Greetings.
    If you are well, it is well.
    There was a very interesting presentation of and discussion of the 
Metamyth last night at the Cafe Wim during yet another stimulating
Spiritual Traditions gathering.
    Again, these notes as always can only hint at what was going on. I
sat very quiet scribbling away, but that doesn't mean what comes below
are perfect minutes. I hope, though you enjoy these notes and catch a
flavour os what transpired.
    As the next of these gatherings on Tuesday February 24th is on my
birthday, I will most likely be spending that time with my family. I 
very much hope that someone attending will take notes and allow me to 
catch a glimpse of "Applied Spirituality". That's the topic.
    May this find you all very well, and may the future be ever more
beneficial and pleasant than what came before.
                                                       All the Best,
                                                          Michael

                              The Metamyth
    The Metamyth is the concept that despite apparent differences of
cultural mythologies there is a unifying archetype, a web of thought, 
behind all mythologies and all are varying flavours of that general
one.
    There really is no Celtic or Greek mythology. These are just 
general expressions of the common one. 
    The books used include Joseph Campbell and a few others.
    The origin of the Metamyth is the question where did we start,
where did we come from, the creation myth. Only after that do we ask  
if the gods created the place, then where did they come from.
    All the answers seem tied to a water myth. There was water before 
there was land. From the Bible right down to the natives of Southeast  
Asia and North America land comes from the sea, the primordial chaos.
    The Vikings had the sons of Odin killing a giant, then the giant
they had killed becomes driftwood from which was came man and woman.
    The idea that somewhere in recent history something happened to
cause a split between the social and the mystical aspects of mythology.
Myth becomes asserted to be dogma and fact. So, there is a god with a
white beard sitting in heaven.
    I think this goes back to the leader of the tribe being asked,
"Benjamin, what does god look like?" He has to make up an answer using
popular characters. There are lots of stories in the Old Testament that
began with someone asking a question.
    He is made in our image.
    It's not through Jehoval, but through Christ.
    Christ started looking like Christ only in the Fourteenth Century.
    Since the shroud was displayed in 1412 all Jesi have looked the
same.
    After this split Muslims are willing to die and kill to prove the
Middle East is the Centre of the Universe, and Christians are willing 
to die and kill to prove there actually is some cloudy place.
    Let's pull back from fact to myth and take the next step from myth
to archetypal thought.
    Are they metaphors for structures of the unconscious?    
    Some myths are parables, morality plays, whatever.
    Some are interpretations of history.
    Some are analeptic thought, memories from before you were born.
    Is this racial memory?
    Or genetic memory.
    Genetic memory is the code in your genes, racial memory is the
collective unconscious.
    If your genes give you physical traits of your ancestors who's to
say there's not some patterned reactions from before.
    Also, the baby in the womb is not dead, but alive and listening.
    That's environmental.
    The same sort of thing that lets you know that charging wolves are
dangerous also lets you know your place in life, the universe and
everything.
    The creation myth of the scientific religion is that for let there
be light there was the Big Bang. From all these particles a planet was
created and from the dust of the planet people.
    Still the start of the universe is not separate. Physical meaning 
and the unconscious flow together.
    How could people five thousand years ago know about light.
    There are a lot of parallels etc and the primitive creation myths.
    That's pretty advanced thinking for a bunch of spear chuckers 
making up answers.
    How it really happened is that god created only the sun and the 
earth, and then one day he said, "Shit, they've got telescopes," and 
had to hastily create the rest.
    The Romans talked about stars.
    Those were just the pinholes to the back stage machinery.
    Water, chaos and quantum sludge are all the same, the beginnings 
of the Metamyth.
    The hero's journey. Take myths, fantasy novels etc. they all follow
the same basic twelve steps. 
    Is it just a decent way to get your point across, like all rituals
being the same?
    Is it just a pattern that works or does the pattern mean something?
    Both are true.
    You can't make a cake without flour.
    So ritual structures are the same, as base  require a
certain thing.
    It does work and mean something which is why we do the same again
and again.
    Do we actually follow the steps or do we worship heroes?
    There are heroes and hero worshippers.
    Even the Grail Quest follows the hero's journey.
    Circle and spiral.
    The hero's journey is a spiral.
    Going back, everyone carries a speck of dust of the big bang in 
menory like the concept that we all have a divine spark from the body
of god.
    But in Christianity the divinity is somewhere else, not here.
    You can see the Metamyth in sports. Canadians have hockey. The
Americans have baseball. In England there's cricket. In Italy they
have soccer. 
    Is hockey something special, something we must have.
    There aren't different cultures doing different sports. Humanity is
doing a metasport, teams acting out pseudo-aggression. The same traits 
are acted out through different cultural flavours.
    It is the same with mythologies, Greek, Russian or native american.
These human beings are expressing the same thing.
    It is more bland if we take the flavour out, but we can see the 
myth beneath it.
    We're not so different after all.
    Does this mean that there's no racial memory, as it's all one?
    Heroes in modern society are very grounded, one dimensional,
hockey players or movie stars or inventors of atom bombs. They may not
have any spiritual aspect.
    The Olympics are humans trying to recreate the feats of the gods.
    The myth is continuing.
    We follow physical heroes pursuing physical grails.
    Until 20 years ago Sumo wrestling was very spiritual.
    You'll be exposed to some divine aspect.
    If you're in the presense of one who's attained a higher level of 
energy, you'll get something from it.
