The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a Poem that Reads as a Terrifying Curse

It was written by a poet, Coleridge, from early 19th century, a period where other authors pioneered the genere of horror fiction. During this same period Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein, Beckford wrote Vathek, and a bit earlier, Horace Walpole, had written The Castle of Otronto. Byron wrote early versions of stories of haunted outcasts and later in the 19th Century this culminated in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

But...the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a very and important contribution to HORROR LITERATURE.

FEAR LITERATURE.

If anyone needs to fear karma, it is not Janaki.

She is telling the truth to break a curse.

The Ancient Mariner tells the truth because he once incurred a curse.

At the time the Mariner tells his story, he is actually freed from his curse.

But he is someone who has been through a lot. And though he has done penance and is no longer under the curse he once incurred, he still feels a need to tell his story.

BK would make it seem that the Ancient Mariner is still under his curse and tells his story because he is a cursed being.

THe Ancient Mariner's story is of a man who incurred a curse--and then became free from that curse!!!

You have to read the poem yourself, not rely on BK quoting tiny bits of it.

Here it is.

[historyofideas.org]



BK is trying to use this story and the reference to the Ancient Mariner to scare Janaki.

Dont be scared, Janaki.

Friends, before you read this poem, be of good heart and do not allow this ancient, white haired bright eyed business woman scare you.

For that is what she is trying to do.

It would be interesting to know if anyone did BK programs and recalls lines from this poem being used as part of some of the programs. To hear a reference to
ancient mariner might then re-trigger anxiety.

BK is forgetting that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem that is part of the English language and might mean less to persons of continental European upbringing, for whom English is not a first language.

This entire poem is a store house of proverbs and common phrases used by many who have never read it through. It would be a very powerful poem for anyone doing language magic.

And..its interesting BK refers to this given that she is supposed not to have been much of a book reader--eh?

And like BK, the Ancient Mariner has 'bright eyes.'

Be very careful not to let this poem scare you. Remember, only at the end of the poem do you learn Mariner eventually freed himself from his curse.

He tells his tale as a free man. He does not tell his tale because he is still under the curse.

He is freed from the curse.

He tells the tale because he is human enough to remain affected by his ordeal and to need, now and then, to find a human being to listen to him.

To share what he has learned from it all.

To have a story to tell does not mean that you are under a curse.

Janaki told her story to help us see how she was trapped and how she did become free.

That is not a curse. That is not life as a walking ghost.

That is life as a human being, freeing herself from other people's secrets.

As mentioned..."The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge" and is from 1798.
A reference to a classic poem from literature.

Who else closely associated with Byron Katie calls himself a poet, and translator of classics, and likes to get his hands dirty trying to keep the Byron Katie followers in-line and off-balance with faux-Zen paradoxes?

Interesting comment about Stephen Mitchell's "new-age paraphrase of the Tao Te Ching".
And of course, some shilling in the comments for BK-SM from Richard Lawrence Cohen.

___________QUOTE______________
[ambivablog.typepad.com]
(Wait, isn't Stephen Mitchell married to Byron Katie? Did he write "the master, she" before or after that? If before, was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? A case of "be careful what you wish for"?)

And a caution from an Amazon reader/reviewer:

As Mitchell admits, he doesn't read Chinese. Instead of calling this a "translation," he calls it an "English version." But why would you want to read a loose English paraphrase by someone who can't read either the original or the early Chinese commentaries on it when you could read a translation by any one of a number of gifted and insightful scholars? The standard defense of a "version" like Mitchell's is that he has some special insight into the text that entitles him to interpret it. But the danger of an interpretation like Mitchell's is that it projects modern Western preconceptions onto the Tao Te Ching instead of allowing us to be challenged by the powerful, paradoxical, and even frightening original text. In fact, Mitchell projects Zen Buddhist and New Age ideas into his "interpetation." (And, No, Zen Buddhism is not the same as Taoism, any more than Catholicism is the same as Judaism.)

So what I'm relating to is not the Tao Te Ching but a new-age paraphrase of the Tao Te Ching. That's depressing. The reviewer above goes on to recommend a number of good translations:
_______________________________________



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2009 12:43AM by The Anticult.

