Mythical Science

Anpu/Anubis: Psychopomp and Guardian of the Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 02:27:00 +0000

This is the short and twin paper that accompanied the one on Ma'at. It is interesting that I ended up with two deities so connected fuctionally.

Anpu/Anubis: Psychopomp and Guardian of the Dead

In Greek he is known as Anubis and in the original Egyptian, Anpu, but it has been by the Greek designation the Egyptian god of the afterlife is known. The meaning of his Egyptian name is uncertain (van Voss 403). Depicted generally as a resting black canid, most likely a jackal, or as a jackal-headed man, Anubis is “one of the oldest funerary deities” and featured prominently throughout Egyptian literature of the afterlife (van Voss 403).

Anubis may be best understood by his many epithets, such as Khenty-Imentiu, ‘foremost of the westerners’ indicating his leadership over Egyptian cemeteries, Neb-Ta-Djese, or ‘Lord of the sacred land’, and Tepy-Dju-Efmeaning ‘who is upon his mountain’ (Hart 26). These titles emphasize Anubis’ role as guardian of the buried dead. Anubis Imy-Ut, declares his role in mummification, as ‘he who is in the place of embalming’ (Hart 26).

Religious scholar David White notes that “The domestication of the dog has been recently placed tens of thousands of years earlier than any other animal sharing the human races evolutionary journey,” it would seem reasonable that the earliest guardian of the human enterprise in life would become a guardian of the human dead (2392). White also observes that there were two canine gods of the afterlife in Egypt, “… jackal- or dog-headed Anubis of Cynopolis was considered to be the “opener” of the northern paths of the dead, which the wolf-god Up-uaut or Ap-heru of Lycopolis opened the southern paths” (2393). Egyptologist Jan Assmann does not mention the southern wolf but instead compares the Anubis jackal with the Thoth baboon and their connection to the journey of sun-god, Re:

"The jackal was the animal of the western desert in the Egyptian picture of the world, just as the baboon belonged to the eastern desert. The “bas of the east,” the baboons, greeted the sun god at his rising, and in like manner, jackals towed the solar barque through the netherworld as the “bas of the west.” The jackal stood for the realm of the dead, which the sun good entered in the evening" (82).

One of Anubis’ roles is that of psychopomp and mediator of judgment in the Egyptian afterlife. This can be seen as an echo of the dog’s herding function in human culture, Anubis herds the soul to the judgment chamber with its assessors and Ma’at’s weighing pans. In their guarding function, dogs occupy the space between the domesticated human world and the outside wild. Here, Anubis occupies the space between the living and the dead and safely guides the newly deceased to the otherworld. As Assman also observes about Anubis, “he was the god of the transitional zone between the world above and the netherworld; this zone was called the ‘holy land’ in Egyptian, and Anubis was its designated lord.” Functioning as psychopomp, Anubis occupies the same space as Hermes “the primordial mediator and messenger, who, in Karl Kerenyi’s words, always stands in ‘a middle between being and non-being,” who is “at home while wandering, at home on the road itself” (Avens 78). Anubis also wanders roads, but in a much more restricted way than Hermes, mostly limited to the pathways between the deceased’s dwelling and tomb, from the deceased’s tomb to the afterlife place of judgment, and from tomb to a place of watchfulness over the physical lands of the dead, the cemeteries.

Classical historian Attilio Mastrocinque describes how Anubis was conflated with

Hermes in late antiquity:

"In Egypt Hermes was identified with Thoth, the god of wisdom and the scribe of the gods. Later in imperial times, a new god, Hermanubis, was created in order to identify Hermes with Anubis, who prepared the dead for their travel to the netherworld. Like Hermes, both Thoth and Hermanubis hold a herald's staff" (3938).

Egyptologist M. Heerma van Voss observes that Anubis was originally a ‘destroyer of corpses’ who transitions into an afterlife guide and the “embalmer of gods and men” (403). If the eating of corpses can be seen as a form of communion or sacred meal in pre-dynastic Egypt (Odajnyk, unpublished lecture), and if Anubis’ role originally came from this concept, then that consumption must contribute to the immortality of the deceased. And in a sense, such a sacred meal is a form of immortality as the deceased flesh became part of the animal that ate it. That literal in-cor-poration(from the Latin in + corpus meaning ‘into + body’), is a way to ensure that Anubis has the deceased’s soul for transport; he delivers the deceased’s heart to the Hall of Two Ma’ats for judgment. As van Voss put it, “Anubis tended not only the physical well-being of the dead but their moral nature as well. He played a prominent role in the judgment hall of the hereafter (403-404). Because Anubis operates Ma’at’s scale in the ‘weighing of the heart’ ceremony, he acts as an engineer or scientist, making the actual weight measurement for the goddess.

We see the Egyptians’ need for their physical body in the afterlife in the elaborate mummification procedures and tomb building. And during this period, Anubis evolves further into guardian, psychopomp, embalmer, and participant in final judgment. He becomes the embalmer, not just of human beings, but of the gods. In the Osiris cycle, Anubis is the god’s embalmer and from then on is usually depicted carrying Osiris’ flail. And Anubis may be the only member of the Egyptian pantheon that has a specific skill, which is reminiscent of only one Olympian god having skills and knowing a trade, Hephaestus, who was known as a smith and a skilled craftsman. Anubis is a mortician as well as a psychopomp. Jan Assmann notes:

"The god Anubis, for example, had a very specific function; one that is more unequivocally expressed than is the case with most of the other deities of the Egyptian pantheon. He is (like Osiris) a god of the dead and of the necropolis, though unlike Osiris, he was not the ruler of the dead, but rather the patron of embalmers, mummifiers, and mortuary priests. In contrast to the lunar intellectuality of Thoth, the solar-based royal rule of Re, the chthonic creativity of Ptah, or the celestial charm of Hathor, this specific complex of activities, qualities, and competencies is not easy to relate to the cosmic dimension. Anubis’s specific activities contributed to the success of reality – and in a most important way, considering the central role of the funeral in ancient Egypt – but these activities did not manifest themselves in nature" (81).

Anubis’ role as patron of funerary activities made him the lord over the transition of life to death, that most important of boundaries for the Egyptians. In his cosmic dimension as a jackal that stood at the beginning of the sun’s underworld journey, Anubis is a force of nature that embodies that transition (Assmann 82).

Works Cited

Assmann, Jan. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. Trans. David Lorton. Ithaca and London: Cornell U. P., 2001.

Avens, Roberts. The New Gnosis: Heidegger, Hillman, and Angels. Putnam, CT: Spring

Publications, 2003.

Hart, George. The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. New York:

Routledge, 2005.

Mastrocinque, Attilio. "Hermes." Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 6.

2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 3936-3938. 15 vols.

Odajnyk, V. Walter. Unpublished Lecture. Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA.

