Cupid | a single element in a Greek Tragedy involving Apollo

[Cory Duchesne]

Cupid | a single element in a Greek Tragedy involving Apollo and Daphne

I never liked Valentine's day. However, I just learned this last month (I never knew anything about the character of Cupid) - Cupid is a greek-Roman God, and the only way to understand Cupid is through his relationship to Apollo and Daphne. If you read the myth closely, it’s a slightly modified version of Cain and Abel, and perhaps can be seen as another way of conveying the entire Garden of Eden story.

Cupid (Eros) is Cain. He is a passive aggressive character who seeks revenge on Apollo. I can relate very personally to this, as I had a very rough summer involving a guy who played matchmaker, but I was totally ignorant of his motives. I never knew that level of cunning and malice was possible.


Humanity has never done a very good job of thinking metaphorically.

Humans take things literally. But the people who wrote some of the best ancient myths were in fact very good at thinking metaphorically, and in these stories you’ll find a very deep psychology, a social science that many (perhaps most) of our modern therapist have not caught onto. This is pretty scary, considering they’re going to be treating your kids if there are any serious problems.

[Tomas]

-Cory Duchesne-
I never liked Valentine's day.

-tomas-
Living up north in Nova Scotia will do that to you. Youse guys pickle everything with salt.


-Cory spouts wise-
However, I just learned this last month (I never knew anything about the character of Cupid) - Cupid is a greek-Roman God, and the only way to understand Cupid is through his relationship to Apollo and Daphne.

-tomas-
You still don't know squat.


-Cory intones-
If you read the myth closely, it’s a slightly modified version of Cain and Abel, and perhaps can be seen as another way of conveying the entire Garden of Eden story.

-tomas-
I don't know about closely, prefer arms-length with that cast of characters perhaps seen the Garden covered in a sheet of ice say, Antarctica. Conveying is all the rage these days.


-Corey-
Cupid (Eros) is Cain.

-tomas-
This fits your person. You're the offspring of those angelic Host, cast out into utter darkness (see book of Jude) wandering aimlessly in that bottomless sea called outer space which has no bottom.


-Corey goes psychologist-
He is a passive aggressive character who seeks revenge on Apollo.

-tomas-
There's that passive aggressive behavior cropping up again.


-Corey walks us down memory lane-
I can relate very personally to this, as I had a very rough summer involving a guy who played matchmaker, but I was totally ignorant of his motives.

-tomas-
Don't attempt to slip into Abel's shoes, bucko. Your papa's seed was Satan.


-Corey talks smack-
I never knew that level of cunning and malice was possible.

-tomas-
Said the virgin princess.


-Corey spreads his arms wide-
Humanity has never done a very good job of thinking metaphorically.

-tomas-
Hey Mosey, how about a new tablet of Commandments?


-Corey-
Humans take things literally.

-tomas sniffs-
You been hanging around your older cousin, Ryan Rudolph, too long.


-Corey quotes George Orwell-
But the people who wrote some of the best ancient myths were in fact very good at thinking metaphorically,

-tomas-
Sure. Their 'real meaning' was lost in translation only you can decipher, oh, Learned One.


-Satan's grandchild writes-
and in these stories you’ll find a very deep psychology,

-tomas-
Can't wait till your weekly newsletter comes out.


-Corey goes into orbit-
a social science that many (perhaps most) of our modern therapist have not caught onto.

-tomas muses-
Probably because they live in the land of the living. (Sockpuppets take notice).


-Corey-
This is pretty scary, considering they’re going to be treating your kids if there are any serious problems.

-tomas-
Good thing you are incapable of having kids. You are one sick storyteller.

[Dennis Mahar]

When the weather's hot and sticky,
Ain't the time for dunkin' dickie.
Aye, but when the frost is on the pumpkin,
that's the time for dickie dunkin'.

Robbie Burns

[Jamesh]

I see studying Greek tragedies to be a bit like playing chess, or playing science or playing academic philosophy. Ie it’s just another game of puzzles that we humans like.

