Myths Derived Data for *Eblong.

1. S ym b o lis m o f P o p u lar Cu ltu re
Duality:
Opposition and Sequence in Cycles
"The fear in birth, which we have designated as fear of life, seems
to me actually the fear of having to live as an isolated individual, and
not the reverse, the fear of loss of individuality (death fear). That would
mean, however, that primary fear corresponds to a fear of separation
from the whole, therefore a fear of individuation, on account of which I
would like to call it fear of life, although it may appear later as fear of
the loss of this dearly bought individuality as fear of death, of being
dissolved again into the whole. Between these two fear possibilities,
these poles of fear, the individual is thrown back and forth all his life … "
Otto Rank
Will Therapy
There is much to be gained by seeing culture as an agent
of expression rather than as a tool of repression. There is even more to
be gained by seeing the source of cultural expression outside rather
than inside culture. Outside culture there is context while inside culture
there is content. The essence of symbolism involves expression of
context rather than representation of content.
For western culture this is relatively easy to say but difficult to
understand. One might say that western culture is caught in a perpetual

2. trance of content while magic happens just outside the gaze of trance in
the mystique of context. Conscious attention is focused on something to
understanding it. Then it is broken down into pieces to analyze it.
Understanding involves breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. What is
needed to understand context is a more unconscious inattention
directed outward at associations and relationships rather than inward on
analysis.
During those brief moments when there is the hint of an interest in
context, certain specialists are often called in for the job. There is the
professional therapist who tries to make sense out of our dreams. There
is the little lady wrapped in shawls and jewelry who peers into glass
balls in dim curtained rooms. And, there is the church service on Sunday
mornings.
At certain times, specialists are not needed to establish the connection
with context. It comes and goes apparently with a mind of its own, with
little control on our part. It surrounds us in magical periods of life such
as childhood. It comes and goes like brief unannounced winds
throughout our lives. It is a familiar land to artists perpetually existing in
that twilight area between content and context. It is the only land for
some defined as mentally ill by a content oriented culture.
In our dependence on specialists such as mediums to bring the
outside to us, in our relegation of context to a fleeting mental state, in
our definition of some as living in a perpetual context, in all of these
areas, we direct context into particular areas. In the process we fail to
realize that we might be within a medium which is perpetual expression

3. of context. Rather than the images of dreams, the sessions of therapists,
the visions of psychics, context might be all around us like water is all
around fish. Culture might be medium itself.
There is the possibility that all culture is psychotic and a type of
medium, constantly transmitting something from without rather than
repressing something from within. As Freud once suggested, the
possibility exists that neurosis is a cultural as well as an individual issue.
And there is the possibility that dreams are more realities of the day
than visions of the night. Popular culture might be a vast "daydream" of
contextual expression. And we might be able to gain a glimpse at this
daydream if we could escape the trance of our electronic culture.
This possibility is the little understood heart of symbolism and
particularly the symbolism of popular culture. Its true meaning for
modern man is not contained in objects of culture but rather the
contexts of cultural objects. This is easier to say than to feel and
understand in our object oriented western culture. This investigation
moves towards the understanding of this idea.
It is a difficult task. Symbolism is one of history's most elusive
concepts. Rather than move towards understanding and definition of it,
the march of time has only made it more elusive and perplexing. The
result is that today it is like a multi-headed hydra possessing numerous
faces, running across the landscape of the modern world like a herd of

4. wild horses, crossing boundary lines into multiple disciplines with no
particular homeland.
In a large sense, symbolism is a key part of psychotherapy and the
nightworld technique of dream analysis. Yet it has played a key role in
the religious realm with the plethora of religious symbols through
history. Or, it has represented a particular type of technique in literature
or art.
While many of these (and many other meanings of symbolism) have
some truth to them, there has been little effort to see symbolism from a
larger perspective that might include all of these meanings. This is a
goal of the current investigation. And, at the end of this book, this goal
might prove to also be elusive. The larger perspective we propose is the
context of culture where symbols are not merely dream images,
religious objects or artistic theories but rather products of consumer
culture. It is not a world where symbols are created through culture but
rather expressed through culture.
In our modern world of simulation and virtual reality, when the real
and natural merge, everything becomes a symbol, a representation of
the lost real. Ironically, though, as our culture becomes more symbolic,
the meaning of symbolism becomes more buried in post-modern theory
or appropriated by exclusive fringe disciplines and groups. Rather than
see symbolism in the broad daylight of current everyday life, it has been
relegated to a twilight world of dream images and museum relics of the
past. We study pictures of symbolism and hear literature teachers tell of
its importance in the stories we tell but it does not seem to be part of