March 20, 2007.

van Voss, M. Heerma. “Anubis”. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 1.

2^nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p.403-404. 15 vols.

White, David. “Dogs”. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 4. 2^nd ed.

Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p.2392-2394. 15 vols.

Ma’at: That which is Straight

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 02:17:00 +0000

I wrote this for V. Walter Odajnyk's course on Egyptian Mythology during my third year at Pacifica's Mythological Studies program. I loved Walter's classes and was terribly, terribly sad to hear of his passing.

For this class on two occasions, Walter passed around a bowl full of folded slips of paper to determine which Egyptian deity we would present about (and then of course, write a short paper). Less creative than my classmates, I opted for PowerPoint presentations. No masks or costumes for me, though I did find a pattern and made a nemyss; I just never wore it during the presentations (I chickened out). The image below is from the symboldictionary.net.

I drew Ma'at, the goddess with the single feather headband (in the first draw, I got Anubis). The fact that I'm an adjunct professor in an Administration of Justice department is just a cosmic coincidence, I'm sure.

Ma’at: That which is Straight

The Egyptian word ma’at encompasses two ideas: the abstract concept of truth and correctness (maat) and the Goddess who personifies truth and order (Ma’at). The concept of maat can be seen as balance, close to the Hindu concept of dharma. On the balance idea of maat, historians Faraone and Teeter observe “Maat, in short, represents an elaborate and interconnected sense of truth and cosmic order in all aspects of life and cult. Each individual was responsible for maintaining maat through correct action and truthful speech” (187).

“In Egyptian art Ma’at is portrayed in human form wearing a headdress with an ostrich feather attached to it” (Mercatante and Bianchi 90). In other depictions she is shown holding the feather in her hand, while in others, she is shown headless with the feather taking the place of her head. In tomb depictions of the ‘weighing of the heart ceremony’ Ma’at is shown presiding over the procedure and it is just her feather in one side of the pan balance that is used to judge the newly-deceased’s heart. (Mercatante and Bianchi 90). Variant spellings of her name are Maa, Maet, Maht, and Maut(Mercatante and Bianchi 90).

The goddess Ma’at was of immense importance to the Egyptian’s understanding of the universal order, most prominently exemplified by the course of the sun, Re throughout his daily journey. She is seen several times in Amduat panels decorating pharaoh’s tombs, showing the cyclical passage of the sun, Re, through the underworld during the course of the evening. She is shown doubly in the first hour of the sun’s underworld journey, signifying totality and “guiding him on the way of darkness” (Abt and Hornung 25). Ma’at is also seen in the second hour, the region of the netherworld, and her presence there guarantees order and balance in the beyond (Abt and Hornung 38, 40). In the fourth hour, Ma’at is present as a reminder that “Whoever knows it (maat) is one with right paths” (Abt and Hornung 58-59).

For students of myth or classical studies, the dual idea of an anthropomorphized Goddess and an abstract concept will be familiar in Hesiod’s story of Métis, the Greek goddess of truth. The comparison between Métis and Ma’at go further, and connects on so many levels that it seems certain that Ma’at is the prototype for Métis. Egyptologists Faraone and Teeter have highlighted the similarities between the goddesses to show the connection, shown in the table below:

Table 1

Similarities in the Ma’at and Métis mythology cycles

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

· Both Ma’at and Métis are goddesses of truth, righteousness, and order.

· Both maat and métis are abstract concepts of truth, balance, rightness, and order.

· Both Ma’at and Métis are closely connected to kingship, in the case of Ma’at, to the pharoahship itself and in the case of Métis, to the kingship of the gods, particularly to Zeus.

· Both Ma’at and Métis are ‘eaten’ or ingested: Métis is engulfed by Zeus and Ma’at is offered in miniature as ‘food’ to the gods and to the king.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: Faraone, Christopher A. and Teeter, Emily. “Egyptian Maat and Hesiodic Métis”.

Mnemosyne. Vol. 57, p.177-208, 2004.

An additional similarity reported by Faraone and Teeter is of the goddess’ names and it has been suggested in the past that an etymological link must exist. However, recent work in Egyptian phonetics “has shown that the Egyptian word maatwas probably pronounced something like ma’art, a pronunciation that weakens the argument of phonetic similarity” (193). Regardless of the phonetic difficulties, the story similarities are strong evidence of Egyptian influence on the Greek myth as Hesiod recounts it.

It is difficult to express precisely the meaning of maat and the importance of Ma’at to Egyptian life, because the Egyptian language is one of ambiguity and nuance, with words often holding dual (or more) meanings. For the ancient Egyptians, context is everything:

"Ma’at was more than just a goddess – she was the embodiment of an important concept for the Egyptians. The literal English translation of this concept would be “straight,” but depending on the context, it can mean right, true, truth, real, genuine, righteous, steadfast, and unalterable; there is no single word in English that embraces all the meanings of this term" (Mercatante and Bianchi 89).

The idea of maat and the anthropomorphic embodiment of the concept are most important to the day-to-day existence of Egyptians in the running of the state, particularly in the person of the king. Ma’at is so closely associated with kingship that she is part of the Pharaoh’s coronation names: Hatshepsut was named Maat-ka-Re, “The Spirit of Re is Ma’at”, Amunhotep III was named Neb-Maat-Re, “Re is the Possessor of Ma’at”, and Ramses II & Ramses III were both named Wser-Maat-Re, “Powerful are Ma’at and Re” (Faraone and Teeter 186-191).

Non-royal, or average Egyptians, were also expected to “be in Ma’at” or “be right in Ma’at” in the conductance of their daily lives. A section of the Instruction of Ptahhotep deals with this theme, and this invocation takes on the format of the negative confessions of Ma’at’sforty-two assessors encountered in the afterlife. While these statements are in the form of the negative confessions (“I have not…”) they can also be seen, and most likely were intended, as a prescription for righteous living:

I have come to you, my arms full of maat,

and no contrariness in my body.

I have not knowingly told a lie,

I have not coveted the belongings of another.

I have done maat for the lord of maat

and have calmed the Light-eye for its lord.

I have given divine offerings to the Ennead

and mortuary offerings to the ancestral spirits.

Open up for me, that I may enter into your midst,

I am one of you!

(quoted in Assmann Death60).

