The Love Goddess and the Shawshank Redemption
0 Comments | December 23, 2009 at 11:28 am by mahud
Filed under mythology, Goddess
The Shawshank Redemption (based on a story by Stephen King) has always been a favourite movie of mine. I’ve watched it multiple times, but it was only after watching it this past week that I recognized that the obvious theme of freedom and rebirth is explicitly linked with the Goddess.
For a synopsis of the movie check out Wikpedia.
First off, I noticed that Andy’s escape tunnel is juxtaposed with the warden’s safe. Both are hidden behind pictures. Andy’s tunnel is concealed by, at first, a poster of Rita Hayworth, then in the following two decades, by posters of Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch. The warden’s safe is hidden behind a tapestry (made by his wife in “Church Group”) depicting a quotation from the Bible, actually the Apocrypha: “His judgment cometh and that right soon” (Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 21:5). From here the symbolism of the tunnel and the safe is obvious. Both depict two representations of female sexuality. The warden’s safe represents the female, dominated by a ‘patriarchal’ reality and the tunnel is that of a ‘matriarchal’ reality, and unbridled female sexuality, disapproved of by the warden, yet, to his own downfall, overlooked, in his desire for power and control.
Andy tells Red that his wife complained that “he was a hard man to know. Like a closed book.” He adds that “she was beautiful” and he “loved her,” But he “didn’t know how to show it.” He believes that his coldness “drove her away” and that he was indirectly responsible for her death—leading to his false imprisonment for the murder of both his wife and her lover. It is while in prison, under the tyrannical reign of the warden, in a world of violence and abuse, that Andy is reconciled with the Love Goddess he spurned, and through her, he is finally set free. The tunnel is a passage of rebirth through the womb.
It is also noteworthy that Zihuatanejo, Andy’s paradisical destination across the border in Mexico is known as “the place where goddesses live.” According to Wikipedia; “There is a story that states that Zihuatanejo was a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Cihuatéotl, who was of Olmec origin. She was considered to be the mother of the human race and the goddess of women who died in childbirth, and warriors who died in battle.”
Unconscious Ritual
2 Comments | December 20, 2009 at 11:10 am by mahud
Filed under audio, Otherworlds, Music
During the Summer I spent much of my time experimenting with an open source sound editor called Audacity. It’s as basic as it gets, but using my webcam microphone I was able to make various home recordings and manipulate them into unusual and often ‘dark’ ambient soundscapes. I was partly motivated by a desire to create my own meditative soundtracks, rather than rely on the works of other exceptionally brilliant ambient artists such as Steve Hillage, Michael Stearns, Wendy Carlos, Staruha Mha, among many others.
Click image to download music
All of my experiments can be listened to and downloaded at Last.fm, and exclusively for this blog I’ve put together four tracks under the title Unconscious Ritual for anyone interested in downloading and sampling for yourselves.
Unconscious Ritual Tracklist
- Hringhorni: (3:02)
- an inauguration of a tenth level weaver into the Butu society: (10:35)
- Lykaia: (6:00)
- Callanish: (10:46)
(thresh*ld) creates ambient soundscapes that are dark, primal and ritualistic in nature, often containing industrial elements. Tracks are sometimes short snapshots of occult realities or extended shamanistic/meditational pieces.
Anxiety is not the same as an Anxiety Disorder
3 Comments | December 19, 2009 at 7:29 am by mahud
Filed under Social Anxiety, Blogging, Uncategorized
I discovered this movie about the lives of those who have Social Anxiety Disorder.
Video about Social Phobia
Mark ?? | MySpace Video
Below is a video I made recently talking about my current anxiety disorder issues. Things for me have grown worse over the past year. Probably the worst year of my life actually. My lack of writing for this blog as much to do it. My spiritual practice is close to non existent. My hope is that I can begin to really force some stuff into action. And try to start coping again.
Blessings
At the age of 15-16 I began to develop a serious anxiety disorder, that prevented me from hardly ever leaving my bedroom, unless I was compelled to by my friends. Eventually my anxiety became so bad (plus the drug taking didn’t help either), over the next few years of my life I basically lost any meaningful friendships I had, because I was totally unable to connect with anyone anymore. And I’m still pretty much the same way now.
I began to create a fictional universe when I was nineteen, that was set in both the present and the ancient past. It involved a bunch of musicians living in a castle, who attempt to contact extra-terrestrial life using shamanic techniques, and inadvertently invoke a malevolent forest spirit. The spirit, through possession, kills all but one of the musicians, and he becomes trapped alone within the castle walls. He grows old and loses his memory, awaiting for his release.
It seems to me now, that I was creating a myth of my own reality. I was the musician trapped within the castle, that lost all his friends due to a destructive power, that is, my social anxiety. The loss of memory reflects my own loss of self-identity, as I could and can no longer remember who I was, before my life was shot to bits, back when I was around eleven or twelve.
I also find it interesting that my myth, in a number of respects also mirrors the myth of the Rich-Fisher-Grail King, who was also trapped in an enchanted castle, after receiving a physical wound (that in my case is psychological), and could only be released when someone asked him the all-important question, restoring not only the king’s perpetual wound, but also bring life to the king’s realm that had become a wasteland
My Wasteland of a Reality:The Inward Mythology.
Fool's Journey
My Lunar Wanderings (via delicious)
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