Table Of ContentRECOMBINANT MYTHOLOGY AS ANSWER TO THE ANTI-LIFE EQUATION
A dissertation submitted by
GREGORY SCOTT BAISDEN
to
PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE
in partial fulfillment of
the requirement for the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
with emphasis in
DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY
This dissertation has been
accepted for the faculty of
Pacifica Graduate Institute by
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.
Chair
Robert Kugelmann, Ph.D.
Reader
Lyn Cowan, Ph.D.
External Reader
UMI Number: 3590362
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26 October 2011
Copyright © 2012
Gregory Scott Baisden
iii
ABSTRACT
Recombinant Mythology as answer to The Anti-Life Equation
by
Gregory Scott Baisden
The pervasive perspective of Western culture views spirit as enmeshed or entombed in
matter, an interpretive frame that drives us to periodic socio-political disintegration and
bourgeoning planetary illness because it neither honors flesh as vehicle for spirit nor tends
spirit as animating flesh. Rather, our dominant paradigm emphasizes disdaining the body
and lamenting the spirit, thereby either indulging the former or discounting it, while either
disempowering the latter as incarcerated in flesh or seeking its “liberation” from flesh. This
is an Anti-Life Equation denigrating both body and spirit, and playing a fundamental role in
humanity’s current crises in faith, politics, and sustainability.
The Myth of Orpheus has traditionally been interpreted as exemplifying this emphasis
by portraying him as a failure both of body because attached to his mortal lover and of
spirit because unable to refrain from dooming her to eternity amongst the shades of Hades.
In this frame, the mythic master of the lyre becomes a proponent of a transcendentalist
imperative to free spirit from carnal prison. But what if Orpheus was not a failure — not
because he failed in bringing Eurydice’s spirit shade back to the day world, but because he
succeeded in relinquishing his love from her carnal form and from his attachments to and
projections upon her?
From this perspective, that of a Recombinant Mythology, we may reclaim our
foundational stories from the anti-life perspectives and interpretations that color them.
iv
Thus we may recognize Orpheus as the very image of perceiving, acknowledging, and
embracing the spiral gift of life, in which spirit enters body as a journey of experience for
the tempering of soul, for transforming or transmuting phenomenal, incarnate being, rather
than as a trap of separation, dislocation, and isolation from divinity.
v
Table of Contents
Abstract ... iii
Table of Contents ... v
invocation oblation ... vii
Acknowledgments ... viii
Part One: Theoretical Component
Chapter 1 | Questioning Our Answers
A. Introduction ... 1
B. Review of Literature ... 7
C. Organization of the Study ... 13
Chapter 2 | Understanding Our Foundational Stories
A. Soma Sema: Lineaments of The Great Reversal and The Anti-Life Equation
1. Body As Tomb: The Great Reversal and The Failure of Nerve ... 18
2. Mythology, Religion, Philosophy: Thoughts on The Anti-Life Equation ... 23
3. Institutional Mind ... 49
B. Transcendence versus Transformation
1. Retrieval and Recombination ... 81
2. Dreams of Gaia and The Anti-Life Equation ... 86
3. Questions in Answer to Job and Jung ... 102
Chapter 3 | Transforming Our Foundational Stories
A. On Mythic Imagination, Re-Visioning, the Mythical Method, and Mythopoesis
1. Epic Literature As A Mythopoesis of Recognition and Reclamation ... 116
2. Religious Mythology vis-à-vis Mythic Imagination ... 136
3. 9/11 As Mythic Event ... 143
4. On Creative Mythology (Campbell’s Synthesis and Integration) ... 157
B. On Recombinant Mythology
1. Our Quest for Understanding and Transformation ... 186
2. Wand and Cup, Bolt and Heart, Vajra and Grail:
Thoughts on Eastern and Western Engagement with the Natural World ... 187
3. Fidelitas: Gaia and Grail as Vessels of Harmony Requiring Discovery ... 198
4. Recombinant Mythology as answer to The Anti-Life Equation ... 207
Chapter 4 | Remembering A New Poesis
A. Lineaments for Application of Recombinant Mythology ... 252
B. Orpheus, Eurydice, and the Orphic Tradition
1. Orpheus: Dionysian Shaman in Apollonian Poet-Priest Guise ... 260
2. The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice ... 266
3. Orphism and Its Adherents ... 292
vi
Chapter 5 | Summary Conclusion:
Descrying A Great Transition, or metaModernism ... 321
Works Cited ... 348
Appendices
A. Formulae ... 367
• Propositional formula notation for The Anti-Life Equation
• Propositional formula notation for ALE > RM —
Recombinant Mythology as answer to The Anti-Life Equation
• Propositional formula notation for Calculae of Qatsi (life-affirming ethic)
B. Excerpt | V for Vendetta ... 368
C. The Tower ... 369
D. The Anti-Life Equation of Darkseid ... 370
Part Two: Production Component
A. Introductory Note on Form and Presentation ... 371
B. Orpheus & Eurydice: A Mystery Play | Act I ... 1
Act II ... 32
Act III ... 54
vii
invocation oblation
Q: What happens when irresistible force meets immovable object?
Q: How does one resolve Alexander’s Gordian knot?
Q: Of what is the spirit made?
A: Recognition. Acknowledgment. Contrast. Choice.
Reclamation & Retrieval | : RELINQUISHMENT :
— or —
Rivalry. Denial. Conflict. Coërcion.
