mythology

Healing Pandora: The Restoration of Hope and Abundance

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The mythic Pandora has long been misunderstood as one who brought evil into the world. She was thought to be the first mortal woman created and sent to Earth by the gods. Her infamous box, once opened, leads to the escape of diseases and other ills, resulting in a lasting curse upon humankind.

But this is not Pandora’s original story; in fact, the modern retelling of this myth is vastly different from Pandora’s true nature. In Healing Pandora, author Gail Thomas explores the origins of the Pandora myth, how it evolved into the tale we accept today, and Pandora’s influence on our culture.

Thomas asserts that long before Pandora’s myth became twisted, she inhabited the role of a goddess. Pandora was not just any goddess. She was the Earth Mother and maker of “all things, all gods, and all mortals.” But like many other female figures (historical or mythical), Pandora’s role as life giver transformed into one who bestows misfortune upon the world, and men in particular.

The first half of Healing Pandora takes a thorough look at the goddess and the vessel she carries, while in the second half, Thomas focuses on how people can apply Pandora’s lessons to modern culture. Thomas describes Pandora as “an archetypal image of culture, an image no longer in the consciousness of our world today.” She invites the reader to consider Western culture as a living entity and describe its appearance. The author bets the image would be one of “competition and scarcity.” By viewing culture through the Pandora myth, however, Thomas states that we will find “a bountiful feminine figure with outstretched arms and hands, waiting to provide everything we need.” The latter outlook seems most assuredly a rarity for Westerners.

Some solutions Thomas offers for transforming culture include women and men embracing their feminine side and also to become true stewards of the earth who recognize that spirit exists in all matter. She also suggests considering how different the world would appear to each of us if we imagined it as a bountiful place instead of one that is always deficient in some way or another.

Of course with a book titled Healing Pandora one would expect the author to spend some time analyzing myth. Thomas does this and takes liberty by discussing Pandora and many other mythic figures in great detail, so much that it’s difficult to keep track of the book’s main purpose. On the other hand, she does raise many valuable and thought-provoking insights toward culture today that are worth contemplating, and Thomas provides a much-needed background of Pandora before her myth became corrupted.

Written by: Beverly Jenkins-Crockett, April 8th 2010

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Dubravka Ugresic

Canongate

When she sleeps, her nose scrapes the ceiling of her small cottage. Her breasts hang from a pole over the fireplace, and she has a leg made of iron. She lives alone in a hut on chicken legs, and her gates are topped with human skulls. Passing heroes can flatter her and order her to do their bidding, but heroines must serve her in order to win her favor. Baba Yaga, a complicated crone from Central and Eastern European mythology, is a theme explored and exploded in Dubravka Ugresic's Baba Yaga Laid an Egg.

The novel has three parts, all set in Central and Eastern Europe. In the first, a woman deals with her aging mother's increasing senility and travels to their hometown in search of memory and meaning. In the second, three old women visit a health resort to relax and rejuvenate; romance and death follow. The final part is a meta-level, scholarly treatise of Baba Yaga written written from the perspective of a minor character in the first story and as though a folklorist had teased out all the feminine symbols woven throughout the previous two stories.

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is an exploration of women growing older in a post-Soviet state where distance between people is becoming the norm. Like Baba Yaga, the older women in these stories are dealing with their aging bodies, are often alone or isolated, and are frequently misunderstood, though they help or hinder other characters as they please. While these women are marginalized, they are definitely not powerless. They have the power to transform lives, and this is usually done through wealth they've accumulated during their younger years.

At its core, this is a book about women, bodies, and journeys. While Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a thicket of fairytale symbols and references to life in the former Soviet bloc, it can be enjoyed by those who don't have a prior interest in either fairytales or the locale. Ugresic is a clever writer who shows in this book that imaginary lands are dangerous places and little old ladies aren't as toothless as they may appear.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, April 2nd 2010

The Hindus: An Alternative History

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:32:00 +0000

By Wendy Doniger

Penguin Press

Wendy Doniger, currently the most outstanding American scholar of Hinduism, serves us a feast of tasty historical events and interpretative myths in this rich curry of a book, covering social and cultural developments in the Indian subcontinent from prehistoric times to the modern day. It is an “alternative history” in that it concentrates on the interactions between the religious texts and rituals created mainly by those whom Gurcharan Das calls “Dead Male Brahmins” and the alternative peoples Doniger finds so significant in the evolution of the multiform Hindu tradition, such as lower-castes, women, Buddhists, Muslims.

