mythical
Midsummer
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 | life, mythical, vintage | 99 Comments
On the 24th of June, there is the so-called Midsummer, known in the Cristian calendar as the day of birth of Saint John the Baptist. This holiday always revives our innermost rhythms and our connection with nature, as it ritually marks the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, all around Europe people have different rituals of celebrating Midsummer, which, in the old pagan world had an importance equal to nowadays Christmas (well, let’s not think of the whole commercial fuss about Xmas right now), which coincides with the winter solstice. Also, Midsummer ritual are reported as well in US or Canada, but lets not take now the shallow neopaganism into consideration and let us focus on genuine tradition.
The evening of 23rd of June is Midsummer’s Eve, and it is an evening for magic and bliss. Most medicinal and magical plants are picked up today, since their healing powers are assumed to reach their peak around midnight or before dawn. Waters are said to be healing also. Bonfires are lit to protect from evil spirits, and spells for growth and fertility are made, some involving beautiful wreaths of flowers and fresh leaves. Love rituals, especially, are everywhere: mock marriages are arranged both between adults as between children, and if a girl puts a bunch of flowers under her pillow she is said to dream of her future spouse that night.
It is a time of magic, but this magic has a sense of humour also – not to forget Shakespeare’s comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with the whole bunch of tricks the forest fairies play on one another and on people.
At sunrise, the sun winks, plays and smiles, or so the legend says – however, if you get to see the sunrise, you’ll be blessed and lucky through the year. It is a feast of life, of life at its very best.
Rodin – genuine sensuality, mirrored
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 | arts, mythical | 105 Comments
There are few works of art that celebrate the human body at its purest and most sensual expression, the way the sculptures of the great Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) do. Faraway from the usual cliques, it is there the force, the violent passions of humanity, there in the tormented surfaces, in the rich and luxurious shapes, the truth, the individuality. What is there in a metaphor other than individuality and universality brought together? And what is the core of the individual if not the clash between spirit and emotion?
Rodin was the one to free sculpture from formalism and bring it to life, his expressive style, evoking both the concrete sensuality of flesh and the mystical purity of spirit, plays with shadows and light, with details and textures, and makes marble and bronze truly human.
Of Spirit, Soul and Kamasutra
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | arts, mythical, sex | No Comments
When I was really, really young, there was a whole Kamasutra trend among my friends, male and female alike. The mythical Art of Lovemaking was arousing everyone’s imagination. It sounded deep, mysterious and dirty, and it was all about an universe we were yet to discover. Our minds were tremendously fancying twisted positions and strange techniques, and nothing seemed as exciting as this naive surface-scratching.
Of course, it took me some years to get it right. Some life experiences and some reading, and most of all, some “giving up preconceptions” work, which, I have to admit it wasn’t easy.
Kamasutra was written around 150 B.C. by the Indian scholar Vatsyayana and it is composed of seven parts, 36 chapters, and a total amount of 1250 verses. It describes the practices and discipline of sensual pleasures and it is NOT a tantric text. It does not describe tantric rites, nor do its content have tantrical connotations as it is a book for the noble and the righteous, and it does not address the specific group of the Left Hand followers. On the contrary, it’s rather practical than mystical and it refers to the carnal, legitimate pleasures of day-to-day life.
One of Kamasutra’s more important concerns, however, it is the spirituality of its reader and its relationship to carnality. The book approaches matters of soul with wisdom and it raises important warnings for the young and inexperienced profane, unaware of sexuality’s hidden dangers. Seeking these pleasures for your senses is enriching you, but it can also enslave you to this world and its materiality, to your own desires and the karma they create. That is why Kamasutra is also emphasizing one’s relationship with the other: choosing, getting to know, getting close and getting intimate. Before talking of positions and penetration it talks of kissing and embracing, of beginning and ending, of arts and virtue. Of loving and committing yourself to giving pleasure to the loved one. Of understanding and practicing sensuality as a whole.
“Kama is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact is called Kama.” (Vatsyayana, Kamasutra).
If interested, you can find here the original translation from Sanskrit, as first printed in 1883.
Venus retrograde
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | arts, mythical | 55 Comments
Astrology says Venus is retrograde in this period, starting from 6th of March to the 17th of April, which invites us to rethink and analyze our lives and relationships, to restructure and re-engineer our worlds, to rest, relax and gather our forces for the magnificent times ahead.
