Dimensi Eko-Eskatologis dalam Mitos Penciptaan pada Masyarakat Manggarai Nusa Tenggara Timur

One of the problems suspected to be faced by human is environmental problems. Whereas in various traditions generated by the ancestors, it encourages harmony between human life and nature through mythology, including the teachings of eschatology. The ecological crisis that occurred because of leaving the concept of eco-eschatology in religion and culture. This paper aims to find the ecoeschatological dimension in the creation myth of the Manggarai Community, NTT. The study used qualitative approach with ethnographic methods. Data were obtained through interviews with several key informants from several villages in Manggarai. The results of the study found two myths that have the eco-eschatological local wisdom, namely the myth of the origin of humans and the origin of plants. There are several eco-eschatological meanings in the creation myth, those are everything was created by Morin, all creations have an eschatological future, and there is continuity and discontinuity between the old creation in the world and the new creation in the eschatological world. These meanings bear some resemblance to the teachings in Catholic theology of creation. This finding contributes to the Church in efforts to sensitize the people in relation to the ecological crisis. In addition, local wisdom is also the basis for the environmental conservation movement.

The Mythology of the Gap in the Work of James K. Baxter

<p>In 1967, New Zealand poet James K. Baxter reflected on his beginning as a poet with the statement that 'what happens is either meaningless to me, or else it is mythology' and that in his personal mythology 'first there was the gap, the void'. While the first of these comments has been frequently cited in connection to Baxter‘s work, few critics have taken its extreme implications seriously. This thesis also takes the second statement as crucial to understanding Baxter‘s creative process and the links his poetry makes between otherwise disparate experiences. These statements are a starting point for a study which maps out the consistencies and continuities underlying Baxter's vast literar output throughout his career as a poet. It considers Baxter's poetry alongside his published prose and unpublished papers in order to demonstrate the underlying patterns which characterise Baxter‘s output throughout his diverse career. The thesis first develops a framework for identifying the presence of gaps in Baxter‘s writing, tracing a network of symbolic and mythic relationships that comprise his evolving personal mythology of the gap. Having established this framework, I show how Baxter's engagement with 'the gap' evolves throughout his work. The thesis demonstrates the significance of gaps not only as central motifs in Baxter‘s work, but as a crucial part of the poet‘s creative process. Baxter‘s purposeful approach to poetic mythologising relies on notions of absence, division and descent: the 'gaps' out of which poems emerge. These gaps simultaneously create and are created by the temporary 'mythologising self' at the centre of the creative process. This is the poet as creator, shaping 'chaos' into 'cosmos' through the use of ordering tools. In Baxter's case these include the consistent use of three main mythic paradigms which address the imperatives of desire created by these gaps. As well as this parallel with the pattern of creation myth, Baxter's creative process is suggestive of the mythic 'journey to the centre' which is in turn recurrent throughout his poetry. In applying the 'chaos-ordering-cosmos' framework to Baxter's mythology, I reveal the consistent elements of his work on the underlying level of myth, symbol, origins and method, thus opening up new possibilities in the critical response to his work.</p>

The Mythology of the Gap in the Work of James K. Baxter

<p>In 1967, New Zealand poet James K. Baxter reflected on his beginning as a poet with the statement that 'what happens is either meaningless to me, or else it is mythology' and that in his personal mythology 'first there was the gap, the void'. While the first of these comments has been frequently cited in connection to Baxter‘s work, few critics have taken its extreme implications seriously. This thesis also takes the second statement as crucial to understanding Baxter‘s creative process and the links his poetry makes between otherwise disparate experiences. These statements are a starting point for a study which maps out the consistencies and continuities underlying Baxter's vast literar output throughout his career as a poet. It considers Baxter's poetry alongside his published prose and unpublished papers in order to demonstrate the underlying patterns which characterise Baxter‘s output throughout his diverse career. The thesis first develops a framework for identifying the presence of gaps in Baxter‘s writing, tracing a network of symbolic and mythic relationships that comprise his evolving personal mythology of the gap. Having established this framework, I show how Baxter's engagement with 'the gap' evolves throughout his work. The thesis demonstrates the significance of gaps not only as central motifs in Baxter‘s work, but as a crucial part of the poet‘s creative process. Baxter‘s purposeful approach to poetic mythologising relies on notions of absence, division and descent: the 'gaps' out of which poems emerge. These gaps simultaneously create and are created by the temporary 'mythologising self' at the centre of the creative process. This is the poet as creator, shaping 'chaos' into 'cosmos' through the use of ordering tools. In Baxter's case these include the consistent use of three main mythic paradigms which address the imperatives of desire created by these gaps. As well as this parallel with the pattern of creation myth, Baxter's creative process is suggestive of the mythic 'journey to the centre' which is in turn recurrent throughout his poetry. In applying the 'chaos-ordering-cosmos' framework to Baxter's mythology, I reveal the consistent elements of his work on the underlying level of myth, symbol, origins and method, thus opening up new possibilities in the critical response to his work.</p>

