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Ever read Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll? It's not as well known as the more accessable Alice books, but is, in it's themes, a follow up to them. It's first line, "Is all our life, then, but a dream?" is a variation of the famous final line of Through the Looking Glass, "Life, what is it but a dream?" The way Carroll describes how one enters what he calls the Fairyland is very much like the experiences people describe as the results from successful ceremonial magic. There seems to be something about Oxford...
Robert E. Howard wrote, when he was writing the Conan stories, that he felt the character's presence, the barbarian telling him what to write. So, yes, creators have invoked beings, travelled to other places, etc. They just achieved these states in a different way. This is something I'm sure people who do both creative writing and celemonial magic, like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, are familiar with.
Myths are, after all, stories. They are stories that reach something deep within us, something hardwired into us, some higher truth, whether or not they literally happened. The folks looking for wreckage of a boat on mountains in an attempt to prove the Noah myth are missing the entire point. It's the higher truth behind the myth that's important.
So, whether a myth was created by a modern writer for modern people, or by ancient tribes sitting around a camp fire for a society that lived and died thousands of years ago, it's still, really, the same thing. We just happen to know more about Tolkien, who he was and his thoughts, then we do about Homer and whoever wrote Genesis.
Sure, Inanna was the original Goddess Descending into the Underworld, but we know that story better, today, as Alice. Most of us didn't know of Inanna until we looked into that Mythology when we were older, usually after we'd become familiar with some of the variations of her Myth, such as Ishtar and Persephone. Alice, most of us have known all our lives, from when we were old enough to remember anything. So, who's the Goddess Descending into the Underworld for our modern culture, Inanna or Alice? Recent variations of that Myth, such as Spirited Away, Mirrormask, and Pan's Labyrinth, have drawn from Alice rather than Inanna.
Granted, it's my Crowley and R.A.W. influences, but I don't believe in setting up strict rules for Chaos Magic, of all things, that you can invoke from THIS Mythology but not THAT one, that it MUST be based on stories that are at least a couple of thousand years old. If one can't invoke Carroll's mythology, then one, I would think, can't invoke Ishtar, either, since she wasn't any more the original Goddess Descending than Alice was.
Alice would be an innocent Maiden form of the Goddess that speaks like a cultured English schoolgirl and asks all sorts of questions, sorting out puzzles. You don't have a lot of the issues invoking another form of that Archetype might bring. Kal-El, likewise, prevents certain things that might crop up with some other Sun God, but I imagine you'd feel the weight of the world, so much responsibility for it. Christ is probably still the safest Sun God to invoke.
But it all comes down to which incarnations of these Archetypes you relate to. A more familiar one to you, personally, might actually produce better results than one that is, to you personally, more distant and obscure.
Also, something important to remember: Whatever deity representing an Archetype you use, it's symbolizing a concept. These are ALL symbols that represent something, not the thing, itself. These symbols I'm typing right now using a computer are representations of thoughts, not the entire being of the thought, itself. It's all about using symbols we've created to communicate something that can't truly be expressed entirely, through symbols we've created and learned. That's what Myths are. That's what deities are. It's using symbols to represent something in a way we can understand and share it.
Christians invoke a Sun God that was based on a person that likely existed, though he may not have done everything the Mythology ascribes to him. Buddhists invoke a Mythology based on an even older person that likely existed, but may not have done everything the Myths say. Rastafarians build their Mythology around a 20th Century Emperor of Ethiopia. Alice, so we understand, was a story created to entertain three sisters on a riverboat journey, based, in part, on ancient Myths, and in part on a person that existed that we can be certain didn't actually do all those things the story says she did.
She looks so the Fairy Queen in that photo that she's become in our culture's Collective Subconscious. Alice IS that to us, now, just as Jesus IS Christ, the Sun God, to those of us raised in that culture. So, modern storytellers base their versions of the Goddess Descending story on the Alice Myth, as that's a more familiar symbol, a representation of a concept, than the much older ones, now.
And now we turn to Chapter IX of Through the Looking Glass...
To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said
"I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head.
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be
Come dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen and Me!"
Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea--
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!
"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth Alice, "draw near!
'Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and Me!"
Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine--
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine! |
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