The backwards nude Venus picture I’m offering here is a famous Velasquez, and it represents the goddess of beauty and love while looking in the mirror, in a moment of solitude. ‘Cause mirroring, beloved readers, is essential.
Yin, Yang and the melting pot (part II)
Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
If we go deep, really deep within ourselves, we come to the point where we can realize where our Anima or Animus is, how it reports to itself or to us, and, most of all, where in our behaviour does it show its trickiness. Being aware of one’s Anima or Animus may bring significant improvement in this person’s life.
For instance, when we fall in love out of the blue it happens because we have met someone close enough to our Anima/Animus for it to project itself upon him or her. And so, for us, that person suddenly becomes the very incarnation of Masculinity or Femininity, as we understand and desire it, because it is our own Anima or Animus we are identifying her/him with. That’s why, in those moments, we feel that we are irresistibly drawn towards that wonderful, promising creature, that seems to have locked inside the very secret of our happiness, our fate, our meaning. When, later on, we unfortunately fall out of love, the whole initial magic doesn’t make sense anymore, sometimes the attraction we once felt gets beyond any understanding and there are also many unpleasant things about our former lover we can’t explain not having seen before.
The Myth of the Androgyn has its roots here, although the other half we are so eagerly looking for during our lifetime actually lies inside us. Being together with one or another of its projections may bring us temporary relief, may bring us human warmth and long moments filled with love, but when until the spell breaks we’ll still be incomplete.
However, when we become truly aware of our Anima/Animus, when we manage to understand it and to integrate it into our self, then we’ll get strong, real, wise, complete. It’s that very moment when we find ourselves, that very moment that sees our greatness as a wonderful, luminescent whole. We obtain a peace that will clear away all pain and fear. We enlarge out conscience and rise ourselves beyond this world’s delusions. We reach our true self, and everything that will happen afterwards will be different, meaningful. The love we’ll get will be itself more complete, because we’ll be able to see our significant other not only as a reflection of our Anima or Animus but for what he or she really is, and adore it as a whole. Our compassion and understanding will enlarge and our world will be richer and much more colorful.
But in order to get there we need long hours of introspection, of self-awareness in which to understand, accept and integrate what is different, and hidden, and yet, still within ourselves.
A Tale of Fate and Saudade
Friday, September 19th, 2008 | arts, mythical, people | No Comments
Ladies and gentlemen, may I humbly bow and talk to you about one of the world’s most melancholic and passionate musical genres. It is called Fado (a Portuguese word normally translated as Fate) and it miraculously emerged, under its nowadays shape, from Mouraria, one of the oldest Moorish neighbourhoods of Lisboa. Its mysterious birth dates from the very begining of the 19th century, although earlier, deeper roots are generally admitted. It seems to have been the astonishing, heartbreaking result of a powerful multicultural combination: the black rhythms of African slaves, the traditional music of old Portugal, the Moorish vocal inflexions and the Brazilian modihna.
Fado talks of loss and longing, talks of people’s lives and talks of people’s soul. It has in it the sea and its tenderness. It is mostly made of desires and their stories, desires that are not meant for fulfillment, but for singing and sublime renouncement. It is the ultimate strength of the human soul: to escape and overcome reality. It is poetry and poetry only. And so is the love it describes. Defined mostly by the untranslatable word “saudade” – which counts for infinite longing for someone or something, a form of nostalgia that is bigger than life and more profound than the Atlantic ocean – love in fado’s short stories is built out of poetry and tragic passion, it forever breaks the tide of ordinary to melt itself into its own flame.
This beautiful world of sounds and feeling is my gift for today. Hope you’ll enjoy it. The gorgeous lady in the above movie is Amalia Rodrigues, Portugal’s greatest modern days fadistas and one of Europe’s “grand dames”.
Yin, Yang and the melting pot (part I)
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | analysis, mythical | No Comments
Good versus Evil, North versus South, Darkness versus Light, Male versus Female. Although it’s the latter we’re going to concentrate upon, lets have a little look around first, shall we? Somewhere behind these opposite and their spectacular clashes lies the secret of all things, the root of life and the essence of all creative powers. Duality starts it all.