But as Jan Assmann points out in another work, “’Doing and saying ma’at’ did not bring men any nearer to god. Only in the Judgment of the Dead did the heart of the just prove worthy (or not) of swelling the ranks of those who would have congress with the gods in the afterlife. (Assmann Mind239). Assmann’s writings on ancient Egypt also contain, unusually, comparisons with today’s society:

"Maat designates the idea of a meaningful, all-pervasive order that embraces the world of humankind, objects, and nature – in short, the meaning of creation, the form in which it was intended by the creator god. The present condition of the world no longer corresponds to this meaning. The difference manifests itself in the phenomenon of Isfet, “lack.” Sickness, death, scarcity, injustice, falsehood, theft, violence, war, enmity – all these are manifestations of lack in a world that has fallen into disorder through loss of its original plenitude of meaning. The meaning of creation lies in its plenitude, which yields order and justice. Where all are cared for, no one is oppressed, no one commits deeds of violence against others, no one need suffer. Suffering, scarcity, injustice, crime, rebellion, war, and so forth, had no meaning for the Egyptians. They were symptoms of an emptying or estrangement of meaning from the world, which had distanced itself from its origin in the course of history" (Search 3).

Assmann’s commentary describes a culture that has fallen out of its myth and distanced itself from “that which is straight”, a very apt description of the “problem” as it has been formulated and discussed in many of my classes at Pacifica. For Assmann, the problem is formulated by asking the question, “How do re-establish ma’at in a world that is full of isfet?”

Works Cited

Abt, Theodor and Erik Hornung. Knowledge for the Afterlife: The Egyptian Amduat – A Quest for Immortality. Zurich: Living Human Heritage Publications, 2003.

Assmann, Jan. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Trans. David Lorton. Ithaca and London: Cornell U. P., 2005.

--- The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs. Trans. Andrew Jenkins. Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 2003.

--- The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. Trans. David Lorton. Ithaca and London: Cornell U. P., 2001.

Faraone, Christopher A. and Teeter, Emily. “Egyptian Maat and Hesiodic Métis”. Mnemosyne. Vol. 57, p.177-208, 2004.

Mercatante, Anthony and Steven Bianchi. Who’s Who in Egyptian Mythology. NY: Barnes & Noble Publishing, 1998.

Losing Our Myths

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:59:00 +0000

I’ve just re-subscribed to the Chronicle of Higher Education (and I have no idea why I let it lapse, it feeds my brain in all the right spots) and have been enjoying a backwards read through my favorite section of the publication, The Chronicle Review, sort of The New Yorker for college educators (oh, relax already; I read The New Yorker, too).

Anyway, in the November 25, 2011 edition of the CR, Pitzer College sociology Professor Phil Zuckerman’s “Taking Leave of Religion” (subscription required) article describes a growing trend, apostasy. He writes that there isn’t a lot of research on apostasy or the leaving of one’s religion. He interviewed 87 apostates about why they became non-religious.

Quoting from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s Religious Landscape Survey, he notes that 16% of Americans are religiously “unaffiliated” and 17% claim “none” as their religion. These numbers are significantly higher than in previous years. And one of Zuckerman’s predictions is that these numbers will continue to increase. [Geeky fan side note: he doesn’t mention how many Americans listed “Jedi” as their religion, but I checked the survey, and Jedi isn’t listed. It’s bigger in other countries, like in the UK.]

Zuckerman’s writes that what he learned in doing this research is that “Religion is not universal or necessary.” CG Jung wrote about the psyche’s transcendent function, which many people cite as a reason for religiosity, but this can of course operate outside of organized religion or any form of theism. During my years of mythological studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, there was often a conversation about “people falling away from their myths (religions)” and wondering what would replace that lost faith. Zuckerman is saying that we don’t need anything to replace them and in fact “many [non-religious] people prefer it that way.” More generally, though, from a mythologist’s point of view, a lot religion doesn’t have to be replaced by another religion or religious practice, specifically. We tend to talk more about another mythology replacing a lost religion, and not all personal mythologies are religious, but they do inform a personal worldview.

I know this where I should be prompted to write a lengthy explanation as to why I’m an atheist, but it’s really not so complicated: I’m a scientist and I’m a lesbian. I’ve found that while one is a profession and the other a biological feature, neither is compatible with being a Baptist (the religion on both sides of my family). Or religious. End of story.

I have a good friend at work who comes from a Catholic family, is sternly non-religious now, but has to deal with an overly-religious mother (and truly Irish Catholic, her mother is an Irish immigrant). I lent her my DVD of Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God”-- a one-woman staged monologue about her quest for religious knowledge. When she returned it, our conversation was full of some of the hilarious punch lines (“Have you READ that book?” “Deepak Chopra is full of shit!” At least the Scientologists know to give you a personality test before telling you about Xenu, the intergalactic overlord.”). Then there’s Sweeney’s impressions of her slightly dim mother, “This doesn’t mean you’ve stopped going to church now, does it?”

Interestingly, when I was out this morning getting a Los Angeles Times Sunday newspaper, I heard an NPR story that featured quotes from the current batch of Republican Presidential contenders and their supporters talking about President Obama’s war on religious freedom. I don’t want to go into all of the reason why I find the notion ridiculous, but check out the story if you’re strong of stomach and can handle the kind of reasoning that pushes why religious-based health charities should not fund contraception or that LGBT rights is the biggest threat to American religious freedom today. Going back to the Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey, 56% of American adults who leave or switch their religious affiliation cite being “Unhappy with teachings on abortion/homosexuality” as a reason why they made the change.

All right, I’ve got to go and prepare for a daylong class I’m teaching in about a week. Be sure to check out Phil Zuckerman’s terrific list of 65 Songs for Atheists and Agnostics.

On the Nature of Four: Jung's Quaternity, Mandalas, the Stone, and the Self

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:31:00 +0000

This is a student paper I wrote back in 2005 for Glen Slater's "Jungian Depth Psychology" course. Glen's course was/is part of Pacifica's Graduate Institute's Mythological Studies program curriculum. What is odd about this paper is that it's taken on a life of it's own on the internet. I uploaded it to a bulletin board a few years back and since then it has appeared on a number of websites without my permission. If you do a Google search using "Jung" and "quarternity" or "mandala" this piece pops up. On many sites, they attribute the author to a "Carbonek" which is a handle I used in a particular online community, and anyone familiar with Charles Williams' Grail cycle of poetry will recognize the name. Oddly, the versions I've seen online don't include Ellenberger in the Work Cited, which is a big omission. Recently, I've found it in in places like CarlJungDepthPsychology with no attribute to me but authorship being claimed by the blog owner. Wow, lazy and jerky.

Below is the entire paper and all mistakes are mine.

-->

On the Nature of Four: Jung’s Quarternity, Mandalas, the Stone and the Self

During a difficult period in his life in which he withdrew from his teaching position and devoted much of his time investigating the nature of the unconscious, Jung frequently painted or drew mandalas, but only learned to understand the mandala symbology many years after he had begun creating the images. He understood only that he felt compelled to make the figures and that they comforted him, “Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: “Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation”. And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions” (MDR 195-196).

Mandalas are defined by Jung as magic circles, containing certain design motifs that he found to have a universal nature, across cultures and across time, whether they are the transiently created mandalas from Tibet, sand paintings from the American southwest, or illustrations from ancient, medieval, and Renaissance alchemical works.

