version

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I've been interested in underworlds recently, both in the Xibalba/Hades sense and the general idea of a world beneath the world, and the other day I learned there was a specific term for the descent - katabasis. Anyway for whatever reason it got me thinking of Trump and the fact that with him there's little to no distinction between the street and the sewer, the sewage is there for all to see and it both attracts and repels. You can see the same thing at play in celebrity gossip and conspiracy theories, it's gross and repellent but there's a lurking desire to dive in.

How important do you feel the distinction between street and sewer is? What's the psychological impact of wading through this stuff? Are there infections and diseases lurking?

thirdman2.jpg
 
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version

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The hero's journey into the underworld in general always captures my imagination, even when it's in silly kids films like Disney's Hercules. I guess it's partly the excitement of cheating death, going beyond and somehow making it back.
 

version

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There are two ideas here, but whatever. I make enough threads as it is so one garbled one with a bit of both will do.
 

entertainment

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Up in the sky there is mystical transcendence. From the street, we can see the light and sometimes even feel it. But down in the sewers, you can't see it.
 

entertainment

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there's a good line from the Shawshank Redemption where Morgan Freeman narrates the escape and says something like "He crawled through a mile of shit and came out clean on the other side"
 

entertainment

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But do you ever go through the underworld and live on as you did before? It seems like cheating death always takes a toll. Once you look at it, you'll never be the same. Scars that never heal.

Long time addicts can recover but never really live on. Frodo had to take that ship to the Elven realm after destroying the ring.
 

version

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Pynchon talks of the sewer and the 'dream street' in V. and the characters who feel more comfortable in the sewers know they have to return to street-level at some point. It comes up later on during a bombing raid in Malta too when everyone descends into the sewers in order to escape the death now coming from above.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
katabasis
onomatopoeically it immediately makes me think of chthonic, always one of my touchstone words, would imagine they share a similar etymology

as well as its opposite - anabasis - which invokes obviously Xenophon, the Greeks coming up over the last hill, "thalassa! thalassa!"

and catalysis, catabolism, etc
 
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version

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There are supposedly entrances to the underworld dotted around in various countries. There's one in Izumo Province in Japan and the entrance to Xibalba is apparently in a cave in Guatemala.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Yeah, it's one way trip in some respects, even if you make it out.
in the same sense that you can never enter the same river twice

does it necessarily involve a change that is diminishing?

I don't know the comparative mythology well enough

I wouldn't be surprised if katabasis requires the journeyer to make some kind of sacrifice
 

version

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Corpsey made the point in the Nova thread that there's a certain phase in your teenage years when people often seek out the most shocking stuff they can find and I think that's probably true. It's definitely a one way trip too. The one-two of encountering Rotten.com followed by Naked Lunch in my early to mid-teens genuinely frightened and disturbed me and there's a clear before and after in my mind.
 

version

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in the same sense that you can never enter the same river twice

does it necessarily involve a change that is diminishing?

I don't know the comparative mythology well enough

I wouldn't be surprised if katabasis requires the journeyer to make some kind of sacrifice

One of the usual tropes is that they head into the underworld to bring someone or something back.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it doesn't speak to necessarily leaving something of yourself behind in return

tho that would seem like a logical exchange
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
deities and powers of the underworld are almost always malevolent and/or dangerous

my understanding is that in Greco-Roman mystery cults, for example, chthonic deities were the most ancient and primal

in the earliest days of Rome there was for example a ritual by which a general might offer himself as a sacrifice to those chthonic deities to secure victory for his army
 

version

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"The trip to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world. The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge. The ability to enter the realm of the dead while still alive, and to return, is a proof of the classical hero's exceptional status as more than mortal. A deity who returns from the underworld demonstrates eschatological themes such as the cyclical nature of time and existence, or the defeat of death and the possibility of immortality."
 

version

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I found it interesting that some of the Mayan Death Gods represented specific diseases and deaths; there's a God of Pus for one.
 
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