Important cave notions

The Cave represents the dream descent into the unconscious, where that which is repressed and ignored will come to be seen in full light.
The price of admission is a reversal of normal conduct and ideas associated with waking life.
The cave often contains the dead and sometimes spirit animals. The animals give strength and the dead often mock the heroes who have become 'as weak as they.'
The cave is ubiquitous in popular literature and cinema, but exists in the bible generally as temporary blindness and a few times as a pit that leads to hell.
What is in the cave is not just darkness, however, there is also a treasure, a golden light that symbolizes the effulgence of a forgotten sun. Sometimes it is in the form of knowledge of the future, sometimes it is the ability to shut up this underworld as with Jesus' keys and Luke's repression of his own dark side. If these hordes of the subconscious can be mastered, stolen or understood (if the horde is intellectual knowledge), then the hero can ascend back to the surface, or emerge from the bottom of the cave (as it is with Dante, being shit out by the devil) and use this hidden treasure of the deep to redefine and reestablish life on the surface, or waking life.
For more information, please look at my blog on Etruscan divination, where I have explored some of these notions of Frye's in more detail, within the context of how the Etruscans saw the future.

And now the let down...

Okay, up till now Jesus talks about giving aid to the poor and the maimed and the weak, how money gets you nowhere and how it is best to be a pacifist, even saying that "him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid him not to take thy coat also" (Luke 6:29).
So what in the hell is Jesus talking about in Luke 19? It seems to be a complete reversal of all this.
In Luke 19: 11 this disturbing story starts. He tells a parable supposedly reflecting how the apostles are to behave in Jesus absence in the time between his death and the coming of the kingdom.
A man is appointed ruler over a kingdom. "He called his ten servants and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, 'Occupy till I come.' But his citizens hated him" Okay so the king returns later and "he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, so that he might know how much every an had gained by trading." The first two servants present more money and are rewarded with land accordingly. The last servant presents the same pound that was given to him, explaining that he was fearful of losing it for the lord of the kingdom is and austere man, who "takest up what thou not layest down and reapest that thou did not sow" (Luke 19:21). The king calls the servant wicked saying that the servant should have at least given it to the bank that the master could have made money by usury (lending with interest something forbidden in Europe later on and associated with the Jews).
Then it gets ugly. The master "said unto them that stood by, 'take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds... For I say unto you, that unto every one which hath shall be given and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. But those my enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me" (Luke 19: 27).
This isn't turning the other cheek! This isn't letting someone steal your cloak and coat. This is so extremely the opposite that it is more the insane than the first exaggerations. The king (supposedly a metaphor for Christ) demands that his servants make money for him, 'reaping what he did not sow,' and then takes the last pound from the servant, suggesting that he be slain even though he rightfully returned the pound, just not with interest.
Is this the beginning of venture capitalism? The justification that the lords of wall street make so much lucre off the products of the labor of others? Or is this just another superlative statement about the importance of this Christ character, that even though he tells you to be a pacifist, if anyone wont accept a tyrant who rules in Christ's name that you should put him to the sword?
I don't understand it. I think the trading story is just a metaphor for how devoutly everyone on earth should serve this person, but this I find troubling as well.

My love for, and disappointment with, the Book of Luke

The book of Luke has surprised me quite a bit. At first I was blown away, thinking, wow, this stuff is awesome!
And not just the obvious, moral overtones that are generally the most clearly defined basis for modern ethics (not that the Christians can claim these morals as their own, though I have met individuals that do). Really, I found allot of support for the gnostic notions I mentioned at the very beginning of my blog. And this has delighted me. You see, I have always found dogmatic 'youre going to hell' Christians to be loathsome at best, and in the Bible belt of California, I often argued with them from my scant knowledge of the scripture they claim inerrant. But now, in the book of Luke, I have an entire arsenal at my command!
Check it out.
As concerns the gnostic belief that Jesus was an 'enlightened' human being, as opposed to an incarnation of God, Luke is pretty damn clear. Jesus never calls himself 'son of God' only 'son of man' something like ten or fifteen times.
Demons, however, are all about calling him the son of God. So are those who mock him as he suffers. They ask him if he is the son of God and Jesus says 'ye yourselves say it.' Do Christians, in their rather Greek insistence that their savior is God incarnate, put more faith in the words of demons and murderers than the words of the Christ himself? What the hell?
There is one source that is less dismissible, however, and that is God himself. When Jesus is baptized, God comes down in form of a dove (another example of cross culturation with Greek ideas) and he says that Jesus is "my beloved son, in thee I am most pleased" (Luke 3:21) But wait! Hold thy tongues, thou vile dogmatists! Luke gives us a very important qualifier right afterward, and it is probably the only example of an interesting genealogy.
Okay, so I skimmed it like I did all the others, but at the end of Jesus' supposed lineage is this: "...which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God" (Luke 3:38).
Kapow!
Adam is the son of God because God created him. He had no father other than God. And was Adam perfect like Christ? Was he intelligent and well spoken and pure in the eyes of the lord? Fuck no! He was a putz! He ate the forbidden fruit and doomed mankind to a frightful life of knowledge, shame and death! He is not the son of God because he is perfect, or a Herculean incarnation of divine power, he is the son of God because he is a human being.

