The End

Well, with one class left in the semester, I feel like I should at least get one more blog in before it's all over. This class has been a real eye opener for me and I view the world differently because of it. It's been cool getting all of this new knowledge and whatnot. But there is one point I wanted to make in this post.

Though we covered destruction myths (however briefly), I've noticed that there is rarely a mythological explanation for the end of something. Perhaps this is because most gods are immortal and they rarely have to worry about something coming to an end. Eh, maybe, maybe not. Who knows?

Well it's been a good semester guys. Thanks for all the insight!

A Little Jumble of Everything

So today I had multiple little ideas for a blog but not one that would be long enough to sustain a whole blog so I'll throw in a little taste of all three.

 First off- Left Handed-ness. According to Wikipedia, the Latin word for being left handed is "sinistra" which originally meant left but started to be connected to evil and bad luck. This ties in with our talk of the trickster well because the trickster is rarely ever seen in a positive light.

Next- Herms. Just to let you guys know, if you google "herm" be prepared for a lot of porn. A midst all the porn there were a few picture of herms though. And interestingly enough, Charity drew them very well! This is what a majority of most herms look like.

Finally- My theory as to why the weather has been so weird lately. I'm pretty sure the thermostat in the heavens is broken. That's why we'll have nice 50 degree days one week and then get a few inches of snow the next. Then we revert back and eventually we're all just slopping around in the mud and puddles. I'm not sure how long it will take to fix the thermostat but I hope they fix it soon. This teasing is getting old.

Crowds... not such a good thing

In class on Friday, we talked about the cult of Attis and their strange ritual festival. For those of you that weren't in class, here's a short recap.

1. They go out into the forest and find a tree and decorate it with small carvings of Attis.
2. They take the tree into the city and set it up for the festival.
3. They cut themselves and spatter the blood all over the tree as a sacrifice
4. The males in the group cut off their manhood and beat a statue of Cybele with it.
5. Finally, they run through the streets, throwing the severed manhoods in random doors.

Weird huh? The strange thing about this phenomenon is that effects like this are still present today. What effect? This effect can be called the crowd effect, mob effect, or herd behavior. Basically what happens is people get into a large group and jump around (usually to some sort of high energy music or beat) and psychologically lose themselves in the process. These people may come into a mental state in which they may do things they don't want to do.

A good example of this is Woodstock 1999. In my high school government class, we looked at a video of this (which I can't find). I believe when Korn was singing, this effect took place. Suddenly, everyone started jumping at the same time, in the same rhythm. This doesn't seem like a bad thing, does it? Well, as the effect wore on, many people were raped and some injured and killed. Kinda makes you rethink a mosh pit huh?

Why Babies Cry

Why do babies cry when they come out of the womb? Wouldn't it be nice if they just came out laughing and smiling and doing that cute little gurgling thing they do? But no, they come out looking like aliens and screaming at the top of their lungs.

I did some looking into this subject and a lot of people seem to think that they cry because they are scared, which could very well be true. I believe that babies actually cry because of the fact that the first inflation of the lungs is decently painful, at least that's what I learned in human development. Babies "practice" breathing in the womb but the lungs don't actually inflate until they are filled with oxygen. That's not a very interesting explanation though.
If we looked through the eyes of a baby, how would we see this?

• First off, the baby could be cold. In the womb a baby is almost always 98.6 degrees. How many hospitals are that warm? I can answer that question- not many, at least none that I've ever been in. 
• Secondly, the world is LOUD! If you've been living in a decently quiet place and suddenly you're pushed out into a world with beeping, crying, yelling, talking and bustling around you wouldn't be very happy either.
• The umbilical cord allows for constant nourishment to the baby and all of the sudden it has been sawed off. That's it. No more food. Suck.
• You've been floating around in random fluids for 9 months. Now you're being tossed around from doctor to nurse to other nurses to mom to dad etc etc. Not fun. Talk about motion sickness!

These are just a few things that popped into my head about how I would feel if I had just been born but I guess we'll never know since we can't be born again.

