myth
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?