Sunday, April 12, 2026

Yin Yang Bats: OTI:April 12, 2026

 Open to Interpretation

#Yin Yang Bats


Games On...on the radio...Ohtani up...way back...Home Run...back to back with lead off yesterday too...Rangers 2-Dodgers 1...bottom of first...so, so, I have a side by side by side...Yin Yang Bats/Two frogs splashes in the pond/Sunflower Twins-Fibonnaci Spirals... we go the second...bbk...lost in facebook search: yin yang bats....I thought they were a specific species, but no, yin yang refers to all bats, 80 per cent have one kind of hearing, yin, the other 20 another, yang...Egyptian tomb bats echolocate, which makes them yang...I think...I found this looking for Egypt WAS sceptre:

🧐https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid022nxA1vTmhRDDgDpidc6inkhizhi9B9bJAr5c92DSJEwfoJYw6yiMaSvYQ15D4gc7l&id=100044499887799&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6



I'm wondering if it is a bat...echo locating bats' ears have those ribs...now I'm wondering about the rib like ties, somethings, on the Ankh and Djed seen here!...🍿

🎶comment left...post has pics, shows  the WAS sceptre animal, aaand here a long AI on the WAS Animal

Archaeologists' comments on WAS sceptre 

Rangers with a home run, top of third...


✨️Archaeologists interpret the Was sceptre (wꜣs) as a primary ancient Egyptian symbol of divine power, dominion, and sovereignty, appearing from the First Dynasty through the Roman period. Frequently held by gods (especially Set, Anubis, and Osiris) and pharaohs, it represents control over chaos (isfet) and support for divine order (maat).

Key Archaeological Interpretations and Findings:
  • Symbolism & Function: It is designed as a staff with a forked base—likely representing the legs of a desert animal—and a top fashioned as the head of the "Set animal" (a canine or unidentifiable beast). It embodies strength, authority, and and acts as a magical tool for protection.
  • Physical Makeup: Archaeologists have found examples constructed from wood, faience, and sometimes precious metals. While often depicted, actual physical examples, such as those made of faience, have been discovered, sometimes with alternating bands of blue and gold.
  • Origin Theories: Some scholars suggest the staff evolved from a shepherd’s crook (heqa staff), a walking stick, or a, representing control and, in some theories, having connections to African bull cults (e.g., as a dried, stylized, and preserved bull's penis).
  • Usage: It was used to bestow the power of "well-being" and "dominion" upon the deceased in funerary contexts, appearing on tomb walls and in coffins.
  • Recent Discoveries: In 2020, archaeologists, including Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, reported discovering a 3,200-year-old bronze-and-silver plated, spatula-like object in a Canaanite temple at Lachish, which they identified as a Canaanite version of the Was scepter, potentially associated with life-sized statues of gods.
The sceptre was often paired with other symbolic, such as the Ankh (life) and Djed (stability).

