Mythology and Folklore 2020

Tamatori's Sacrifice     I died too young, but I did it for love. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but let me explain. I had long been in love with Prime Minister Takeuchi, having seen him roaming the city often, pacing by the cliffs thoughtfully and delivering calm, reasoned speeches in the town square on behalf of our Empress. I never did anything, because I knew that someone like him could only marry royalty, and I was just an ama , a fisher-maiden. I earned my living by diving under the surface of the ocean for fish, crab, octopus, even pearls, anything that I could get my hands on. We occupied different worlds; how could I expect someone like the minister to even notice me?     One day, I came upon him standing on the cliffs overlooking the rolling waves. He had his swords out, ready to engage in the ritual suicide of seppuku . I broke my tradition of silent longing and ran to him, throwing my arms around Takeuchi to stop him from throwing himself onto his swo...

Notes: Empress Jingu and her men return from their journey to the Land of Morning Calm (which I guess is Korea?) dejected because they have lost the Jewel of Heart's Desire. The Empress had entrusted the jewel to her Prime Minister, Takeuchi, and is angry with him for having lost it. I don't agree with this part because it was Benten who stole the gem from the ship, and what was Takeuchi supposed to have done against a literal dragon's daughter? But I digress. The Empress says she will not grant Takeuchi an audience until he recovers the gem. Disgraced, Takeuchi climbs to the top of a cliff and decides to take his own life. Before he can do that, Tamatori, a fisher-maid who seems to have a crush on Takeuchi but refuses to act on it because of their difference in station, intervenes. She had been following him, and when she sees him take out his swords, she runs to him and begs him to stop. Takeuchi tells her what's happened, and it seems like Tamatori decides to get...

The Miraculous Mirror: This story took me a couple of reads to understand what the plot was. The prose of these stories are beautiful and poetic, but they are a little hard to follow sometimes. So, what I have gathered of the plot is this: Amaterasu is in heaven, hanging out with her handmaidens, weaving "the dark web of Doom" which I assume is a kind of Fate tapestry. Her brother (and apparently her rival) Susanoo arrives in the Hall of the Gods, and Amaterasu flees, scared. She hides herself in a cave under the ocean, leaving the land above in darkness. People are grieving and begging her to come back, to bring the light back to their land, but Amaterasu doesn't come out. To try and coax the Sun-goddess out of her seclusion, an "auspicious" god (no name is given) crafts a mirror and hangs it outside the entrance of Amaterasu's cave. A goddess, Uzume, is brought to dance on the waves, and the welkin (which I looked up, and apparently means the sky or th...

Story: Life of the Buddha - The Fair Maiden and Gopa's Dream Microfiction 1: Twitterature Length: 140 characters They went to the woods where the maidens waited. They offered him gifts, but all he could think was, "They laugh because they know nothing." Author's Note: I took the first part of this story, where Udayin and Siddhartha go to the woods where the "fair maidens" are. I assume from the way the girls are described with the phrase "skillful in the game of love" that these girls are meant to entice Siddhartha. They all offer him different things, gifts and affection, but Siddhartha can only think about how they don't know about sickness or old age or death, and that that  is the reason why they laugh so easily. They didn't know suffering the way he did, and to him that meant they were ignorant. I tried to capture the kind of headiness of that whole scene, which reminds me of the scene in the Odyssey with the lotus-eaters that ...

Notes: I'm going to be honest, Siddhartha lost me pretty quickly during his "profound meditation." He is searching for the root cause of old age and death, and somehow, it all comes down to ignorance. I can understand the Buddhist belief that the cause of suffering is desire; I think that's a pretty intuitive connection. I can even see the connection between desire and sensation. But towards the end of the meditation, when Siddhartha begins to arrive at the conclusion that the root cause of old age and death is ignorance, I'm lost. But, then again, I'm not the Buddha. I'm not even Buddhist - I practice mindfulness techniques sometimes, and I meditate once and awhile, but not regularly, and never for more than ten minutes. I think it takes a lot of dedication to reach the level of introspection that allows one to follow that kind of convoluted path of logic. Siddhartha becoming Buddha (Source: Medium ) The story of Siddhartha's transition to b...

