#mythopoetic

[sunthroughdarkclouds]

Watching the day slowly bloom into night. That’s how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heavy scents.

-Patricia McKillip

[the-wilderless]

Might come hang out here a bit more often

I just took another swing at mastodon and it’s the literal worst—I can’t even search for common terms, discoverability is nil, need people’s exact names AND servers to find them,,, the only “good” thing I can find about any of it is “Twitter People Use It As A Backup”

But I’d rather foster a backup that isn’t worse in every conceivable way, so

Let’s see if I can kick off some tumblr shit

[barbarian15]

To one [C.S. Lewis] who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'.

Philomythus to Misomythus

You look at trees and label them just so,

(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow');

you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace

one of the many minor globes of Space:

a star's a star, some matter in a ball

compelled to courses mathematical

amid the regimented, cold, inane,

where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend

(and must), but only dimly apprehend,

great processes march on, as Time unrolls

from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;

and as on page o'er-written without clue,

with script and limning packed of various hue,

an endless multitude of forms appear,

some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,

each alien, except as kin from one

remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.

God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,

tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these

homuncular men, who walk upon the ground

with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.

The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,

green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,

thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,

slime crawling up from mud to live and die,

these each are duly registered and print

the brain's contortions with a separate dint.

Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen

and never were so named, tifi those had been

who speech's involuted breath unfurled,

faint echo and dim picture of the world,

but neither record nor a photograph,

being divination, judgement, and a laugh

response of those that felt astir within

by deep monition movements that were kin

to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:

free captives undermining shadowy bars,

digging the foreknown from experience

and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.

Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves

and looking backward they beheld the elves

that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,

and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first

of living silver made that sudden burst

to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,

whose very echo after-music long

has since pursued. There is no firmament,

only a void, unless a jewelled tent

myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,

unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build

Gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! 'wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat

our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!

Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,

or some things fair and others ugly deem?

All wishes are not idle, nor in vain

fulfilment we devise -- for pain is pain,

not for itself to be desired, but ill;

or else to strive or to subdue the will

alike were graceless; and of Evil this

alone is deadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate

that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;

that seek no parley, and in guarded room,

though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom

weave tissues gilded by the far-off day

hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build

their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,

and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,

a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

of things not found within recorded time.

It is not they that have forgot the Night,

or bid us flee to organized delight,

in lotus-isles of economic bliss

forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss

(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,

bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,

and those that hear them yet may yet beware.

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

and yet they would not in despair retreat,

but oft to victory have tuned the lyre

and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing

and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.

I would be with the mariners of the deep

that cut their slender planks on mountains steep

and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,

for some have passed beyond the fabled West.

I would with the beleaguered fools be told,

that keep an inner fastness where their gold,

impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring

to mint in image blurred of distant king,

or in fantastic banners weave the sheen

heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,

erect and sapient. Before them gapes

the dark abyss to which their progress tends

if by God's mercy progress ever ends,

and does not ceaselessly revolve the same

unfruitful course with changing of a name.

I will not treat your dusty path and flat,

denoting this and that by this and that,

your world immutable wherein no part

the little maker has with maker's art.

I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,

nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

from gazing upon everlasting Day

to see the day illumined, and renew

from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.

Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see

that all is as it is, and yet made free:

Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,

garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.

Evil it will not see, for evil lies

not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,

not in the source but in malicious choice,

and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.

In Paradise they look no more awry;

and though they make anew, they make no lie.

Be sure they still will make, not being dead,

and poets shall have flames upon their head,

and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:

there each shall choose for ever from the All.

You just told your coworker that you think myths are fun stories but don’t really communicate any truth. You walk into your office. There on the table you find a piece of paper. On the piece of paper there is a poem. It’s a good poem. It’s also, you realise as you read it, an academic refutation of your stance. It makes excellent points. It also rhymes and scans. Pov your name is Clive Staples Lewis

[eyeoftheheart]

Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.   By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you live. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same.    ~ Joseph Campbell

The true power of myth lies in its ability to speak the language of the soul, weaving timeless truths into the fabric of our innermost being. Myth holds its power in being the soul’s native tongue, where the ineffable finds its voice and the eternal unveils its mysteries. Myths frequently depict heroes or seekers undergoing trials, death, and resurrection. This mirrors the process of spiritual rebirth: the shedding of the old self and the emergence of a renewed, awakened identity.