Further more, he points to the path of realization in all humans, not the normal your-all-gonna-burn attitude Christians today are so famous for. Jesus says that while humility is good, "everyone that is perfect shall be as his master" (Luke 6) because those who rule themselves need no law. "He hath come to redeem us from the curse of the law" (Galatians 3:13). This echoes the gnostic gospel Thomas pretty clearly but not as much as when Jesus says, "for behold the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20).
And as for a general distrust for the establishment, the book of Luke is rich. First, the Pharisees are railed against constantly, so that you get the picture of them not much different from Mel Gibson's the Passion: horrible men with claw like fingers and scowling faces. Christ rails against money and exploitation by the rich everywhere. Encouraging charity and coming down very clearly on the issue of money: "ye cannot serve God and mammon." But he also states some pretty Buddhist reasons. He likens mental riches ("the riches of heaven") with a house that is built on a rock, whereas status and wealth are as a house that falls at the first sign of in-climate weather.
And what gets Jesus killed? Well its not until he hits the Pharisees in the pocket book (kicking the money changers out of the temple) that the Pharisees take the gloves off. But he spends allot of time generally pissing off the establishment before this. Remember, the gnostics revered personal experience of the divine, not what a church or any congregation of the unwashed masses proclaim, for we see in the book of Luke, they are often wrong.
Some of these things are just manners of rule breaking. Jesus is the ultimate rebel, he suggests that foreigners are better neighbors than than rabbis can be (the good Samaritan), and he allows his disciples to have corn on the sabbath.
What? On the Sabbath?! Yes. They were hungry, and in Luke Jesus tells the Pharisees that this is okay because he "is the lord of the Sabbath." But in Mark 2:27, he has a more humanistic approach, saying "the sabbath was created for man, not man for the sabbath." This implies that the whole of God's laws are not something to be followed for fear of reprisal but because the law is good for people to live by. You know -supposedly.
But the one who possesses experiential, emotional knowledge is always more committed than those who simply obey, for when a blind man shouts out to the Christ to be healed, the followers hush him and rebuke him as a sinner. But the man wails and screams to be cured, and of course Jesus is committed to lifting the man's affliction, in one of many Asclepius-like healings. Another note about the importance experiential knowledge: Jesus usually tells those he has healed that their own faith, not his divinity, is responsible for their miraculous recovery.
I would like to get to where Luke really lets me down, but Ive taken way too much time on this one, for now lets just say it has to do with the social contract. And we'll get to that next time.

The Slave: on a more positive note concerning Judaism

On a more positive note concerning Judaism.
I know I have sort of blasted the Hebrew god as a character, and am aligning myself with a gnostic interpretation that calls him a devil. But that is not to say I find Judaism abhorrent. I have nothing against peaceful, informed and heartfelt individuals going over their culture's ancient texts, philosophies, meditating, praying -on the contrary, I think the way Jacob lives his life is usually something to be encouraged and greatly envied.
His attitudes supply him with a wealth of emotional resources with which to deal with despair, celebrate in the face of cruel fate, comfort those who are downtrodden, and generally live abundantly as whoever wrote the part in Ecclesiastes where it says "my cup runneth over." He says this because this state is a kind of over abundance of spiritual energy, of spiritual wealth, elation of the heart,intensity. Some Anthropologists refer to a kind of boiling over when they speak of the trancing of shaman in so called 'primitive' cultures, and I think this is the same thing.

The Slave

The Slave was amazing. And its pretty clear to me why Singer chose to call it that.
You see, many times throughout the book Jacob is so beautiful, so happy, so alive. Often times, reading about him rising in the morning to wash his hands and thank God, I felt drawn back to times in my life, among the mountains, sleeping in crumbly shelters, rising to see "God's hand shown clearly in the red fire of the sun rise," and I feel that haunting sens of the ascetic's connection to the divine. Living with so little, with the mind so fixed upon the concept of goodness, the will of the world, the soul of the world.
But his attachment to tradition, the way he cant pray without washing his hands, the way he makes Rachel wash herself in the river when it is snowing out in the mountains (modern science: menstrual blood is not that fowl and shouldn't stop you from having fun).
His greatest slavery is the one that does him no good. It is his slavery to what the community thinks. Though the Jewish community is portrayed as a wholesome one, it is also full of depravity, so who cares what they think? Yet, from the time Jacob is ransomed he starts making the wrong choices, starting out with leaving Wanda all alone with no explanation.
This is the true sense that Jacob enslaves himself, because he lets tradition and hypocrites defile and distract him from the most important thing, his love, the same thing that animates his holy life, because all that he links to sensuality for obvious reasons.
The mythical parts in this book are truly amazing. Singer speaks of ways in which characters just 'know', not 'think' that there are werewolves on the side of the road, they 'know' that there are hobgoblins, witches and elflock tying demons. In this way the power of the human mind is shown to bring reality to that which is mythical. They have real effects. The mythic element stays like this, sublimated to the plot and not really effecting it greatly until the end.
In the end, the mythic, or romantic force, comes to a head. Jacob's body is felicitously buried right where Sarah's body was interred -the God of Jacob has shown his hand in the world, and shows that their love was ordained, justified and held sacred by the all mighty, who judges all things correctly.
And in this case, he certainly dose.
At least, that's what I think.

