Dear Russ,
How fascinating. You must have had a wonderful childhood as part of a family willing to be characters in your scripts! I think you were born with a natural link to mystery.
All life is a mystery and each individual life is a mystery. Mystery means “initiate” in the secrets of this Universe. But, then, the atoms of stars live in us — the Universe lives in us — and it seems we are the part of the Universe meant to solve the mystery of its existence and endless potential.
Life is all about mystery. It baffles, perplexes, defies explanation — excites wonder, curiosity, surprise. And constantly presents us with mysteries to solve!
SOLVE = (lit. “to loosen, dissolve” i.e. find a solution to.
SOLUTION = (lit. “to loosen, dissolve, solve”)
Mystery stories follow the clues (dropped by the writer) of a crime (murder/disappearance?) which turns the reader into a detective trying to solve that crime.
The reader then finds himself involved in intrigue, danger, suspense and fear as he encounters the writer's revelations, twists and turns, & cliff-hangers. The reader has to follow the suspects, figure out their motives, ferret out hidden evidence, discover unseen patterns, look for essential details that can seem unimportant, decipher inference gaps — all the while sitting safely in a room reading.
The whole process, to me, sounds similar to how we approach our dreams.
Perhaps a good way to work with dreams is to see them as mystery stories, i.e. to try more of a “Fex & Coo” approach where we take on a character to the extent that we become it.
The sense of a mystery as something to be solved reminds me of alchemy's “Solutio”. Does the alchemical process of Solutio reveal ways to approach these mysteries?
We usually think of mystery stories as something we solve with our intellect and minds, but solutio has to do with the element of water. An invitation, perhaps, to allow our feelings to help us “solve” the mystery. Thoughts can be stubborn, as hard as rocks, and must be melted if they are to enter the creative energy flow. It’s in the flow that we begin to discover answers beyond words — and it's our more passionate involvement that activates the unconscious in a way that facilitates an actual encounter between our own ego’s Mr. Hyde and our shadow's Dr. Jekyl.
The question is: once we are hooked on the search to solve to the mystery, are we changed? Is that what “Fex & Coo” is showing us?
Now is a chance for hard, dry thoughts — with their ready, stubborn answers that must fit into society’s norms to be taken seriously — to loosen & dissolve. When we become the detective chasing the clues in our dreams and in films & TV series, do we also become more liquid, more fluid, more open to new revelations and even a larger personality?
Mystery also makes me think of the ancient Mystery schools scattered all over the Mediterrean. Paul says, in I Cor. “This is how one should regard us as … stewards of the mysteries of God”. (There is strong evidence Paul was a gnostic Xn).
When Pythagoras, after years of studying in an Osirian Egyptian temple, returns to Greece, he looks for a Greek god closest to Osiris and chooses Dionysus. Each country had its own name for the dying and resurrecting god: Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and all were all born on Dec. 25. The sun descends southward until Dec. 21 or 22, the winter solstice, stops for three days, then starts moving northward again. Dec. 25 was the birthday of the SUN/SON for the ancients. What is translated as the “end of the world” in the New Testament is actually “end of the age”.
Greek soter = savior, meaning healer or "one who makes whole".
“Repent" is the Greek metanoia = “to have a change of consciousness”
“Resurrect” is the Greek anastasia = “rise from sleep” — or become fully awake in the cosmic dream.
Gospel of Thomas: “What you bring forth from within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” The mysteries are within us all.
Arlan Condon is a therapist who has retired from working with people's psyches to run a bookstore. All those books represent his considerable knowledge of the mysteries of life. And in DREAMS: the Final Heresy (does this come as part of the Final Ragnarok dream?) Condon, who wants to be left alone to run his bookstor in peace & quiet, finds himself drawn into the dreams of others once more — into the MYSTERY of what is transpiring NOW in our world. Is this the inspiration/motivation behind “Fex & Coo”? Poor Condon isn’t allowed to simply retire and read about the mytersies of this life at the end of his days.
Just a few ponderings, Russ.