Doniger’s themes include violence versus nonviolence towards humans and animals, tensions between the worldly “householder life” and ascetic renunciation, the desire to obtain a good rebirth on earth and the desire to avoid rebirth altogether. She emphasizes the Hindu sense of time, the feeling that things that happened in the past are the source of things happening now, that the past comes to fruition in the present, and the value of oral traditions in preserving variant voices in society. She maintains the importance of the history of ideas and the stories that express those ideas: “For we are what we imagine, as much as what we do.” Tales of animals are especially vital in Hindu mythology, and she recounts many different stories in which animals such as horses, cows, tigers, monkeys, dogs and an occasional cat play key roles. Gods even become incarnate as animals and are associated with particular animals, such as Shiva with his bull, Nandi.

Another important focus of Doniger’s work is the representation of the female gender, whether in animals or women, goddesses or ogresses. From the ancient myth of the doomsday mare in the depths of the sea, , to the rise of popular worship of the dark goddess Kali, the female in Hindu mythology is dangerous and must be controlled and propitiated. Doniger argues that there is “an inverse correlation between the powers of goddesses or supernatural women in texts and natural women on the ground.” The female divinities of India can be divided into goddesses of the breast, peaceful wives and mothers, and goddesses of the tooth, unmarried, independent of male control, often killers. Doniger finds that the situation in India, in general, destroys “the pious hope of goddess feminists” that the worship of goddesses is a good thing for women. The powers attributed to goddesses have not encouraged men to grant to women, or women to seize from men, greater political and economic powers. Indeed, the shakti or creative power seen as inherent in women leads men to try harder to control women, to silence them, except for those rebel women who defy convention and allow themselves to be possessed by the spirit of the fierce goddesses.

Doniger devotes considerable attention to the development of the custom of suttee, or burning wives on the funeral pyres of their husbands, along with other abuses such as female infanticide and the dowry murders of daughters-in-law still occurring in modern India. She notes that some eyewitnesses give evidence of widows who seemed willing to go to the pyre and others of widows forced to sacrifice themselves, adding that the voice we most want to hear is missing: “the voice of the woman in the fire.” We can never hear the testimony of the women who wanted to die and did, whether for pragmatic or religious reasons. The ritual itself arises from the mythology linking women and fire in the cycle of marriage, death, and rebirth.

The final chapters of this impressive study analyze the political and religious activities of Mahatma Gandhi, the efforts to reform or repeal the caste system, the migration of Hindus and Hinduism to England and America, and the political and religious controversies in present-day India. The Hindu goddesses continue to evolve: in Kerala in 2008 the goddess Bhagavati paid a ceremonial visit to her “twin sister,” the Virgin Mary, at a near-by church. Meanwhile the women painters of Mithila, who traditionally made wall and floor paintings in their homes for marriages and other domestic rituals, have begun to make and sell similar paintings on paper to art collectors in India and around the world. In spite of conflicts, the rich diversity of the Hindu culture is moving forward to a promising future.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, June 23rd 2009

The Singing of Swans

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:06:00 +0000

By Mary Saracino

Pearlsong

Individualism. Capitalism. Survival. Of the fittest. These are values in our society that have evolved from the ideals taught in our mythologies. Historically, these mythologies have been male dominated and, in many cases, have been interpreted in ways designed to oppress certain groups - among them, women. Mary Saracino’s novel The Singing of Swans is a female-centered mythology focusing on the feminine divine, the Divine Mother.

The story revolves around Madalene Ross, a woman in contemporary society whose connections to those around her are tenuous at best. She lost her mother when she was a child, she has a poor relationship with her father and most of her friendships are work related. She discovers her spiritual connection to the past through dreams and an encounter with a homeless woman. Madalene is one in an ancient line of women: the Streghe, women with deep spiritual connections to the Divine Mother, who have been silenced by male dominated social structures, particularly the Catholic Church.

Saracino’s mythology gives a voice to women while also providing social commentary about oppressive forces throughout history. Woven through Madalene’s story are the stories of other Streghe: Ziza, Rosalina, Josephina, Ibla, and Magda, and their struggles to maintain their voice and their connections to the Divine Mother. Using the physical connection of blood ties – to our ancestors and Mother Earth – as well as spiritual ties, Saracino illustrates our sacred connection to the divine in nature and each other, woven as thread through a tapestry, to the past and the future.

While I occasionally enjoy a fun story in a nice, neat package, I truly appreciate those stories that leave me asking questions and searching within myself. How am I connected to all that has happened in the past and all that will happen in the future? We are not islands unto ourselves and Saracino shows our connections – how our pasts have shaped our world today and how we shape the future.

Written by: Jeanne Winslow, March 21st 2007