5. our life and it seems as if these images are separated from us by an
invisible shield.
But viewing culture in a symbolic manner is much easier said than
done. In attempting to do this we are somewhat like fish trying to
understand the medium of water which surrounds them every second of
their existence. For us, symbolism is in the air, the atmosphere. In effect,
it is really a type of medium which transmits rather than produces.
Where do we begin in the attempt to see culture from a symbolic
perspective? We could run full-speed ahead into popular culture chasing
down symbols like a hunter going after prey. But the direct method is
too conscious, too focused. The overall context is not taken in when the
object of the hunt is content within context. Going directly after symbols
is similar to looking into a mirror. We see reflected back what
we want or need to see, or, what manipulators of symbolism want us to
see. We fail to see the context containing the mirror.
What is really needed is a philosophy towards life rather than a theory
about some part of life. This philosophy might begin with a few
observations about symbolism which have been persistent throughout
the ages.
First of all, symbols are not antiques of yesterday's culture which
clutter the landscape of the modern world. They are not the leftovers
from previous societies or enigmatic objects which need definition and

6. analysis. They require comparison rather than definition. One takes the
wrong road towards understanding of symbolism when one ventures
down the road of definition and analysis rather than association and
relationship.
But symbolism is more than images and the association of images. It is
also about the appearance of images in time. In this sense, when images
appear is as important, or more important, than what images appear.
The focus of western culture has always been on the image content but,
in focusing on image, the sequence of images has been overlooked. The
real archetype or secret key in symbolism may in fact be in the
sequence rather than the image, the context of the image rather than
the content of the image.
Since the advent of Freud and Jung, symbols have been related to the
unconsciousness, inside world. But they may have a greater practical
application and importance in understanding the expression of the
inside world in the context of the outside world. In the end, context may
in effect be simply another word for the unconsciousness. The reader
needs to be the judge in this area from the evidence we present.
As we argue, the key symbols of the modern world are the products of
popular culture. But they do not simply appear and disappear through
the magicians of Hollywood and Madison Avenue but rather through a
series of dynamic energies.
While the meanings of symbols have changed throughout history,
these energies have not changed. One might suggest that they

7. represent a type of philosophy of life, an attitude towards seeing life,
rather than a structured belief system. In this sense, they are similar to
forces like gravity and magnetism that align patterns and move between
oppositions. We might say that a philosophy of symbolism involves the
energies of duality, relationships and sequence or repetition.
Duality And Opposites
In opposition to a linear, causal progression, symbolism represents a
cyclical dynamics of duality. Two forces continually battle in the world of
symbolism. They go by many names. Consciousness and
unconsciousness; day and night; masculine and feminine; segmented
and mass culture. There is never any victor even though the evolution of
history might outwardly suggest otherwise, that consciousness is
increasingly the victor.
The concept of duality is one of the basic components of symbolism
but it certainly is not solely contained within the province of symbolism
but is part of key ancient philosophy as well as religion. In fact, duality is
at the very beginning of the Bible in the creation of light from darkness:
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw
the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the
darkness."
The Bible begins with the recognition of consciousness which is itself a
recognition of duality. This duality is the basis for all symbolic
correspondences.

8. Duality is also at the heart of mythology and the basic structure of
myths. As Claude Levi-Strauss reminds us in his famous Structural
Anthropology (1968), myths are structured in terms of "binary
oppositions" where meaning is produced by dividing the world into
mutually exclusive categories such as culture/nature, man/woman,
black/white, good/bad/ and us/them. As Levi-Strauss notes, the purpose
of myths is to make the world explicable which is accomplished by
resolving these binary contradictions. "Mythical thought," he argues,
"always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their
resolution...the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of
overcoming a contradiction."
Symbols are the binary oppositions of myth. In effect, myth places
symbols into a linear, "narrative" structure with a movement from one
opposite at the beginning of the myth to the other at the end. The
same process can be observed in modern mythological stories such as
modern film. But outside film and the other stories we tell itself, popular
culture and its leading products can be seen as one central myth
moving between opposites.
Mythology does not confine itself to our theatres and dreams but
plays itself in the daylight of weekdays.
It is impossible to talk about duality without talking about its opposite
unity. The original state was unconsciousness or unity and the division
between light and darkness in the Bible was the prerequisite for

9. consciousness. In fact, scholars of symbolism place duality originating in
the emergence of consciousness from unconsciousness, of the
emergence of duality from unity. Symbolically, unconsciousness is
associated with darkness and consciousness with light.
All symbols have basic division into duality of unconscious and
consciousness.
Opposites
An extension and consequence of the idea of duality is the concept of
the opposites. All dualities consist of opposites.
The existence and knowledge of opposites go back to ancient history
and the pre-Socratic philosophers, the Pythagoreans.
These early philosophers were aware of the importance of opposites
and established a system of ten pairs of key opposites:
 Limited/Unlimited
 Odd/Even
 One/Many
 Right/Left
 Male/Female
 Resting/Moving
 Straight/Curved

10.  Light/Dark
 Good/Bad
 Square/Oblong
Within these oppositions, one can see the beginnings of a symbolic
perspective of the world.
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[[ NAVNEET : Word MeaningFor Pythagoreous : InMarathi ( Tatva-Vaythya ] ; MeaningCouldBe :-
Phylosophy-SpeciFic.Composition]].
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