Understanding the Deep Movements of the Human Mind through the North American Indigenous Myth of the 'Heavenly Rock Cave' - Reading Levi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' through Deep Semantics (75_ 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners' - 26, M454 The Quarrel of the Celestial Bodies)
This is the 75th attempt to “creatively” read Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' in a non-standard way. We will read from the end of Part 4, 'Exemplary Girls,' to the beginning of Part 5, 'Voracious as Wolves,' from 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners'.
You can read all the previous articles from the link below.
Even if you haven't read the previous articles, you can enjoy this one on its own (?).
Introduction
I am reading Lévi-Strauss's “logic of myth” by likening it to a mandala-like structure of double four-term relations (eight-term relations) as described by Kukai in his 'Unjigi'—or rather, as a 'thing' where pulsations resonate, causing mandala-like patterns to emerge like ripples.
At the end of the narrative, myth aims to draw a stable, mandala-like pattern that separates Δ1–4 in Figure 1 without separating them too excessively.
To achieve this, the narrative describes movements of amplitude: the β terms stretch long toward the first and third quadrants, or toward the second and fourth quadrants, or gather at a single central point.
Like kneading rice cakes, clay, or pie dough, two of the four terms are described as being excessively joined on the first axis while simultaneously being excessively separated on the second axis, which is orthogonal to the first. These “axes that cause separation” and “axes that cause joining” alternate at high speed.
Turning from there, when the β terms are pulled out in four directions and the four β terms are separated at an equal distance (drawing a square), this balances the pulling movement with the force trying to return to the center.
*
Here, the speed of expansion and contraction slows down infinitely. In this way, in the “between” of these β terms, room opens up for four regions or objects—'that which is not, distinguished from that which is not-not' (Δ)—to flicker so that they maintain their contours continuously.
Here, a world meaningful to us is generated—a 'world' where we can say 'Δ1 is Δ2,' where the various Δ terms have already been separated and arranged in an orderly fashion as individual objects, and can be linguistically and stably distinguished. Any empirical world, and the myths that tell of the origins of the elements of that world, follow this logic.
Just beneath the surface of our empirical world, the movement to adjust the frequency of β and regenerate the world as a different four-term relation by derailing it from the fleeting 'four' square of the here and now never stops moving.
Vertical to horizontal,
Inside to outside,
There to here.
On page 292 of 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners,' Lévi-Strauss compares two myths featuring a 'porcupine' and writes the following:
In both myths, the porcupine episode is at the beginning, but it is accompanied by a reversal of all words. A tree that is lying down instead of standing tall, a porcupine that is inside instead of outside, climbing up toward the porcupine (from bottom to top) instead of sitting on top of the porcupine (from top to bottom), a daughter who is foolish rather than wise, tearing the prey from behind instead of violating it from the front, an animal that is an attacker rather than a seducer.... The opposition between sisters, one wise and one foolish, reproduces that of the human wife and the frog wife. The two heroines of the plains (the woman who ascended to heaven and the woman who remained on earth) live in a village, while one refuses to move and the other moves vertically. For the two heroines of the Ojibwa myth, there is no longer a village. There are only two of them in the world (M447), or they are exiled (M444). And one, boldly, and the other, reluctantly, above all else move horizontally.
The two porcupine myths are the one discussed in this article on page 276 of 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners', 'M443 Menominee: The Porcupine, Master of Cold,' and the Ojibwe myth discussed in the previous article, 'M447 The Celestial Wives.'
Let us focus on the fact that in these two myths, every word is 'reversed'.
In M443, human sisters catch a porcupine hiding in a tree hole and violently steal its quills. The victim is the porcupine, and the older of the human sisters is the perpetrator. The porcupine, having had its quills stolen, retaliates by climbing to the top of a vertically towering tree and summoning a heavy snowfall, burying the sisters in snow.
