Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

In metaphorical language, he makes the night journey into the soul’s fearful, unmapped places to grapple with hidden terrors.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Weilding the sword of his father Aegeus, Theseus slays the Minotaur .

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Leading the other Athenians back out of the labyrinth, he sets sail for home on the black-sailed ship, accompanied by Ariadne.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But on the way home, Theseus inexplicably abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Theseus anticipates his triumphal return. He neglects, however, to put up the white sails... From the headland on Cape Sounion, King Aegeus sees the black-sailed ship approach and, presuming his son dead, commits suicide by throwing himself into the sea that is named after him...

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Every myth serves to illumine. For each of us, the quest we undertake throughout our lives involves the opportunity to become the hero of our own story; to slay the dragon, to rescue the distressed damsel, to do good, to be transformed - and this is an essential rite of passage if we are to truly fulfill our destiny, whatever it may be.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Theseus is not triumphant, but tragic. As a consequence of his own actions he becomes king at the heavy cost of his father’s death; and his story is a warning, that in our striving we must risk becoming the monster instead.So then, if we fail, instead of the longed for heroic transformation, we must through suffering and sacrifice seek redemption. For what if the Minotaur aspired to be a hero?

 

 

And this is the story, not of the labyrinth, but of the grail…

 

Next: THE HOLY GRAIL

 

[Dr. Love]

Beautiful, Michael. Thank you. And an apt theme for this day.

 

I look forward to the next installment.

[Flex Mentallo]

Thanks for the kind words Andy! I aim to have the second part up on New Year's Day. Merry Christmas!

[Flex Mentallo]

Depending on what life has shown us, we may wish like Alice simply to awaken from a “horrible dream.”

 

 

.... I had forgotten how much I loved this movie GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

It's a perfect movie, and how often can one say that? It struck me as I was researching this essay, that the young heroine bears a striking resemblance to the young Jennifer Connelly in Jim Henson's (vastly inferior) Labyrinth. I wonder if that was a conscious decision by Del Toro, or is serendipity at work here yet again?

 

[Flex Mentallo]

THE HOLY GRAIL

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Dan Brown published his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code in 2003.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In it he postulates that the Holy Grail is not a cup, but the earthly remains of Mary Magdalene, buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The plot goes through many twists and turns, eventually to reveal that Mary is the source of Jesus’s bloodline, and the grail is a reference to her womb.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

A set of ancient documents is discovered which purportedly tells the true story of Jesus, who marries Mary and escapes to Southern France rather than be crucified.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

It is by no means the first work to connect the grail legend to a conspiracy. Though he apparently denies it, it's evident that Brown based his novel largely on Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a supposedly factual account published in 1982.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The authors similarly assert that Jesus and Mary founded the Merovingian royal lineage, guarded to this day, as in Brown’s novel, by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The Old French expression for the Holy Grail, San gréal, actually is a play on Sang réal, which literally means "royal blood" in Old French.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The title of the Brown novel refers, among other things, to the finding of the first murder victim in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The body is naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’ s famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentagram drawn on his chest in his own blood.