    If we're not getting it are we bad receptors or are they not as 
spiritual?
    Like we cut off the top plane. instead of spiritual enlightenment
we get an adrenaline rush.
    In modern society religion takes mythology as fact.
    The great heroes are after bucks and the audience is after an 
adrenaline rush.
    How do we step back into the mystical, spiritual, divine side of
myth?
    It can't be done for everyone.
    < > meant to have control and destroy itself.
    Religion is meant to turn against itself.
    They contain the seed of their own destruction.
    They evolve or they die out.
    A lot evolve into nothingness.
    Myths coloured the different generations, the psychological 
interpretations. Who knows whether the value of Roman or Greek
interpretations work today.
    It's gone from people moulding the church to the church moulding
itself.
    Like the Catholics thinking of promoting Mary to a goddess.
    Nothing has changed. 
    It's a last desparate gasp.
    It's important to bring the myth through different places. If you
act it, act part of it, part's sublimated.
    The hero's journey.
    Paganism, Wicca returns. The metamyth still stands.  
    Neopaganism has still a fairly spiritual centre to it.
    It is still a small part of society
    Paganism is just a sign.
    The depressing sign is that so many are turning to fundamentalism.
    The spiritual core of humanity has always been small.
    Is it our duty, job, decree, etc. to be anchors.
    To walk our talk.
    To sit on the spiritual side and as we grow others will.
    Myths always die.
    Christianity started with one guy and grew.
    There's too much emphasis to converting people on the physical plane.
    Some of the flaws, the dangers of being the anchor are as soon as...
    You're duty is to keep on trying while still alive.
    Not that we run around saving people.
    Ours is taking the first step on the hero's journey.
    Any spiritual success will shine back
    There are two alternatives, opening spiritual ideas to the public 
such as Teillard de Chardin and Jesus did and purposely being secret or 
having no interest in being public.
    As long as you're alive you're part of the human collective and
your spirituality has an influence.
    I think those agents of change should be hidden.
    Once it is common knowledge.It is like Golden Dawn work, if it 
becomes common knowledge it loses its potency.
    Is the hero's journey to be open or private?
    If it is open then it's a social hero rather than a spiritual one. 
    Or a false hero.
    You gain a false sense of pride and grandeur.
    You do it not for success, but for the quest itself.
    It begins with the call. It starts in a local setting, a village.
There is the dream, vision, visitation, the call to the quest.
    Most of us feel that call.
    You begin an unusual journey. Physical travel is not necessarily 
involved. You travel to the underworld. There's a subtle contact with 
the mysterious, a dark figure, a tense unhostile way, you meet the
lesser minions of the dark figure, an amount of danger, physical, 
mental, emotional. The journey continues to the place of this figure.
There is conflict. Good triumphs over evil, defeats the dark figure,
you return to where you started, irrevocably changed. You're a great 
warrior or a wizard, you've acquired some title, some skill. 
    It is a circular journey, but it is also a spiral. You return to 
the same spot but at a higher level.
    The underworld is the unconscious. Most of us are afraid of the
the psychological view of the dark figure, our shadow.
    The defeat of the villain is not so much a defeat as a 
reintegration.
    This is not a separate figure but the self.
    When you come back you are not as you are not as you left.
    There is an Oriental thought that at the beginning there are 
mountains. In the middle there are no mountains. At the end there are
mountains.
    This can be seen over and over again. The example of Pwyl in Welsh
mythology, who shot a deer, and is challenged by this mysterious figure
whom he defeats and he returns as the lord of Anwuin.
    Also on the social side Guy lafleur starting off in a village in
Quebec as a boy and he hears the call from some friends to play hockey.
    What is this telling us? 
    Why not get a shovel and dig straight down?  
    Then you won't return to a higher plane. It's the journey that has
us return enhanced.
    The next topic is going to be applied spirituality.
    This is not how to use telekinesis to build your dog house.
    Looking at the Metamyth spiritually, how can we bring the hero's
journey into our lives? Can we stop being hero worshippers and become
heroes?
    The degree to which you follow the hero's quest is not even your 
choice.
    You have to have heard the call and want to do it.
    Do you need an audience?
    No.
    It is the courage to hear and follow the call.
    My quest is to seek Cernunos within the self and integrate the
goddess and god with the self or in Hermetic terms to wander through
the astral etc till I encounter the Holy Gaurdian Angel.
    A lot of semantics.
    They're parallel. You go through different levels to achieve.
    All paths do that.
    There are little battles until the one big grand battle.
    It's not even up to you.
    Synchronicity.  
    Scary as hell, but there are rewards.
    Cyclical.    
    Every lifetime is a hero's quest.
    You choose to incarnate.
    Most of us forget we have chosen.
    So we need to stop and remind ourselves we have done so.
    What about the anti-hero, Hans Solo?
    He too followed the hero's quest. He moved from being a criminal
when he heard the call to being a hero at the end.
    What about downward paths?
    Are they necessarily evil? 
    This is part of the balance. If they weren't there this would 
remove the hero's opportunity. 
    We are all called to evil.
    There are choices you make on the journey.
    How do you see honour?
    Honour is a social thing.
    Everyone can remain honourable to the self.
    Next meeting is Tuesday February 24th at the Cafe Wim at 7:30 pm.
The topic is Applied Spirituality. I look forward to reading your notes
of that one.
                                                        Fare ever Well,
                                                            Michael