Immanence In Mythology

Where can we begin a genuine discussion of immanence in myth? Do we engage the tools of analysis on the dissection table of academia? Or perhaps it is best not dealt with in sterile light, being rather an arcane synthesis, a syncretism.

    

If myth is something long dead, a corpse exhumed with philosophical disinterest, then please consider this work an attempt at necromancy. But if myth is considered something dangerous; full of falsities, dead ends and mazes luring the unwary into a fugue of superstition, then consider it a whispered pass-phrase into another world: the world beyond the wallpaper. A world that recognizes the real is in the effect rendered, rather than in the thing symbolized. Conflicting fictions drive Holy wars. How is a history born of spilled blood unreal? How is it meaningless, even if all the Gods are just shadows cast on the wall by finger-puppets? Myth is not dead, nor is it false; it is living, and misunderstood.

      

This anthology is a book. For the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, a book is an assemblage:

“Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity[.]” (A Thousand Plateaus)  

It is an assemblage of voices gathered together to speak on the immanence of myth. It is, as already stated, a multiplicity, which is fitting as myth embraces multiplicity. Contrasting Mythos with Logos, we contrast those multiple voices against the singular, the transcendent. Whereas the logos is the word of God, the divine fiat that structures and moves our universe, so the mythos is an indefinite set of articles, tales told for the telling itself, with no hard and fast authority, no assertable Ultimate Truth, no attributable origin grounded in cold solidity. It is immanent rather than transcendent because it is the codification of our direct experience, forms and ideas ground from our collective bones and flesh. 

-Mr. VI and James Curcio, from the chapter "Immanence and Butchery."

Purchase The Immanence of Myth

• The Immanence of Myth
• ISBN: 9781907810084

• Purchase on Amazon
• Purchase on Weaponized
• The Immanence of Myth uses a deep but also conversational, honest and even subversive approach towards looking at the issue of mythology in our lives, especially as the book moves towards personal mythology and conversations with current mythic artists.
• If you haven't already, take this as a wake-up call to join in and become a myth-maker of the 21st century.


• Includes:
• Black and white artwork
• Introduction by the editor

Published by Weaponized August 2011.

Art Samples

Additional Credits

• Page and book cover design by James Curcio.
• Book layout by Judith Curcio and Julie Greystone
• Featured art on this page by David Mack, Rudy Rauben, David Aronson, and Laurie Lipton.
• See top image for full list of contributors.