God's answer to Job

Obviously, Job gets it pretty bad, through no fault of his own. We are told that God considers him perfect in every way. But God lets the devil have reign over him. What follows is the troubling story of a suffering man, a man afflicted by the loss of his children, his cattle, his slaves, and if it weren't enough to just deprive him of all the trappings of a wealthy, land owning patriarch, (boo hoo), the devil gives him some form of chronic chicken pox.
Then a bunch of dudes with silly names, like Bildad, Zophar and Whirlygig, sit down and talk a bunch of smack on the poor man as he lay there, covered in boils.
Now, Job is being a whiny bastard, this is true. But his friends are worse, because instead of comforting him, they accuse him of wrong doing.
When God comes in the whirlwind he is thoroughly pissed.
He explains that everyone is wrong.
The friends are wrong because they blame the faultless, seeking to impose feeble human reason on the inexplicable universe, although a bet is really a rather shockingly human reason to do something stupid, like strip naked in a party, or jump a bike off a roof into a pool.
Anyway, God dosn't stop there. He has to answer all this repetitive wailing of Job's that seems to finally have got his attention like the mob of rapists outside Lot's hut.
He tells Job not to be such a whimp.
That's it.
He doesn't give him a reason why, because in this story God is a metaphor for that which we have no control over. The will of the universe. You, know, the blind fate(or ego maniacal, in this case) that casts a shadow on the evil and the good alike.
Everybody burns.
So in a way, the answer is what we get from any good father when we fall off our bike and sniffle: "I don't wanna do it anym-m-m-more!"
The answer is to stop being so damn worthless and learn to take a few cuffs every now and then.
Oh yea, and then Job gets a greater number of shit back then he lost in the tragedies. Whatever.

Frye's Cave and the Etruscan divination

Okay, so last night I attended a lecture by an archaeologist on Etruscan divination.
And some of what I heard fits quite well with Frye's talk of the cave.
Now, the cave is more metaphorical than, say, the garden or the mountain. The cave, says Frye, is often a dream state, a descent into the underworld, where the dead mock the hero for being "as weak as we" (Isaiah 14:10). The cave can also be under water. Frye basically equates the land of shades, the cave as any subconscious state where something is lost, cannot be seen, and he mentions the story where the fish is cut open and the king finds his long lost (and I think demon-controlling) ring. This journey is started by a call (as most journeys) but the source is not known until the hero plumbs the depths. He is apparently helped by grateful dead people (like Jerry Garcia) as well as spirit animals who guide the way. This visit to the cave shows something repressed and forgotten, something that will rise to the surface, just as the repressed proletariat eventually always strike out. And Frye takes this political model a bit further, saying that the realm of the cave has no hierarchy, and things here are even reversed, often in social terms as when Ahab becomes friends with the native whom he never would have befriended in real/ normal life. Sound familiar? "and the last shall be made first" or how about "blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom and the glory" -hmn?!!!?
Any how, the cave and the dead often reveal the future. Now, the Etruscans had some parallels here that are worthy of note, because as the woman leading the lecture last night showed, there are parallels across the globe.
First off, things are reversed in the underworld, as in a mirror. ANd guess what the Etruscans used for divination. Dunt dunt duh! A mirror, fools! Also the liver of a sacrificial beast but only because livers are shiny and, yes you got it, reflective. So things in the cave are a backward reflection. But there are other parallels about this practice of telling the future, too. For instance, the knowledge of the future, like all true knowledge, and I agree emphatically with this point, comes from the earth. And the best Etruscan prophet was born out of the dirt! Other prophets walked without shoes that their toes could be closer to the source of all true wisdom.
They also believed that the future telling knowledge sprang from the dead. In one of their divination mirrors showing the practice of divination, the one holding the mirror for the prophet is labeled as a shade, or a soul. Sometimes it is Cupid holding the mirror, and the lecturer pointed out -who is Cupid's wife? Psyche! The spirit, the soul and the dead shade that continues to exist in the underworld where it can offer up prophecy and truth. Note: the lecturer also states that the voice of prophecy is often depicted as a disembodied or severed head (a dead person a voice that comes from no where).