Foot Fetishes Explained

So in class we talked about how someone (I can't remember the name for the life of me) was pierced in the heels by his mom and this resulted in his inability to sexually desire anyone but his mother-- gross. Then we covered another one of Freud's many theories about why weird (and most of the time, disgusting) things happen in the mind.
The connection between the feet and desire reminded me of a book I read for my seminar class last semester called Phantoms of the Brain (really interesting book for anyone looking for a good psychological read!!!!). In Phantoms of the Brain, there is a section covering the "body map" that we all have in our brains.

On the left, you have the body map in it's entirety and on the right, you see the homunculus. I can't fully remember why certain parts of the homunculus are enlarged and others aren't but I think that the bigger the part, the more sensitive it is, but don't quote me on it. The purpose of this map is to show us the relationships between certain parts of the body. The closer the parts on the map, the more closely they're related using sensations such as scratching or tickling.

If you look closely at the body map, you'll notice that the toes are located directly adjacent to the genitals then the rest of the foot is located next to the toes. This explains our theory of the foot fetish! When your genitals experience some sort of sensation, your feet will react in some way as well. Also, this is the reason why foot massages feel so good. If you don't feel weird about yourself right now, I don't know what would make you feel weird!

Fallen Heroes

I think by now we've all had our fair share of hero myths and we know the basic plot inside and out. Through all these myths, I've seen a very obvious trend: the good guy wins.

In our world, we always hope for good things to happen and things to work out but the chances of the good guy winning EVERY time is pretty slim. So what happens when the good guy loses? When bad triumphs over evil? And most importantly, what happens to our fallen heroes? Thoughts?

Athletic Heroes?

So most of you don't know, but some do, that I am totally in love with football. I love the competition, the spirit, the athletic demand, and yes, the players. A classmate recently posted a blog addressing the issue of whether or not athletes should be viewed as heroes (thus giving me the idea to post THIS blog). Saying that athletes shouldn't be heroes seems irrational to me. If you look at our definitions of heroes you'll see that football players fit the bill almost perfectly. Let's go over the checklist shall we?

• Strong- Check. Anyone that says NFL players aren't strong could very well be blind. You can see their muscles even through all the gear they wear and they train 10 to 11 months out of the year. 

• Possessing superior qualities in any given field- Check. Players are the best in the world at what they do. They're fast, strong, strategic, agile, and many other things. Also, when we look at the college level, student athletes are required to uphold a certain grade point average and do a set amount of community service. I realize that not all players go to college before they hit the draft though. 

• Courageous- Check. I think this one is fairly self explanatory. If you willingly put yourself in the line of fire to be hit by another man that is approximately 300 pounds and over 6 feet tall, you're pretty dang brave in my book.
• Noble- Check... mostly. I know that there are exceptions to every rule but I think that for the most part, NFL players have fairly high morals. Though the public constantly focuses on Michael Vick's dog fights and DeSean Jackson's numerous incidents, along with OchoCinco's straight up dumbness, most of the guys are upstanding citizens.

• Fortitude- Check. By definition, fortitude is mental and emotional strength in facing adversity. If this doesn't scream quarterback to you, I don't know what would. When you snap the ball and eleven huge men are doing everything they can to make your face meet the ground, you have to be able to keep it together. You have to think "This is the play, my receivers should be here here and here, what do I do if they aren't etc etc" all in the 3 to 6 seconds that your line can keep you in the pocket. 

• Male- Check. Every definition of hero plainly states that the hero is the leading male. Yes I could look up heroin, yes that would say it would be the leading female, but we're not looking at the Journey Of The Heroin (if there is such a thing). All NFL players must be male so they fit the standard.

This is my take on why athletes can definitely be viewed as heroes in our society. Obviously not everyone is as into football as I am and some couldn't care less and that is perfectly ok. Whether or not you care about football at all, I think you can agree that players meet these standards even if it's not in the totally traditional way.

It's a... oh wait those are just birds....