Jung believes that his mandalas were “cryptograms” of the state of the self as it was on the day the mandala was created. Each mandala that he spontaneously created was different from their predecessors and the paintings were precious to him, he “guarded them like pearls” (MDR 196). He also believes that mandalas appear in connection with dreams, chaotic psychic states of disorientation or panic (CW 9i 645) as they did in Jung’s own life, and that a function of the mandalas is to bring order out of chaos. Edinger agrees, “Quaternity, mandala images emerge in times of psychic turmoil and convey a sense of stability and rest. The image of the fourfold nature of the psyche provides stabilizing orientation. It gives one a glimpse of static eternity.” (Edinger 182).

Jung eventually came to believe that the mandala itself is an image of “squaring the circle” and as such could be called an archetype of wholeness (CW 9i 715).

Jung’s continuing practice of drawing and painting mandalas eventually leads him to understand them as symbols of the Self, that they are informed by archetypal forces in the unconscious that the artist is not aware of during the creation of the work.

Working with mandalas, Jung eventually realizes that like the designs he was drawing, his own life had been a series of meandering paths that bent back upon each other and yet always led back to the center. The mandala symbolically represents that path to the center, to individuation (MDR 196). Jung’s later practice of having his patients to spontaneously create mandalas is a prime example of Jung’s own explorations into the unconscious becoming effective tools in his psychiatric practice. In “Concerning Mandala Symbolism” several mandalas painted by some of Jung’s patients are reproduced and his commentary on each shows the universality of the symbolism across the patients’ cultural differences. He doesn’t go into the clinical details of the patients’ therapy but notes that “a rearranging of the personality is involved, a kind of new centering” over time as the mandala-creating process continued. (CW 9i 645). Jung’s reasoning for the similarity in mandala symbols created by his patients is that these symbols and images come from the collective unconscious and are therefore archetypes, or primordial images, which reside in each of us (CW 9i 711).

Jung also found that mandalas created by individuals often contain motifs related to the number four, which he terms a “quaternity”. The symbol might be “in the form of a cross, a star, a square, an octagon, etc. A form of this symbol is frequently found in alchemical texts as the “squaring the circle” or quadratura circuli (CW 9i 713). Jung thought that “squaring the circle” was a “problem that greatly exercised medieval minds” and this was also a “symbol of the opus alchymicum because it breaks down the original chaotic unity into the four elements and then combines them again in a higher unity” (CW 12 165). However, Jung is not the first to write about the symbolism of the quaternity as Ellenberger reports:

“In France Fabre d’Olivet had previously written about the same subject in the nineteenth century. However, Jung was certainly the first to relate it so closely to the process of individuation. The mandala is a circular figure ornamented with symbols that is generally divided into four sections. It is well known in India and Tibet, where it was used for centuries by ascetics and mystics to aid in contemplation” (712).

The fourfold symmetry of the quaternity eventually led Jung to study alchemical works and in these he found many examples, such the four main steps in the alchemical process: nigredo (black), albedo (white), citrinalis (yellow), and rubedo (red) (Henderson and Sherwood 5). Alchemical processes have fourfold properties such as hot, cold, wet, and dry while all materials are said to be combinations of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. He found that even the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone had a four-fold nature, “The lapis is called a “sacred rock” and is described as having four parts (CW 9ii 143). Elias Ashmole, in his Theatricum Chemicum Britannicum, an 18^th century collection of English alchemical texts, even describes four different Philosopher’s Stones: Mineral, Vegetable, Magical, and Angelical, each with a different functionality (Edinger 264).

The alchemical arts have a dual nature, one which may be described as external, embodied and practical, and another which is internal, spiritual, and abstract (Henderson and Sherwood 7). While there were certainly those who practiced alchemy in a physical way, that is, with laboratory equipment with the goal of transmuting a base material into gold (chrysopoeia), or developing an elixir of immortality (spagyrics), it is clear that the metaphor of a laboratory process was more valuable to alchemists as a way to describe what was a psychological and spiritual practice in an attempt to improve themselves as human beings (Henderson and Sherwood 7). Jung "sees a projection of the process of individuation in the steps performed by alchemists" and "devoted many years to the psychological interpretation of alchemical symbology" (Ellenberger 719).

Edinger also sees the alchemical association between self and the lapis, “The goal of the individuation process is to achieve a conscious relation to the Self. The goal of the alchemical procedure was most frequently represented by the Philosophers’ Stone. Thus the Philosophers’ Stone is a symbol for the Self.” (Edinger 261).

The study of alchemy was essential for Jung’s understanding of the way to the Self, “Alchemy … made it possible for me to describe the individuation process at least in its essential aspects” (CW 14 792). And Jung notes that while medieval alchemists didn’t discover the structure of matter, they did discover the structure of the psyche, even if they themselves did not understand what it meant (CW 14 150).

We find a wide spectrum of four-fold symbols and systems in religion, myth, history, science and culture. There are four winds (Boreas, Eurus, Notus, Zephyrus), four seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall), four directions (north, east, south, west), four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), four letters in the sacred name of God (YHVH), four ancient ages (gold, silver, bronze, iron), and four medieval humours: sanguine (blood), choleric (yellow bile), phlegmatic (phlegm), melancholic (black bile) to name a few. DNA is composed of four nucleotide bases, there are sixty-four triplet codons in the genetic code, and twenty common amino acids as a result of translating the genetic code.

Adding a fourth to an already established three has a transformational effect. In geometry, a fourth point transforms the two-dimensional triad or triangle into a figure with depth, the cube and the tetrahedron (a form lapis). As the mathematician Michael Schneider observes, “There are always four ways (another quaternity) to look at any three-dimensional structure: as points, lines, areas, and volumes, or as corners, edges, faces, and from the center outward (63). Ellenberger notes that “The quaternity can appear as a geometric figure of square or sometimes rectangular shape, or it will have some relation wit the number four: four persons, four trees, and so on. Often it is a matter of completing a triadic figure with a fourth term, thus making it into a quaternity” (712). Jung searches for the quaternity when a trinity is encountered, “Jung over and over again in his writings returns to the alchemical question: “Three are here but where is the fourth?” (Edinger 189). The completion of the quaternity is seen frequently in alchemical works, even whimsically, “All things do live in the three/ But in the four they merry be” (quoted in CW 12 125).

One Trinity that was completed in the last century, with the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven (defined as dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XII), transformed the Christian Trinity into a Quaternity, and one that Jung believes was achieved by the overwhelming insistence of the Catholic masses (CW 9ii, 142). “… the quaternity is the sine qua non of divine birth and consequently of the inner life of the trinity. Thus circle and quaternity on one side and the threefold rhythm on the other interpenetrate so that each is contained in the other” (CW 11 125). Jung believes that this was the most significant religious event since the reformation (quoted in EJ 321).

