Knowing Where Our Genesis Lies.

"Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science." The Golden Bough, James Frazer-pages 853-854.

While paging through the text of The Golden Bough I came across the above passage near the end of the book. Reading it over once or twice, I came to realize that it summed up my reasons for taking this course quite nicely. As a 19 year old fresh out of high school, I come to college bearing the tasteless burden of my high school education. I'm not saying high school was a worthless endeavor, far from it, what I mean to say is that I came to reject those childhood myths (my "religion") in favor of  science. I read the old Greek myths in order to analyze their symbols and see those symbols in use today. I studied bacteria in order to see if they would accept a man-made plasmid so that they might glow if I shone a UV light on them. I studied the stars not for their stories, or their beauty, but rather for their structure, shape, and temperature. As James Frazer would say, I gave up my religion in favor of logic.

Science worked well for me in high school. And though I loved those old stories from the past, that's all they were to me, stories. Tales to tell my children someday and nothing more. But as an Anthropology major looking to cut into Archaeology, I can not look at myths as mere stories. To the cultures I wish to study someday, those myths were reality. So, I took this class. As Dr. Sexson told us last Thursday, I'm learning to "see the sacred".

I'm jumping down the rabbit hole and am now only beginning to see how far it goes...After rereading the first book of The Metamorphosis I am able to connect bits and pieces of myth to daily life. I step on a stone and start to wonder if I toss it over my shoulder, will it become a person? I stare at the trees and almost strike up a conversation with them, wanting to know which God/man/beast they begged release from. Our class is only just beginning to see and respect myth in daily life, and I am growing curious to know if Mircea Eliade's words prove correct. "The cosmogonic myth is "true" because the existence of the world is there to prove it; the myth of the origin of death is equally true because man's mortality proves it, and so on."-Eliade, page 6. If mere physical evidence proves a myth, then I shall continue to grow ever-more excited for this class and what it teaches, because it will work to bring me back to Genesis, to Chaos, The Big Bang.

So then, I've started my regression into myth with this; two names. Eris and Sinbad. These names have not popped up in the reading so far, but they've got stories behind them, they're myths in themselves. So every time I look at my two new dorm-fish, I'm reminded of the journey I'm taking with the rest of the class in Lit.
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