Sure Nietzsche’s words call for us to study the ancient Greek mindset, but it doesn’t appeal to me. My view is always – just fucking say things directly, with a bit of wordsmanship to make it pleasant.

I can see it appeals to you, because the hero desire is still quite strong in you.

[Dan Rowden]

Nietzsche does not require a moment's interest in Greek Tragedy. His early focus on that is kind of tedious.

[Cory Duchesne]

If you don't value Greek Myth and the value of applying metaphor beyond the aesthetic, then your understanding of western psychology is shallow, and well, tethered to current convention.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Excuse the rather opportunistic *slap*, but the QRS, speaking generally, do not have the slightest interest in Occidental Psychology. Essentially, in a pinch I should say, the 'psyche' is made to disappear or is described as being non-existent to begin with. There was no one there either 'existing' or doing anything that such a psyche does. I am not (merely) being an asshole in saying this or 'torturing' and 'belittling' these fine gentlemen in saying this (as Bob suggests). It is just a statement of fact. They have no training in and no interest in the Western opus or in assembling the platform for understanding the present. The present is irrelevant. It seems to me they go for the extremist philosophers, those from whom they can extract and weild portions of philosophy in their project of...but this is the tough part: assigning a name to it. Clearly, it has links to Buddhism and to 'pseudo-Buddhism', but underneath that there is, I suggest, a kind of extremist Evangelical platform. In any case, it is Christian and not Buddhist. It is Occidental but peculiarly so.

To understand how the Greek concepts of the gods still 'lives' in image and word and in the 'psyche' is, it seems to me, far too delicate of a mental job for them. Too subtle, perhaps too 'feminine'. Hellenism and Hebraism, like it or not, recognize it or not, is part-and-parcel of the Occidental person. Along that line, there is an interesting book: The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and It's Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art by Jean Seznec (Bollingen)

But the thing about the Hellenistic conception of 'things' and Life is that it can't be bent to serve Abstract or 'enlightenment' goals. Buddhism, even if a rebellion, an extreme redefinition, still arises from the Vedic metaphysic, and makes our present world an *unreal place*, a place only of appearances, of shadows. But the Hellenistic 'gods' are embodied gods, part and parcel of life. This is why there is so much juice in them but for terrestrial purposes. Those who fall in for the 'Abstract', it seems to me, long for something beyond the embodied condition (for example dear Jupi who expresses nothing BUT that) and must have a philosophical position and lingo that supports, in this sense, 'disembodiment'.

That is my impression anyway.

Dan?

[Dennis Mahar]

In the 'where you're at' continuum of mental events proceeding out of prior mental events..
The only meaning Myth has is pleasure.
love of story.

that is the algebra.

[Alex T. Jacob]

You give expression to exactly what I critique in the arbitrary and even 'pseudo' philosophy dispensed through this neo-Buddhism. I gather that your answer satisfies you, makes sense to you, empowers you with at least some angle to work. Everyone seeks to become.empowered I suppose.

And it is really much more than 'myth'. You may be so unfamiliar with this whole world of ideas that it has to be slowly explained (the QRStian trip would so different if its protagonists were literate). It has to do with 'perceptive modes', ways of viewing and interpreting the styles of events, also the styles of relationship to people and also to the world. The Hellenistic worldview which is part of the Occidental psyche (as is the Hebraic) could be compared to the early Vedic personification of fire, wind, dawn, night, sun, water: they are interwoven in Sanskrit, the ideas interweave in metaphysic and cosmology.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Hermetic
Irridescence
Saturnical
Phosphorescent
Chromatic
Deity
Martial
Jovial

You---and by that I mean someone with a smidgen of discrimination---can note in these words certain histories of ideas and thinking. What is described is some part of our perception because it is part of our language. But there is a more interior level too.

[Dan Rowden]

If you don't value Greek Myth and the value of applying metaphor beyond the aesthetic, then your understanding of western psychology is shallow, and well, tethered to current convention.