Another quaternity that Jung develops is that of the four psychic functions: sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuiting. “The essential function of sensation is to establish that something exists, thinking tells us what it means, feeling what its value is, and intuition surmises whence it comes and whither it goes. (CW 6 983). Sensation and intuition he terms irrational types with thinking and feeling are rational types. Jung diagrams the four functions in a basic symbol of the quaternity, as a cross with the irrational functions at right angles with the ration functions. Along with what he terms the two general attitudes, extroversion and introversion, Jung feels that these now eight types provide a useful framework for these psychological concepts (CW 6 987). Jung’s suggestion that his psychological typology could be compared with a trigonomic net or a crystallographic axial system suggests the lapis, or Philosopher’s Stone once again circling back to alchemical concepts (CW 6 987).

During the years that Jung spends drawing and painting mandalas, he comes to understand that “the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self” (MDR 196). If there is one concept about the development of the self, of individuation that is important for those of us in the 21^stcentury caught in a Cartesian-Newtonian notion of reality is that “there is no linear evolution” for this process; that the process is one of circling, rotating, orbiting, circumambulating around the center – we must square the circle. We must create our own mandalas and go where they lead us. As much as we might wish for a clearly delineated way, here is no straight line to follow:

"From the circle and quaternity motif is derived the symbol of the geometrically formed crystal and the wonder-working stone. From here analogy formation leads on to the city, castle, church, house, and vessel. Another variant is the wheel (rota). The former motif emphasizes the ego's containment in the greater dimension of the self; the latter emphasizes the rotation which also appears as a ritual circumambulation. Psychologically, it denotes concentration on and preoccupation with a centre" (CW 9ii 352).

The circumambulation Jung describes, the process of “squaring the circle” or “circling the square” has an uncertainty built into the journey: do we ever achieve individuation or is it a goal that is ever just out of reach? It is important to take the path that the mandala represents, to revolve around the center, to rotate near and around the center, and hopefully, move towards the self. As Jung remarks “… the self is our life’s goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality…” (CW 7 404).

Works Cited

Edinger, Edward F. Ego and Archetype. Boston: Shambala Publications, 1992.

Ellenberger, Henri E. The Discovery of the Unconscious. NY: Basic Books, 1970.

Henderson, Joseph L. and Dyane N. Sherwood. Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis. NY: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 9. part i, 2^nd edition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 6, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 12. 2^nd edition, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 13, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 14, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.

--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. 2^nd edition.Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 7, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966.

--- The Essential Jung: Selected Writings. ed. Anthony Storr. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.

--- Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Revised edition. ed. Aniela Jaffe. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Schneider, Michael S. A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The

Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science. NY: Harper Perennial, 1995.

Human Genre Project

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:44:00 +0000

Combine all 23 pairs of human chromosomes with short writings and poetry and what do you get? The Human Genre Project. The website is a simple and elegant page showing all of the chromosomes in order. Hover your mouse over a chromosome and a list of titles appears below. Click on a chromosome and the list becomes static and easier to click through.

I've not read all of the pieces and new ones are being added all the time. One piece I really like is "Meet Me at the Speed of Light" by Laura-Grey Street over on Chromosome 1. On Chromosome 17 you'll find a short but tough essay on breast cancer (BRCA1 is located on Chromosome 17) called "Knowing Who I Am" by Heather Fineman.

The Human Genre Project is taking submissions. Check out the "Contribute" link (you thought it was about monetary donations, didn't you?).

The Human Genre Project is funded through the ESRC Genomics Policy Research Forum in the UK, an organization that explores social issues and genomics.

Ardi! Ardi! Ardi! Ardipithecus ramidus finally revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:40:00 +0000

You would have to be away from all electronic and print sources of news to miss the furor about Ardipithecus ramidus this week. The press releases and conferences hit the news cycle on Thursday followed by the publication of eleven (!) Ar. ramidus related papers in the weekly journal Science.

So what's the deal with Ardi? She is a partial skeleton of a hominid species ancestral to us and older than Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis partial skeleton by a over a million years. Tim White and his team discovered "Ardi" in 1992, finding a molar and a lower jaw, which they published in 1994. Working on this find and the area where the partial skeleton was found in Aramis, Ethiopia, it took 15 years to complete. Instead of publishing a stream of papers as discoveries were made, White made the decision to hold off until a complete story could be told.

The wait has been worth it, considering the amount of information that the extended international team has been able to provide. Several ideas about human evolution will have to be reconsidered based on this species' attributes.

Ardipithecus ramidus lived in the trees but was also "intermediately" bipedal, based on analysis of pelvis, spine, legs, and feet. For the first time, a hominid species was found with a large opposable big toe, allowing for tree limb grasping. A theory about the development of bipedialism describes the needed walking trait in an African savannah environment, but Ardi walked even though she was also arboreal, living in a woodland environment.

Yet, Ardipithecus ramidus did not knuckle-walk, like chimpanzees or gorillas, the wrist and hand bone structure is not strong enough to support that kind of movement. "Ardi" is not chimpanzee-like, which is how most theorists described our earliest hominid ancestor.

This is the find of a generation and I'm sure there will be much more analysis and commentary in the years to come.

Great interactive site for general audiences can be found over at the Discovery Channel, which is a companion to the TV special.

Science has the scientific papers and news articles available with a free registration -- I recommend doing this because you can read the original papers yourself. There is also a good 10-minute video interviewing Tim White and explaining some of the significant features of "Ardi." I also highly recommend science-writer Ann Gibbons' NewsFocus article here entitled "A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled."

I have one complaint about Science's handling of the general interest articles -- the introductory article prefacing the eleven scientific articles is entitled "Light on the Origin of Man" written by Brooks Hanson. The use of such sexist language in a major science journal in the year 2009 (and introducing such a major scientific discovery) is unbelievably crass. The language choice may have been unconscious, but it's stupid. I expect dumb headlines like the ones from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times and we got them ("New Discovery Turns Evolution on its Head") at first, and then they were changed soon after. But Science? Ironically, the partial skeleton described (like "Lucy" before her) is female.

Lev Grossman's "The Magician's" mini-review

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:42:00 +0000

Just finished Lev Grossman's absorbing new novel The Magicians. I don't want to be too revealing about the storyline, but I found the story to be an homage to a number of well-known fantasy stories: the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter series are the most obvious. But I detect some LOTR motifs and a few from the Arthurian legends. Quests abound, but this is not a kid's story; it's rather adult (yes I've read the HP books and know how dark they get as they progress). But dark is different from adult content.

