Myth Matters

“Epic shows us again and again the pattern of moving from the old myth to a new, carrying everything of value with it as it goes.” -- Louise Cowan
 Christopher Nolan's film version of the ancient Greek myth The Odyssey has been big news. Written down by "Homer" some 3-400 years after the destruction of the city of Troy, The Odyssey is a mythic account of rise of Greek civilization after the collapse of the Bronze Age Mycenaean kingdoms.
It's an old story about ancient times. A blast of the past. And, it always has been. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks heard the myth and remembered their history. They were looking back, recalling a pivotal time of change. A time when notions of honor, order, and the right way of being and living together were redefined.
When we read or watch The Odyssey today, we're stepping into this lineage. Many of us see myth as entertainment, and there have been centuries of cultural change. Still, I wonder if the lasting resonance of The Odyssey reveals the power this story continues to hold and explains the big response to Nolan's movie.
We are, after all, living in a time when notions of honor, order, and the right way of being and living together are being redefined.
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"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, that then when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." ---- Wendell Berry
The situation that Berry describes is a creative edge, the place where the known meets the unknown, where what is and has been realized and understood fades into the possibilities of what is yet to be.
Two questions arise for me in contemplating this creative edge. Where do we look for guidance? Or rather, what are we in conversation with when we reach the edge of knowing? And what is a good way to court this guiding source, energy, inspiration, or wisdom?
The nine Muses of ancient Greece and their mother, the Titan goddess Mnemosyne, offer some ideas.
Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive...
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“Energy, creation, movement and harmony, development, all happen under the aegis of love, in the domain of eros. Desire is the cause of all movement, and movement is the character of all being. The universe is a process, and its method is change.” — Germaine Greer
 
The ideas expressed by Greer in this quote reflect the ancient Greek perception of a cosmic dynamic of love and attraction, imagined as the god Eros. The notion of Eros is thousands of years old and yet still central, compelling, and meaningful. 
In this episode, we take a look at two ancient poets whose poetry about eros speak to us today. The Roman Ovid was fascinated with the psychology and effects of eros, passionate love. In his view, love is the catalyst for transformation and our passions are our folly. This is a mad, crazy world.
Ovid's work was innovative and yet he had an important predecessor in Sappho, a Greek lyric poet whose primary theme was also love. Her work was also ground-breaking and known to Ovid. He even included her in his Heroides, a collection of fictitious letters exchanged between lovers.
The work of these two poets, conceived centuries ago, illuminates some of the ways that ancient Greco-Roman ideas about eros influence our ideas about love and passion today.
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"Some sisters said such things could never be, while others were convinced that anything was in the power of true deities---"
-The Metamorphoses, Book 4, by Ovid translated by Allen Mandelbaum
Ovid wove Greek myths of transformation to create his masterwork, The Metamorphoses. This poem describes a world of shapeshifting, ambiguity, and forms in flux. Of endless transformations instigated by passion: passionate feelings, fantasies, pleas, prayers, and convictions.
This episode contains a couple of more obscure myths from Book 4 that seed a meditation on the fluidity of identity and gender, and the blurriness of boundaries in an ever-changing cosmos.
Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive...
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“All things change; nothing perishes.”-- Ovid
Ovid was a Roman poet who wrote his master work, The Metamorphoses or "Transformations," in 8 C.E.. He weaves more than 250 Greek myths together in one long poem to tell a story of transformation, and explore the complexities of love as an agent of change. 
Ovid's voice has been influential over the centuries. The Metamorphoses was an important touchstone for Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other artists and thinkers whose works are foundational to today’s dominant culture. HIs perspective and the story that he tells are worth examination. 
Is it still useful to us? Does it offer anything to our vision of the future?
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