Worlds within Worlds

As I mentioned in my first blog, this summer I was quite engaged with a book titled "The Secret History of the World" by Mark Booth. In this nonfiction work, the author traces the timeline of the earth backwards--the universe was not created before the mind, but the mind before the universe. One could argue that each galaxy, planet, rock, bird, poopy, and human are aspects of some sort of grand cosmic mind that none of us could really understand. You could also argue that this mind created humans so it could look at itself--strange, very strange. At any rate, Mark Booth takes this concept on, tracing through Genesis (another retelling of the great battle of Saturn on the Mother, and the rescue of the Mother by the sun god Apollo), through Atlantis and Noah's Ark (man is slowly losing his connection with the cosmic minds, the gods, his third eye is sealing up--and yes, my first thought on seeing Frances Yates' book was the third eye on the man's forehead). The history of the world, according to the Booth, is the history of the mind because there would be no world if there wasn't someone to observe it. Therefore, to link this with the class, you can remember a universe in your mind, because the universe is literally inside your mind. Worlds within worlds within worlds within worlds. You probably have whole civilizations in the atoms that make up your brain--and I mean actual civilizations with people and buildings and performing monkeys.

Mark Booth's book also talks about Giordano Bruno but claims that he was burned in 1600 "for insisting that the solar system is heliocentric" (447). Perhaps, in the future, I can use the solar system as a memory palace as well. Each planet is a particular vibration in my mind--seven spheres that one must travel through before he reaches the great cosmic mind. And luckily that means I commune with the Muse of astronomy, Urania. Speaking of the muses, one of my favorite stories dealing with them is in the Sandman comics. Sandman, Morpheus, the God of Dreams, takes Calliope as his wife and produces a son, Orpheus (yes Neil Gaiman retells that story too, brilliantly I might add); however, they later divorce because of Morpheus' stolid personality. In Modern times, Calliope is captured and repeatedly raped by writers who go on to produce amazing works of art. She is passed down from one great master to the next until she arrives with her last captor. Of course this story is some sort of metaphor for writing--how you have to sell your soul to make something beautiful (rape something beautiful, disturbing). Morpheus shows up, freeing his ex-wife (he waits for so long because he holds a grudge). The man who had trapped her goes insane trying to write down the amazing ideas before they go out in his head forever--eventually writing with his own bloody fingertips on any surface he can find. What sort of self-destructive aspect of yourself do you have to commune with so you can write? Are you raping a figurative Calliope in your mind? A terrifying idea. I would prefer to believe that I am dancing with her, but I suppose it depends on what sort of mood I am in when I am writing. If I was Edgar Allen Poe, I would probably being playing legos with her, but if I was some sort of sublime artist who got into a furied passion to conjure up something, I guess that may be different. We have all done bad things to Calliope in our own way.