When beginning Ovid, I was immediately overcome with the beauty and fluidness of the writing and imagery, interpreting the text at first was some what difficult and I found myself trying to draw meaning out of the words instead of the meaning manifesting itself on the pages before my eyes.
At first, after reading the Creation I was disappointed, although a beautiful story I felt as though I had been duped, tricked by the translator into reading the bible masked as Ovid. I originally felt as if this entire book would describe how high above us God is watching, as we his creations scramble and suffer below. It was only after completing Pythagoras’ speech (which I admittedly skipped ahead to after only a few chapters) but it was only after this did the true beauty of Ovid, the essence of the Gods themselves manifest in my mind. It absolutely was not that the Gods watch from above, instead that the Gods are within, not only within ourselves but within everything, everyone around us. The spirit that leaves us when we pass is in fact the spirit of God, as we die our soul does not die with the vessel instead it transforms. Pythagoras put it (p.s. these are not my five chosen lines I just think it sounds cool and is a good way of describing this transformation.) “You’ll see that any corpse which- through long lapse of time or else because of liquefying heat- has decomposed, is transformed into tin animals. If, after precious bulls are sacrificed, you set their carcasses within a ditch, you’ll see (it’s a familiar happening) that everywhere among the rotting guts, the pollen-gathering bees will soon spring up.”
Even though this is some what a gruesome sight there is still beauty in the knowledge that it is the transformation, the metamorphoses of spirit, of soul, of god most importantly to another being. The connection is never ending the transfiguration is constant, like this Salvador Dali painting we see not only depiction of a gods presences in the clouds and mountains, but we also are exposed to the infinity of the spiritual movement from one begin to another, in the painting we cannont clearly see where man and woman separate, where one begins and one ends. Instead we see a connection, one that is alltogether sexual, beautiful and alluring, but also frightening and somewhat beyond our mental bounds.
At first, after reading the Creation I was disappointed, although a beautiful story I felt as though I had been duped, tricked by the translator into reading the bible masked as Ovid. I originally felt as if this entire book would describe how high above us God is watching, as we his creations scramble and suffer below. It was only after completing Pythagoras’ speech (which I admittedly skipped ahead to after only a few chapters) but it was only after this did the true beauty of Ovid, the essence of the Gods themselves manifest in my mind. It absolutely was not that the Gods watch from above, instead that the Gods are within, not only within ourselves but within everything, everyone around us. The spirit that leaves us when we pass is in fact the spirit of God, as we die our soul does not die with the vessel instead it transforms. Pythagoras put it (p.s. these are not my five chosen lines I just think it sounds cool and is a good way of describing this transformation.) “You’ll see that any corpse which- through long lapse of time or else because of liquefying heat- has decomposed, is transformed into tin animals. If, after precious bulls are sacrificed, you set their carcasses within a ditch, you’ll see (it’s a familiar happening) that everywhere among the rotting guts, the pollen-gathering bees will soon spring up.”
Even though this is some what a gruesome sight there is still beauty in the knowledge that it is the transformation, the metamorphoses of spirit, of soul, of god most importantly to another being. The connection is never ending the transfiguration is constant, like this Salvador Dali painting we see not only depiction of a gods presences in the clouds and mountains, but we also are exposed to the infinity of the spiritual movement from one begin to another, in the painting we cannont clearly see where man and woman separate, where one begins and one ends. Instead we see a connection, one that is alltogether sexual, beautiful and alluring, but also frightening and somewhat beyond our mental bounds.
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