The Ramayana

The concept of dharma is extremely important in not only hinduism but many other cultures. You get good karma (which is what decides your fate for your samsara) by living your dharma which is different depending on which caste you are born in. I find all of this fascinating. So many people (including me) use the term karma very lightly without knowing the full extent of its importance to hindus. A person’s karma is the most important thing in their world and they cannot get good karma without fulfilling their dharma.

Pattanaik talks about the never ending cycles 0f life that hindu’s believe in and the difference between Alexander and the gymnosophist and how differently they viewed their lives. Alexander believed he had one life to live so he needed to live it extravagantly while the gymnosophist was fulfilling his dharma for this life. Pattanaik also talks about today’s indians and how everything is “maybe” (which I find hilarious!). Everything is maybe because they aren’t as caught up in how fast everything “needs” to be in our american culture because we are used to instant decision making and results. Modern day Indians aren’t as concerned about that because they are all just living out their dharma and being good people so that they can have good karma for the next life.

Dharma has different strengths in each age of a Maha Yuga. As each stage progresses and there is more evil in the world, the role of dharma decreases and becomes more and more unsteady and has less of a role in people’s lives. The less you follow your dharma, the worse your karma is going to be.

In the Ramayana, Rama has so much respect and love for his father and his stepmother that he doesn’t even question them ( more his stepmother Kaikeyi) when he is told that he is not only no longer going to be king but he is also to be exiled for 14 years (chapter 3). Rama is just fulfilling his dharma and doing what he is told because his parents told him so (great kid right?!).

 

Anna

Anna is the perfect heroine in the sense that she is just an ordinary lonely princess until her sister’s powers put her kingdom in jeopardy and she needs to find her so she steps up to the plate and goes on a journey to save Arendelle.

• Anna’s ordinary world is being lonely and by herself.
• Her call to adventure would be when her sister Elsa runs away
• Anna’s crossing of the threshold would be when she actually leaves and puts Hans in charge
• Some allies that Anna meets on her journey are: Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, The Rock Trolls
• Some tests she conquers: The cold, the snow giant named Marshmallow, Elsa tries to push her away
• Anna’s Crisis is when she is accidentally struck in the heart with Elsa’s powers
• Her road home is when Kristoff takes her to the rock trolls and they are told that the only way to save her is an act of true love
•  Anna saves her sister just as she completely freezes over. Because she saved her sister, she saved herself and broke the curse and “resurrected”.

Anna fits almost all of Campbell’s steps for a hero’s journey which is why she is such a good example of a heroine. Anna’s journey is different than a traditional masculine hero’s journey because her’s was based completely on love, not for any personal reasons.

Heroes!

Campbell states that all hero myths follow the same basic structure structure. After this weeks readings I completely agree. Some of the steps overlap each other but the same basic format is followed in the myths of Theseus and Herakles. He states 12 steps in the hero’s journey. They are: 1. Ordinary world 2. Call to adventure 3. Refusal of call 4. Meeting mentor 5. Crossing threshold 6. tests, allies, and enemies 7. Approach 8. Crisis 9. Reward 10. Road Back 11. Resurrection 12. Return with Elixir.

Theseus’ “ordinary world” was when he was younger. He always knew he had a special father and yearned to meet him but he couldn’t until he was older. Theseus’ call to adventure could be seen as when he was able to lift the rock and retrieve the tokens his father hid for him. On his journey to Athens (his crossing the threshold), he chose to take the mainland which was a much more treacherous route opposed to the easy journey by sea in order to make travel for everyone safer. During his travel he met many awful creatures that his cousin Herakles hadn’t rid the world of. Some of Theseus’ tests and approach include “Club-Man” Periphetes, Sinis “Pine-Bender”, the man-killing sow, Skiron, the giant turtle, and others. After this difficult journey is over you would think that Theseus’ hero quest would be over but the most difficult has yet to happen. Theseus’ crisis can be seen as when he is found out by Medea (his father’s wife). Theseus is weary when he gets to Athens and for his father he offers to kill the bull of marathon. After during his celebration reward, Medea tries to poison him with a glass. But his father catches glimpse of his tokens and saves Theseus just in time.