On the other hand, in M447, the human sisters are deceived and suffer a terrible fate at the hands of a porcupine that says, 'I will give you my quills,' at a tree stump, which is a felled tree (a tree lying on its side). This time, the victim is the older of the human sisters, and the perpetrator is the porcupine.
And while it is common to both myths that the scene of this incident is a 'tree,' the 'orientation' of this tree is divided into the opposing poles of vertical/horizontal.
The porcupine is the same, but everything else is reversed.
The tree that serves as the site of contact between the porcupine and the sisters is reversed at the following two poles.
Vertical / Horizontal
The inclusion relationship between the porcupine and the tree is also reversed at the following two poles.
Inside / Outside
The direction of the sisters' movement as they approach the porcupine's quills is also reversed at the following two poles.
From bottom to top / From top to bottom
The perpetrator and victim of the violence are reversed.
Human assaults porcupine / Porcupine assaults human
Everything, this and that, is perfectly reversed.
Relations precede terms. Is the porcupine a good guy or a bad guy?
Here, let us focus on the porcupine. In North American mythology,
is the porcupine a good guy or a bad guy?
Let us pose this question.
It is impossible to give a definitive answer to this question. In other words, regarding '
the porcupine itself,' it is impossible to determine whether it is essentially good or bad.
The porcupine cannot be classified into either the good or bad pole in the same way, anytime and anywhere. In one myth, the porcupine is a good guy, or rather, a victim and retaliator who deserves sympathy. However, the porcupine in the other myth is a bad guy who deceives people and causes them serious injury. The porcupine is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
*
And this is not limited to the porcupine, but can also be said of other characters and things in the myth.
The oppositional relationship of ambiguous mediators that relate relations
Myths are composed of a minimum of a combination of four binary oppositions, totaling eight terms that separate and combine through a relationship of being different yet the same, and the same yet different, drawing a mandala-like structure. At this time, binary oppositions such as inside/outside, ascending/descending, horizontal/vertical are oppositions that are extremely clearly distinguished through sensory experience, and those who can be either of the two poles of such sensory-experiential oppositions are the ambiguous mediators tentatively labeled as β in Figure 1 above.
And the porcupine is also driven in these myths as this β, an ambiguous mediator. An ambiguous mediator is a being that is two-as-one and one-as-two. The ambiguous mediator moves back and forth between the two poles that are empirically and sensually opposed, drawing an amplitude. And through this pulsation that draws an amplitude, it clearly highlights the empirical and sensory binary opposition.
And since this ambiguous mediator is also a being (term) that can be defined as 'this' through words and images, in the logic of myth, it is not considered to exist independently on its own. Every single term emerges as one side of a binary opposition, as one pole of the movement that draws an amplitude, separating and combining the binary opposition.
In the case of the porcupine myth currently being discussed, it is the porcupine and the sisters who show the movement as ambiguous mediators. The sisters who are a set of two and the porcupine with needles growing all over its body are the ambiguous mediators who possess the mode of being where two empirically and sensually opposed poles become one while remaining two, and are one while being two.
In the myth, the movement is told where these two ambiguous mediators transition from a state of being far apart to a state of being close together, and then separate again, settling into a position where they are connected while being appropriately distanced.
When the pair of ambiguous mediators settles into a position where they can maintain this balance of being neither too close nor too far, an axis is established between them, and an axis orthogonal to this is also established.
And within the four quadrants cut by this cross, the oppositional relationships of things that are empirically and sensually opposed are contained, with a minimum of two.
The personality of the porcupine and the personality of the sisters are determined later within the relationship
Here, whether each of the 'sisters' and the 'porcupine' is a good person or a bad person, wise or foolish, is determined secondarily within the pattern that the vibration separating and combining the two brings to the surface.
In other words, the direction in which the relationship where the porcupine and the sisters separate and combine overlaps with the relationship where binary oppositions like good person/bad person also separate and combine can be reversed.