Heroes. One word. That's it. Just a single word but all of the sudden, a million pictures and scenes pop into your head. For me, I see Spiderman, Superman, my own personal hero and numerous other individuals. By definition, a hero is a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. When we think of heroes, what do we think of? Great hair, bulging muscles, a pearly white smile, and some sort of spandex suit right? Basically, Superman!

See? So many muscles you can't even count them all. Along with physical appearance, we have high standards for the moral standards of heroes as well. Heroes HAVE to work for the greater good of society and that's it. That's what they do. They take care of us, watch over us, keep us safe, and make us feel better about our world. Then there's the extra stuff that they all have as extra baggage. Most heroes have a girl that can cause distractions and they all have a weakness. Whether it's kryptonite or the innocent girl that just can't seem to stay out of trouble.

With all of these stereotypes of people that don't actually exist, how do we distinguish our everyday heroes from the extraordinary? What is our own personal criteria? Do they have to sacrifice their lives for us? Sweep us off our feet? Save our lives? My hero is my cousin Kenna. She's never sacrificed her life for me, never saved my life, or swept me off my feet. What Kenna HAS done is shown me a new way to live my life and to just have faith. She's definitely stronger than anyone else I've ever met even though you wouldn't know it by seeing her muscleless 55 pound 8 year old body. Who is YOUR hero?

Birdwatching Could Be Worth Your While

Since today is Valentine's Day, I figured I would try to find some kind of myth revolving around Valentine's Day and finding love and what not. I turned to the oh so trusty google and found an interesting myth involving the sighting of birds. According to this myth, the first bird an unwed woman sees on Valentine's Day will tell her something about her future marriage or the man she will marry. Interesting stuff. Personally the first bird I saw this morning was a duck since I had class in Howard Hall and had to walk by the duck pond to get up to Wilson so my marriage will be homely and stable... I guess that's good, lol. What kind of birds did YOU see this morning?

Blackbird: he'll be involved in charitable or spiritual work – an aid worker of vicar

Dove: your marriage to him will be happy and loving

Robin: he earns his living through water – a naval officer or fisherman

Sparrow: he works with the land – a farmer or tree surgeon

Blue bird: he likes to make others smile – a comedian

Woodpecker: no marriage will take place

Duck: your relationship with him will be homely and stable

Gull: he travels a great deal for work

Birds of prey: he is a businessman, politician or leader

Goldfinch: he is a person of means

Kingfisher: he has already done well or inherited money

Pigeon: he will eventually return to the place where he grew up


Some theories behind this myth include the belief that birds used to choose their mates on Valentine's Day. It seems to me that for some unknown reason, humans think they need to be like the birds so they decided to look to the birds to help them choose. Also, farms were very popular on Valentine's Day. Why you ask? Well according to this myth, seeing a hen with a cockeral (which I believe is a rooster) meant that you would get married soon! I wonder how well that went over....

The Chicken or the Egg....

Talk about hieroglyphics today in class got me wondering about other kinds of mythological hieroglyphs. So I decided to look up the Green Man and homologies of homologies, the Green Man is a symbol for rebirth, renaissance, the cycle etc! It's amazing to me how allllll of these stories are so strangely connected! More specifically, Green Man represents spring and the rebirth of vegetation basically.

This is basically what Green Man normally looks like:

Pretty self explanatory. Older looking person, male, leaves/vines/vegetation etc. Fairly simple. BUT! Green Man can show up in many forms. Green Man can appear to be a male peeking through foliage, be made of foliage, or be sprouting foliage from facial orifices. Depictions can be strictly facial or full body. Green Man can also be a WOMAN but green women are very rare. There can be Green Men aside from humans as well. Cats, lions, and demons are also fairly common and on gravestones, skulls sprouting vegetation to symbolize rebirth is common.

Here's some other forms of Green Men/Women/Cats/Lions/etc:

After looking at these myths and hieroglyphs it begs the question, what came first? Did ancient cultures randomly draw and then make stories to match them? Were the stories first and the drawings were made to make a historical account of the stories? I think the latter is more likely but we'll never know for sure!