Herakles is the ultimate hero. His ordinary world is how his human father schooled him extremely well. He also grew up on his father’s son after killing one of his teachers. Herakles’ call to adventure came after he exiled himself and sees the Oracle at Delphi and she tells him in order to achieve immortality he must complete 12 labors for Eurystheus. His mentor is his childhood archery teacher Eurytos. Over the 12 labors he meets many tests and enemies. Some including: the lion, hydra, keryhela, the wild boar, he must clean a barn, get rid of evil birds,capture a bull, capture the mares of Diomedes, and steal the royal belt. Over the course of the 12 years, the tasks elevate to be more and more difficult. He also meets some allies along the way such as Prometheus and Atlas. Herakles’ approach could be seen when he reaches the edge of the known and kills Geryon, Orthos, and Eurytion and also when he goes to get the golden apples. Herakles’ crisis is when he travels to the underworld and borrows the hell hound Kerberos. His reward is his freedom from the labors. But on the road back he doesn’t know what to do with himself so he kills Iphitos. He can have redemption by being a slave for 3 years for a woman which is humiliating to the hero but its part of his resurrection.

Death

Steven Cave was extremely eloquent in talking about something that many of us are afraid to discuss. He describes 4 different stories we tell ourselves about death and how we deal with them. One of the most impacting statements to me was that we believe these 4 stories because we are biased and we are biased because we are afraid of death. Our fear of death is natural but not rational. Its not rational because theres absolutely nothing that we can do about it, we just need to come to terms with it.

Elixir- the old story of a fountain of youth is a very common immortality story. We have changed that to fit today’s feelings through how we can avoid death through science (stem cells etc). In greek mythology their nectar and ambrosia can be seen as the elixir of immortality.

Resurrection- some people can accept that they are going to die but know that they will return. This is especially important in christianity. In todays day and age we see resurrection ideas through cryogenically freezing practices.

Soul- A much more spiritual way of seeing immortality. Its the idea that the body dies but the soul will always live on. We see this in Ancient Egyptian myths. After being mummified with everything they could possibly need in the afterlife their souls take on this vast journey to the underworld.

Legacy- The idea of legacy as an immortality story is a bit different than the other 3 stories. Instead of the person or their soul living forever they are always remembered. Today it is much easier to have a legacy with the internet available for pretty much everyone.

At the end of his lecture, Cave describes the way he came to terms with his inevitable death. He sees it as a book. The opening cover his birth and the back cover as his death. All that matters to him is that it was a good story no matter how long or how short it is.

Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon a Time is the ultimate trickster. He fulfills the archetypes outlined by Hynes because he:

1. has an ambiguous and anomalous personality.
   1. no behavior is out of the ordinary for him
   2. he is neither good nor evil
   3. there are multiple reasons why he is the way he is. (son, belle)
2. is deceptive
   1. he uses the fact that he is often the only one that can help the people of Storybrooke and the enchanted forest to his favor
   2. will do pretty much anything at a price.
   3. the price for his services is often much higher than what you get.
3. is a shape shifter
   1. he kills the previous dark one to take his power because his son was being drafted.
   2. has a lot of anger. changes when he falls in love with Belle but not completely.

Hyde explains that all tricksters have an extreme hunger for something.

Rumpelstiltskin’s hunger is for power. All that he wants is to show it to Regina, the evil queen. He has lost a lot in his life and to him the only way to make up for that is by gaining ultimate power.

I think that Loki and Rumpelstiltskin are quite similar characters. They both have the tendency to be cowards and they have the same grungy bad guy feeling.

Tricksters

According to William Hynes, for a trickster to be a trickster they need to follow at least some of the following six characteristics.Those characteristics are: having an ambiguous and anomalous personality,  being deceptive and playing tricks on others, shape shifter, situation inverter, messenger/imitator of the gods, and sacred/lewd bricoleur.

Loki is known for his shape shifting abilities. Not all tricksters are as evil as Loki but a lot are shape shifters. When in hiding, Loki turns into a salmon which ends up being his demise as a lot of trickster’s “tricks” end up killing them in the end. Also, when he is plotting to kill Balder, he disguises himself and gets Frigg to unknowingly help in the murder of Balder.

Coyote is one of my favorite tricksters. He likes to play a lot of tricks on others and be deceptive. In the well baked man, he is responsible for the undercooked and the overcooked man which also shows his hand in creation. Coyote also tricks the frog people into letting him dig up the dam to free up the water for everyone else. Coyote is never really shown to be evil.