🎶"forked base represents legs"...that supports my guess the fork is the Egypt bat's hands, that have evolved into one thing, a kinda hook...from which they hang...they look like the SET animal, and fit the Set attributes-chaos-scared bats...Set is the Yang to Horus' Yin...Rangers tie it up...aand bases loaded...
✨️Horus and Set represent a fundamental Egyptian duality, often viewed as a yin-yang dynamic of order versus chaos. While rivals for the throne, they are complementary, embodying "The Two Lords" necessary for a balanced cosmos. They are sometimes depicted together tying papyrus and lotus around the sema-sign, symbolizing unity.
Key Aspects of the Horus-Set Duality:
  • Complementary Opposites: Horus represents order, sky, and kingship, while Set represents chaos, storms, and the desert. Like the yin-yang, they possess aspects of each other, where one force enables the other's existence.
  • The Mythological Contendings: Their 80-year battle for the throne, detailed in the Chester Beatty Papyrus I, involved competition, trickery, and transformation, often highlighting their equal power.
  • Balancing the State: Egyptians viewed the pharaoh as embodying both forces, balancing the chaos and order in the land.
  • Symbolic Unity: Despite their violent rivalry, they are depicted on thrones uniting the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt).
  • The Eye Symbolism: The conflict included the destruction of Horus's eye (often associated with the moon) and the injury of Set, symbolizing the wounding of the world, which is later healed or restored.
While in many depictions Set is considered the villainous force, some interpretations argue that the duality of Horus and Set is necessary to create a whole, akin to the balance of day and night.
🎶Rangers 2-Dodgers 1...bottom of three...it's deep weeds trying to go on and on about yin yang...good and evil...Ohtani up...on base in 46 straight games...Ron Cey with 47...Duke Snyder 58...Night is scary...Greek gods of Day and Night...ball four...
✨️In Greek mythology, Hemera is the primordial goddess of the Day, while her mother, Nyx, is the goddess of the Night. They are distinct, ancient forces (Protogenoi) who live in Tartarus and alternate passing over the earth, with Hemera dispersing the mists of her mother, Nyx, every morning.
Key Details About Day and Night in Greek Myth:
  • Hemera (Day/Dies): She represents the daytime, emerging from the underworld as her mother leaves, often depicted as a radiant figure bringing light.
  • Nyx (Night): The ancient goddess of the night, who brings her dark veil across the sky, often regarded as one of the most powerful and feared primordial deities.
  • The Cycle: According to Hesiod's Theogony, they never share the same space simultaneously, constantly passing each other at the threshold of the underworld.
  • Origin: Both are children or forces related to Erebus (Darkness) and share the duty of creating the 24-hour cycle, long before Olympian gods like Apollo were associated with the sun.
Hemera is sometimes conflated with Eos (Goddess of Dawn) or Hera in later myths, but as a primordial deity, she is the literal embodiment of daylight.
The Protogenoi (or Primordials) are the first generation of Greek deities, emerging from the void of Chaos to form the fundamental fabric of the universe, such as Earth, Sky, Sea, and Time. Unlike later anthropomorphic gods, they are elemental beings representing physical, natural, and cosmic forces rather than human characteristics.
✨️The concept that one thing cannot occupy the space of another is primarily explained in physics by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that no two fermions (like electrons, protons, or neutrons) can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. This is why solid matter feels solid and objects cannot simply pass through one another.
Here are the key aspects of this principle:
  • Electron Repulsion: The electrons orbiting atoms possess a negative charge, and when atoms approach each other, their electron clouds repel, preventing them from occupying the same space.
  • Fundamental Stability: It prevents all electrons in an atom from crashing into the lowest energy level, allowing atoms to have structure, which enables all chemistry and material existence.
  • Solid Objects: It explains why you cannot put your hand through a wall; the atoms in your hand cannot occupy the same spatial position as the atoms in the wall.
  • Fermions vs. Bosons: This rule applies specifically to fermions (matter particles). Bosons (force particles like photons) can share the same space, allowing light beams to pass through each other.
While atoms are mostly empty space, the electromagnetic forces and the quantum behavior of electrons ensure that macroscopic objects hold their structure and maintain their own, distinct space.
🎶hmmph...gods personified science, back then...and got conflated into stories...
the stories from fiction to fact...

✨️That perspective aligns closely with several theories in anthropology and history, particularly euhemerism, which suggests that gods and myths often originated as distorted stories of historical figures, celestial events, or natural phenomena that were personified over time.
In the ancient world, before modern scientific methods were developed, myth was the framework for understanding, documenting, and conveying complex observations about the world.
Here is how ancient stories acted as "personified science" and the journey from fiction to (perceived) fact:
1. Personification of Natural Forces
  • Weather and Geology as Deity: Natural phenomena were often too complex or terrifying for ancient people to understand through mechanisms. They personified them to make them relatable. For example, Poseidon was not just the sea; he was the personification of the sea’s destructive power, responsible for earthquakes.
  • The Sun and Cycles: Apollo and Helios were personifications of the sun. The myth of Helios driving a chariot was a poetic explanation of the sun’s daily journey across the sky.
  • Creation Myths as Science: Ancient Greek mythology, such as in Hesiod’s Theogony, explained the origin of the universe ("cosmogony") by describing the emergence of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky) from Chaos.
2. Distortion of Historical Facts (Euhemerism)
  • Heroic Figures as Gods: According to the theory of euhemerism, many gods were originally great kings, rulers, or explorers whose lives were exaggerated over generations until they were deified.
  • Real Events as Myths: Stories like the Great Flood (found in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh) may have originated from real catastrophic flooding at the end of the last Ice Age.
  • The Amazons: Greek myths about fierce warrior women were long considered pure fiction, but archaeological discoveries of Scythian women buried with weapons suggest a basis in real nomadic cultures.
3. The Shift from Fiction to Fact
  • Symbolic Meaning: For the people who created them, these stories were not meant to be "falsehoods" or simple entertainment. They were "subjective truths" that explained their reality, provided moral guidance, and organized their society.
  • The Loss of Context: Over centuries of oral tradition, the original context of a story was lost, and the metaphor was taken literally, turning a poetic description of nature into a literal "god".
  • Ritual and Memory: Myths were often created to explain rituals whose original meanings had been forgotten.
In this sense, ancient mythology was a form of "protomagic" or "early science"—a way for humans to connect with their environment and manage their fears in a world filled with unknowns.