Porcupine / Sisters
|| ||
Good person / Bad person
Or
Porcupine / Sisters
|| ||
Bad person / Good person
+
The relationship is the same, but the orientation of the arrangement of the two terms is different
In these two myths, the characters are both common in that they are sisters and a porcupine, and the stage setting for their interaction is also completely the same in that it is a tree.
However, the direction of the movement in which the sisters and the porcupine separate excessively or combine excessively, which unfolds on the stage of this tree, is beautifully reversed.
Mr. Lévi-Strauss writes, 'the reversal corresponds from one dimension to another' (Claude Lévi-Strauss, 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners', p. 259)
Empirically, the relationship between a porcupine and a human is that of a human seeking, chasing, catching, and taking quills from a porcupine to use as embroidery tools. This means there is a 'separation-to-union' movement, where the distance between two spatially separated poles (human and porcupine) is gradually closed, moving from an initial state of separation toward union, and at the terminal state of this movement—the state of union—the 'quill' separates from the wild body of the porcupine, joins with the human to become a cultural tool, and thus the porcupine itself and the human separate once again.
* *
In these myths, the porcupine is an ambiguous mediator for clearly separated, opposing binary terms in sensory experience. To keep this ambiguous mediator, the porcupine, excited so that it can continue to vibrate in an ambiguous and mediating state, the 'correct answer' to a narrative that tries to force the porcupine into one of the poles of an empirical binary opposition—asking 'Is it good or bad? Is it this or that?'—would be a response that avoids fixing it, such as 'It is both good and bad' or 'It is neither good nor bad,' refusing to clarify which side of the empirical opposition it falls on.
In the first place, the ability to consistently distinguish between good and bad according to a fixed pattern is something that happens 'after' the ambiguous mediators have moved around between separation and union, separating while uniting, and bringing to light the vibration pattern of a mandala-like structure.
* * *
The beginning of the empirical, sensory, dualistic world
Thus, when the oscillation between the two poles of the ambiguous mediators—which delineate the empirically opposing poles as the maximum and minimum values of their vibration—succeeds in bringing to light a set of clearly defined empirical binary oppositions, we pause the pulsation of separation and union for a moment to draw a still image.
At that moment, within the still image, a series of binary opposition pairs such as inside/outside, ascending/descending, horizontal/vertical, and nature/cultureclearly emerge, and the two ambiguous mediators that had been marking the pulsation of separation and union take up separate positions at each of the two poles of these opposition pairs.
By being observed (superimposed with a certain classification), the orientation of a certain binary relationship is determined.
Therefore, if we tentatively say that the sisters were initially at the 'upper' position of the 'upper/lower' opposition, the porcupine, which must naturally take the 'exact opposite' position from the sisters at the start, is forced to say that it is, inevitably, at the 'lower' position.
There is no need for it to be a porcupine
By the way, a porcupine is simply a non-non-porcupine, and there is no mysterious, ambiguous power hidden within the porcupine as an in-itself, independently existing term.
The reason the porcupine 'becomes' ambiguous and mediating is that, in its relationship with humans, it empirically embodies a way of being that easily symbolizes the pulsation of separation and union, such as becoming fleeing/chasing, and also because its quills, while being wild, become phenomenal cultural tools, making it easy to recall a state of 'two-in-one and one-in-two' that pierces and unites the opposition of nature/culture. If humans were to stop desiring porcupine quills as cultural tools, the porcupine would also move away from the pulsation of separation and union, would no longer be in a state of two-in-one and one-in-two, and would thus no longer occupy the position of an ambiguous mediator.
In mythology, the porcupine is not the only thing that reigns as a privileged ambiguous mediator. In fact, as long as it can separate and unite the pulsation of separation and union and the relationship of two-in-one and one-in-two, anything can occupy the position of an ambiguous mediator.