Who Ya Gonna Call....?

Archetype Busters!!!

We are about to face a torrent, a deluge of archetypes. Call in the response squad from the local Jungian Institute.

The Coleridge poem reads as a waking nightmare, of hallucinatory intensity.

The horror is held, contained and carried through to the reader via the disciplined forms of English classical poetry.

It is not a poem I would recommend to anyone who is depressed or fragile.

For this is a poem that could be used to scare people.

I dont think the poet himself would have approved of that at all.

But, we can un-do the fear quotient through use of analysis.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner is full of suggestive images.

It begins with a wedding, glittering eyes, a spell binding story teller who may be crazy* (loon).

Lots of stuff going on here, and just in the first few stanzas. Its enough to thrill the pants off a psychoanalyst.

Quote

An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
`There was a ship,' quoth he.
`Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,

.


The poem can be read to generate suspense and to evoke fear. The images of a stranded ship, with no wind for movement, lifeless, and the evocation of its crew dying, drying up, tormented by thirst are utterly haunting.

This becalmed ship, stranded 'in a copper colored sea' is the very image of a paralyzing immobilizing depression of the most dire kind, the sort of depletion and immobility reported by persons who who survived bipolar depression. Further in the poem, there is a hell ship in which images of shipwreck and the ribs of a skeleton are merged in the imagination with the bars of a dungeon.

Coleridge himself became heavily dependent upon opium and would have known a thing or two about the anxieties of going without it.

Lots of references to glittering eyes.

Finally, the poem makes many references to the human eye, its expressions and movements.

Glittering eyes of the Mariner. Stony eyes of the bewitched crew, eyes not meeting the gaze of the Mariner.

Glittering eyes are mentioned three times.

Quote

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
He holds him with his GLITTERING eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child :
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner

.

Quote

PART IV
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him ;
`I fear thee, ancient Mariner !
I fear thy skinny hand !
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
(Coleridge's note on above stanza)
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.'--

Glittering eyes, bright eyes--these are emphasized.

Mood states and trance are referred to.

Quote

He holds him with his GLITTERING eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child :
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear

These are the emotions evoked in a tiny child when Mommy is in a fury and the child goes into shock and cannot imagine leaving, but stands paralyzed unable to imagine leaving the sitaution.

In Part Six the Mariner is cast into a trance. The text says so, right here!

Quote

PART V
`
The Mariner hath been cast into a trance ; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure.

Let us unscrew the inscrutable and look at this poem yet more closely.

Lets look at the archetypes. They seem to stay much more about what BK looks like and images she uses. References are made to angels and ghosts.

But..lots of Mom images, too. Powerful stuff.

The becalmed sailors beg the heavenly mother for help

Quote

It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace !)

The poem contains a hellish depiction of what a psychoanalyst would call a Punitive Maternal Introject.

This is Mommy Dearest on steriods.

Or....a guru having a very bad Hair Day and shitting on her loyal assistants who have worked their asses off for her.

Coleridge has an eye for detail here. A make up stylist could go to town on this one.

Quote

The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship.
And those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate ?
And is that Woman all her crew ?
Is that a DEATH ? and are there two ?
Is DEATH that woman's mate ?
[first version of this stanza through the end of Part III]
Like vessel, like crew !

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

Eeeew.

Most of us have not read the poem all the way through.

It is full of proverbs that are part of every day speech. Most of us think of the Ancient Mariner as a cursed figure.

But few read the poem all the way through and learn that the Mariner did incur a curse, but that he suffered, accepted responsibility, and overcame his curse.

But he remains a human being who went through an ordeal and must tell his story to another human being.

The Ancient Mariner can be understood as a Suffering Hero Who Returns to Humanity.

But it is easy to use just a few phrases from this poem to scare people--unless people stay calm and read the entire poem for themselves.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2009 01:06AM by corboy.

From the Code of Ethics which Katie wants to be signed by all her people:

Quote

“I will not engage in conduct and make statements that may negatively affect another facilitator and or The Work”.