🎶euhemirisim...hmmph...telescoping...that's like what AI said of Robert Graves unraveling myths, in fact, in his Greek Myths books, he goes on about the different attributes of myth in the Introduction, if I remember right...stories are pudding stones of fact and fiction...
✨️
..stories are pudding stones of fact and fiction...
+3
This phrase is a metaphor comparing narratives to pudding stones (a type of conglomerate rock), illustrating that stories are rarely pure, but rather a blend of different materials fused together.
  • Pudding Stone Definition: Pudding stone is a sedimentary rock (conglomerate) consisting of rounded pebbles (clasts) cemented together in a finer matrix, resembling a plum pudding.
  • The Metaphor: Just as a pudding stone takes diverse, separate materials (jasper, quartzite, quartz) and binds them into a single, cohesive solid, stories take facts (events, people, places) and fiction (imagination, interpretation, narrative structure) to create a new, singular, blended "reality".
  • Fact and Fiction: The "pebbles" represent distinct facts, while the "matrix" that binds them is the storytelling, which may fill gaps and connect them, blending them into a single, solid narrative.
In essence, the metaphor implies that stories are formed through a process of accretion—layering truth with imagination over time—making them a unique, sometimes unrecognizable, combination of the two.
Robert Graves pudding stone
🎶Ohtani up...I'm missing a great game!...aaand they walk Ohtani...Tucker up...two Dodgers on base...looking for a timely hit...overcast in socal...rain this morning...
found this on pudding stones-a neat blog!
https://share.google/JUkIxuROHzods6II6
The how these things are made is in that hot taffy factory beneath our feet...geology is the university of the universe...
✨️Geology is often described as the study of the Earth, encompassing its structure, composition, physical properties, and the history of its evolution over 4.6 billion years. It acts as a foundational science, frequently referred to as the "liberal arts" of the sciences because it integrates principles from mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology to understand Earth's interconnected systems.
who resembles Hathor-no connection to Bats...aaand, then there's baseball bats...
time for outandabout snack...bbk with score...
BK.  Rangers 5- Dodgers 2...
Liberal Arts pudding stone
a distinctive sedimentary conglomerate rock containing rounded, colorful pebbles ("fruit") embedded in a finer-grained, cemented matrix ("cake"). 
:)
DavidDavid

Saturday, April 11, 2026

Yin Yang Bats:OTI:April 11, 2026

 Open to Interpretation

#Robert Graves comments on Bats

#Yin Yang Bats

Game on...on the radio...top of ninth...Rangers at Dodgers...Rangers 3-Dodgers 6...all safe...E5...one out...K...down to last out...

✨️Robert Graves (1895–1985) often used imagery of bats in his poetry to evoke themes of darkness, mystery, the subconscious, and the unsettling, "uncanny" nature of the natural world. His depictions frequently lean toward the menacing or the magical, particularly in his earlier work, where they often symbolize older, untamed, or pagan forces lurking at the edges of human consciousness. 

Key Comments and Imagery in Graves' Poetry:
• "Outlaws" (1918): In this poem, Graves associates bats with darkness and the lingering power of forgotten, "malign" forces.
• He writes: "Owls: they whinney down the night / Bats go zigzag by. / Ambushed in shadow out of sight / The outlaws lie.".
• He portrays them as part of a "moving sea of black" in the woods, "greedy of human stuff to snare / In webs of murk.".
• They are described as "aged gods... Shrunk to mere bogey things," representing a spooky, almost malevolent force.
• "Ghost Music" (1917): In this poem, Graves compares the "ghosts of long-dead melodies" to bats hanging in a belfry, setting a somber, melancholic, and somewhat unsettling tone, describing them as "drowsy-sweet" yet "huddled there in harmony / Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.".
• Symbolism of the Uncanny: In his poetic and analytical work, such as The White Goddess, Graves frequently delves into themes that are hidden, nocturnal, and irrational. Bats align with this, appearing in his poetry as creatures of the "dark," "wet woods", which contrast with rational, "daylit" thought. 
Voetica +4
Distinction from Other Poets:
While another poet, Theodore Roethke, famously described bats as having a "human face" and being a "cousin to the mouse", Graves’ use of bats is more heavily centered on the "ambuscade" (ambush) and "nets of shade," emphasizing their role as watchers or "outlaws" in the dark. 
Voetica +1

🎶K...Rangers 3-Dodgers 6

Tourists comments on Egyptian Bats

🎶consensus seems they're cute...searches found this about one mummified bat in all of Egyptian history...by AncientArchetecs...