'Even if the porcupine of the plains and the grebe of the Eastern Algonquian tribes are in a correlative, oppositional relationship, they are separated at one point. In the former, the porcupine combines two functions. That is, a natural function as the master of winter and a cultural function as the supplier of quills, which are the material for embroidery. In the grebe text, the same two functions are seen, but they are distributed among different animals. The grebe, which is nothing in terms of culture but is an invincible existence in terms of nature because it governs the return of spring, and its alter ego, called the loon or 'bead ornament,' 'bead spitter,' or 'bead head' (the loon's chest is decorated with a necklace of white feathers). The latter is not endowed with a natural character in the myths in question, but purely embodies culture. Wampum, shell beads that the latter is said to have the power to create infinitely, are, like porcupine quills, symbols of culture. The porcupine, which is the intersection of nature and culture, represents in a wrapped form the same relationship that the grebe and the loon, as separate characters, express in an unfolded form.'
In one myth, the 'porcupine' has two roles: the 'master of winter' in the natural world and the 'supplier of quills' in the cultural world. The porcupine is spoken of as having two roles related to the opposing poles of nature and culture. However, in another myth, these roles of 'master of winter' and 'supplier of quills' are assigned to separate birds, the grebe and the loon.
Culture / Nature
||
Little Grebe / Loon
||
Porcupine
Nature and Culture is an empirical and sensory oppositional relationship, a binary opposition that many myths, while clearly separating at the end of their narrative, maintain in a relationship of neither too close nor too far, keeping a passage open to connect them.
Sometimes both terms of this nature-culture binary opposition are replaced by a single term, the porcupine, while at other times the nature-culture binary opposition is superimposed onto separate birds, perhaps a set of two types of birds that are in opposition in terms of some sensory quality.
Terms as Intersections
Here, Mr. Levi-Strauss's expression of the 'intersection' where the opposing terms of nature and culture meet and pass each other is very interesting ("The porcupine, as the intersection of nature and culture, represents in a wrapped form the same relationship that the separate characters of the little grebe and the loon express in an expanded form" (see the quote above)). The relationship between nature and culture can be 'separately' in an 'expanded form,' meaning it can be separated, or it can be 'wrapped' into one.
In depicting an eight-term relationship as an opposition of oppositions of oppositional relationships by combining the oppositional relationships of things that are empirically and sensuously distinguished, which term-to-term relationship is assigned a clearly separated phase (the Δ-Δ binary relationship in Figure 1), and which terms are assigned the phase of an ambiguously mediating term superimposed into one (β in Figure 1), is not determined in advance by the essence or self-nature of each term itself, but is determined by how the opposition of oppositions of oppositional relationships happens to be woven.
Following the above quote, Mr. Levi-Strauss writes as follows.
"One is a symmetrical form, the inverted porcupine myth, and the other is an antisymmetrical form, the little grebe myth. On one hand, the characters are the same, but the vertical is replaced by the horizontal, high by low, front by back, evil by good, and so on. On the other hand, winter is replaced by summer, freezing by thawing, and the characters also change."
Vertical/horizontal, high/low, front/back, good/evil, winter/summer, freezing/thawing, and even including being an ambiguously mediating term / not being an ambiguously mediating term, at what position these various binary oppositions are arranged to stop the state of vibration depends on how the knots are placed when weaving a mandala-like pattern while folding the oppositional relationships.
*
There are no given terms (and their meanings) that precede the relationship
What is important here is that the mandala-like eight-term relationship is what distinguishes terms such as 'porcupine,' 'older sister,' 'younger sister,' or 'tree' as 'that' and nothing else, while connecting those relationships in a certain direction, and prior to this movement of distinguishing, this movement toward separation from combination, the terms are not already lying around somewhere as given entities.
What a porcupine 'is,' or what a 'tree' 'is,' the so-called 'meaning' of the porcupine or tree, also only emerges when the movement of separating the porcupine from the non-porcupine resonates or synchronizes with the movement of separating the term x that is equated with the 'porcupine,' that is, the term x placed in the position of 'the semantic content of the porcupine' and the non-x that is not that term x.
+ +
"Their meanings are differential and become clear only through the existence of their opposing terms"
Based on the above examination, Mr. Levi-Strauss writes a vivid passage that can be called the highlight of the 'Mythologiques' series.
