Mythopoetics

The future development of Mythico-Ritual axes more complex than those of Human Law (the one we are living in) seems to point to narratives of open identity for different social, individual and collective masks. The history of our myths is the general narrative of the emergence of social personae, their associations and conflicts, in growing circles of action that have given rise to new identity masks. On this journey, Humans cross thresholds of identity transformation, liminal moments in which old identity masks are left behind and replaced by new ones more harmonious with the vital experience of the present. These moments of paleopsychology have been reflected in traditional mythical narratives. A fascinating moment in our development occurred when we stopped sacrificing on the altars of the Gods in search of a more Universal and unified principle on which to base the Universe. In a hymn from the Rigveda (I.170), the god Indra, lord of the storm, dialogues with the r...

When science steps out of isomorphic functions embraces the misty world of metaphors, for its codomains become under-determined by the structure of the domain and the rule which constitutes the function. Codomains are the epistemological pain in the neck. Say that we construct a function, φ , which pairs a theoretical object with an empirical one. Such epistemological function has proven to be surjective, in  simple terms: is what the duality wave-particle shows. Thus, φ has not inverse, ergo there is not an isomorphism between theory and fisis. Physics is nothing but a well-organized (at best) set of metaphors, useful metaphors projected upon an apeiron by the pseudo-subject of our contemporary science.

What is the meaning of being Catalan, or Spanish, or English for that matter? It is evident that the correspondent narratives of political identity express both a particular historical inertia and the very basic need for a group identity in order to function in an economic milieu. Those basic needs have deep roots in human emotional nature and imply old narratives fully equipped with hard metaphysics. And so we heard, in a not too distant past, of a unity of destiny in the universal in relation to Spain, or of a manifest destiny in relation to the British Empire. A nationality expresses, unavoidably, a set of metaphysical beliefs, for the very concept grew up in the middle of a particular European milieu, linked to particular Institutions. To declare oneself Spanish or Catalan, would be merely the expression of a belief in certain Institutions, a rather accidental question related to the place where one happens to be born or live. However, in modern Europe, and even more so in c...

In moments when Europe has its fundamental values tested by the recalcitrant narrowness, cruelty and ignorance of religion, I recall Pericles’ Funeral Oration, as recorded by Thucydides, amazed by its relevance: "We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality..." (Perseus Project translation of Peloponnesian War ). The barbarians, those that do not believe in the myths of the human law and impose their nightmares to others, are now forcing us to close our borders, and what is worst, to close our minds, and change our beliefs for a dream of security that could never be fully guaranteed. Thus we are caught in a web of terror and lose our identity to a poor and sad trivialization of our democratic political foundations. In liminal times, basic emotions take control over the neocortical enaryzed symbolic constructions that we ...

Es frecuente encontrar en la obra de Lorca alusiones a lo primitivo y arcaico como origen del fundamento, como el lugar donde está depositado el sentido. Bernarda . Los antiguos sabían muchas cosas que hemos olvidado. [1] La sabiduría se encuentra en el pasado y el tiempo la desdibuja en el olvido. Me siento muy lejano de la actual descomposición poética y sueño con un amanecer futuro que tenga la emoción inefable de los cielos primitivos. [2] El presente es vivido como proceso caótico frente al ordenado y armónico pasado, y el futuro alcanza su significado en la medida que repita la emoción original, la única portadora de sentido. La intuición del tiempo como algo que se mueve hacia delante, que progresa y cambia hacia lo distinto y lo nuevo con irrefrenable impulso, que va desde el ayer hasta el hoy para después convertirse en un mañana distinto, corresponde a una cosmovisión humana relativamente moderna. Tal intuición es sólo parcialmente refrendad...

There is an interpretation of the myth of Antigone based on the concept of civil disobedience, i.e. in terms of the tension between myths of the human law and myths of the universal law. Has the universal law or law of the gods (the God) prevalence over human law (civil law)? The question is so confusing that it barely makes sense. Curiously enough the universal law is so embedded in our most basic valuations that we mistake it to express the essential human nature, and feel human law as a mere human all too human appendix of the profane ways of the meaningless modern world. From this point of view, just like Thoreau did by refusing to pay taxes to a Government which condoned slavery, Antigone refused to comply with a law which condemned the corpse of her brother to be the plaything of the crows and a banquet for the dogs. The primitive or metaphysical determination which orders the burial of corpses clashes against the functional or economic determination that denies any ent...