So no one is allowed to make statements that may negatively affect another facilitator. I wonder if she signed it herself????

Because it seems that she is allowed to make statements that negatively affect other people by calling them wacky.

FYI:

'Makepeace' was also the middle name of the English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray.

[www.google.com]

He's the author of the novel, Vanity Fair.

The English Protestant reformers often took names such as 'Makepeace', so perhaps Thackeray had a Puritan ancestor.

There were close ties between the English Puritans and the Dutch Calvinists in the 17th Centuries. Puritans disliked England tried living in Holland and some decided to create a colony in New England, resulting in the Mayflower voyage and Plymouth settlement.

John Bunyan, a Puritan minister and author of the later 17th Century, wrote the novel Pilgrim's Progress. One portion of that novel contains a fictional locale, called 'Vanity Fair'--'Vanity' referring to worldly temptations that distract us from our soul's salvation.

(As in the Book of Ecclesiastes referring to Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity..all is chasing of the wind.')

Thackeray was inspired by that little bit and used it as the title for his own 19th Century novel, Vanity Fair.

If anyone is operating a Vanity Fair today, it would be the LGAT hucksters.

To the Anticult:

Your mailbox is full, homie.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2009 05:26AM by corboy.

Corboy said : "Cockroach Lady gets to have all the power. She gets to change the rules when she feels like it.

She can phone her lawyers whenever she wants to do so, and when she calls her lawyer, its all about loooove.

A former student of BK's concenred about having been captured on video in a moment of humiliation, who were to phone a lawyer to get advice, would be acting violently, by seeking to do the very same thing BK does to protect her own interests."

This is the absurd distinction when you have a Guru/student relationship. They seem to be able to comit whatever outrageous acts they want and still be respected as examples of the 'finished product' in their field, for instance Chogyam Trungpa and Muktananda.

It it also makes it impossible to have an actual friendship between the two. Didn't matter how many times Janaki rubbed her feet, money donated, or worked voluntarily she was still viewed as a employee/disciple. To be cut off her livlihood by EMAIL, picking up the phone and talking out the situation would be giving too much consideration to a peon when you could be out social networking with celebrities.

An Emancipatory Turnaround of the 'Ancient Mariner'

To this reader, The Ancient Mariner does not at all resemble Janaki.

Quote

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three. (one of the three guests arriving at the wedding)

Guest: `By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din.'

He (the Mariner)holds him (the guest)with his skinny hand,

The Mariner speaks: `There was a ship,' quoth he.

(The guest speaks and demands to be let go:)`Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !'

(The Mariner lets go of the guests arm. But, having touched the guest, and begun his opening words, the Mariner now has the guests attention. And the guest is so attentive that Coleridge writes in terms of spells and constriants--what follows are Coleridges words:

"The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.

"

In the poem, it seems quite clear the Ancient Mariner forces the wedding guest to listen to him.

Unlike the Ancient Mariner, Janaki does not force anyone to read her blog. She does not keep you from attending a party, nor does she reach her hand right out of your computer terminal to grab onto you and force you to read what she has writen.

People read her blog only if they are already interested and want to read her story.

Unlike Janaki, the Ancient Mariner intrudes. He seizes someone by the arm. He has glittering eyes. He forces others to listen to his story, again and again and again.

(Cough)

Quote

And ever and anon through out his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land ;
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns :
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2009 10:12PM by corboy.

The Need to Examine Cultural Cliches

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a highly complex poem.

It is a shame that in the minds of most, it has been reduced to the cliche phrase
'albatross around the neck'. Most of us have a hazy idea that the Ancient Mariner mariner forces everyone to listen to his story.

And most assume that the Mariner is cursed to go wandering forever, cursed with the need to 1) tell the story repeatedly and 2) cursed to tell the story while the dead albatross bird still hangs from his neck.

So we equate Mariner's need to tell his story with his still being under a curse.

It is not this way at all.

1) By the time he tells his story, the Mariner has been freed from his curse.

2) He is telling his story without the bird hanging from his neck. The albatross dropped away off his neck while the Mariner was still at sea.