“We have verified that all types of myths concerning the celestial wives create a combination of opposing terms that form a system. It is likely futile to attempt to interpret those terms individually. This is because their meanings are differential and become clear only through the existence of their opposing terms. Where the historical school sought to find traces of accidental connections and diachronic development, we have discovered a system that can be understood in synchrony. Where they merely created lists of items, we saw nothing but various relationships. Where they busily collected transformed remains and accidental assemblages, we revealed meaningful contrasts.”
“It is likely futile to attempt to interpret terms individually[…]their meanings are differential and become clear only through the existence of their opposing terms” is something I would almost like to write on a banner with a brush and wrap around my house. No, there is merit even in just chanting it every night before going to sleep. Or perhaps this single sentence has a very
“Rishukyo” feel to it.
Relationships precede terms
Here, Mr. Lévi-Strauss quotes the following words of Ferdinand de Saussure.
“[...] that is to say, in this domain, the relationship established between things exists prior to the things themselves, and plays the role of determining the things themselves.”
Relationships precede terms. Moreover, this relationship is something that is 'established'.
The myths of the celestial wives[…] cannot be attributed to the totality of the many types counted in a catalog. It exists in the form of a system consisting of various functioning relationships, and precedes the individual types. The individual types were produced by the operation of those relationships. The individual types were produced by the operation of those relationships.
Alternatively, expressions such as 'functioning' relationships and the 'operation of relationships' are also used.
In other words, the movement expressed by words such as 'establishing,' 'functioning,' and 'operating' is precisely the 'relationship' that precedes the terms. Relationship as a verb, relationship as movement. A relationship is a relationship that relates relationships.
This is likely the key to understanding what 'structure' is.
(For those interested in Saussure, I recommend this book by Keizaburo Maruyama)
Structure, signifying, signs and meaning
Separating and connecting two terms
Come to think of it, everything in our world that has a name, is called by a word, and is described by words is one pole of a binary opposition between 'that thing/that matter' and 'not-that thing/not-that matter'.
Our world, this present life, is limited and defined (limited and fixed) after moving to bind and solidify the opposition of opposition of opposition, subsequently, secondarily, or hypothetically.
No, this movement of the structure that relates relations never stops.
From the perspective of the mechanism that operates after receiving the ready-made, categorized oppositional relationships of surface consciousness, one could say that the structure moved to create the world and then departed somewhere, but in reality, the movement of the structure continues to move.
Against this limited phase of the surface, the logic that brings the 'deep' myth to the surface is one where the opposition of oppositional relationships continues to separate, combine, and pulsate. And in each moment, it 'fixes' a still image of the pattern of how these oppositional relationships are layered—a pattern that has momentarily stabilized—onto the linear arrangement of words and their paraphrases, much like printing an old silver-halide photograph onto photographic paper.
Of course, this fixation changes as the pattern of how the structure moves changes; that is, if the way the oppositional relationships are layered, combined, and separated changes, the fixed, limited pattern also changes.
“In other words, if the existence of an animal with an importance comparable to that of a porcupine in technical, economic, artistic, and philosophical terms is replaced by its absence, it becomes necessary to project the porcupine into another world so as not to lose its role wherever it might have played one. And because of that, the low changes to the high, the horizontal to the vertical, the internal to the external, and so on. It is only under such conditions that a consistent worldview can be maintained until very recently. If it were adapted to the relations expanded by the theory of the porcupine, the new revision would require the relations it encompassed. Therefore, whatever the historical contingencies may be, the following remains true: all forms are interrelated, and depending on those interrelations, some content is permitted while other content is discarded. The degree of freedom in that process is even smaller, precisely because those contents do not exist as separate free radicals.”
Let us assume that the people who were telling the porcupine myth moved to a region where porcupines do not inhabit. However, let us assume that in their new home, there were still 'sisters' and 'trees.' In that case, by replacing only the 'porcupine' with something else within the relationships with the sisters and the trees, one can maintain a 'consistent worldview' that establishes the distinctions of the present world.
