and the Queer Nature God, in practice, is stupid"

I never claimed there is no difference! I just said that there is no difference in the idea, or divinity, these masks represent.

But we're not talking about the masks now, though. The Messianic Jew is something Christ represents just like the Queer Nature God is something Dionysus represents. These are not just different names for Christ and Dionysus. These are the very ideas you've been speaking about.

Your claim that the idea is very different between Baccus and Dionysus seems a little flimsy, considering they have the same page on wikipedia, there's no separate page for Bacchus and Dionysus.

Just FYI: this in no way speaks for the flimsiness of anyone's claim. Wikipedia is not an authority on anything.

My apologies to Quantum, I'm sure Buffy is a great show, I've just never been that into it. Before my time, I guess.

Before your time? Jesus.
 
 
darth daddy
20:37 / 11.02.09
I'm coming at this from the point of view that I have never had actual contact with Thor or Odin or any other heavy duty entity. I envy and respect those of you who have.

My use of these constructs is as a form of a clearing house or NLP on steroids in a meditation practice. As such, Pop Icons are much more relevant and accessible than figures from the Golden Bough. The goddess of the hearth? I don't even have a fucking hearth!!!

My take on tantra is that the evocation of gods is an effort to combat the "Heathenism of the Mundane"tm The Tibetans had a history of Heathenism which the great masters used towards Buddhist aims, ie: liberation. Like a raft, such evocations should be abandoned when the shore is reached.

In the "Heathenism of the Mundane"tm we are assaulted by far more energetic entities, such as Jerry Springer, Barack Obama, and Oprah Winfrey. Which figure has more influence on an American, Thor or Oprah Christ? Who more accurately depicts modern relationships, Zeus and Hera or Al and Peg Bundy? A McDonalds sign has more meaning and history for me than the entire hebraic alphabet.

I'm currently using portions of Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a banishment tool against the "Heathenism of the Mundane"tm. Joyce in this book merges the pop culture of his time, including pop music and pop figures, in a blender of cultural references. (The pop tune currently driving me nuts is "Are we Human, or are we Dancers") While I am nowhere near smart enough to fully appreciate this novel, his use of pop figures and bad puns is amazing and, yes, magical.
 
 
alex supertramp
21:16 / 11.02.09
"These are not just different names for Christ and Dionysus. These are the very ideas you've been speaking about."

Don't really have time to respond in full, I just want to clarify that I never used Christ and Dionysus interchangeably, you did. If you go through my posts you won't see me compare those two deities.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
22:28 / 11.02.09
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, and at any rate it has nothing to do with what I actually wrote. You said, and this is simple cut n' paste, I just said that there is no difference in the idea, or divinity, these masks represent. Which is, as demonstrated, not true.
 
  

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