Complimentarity in Myth

Okay here is a post that will hopefully try and clear up some of the confusion that our looong re-enactment have inspired. The problem with our chapter was that it was a long myth, and therefore we were unable to really give you guys any insight, it is a somewhat hard chapter to wrap your head around, I read it three times. But hopefully this will give you more of an understanding. I think this is one of those books that you can take things out of by reading individual chapters, but to really experience the full meaning, you must read the entire book, because I think it builds on each chapter. But without further ado, here goes!
"The term hieracrch denotes an organization having distinct yet interrelated levels of activity or being....The term hierarchy is useful so long as one does not confuse it with the power pyramid spoken of by sociologists. In the power pyramid, all mind and control is concentrated at the top, like the eye of Reason surmounting the pyramid of Matter on the back of the American one dollar bill. In contrast, in a natural ecology no part of the system is in a position to control the rest of the system unilaterally. That is because the system is informational in character." Kane pg 165. This is to say that in myths, their is no one power that controls the other, but a working together, and that the myths are not to control the listeners but to inform. The myth that we re-enacted was part 2 of a 4 part myth called the "Branches of the Mabinogi", our myth representing the 2nd part or that of the summer. Each branch representing one of the seasons; spring, summer, fall, and winter. So that the 2nd branch is the branch that is concerned with war, "a set of thematice categoy of "youthful exploits", as seen through the youthful exhuberance of Evnissyen, and the war that follows between the two worlds. The spring branch is concerned with the idea of fertility and rebirth and is celebrated in the Celtic world by Beltain, May 1st which marks the earth turning into her explicitely fertile phase. From dream to objectification-re-establishing boundaries-wooing and betrothals. The fall phase is the banishment phase, where the fertility and light are starting to wain, it is concerned with the consequences of loss of feritility in the human world. On Nov. 1st "Samhain" is the foreboding of these nights-movement of the earth to the dark-during this hibernation of nature & growing power of the new year, people retreat to their homes to reflect on the legends and their ancestors. A sort of mythtelling explosion, to remember the lives and customs of those that have gone before, and to celebrate. Winter therefore is the story of sterility. Where nothing is blossoming, and death is a common thought or theme. It is during these two sacred dates May 1st and Nov 4th that the boundaries between the 2 worlds are most permeable-so exchanges between the realm of the living and the realm of the spirit is most accesible. The 4 branches represent the 4 seasons or birth, adventure, disapperance, & death. The 4 branches of the Mabinogi set in order of the seasons is a whole mythology. In the center of the mythology is the g reat complementarity between 2 kinds of power: dreaming and doing. Two worlds that must sustain each other mutually.
So as demonstrated by the myth we re-enacted because the cauldron of life was taken from the spirit world, the gift of life must have something missing, and because it was speech, and as we have seen without words or speech the oral culture is basically dead, this was the complimentartity, it was a warning to the people not to forget hte power that the spirit world holds over fertility, "With its vision of what seem to be speechless clones emerging from the Cauldron of Rebirth, the myth stands as a warning against the modern temptation to manipulate the priniciple of fertility.
Because this chapter is so dense, it is hard to sum up, but hopefully that makes it a little more clear. In myth there are complimentary elements, and the living realm and the spirit realm must work together if harmony is to be accomplished, and once something is taken from one world, then the other world must surrender something in order to substain this balance.