Notes: My junior year of high school, I ran across the book Siddhartha   by Hermann Hesse (a great read, by the way, highly recommend) in my local public library and decided to read it. The book, much like the stories I'm reading this week, described the life of Siddhartha Gautama and how he came to be the Buddha. The book and these stories are actually extremely similar. That is just some background as to why I chose to read this particular unit this week. That being said, this story in particular, The Great Truths, was the most compelling one of today's readings. It is the turning point in Siddhartha's life, his "call to adventure" according to Campbell's template of the hero's journey. Siddhartha had lived his whole life surrounded by luxury and shielded from any kind of suffering. Once he was exposed to three of humanity's greatest ills: old age, sickness, and death, he lost his sense of contentedness. These things are unavoidable, and accor...

Sarnevesht When my son was born, it was love at first sight for me. I knew from the moment I first held him for the first time that I would do anything for him. He was my first child, after many failed attempts by my wife and I to have a child. Soon after he was born, I took my son to the mullah to have his horoscope read. I gave the mullah all the information of his birth, and waited anxiously while the man did his calculations and consulted his books. I wanted my son to have a good life, more than I had wanted anything before. After a while, I watched a frown form on the mullah's face, deep furrows appearing on his brow as he checked, then double-checked his calculations. "What is it?" I asked him anxiously. The mullah shook his head, then said gravely, "I'm sorry, agha, but I can only see a violent end for your son." "'A violent end'?" I repeated incredulously, "What does that mean? What does his horoscope say?" He shoo...

The Story of the Wolf-Bride Notes: This is a short story, but one with a powerful message. A man has a son, and goes to an akhund (an Islamic cleric or mullah) to get the boy's fortune. The akhund tells the man that his son is fated to be torn to pieces by a wolf. The man, to prevent this from happening, goes home and builds an underground room for his son and puts him in there presumably forever. He gets a cleric to teach his son, and the boy goes on to live underground like that for a while. The boy grew up, and his family decided it was time for the son to get married. He married his uncle's daughter, and after the wedding celebrations, the girl was sent underground to go live with the boy (who I guess is also her cousin, but that's another thing). They were left alone, and as soon as the boy touched the girl, she turned into a wolf and ripped him apart. When that was done, she turned back into a girl to be found by the women of the family in the morning. She ...

The Boy Who Became a Bulbul My Thoughts: Okay, immediately my first question with this story is: why did the father and son agree  to the stepmother's suggestion??? I have a stepfather, and imagine if I went out shopping with my mom one day and he was like "Hey, whoever spends more money today, that person should chop off the other person's head." And we agreed??? So that is my first question, and it was stuck with me throughout the whole story. And then the son loses the challenge, through some trickery on his father's part (gross, by the way), and then he takes his son's head home to his wife and asks her to cook it? I don't want to judge a culture, I'm just confused about how everybody is all so casual about this. Except the sister, who freaks out and goes to the mullah, who tells her not to eat the soup and gives her some instructions for what to do with the remains of her brother. She buries his bones and marks the spot with a reed plan...

If you've read my other brainstorming posts, you know that I've already done a lot of thinking about this project. As of now, here is a tentative outline of my Storybook: I ntroduction - I'm going to take the end of the Shadow of the Tomb Raider game that I mentioned in my last post and kind of take some artistic license to connect the two stories. Let's say that in trying to save the world from apocalypse and messing with Mayan artifacts, Lara angered Quetzalcoatl. As the god of wind and air, he is creating devastating storms across the nation that are affecting people through the destruction they cause. The Intro then is Lara deciding she needs to go to Mexico. Xolotl - Lara is in Cancun (just because of geographical positioning for the rest of the story, I couldn't find a geographic location where Xolotl is tied to like with Ixchel and Quetzalcoatl), and is told to talk to a man mysteriously known as "The Joker" (I'm still deciding on which tr...

