Book V

Perseus and Phineus- The fight of only two men left hundreds dead or turned to stone.
Polydectes- If he shall be so bold, stare up at the invented face to find yours turned to stone.
Pyrenus- Just because you can fly does not mean have whatever your heart desires.
Ceres and Proserphina- The worst thing in the world is a women scorned, yet the worst thing in the universe is a goddess scorned.
The Pierdes- Challenging the gods to anything will certainly lead to your inevitableness demise.

Book IV

The daughters of Minyas- Instead of partaking in the grotesque act, they took turns and told each other stories.
 Mars, Venus, Vulcan, the Sun- The Sun has an overpowering will to make you stare at it.

Athamas and Ino- The poison of the snake can prove to be to great for even a god.Acrisius-No matter how hard one trys, they can never escape the truth.
Perseus and Medusa-For the love of another a man is capable of almost anything, even the slaying of a horrid snake haired monster.

Tree hugger

I am sure you will mostly get pictures of people hugging live trees that can be seen all over campus. This is all well and good but I thought I might share a picture with a fallen comrade. 
Just because they have been cut down and processed doesn't mean they should get neglected

Pictures

1.my soul would sing of metamorphoses.
2.The soaring palace of the sun.
3.But his false Semblance soon is set aside.
4.But Minya's daughter, his Alcithoe, will take no part in Bacchus' sacred orgies.
5.But while the stalwart son of Danae told story of his feats
6.Their tale was done.
7.Now, in the ship they built at Pagasa
8.Now Lucifer, expelling night, revealed the light of shining dawn.
9.And Theseus, hero dear to Neptune 
10.But hymen had to leave the isle of Crete.
11.Such were the songs of Orpheus
12.But father Priam, since he did not know the Aesacus was still alive
13.Ringed by their troops
14.And Glaucus the Euboean, god who haunts the swollen surge
15.Meanwhile they seek a man to meet their needs.

Forgetfulness?

     Chapter 7 in Mircea Eliade's Myth and Reality, focused on how different cultures viewed forgetfulness, memory, sleep, death, awakening, and history. The first part of the chapter looked into the Buddhist view of these ideas. Last semester I was in a class that looked into the Buddhist ideology. I could understand most of what he was talking about in connection to Atman, ones self, and how ones self could achieve complete freedom through awakening or nirvana.
      I really began aware of how many cultures view sleeping, being confused, nativity, and drunkenness as the same thing. These things create a void between the person and some sort of god figure. All of the previous listed things were related to death. To avoid death people have to come out of this stupor of any of the four things already stated. You need to be awakened and brought into the light. In a lot of creation stories beings or the earth itself was first in total darkness. And through some mythic action they were brought into the light. The light is always described in such a way that it seems divine.
      Throughout the entire chapter Eliade explained how all cultures are trying to figure out the original myth, or how the world(as we know it) came to be. He has concluded that most of the Western world believes that they are here because of some Supernatural Being. Other cultures such as Buddhist aren't trying to figure this out. What they truly care about is learning how to achieve nirvana through total lose of Atman.

Someone else's blog

          I read Ashley Arcel's blog on Collective Unconsciousness. Towards the end of her blog she concluded that in almost every culture, the same type of people are falling into the same type of situations. I believe this to be fundamentally true as well. My previous post is on just this topic. Throughout different cultures the same events seem to occur in their history. Ashley goes as far as saying that Myth is human tradition. With all of the "coincides," I think it would be hard to disagree with her. I know I don't. The same stories with minor variances coming from different sides of the world, and from cultures that are in unique places. The probability is to great for these all to happen by chance. 

Scary Closet Monsters!

 I really can't remember what my first memory was, so I just thought back as long as I could to something that I could vividly remember. This is one of biggest moments in every kids childhood. This is when I got over my fear of the monsters in my closet. I invited my friend(Justin) over from down the street to my house for a sleep over. I was around six and my friends was closer to twelve. Their was a big gap in our age but luckily for me he was one of the nicest kids I have and will ever meet. With my fJustin being twelve, he was not scared of the imaginary things that most six years olds are. I am not sure how we got on the subject but it came up that I was still scared sometimes by the monsters in my closet. He didn't laugh, smile, or any other demeaning thing that you would expect. He knew exactly what to do. He thought up this "magic" potion to get rid of the monsters. This was a genius idea for a twelve year old kid to come up with off the top of his head. So we went out side and found some grass that had been spray painted white. He said we needed to mix this and water to get rid of the monsters. This was all I needed to hear, I wouldn't have ever doubted Justin. He mixed up this bizarre concoction in a water bottle. He took the water bottle and sprayed it in my closet a few times. Thats all he did. That day was the day I was never scared of monsters in my closet anymore. On a side note, Justin brought over some great lemon heads that night!

Similarities

"I have made these remarks on taboo and its relations to magic because I am about to give some instances of taboos observed by hunters, fishermen, and others, and I wished to show that they fall under the head of Sympathetic Magic, being only particular applications of that general theory." - The Golden Bough

      I like how the passage above talks about more than one instance certain things are observed. Through my short life I have already noticed patterns in different cultures/religions. It is very interesting to me how people are so quick to tell off another person and their idea's; when in reality they are basically telling the same story. In the Metamorphoses of Ovid, they talk about how in the beginning their were people on earth. After a major event throughout the world there is only one man and one women. Sound familiar? It does to me. Lots of religions believe that man came about from one man and one women.
     As I go through my studies of unrelated topics I still see these same ideas popping up everywhere. Creation stories are, for the most part, very similar. Many start with one man and women as previously stated and then soon after/before this happens a major catastrophe envelopes the world, killing most if not everyone.
     This leads me to believe that some of this is true. Almost all people have played telephone before in their life. In this game we can see how a simple sentence being passed from relatively few people can get horrible misconstrued. I can see how a story of creation, thousands of years old, could have a few different variations. At minimum this is an interesting topic to me.

"In the island of Nias the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them
lightly over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game
into them." -The Golden Bough

I believe this class will be good for me, since I have almost no actual literal background reading of any greco-roman mythology. This class will force me to read some of the different types of myths throughout time. I am excited about how we as people in present age can extrapolate the ideas that these older texts give us and see them again in our twenty first century world. The quote above explains how hunters are being clever to hunt their game of choice. This is how many movies and books portray the hunter and the hunted. Overall this should be a great class for me to get out of my comfort zone.

My first post

Finally got this whole situation figured out!