Hermes is sort of the ultimate situation inverter. When Apollo finds out that Hermes stole his cows and even butchered two of them he is out for blood. But when Hermes plays his lyre, it completely changes his attitude towards Hermes and even gets Apollo to give him a great staff and make him the god of cattle and herding in exchange for they lyre and his promise to not steal it back.

As far as for my trickster analysis… I would like to study Rumpelstiltskin. Which version of him is where im conflicted. Im only on season 1 of once upon a time but after a quick google it looks like there may be other mediums to analyze him from.

Disasters and the Apocalypse

I really enjoyed listening and watching all of Pagel’s interpretations and claims on the book of revelations. I find it fascinating how she analyzes the life of John of Patmos and brings to light the analogies he is trying to convey. I think that her interpretation makes it a lot less scary than others make it out to be.

One of the four horseman of the apocalypse and I think the scariest is disaster. Disasters are scary because they are powerful and as much as we try there is no way of knowing for sure when and if its even going to happen. In Christian, Greek, Norse, and even Native American myths we see the idea of floods coming up again and again. But its not seen as an end. Its seen as a new beginning. The flood is brought down as a cleansing of all evil in the world and only the worthy survive and its their job to re populate the earth. That is a terrifying concept! Because no one has any control over whether or not they will be “chosen” to be one of those select few people. In all of human history, control is extremely important. People are afraid of what they don’t know. At the massacre of wounded knee, the white men believed the ghost dance the Native Americans were doing was a war dance, so they murdered every single one they could.

The time line of Native American myths seem to be shorter than the other myths we have studied.  In Christian and Greek mythology, the floods happen at the beginning and the story continues, where in Native American mythology, the great flood happens at the end and thats what starts the new beginning that just hasn’t happened yet.

Natural disasters as the beginning of an end shows up in film and is popular because people are afraid of it! current times, people blame natural disasters on the end of the world. When hurricane Katrina happened, some believed that to be the beginning of the end. This strengthens Pagel’s argument how The Book of Revelations is being twisted and construed to fit any given event.

Tribal Religions vs Christianity

Vine Deloria describes in his God is Red: A Native View of Religion many differences between Native American myths and Judeo-Christian ones. One of the more striking differences Deloria describes is the fact that the Native Americans see the whole of creation as good while Christianity sees us as doomed from the start. In Genesis 3:16, God punishes Eve for eating the forbidden fruit by saying: ” I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing”. Also, in greek mythology, the gods are extremely spiteful. The fates for example, are sisters who have complete control over how much good and how much evil each human, and god, has in their lives. In the Native American myth The Orphan Boy and The Elk Dog, Long Arrow has complete trust in the Spirit Boy when entering the lake because why not? Evil hasn’t taken over Long Arrow.

Tribal religions show a great focus on the connections of all creation to one another (there is no real beginning and no real end), while there is a definite beginning in Judeo-Christian myths. In Genesis 1:2, “the earth was without form and void” there was an absolute nothingness. In the myth Corn Mother, in the beginning, Kloskurbeh, the All-maker, was the only inhabitant of earth. It is not said what came before. In the myth Rabbit Boy, a rabbit kicks and plays with a blood clot until it becomes a human boy. Native Americans see motion as such a powerful thing that they believe that anything with movement has a spirit inside of it– called Takuskanskan.

The Tribal religions also place a huge importance on their connection with nature while there is a disconnect to nature in European belief systems. In Genesis 2:8, “whatever the man called every living creature, that was it’s name”. That shows how man is believed to be above all other living things. The Native Americans feel such a connect to nature that in Creation of the Animal People, they state that earth was once human and every part of her has changed but she is still alive which is why they have such respect for the earth and everything on it. The smoke of the peyote plant is seen as a human spirit to be respected and used for prayer and reflection. In How Grandfather Peyote Came to the Indian People, the peyote plant is brought to the sick by an old woman and her granddaughter. The Native Americans also place a huge power on women and they are often seen as the heroines in Tribal myths.

Differences between Greek and Norse Mythology

After reading both Greek and Norse mythology, it is clear that there are similarities but there are also glaring differences. A big difference between Greek and Norse mythology is that the gods in Norse mythology are a lot closer to mankind. They get hungry, they get hurt, they die; whereas Greek gods have very little physical connections to mankind. Norse gods also interact with humans a lot more than Greek gods. Zeus would pretty much only head down the mountain to sleep with human women. While In order to get around the nine worlds of the Norse, the gods had to interact with humans and even rely on them (thor leaving his chariot at a farm).

