Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest. Act iii. Sc. 2
Gambit,
I like this. I want to think about this before posting.
***
I keep coming back to this... I do not know why. I want to discuss the
"Bullroarer" mentioned on page 1 of this thread...
***
The young initiates of the tribe were led to the stony bed of a creek
and were shown the holes where Djamar had planted his "bullroarer".
In aboriginal lore the sound of the "bullroarer" --
a roaring wind noise -- symbolised the approach of the god. The original
accounts indicate that Djamar's bullroar or "galuguru" are representations
of the "being" itself. According to E.A. Worms:
"Earnestly the old men impress on the youths the terrible
force of the original tjurunga, by pointing out the baldness of the surrounding
hills and the damaged bark of the trees struck by Djamar when he whirled
the bull-roarer. It smashed the rocks of the foreshore."
After the manifestation of Djamar, which left behind all this damage,
the supreme being himself ascended once again into the sky with his "tjurunga".
Such accounts lost in prehistory are full of emotive similarities but
beyond that they are only diverting tales of the Australian aboriginal
'dreamtime'. [2]
***
Perhaps I am reaching but I sense a parallel between the "Monster"
and the Myth of the Bullroarer...
And then I find this...
***
From the late 1800’s until well into the twentieth century, anthropologists
worldwide recorded bullroarer mythologies, rituals and initiation traditions
and argued their significance in theories of diffusion and independent
invention. Social evolutionists used the bullroarer as a gauge of progress
“up” the civilizational ladder, with Britain at the pinnacle,
their bullroarers having “deteriorated” into toys as superstition
was overcome by science. Somewhat lower were peasant Spain, where bullroarers
were ritually swung on Good Friday, and indigenous cultures in North and
South America using bullroarers to summon wind and rain, promote fertility
among game animals and crops, and ward off evil spirits. In “primitive”
Australia and New Guinea, researchers found thriving and almost unfathomably
complex ancestral bullroarer “cults.” Women and girls, they
were told, neither knew about nor, under pain of death, could they see
the bullroarers. Young men newly circumcized and sub-incized were given
small bullroarers to swing both to promote healing and to warn off females.
At the same time, sacred traditions across many cultures held that the
bullroarer was either given to, discovered by, or born of a woman who
ultimately surrendered it to men.
Infrasonics and Consciousness Modification In the mid-1980s, a
radical reassessment began when acoustic scientists determined that bullroarers
produce a range of infrasonics, extremely low frequency sound waves (20
Hz. or less) that are below the human auditory threshold but nonetheless
enter the brain. Thunder, earthquakes, waterfalls and waves, whales and
sharks, cassowaries, deep drums and gongs, chanting, jet planes, and bass-boosters
all generate infrasonics. These waves are picked up by the cochlea (labyrinth)
of the ear and influence the vestibular, circadian systems of the brain.
Infrasonics stimulate a wide array of euphoric, eerie, and/or deeply traumatic
trance-like and hallucinogenic states, and serotonin nerves may be central
to this process.
Awareness of and experimentation with infrasonics in military applications,
performance, rock art research, ritual, therapy, persuasion, and learning
has grown exponentially with contemporary brain research. Infrasonics
fall within the same frequency range as brain waves, and brain waves have
been experimentally linked to a variety of mood and thought patterns.
Theta brain waves (5 Hz - 8 Hz) are associated with creativity and insight;
alpha waves (8 Hz – 13 Hz) with relaxed meditative states; and beta
waves (13 Hz – 30 Hz) with fully awake, analytical thinking. The
different parts of the brain simultaneously generate different waves,
and researchers have only begun to imagine how environmental infrasonic
mixes might actually shape or even have given birth to human consciousness.
Future Research Directions History, anthropology, and the neurosciences
are teaming up to decipher the roles of diffusion and independent invention
in the remarkably uniform worldwide tradition of bullroarers. A major
task is to understand the subtleties employed in generating the voice
or “calls” of the bullroarer and their role in the creation
of human belief systems—especially the spectrum of physical, emotional
and hallucinogenic responses to beneficial (15 Hz. and above) and potentially
“toxic” (below 10 Hz.) infrasonics. Of particular significance
is the widespread belief that the bullroarer existed prior to deities
or ancestor spirits.
***
Interested to hear your thoughts.
And about Rose, who thought "it" sounded familiar -- perhaps
she heard a Bullroarer while in Australia?
An audio sample of the Bullroarer can be found here. Note that sounds differ depending on materials, strength, acoustic environment, etc...
www.audiolicense.net/imag...sten
Turn it up but be warned: THIS IS CREEPY.
I must say that the sound does indeed create an odd emotional response...
whether or not it sounds like the "monster" I cannot tell but
the sound is quite effective.
I think we might be onto something...
I also might add: I now really really really like this Theory and think it is quite strong.
I would also like to request from a Tech Savvy User to provide us with
an audio sample of the "Monster" for some comparison.
The audio sample above, at about second 36 and on, does sound (to me)
like the arrival of the "monster."
But I could be reaching. Interested to know what all of you think.
purrkins
When I started reading this thread...I thought...once again...how smart our members are. Continued and second thought: our members are smarter than the writers of the show...and the writers could NEVER come up with this stuff. Then I recalled how Abrams is about "Sydney." Could just be a signatory thing. But still...it is out there. So, I keep reading: and then? I am blown away by the possibility.