Firstly, I was talking specifically about Nietzsche. Secondly, I don't need to think for a second about Greek Tragedy to understand matters of importance. That doesn't mean it may not be useful for some people, but focussing on the metaphoric can be a danger, especially when there's an entire emotional, aesthetic realm in which one can get lost. Most people's relationship to Greek Tragedy is romantic and not especially intellectual.

[Dennis Mahar]

Is it possible to distinguish.

A mind generating story,
from a story the mind generates?

If story transformed then human being would be transformed and it's not.

Is it possible to distinguish,

A mind of contents,
from the contents of mind?

The transformation is grokking the nature of mind.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan?

Dan what? When you give up your obsession with complicating everything for the sake of entertainment, I'll consider engaging you. You get that about yourself, right? That you're interested in entertainment, not actual understanding?

[Cory Duchesne]

If you don't value Greek Myth and the value of applying metaphor beyond the aesthetic, then your understanding of western psychology is shallow, and well, tethered to current convention.

Firstly, I was talking specifically about Nietzsche. Secondly, I don't need to think for a second about Greek Tragedy to understand matters of importance. That doesn't mean it may not be useful for some people, but focussing on the metaphoric can be a danger, especially when there's an entire emotional, aesthetic realm in which one can get lost. Most people's relationship to Greek Tragedy is romantic and not especially intellectual.

Most people are literal minded, which completely avoids the root of what Greek Myth is about.

Romance is not avoidable, so you need tools to put it into a spiritual context. We are born in between the cross fire of romance, and romance, used minimally and cautiously, with a stoic mind, is a tool for spiritual transformation. Greek Myth, or spiritual metaphor in general is there to help you frame the aftermath of romance into a spiritual context, conditioning ones heart to love the tragedy behind, and see a new, spiritual world ahead. Through metaphor, we lose the literal and use the elasticity of boundaries to attain a poet existence, but not a worldly one. A Sage with no respect for a shaman is a poor Sage. People need healing through a means which leaves them capable of grasping the nature of reality. Metaphor is the ideal tool, provided you are in relation to the totality.

"When you make the two one, & when you make the inside like the outside & the outside like the inside, & the above like the below, & when you make the male & the female one & the same, so that the male be not male nor the female female; & when you fashion eyes in place of an eye & a hand in place of a hand, & a foot in place of a foot, & a likeness in place of a likeness; then you will enter the Kingdom." Thomas: 22

[Cory Duchesne]

I will add something that I agree with from OW's notebook:

"The criminal conquers fear through hate rather than love."

"There is only psycho-therapy and certainly not that entirely deficient psychotherapy from outside, which we have today, where the foreign will of a suggester must accomplish that for which one’s own is all too weak; not an heteronomous, but an autonomous hygiene and therapy, where each is his own diagnostician, and thereby already even his own therapist. Everyone must cure himself and be his own doctor. If that is his will, God will help him. Otherwise no-one will."

[Alex T. Jacob]

Dan, you might say I entertain my way to the unravelling of knotted complexity. *Hint, hint*. But in fact post after post is pure, intelligible prose. I'm beginning to think you may suffer from some sort of Alexian Complex. I think I might have an Orestian Complex but I don't think Freud dealt on that one. Sis won't talk about it--- or can't. There were three interrogation points in your post. Three is a Hermetic number. That is how questions SHOULD be asked!

This 'understanding' for you is...?

[Dan Rowden]

Unravelling? Oh, no, Alex, what you do is the exact opposite of that. You are hopelessly smitten with the complexity and diversity that exists in shallow analysis. You mistake that complexity and diversity - either by design or accident; I'm not totally sure which - for depth. i.e. you think nuance really matters. You get lost in it and thereby fail to perceive underlying principles. Or, if you begin to, you immediately sense that they do not entertain and you recoil from them and retreat into your beloved tapestry.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Sez you. I see what you wrote as standard fare when you encounter people who think differently than you and who come to different conclusions about spirituality, the life we have to live, etc. It seems to me more than anything a bad habit. My writing contains many different things, and clear ideas as important and relevant as anything you discuss. It is just that you have no way to grasp where I am coming from. The 'barking game', though, is old hat by now. Learn to purr!