The Trials and Tribulations of Woman-ly-hood-ness...

Today in class we talked about the traits of women (after most of the class was excused) and it got me thinking about how much women have changed in the last hundred years. Women used to be a lot like this:

Thin, tall, properly proportioned, long slightly curled hair, serving tea, and, as always, wearing pink. This is what I think of when I think of a common housewife. It must have been nice- staying at home, cooking, cleaning, having/raising children. Even though it was probably nice to be able to stay at home, I realize that it was a lot of work and I definitely wouldn't want to do it. I could never imagine that being the extent of my working career but some people would like that.

  

But nowadays we have women that have a MUCH more prominent role in society. Almost all moms are working moms and kids go to daycare or stay with a relative while mom and dad are working. Not only are women working more, they have huge influences on society. Women such as Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are making waves in a man's political world. I think it's so great that women are making so many advances in today's world because I've never been a girly type of girl and that's good with me. 

Goddess Stereotypes

I think we can all agree that our society is chock full of stereotypes. Emos, preps/jocks, geeks, etc etc. But one stereotype I think we tend to look over is the stereotypes we've received from the goddesses. In class today we talked about the three kinds of goddess stereotypes- the virgin/maid, the mother/life giver, and the crone.

<-- I think this is basically what we all think of when we think of a little girl (at least along those lines). This little girl appears sweet, cute, loving, and, above all, innocent. So hence, she is our virgin. This is what most of the pictures looked like when I googled "little girls". In today's society, we characterize little girls like this. But to my surprise, you get a very different collection when you look up "teenage girls". If anyone wants to see what I'm talking about, just go to google and type in those searches and go to images. It's a shame that this is the way our society views that changes from childhood to the teenage years.

This is our stereotypical mom to the right --->
The only thing that would make this mom any more stereotypical would be cleaning supplies and a child with a soccer ball. Obviously not many moms are like this because it's not very practical in today's world. Few women can afford to stay at home and cook and clean and take care of children all day long. Plus cooking 3 four course meals a day would definitely take a toll on the house income! Though the details of this picture are impractical, the overall message still resonates true today: a mom's main goal is to care for and nourish their family. I think it's safe to say that this mom is doing her job.

This is a stereotypical Crone. Scary! I personally don't like thinking of myself turning into something like this later on in my life so I'll give a different option: grandma! 

Grandmas are awesome. We all know that. But what do we think of when we think grandma? I think of cookies, knitting, shopping, cooking holiday dinners, and a ton of hugs! I would definitely rather be this type of woman than a crone, that's for dang sure!

So this is my take on how the myths we're studying fit our stereotypes to a T. 

My Underworld Moment

So I wanted to start this blog by showing a little cartoon about what I think of when I hear "the end of the world". I'm sure we've all heard the famous story of Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burned and that is what I think of. Sometimes I think Nero was insane but perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Just like on the movie Titanic, Nero embraced his situation and they almost seemed like they went into a state of oblivion and just enjoyed themselves. Not so bad, huh?  

So now I'll try to come up with a time that I had an "Underworld Moment". I truly do believe that we all have our demons that we battle every day. Some demons might not be so hard to deal with but others are awful! I don't really know if I've ever had an underworld moment to tell the truth. It's kind of difficult to have demons when you're only 18 years old but there is one regret that I have that periodically comes back up in my everyday life.

When I was 10 my Grammy died. My mom thought I was too young to be in the hospital when Grammy was on life support so I actually didn't get to see her for about 3 weeks before she actually died. I often look back on that time and wish I had made the effort to ask my mom to take me to see Grammy. I remember the day my family came home, I was so excited. I thought my Grammy was coming home too. Unfortunately I had to have the nonbeliever episode before I would accept the truth and I'm sure that didn't help my family at all.

So now you're asking how this comes back up in my every day life. Well my younger cousin that I mentioned in a previous blog has been placed on life support more than once at the hospital she has been in for over a year now. I always feel like I should be in Ohio but it's hard to leave college and head to Ohio on the broke bank account of a student. If something happened to Kenna before I could get to her, I would have to add another demon to my list but we're all hoping and praying that she'll continue to fight.