🧐https://youtu.be/hmOWi_eFgdY?si=-6RLCzc3cJebEakV

✨️Egyptian fruit bats (
) are often described by tourists and nature enthusiasts as surprisingly "adorable" or "cute," with large eyes and dog-like faces, rather than spooky. While some visitors to Egypt have been surprised to see large numbers of them flying around high-rise hotels in Cairo, they are generally viewed as gentle nighttime gardeners crucial for the ecosystem.


🎶too much to be quoting AI...easy way...but, 
it's so curious...Robert Graves comments...
on Dracula...bbk...no luck...Movie monster 
triad is Dracula, Werewolf, Frankenstein...

Robert Graves comments on Werewolves

✨️Robert Graves discussed werewolves in the context of ancient Greek mythology and ritual, specifically highlighting the Arcadian tradition where men became wolves. He described these transformations as being linked to rituals involving human sacrifice and the consumption of human entrails, after which the individuals would live as wolves for several years before returning to human form. 
Doris V. Sutherland
Key insights on Graves' views:
• Arcadian Lycanthropy: Graves detailed the story of Lycaon's descendants in Arcadia, where a participant in a ritual feast would become a werewolf, herding with wolves for eight years.
• Reversion Rule: Graves noted that a werewolf could return to human form if they abstained from eating human flesh during their eight-year exile.
• Mythological Context: These comments primarily appear in his analysis of Greek myths, focusing on the anthropological and ritualistic roots of the werewolf legend.
• Ritualistic Transformation: Graves' focus was on the ritualistic, almost shamanic, aspect of becoming a wolf rather than the supernatural "curse" typical of modern pop culture. 
Doris V. Sutherland


Robert Graves comments on Frankenstein



🎶Mary wrote Frankenstein

(Note: watched Fringe after, Marionette 
episode 9 season 3-a take on 
Frankenstein...aaand, looked up 
Miranda Seymor, she has biographies of
Mary Shelly and Robert Graves, and many
other books!!!)


✨️The author 
Robert Graves
’ most notable connection to 
Mary Shelley
 is his personal interest in her 
life and work, which influenced his 
own literary circle and later biographies. 
He notably compared his
 partner Laura Riding to 
Shelley, suggesting that both 
women were central to the 
production of great novels—though 
in Graves’ view, Riding's influence 
was more indirect, serving as the
 necessary muse for his own work 
in a way that mirrored the intense
 creative environments Shelley 
inhabited. 
The Hudson Review +3
Graves' perspective on Shelley often 
filtered 
through his broader fascination 
with the Romantic era and
 the "Shelley spirit": 
• Creative Influence: Graves viewed
 the creative partnership of Percy 
and Mary Shelley as a template
 for his own intense, often difficult 
literary collaborations.
• The Biographer's Lens: Graves 
himself was the subject of a biography 
by Miranda Seymour, who also 
wrote an acclaimed biography of 
Mary Shelley. This shared
 biographical focus highlights Graves' 
role as a link in the ongoing literary 
reassessment of the Shelley circle.
• Romantic Myth-Making: Much
 like Graves sought "emotional truth" 
over strict accuracy in his own 
historical works like I, Claudius or 
The Greek Myths, he was drawn to 
the dramatic and often macabre 
myths surrounding the Shelleys, 
such as the story of Mary retaining 
Percy's heart after his cremation. 
The Hudson Review +4
While Graves did not write a 
standalone critical treatise on 
Shelley, his private letters and 
autobiographical reflections often
 return to the "troubled" and "tragic" 
nature of her life as a source of poetic
 inspiration. 
WordPress.com +1
Would you like to explore more 
about Graves’ own historical novels
 or his relationship with other 
Romantic-era poets?
The One Story of Robert Graves | 
The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review

🎶Graves seems to regard Muses 
as a shamanic, maybe manic!,
 ingredient of poetry...
that IS in the Tradition!...
"outlaws"..."scared like bats"...
AI drops things-a Frankenstein muse...
didn't get to the Yin Yang bats...