However, since bright colours were successfully invented, there is no such a thing as black and white worlds, if we exclude from this affirmation early film-making and photography. It’s abstract, unfair, and by no means representative, and that goes for modern Hollywood thrillers too – technical details won’t matter. Besides, duality seems to be taking its force out of mixing stuff: maniheistic legends, for instance, take a point out of combining Darkness and Light, Spirit and Matter in a forever enchanting struggle and “underground” collaboration – and these guys were most radical when it came to contrasts. Wonderful laws does the nature have.
Therefore, as you’ve probably heard more than often, the phrase “every man has a feminine side and every woman a masculine one” is more than just politically correct. Julius Evora, in The Metaphysics of Sex defines Femininity and Masculinity as some kind of strong, genuine opposites, resembling magnetical field’s poles in action and energy. There is impossible to find pure Femininity or pure Masculinity in any living creature, but, the more Femininity does a woman have, the more she embodies the warmth and attraction of it, the closer she will be to Perfection. Also, the more a man becomes the incarnation of powerful male archetypes, the more will he find himself above other weaker, less sexual men. However, as this equation’s poles are as far apart from each other as Antarctica and Greenland prove to be, in every genre’s exponent there will be a nice little – or not so little – leak of opposite energy. He or she may ignore it all lifelong, but it’ll be there, playing tricks on them from its sweet well-hidden place.It will never disappear, and it will grow stronger and stronger, feeding itself from the owner’s denial, like a smart outlaw would steal electricity from an energy plant. And this, my friends, is beautiful, and great, because, ultimately, the oh-so-neglected side of ours is an useful instrument, able to make us whole, if we let it.
Carl Gustav Jung named man’s feminine side Anima and woman’s masculinity Animus. They are important, base concepts in his work and ones of most significance in psihanalysis’s efforts of understanding the dynamics of human inner and outer relationships. Normally, a man will only be able to understand women and their behaviour through his Anima, which generates the proverbial irrationality, uncontrolled emotions and unpredictability view. It’s not the way women are, it’s the way Anima is and the interface it offers to real-world Femininity. Same, if no level of higher awareness is met, women have their impressions of men established through their Animus – the Animus is a source for ready-made logic, rigidity, judgementalism and when a girl shows off her list of prejudices, yes, sir, it ’s her Animus at work there. Sounds like a lot of trouble in male-female interactions, doesn’t it? Well, at this level, yes, it definitely is and as we all know from experience genre conflicts are not actually light-and-easy, right?
Still, solving the duality brings peace and freedom, and that’s why we must take things further on and go deep, deep, deep.
[to be continued]
Femme Fatale
Monday, September 8th, 2008 | analysis, mythical, sex-appeal, style | No Comments
There is a figure in today’s modern mythology that I found myself very fascinated with when I was a child. Oh, and in my early teenage period, too. It was the sublime, mysterious aura of so called femme fatale: the seductive, incentive woman that captures them all. Eyes, men, whatever. She had to have style and wits, and to posses that indescribable charm that was beyond beauty and glamour. Her sexuality was strong, dominant and enslaving, and there was no hope for the poor butterfly heading towards her light. A modern, powerful, superb witch.
Even though this image has blossomed fully during the ‘40 and ‘50 decades, in the period of the American “film noir”, I have to admit that one of my favourite bewitching characters is the cabaret dancer Lola Lola from 1930’s “Der Blaue Engel”. As everyone who has seen, or even heard about the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star knows, the lovely Lola pushes Professor’s Rath life on a downward spiral using nothing but the power of lust that she so irresistibly awakens. The power behind a femme fatale ’s silk eyelashes is always meant to bring destruction in the aftermath of every sin, as her ravishing force will ultimately escape all control, even her own.
This was the black-and-white archetype that marked my age of restlessness. Surely, I eventually got to learn that it is only the incarnation of femininity’s destructive and unstoppable potential, and that it has nothing to do with reality. I have never met her in flesh and blood, only pale, wannabe roleplayers. As for any other common archetype (the mother, the maiden, the prophet, and so, so on), there is no human being that simple to match it completely. Humans are way more complicated than black-and-white figures, and even though our lives may, sometimes, resemble old thrillers, they have a little bit more meaning and underlying layers, don’t they? However, for short moments only, I can see her very glow in the shape of one of my female friends, or acquaintances, or other random girls I happen to randomly meet one place or another. And there she is, charming and dangerous, filling men’s hearts with desire, only to disappear some seconds later. Strange, glamourous epiphanies.
