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Journeying to Otherworlds: Access Denied (Mythology Synchroblog 4)

This post is one of many in the fourth Mythology Synchroblog (View the list of other bloggers below)

Journeying to Otherworlds: Access Denied

Our transition from child to adulthood to old age to death is often marked by some kind of rite of passage within various systems of belief. Each transition, in reality, is a gradual one: The rites are merely markers that provide orientation with the world, however big or small, around us. Each new undertaking along the path of life can be understood as a journey to a hitherto unknown reality; an ‘Otherworld.’

Dante once said:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
For I had wandered off from the straight path.

Dante: Divine Comedy: Inferno: Canto I 1-3

The Path of life can be a crooked one for those who, either by choice or circumstance, lack cosmic orientation: Forever blown off course, like Odysseus, unable to reach our true home, or rather our true selves. If we are unable to find peace and overcome the chaos within, we shall also absorb that chaos in the world, that is, into our own lives.

Along the way we can meet any number of ‘mythological’ beings that seek to harm us, such as the unscrupulous Procrustes, who would promise to give rest to weary travellers upon an iron bed and amputate their protruding limbs, or (to give another example from the Odyssey) we may become enslaved by the power of the lotus of forgetfulness, living in a state of ignorance of who were truly are. We will also be faced with unsolvable problems, like Herakles who was unable to slay the many-headed Hydra. We also, alone upon the dark crooked path of our lives will also face many seemingly unsolvable problems, but along the way we will also meet holy ones, in the guise of family members and friends or benevolent powers, who will aid us and help us overcome our manifold difficulties. Medea helped Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, while Ariadne provided Theseus with a torch and thread to help him successfully navigate the labyrinth. We may choose to take the crooked path alone, but we need others to help guide us on our journey if we are to return safely to the home of our hearts.

We no longer have definitive answers to life’s big questions, and we need a mythology that accepts that. For many of us who grew up without any rigid religious structure that is designed to guide us safely through life’s dilemmas, we have been thrown in at the deep end, without being taught how to swim. And this is why so many people are so screwed up. They haven’t been properly integrated into the limitless possibilities of modern society. Instead, life is not limitless, just meaningless.

Between Old and New Moons: A New Mythology

Civilized existence, without a religious structure, is itself a sacred reality, although we may never be aware of it. According to Mircea Eliade, Those of us who choose to live secular lives, even without adhering to a life of spirituality, cannot fully escape religion, for it transcends human existence. The first humans who connected with the sacred, didn’t invent it, rather, they consciously experienced the numinous for the first time, later expressing this new found reality of the unseen through symbols, such as images of deity and myth, and through these the Otherworld was accessed. It is something that permeates nature in its manifold forms and transcends it. For Eliade, we are by very nature, homo religiosus, because the divine exists, and despite what the ancient Greeks may of thought, the sacred doesn’t depend upon us (if anything it is the reverse). But without sacred knowledge, without true friends, and a denial of the force/s (divine being/s) that guide us through life, our dilemmas will undoubtedly manifest themselves into creatures of cosmic chaos, and in our inability to recognise them, we enter the realm of cosmic taboo and the creatures of chaos make new homes for themselves within us.

One Hero, namely Gilgamesh, from the oldest known mythological epic The Epic of Gilgamesh, was also, I would say, a man beguiled by creatures of chaos. Through his rejection of the forces that guide us, Gilgamesh lost his ontological orientation after the death of his closest friend (whose friendship had a partial transforming effect on the hero-king, who previously had a tenancy to be uncivilised within the civilized world), Enkidu. Before his encounter (wrestling match) with Enkidu (who could be understood as his shadow-self), lost contact (through dream) with the gods, and in his fear of his own mortality and his place within society, rejected culture and journeyed beyond the city walls (symbolic of the creative orderly principle) and roamed the wild (symbolic of the destructive chaotic principle) in the vain attempt to attain immortality. Unlike Enkidu, who was once in harmony with nature (and therefore, very much still within the realm of creative order), Gilgamesh makes the transition from culture to nature lacking the necessary skills to guide him. Conflicts within manifest themselves as dangers in the journey ahead. And his journey to the end of the world is one of ignorance, pain, and endless toil. From Mount. Mashu onwards, it can be said that Gilgamesh transcended the ‘mundane’ world and entered the fairytale realm of the unseen, where he encounters, among others, the alewife Siduri. Looking upon his wretched appearance and perceiving the turmoil of his heart, she offers Gilgamesh council, in an attempt to dissuade Gilgamesh from his futile attempt to attain immortality:

The life you pursue you shall not find.
When the Gods created mankind,
Death for mankind they set aside,
As for you Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,
Make merry day and night.
Day and night dance and play!
Of each day make great rejoicing.
Let your garments be sparkling fresh,
Your head be washed; bathe in water.
Pay heed to a little one that holds on to your hand.
Let a spouse delight in your bosom,
for this is the task of [woman]

Batto, Bernard Frank, 1992, ‘Slaying the Dragon’, p.22 (Westminster John Knox Press)

Now, as in the case of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, where The words of the Teacher fatalistically expound that, “Everything is meaningless”, perhaps we have a similar fatalistic outlook on reality here. On the other hand, possibly the words of Siduri are words of supreme wisdom. Would these worldly pleasures be the much needed medicine to exorcise the creatures of chaos from Gilgamesh’s wounded heart? Perhaps. But, for the moment at least, it is imperative that the Otherworld journey continues.