Destruction & Decline | : DIMINISHMENT :
A: Patience (reclamation)
INTEGRITY
Alacrity (retrieval) Humility (relinquishment)
: RESPONSIBILITY :
A: Amor.
That is, “Rota Taro Orat Tora Ator.”
“The Wheel of Taro[t] speaks the Law of Ator [Hathor, or Love].” (A.E. Waite)
: RECOMBINATION :
viii
Acknowledgements
Shouldn’t my THANKS in completing this work go out to everyone ever met, the valiant and the villainous?
So be it.
Yet let me emphasize my gratitude for those whose brilliance and generosity in mentorship, stewardship,
fellowship, and friendship made this work not only complete (in this form) but possible at all.
First and foremost in that pantheon resides Dennis Patrick Slattery, for whom a Medal of Lionheart Honor
needs be named. Let this dissertation, which you so decisively nurtured into being, Dennis, be a kind of
medal for you: your genius, your mastery in teaching and in imbibing freely the joys of imagery and discourse,
with room even for the discursive — as spirally as necessary to complete stories and circuits. Forged in soul
and hope, this for me Great Work tempered and prospered under your kindness, acuity, grace, and expertise.
And thus I thank you heartily, Dottore Slattery, and Praise You With Great Praise.
Not far from Dennis’ side in my vision of creative Ἠλύσιον πέδιον peers The Best Dissertation Buddy Ever
(BD\WB\4E): Rebekah Dawn Lovejoy, whose name reflects her talents. Ever, and over and over, your expansive
breadth and incisive depth, your ceaseless wry wit and endless wicked wisdom — so much conveyed in every
(any!) conversation, and in so much conversation generously shared — encouraged and challenged my
progress, inestimably.
At Pacifica Graduate Institute, my thanks first flow to Diane Huerta, enrollment coördinator that was: an
artist at envisioning and arranging affinities. For her, Much Appreciation in devising that cohort of MAGI (Fall
’06 – Summer ’09) that certainly ranks among the legendary. And to you, belovéds: banquets of wonder and
joy, as rich and weird as supped together in class. And to bibliothécaires nonpareil Diana Zakhour & Mark
Kelly: Many Happy Returns.
Where words fail insufficient, names themselves must suffice — those instructors at Pacifica touching mind,
imagination, heart, and soul:
Charles Asher, a prince of the other world on his travels through this one
Hendrika de Vries, pure joy • William Doty, for matrixing modes and activities
Christine Downing, no arbiter between we but us • Dawn George: Anguruzuminabstafil
Patrick Mahaffey: Om Padmo Yogini Jnana Varahi Hung
Walter Odajnyk, adept of withdrawal, achievement, valuation, denial, acknowledgement
Ginette Paris: the best armies are an aggregate of friends
Glen Slater, a signifier esteemed in psyche and in nature
Evans Lansing Smith, revealing a path that need chooses
And those other mentors no less present here:
Robert Kugelmann and Lyn Cowan, whose guidance of this project lent clarity and determination
Karen Bolesky and Marcia Nolte, guiding integration in body, training eye and hand
Elizabeth Bothwell and Barbara Stone, treasured Beatrices of the transpersonal
In my kriya sampradaya, or tradition of yogic initiation, we honor ourselves and all others in honoring our
forebears, and so infinite thanks from me to the world at large for all the awakeners, textual, visual, aural, and
otherwise, who have brought imagination into consciousness for any who would hear. Many of their names
have been celebrated in this study’s Works Cited. Especially I must emphasize Joseph Campbell and Sri
Aurobindo: wide flights of wonder yet gifting.
And finally, because once-upon-a-time if with pretense now past tense, to Lisa Ann Roth my gratitude and
loving relinquishment, wherever you may be, a Eurydice to yourself, love.
1
Part One | Theoretical Component
Chapter 1 | Questioning Our Answers
We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Nachlass” (The Will to Power, 822)
Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace. Bob Dylan, “Man of Peace” (Infidels, 1983)
A. Introduction
Humanity roils in a death wish. Set on renouncing — or decrying while indulging — our
“imperfect” mortality so prey to lusts and illnesses, to decay and capricious nature, we have
turned from celebration of life to cultivation of death. Through fearful avoidance and
reckless action, our irresponsible choices mire this planet in destruction, disease,
despoliation, pollution, fratricide.
We can do worse, and appear to be planning it. Can we do better, and how might we?
If the dilemma at work here were merely one of existential misapprehension, of
immaturity in recognizing and bemoaning life’s fleet rush to phenomenal extinction, it
might find progressive resolution in any one or several of the doctrines of renunciation or
“afterlife” comprising humanity’s preëminent spiritual teachings and religions. Yet some-
thing more insidious coils here: a literalist dogmatizing and applying of these teachings that
drives unreflective humans to fear their existence, their impending doom, as it impels them
to indulge experience, to “get it while they can.” In combination, these drives drown
spiritual perception and aspiration in a consumptive disdain for phenomenal or “material”
being that informs our callous waste of this plane of existence — or, put more forcefully,
this plane of tempering soul through phenomenal being.
Description:First and foremost in that pantheon resides Dennis Patrick Slattery, for whom a Medal of Lionheart Honor needs be named. Kelly: Many Happy Returns. and James Hillman to the religious inquiries of Henri Corbin and Mircea Eliade, to the admonitory, even compulsory, rule of conduct in living?
