Persephone Returning, © 2003 Deron
Cohen
Original Oil for Xara Dulzura 2003: Rite of Spring
Creative Mythology:
"In the context of traditional
mythology, the symbols are presented in socially maintained rites, through which the
individual is required to experience, or wil pretend to have experienced, certain
insights, sentiments, and commitments. In what I am calling "creative"
mythology, on the other hand, this order is reversed: the individual has had an experience
of his own - of order, horror, beauty, or even mere exhilaration - which he seeks to
communicate through signs; and if his realization has been of a certain depth and import,
his communication will have the value and force of living myth..."
Joseph Campbell, Masks of God, Volume 4, Creative Mythology.
Our idea begins with Adolf Bastian's
observation that everywhere in the world, at all times of history, people have used a
common vocabulary of images and symbols to express the same spiritual ideas. These always
appear in some local costume, adapted for the needs of the local society. But behind all
the different masks and local names ("folk" or "ethnic" ideas), the
same heroes live the same stories and teach the same lessons ("elementary"
ideas).
By imagining 400 years into the future, this
same primordial vocabulary of symbols can be freed from competing claims of faith and
fact, and brought to new life through myths and rites that make no claim to historical
truth at all. And yet, those symbols do resonate with power and meaning, and they still
point to who we truly are. We invite participants to explore these perennial,
"elementary" ideas through new stories and myths dressed in the imaginary
"ethnic ideas" of a future paradise.
Our hypothesis is: when art
addresses transcendence, and when it works, it induces an authentic spiritual
experience, without asking anyone to believe anything. Neither must anyone give up belief
in anything to share this experience. These symbols have their own inherited power to
influence human beings - but it's in the spine, not the mind. And so we seek shared
experience, beyond belief, linking us through art and community to the real ground of our
being.
"And if there is still one hellish,
truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being
like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."
Antonin Artaud, Preface, The Theater And Its Double