However, when the porcupine is changed into something else, the way it connects with the terms that were separating from and combining with it may also be reversed, and thus the low changes to the high, the horizontal to the vertical, the internal to the external, and so on occurs.
And the fact that one term changes into another in this way is not a major problem.
Above all, relations precede terms, and whatever can be expressed in words—low or high, horizontal or vertical, internal or external—are all 'terms.' They are terms that emerge after the relations.
A North American Amaterasu?!
Now, having touched upon the algorithm that is the essence of myth-logic, 'relations precede terms,' Mr. Lévi-Strauss introduces a myth called M454 'Cherokee: The Celestial Quarrel'. Regarding this M454 'Cherokee: The Celestial Quarrel,' Mr. Lévi-Strauss writes as follows.
This is the Japanese myth itself, but since such a thing is nothing new, I would like to focus here not on this similarity, but on another similarity that causes fewer problems.
M454 'Cherokee: The Celestial Quarrel' is a story that reminds one of the hiding in the heavenly rock cave of the Japanese sun goddess, Amaterasu, or rather, it is exactly that story. Let's take a look at what kind of story it is.
The daughter of the Sun lived at the zenith, while her mother, the Sun, lived on the other side of the earth. Every day,
during her daily journey, the Sun would stop by her daughter's place for lunch. This
Sun hated humans. This is because they would scowl
when they looked at her. The Moon, the Sun's brother
countered, "
humans smile in my presence."The Sun became even more jealous because of this and spread a fever that caused people to die. Humans, fearing extinction from the fever, sought help from their guardian spirits
. The guardian spirits decided to kill the Sun. They hid a venomous snake and ambushed the Sun. Depending on the version of the myth, there is a pattern where the Sun is bitten by the snake and dies, and another where the Sun's daughter is bitten by the snake. Here, I will continue the story with the version where the snake mistakes the daughter for the mother and kills her. The Sun, having lost her daughter, said she would go into mourning and hid herself. No more humans were dying, but eternal darkness reigned
.
This was because the Sun refused to show herself
. * Following the advice of the guardian spirits, the humans
decided to return the daughter to her mother, the Sun, and dispatched an expedition team to the 'Land of Souls' to retrieve the soul of the Sun's daughter. They went to the Land of Souls in the west, struck the Sun's daughter with a stick to capture her, put her body in a large box
, and decided to carry her back without ever opening the lid until they arrived. Seven men were assigned this task. They successfully trapped the Sun's daughter in the box and began to carry her. On their way back, the daughter came back to life inside the box and struggled, begging to be let out. The men carrying her did not listen. This was because it was a rule that the box must never be opened. However, the Sun's daughter pleaded that she was dying of hunger and thirst and could not breathe. The seven men carrying her feared that the Sun's daughter might die of suffocation again. So, they opened the lid just a little. At that moment, the Sun's daughter turned into a small bird and flew away
. + Because of this, once a human died, they could never be brought back to life again. If only the messengers had not broken the taboo, they could have brought humans back to life.
As for the Sun, she was deeply saddened by losing her daughter twice and caused a flood of tears on the earth. ++
Humans, fearing they would drown, sent very beautiful boys and girls to dance before the Sun to try to catch her attention
. The Sun showed no interest in the singing or dancing and kept her face hidden for a long time. However, when one
drummer changed the rhythm
, the Sun was surprised and looked up, and she liked the dance she saw so much that she smiled
Sun/Moon
The Sun and Moon have a sister-brother (or sister-brother) relationship.
Sun / Moon
In other words, the sun and the moon are siblings in that they are one and the same existence, but they are clearly separated along the axis of male/female, and they are also clearly divided and in opposition in the pattern of the celestial periodic movement of day/night.
In short, the sun and the moon draw an oscillatory pattern of separating while combining, and combining while separating; they are each an ambiguous mediator (let us denote this as β).