3) The Mariner does not impose his story on everyone. He only tells the story when he senses that someone needs to hear it.

4) The Mariner is not always in a state of torment. He ends the poem speaking of Gods blessings and the loveliness of all creation. The Mariner has gone through hell but has reached a state of grace.

He tells his story not to large audiences but to selected listeners.

And...at no point does the Mariner ask for money in return for telling this story. Never.

In some ways the Ancient Mariner is quite a demanding person. Yes, he does reach out and grasp the arm of the particular man he wants to tell his story to.

But, this man is one of a group of three 'gallants' on their way to attend the wedding.

The Mariner could have told all three men his story. He could have selected an audience.

But...the Mariner is not attracting attention to his personality. He is not doing missionary outreach. He needs to tell his story, but to not to large audiences.

He singles out one person, and lets the other two go. More about this, later.

And in the end...the Mariner lets the listener go home. He does not accumulate followers who tell others to believe the Mariner.

He lets his listeners go home, afterwards. He doesnt set up a Friends of the Ancient Mariner Worship Group.

'Albatross around the neck' is a metaphor, an image of guilt and shame that is now part of the cultural pattern of persons acculturated to speak and think using English and terms from English literature.

That image 'albatross around the neck' is from Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and we refer to it so often that we do not think about it very much.

Often we equate the 'albatross around the neck' not only to shame and guilt, but see it as the very same thing as being compelled to force your story upon persons who do not want to hear you.

Quote

And if they didn’t know the story, I’d repeat it like some ancient mariner with an albatross around my neck, effectively weighing myself down, and everyone else, and then needing to put her out of my mind again.

later the write of this essay noted

Quote

I may continue to be a jerk sometimes, but I’m a jerk with awareness; so many of my old stories, so carefully created and maintained, have collapsed like a house of cards. I could feel this one crumbling as I sought to cling to it.

My mentor, the author Byron Katie, has famously said, “Forgiveness means that what you thought happened, didn’t.”

[sasee.com]

Now, to repeat:

The Ancient Mariner undid his curse when still at sea. The moment that was accomplished and he was freed from his curse, still at sea, the albatross dropped off of his neck.

And...note that this deliverance happens when the moon appears (The Ancient Mariner does not 'lose the moon' friends, its appearance signals the onset of deliverance from the curse). The Mariner sees the loveliness of creation and can see beauty even in water snakes. This signals his impending deliverance.

(Part Four of the Poem)

Quote

By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes :
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire :
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam ; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

Their beauty and their happiness.
He blesseth them in his heart.

O happy living things ! no tongue
Their beauty might declare :
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware :
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The spell begins to break.
The self-same moment I could pray ;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

PART V

Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole !
To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.

So, by the time the Ancient Mariner returns home, his albatross has fallen off. He is freed from the curse.

But he remains telling the story when he feels the need--not because he is cursed, but because he is human, he has lived through an ordeal and he has a lesson to offer.

And he speaks of human community 'goodly company'--this isnt an individual salvation that excludes all else. It is inclusive and sees all creation, humanity, animals, .

Quote

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company !--

[historyofideas.org]

So to equate the 'albatross around the neck' with 'being cursed to tell a story' is sloppy remembrance of a far more complex poem that is worth revisiting and re-reading in adulthood, when no longer forced to rush read it hurriedly so as to get a passing grade at school.

This man was rendered lonely at sea and now on land wants to tell a tale of remption and of grace. And it regards 'all creatures great and small--including the water snakes referred to above--with a loving eye.

Quote


I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.

**(Corboy note)'I know the man that must hear me'--Coleridge does not have the Mariner is say, 'I know men must hear me', nor does he say 'I know all men must hear me'.

Instead, Coleridge has the Mariner speaking of his listener--in singular. He gives his story person by person, selectively. As in, 'I know the man that must hear me'. Our Ancient Mariner is not doing hard core outreach, nor door to door proslytization.)

What loud uproar bursts from that door !
The wedding-guests are there :
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are :
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer !

O Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea :
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company !--

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay !

And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest !

He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone : and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn :
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2009 02:47AM by corboy.