Daily Archives: April 1, 2024

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (7) It’s a Gundam

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Youtube channel banner as at 31 March 2024

 

 

(7) IT’S A GUNDAM (USA 2015)

 

 

“The voice of a disenfranchised generation. Culture critic, trash comedian, failed musician. I’m the triple threat.”

 

Perhaps the most caustic of the caustic critics in my top ten and the most wide-ranging in his criticism, which might be broadly characterized as extending throughout online or social media controversy, popular culture criticism and social commentary.

 

He has a particular focus on the, ah, questionable aspects to be found among the perpetually – and, ahem, progressively – online, especially on Twitter or X as something of his happy hunting grounds for subject material for his video content. However, I can’t help but laugh as he nails the absurd outrage and indignation you see hyped online. Whatever you may think of his content, he does have comedic style.

 

No doubt he thrives on the outrage – particular highlights for me in his content are where he uses clips as running gags to mock the incoming outrage at someone daring to say such things, such as Sansa Stark saying “he’s a monster” (or more recently a clip of unknown origin to me – “Stop him!”). Also his running gag of calling to his poor overworked video editor – Stu? Stew? – “EDIT THAT OUT!”

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (7) Hydromancy

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Free ‘divine gallery’ art sample from OldWorldGods

 

 

(7) HYDROMANCY

 

Glug glug glug…

But seriously, hydromancy or divination by water has one of the longest pedigrees of any method of divination, no doubt reflecting the importance of water for human survival or life in general, and of bodies of water to human civilization or societies.

Divination by water should be distinguished from divination for water, most famously that of dowsing – or attempting to divine the location of water, typically wells or other underground bodies of water.

Just as divination for water tends towards forms of dowsing, divination by water or hydromancy tends towards forms of scrying by looking at water or bodies of water, particularly those identified as divine or sacred.

Think Galadriel’s Mirror in The Lord of the Rings – except why couldn’t it have been Galadriel’s Jacuzzi? I’m sure I’d have had many meaningful visions, particularly with Galadriel in it.

The permutations of hydromancy are almost endless, including observations of color, ebb or flow, tides or currents, ripples from pebbles or other objects cast into water, or the movement (or flotation) of objects in water.

Again, one could probably squeeze out enough drops of hydromancy for their own top ten within my top ten, but I’ll just mention two here as worthy of distinction – cryomancy or divination by ice or snow, and hydatomancy or divination by rain or rainwater. To which I’d add my own invention of flotsamancy and jetsamancy, for divination by flotsam and jetsam.

As a method of divination, hydromancy would appear to be as or even more versatile than pyromancy, although perhaps lacking quite the same potency for visions, at least from burning particular substances.

As a school of magic, hydromancy would similar seem more versatile than pyromancy – particularly if one extends it throughout all forms of water from snow and ice to clouds or mist, not to mention the full volume of it as the surface area of our planet and within our bodies or all life (in the style of blood-bending within water-bending in the Avatar series), even more so if one extended it in more metaphorical senses of cleansing, healing and life. Or ebb and flow, rhythm and tides – in the style of the metaphorical comparison of the Tao to water.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (7) Hindu

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Ganesha – free ‘divine gallery’ art sample from OldWorldGods

 

 

(7) HINDU

 

Another mythology as part of an active religion – indeed, the third largest religion, although it might be more accurately described as mythologies or religions, given the diversity of Hinduism.

It is perhaps the most cheerfully and flamboyantly polytheistic of modern religions, with all its gods and their avatars, although Hinduism itself can be polytheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, pandeistic, henotheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist – depending on how philosophical one is towards it.

The classifications vary, but modern Hinduism is often classified into four major denominations by primary deity – Vaishnavism by Vishnu (or his avatars, often Krisha or Rama), Shaivism by Shiva, Shaktism by Devi (or manifestations of the supreme goddess) or Smartism by a combination of five deities. Of which I obviously prefer Shaktism for worship of the goddess – she is the goddess and this is her body, o yes!

However, it is a mythology or mythologies of which I have only the most basic knowledge – primarily of their literally colorful deities with all their arms, avatars and trinities. The trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. The supreme goddess Devi or Shakti in all her forms and trinities – most commonly Saraswati, Laskshmi and Parvati, with Kali perhaps as the most distinctive form of Parvati known outside Hinduism. And of course Ganesha, because I have a soft spot for animal-headed deities.

 

RATING 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (7) Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces

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New World Library, Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, 3rd edition

 

 

Behold the monomyth!

Joseph Campbell, arguably the leading scholar of mythology, developed the monomyth or Hero’s Journey as the archetypal heroic narrative in which the protagonist hero sets out, has transformative adventures and returns home. And it has been a favorite of comparative mythology and literary or writing studies ever since, particularly after George Lucas identified it as a major influence on his original Star Wars trilogy.

Campbell identified it as the monomyth because he saw it to be at least a recurring mythic structure to heroes, if not universal. Of course, it helps to be a monomyth if you pitch it in broad terms that apply to almost any story – the hero (ad)ventures into the mythic world – the supernatural or mysterious realm – and brings something back, not least himself in transformed form.

As per Campbell – “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Or even more broadly, a hero goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis and comes home changed or transformed – which is almost any story.

It also helps to structure it in the basic modern dramatic format of three acts – which Campbell styled as departure, initiation (often featuring death and rebirth or resurrection) and return.

And it helps even more to combine this broad structure at the same time with a number of specific variations from virtually every story – which Campbell styled as stages – which themselves have an almost infinite number of permutations.

Even so, you can’t deny the poetic resonance of Campbell’s stages as he styled or titled them – from the Call to Adventure (often accompanied by a Refusal of the Call) that starts it all, through the Belly of the Whale and the Road of Trials as well as my personal favorite The Meeting with the Goddess, to the triumphant return as the Master of Two Worlds and the Freedom to Live.

Of course, the monomyth has its critics – from those who criticize that its very generality (or vagueness) detracts from its validity or usefulness, to those who criticize its male frame of reference (with some offering up the heroine’s journey as an alternative) or its inherently aristocratic (or autocratic) elitism.

Yet, who can deny the emotional resonance of the hero’s journey – and who hasn’t yearned for their own call to adventure?

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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