No Longer A Need For The Opposite Sex

As I'm sure some of you have heard, we have now discovered that it is possible for babies to grow outside of the womb. What does this have to do with anything? Well, if a womb is not necessary to grow a baby, perhaps there is a possibility that men would be able to bear children even without the presence of a womb. Obviously it would not be possible to have a natural vaginal delivery, but a type of C section is a possibility.

This miracle baby is Billy Jones. When Jayne Jones became pregnant, she went in for a 27 week check up and discovered that her son wasn't growing in her womb. Billy was actually growing in Jayne's abdomen on her omentum, which is the fat layer that covers the bowels. Billy was delivered at 28 weeks weighing a little over 2 pounds but ALIVE! There have been other cases reported to have this same problem, including a set of triplets in which one child grew outside of the womb but I don't know if that child lived so I won't say much about it. But if this is possible, perhaps same sex couples could now have their own children. Fascinating stuff....


So what does Billy have to do with mythology? Well we've discussed child bearing in class and how people used to think that women just had babies. Poof! Pregnant. Baby. All on her own! Obviously now we know differently, but with this new discovery, perhaps women won't be valued as much anymore. Could you imagine how ecstatic Zues would have been if he found out he never needed women to reproduce?! That would have been phenomenal for him!

Along with babies growing outside of the womb, women can also go to a sperm bank and become pregnant through artificial insemination. I don't know for sure if we can synthetically create sperm but I'm sure one day we'll be able to do that too. It's amazing to me how we hardly need the opposite sex at all anymore for reproductive reasons.

Anti-depression Blog

So since today's class (1/31/2010) was so depressing with all the talk about how our world is sucking and getting worse and the talk of death and what not, I figured I would post a video that never fails to make me laugh. I know the song is cliche but the guys in it are soooo funny. So here it is:

Now that you've watched the random video, I'm gonna state my reasonings for why I think the world is actually getting better rather than getting worse for the fun of it. I think we can all agree that there are a lot of things that aren't necessarily desirable about our world but, as humans, it's natural for us to overlook the good things and accentuate negative things. Yes there are people starving in 3rd world countries, but we're making more efforts and more advances towards helping those people all the time.

One thing that is really near and dear to me that I personally think is a fantastic thing that we've never had before is all of out medical advances. My younger cousin has been in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital for almost 3 years now. She is one of 12 people in the world that has Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome and without all of the medical advances we have now, she wouldn't still be alive today. We may not have a cure for cancer yet but there are a million other advances we've made that are so incredible. So I think that's a pretty awesome reason to prove that times aren't quite as bad as people think.

"That Guy" Who Keeps Showing Up

Something that resonated with me in class today (1/28/2010) was the resemblance of Viracocha to our stereotypical view of what Jesus was like when he was on earth. Viracocha was described as "a man of medium height, white and dressed in a white robe like an alb secured round the waist, and that he carried a staff and a book in his hands." Now I don't know about everyone else, but to me this sounds extremely similar to what we think of as Jesus: A guy with shoulder length brown hair, white (even though he was actually from the mid east), often wearing a white robe with a rope for a belt, often times seen with a walking staff and the book was most likely symbolism for the bible.
So what causes these similarities? I searched through the wonders of Wikipedia to find the reason (or at least some supplemental information) for these happenings. Turns out wikipedia has more info on the moralistic qualities rather than physical so this post is going to take a bit of a left turn. So off we go!
According to wikipedia, a Christ Figure is a literary element that is common in many stories. Such a figure should display more than one (but not necessarily all) of the following qualities: performance of miracles, manifestation of divine qualities, healing others, display loving kindness and forgiveness, fight for justice, being guided by the spirit of the character's father, death and resurrection. Often times the Christ Figure is also a martyr. I think Viracocha kinda met some of these qualities but wikipedia had a loooong list of stories that follow this pattern including To Kill A Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, The Green Mile, and, my personal favorite, Harry Potter!
If you want to see a full list of these stories/movies, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_figure .

