caves, the Forms + deep water

In Romanticism, nautical allusions serve as one of the major metaphors for the life journey.

The Raft of the Medusa  
Théodore Géricault 1819

Campbell somewhere suggests each find a single fragment from the pile of shards left in the ruins of the mythic world, a fragment that speaks to you, and then play and work with it.

Novalis: “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet” 

Campbell, in The Hero’s Journey interprets the outer world as the world of tradition - that which can be taught – and the inner world as your response to it – an interesting view of the poet’s insight into the relation of subject and object.

The soul is the realm of reconciliation of those two parts of the world – inner and outer – that belong together, but have been falling apart. Novalis continues: “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.” The psyche is a place of potential growth, and the more the inner psychic and the outer cosmic world overlap, the more we gain ground both in the physical and psychic dimension - and the more we are in balance.

The inner and outer worlds are identical anyway; we’re just experiencing the one world in two dimensions. The mystical way of experiencing dissolves the categories of inner and outer. There is only one cosmos, one “undifferentiated consciousness” (Campbell), but it is explored in different ways, by looking inside, or looking outside. An artist has to explore both, because, as Max Beckmann puts it, the purpose of the arts is to make visible the invisible, through reality as the actual mystery of existence.

Where Phantoms Reign:
Myth and Nature in Modern Art
by Martin Weyers published on August 18, 2008 

http://www.martinweyers.com/int_intro_frames.htm 

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=37&blogid=7