This opposition between the sun and the moon is also clearly opposed along the axis of
hating humans / loving humans
Incidentally, the reason the sun hates humans is said to be because
humans 'frown' when they look at the sun. This is the same pattern as the myth where the sun, the brother of the moon, marries a frog, while the moon marries a human girl, leading to trouble where the frog clings to the moon, his brother-in-law.
humans who frown / humans who smile
Now, the sun god, hating humans so much, caused a 'fever' to spread in an attempt to destroy them.
The celestial sun that is too close to the ground
Humans, unable to bear being destroyed by excessive heat, gathered their guardian spirits to challenge the sun. It is said that the myth splits into two versions here.
First, there is the version where the guardian spirits use a venomous snake to defeat the sun and replace it with the sun's daughter. This 'daughter' is the sun we see in the sky today, a sun that is moderately warm for humans and not too hot. This version is the same as the myths where one shoots down the sun to reduce the heat, a story about moderately separating the celestial world, which was too closely combined with the ground and burning it with heat, from the ground. In other words, it is a creation myth stating that the state of heaven and earth being undifferentiated has changed to a state where heaven and earth are separated.
In another version, the venomous snake mistakenly bites the sun's daughter instead of the sun. In this version, the sun, shocked by the loss of his daughter, hides somewhere, refuses to show himself, and stops pouring his light onto the ground. This version is the 'Iwato-gakure' (hiding in the heavenly rock cave) itself.
Excessive separation between the ground and the celestial sun
The sun's daughter (who should have been the sun of moderate temperature) is also lost, and the sun hides somewhere as well. Light has been lost from the world.
Because of this, the spread of the fever stopped and 'no more humans were dying', but now 'eternal darkness reigns'.
* *
Troubled by the pitch-black darkness, humans try to drag the sun out of its hiding place. The means they devised for this was to bring the sun's daughter back to life. People go to the 'land of souls' to welcome the sun's daughter. There, they try to catch the sun's daughter, put her in a box, and bring her back.
Life/death are separated yet not separated (souls can be retrieved)
However, before reaching the sun, they break their promise and open the box, and the sun's daughter is no longer the sun's daughter (she transforms into a small bird) and flies off somewhere. This bird is a small attendant of the sun that heralds the dawn.
The Great Flood
The strategy of bringing the daughter back to ask the sun to appear again ended in failure. Moreover, the sun deepened his sorrow and ended up washing the ground away with a great flood.
*
The human world reversed from a state of being excessively connected to the celestial realm, where the sun was too hot for humans to survive, to a state of being excessively connected to the deep, dark, and cold water realm, where humans also could not survive. Having escaped the dazzling and overly hot state from the celestial realm to the water realm, it had now become pitch black and cold.The human world must be a 'Middle Earth' between the celestial and water realms, but at this time, the separation and connection of heaven and earth were vibrating intensely—as if they were excessively connected, then suddenly excessively separated—meaning that heaven and earth were not yet divided, and so on.
* *
Incidentally, the 'humans' at this point are not humans like us today; they are still mythical humans who are neither the same as nor different from the gods of myth. Because of this, they are divine humans who can visit the 'Land of Souls' and, if not for the fever spread by the sun, could live forever.
The clear separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead
These immortal divine humans became humans like us, who have a lifespan, because they let the sun's daughter escape from a box that should never have been opened. This part is exactly the same as the story of'Urashima Taro' opening the Tamatebako (jeweled box) and suddenly aging.
The story goes that by opening this box, humans could no longer be brought back to life after death. Conversely, this means that before this, if one died, they could be brought back from the 'Land of Souls' and live again as many times as they wanted. It was a state wherelife and death were separated yet not separated.
However, with the incident of'opening the forbidden jeweled box', the separation of life and death was finalized.
Ame-no-Uzume
Now, the myth becomes like the story of Ame-no-Uzume and the Heavenly Rock Cave. Humans
send very beautiful boys and girls to dance before the sunto capture the sun's interest and lure it back out.
