Tag Archives: Frederick Glaysher

November 10, 2012 · 10:17 am

Joseph Campbell, Earthrise–The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness

Earthrise

I’ve found myself over the years repeatedly going back to a few of Joseph Campbell’s books and articles. Among them, of course, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and his 1979 article “Earthrise–The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness,” reprinted in Thou Art That (2001), which I’ll let here speak for itself:

“Men stood on the moon and looked back and by television we were able to look back with them–to see earthrise….

With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. There is no division and all the theological notions based on the distinction between the heavens and the earth collapse with that realization. There is a unity in the universe and a unity in our own experience….

Symbolically, the same tradition suggests the return of Mother Earth to the heavens, the very thing that has occurred because of our journeys into space….The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth–that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us…….the Space Age reminds us that it must come from within ourselves. The voyages into outer space turn us back to inner space.As Thomas Merton wrote, a symbol contains a structure that awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and reality itself. Through symbols we enter emotionally into contact with our deepest selves, with each other, and with God–a word that is to be understood as a symbol.”

Frederick Glaysher

Leave a Comment

Filed under Epic

Tagged as earthrise, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, Joseph Campbell, moon, Parliament of poets, Poet, poetry, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

November 1, 2012 · 7:28 am

During November, The Parliament of Poets

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.

The first global, universal epic, and the first epic poem in the English language in 345 years.

In the spirit of the Post-Gutenberg Revolution, during the month of November, free worldwide. The entire book, now online.

https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.

Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.

All the great shades appear at the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility: Homer and Virgil from the Greek and Roman civilizations; Dante, Spenser, and Milton hail from the Judeo-Christian West; Rumi, Attar, and Hafez step forward from Islam; Du Fu and Li Po, Basho and Zeami, step forth from China and Japan; the poets of the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana meet on that plain; griots from Africa; shamans from Indonesia and Australia; Murasaki Shikibu, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Austen, poets and seers of all Ages, bards, rhapsodes, troubadours, and minstrels, major and minor, hail across the halls of time and space. One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another is the nature of science and religion, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities.

That transcendent rose symbol of our age the Earth itself viewed from the heavens, one world with no visible boundaries, metaphor of the oneness of the human race, reflects its blue-green light into the darkness of the starry universe.

Frederick Glaysher

Leave a Comment

Filed under Epic

Tagged as Beyond Postmodernism, Beyond Postmodernity, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, Parliament of poets, poetry, Post-Gutenberg Age, Post-Gutenberg Publishing

October 23, 2012 · 7:38 am

All Is Not Vanity

Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet

All Is Not Vanity: The rise of literary self-publishing.

This article makes some interesting observations on various Post-Gutenberg publishing issues… despite still being too tied to the old model in some ways, with many assumptions based on it.

I would argue that the Post-Gutenberg Revolution places the responsibility, if not duty or test, of discernment and taste, upon the reader… As the author of the article rightly points out, all the leading, traditional, review publications are corrupted by the advertising dollars of the mega-publishers, just as much as an author who would pay someone to review their book on Amazon or elsewhere, which was recently in the news.

It seems to me the Internet and social networking provide the potential reader with the opportunity of knowledge of a writer’s work, and therefore the possibility of exploring it further. As has been observed, a great book judges its reader as much as the reverse–all the more true in the current Post-Gutenberg world, tired of the “taste” of the corporate gatekeepers, but still too often in limbo waiting for the new world to be born, not actively enough bringing it into being. For a long time I’ve thought of this as the reader not realizing how much power they actually have.

Self-publishing is at a stage analogous to the early days of Wikipedia, when users were
reluctant to trust information contained in a communally written encyclopedia…. Whether
the increasingly virtual world of selfpublishing will eventually learn to regulate itself is an
open question.

It’s not a matter of regulation, which would mistakenly re-install an hegemony, but a further extension and development of democratic space and openness, wherein perceptive voices can identify, nurture, and cultivate taste, persuading through merit and argument. What is the literary tradition in all national literatures if not that? Convention and revolt with newly digitized tools…

All Is Not Vanity: The rise of literary self-publishing.
https://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2012/09/01/all-is-not-vanity/

Frederick Glaysher

Leave a Comment

Filed under eReading, eBooks

Tagged as ebooks, Frederick Glaysher, literary, POD, Post-Gutenberg Age, Post-Gutenberg Publishing, Post-Gutenberg Revolution, Print On Demand, Publishing, self-publishing