The characters are young adults with all the issues that the age group experiences, but add some very intense magic, angst about love and sex, battling an odd assortment of creatures, and a really big theme of loss -- I found it an intense read. Not a light story but rather melancholy throughout, with a protagonist who is sometimes very hard to relate to or like. I need to re-read it again at a later date, but at the moment I'm not convinced by the ending, which seemed both too pat and improbable given the previous set of events in the story.

For readers who enjoy contemporary mythological fiction, particularly the works of Charles deLint, the story will resonate. deLint has written a number of works centering on managing tremendous loss, set in a mythologically-active, magical landscape. But I wonder if people will be distracted by the obvious HP and Narnia motifs in The Magicians. Read it and ping me about your observations.

Apollo 11 Anniversary -- 40 years since first Moon walk

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:12:00 +0000

I was 11 years old when the Apollo 11 mission headed towards the Moon. I recall that the night of July 20, 1969 was warm in Los Angeles when my Dad called us in from outside (we were allowed to stay outside later than normal during the summer -- plus, it was hot and we had no air-conditioning in the house) to watch the TV broadcast from the Moon. I couldn't quite make out what I was seeing on the TV screen -- the contrast on the image was high. So, it took me a little while to recognize the outline of Neil Armstrong's suited body carrying the boxy EVA pack on his back.

People were on the Moon. Walking on the Moon. Not just taking pictures of it, actually walking on the Moon. This was so exciting to me and the event is one of those signposts that stand out in my memory. I often try to reconstruct my path to becoming a scientist and watching the first Moon walk is one of those moments, one of those points along the way. Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote extensively about the space program, in particular the Apollo 8 mission, when sent back the first photos of the Earth hanging in space (the Big Blue Marble). Campbell felt that "Earthrise" was the beginning of a new myth.

Commenting on the 10th anniversary of the first Moon walk, Campbell reflects, "Men stood on the moon and looked back -- and by television we were able to look back with them -- to see earthrise. That is the symbol that enabled us to feel the truth of the discovery Copernicus made four and a quarter centuries ago."

(1979 interview with the NY Times, a copy of which is available here).

Campbell wrote quite a bit about the mythology of space exploration. Here is one more example: "The knowledge of space is the knowledge of our lives. We're born from space. It was from space that the Big Bang came that sent forth galaxies, and out of the galaxies, solar systems. The planet we are on is a little pebble in one of these things, and we have grown out of the earth of this pebble. This is the fantastic mythology that's waiting for somebody to write poems about." (Myths of Light xix).

You can watch a "replay" of the Apollo 11 mission on Twitter @ReliveApollo11. Nasa has paid to have TV images from the Moon restored (the original tapes were erased and reused, so the only images are from contemporary TV broadcasts, which varied greatly in quality. You can watch the restored footage here. Explore the surface of the Moon on Google.

I don't quite feel 11 again, mostly because I think the original sense of awe is difficult to revisit, especially 40 years later. But, I feel some measure of that wonder when I think about the fact that humans once walked, jumped, skipped, golfed, and drove on the lunar surface. Perhaps it will happen again and perhaps it will be as a waystation on the way to the next planet in the series, Mars. Then the footstep below would be in red Martian regolith.

That would be amazing.

Rita Levi Montalcini Turns 100 April 22

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:23:00 +0000

I saw this news blip on Yahoo news and had to post it. Levi Montalcini's accomplishments began under the restrictions of Mussolini's ideology. As a Jew, Levi Montalcini could not practice medicine (she had just graduated from medical school) or work at the university. Undaunted, she created a home laboratory and continued her work in basic neurobiology. She moved to the United States after the war, and there she discovered what is now known as nerve growth factor (NGF), a small protein that stimulates the growth of nerve cells.

Nature has this extended profile "One Hundred Years of Rita" and describes her as the first Nobel Prize scientist to reach this life milestone. Great article.

The Nobel Prize site has a number of Levi Montalcini resources, including an autobiography, her Nobel lecture, and the original press release in 1986 announcing her prize, which was shared with Stanley Cohen, the discoverer of epidermal growth factor (EGF).

Photo from Nobel Prize site (1986).

(AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca) 2009

Darwin Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:07:00 +0000

I'm currently spending all of my free time working on my doctoral dissertation but I wanted to celebrate Darwin Day. Today is the 200th annivesary of the Charles Darwin's birth and you will no doubt see a lot about this in the media. If you would like to look at the many Darwin Day activities going on all over the world, and perhaps find one in your area to attend, a great place to start is here. If you haven't read any of Darwin's works, today is a very good day to begin, and you can do it for free online.

For now, I will leave you with the last paragraph of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, also known as the "Tangled Bank" passage:

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Darwin, C. R. 1872. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 6th edition; with additions and corrections.

Rethinking the Wrinkling: Key Genes Cause Aging

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:29:00 +0000

All of those "anti-oxidants" we have been striving to add to our diets may have no effect at all.

clipped from www.sciam.com

It afflicts every creature on this planet, and everyone dreams of an antidote. But even after decades of research, aging largely remains a mystery. Now new research findings suggest there is a good reason for this impasse: scientists may have been thinking about the causes of aging all wrong. Instead of being the result of an accumulation of genetic and cellular damage, new evidence suggests that aging may occur when genetic programs for development go awry.

The idea that stress and reactive forms of oxygen—“free radicals” that are the normal by-products of metabolism—cause aging has dominated the field for 50 years. Studies on the worm Caenorhabditis elegans have shown that reducing exposure to reactive oxygen species increases life span, and worms that have been bred to live longer are also more resistant to stress. But few studies have definitively linked oxidative damage to altered cellular function.

92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew survey finds

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:03:00 +0000

Here is the link to the Pew Study: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

clipped from www.latimes.com

Americans overwhelmingly believe in God and consider religion an important part of their lives, even as many shun weekly worship services, according to a national survey released today that also found great diversity in religious beliefs and practices.

Ninety-two percent of those interviewed for the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey said they believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, and 58% said they pray privately every day. But California, like other states along the country's two coasts, resisted the prevailing national tendencies.

Californians are less likely than other Americans to consider religion "very important" in their lives or to be "absolutely certain" in their belief in God.

Californians pray less than others in many parts of the country. They are less inclined to take the word of God literally. And they are ready to embrace "more than one true way" of interpreting their religious teachings.

California Challenges Genetic Testing Firms' Claims

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:16:00 +0000

The state had been investigating consumer complaints for a while. GenomeWeb News notes that California is following a similar action by New York, Steve Murphy at Gene Sherpas has an acerbic take on the situation which he followed up with a detailed and reasoned post. I went to the websites of both 23andMe and Navigenics, two companies that have reportedly received letters, and couldn't find anything that tells Californian consumers that they cannot use their services without a doctor's prescription.

clipped from www.latimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO --
California health regulators have dealt a blow to direct-to-consumer genetic testing start-ups by demanding that 13 companies halt sales in the state until they prove they have met quality and reliability standards.

