The Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 2 Book

[A good book to read along with this one is Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology in his 4 vol. Masks of God "magnum opus"]

I had to read Cassirer's works in grad school and they challenged me then and gave me headaches at the same time. But the man is brilliant and opened windows and doors in my mind about how language functions in cultures and the individual life and how it has evolved over time in human history. I recently re-read this volume hoping to get some inspiration, maybe get the juices flowing, imbibe some optimism, refresh myself and writing. This volume is on mythic thought and that world view, a world view and a way of experiencing life so radically different from our modern sanitized, objective, abstract, distanced relationship to what is out "there" versus what is "in us"--it's a world more immediate, tangible, compelling, connected to other life, so imaginative, spiritual and full of amazing surprise and possibility--it really knocked me out all over again. Ripped open my eyes. Everything in that world is numinous, fraught with anima, liable to induce mysterium tremens (make your knees buckle, strike you frozen in place and open-mouthed with awe-in-the-presence-of-the-divine). Everything has a spirit, quivers with some sort of sanctity or dark evil intention and capacity, is fully alive and reactive to stimuli, including you and your "vibes" or whatever, and active (even stones, even the wind and rain) and capable of entering your comfort zone, altering it, affecting it, purposefully. A tree is not just a thing that grows out of the ground and has leaves, that needs sunshine and water. It's a being with every bit of significance and sensitivity/awareness as you. You walk by it? It sees you, takes you in, reacts to you, judges you, ignores you or likes you, tells you something important or funny that only a tree, this particular tree, could know, and both of you are changed by the experience.

As you can tell, this the world of children's literature too: everything has a face, a heart, is alive, can communicate, and is connected with everything else! So it's still in our blood...

Most of the human race passed through this way of seeing the world as a phase or stage, but thousands of primitive societies still exist on the planet who continue to live, feel, think and apprehend reality this way. It's astounding. And interesting too because we haven't, even at this late date and great distance or remove from it, entirely lost the capacity to relate to the world this way.

Strangely, POETS seem to have a flair or apptitude for going back and forth between these states or world views. Many of the greatest poets apprehended reality from essentially the same "place." Their poems gleam, glisten, quiver, speak to us in the voices of angels, saints, heroes,in the language of myth (eternity) and there's a golden numinosity to them that just stops us in our tracks. We recognize, but can't name or explain what it is, but we have a limited though stubborn sense that it's a more "real" and "wonderful" place, maybe more true, even better. But that's a subject of another comment or blog blather down the road for me. BTW, this is not original with me, Oh, no, I'm not the first one to have noticed this. Fascinating stuff.

PS I suggest that if you want to put your toe in the water with Cassierer (before doing a canon ball into his endless sea of discovery), you can read his LANGUAGE AND MYTH first. There's an inexpensive Dover paperback of it. Go ahead, highlight it like mad! Make notes. You'll go back to it many times, if he grabs you at all. It's only 99 pages, and distills to a nectar of the gods the essence of his thought. It will ready and prepare you for more. Just by itself, it's a landmark work, and stands as a major contribution to our understanding of language, human thought and the eternal power of myth in the human life.