Metamorphoses, the collection of stories by the Poet Ovid, is a story that in itself is a creation story. It not only gives details on how certain things got to be how they are today, but Metamorphoses also offered answers to complicated concepts and non-explainable phenomena. It also contains archetypes, which are found not only in real life, but in other creation stories from various cultures.
One archetype found in Metamorphoses is the concept of love. Love is found in every aspect of human life, from love to another person or one's self, to love of an object or an idea. In Metamorphoses, Apollo discovers his first love in Daphne [733], although not through his own will. It is due to "Cupid's fierce anger" [733] that Apollo falls in love with Daphne, and conversely causes Daphne to reject Apollo continuously. This can be seen as a real life archetype, as rejection is a common thing in love, and sometimes a person will chase another person until it makes very little sense to do so (Daphne being turned to a laurel tree [734], for example.).
An archetype that is found in several creation stories is the concept of a great "doing away with" of the human race due to them displeasing the gods. This is found not only in the Bible with the Great Flood and Noah, but also in Metamorphoses when Jupiter floods the earth due to his anger with humanity [732-733]. Gods displaying power in a way to punish humans was a very common archetype in creation stories.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
Post 3: Archetypes in Every Day Life
In my short nineteen years, I have experienced several types of archetypes or concrete things in my life that have not really changed and probably will not change. As a kid, I moved around quite a bit; one of the things that has not really changed in my life is the support of my family. Regardless of any endeavor that I have taken in my life, my family has always been there to offer support and advice to me, despite them not necessarily always agreeing with the paths that I have chosen or not chosen to take. Also, my family always tells stories about their past and what they had to endure in order to end up where they are at this very moment. It rarely has to be a large event for an older family member to tell the younger ones in the family about their lives. The stories often offer a significant amount of insight to my life and these stories impacts on me very rarely change.
Another archetype in my life is the church, and this is a physical archetype that I am in every Sunday. Whenever I move around, my family and I have always at least attempted to stay in church every Sunday. We go to church to get insight on ourselves, and we also use it as a place to meet up and converse with our peers. The church is a physical archetype that has a good amount of symbolic and emotional impact on my life.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Post 2: Creation and How it Molds Us
I feel as though creation stories give a simple answer to questions that are not simple in the slightest. Creation stories range from vast and deep ideas that are often scientifically theorized, such as the creation of the entire galaxy with the Big Bang Theory, to much simpler concepts that are still difficult to rationalize and explain, love, for instance.
Interestingly to me, though, is how similar many of the creation stories are. They all share certain archetypes that are recognizable across all of the stories.Take the books of Genesis, the stories of the Cherokee, and the stories of the Pima, for example. They all feature the earth existing as sort of a vast mass of nothingness. In Genesis it is described as "without form, and void"[8, vol 1.] The Cherokee Indians say that the world was submerged underwater [332 vol 3] and the Pima state that the Earth did not even exist until Juh-wert-a-Mah-kai (The Doctor of the Earth), decided to create it so that he or she or it would have something to stand upon [350]. Regardless, all three of these stories are outlandish and are true if you believe them to be, but they are also all understandable to their culture and are able to be retold. If you are a Christian, you were probably told at some point that God created the earth and you believed it. Not because it was factual, but because the idea of creation is so vast and nearly inexplicable that it has to be converted into something that is easy for someone to understand. And I believe that is what creation stories do; give answers to questions with no straightforward answer.
Interestingly to me, though, is how similar many of the creation stories are. They all share certain archetypes that are recognizable across all of the stories.Take the books of Genesis, the stories of the Cherokee, and the stories of the Pima, for example. They all feature the earth existing as sort of a vast mass of nothingness. In Genesis it is described as "without form, and void"[8, vol 1.] The Cherokee Indians say that the world was submerged underwater [332 vol 3] and the Pima state that the Earth did not even exist until Juh-wert-a-Mah-kai (The Doctor of the Earth), decided to create it so that he or she or it would have something to stand upon [350]. Regardless, all three of these stories are outlandish and are true if you believe them to be, but they are also all understandable to their culture and are able to be retold. If you are a Christian, you were probably told at some point that God created the earth and you believed it. Not because it was factual, but because the idea of creation is so vast and nearly inexplicable that it has to be converted into something that is easy for someone to understand. And I believe that is what creation stories do; give answers to questions with no straightforward answer.
Post 1: Creation
Creation has always been a sort of touchy subject for me and it's not something that I openly discuss around my family, who is normally extremely religious and convinced by their ways. I rarely discuss it with my friends either since they're often times uninterested in this sort of topic. But my understanding of creation is that most people have a scientific belief system regarding it and other people have a more religious belief system in regards to it. In that sense I guess my views on how the world was created and how we got here are atypical, since I believe there are elements of both meshed into how the world was created.
I believe that it is uneducated to deny the science of how humans, life, and the earth we live on, simply put. I also believe that is short sighted to deny the possibility of a life higher than ours. I feel as though there had to have been something to "create" that science, or something used the literal science to his, her, or its advantage in order to craft the world that we know and inhabit. Either side of the spectrum should be taken with a grain of salt since their is no way of proving something like that and there isn't much evidence to back an argument on either side, so it is almost impossible to make an argument that isn't strictly opinion, and my opinion is that a god or godlike being created the universe, but with science that he or she or it created.
I believe that it is uneducated to deny the science of how humans, life, and the earth we live on, simply put. I also believe that is short sighted to deny the possibility of a life higher than ours. I feel as though there had to have been something to "create" that science, or something used the literal science to his, her, or its advantage in order to craft the world that we know and inhabit. Either side of the spectrum should be taken with a grain of salt since their is no way of proving something like that and there isn't much evidence to back an argument on either side, so it is almost impossible to make an argument that isn't strictly opinion, and my opinion is that a god or godlike being created the universe, but with science that he or she or it created.
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