Or maybe just my imagination, as I truly, deeply love my inner world and its ghosts. So, reality check here: have you ever met Her?
Fairytales
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
Oh, those sweet old times! How trendy they prove to be today! We’re always in for some candlelight or vintage furniture, aren’t we? It’s just the charm of living brand new lives in brand old eras that steals our soul. It’s that beautiful, oh-so-polished image that wraps us into some novel/movie/whatsoever character and that usually lasts until candlelight goes out and the lightbulbs go in. Cause fairytales are just fairytales, right?
Truth is fifteen minutes of poetry won’t make up for 15 hours of prose. And we always come back to our daily life and those overused contemporary myths: The Strong Woman, The Self Made Man, The Success. It seems like The Princess, The Hero, The Accomplishment have transformed overnight in their Business-World-Equivalents. That’s the model for today, nothing else we’ve got in stock, so take it or leave it.
I was not aware of my own, personal need for fairytales until some years ago. Back then, I was in the middle of some love-affair and way too preoccupied with being cool about it. Being cool was cool, right? So I was being so cool that one day I realised it wasn’t fun anymore. I was looking on the window, smoking in silence, my dreams were blocked somewhere on the way, there was no thrill, no thrill at all. I was feeling strong, the night was warm, there was no wind blowing and no sense of adventure. Nothing could have been more boring. My lover was a nice, calm, almost passionless person and I wasn’t looking for commitment. Everything was awfully clear and there was nothing to fantasize about. Suddenly, I realised I was living an uninteresting solitude, as my experiences were losing their meaning, and I got extremely sad. And out of that, of course, because that boredom thing wasn’t making feel like a novel heroine at all.
What I came back to was not idle dreaming, but a world full of sense. An interesting solitude, where you could plant fairytales and let them grow. And then I actually realised the value of being able to wait, hope or fight for something. It’s not the adventure that makes our hearts beat faster, but the possibility of it.
So, the prose? It will always be there, but when you do have something to wait for, something to believe in, well, it just turns to poetry a lot easier. And then we can just get rid of all those models and write some true fairytales. True fairytales rule.
Innocence and when does it fail
Monday, July 28th, 2008 | analysis, mythical | No Comments
Innocence. I truly, madly, deeply want to talk about this. We tend to consider innocence as some angelic phase in somebody’s evolution. So appealing, that we even want and try to prolong it.
Children are innocent, and this is because of their immense ignorance. Even though thinking of childhood fills me with a peace that is older than me, I don’t remember my childhood as being serene. I was a happy child, having all I could possibly need, but my life was full of internal conflicts, of questions, of contradictions, of small-sized dramas that meant the world to me. I had absolutely no responsibility, so I was innocent. I knew nothing, and my ignorance was preserving and protecting my innocence. I was not good, as I didn’t knew what good actually was. I was simple, instinctual, selfish, narcissistic. And that was natural, I was a child. However, my continuous struggle for knowledge, my growth, and each new everyday experience tore my innocence to pieces and that was exactly what had to happen. Being innocent I wasn’t at all pure, cause no efforts were made from my part to achieve anything. Being innocent was no quality, but the lack of them, my mind was like the fertile ground waiting for its seeds.
Innocence was from heaven, because was the one and only remainder of the prenatal state. It kept me close to heaven, but that heaven was one of the unconscious, while reaching out for reality was tough and painful. Still, if I was to grow up and become a real humane being, my conscience had to grow too. There was no room there for denial, I simply had to leave that sweet, warm heaven and face the world, my whole being was urging me to this.
When now, as an adult, I try to speak up and talk about my innocence, I’m usually wrong, and I only do it out of cowardice. I try to escape responsibility, and this, my friends, is no longer possible. I try to limit my consciousness, and that makes a part of me wanting to scream out loud the truth, the whole truth. I try to pretend that I’m ignorant about one thing or another, but I keep forgetting that, now, I’m the one to blame for this. That’s because I’m not a child anymore and I have to assume full responsibility for almost everything around me.
I’m only human and I make all kinds of mistakes. I see all kinds of things, that may or may not affect me. I sometimes act when I shouldn’t or keep still when I really should be doing something, anything. My thoughts and feelings seem to have a life of their own in many cases. But closing my eyes about this would be the biggest of mistakes. I must get out of that womb and try to know, feel, live, and this is the long, everlasting fight of the wannabe-individual against innocence.