Hey everyone! This is the comment wall for my Storybook, Lara Croft and the Mask of the Jaguar God . Thanks for your feedback! Please don't be mean, or you'll make Juno cry. (Source: personal photo, December 2019)

    For this StoryLab assignment, I watched three videos from the YouTube Channel Crash Course (the Mythology series) about the definition and theories of myth, and also t he concept of "the Hero's Journey", or the monomyth .  I've been a subscriber to the channel since my freshman year at OU, but had never explored the mythology series. These videos were a great introduction not just to the channel, but the entire field of mythology in general. There are so many definitions of myths, including those that correlate myths to lies or falsehoods. I think that's a usage that's pretty common in the West, especially in America. If someone references some news headline making some ridiculous or extravagant claim, they are sometimes met with the response, "That's just a myth." As in, "That isn't true." The purpose of the video series is not to determine whether certain myths are true; the host, Mike Rugnetta, leaves that up to the viewers...

Saint Cecilia of Rome Notes: I was drawn to this story for obvious reasons. My name is Cecilia, too, and my parents actually named me after a Simon & Garfunkel song that is apparently a reference to Saint Cecilia being the patron saint of musicians. It's about how creative whims come and go, and it's actually a really interesting allegory (click here if you want to read more about the song's origins, and here for a link to the song itself). So, that being said, I was drawn to this story for that reason, and also because I was a musician when I was younger, and I was later told by my boyfriend's family that because I shared her name and practiced music, Saint Cecilia must be watching over me. Not sure if I believe that or not, but it is nice to think about. Living in a majority-Catholic country for so long, I actually heard more references to the saint than I had ever heard growing up in the States. My landlord actually threw a small party for me on her feast da...

Saint Margaret of Antioch Notes: I just want to preface all of this by saying that I'm not particularly religious myself, but I respect all faiths and will try to show that here. That being said, I lived in Mexico, a majority-Catholic nation, for a year, and my boyfriend and his entire family are part of that faith, so I do have a closer connection to the Catholic religion on that level. I've always found the stories behind the different religions to be fascinating, and the saints of Catholicism especially, since I'm named after one (keep an eye out for Part B to see my notes on Saint Cecilia). Obviously, these stories are all centered around these individuals being prepared to endure incredible suffering and die for their faith. Being a martyr, according to Merriam-Webster , is "a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion." The term martyr  is often linked to sainthood and canonization , though ...

For this microfiction assignment, I will be telling two different versions of the story of Narcissus, from Ovid's Metamorphoses . To read the original version, click here . Hint Fiction (25 words): He saw himself, and fell in love. He moved to embrace himself, and touched only water. He couldn't reach himself, and only Echo mourned him. Author's Note: So, I know this is a bit dramatic. But how else do you tell Narcissus' story in 25 words? It summarizes Narcissus' story, and I feel like anyone who knows at least the rough plot of the story would be able to understand it. I added the part about only being mourned by Echo because I thought that was a heartbreaking part of the story. Echo loves Narcissus, like everyone else, but because of her curse, she can't communicate well with him and instead is forced to watch him fall in love with himself, just like she did, and beat himself to death when he realizes he cannot ever be with the person he's in love...

The two articles I will be discussing in this post are: "How to Give Bad Feedback Without Being a Jerk" - Adam Grant, Next Big Idea Club " Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback" - Marshall Goldsmith My thoughts:     Grant's article discusses the issue I think we all have when it comes to giving bad feedback: how to give feedback without the other person getting defensive or upset with you. He talks about the most common technique, the compliment sandwich. Stick your criticism between two compliments, and that helps to soften the blow of the critique. But the data shows that isn't necessarily effective. People either think the compliments are insincere, or don't remember the criticism at all because of primacy and recency effects (i.e. we remember best what he heard first and what he heard last, not what was in the middle.     This first section resonated a lot with me. In my grad classes, we sometimes are asked to read each other's work and...

    So, in response to my last post about this class's final project, Laura made a really great suggestion. She suggested that I could do a Storybook about some (or all) of the gods I had discussed in my post (for reference: Pele, Quetzalcoatl, Xolotl, and Ixchel) in which Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider  series of comics and video games encounters these gods. That honestly sounds like a really fun project, so I think that's the trajectory we're going on for now.     I decided that Lara Croft, in this Storybook, should be looking for some artifact, because, at least in the games I've seen, that's always her goal. In the newest game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider , Lara is looking first for the "Dagger of Chak Chel," which she recovers in Mexico. Chak Chel (also spelled as Chac Chel) is the Mayan goddess of "creation, destruction, childbirth, and water." Lara discovers her dagger and ultimately sets of the countdown to the apocalypse, and finds out ...