orsi -Opening and unleashing The Golden Bough

I realize that one of the most difficult aspects of "blogging" is knowing where and when to stop. Blogs seem to service as a converted canvas of the mind, ideas are expressed freely.This is both the beauty and the tribulation of blogging. Images associated with these ideas are presented, countless links and cross references branch off and root. Often I am unable to keep this entanglement of ideas ordered. There is just so much to be said, so many stemming thoughts, and I am not really versed enough in any of them to keep the chaos contained.
That being said, I almost laughed when I really started reading more of the Golden Bough passage. It broke the stagnant pool of my mind like a rock, spiking jets of water up and outward, a wake of ripples extending in all directions. Now I'm going to try and keep these waves contained and fluid, for in my mind they fractaled in a picturesque pattern. But when i try to convey them it is often splintered fragments of the full mindscape. so bare with me.

This passage is nearly perfect for this class, foreverything. It just takes a little reading into- it's one of those transparent things.
" Further, when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some common object, such as an animal, or plant, or fire, or water, it is sometimes considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and replace it by another. A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of change in language; for where it prevails to any considerable extent many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up" page 306

So, as is custom with the Nicrobarese tribe, when someone dies who is named "monkey" for example, the word dies along with the person. So actual monkeys are no longer referred to as such they become "yeknoms" ...or something-not important.
What is important is the concept at play. And here is where that old mysterious mental maneuver is enacted. The importance of this practice is, essentially the essence of this class. What is dealt with here is "image death" or "label death". When the "monkey" dies, no monkey actually dies. Just the word by which we call the thing itself. The label is merely a vehicle for the "object" (and i use this word with some hesitation) to ride. Just as the body is a vehicle for the soul. Just as the story, its characters and setting are a vehicle for the mythos.
When 'death' occurs it can take away the image of the being, it can take away the name, but it does not take away the being itself.
Long years I have contemplated a single sentence from Ovid. Longer years still, have others before, and will others after me move with these words. Even those who have never read them.

"For all things change, but no thing dies. The spirit wanders: here and there, at will, the soul can journey from an animal into a human body, and fro us to beasts; it occupies a body but it never perishes." Pythagoras (book XV page 519)

This is a reading, not of the above but its still great. it only has 27 views. I feel like it should have a lot more.

also, I started reading up a bit more on Pythagoras and I found this amazing article about it--and so many other things-- J Stor Pythagoras

and then reading this, I remembered a story by Jorge Luis Borges (thank you Dustin for turning me on to him) that fits the metempsychosis or "trans migration of souls, or... reincarnation.
""I have been Homer; soon, like Ulysses, I shall be Nobody; soon, I shall be all men--I shall be dead"

To anyone who hasn't yet read Borges, i'd say: do so. It'll twist yo cap back.