The Department of Public Health sent the cease-and-desist letters last week, after an investigation spurred by consumer complaints about the tests' accuracy and costs, a department spokeswoman said Monday.

The department said it would not identify the companies involved until it confirmed they had received the letters. It said they all advertised on the Internet. Two of the best-known companies to offer consumer genetic tests, Navigenics Inc. and 23andMe Inc., both confirmed receiving the letters.

Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:43:00 +0000

See the post below this one for a look at a recently published and lucid evaluation of the state of high-school biology education in the United States.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”
The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”
Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.
Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

Evolution in American High Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:04:00 +0000

The new issue of PLOS Biology is online. For those of you not familiar with the PLOS journals, the Public Library of Science is a collection of peer-reviewed scientific journals that are freely available online. You can browse the list here.

In the new June 2008 issue is an article describing the current state of teaching high school biology in the U.S. As many of you are already aware, American high-school biology classes, are the crucible in which the current conflict between science and religion is most importantly being waged. While it is illegal to teach creationism or it's renamed twin, intelligent design, in public schools, this has actually not stopped the practice. The article in PLOS Biology provides some interesting data as to why:

About 1 in 6 High-school Biology teachers are young-Earth creationists. The article also shows in other data that some teachers feel community pressure to either gloss over or skip the concept of evolution entirely. 25% of teachers surveyed included creationism or intelligent design in their course curriculum and "nearly half agreed or strongly agreed that they teach creationism as a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species.”

Regardless of the outcome of high profile cases, such as the Kitzmiller decision, the message is not getting to teachers, or they are just ignoring it, "These findings strongly suggest that victory in the courts is not enough for the scientific community to ensure that evolution is included in high school science courses."

And it's clear that some teachers have had no education in evolutionary biology (it's not clear from the article whether any of the teachers surveyed would welcome one). The recommendation of the paper's authors is an educational standard for biology teachers that includes evolutionary biology, "Our study suggests that requiring all teachers to complete a course in evolutionary biology would have a substantial impact on the emphasis on evolution and its centrality in high school biology courses."

One thing is clear, bringing a personal belief in young-Earth creationism to the biology classroom, to mix an ancient mythology with modern science, is not a design of any intelligence that will increase American students' science literacy. Next year is a double Darwin anniversary: the 200th year of his birth and the 150th year of the publication of The Origin of the Species. It should be the perfect opportunity for high-school teachers to engage their students in the history of evolutionary theory.

Want to take bets that, in the U.S, it won't be?

Instant update: Only 1 hour after posting this, I found a related story at the NY Times.

Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404K at Auction

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

How's your German?

The media loves to invoke "the culture war" between science and religion, which in this country means evolutionary biology and Christianity. Neither is mentioned in this letter.

The article mentions that Einstein said he fell out of his religion at age 12 and "never looked back" but he still seem to experience the numinous: "But he never lost his religious feeling about the apparent order of the universe or his intuitive connection with its mystery, which he savored. “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility,” he once said."

And this statement is even clearer: “If something is in me that can be called religious,” he wrote in another letter, in 1954, “then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it.”

clipped from www.nytimes.com

From the grave, Albert Einstein poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion this week.

A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.
The Associated Press quoted Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, as describing the unidentified buyer as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that that entails.” Among the unsuccessful bidders, according to The Guardian newspaper, was Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist.

NYT Book Review: Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:06:00 +0000

Masha Gessen's new book is part memoir and part medical investigative thriller -- by chronicling her own story, Gessen lets us imagine what information obtained from a genetic screen can do to us psychologically, emotionally, and in some cases, physically, once we have that knowledge.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

One of the wonders of the genome is how it enables us to time-travel, both backward and forward. Scribbled within it are clues to our ancestry, which can give us an emboldening sense of continuity, coherence, place — how marvelous to imagine ourselves the sons of Levi, the daughters of African queens! But scrawled within it, too, are clues about our future, which can be downright terrifying. Rather than expand our sense of possibilities, they foreshorten them. There are dread mutations slumbering in our cells. From our genes, we learn how we may die.

Eleven years after her mother died of breast cancer, Masha Gessen, a Moscow-based journalist and the author of the fine family memoir “Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace,” tested positive for a BRCA1 mutation, which disproportionately afflicts Ashkenazi Jews and significantly increases the risk of dying young.

Happy DNA Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:21:00 +0000

From the official website: " National DNA Day is a unique day when students, teachers and the public can learn more about genetics and genomics! It was created to commemorate the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, and the discovery of DNA's double helix."

This is a great website to learn more about the human genome project -- the site has webcasts, presentations, and educational resources and links to even more information.

Senate passes bill baning genetic discrimination

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:11:00 +0000

Finally, it looks like GINA will become law. Why is this important? In this new age of personal genomics, it's incredibly important that individuals are not discriminated against based on their DNA. It might be personally informative to go to DNA Direct and buy one of their direct-to-consumer disease tests, but what would happen to you if your insurance company got a hold of the results? Or your employer?

clipped from www.latimes.com

WASHINGTON --
The vast promise of an era of personalized medicine based on genetic testing long has been haunted by a disturbing possibility: The same data that could alert people to serious medical problems might be used to deny them jobs or insurance coverage.

But Thursday, the Senate voted 95 to 0 to outlaw such discrimination, with the House expected to add its approval quickly.

The bill, which President Bush has agreed to sign, does more than protect those who undergo genetic testing: It marks a significant milestone in the effort to develop a 21st century architecture of laws to govern the revolutionary changes sweeping science and medicine.

"It's the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said. "We made sure today that our laws reflect the [scientific] advances we are making."

America's Favorite Books is a Mythological Text: The Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:14:00 +0000

Somehow I'm not surprised by this outcome. But one really has to wonder if the people who chose the Bible has read it -- most people haven't. So, could it be the most favorite book American's haven't actually read?

clipped from news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - When it comes to literary pursuits in the United States most people agree on at least one thing -- the most popular book is the Bible, according to a new survey.

It came in first in a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults but the second choice in the survey was not as clear cut.

"While the Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite book," Harris said in a statement announcing the results.

Men chose J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and women selected Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book, according to the online poll.

But the second choice for 18- to 31-year-olds was J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, while 32- to 43-year-olds named Stephen King's "The Stand" and Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons."

Myth and Violence Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:53:00 +0000

Anne and I spent Friday and Saturday at the Myth and Violence Conference in Santa Barbara. This is the annual Myth conference organized by The Foundation of Mythological Studies and co-sponsored by Pacifica Graduate Institute and Spring Journal. The conference does continue through today, but we both needed today off as we'd already taken in a lot in the first two days.