Zeus and Odin are a great comparison for some of the differences between Greek and Norse mythology. Both are leading “all father” gods.  Zeus is a lot moodier and definitely more promiscuous. Zeus also likes to “puff out his chest” and assert his power a lot more than Odin. Odin is also arrogant in his own ways. For example when Odin is disguised as Harbard, a ferryman, (in The Lay of Harbard), he goes back and forth with his son Thor about his many accomplishments and why ‘Harbard’ is so much better than the hero Thor.

The timeline for Norse mythology ends While Greek Mythology doesn’t have a definite end. All throughout the Norse readings there were many references to Ragnarok– the final battle. And there isn’t much talk about what happened after Ragnarok since its seen as a sort of end. There is a grand battle in Greek mythology where Zeus and his brothers succeed in overthrowing his father but its shown as a beginning rather than an end. Zeus’ battle is towards the beginning of the Greek mythological world and is an extremely important part. Because without that battle, Zeus and his siblings wouldn’t have any power.

Both Greek and Norse mythology describe how the world came to be. The Norse creation story was a lot more gruesome since its described as the earth being made from a fallen giant. Every part of him was transformed to be a part of the earth and even the sky. His death caused a great flood of his blood where only two humans survive and the oceans were created. (The Creation). The concept of a great flood has been explored by many many religions including the Greeks. But with the greeks, the great flood was a punishment to Prometheus and his creations– man and woman.

Aphrodite

No goddess is better than Aphrodite! Zeus, the king of kings, can’t even escape her beauty and power! How awesome is it that she was born from the cut off  “member” of Ouranos mixing with the frothy shore of Cyprus? A birth story doesn’t get any better than that!

Where it is said that Aphrodite came to be

Without Aphrodite we wouldn’t have any of the greek gods and goddesses we know today. She is so powerful that she even made mother earth, Gaia, sleep with Tartarus and had Typheous also known as typhoons to punish the gods for killing all of the giants. She also gave Pandora her grace and charm where if she didn’t, Pandora wouldn’t have nearly as much power as she did over Epimetheus.

All of the gods wanted Aphrodite for their own. Ares wanted her for his wife and was promised her but before they were to be together, Hephaestus demanded her as part of his payment for freeing his mother, Hera, from the throne he entrapped her in. But that didn’t stop Ares! She was that beautiful! Ares secretly pursued Aphrodite and they ended up having an affair. Hephaestus found out and devised a plan to catch them in the act. He netted them to the bed and called all of the gods to mock and embarrass them. Aphrodite, the strongest of the gods and goddesses, didn’t make a big deal out of it  and Poseidon agreed to pay Hephaestus back his dowry.

Aphrodite was spiteful as were all other greek gods. She is not one to be messed with. Smyrna failed to honor Aphrodite so she made her fall in love with her father. But Aphrodite still did have a soft spot for beauty. She took a great liking for the baby Adonis, the son of Smyrna and her father, and sent him in a chest down to Persephone. Persephone fell in love with this baby as much as Aphrodite did, so Zeus had to intervene and divi up Adonis’ time with the two ladies. Adonis loved Aphrodite as much as she loved him so he gave her his portion of time alone. Unfortunately his life ended tragically when after much warning of beasts from Aphrodite he got cocky and was charged by a wild boar.

Something that makes Aphrodite better than all of the other gods is that she is very close to perfection and definitely believes it. Zeus, being the jerk he is, wanted to make her feel how the other gods felt under her spell. He made her fall in love (maybe a better word is lust) for a mortal and cow herder named Anchises. She of course had to have him so she disguised herself so as not to scare him away and spent the night with him after much convincing that she was not an immortal (wink wink). The next morning she revealed her true self to him and told him about their newly conceived baby boy– Aeneas.

Aphrodite is also still hugely referred to when discussing greek mythology or pure and  unadulterated  lust. She is also referred to in a lot of music. For example Katy Perry’s Dark Horse. That song really captures how powerful Aphrodite is and how she is definitely not a goddess to mess with.

In conclusion Aphrodite is by far the best goddess of them all. And does anyone really want to be on her bad side?

Works Cited

Martin, Richard. Myths of the Ancient Greeks. New York: New American Library, 2003. Print.

“Aphrodite.” Theoi: Greek Mythology. Web. 2015. <http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Aphrodite.html&gt;.