My final thought...if anyone has read this so far...is if this is NOT
part of the show's premise....we have some members here who need to gather
and write this show. Tony Hillerman's books are made into movies and shown
on PBS. THIS stuff is GOOD.
cccourt
that bullroarer sound is pretty wicked. there definitely seems to be a loose parallel between that and the monster, whether intended or not. here is some more aboriginal digging:
In Aboriginal kinship stories, the rules for relationships between people
are delineated. They provide the Dreaming Tracks and the law of the land.
A typical Aboriginal family unit is large and extended. Children are the
concern of the entire community and their education and rearing is the
responsibility of everyone, even though, some knowledge is secret and
only revealed when the child is ready. People are addressed by their skin
name or kinship name which is shared by others of the same generation.
Kinship is more important then individuality, and, the strength of the
kinship system is a core element of all Aboriginal traditions.
Colonel Beauregarde
Well, I for one like this theory/thread the most -- it may not be "the ONE" -- but it is the one I'm learning the most from.
The bullroarer sound wav was freaky cool...and I can buy into the bullroarer/monster
link -- but the sound of the "monster" is more mechanical/steam
blowing. I agree that this might be way beyond what the writers are creating
-- but still...perhaps they are blending some basic Aboriginal myths with
some sort of "real world" explaination.
I keep on going back to the diagram...everything we've seen so far fits
in the headings. I'm too brain-dead right now...I'll come back later...
trinabobina
Folks,
I do promise. I will drop this Bullroarer topic in a moment and return
the Spiritual Pyramid Map posted on page 1 of this thread, as I too think
it is important...
But... A bit more on the Bullroarer...
Another anthropologist, Andrew Lattas, studied the Kaliai bush people,
a culture which invokes tambarans. A tambaran is the illusion
of a monstrous being, produced secretly by men during initiation.
It is represented by masks and loud sounds, produced by such instruments
as the bullroarer. The women of the village are often told that
a tambaran has eaten their children, but because pigs were sacrificed
for the tambaran, it was full, and so vomited up their children; or, as
is sometimes the case, their child was taken up into the womb of the tambaran
and then dispelled (Lattus 452).
An especially important tambaran is Varku; “Varku is one of the
most secret and powerful of that pantheon of tambarans which men’s
houses are capable of invoking as the basis of patriarchal power. Varku
is composed of a bullroarer and a painted wooden mask” (Lattus 455).
In this case, men are able to imitate procreation by invoking
a god-like beast, depicted by a bullroarer, which devours and excretes
initiates.
Similar rituals are observed throughout portions of New Guinea. Anthropologist
A. C. Haddon studied the balum cult, a cult found among the Bakaua, the
Jabim, the Tami Islanders, the Kai, and other tribes and peoples. Balum
refers to “(1) the secret cult of a mysterious being of
whom the women are told that he is a greedy monster desiring the lives
of young people, who has to be bought off with pigs, (2) the bullroarer
which produces the voice of the spirit, and (3) the soul of those who
have been dead a long time” (Haddon 241). Initiates into
the cult spend several months in seclusion until they are taken away from
the village to a balum hut. While being led to this hut, the initiates
are surrounded by noise and the swinging of bullroarers. This special
balum hut symbolizes a monster, and as the boys proceed into the hut,
the men of the village growl, thus symbolizing the swallowing of the initiates.
In the hut the boys are circumcised; during circumcision bullroarers are
swung.
***
Eaten and then dispelled!!!??? Well this sounds like... uh... the "monster"
But I would like to add -- I like the comment "illusion of a monstorous
being."
After all Danielle said there were no such things as monsters. I tend
to agree with her, it is something else...
OK, back to the Pyramid map after lunch.
RE: Your earlier post (I am not sure how to quote here)
I would disagree with you. I think the writers of LOST use the same resources
we do and have found this information themselves.
The similarties are indeed almost too striking...
But I am also a writer, and I know that writers are a lazy bunch when
it comes to doing research.
I have posted nothing that could not be found in 10 minutes using Google.
(This is all new to me too, I am no expert on Aboriginal Mythology or
Customs -- I work for an Opera Company, a far world away from what we
are now talking about) and knowing how lazy writers are, I have simply
typed what I have learned into Google and it opened up new avenues, new
parallels and new similarities.
I have also hit lots of dead-ends ;-)
There is nothing new under the sun. Every story is a rehashing of an older
story -- and creation myths, no matter where they are from, are all very
similar because they are based in Universal Truths. These constants of
the Human Experience are Universal to all of us.
Look at the map on page 1 of this thread. This is a Spiritual Map of the
Aboriginal World. But, it can also be applied to Christians, Jews, Muslims,
Buddhists, etc... -- all of these boxes and circles are Constants in our
Experience. We all deal with each one of these nodes on a daily basis
-- despite our upbringing and belief sets, in our public and private lives.
But this is what makes LOST such a brillant show. Because it shows the
Human Experience in a distilled fashion -- a microcosim of a bigger world
we ALL live in.
The Dreamtime Theory is not the answer to LOST. It is just one layer among
many. Perhaps it is a layer that is closer to core than some of the others
-- perhaps it was where the writers began, the springboard of ideas before
they branched out...
One thing is for sure, it makes for great for television because in all
the characters we see a bit of ourselves, even if we do not want to...
Rest assured, I will keep on posting here. And also remember that my comments
are only as good as the comments of those before me, and those after.
purrkins
Over all I think this theory is important to understanding Locke. Locke most likely knows all this and is referring to it at times.
Wynter Zera