Mythopoea
'Mythopoea, a strange word that,' MAP mused appropriately. The Greek concept of 'muse' being the topic for discussion amongst his most recent creation, the Mythologists and Philosophers (MAPs) gathered beneath the eaves of the Graeco-Roman Order of Time-Travel Orphans' new frat house 'GROTTO'.
'Words have magic in them, remember that, 'said one of the 'Orphans', a bushy-bearded goat-eyed figure with tufts of red hair sprouting from his nostrils like the flarings of a dragon just finished throwing flame at a still-smoldering hamlet.
'Myth - appear!' he said, waving the fingers of his right hand in what was barely understandable, in the swift complexity of his dexterity, as a deliberate symbolic pattern of digital movement that, recorded and decoded, would reveal the secrets behind what had just been conjured into being. For there, in their midst, wearing a secretive smile, and darting a forked red tongue between the twin points of its sharply elongated canines, it sat slightly forward upon the now apparently solid air through which it had so spontaneously emerged. To prevent the stem of the tail cracking back and forth over its shoulder in impatient impish glee, the diamond of its tip seemed to take a perverse delight in entwining about the slender waist of its owner to faun upon the treasures concealed beneath the peachily purple furze of its perfectly perfect derriére. Laughing silently, tail now snuggling between its legs, the she-devil threw back her mane of reddish black hair, revealing small apple tight breasts, the pointy nipple cones thrusting skywards as, throat bared to the heavens, the glee-child, legs now thrown apart in abandonment, exposed the root of its problem, diamond wedge disappearing into Aphrodite's Afrit like a serpent into its lair.
The apparition hung in the air of the room for a few more seconds, then vanished, leaving the gathering breathless and expectantly astonished.
'Creatures of myth are what we call archetypes,' said a white-haired gentleman with brightly blue eyes and redly freckled pale white skin, 'which, as any philosopher worth his salt would tell you, are timeless.'
'Meaning what?' asked MAP peremptorily, still tormented by the vision of the devilish damösel.
'Well, archetypes are those psychic contents of the human mind which, universal and eternal, can be found in the writings, art, works, and indeed all belief systems or cyclic 'patterns of creativity'. In fact, as the great philosopher-psychologist Carl Jung once explained, expounding on Plato's theories of 'ideal forms',' he paused a moment and was rewarded for his patience with a brief spattering of applause from wizened palms of wizards, palmists, wise hard psalmists, wise-ass pharmacists (alchemists) and curly white haired pessimists, the rest merely nodding sagely and making oddly significant gestures with arm, leg, foot and hand. 'We all exist as ideas in the 'Mind of God', which means that, in archetypal terms, some of those walking around on God's earth are timeless, universal, and eternal - living archetypes, creatures that have lived, and will live, alongside humanity as guides, teachers, heroes, poets, artisans, rulers, magicians, courtesans, actors, genii ... immortal and forever.'
'Please,' MAP blinked, clicking rounded eyes back into the machine calculator orbs his Space Marine brethren were oh-so-familiar with, thanks to his habit of enforcing an order, when some rookie SM's sloth showed more recalcitrance than fatigue, by administering a stinging eye-to-eye jolt from his laser-optics, 'how do you recognize an archetype?'
'Hrrrmph!' 'said' an ebony-skinned far-from-archetypal Ethiopian jew with golden locks, a button nose with lenseless spectacle frames perched on the end of it as an affectedly affectatious affectation, 'nowadays it's not a simple matter - allow me to explain ...'
'Greece was known as the 'Cradle of Western Civilization' for a reason, it was there that they first began to systematically 'catch' the Dryads, Nymphs, Naiads, Oreads, Fauns, Satyrs, Bacchi, Sileni, Cabiri, the small gods, the Creative spirits of Tree, Stream, River, Stone, Field, Hill, Valley, Forest, Dell and Cave.'
