The Golden Bough

It arrived! It finally arrived, my copy of The Golden Bough so now I can start the actual preface to my blog.

So let's see here, shall we....

"Clad in rags, daubed from head to foot with red ochre, and stinking shark oil, always solitary and silent, generally old, haggard, and wizened, often half crazed, he might be seen sitting motionlessly all day apart from the common path or thoroughfare of the village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the busy doing things in which he might never take a part." pg. 248

Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway), that is a very long, and descriptive sentence. I think the reason we were asked to do this assignment is because the language is so rich and full of detail that it is nearly impossible NOT to pull a wonderful sentence from it.

I like how Dr. Sexson brought up that mythology is around us everyday, all the time. If we look closely, almost everything in nature has some sort of mythological explanation for why it is the way it is. For example, the story of how the peacock got its many eyes was when Hermes played music which put the guardian's (Argus) many eyes to sleep and kills him (as demanded by Zeus). Then Hera puts Argus' many eyes into the feathers of the peacock and voila! we now have an explanation for this brightly colored bird. I can't believe I didn't pick up on this before, but on the show 30 Rock they briefly introduced a peacock whose name was unironically, Argus.