Eventually Gilgamesh does reach the Island of immortality that is populated by the Mesopotamian Noah Utnapishtim and his wife, who finally reveal, just as Gilgamesh was forewarned, that the boon of immortality is wholly unattainable. However Utnapishtim’s wife prompts her husband to reveal the existence of a plant of longevity that grew at the bottom of the ocean in Apsu’s realm. Gilgamesh manages to obtain the plant, but even the hope of mortal rejuvenation is denied to him, after a snake eats from the plant and sheds its skin, obtaining the power of rebirth for itself. And so Gilgamesh returns to his city of Uruk empty-handed, to finally find peace and contentment in his role as divine king and his cultural accomplishments, which you could say was his me, or in Hindu terms, his dharma. And yet abiding by one’s socially (often rendered in unchangeable cosmic terms) ordained duty, does not always help us succeed in our Otherworld journey, but I’ll save that for another post or something.

If we are unable to find peace and overcome the chaos within, we shall also absorb that chaos in the world, that is, into our own minds.

Above

This post was written by someone who suffers chronically with Social Anxiety Disorder. That which, for the greater part at least, comes naturally and effortless, for me requires tremendous effort. The words (below) of Siduri to Gilgamesh, could we apply to me.

why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate!
Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard!
Why is there such sadness deep within you!
Why do you look like one who has been travelling a long distance
so that ice and heat have seared your face!
… you roam the wilderness!”

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Tablet X

Siduri’s endorsement to enjoy life to its full is not an option for me or others who suffer from this debilitating condition, with its manifold creatures of chaos that dwell within. There are so many Otherworlds out there denied to us, both in the ‘mundane’ and spiritual realms (which I’m inclined to believe are two manifestations of the same reality) Especially the Otherworlds that exist inside all living beings. Still, I’m not without hope. For the past couple of months I’ve been receiving therapy and coincidently the techniques used in overcoming this psychological disorder correspond with my own Pagan practices, such as meditation, developing mindfulness, self awareness, and like most spiritual disciplines, the need to exert effort to attain effortlessness and peace, wholeness and balance.

Who’s Participating (so far…)

1. Faith and the Hero’s Journey (Hawk’s Cry: The voice of a witch)
2. Journeying to Otherworlds: Access Denied (Between Old and New Moons)
3. Lions at the Door (Quaker Pagan Reflections)
4. More Than These Words (Aquila ka Hecate)
5. Journeying to Otherworlds (The Dance of the Elements)
6. Mythology Synchroblog 4: Children’s Story for Mabo (Pagan Dad)
7. Underground Ruminations (Gorgon Resurfaces)
8. Synchroblog: Journeys to the Otherworld (Bubo’s Blog)
9. Otherworlds Synchroblog: Olympus (Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess)
10. Symbolic Saiho-ji and Otherworld Journeying (Symbolic Meanings)
11. Becoming pagan in America - an otherworld journey (Executive Pagan)
12. Welcome to the Otherworlds Next Door (Many Questions)
13. The Wheel’s Hub: the Axis Mundi in Tolkien’s Middle Earth (Druid Journal) New!

If I’ve missed your post let me know. I’ll add more as I find them

Previous Mythology Synchrobloggers

• Dream Builders
• Quaker Pagan Reflections
• Executive Pagan
• Mythphile
• Aquila ka Hecate
• Symbolic Meanings
• ReligionThink
• Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism
• When Isis Rises
• Pitch313
• FULL CIRCLE CENTRAL
• Druid’s Apprentice
• Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess
• the dance of the elements
• Manzanita, Redwoods and Laurel
• Druid Journal
• Goddess in a Teapot
• Politics and Polytheism

Some Previous Mythology Synchroblogging

…it seems natural to assume that the recognition of the earth as Mother preceded that of the Father as Sky. While the symbolic relationship between Mother and Earth is obvious (in the seasonal cycle of birth and growth), the symbolic relationship between Fatherhood and Sky doesn’t appear to be based on phenomenal reality, and may well be merely an subsequent and inevitable extension of the image of the earth as Mother, in a cosmogonic hieros gamos.

Vertical Dualism of Mother Earth and Father Sky (Theme: Dualism)

It is said that when the Primal Pair had finished animating all things, they pulled a feather from a bald eagle, and blowing upon it, set it in motion. Everything in creation, like the eagle feather, is in constant motion, and depends upon Holy Air for its existence. Without Air nothing would be possible. As language animates the landscape through speech, so also speech is animated through the invisible and all surrounding power of Air.

Chanting the Landscape (Theme: Landscapes)

The Greeks identified Cybele with Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Gods. Cybele was known as the mother of both the Gods Meter theon and Men. Among many other epithets she was also known as ‘Mountain Mother’ Meter oreie and ‘Idaean Mother,’ pointing back to her origins in Asia Minor. In the Homeric Hymn (14) To the Mother of the Gods, it is said that she enjoys hearing the sound of rattles and tympanums and the mountains and forest valleys echo with the roaring of lions and the crying of wolves.

The Great Mother from Asia Minor to Rome (Theme: Motherhood)

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