If you don't see the connection between myth and violence, consider that most of the world's conflicts right now have a religious basis, which means people are at war over their mythologies.

Highlights were Chris Hedges, who spoke intelligently and eloquently about his experiences as a war correspondent for the NY Times, spending 20 years reporting armed conflict around the globe. Having an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School (though never ordained) has also given him the perspective of a religion scholar and his two latest works, American Fascists and I Don't Believe in Atheists has earned him the sharp enmity of both the New Religious Right and the New Atheists (he writes that both groups have developed a fascist ideology that threatens American democracy). It's important to note that the New Religious Right is a Christian group that the U.S. hasn't seen before -- they aren't the current Evangelicals or Fundamentalists we are used to, these are Dominionists, who are working for one goal: a completely Christian Government in the US (the Bible would be the basis of our legal system, etc....). Scary stuff.

Sarah Hussain, a Pakastani-American poet read some of her works. Very powerful and moving. She has also edited an anthology called Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality.

Psychoanalyst and religions scholar Lionel Corbett talked about the spiritual roots of war. He also psychoanalyzed GW Bush for a bit, noting that with only a couple of exceptions, all American Presidents had terrible childhoods (fearful, abusive parent, abandoned, etc...). Corbett suggested that a President who is so willing to go to war is enacting a revenge scenario to compensate for such a childhood.

Psychoanalyst and Pacifica faculty member Aaron Kipnis talked about the Psychopathic Nation, describing symptoms that sound very much like the current state of the U.S. He described six stages to a psychopathic society:

1. There is a positive regard for each others' differences.
2. An "other" is created. Differences are articulated and highlighted.
3. The dominant view thinks the "other" might be dangerous (pathologize the "other").
4. Dominant group is afraid of minority and isolates them. Creates gulags.
5. Bridges are destroyed (between the groups).
6. The holocaust stage -- penetrates the gulags and genocide takes place.

We were left to contemplate at what stage the U.S. has achieved so far.

We both attended sessions on juvenile offenders, violence in American society, violence in Japanese society, prison issues, the war in Iraq, America's Titanic Complex, the Jonesboro, Arkansas school shooting (1995), experiences in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, scapegoating and American violence, psychopathy and training of American soldiers, and non-violent struggle.

There was a lot to consider and think about, taking today off seemed prudent.

Vatican updates list of sins

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:37:00 +0000

This is interesting, the Vatican is literally trying to drag biotechnology into it's mythic shadow. This has actually been going on since the first recombinant DNA experiments were done a few decades ago (the potential for human cloning, using fetal tissue to establish stem cell lines, for example).

"Genetic manipulation" has it's own mythic shadow to deal with than trying to add it the one distributed by the Vatican's network. In biology, this process of engulfment is known as phagocytosis.

clipped from news.yahoo.com

VATICAN CITY - In olden days, the deadly sins included lust, gluttony and greed. Now, the Catholic Church says pollution, mind-damaging drugs and genetic experiments are on its updated thou-shalt-not list. Also receiving fresh attention by the Vatican was social injustice, along the lines of the age-old maxim: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer."

In the Vatican's latest update on how God's law is being violated in today's world, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, was asked by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano what, in his opinion, are the "new sins."

He cited "violations of the basic rights of human nature" through genetic manipulation, drugs that "weaken the mind and cloud intelligence," and the imbalance between the rich and the poor.

Too Bad Joe Campbell Never Got to See This

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:26:00 +0000

Joseph Campbell saw the first photo taken by Apollo 8 astronauts of the earth in space (Earthrise) as an image of a newly-emerging mythology. Here is a photo that could only have been taken from much further away, Mars. NASA released an image of the earth and the moon in one picture, as seen from Mars. It was taken by the HiRISE Instrument on October 3rd, 2007.

This is an image of Earth and the Moon, acquired at 5:20 a.m. MST on 3 October 2007, at a range of 142 million kilometers, which gives the HiRISE image a scale of 142 km/pixel and an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a Moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disks of the Earth and Moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth/Moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.
On the Earth image we can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features. These clouds are so bright, compared with the Moon, that they are saturated in the HiRISE images. In fact, the RED-filter image was almost completely saturated, the blue-green image had significant saturation, and the brightest clouds were saturated in the IR image. This color image required a fair amount of processing to make a nice-looking release.

Beautiful!

Synthetic Genome: Signed Sealed, Decoded

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:17:00 +0000

The NY Times writer fell for the "decoded" trope as most non-scientists do: the genome was sequenced, not decoded. The genetic "code" was "decoded" in the 1960s and there is no longer a "code" to "break."

However, this achievement is a benchmark and seems to point the way for truly artificial life built from the bottom up.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

You were expecting poetry, perhaps? The secret messages hidden in J. Craig Venter’s synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are Dr. Venter’s name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.

Dr. Venter announced last week in the journal Science that his team had become the first to synthesize the complete DNA of a bacterium. He revealed that the genome had five “watermarks,” sequences of genetic code that would spell words using the letters for the amino acids that would be produced by the DNA.
Wired Science reported Monday that it had ferreted out the messages, with help from government scientists. One watermark said “VenterInstitvte,” using the unusual spelling because there is no amino acid represented by the letter “u.”
The other messages were CraigVenter, HamSmith, GlassandClyde and CindiandClyde for his co-authors Hamilton O. Smith, Clyde A. Hutchison III, John I. Glass and Cynthia Andrews-Pfannkoch. A Venter spokeswoman confirmed them.
In 2003, scientists from Icon Genetics, a German biotechnology company, engineered the plant Arabidopsis thaliana to contain a line from Virgil’s “Georgics,” with the meaning “Neither can every soil bear every fruit.”

International Consortium Announces the 1000 Genomes Project

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:12:00 +0000

Major sequencing effort will produce the most detailed map of human genetic variation to support disease studies.

clipped from www.genome.gov

Bethesda, Md., Tues., Jan.22, 2008 — An international research consortium today announced the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious effort that will involve sequencing the genomes of at least a thousand people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation. The project will receive major support from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, the Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen (BGI Shenzhen) in China and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Drawing on the expertise of multidisciplinary research teams, the 1000 Genomes Project will develop a new map of the human genome that will provide a view of biomedically relevant DNA variations at a resolution unmatched by current resources. As with other major human genome reference projects, data from the 1000 Genomes Project will be made swiftly available to the worldwide scientific community through freely accessible public databases.

"The 1000 Genomes Project will examine the human genome at a level of detail that no one has done before," said Richard Durbin, Ph.D., of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who is co-chair of the consortium. "Such a project would have been unthinkable only two years ago. Today, thanks to amazing strides in sequencing technology, bioinformatics and population genomics, it is now within our grasp. So we are moving forward to build a tool that will greatly expand and further accelerate efforts to find more of the genetic factors involved in human health and disease."