Orion's Be(e): A Tale Retold

Here is an excerpt taken from the essay, "Orion's Be(e)" published January 2, 2010 to MYTHOPOETRY SCHOLAR annual e-zine.

God’s bounty lights up and overfills the Book of Nature with a secret phrase. How tell again to a new generation of souls the story of pure places? How share again the mystery scene of the events not enacted in the dimensions of space but from within the realm of living images fulfilling themselves in a temporized sphere of their own?

...these are timeless shapes which neither live nor die, they are representations of indestructible, psychological matters. Lke in fermentation, these images of psyche die and rot and become, according to Kerenyi a practical formula devised by the honey-man, Aristaios in a sacrifice at that moment of greatest fermentation. This sacrifice is to Zeus Ikmaios, the god of moisture and bringer of dew maidens. Dew is honey-mead, a poetry writ with the strewing seed of gods.

The shafts of Artemis which slay Orion are gentler ones than those which strike Persephone’s son by Zeus Katachthonious, Zagreus. A great hunter, too, the thunder bolt of Zeus announces the moment when gods, once more, eat gods and return our reflections to the nonhuman realm of non-experience where we are to realize the many makings that go into the reflections which constellate our words.


...to read this essay, "Orion's Be(e)" in its entirety or to read other essays in the premier issue of MYTHOPOETRY SCHOLAR, click on either link.


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