False: deliberately made or meant to deceive.

I decided to analyze page 145 of Calasso's work, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I dove right into the page, quickly startled by the relationship between Apollo and Dionysus. See, Apollo and Dionysus are half-brothers, as Apollo is the product of Zeus and Leto, and Dionysus is the product of Zeus and Semele. However, Calasso describes their relationship as false, because behind their clashes and overlapping, they have a divine connection through their obsession with possession. Possession is defined as the condition of having or owning something. The page says that Zeus was well-versed in possession and that "he need only listen to the rustling oaks of Dodona to generate it". I looked up Dodona, and it is the oldest hellenic oracle- priests and priestesses would go to the grove and listen to the leaves of the oak tree and interpret the correct actions to be taken. So Zeus would listen to the leaves of a tree and be inspired on who/what to possess? That seems a little strange. 

Dionysus was regarded possession as an "immediate, unassailable reality". Dionysus was the god of intoxication, and had followers that performed rituals of intoxication with drinking and drugs and dancing and incantations, often finding themselves possessed by Dionysus' power and attraction. However, to Dionysus, possession was about more than dancing and drinking and intoxication- possession is about beings acknowledging and bending to his power. When someone refused to acknowledge his possession, that's when he would lose his temped and unleash the possession like a monster. "...the Proetides, the weaver sisters who were reluctant to follow the call of the god, dash off and race furiosly..." These women, the Proetides, were said to have been sentenced to lives of going mad because they refused to accept the call and demands of Dionysus. That was Dionysus' punishment to those that refused to accept his possession- he punished them to an eternity of going mad and killing and racing furiously about the earth, lacking possession by or of anything. 

Apollo regarded possession as a conquest. And Apollo defended his possession with an unwavering hand, giving up his possessions to no one and no thing. "But the possession that attracted Apollo was very different than the possession that had always been the territory of Dionysus. Apollo wants his possession to be articulated by meter; he wants to stamp the seal of form on the flow of enthusiasm, at the very moment it occurs. Apollo is responsible for imposing logic too; a restraining meter in the flux of thought." Apollo demonstrates logic perfectly when faced with Hermes and his intelligence; Apollo made a line to divide what Hermes could possess and what he himself could possess. While giving Hermes Thriai. (Thriai were three nymph goddesses inclined in the art of divination by pebbles and birds of omens), Apollo kept the invincible oracle of the word for himself. 

"Love loves to love love"

Redundancy and repetition, eternal punishment, all beautiful ways that the greeks learned to perfect punishment. Punishment and retribution were arts to the greeks, and they turned the most miserable of tasks into the most beautiful rituals and incantations.
Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra, is the celebrity in the middle of the punishment of redundancy. Punished for chronic decietfulness. Tricking Hades and chaining him up, the Gods threatened his life until Sisyphus finally let Hades go. Before Sisyphus died, he told his wife to throw his body into the river, and he ended up on the shore of the Styx river. Sisyphus complained to Persephone that his wife had disrespected him, and tricked Persephone into letting him back into the upper world to scold his wife. He returned the upper world and refused to go back to the under world, finally being dragged forcibly by Hades. Once back in the underworld, the Gods were pretty sick of his tricks and deceit, and doomed him to an eternity of rolling a large stone up a steep hill, and once he got to the top, the stone would fall back to the bottom, forcing Sisyphus to roll the stone back up the hill once more. His eternity was marked by useless efforts and and relentless frustration.
Tantalus, another greek character known for his eternal punishment of frustration, had a slightly different story. Initially invited to sit at Zeus' table in Olympus, he stole ambrosia and nectar and revealed the secrets of the Gods to his people. Tantalus also sacrificed his son, Pelops, and cut him up and boiled him into a soup for the Gods. The Gods, being alerted and repulsed by the contents of the meal, refused to eat, excluding Demeter who accidentally ate Pelops' shoulder. Pelops was eventually revived and rebuilt to be one of the most handsome members of Olympus, but eventually got thrown out because of Zeus' anger at Tantalus. Tantalus's punishment was an eternity with temptation but no satisfaction- he stood in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree. Every time he leaned down to get water, the water receded, and every time he reached up for fruit, the tree pulled back so he couldn't reach. An eternity of hunger and temptation, Tantalus spent his time in the underworld paying for his trickery.

The Hopi People- Four Creations

The only thing that existed at the beginning was the Creator, Taiowa. Taiowa created his agent to establish nine universes, Sotuknang.
Sotuknang had the task of creating four things

1. He gathered matter and made nine universes
2. He gathered water from the endless space and placed them on the worlds to make land and sea
3. He gathered air to make winds and breezes on these worlds
4. He created life

The first person he created was Spider Woman. Spider Woman had the power to create life- she created Poqanghoya to go across the earth and solidify it, and Palongawhoya to resonate throughout the earth so that the earth vibrated with the energy of Taiowa. 

Spider Woman created all of the plants, flowers, trees, and animals. She made four men and four women, and the only instruction she gave them was the respect their creator and live in harmony.

The people spread across the earth and multiplied, and lived in harmony with the animals for a while, until they started to acknowledge the differences instead of the similarities. There was a division, and Sotuknang appeared before the people who still remembered their creator and went down and found refuge with the ants. Sotuknang destroyed the rest of the world. 

The people living with the ants received food from them, and even though they tried to stop the ants from giving them food, the ants continued to give them food, so the ants kept tightening their belts, and that's why ants have such small waists today.

This happened with two more worlds, and Spider Woman gathered the remaining people and took them on a boat, where they sailed island to island until they finally came ashore, where Sotunkang was waiting for them. 

This was the fourth world, and warned them that it was not as beautiful- there was hot and cold, mountains and valleys. He sent the different people on their way to find homes. The Hopi trekked across the entire world and settled between the Colorado River and the Rio Grande River, picking this place to constantly remind them of their dependence and link to their creator.

Hugging Trees

Tree huggers always get bad reps. Tree hugger is (usually derogatory) slang for an environmentalist that is a little too intense for society's taste. But hugging trees is about more than being in love with the environment. Hugging trees is about connecting. Connecting yourself to every tree that has been or ever will be. Connecting yourself to the axis mundi, the navel of the world. Connecting yourself to both the upper and the lower levels of the world. Being in both heaven and earth at the same time.
If you look at the picture of me hugging the tree, you can see tiny snippets of my connecting to the upper level (heaven) and the lower level (earth). You can't see the top of the tree, probably because it's in union with the heavenly universe, and you cannot see the bottom of the tree, probably because it's roots are slowly finding things to wrap themselves around in the earth. In that moment, and in a lot of moments so I'm learning, I was connected to existence in a totally new way.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 
-Langston Hughes

Dreams are uncontrollable. Dreams, as Carl Jung might say, are a product of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the realm of our psyche that collects our memories and dreams- everyone's memories and dreams. We all have access to every memory and dream of every person that has been existence. But what are dreams? What is the unconscious? How are these dreams created and then collected? Every dream, every action, is precedented by myth, so does that mean that our collective unconscious as a human race is made up of mythologies?