The Myth of Creation in William Blake's The Four Zoas

Northrop Frye knows the cyclic version of creation myth in his reading of The Four Zoas according to which the human lives in heaven unified with God, unfallen state; he then falls and loses the harmony had with God, fallen state; and he should restore the previous unfallen state in Apocalypse or Last Judgment. Unlike Fry, while thinking of Maurice Blanchot I argue that Blake has created a new myth of creation different from the cyclic one by focusing on what Blake calls Beulah as the stage intermediate between spiritual and physical existence. In the non-original state, Beulah is the state of perpetual creation beyond dialectic and dualism known in Eternity and the life on the earth, a sort of becoming. For Blake, this proves that entities are not created to be manifested in the state of independent selfhood, but they are in relation with the others. This makes both selfhood and indefiniteness simultaneously possible to exist. It is Beulah itself which is all and the only space of existence opening itself from within itself. All entities including God are in interrelationship while being in the process of interruption (acquiring selfhood) within continuation (interrelationship) simultaneously. This demonstrates Blake's new myth of creation avoiding the primal crisis of the cyclic myth of creation. He has also introduced a new idea of relationship.

“Eternity roll’d wide apart”: The Creation of the World and Man in William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen in Light of Emanuel Swedenborg’s The Last Judgment

Beginnings are usually regarded as either hard or energizing times that set our inner world in motion. However, there is a beginning that is more important for humanity than any other: the origin of human life and of the world. The knowledge of our origin and the mystery concerning the beginning of the world have been the most intriguing and most engaging issues since man became aware of their own physical and spiritual existence. For many centuries, it was the duty of religion to provide humanity with a teaching about their origin and the foundation of human dignity. However, the 18th and 19th centuries were critical in the treatment of the biblical creation stories in Europe. The debate between misinterpreted creation myth accounts and scientific theories led to a sharpening confrontation between religion and science, but it also divided the believers and resulted in the birth of new theories. Emanuel Swedenborg, an influential theologist of the period, wrote detailed commentaries and genuine tractates related to the topic that influenced the ideology and art of William Blake, a versatile and ingenious artist and thinker of the era, whose influence is still significant today. The aim of this study is to highlight the parallels and contrasts between Blake’s Genesis myth and Swedenborg’s teachings, mainly through the unusual pairing of The [First] Book of Urizen and The Last Judgment, to show the connection between Swedenborg’s unorthodox views and Blake’s ideas about the creation of man and the world.

Lições de um Xamã Yanomami para a Construção de uma Identidade Pós-Antropocêntrica

Western culture's imaginary positions human figure as exceptional and identified with cosmological wholeness: "humanity" is taken for granted in the construction of people's identity, while non-human beings are assigned a condition of non-subjects. This paper departs from the assumption that this worldview is supported by a fundamentally mythical structure, which has, as an important representant, world creation narrative expressed in the Hebrew-Christian Bible. Thus, this paper proposes an analysis of the relations between humanity and animality that are expressed in The Book of Genesis, first book of the Bible, comparing them with the way those same relations are expressed in an Amerindian creation myth: The Falling Sky: Words from a Yanomami shaman, from indigenous leader and shaman David Kopenawa. The results are interpreted from a dialogue between anthropology of the imaginary and cultural psychology and show that, unlike Western narrative, in Amerindian animality and humanity figure like parts of the same whole, immanently present in all beings: the contact with spiritual ancestors is only possible through animal mediation, which makes "nature" a fundamental dimension of the "divine" in Yanomami cosmology. I discuss the implications of these findings for a fundamental assumption of psychological thought: the notion of humanity Palavras-chave : Imaginary; Cultural Psychology; Myths; Anthropocentrism; Identity.

Enervating the Divine: Seeking New Intuitions about God from a Time of Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our planet in ways that could not have been foreseen. Yet even as the world has shifted, the “worlds” of our conceptual habitations have not, and this is particularly the case with regards to religious beliefs. It is from within this context that the present study seeks clarity. Beginning at the beginning, the paper sets out from a re-examination of the foundational creation myth of Western societies, and argues that a more careful reading of the actual presentation of that account, along with some situational explanations, results in an understanding of divinity that stresses neither omnipotence nor omniscience. The article then transitions to the importance of the notional in grounding and generating social behaviors, employing phenomenological and psychological research and analytical methods. Intuitions are seen to be central in the personally based methodology undertaken, and the conceptual–perceptional brace of the notion/event is offered as a theoretical construct. Finally, an attempt at application is made through a return to the earlier explication of a reduced idea of divinity, and subtle gestures at possibly resulting ethical calls are given. Although the virus has taken charge of our lives, and although even God/“God” might not be in absolute control, the “world” is yet ours to (re)make.