Dancing off the veils/Dancing the fool: A phenomenological exploration of myths with a view to rediscovering an embodied spirituality

• Main Author: Garcia, Leni dlR
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1998
• Subjects: Phenomenology; Mythology; Spirituality; Literature > Philosophy; Hermeneutics; Subjectivity; Philosophy
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/792
• Institution: De La Salle University

Dancing of the Veils/Dancing the Fool is a hermeneutic-phenomenological exploration of the myths with the purpose of showing relevant paradigms for understanding the nature of embodied spirituality. The exploration is undertaken in the spirit of phenomenological reflection as presented in Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being. Different patterns of this phenomenological process, consisting in primary and secondary reflection, are shown in the movement of the mythical narratives.The first and major myth explored is the myth of the Goddess Inanna's journey to the underworld. Through Inanna's ordeal that culminated in the loss of her flesh through death and decay, it is shown how the goddess represents the individual who goes through the cyclical process of reflection toward the realization that she is a bodily being. This is the first enlightenment toward embodied spirituality.An exploration of a group of creation myths shows that the world, which is the dwelling place of individual beings, has a body, too -- the earth, which has undergone a breaking akin to the broken world of primary reflection. This brokenness is metaphorized to show the modern individual's fragmented view of the world which is part of and contributes to the constant dichotomizing between body and spirit, subject and object. It is shown here that the world's healing, a metaphorical secondary reflection, can be achieved only if individual beings participate in the recognition and celebration of the world as the ground of being. Throughout the exploration, attention is given to dancing, discussed in both its literal and metaphorical sense. The goddess dances off her veils to