September 19th: Spiders, snakes, oatmeal, &c.

"As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods..."
- from King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare


FRONT MATTER:

- Tell your creation story to someone else or to many other people while enacting or recreating some part of it, and post photographic proof of the act.

-  Pay very close attention to a single page in 'Cadmus and Harmony'. Write out a blog post on your explorations of it.

- Be thinking about your own stories of how the gods have mistreated you.




IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

Hubris: Great pride, arrogance; as the say down South, 'You're gettin' above your raisins.'

The Story of Asclepius.  
Read more about the story of the healer born out of the burning body of Coronis here.  

'The Quaker Oats Box Infinity Complex'

'Europa' (1560-62) by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio)

(Also known as the 'Land O' Lakes Butter Box Complex')
("Myths within myths. Inside the page is another page. Inside the myth is another myth.")

- The Story of Arachne.
Read more about her elaborate derision of the gods, and her ensuing punishment, here.  

The three stages of our relationships with the gods—
- Conviviality
(Friendliness/an intermingling)
- Rape
(A series of sudden, violent invasions)
-Indifference
("Perhaps even worse than death.")

Caduceus - The staff of Asclepius, around which the two snakes (one the healer, one newly risen from the dead) entwined. Now a universal symbol of healing.

Enthusiasm - En (or 'inside') + Theos ('the gods')
'The god is inside you.'

Maenads - 'the raving ones', The female followers of Dionysus.

Sparagmos - To rip, to tear apart and destroy without control. Linked to the passions of Dionysis.


ET CETERA:

"Choas is merely a kind of order we have not discovered yet."

"Anything worth reading is worth reading a second time. Anything not worth reading discloses all its information on the first pass."

'Las Hilanderas' (1657) by Diego Velázquez.

"The search (for order) is not something we do merely once. We spend our whole lives searching for it."

"It's a terrible thing, what happened to Arachne, but without the things that happened to her there would be no story. It's true, but my god what a terrible thing to say."

"You know what's going to happen next. Anytime you boast to do anything better than the gods—watch out. You're about to become a story."