However, Amaterasu—or rather, the Cherokee sun god—shows no interest in the dance and does not come out. But when therhythm of the drums changes, the sun becomes interested in the humans' dance and comes out to watch.
A change in rhythm means that the shape of the ripples forming a mandala-like pattern changes. This means that the mandala-like oppositional relationships—the oppositional relationships of oppositional relationships—have changed their way of articulation, and the way the world appears and settles has transformed. The sun god would surely be interested in this.
Thus, the great flood recedes,heaven and earth become appropriately neither too close nor too far, and this present world, where humans have a distinction between life and death, is opened. In the Japanese myth of Amaterasu, this leads to the story where Susanoo defeats the Yamata no Orochi, carving out the distinction between the wild and the human world, and between nature and culture, in the earthly world.
This myth tells of how the articulations that give meaning to our daily lives are carved out from a state where the extremely primitive distinctions and binary oppositions for us in the present world do not yet exist (the distinctions between heaven/earth, life/death, inside/outside, and god/human are also unclear).
In the part where the sun's daughter is confined in a container and transported from west to east, a container that 'must never be opened' appears. This is exactly like the story of carrying 'night' in a container in the myth M326a, 'The Journey of the Sun and Moon in a Canoe'.
A container is a container precisely because it can beopened and closed, put in and taken out, but here it is excited (as a binary mediator) into a state of being a'container that must never be opened'—acontainer that is not a container.
Through this mysterious βmovement and opening/closing of the container,
Separation / Connection (between the container and the sun's daughter)
Inside / Outside (between the opening and closing of the container)
East / West (between the start and end points of the container's route)
distinctions such as these become prominent. And in this passage, the distinction between life and death is established, where humans become
'not immortal, but mortal beings'.
Life / Death (via the opening and closing of a container)
The distinction between life and death is also the origin of the cyclical nature of reincarnation, as Kobo Daishi Kukai wrote: born, born, born, born, dark at the beginning of life; die, die, die, die, dark at the end of death—the cycle of humans being born and dying, born and dying.
Having periodicity / Not having periodicity
From events like the strife between celestial bodies (in the myth above, the sun and moon engage in a great argument over whether they like or dislike humans), the distinction between heaven and earth begins, and the movement of celestial bodies, which exhibit a periodicity distinguished from non-periodicity, commences.
* *
Why are North American myths and Japanese myths so similar?
It is very interesting that such myths of the creation of heaven and earth are woven in both Japan and North America as the same kind of oppositional relationship of oppositional relationships of oppositional relationships.
We humans, whether in ancient Japan or North America, have had very similar life experiences: the movement of celestial bodies approaching and receding, the way humans frown when looking at the sun and smile when looking at the moon, and the fact that containers have lids that can be opened and closed. It is we humans who have used these 'empirical distinctions' as 'tools for concepts' to 'extract various abstract ideas,' and then 'connected those ideas to form propositions'.
"The raw and the cooked, the fresh and the rotten, the moist and the burnt are empirical distinctions that can be clearly defined as long as an ethnographer places themselves within a specific culture and observes. These distinctions become conceptual tools, are used to extract various abstract ideas, and can further be connected to form propositions. The purpose of this book is to show how that is done.
This is the main focus of this research, as written by Mr. Lévi-Strauss at the beginning of the massive 'Mythologiques'.
What is interesting here is the subtle difference that in Japanese mythology, it is Amaterasu who enters the 'container' of the Heavenly Rock Cave, whereas in this North American myth, it is the daughter of the sun who is inside the 'container'. Moreover, the daughter of the sun did not enter the container of her own volition like Amaterasu, but was struck with a stick and forcibly confined, and unlike Amaterasu, she does not open the lid of the container herself, but has it opened by divine humans, and instead of coming out passively and reluctantly, she dashes out at high speed and flees.
We can look at the wonder of this "being reversed" from the perspective that "relations precede terms" in an interesting way.
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