Gods Share Names With Massive Orbs?

One subject that really interested me today (1/24/11) was the Roman names of the gods. I'm sure everyone noticed that many of the gods shared the same name as a majority of the planets in our atmosphere. At first I thought the gods were named after the planets until I took a second to think about a logical timeline and realized that gods and myths were thought of long before the planets would have been named- logic can sometimes take time to arrive.
Anyways, I did some outside research on this and found some answers that may or may not have been part of these myths. On Answers.com I found an answer to the question "Why are the planets named after gods?" which stated that Romans noticed that the planets moved across the sky much faster than stars so the romans naturally believed that the planets were actually the gods moving around the sky going about their godly business. I don't know about the factuality of that statement but it kinda makes sense to me.
Then I found a site that explained WHY certain gods received their names. The examples include gods such as Venus, Mercury and Mars and all other planets ASIDE from Earth. Now you might be wondering "Why did they exclude Earth?", well that is because the ancient Romans didn't know that the planets they could see in the sky were the same thing as the mass they were living on. They most likely didn't realize Earth was a planet as well. The reasoning behind the god/planet connections made a lot of sense to me. Mars is the god of war and the red planet. War=blood. Blood=red. You get the picture. Venus is said to be the planet that shines the brightest so it is considered the most beautiful and Venus is the goddess of beauty and sex. Mercury is the planet that moves across the sky at the fastest rate so it seems natural that Mercury would be named after the messenger god.
If you want to check out the link to a site that has some additional explanations or whatever else, you can go here--> -http://www.syvum.com/cgi/online/serve.cgi/squizzes/astronomy/planets_gods.html
So that's what I learned from class today!

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants Wonder

In class today (January 19th), we talked about how different cultures explain our creation or why they explain it. I've thought about multiple versions of creation/evolution but never truly thought about how cultures reach a certain conclusion. I think it would be interesting to see what I could come up with if I had never been exposed to any theories, but unfortunately I have already been exposed so I doubt I could come up with an original explanation.

Though myths tend to fit into "how things are" today, I have absolutely no idea how they came up with them! How in the world did anyone ever decide that a massive vagina randomly showed up in the sky and "creepers" started crawling out?! Did someone actually see this mass vag? Did an ancestor turn senile and unknowingly made up the story? Or did someone simply have a sick mind? I don't know, probably never will. And that's ok.

So for the sake of argument I'll state the argument that I think ancient cultures made up some of these wild stories because people were asking and they had no answers. Though the stories make sense in comparison to nature and whatnot, I still think they pulled them out of their rear ends and periodically flew by the seat of their pants to come up with explanations.

Heroes, Anthropomorphizing, and Whatnot

Today (1/14/2010) we talked about anthropomorphizing in class which made me think about how my family is with dogs. I don't know if this is quite the same thing since I think dogs can have emotions, but I'm just gonna roll with it! My family is full of dog lovers which has resulted in me living with 14 dogs so far throughout my life. In my family we pretty much treat our dogs like they're additional children. They eat table food (along with dog food), they take baths, they sleep in our beds, they receive Christmas presents, etc etc. My mom believes that our dog Cooper knows when he gets sleepy and he crawls into bed and she thinks certain things hurt his feelings. I don't have any scientific proof that Cooper has emotions or an opinion on many things but I still think it's true.

Talking about heroes made me think about how if it weren't for Lewis and Clark, us "westerners" might not be where we are now. Lewis and Clark were heroes that often times are overlooked for whatever reason. I don't really know who my heroes are but I think someone I really admire is my younger cousin Kenna. Most of you probably don't know who she is but if you're interested, just look up Kenna Emmons. I guarantee you'll find some mind blowing stuff. She's a pretty great kid.

So yea... that's my take on class today....

First Post

Well, this is my first post in this blog for my Mythology class. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post one yet or not but I will, just in case.