Spiritual rebirth often involves a metaphorical death—a loss of ego, attachments, or ignorance—followed by a resurrection into a higher state of consciousness.

Through myth, we relive the timeless tale of shedding illusions and being reborn into truth. It whispers the eternal promise of renewal, where the soul casts off its shadowed garments and awakens to its luminous essence of divine light.

[judgeitbyitscover]

Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner

Cover art by Thomas Canty

William Morrow, July 1990 (top) and Tor Fantasy, November 1991 (bottom)

A minstrel lives by his words, his tunes, and sometimes by his lies. But when the bold and gifted young Thomas the Rhymer awakens the desire of the powerful Queen of Elfland, he finds that words are not enough to keep him from his fate. As the Queen sweeps him far from the people he has known and loved into her realm of magic, opulence—and captivity—he learns at last what it is to be truly human. When he returns to his home with the Queen’s parting gift, his great task will be to seek out the girl he loved and wronged, and offer her at last the tongue that cannot lie.

[halogen2]

somebody buy me roses

somebody make sure i get out of bed today

somebody be my baby

somebody see that i don't get in my own way

[otherworldseekers]

By the way, I enjoy making things for other people. So this is an open invitation if you'd like me to ever make you something with your blorbos.

I don't promise that I will definitely make something or that I will do it right away or that it will be good. But sometimes I get the creative urge but am not feeling inspired by my own blorbos and sometimes it just feels nice to do something for someone else. I'll happily take requests as well. Just dm me your character data or we can arrange a meeting in game for me to save your data if you can't.

[matriarchalfemininity]

It’s wild that we’re still having to hand-hold people as we explain what adjectives are when it comes to ‘toxic masculinity’ and also it wasn’t invented by woke feminists, it was invented by the mythopoetic men’s movement, which unlike the modern ‘mAnOsPhErE’ was a men’s movement that was actually empowering towards men and respectful towards women.

[aboxthecolourofheartache]

*putting a hold on a library copy of Gunfighter Nation* …the things I do for Trigun.

[sunthroughdarkclouds]

You can weave your life so long--only so long, and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.

- Patricia McKillip

[sammbag]

‘Nuther old sketchbook find, the Fates with a distinctly Borges/Marquez-inspired spin. My style has improved since this, but I still am after this exact vibe in everything I draw

[dashiellqvverty]

everytime i see ppl say that ‘fight club is satirizing/criticizing toxic masculinity, Actually’ i am like. PLEASE put on your big boy thinking caps and watch it again

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

also my beloved (hot martial artist actual genius man) hired two handy dudes to fix some stuff in the black and white gothic dream house (where I live with said beloved) and one of these dudes is an Axton, by which I mean a brunette long lanky boi with resting bitch face who talks to you oh so softly and also can fix absolutely anything and when you ask him if he knows how to do some new thing he seems genuinely surprised and baffled that you asked.

so my point is, maybe, that the world is filled with potential romance novel protagonists, all the time, and that’s very magical.

[northernlibrary]

Big Sky Insides

Highly recommend Half Waif's album "Mythopoetics" for fans of Florence and the Machine, Kimbra, or the artists of boygenius (Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus). Listen to it from track one to the end; it's very well constructed as a whole album experience.

[jambeast]

I feel it really says something revealing about these people that they see the main way to accurately understand the real world is from Literary Analysis.

[wurds-fur-nurds]

Isochronoteapotomythopoetical (adjective) Pronunciation: /ˌaɪsəˌkroʊnoʊˌtiːpɑːtəˌmɪθəˈpoʊɪtɪkəl/

Pertaining to the simultaneous or harmonized depiction of mythical themes or narratives, often in literary or artistic form, across different but equally measured periods or moments, symbolized metaphorically by a contained or compact object, such as a teapot.

In literature or art, describing the process of myth-making or storytelling that spans time and space in a uniform manner, often involving the repetition of specific symbols or objects, such as a teapot, to represent cycles of history or mythology.

Example: "The isochronoteapotomythopoetical structure of the poem beautifully balanced the ancient myth with modern symbolism, using the teapot as a recurring motif across temporal shifts."