padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
you can't really get a sense of comparative mythology from a wikipedia page

for example, Odin traveled to Mimir's well in order to gain cosmic - or divine, true, however you want to put it - knowledge, for which he traded one of his eyes

Mimir's well was supposed to be by the roots of Yggdrasil, which isn't the Scandinavian analogue of Hades (that would be Niflheim), but still a descent into the protean roots of existence

I would be curious if other hero's journeys to the underworld involve similar sacrifices, literal or figurative
 

version

Well-known member
It isn't the same thing, but the temptation of Christ comes to mind when thinking of the hero's journey and being tested by the powers of the underworld.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I found it interesting that some of the Mayan Death Gods represented specific diseases and deaths
yes that specificity is interesting - the jungle is a place with many ways to die, perhaps

I spent a good deal of time - many years ago - in southern Mexico and interacted with Mayan people a fair bit

their Catholicism is meant to be heavily syncretized with surviving folk traditions, albeit religion was well outside my purview when I was there so I didn't see any of it
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
It isn't the same thing, but the temptation of Christ comes to mind when thinking of the hero's journey and being tested by the powers of the underworld
one imagines the mythical parts of the story of Christ must've been influenced by existing mythology of the time that writers of the gospels would have been familiar with, be it Greco-Roman, Semitic, etc

I'm sure a biblical scholar could tell us

but the temptation on the cross can certainly be seen as a figurative journey to the spiritual underworld

and then his literal return from the underworld after three days
 

version

Well-known member
Does anyone in the Bible other than Jesus visit either Heaven or Hell and return?
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
journeys to the underworld seem to involve gaining some true knowledge of what is

either on the journey itself, or upon return into the light having passed thru some kind of crucible

one thinks also of the Allegory of the Cave, and the journey from illusion to reality (true forms)

or as in Dante, as a sinner must physically past through hell for his soul to attain a better knowledge of God
 

kumar

Well-known member
I reckon the mine came before the sewer. the first organised descents were extraction missions. black lung arrived before cholera.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. Even Sauron knows them not, for they are older than he.
 

kumar

Well-known member
burial predates all of this, the sense that mining takes place in the substance of death, or is a bottom feeding trawl through earths excrement must have been self evident to the first underground voyagers.

this process culminated at one point in the grand one way trip from gold to paper. the analogues of the natural world, the impersonation of life that no longer require time consuming arduous journeys below the crust, that produce for the first time eternal states unthinkable in nature, the ocean garbage patches
 

version

Well-known member
I reckon the mine came before the sewer. the first organised descents were extraction missions. black lung arrived before cholera.

I stood in the entrance to an abandoned mine once - incredibly intimidating. You could see a little way in then it just went dark and was apparently too dangerous to go any further as there may have been sudden drops, loose rocks etc. Imagine working deep in the bowels of a place like that on a daily basis. Awful.

One of my dad's mates used to go potholing and some of his stories are chilling. The one that really got me was him and a bunch of others crawling down a tunnel so small you couldn't stand up or turn around. They crawled down this thing for a couple of hours before hitting a dead end and realising they now had to crawl the whole thing backwards to get out again.
 

version

Well-known member
There are whole communities living in the sewers, tunnels and spaces under places like NYC, Vegas and plenty of others across the world. Every so often Vice or someone does a film on the 'mole people' in a given city. It's like something from dystopian sci-fi, crazy to think people are literally being driven underground like that.
 

Leo

Well-known member
police cleared out encampments in railway tunnels on the west side of Manhattan but I'm not familiar with groups living in the sewers, per se.
 
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version

Well-known member
People live in the flood tunnels under Vegas and all sorts. There are people across the world living in abandoned subway tunnels, sewers, catacombs etc. It's grim.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
are you aware of the works of lebbeus woods version? some of it might be of interest to you. amazing drawings as well.

lwb-ub18-1.jpg

In a closely related project—an unproduced film treatment called Underground Berlin, also documented in the book OneFiveFour—Woods describes the discovery of a fictional network of government seismic labs operating beneath the surface of Berlin, a distributed facility known as the Underground Research Station.

Woods explains as part of this scenario that, deep inside the Station, “many scientists and technicians are working on a project for the government to analyze and harness the tremendous, limitless geological forces active in the earth… a world of seismic wind and electromagnetic flux.” They are pursuing nothing less than “a mastery”—that is, a sustained weaponization—of these “primordial earth forces.”

The film’s protagonist thus descends into the city by way of tunnels and seemingly upside-down buildings—“inverted geomechanical towers,” in his words—inside of which dangerous seismic experiments are already underway.
http://www.bldgblog.com/2013/01/san-andreas-architecture-for-the-fault/

you can find the complete story here: https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/underground-berlin-the-film-treatment/
 
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