:)
DavidDavid



Friday, April 10, 2026

Atlantis:OTI:April 11, 2026

 #Atlantis

#Robert Graves Comments


Game on...at Dodgers....Ohtani Bobblehead Night...top of ninth...Rangers 4-Dodgers 7...Davis on mound...

✨️Robert Graves, a prominent poet and mythologist, held distinct views on Atlantis, treating it not as a pure myth but as "telescoped history" that blended factual events with legend. His views were primarily developed in his 1953 article "What Happened to Atlantis" and later refined in The Greek Myths (1955), with a final return to the topic in "The Lost Atlantis" (1967).

Here are the key points of Graves' comments on Atlantis:
  • Location in North Africa: Contrary to the popular Atlantic Ocean or Aegean theories, Graves argued that Atlantis was situated in Western Libya (modern Tunisia and Libya).
  • Lake Tritonis Identification: He identified the "Atlantic" sea described by Plato as the ancient, now dried-up Lake Tritonis in North Africa.
  • Telescoped History: Graves believed the story reported by Solon was a conflation (telescoping) of real events: a massive, destructive flood and catastrophe in North Africa (c. 3rd millennium BCE) that dispersed survivors, and the memory of ancient Minoan harbor works.
🎶Did he know of the Eye of the Saharah?...anyway...here is Jahhana going on about this Atlantis in Maritania!

🧐
https://www.facebook.com/funnyoldeworld/videos/1004082085001263/?sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6AJuK9

🎶left comment there of Graves' comment...Rangers down to their final out...base hit...Rangers got back two of three behind...Rangers 6-Dodgers 7...stolen base...aand a deliberate walk...aaaand a base hit...Rangers 7-Dodgers 7...took away win for starting pitcher Glasnow...?...K...bottom of ninth...the eye was discovered in the 30's-40's, readsaid, brought to prominence with Satellite views...missing game finding this...radio app goes off if I scroll a video...Muncie walked it off!...Rangers 7-Dodgers 8...

🧐The structure is also the location of exceptional accumulations of Acheulean Paleolithic stone tools.

🎶worthy of a looksee...

:)

DavidDavid



Wednesday, April 8, 2026

On Growth and Form

 Open to Interpretation

#on growth and form


At home...nothing on...in the soft chair, feet up:...I'm ready to sleep, but oft up reading, writing, to 3am or so...that interspersed with naps and snacks, and a Fringe episode watch of late...wondering if Robert Graves read D. Arcy Thompson...on the table side by side: Newgrange, The Great Pyramid, On Growth and Form, pond ripples, pinecone fishnet lattice fibonnacci, yin and yang bats...yet to riff on the bats...but the WAS sceptre bat ears...anyway, last posts have been lifts from search generated AI exhigisis, or some such...treatises...takes. riffs...here's another, but let me set it up...Newgrange has the three spirals...the White Goddess cover has an illustration made by Graves with an artist friend, and it has three spirals...the book On Growth and Form is full of spirals...my on and on has been the step fret triangle...welp, that's some to keep in mind reading thru this AI quote, and the one after-there's two...read on Zena...


✨️D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948) was a pioneering Scottish biologist and mathematician who, in his seminal 1917 book On Growth and Form, extensively documented the appearance of the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...) in nature. He argued that these numerical relationships in plant and animal growth were not mysterious, but rather the necessary consequence of physical and mechanical forces acting upon developing structures. 

Key Insights from D'Arcy Thompson
• Phyllotaxis (Leaf/Seed Arrangement): Thompson showed that the spirals in sunflowers, pinecones, and cauliflowers correspond to Fibonacci numbers (e.g., a sunflower might have 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other), which allows for the most efficient packing of parts. 
• "Gnomonic Growth" (Shells): He analyzed snail shells and animal horns as "equiangular spirals" (or logarithmic spirals), which are fundamentally related to the geometric growth pattern associated with Fibonacci numbers, where each new piece of growth is similar to the whole. 
• Mathematical Necessity over Adaptation: Unlike many contemporaries who believed every biological structure was optimized strictly by natural selection, Thompson proposed that Fibonacci patterns arise spontaneously due to the mechanical constraints of packing and growth in a limited space.
The "On Growth and Form" Philosophy
• Focus on Structure: He believed that the morphology (shape) of an organism is often determined by the physics of its environment and growth, not solely by its genetics. 
• "All Preface": He aimed to bring mathematical rigor to biology, showcasing that many natural forms (e.g., jellyfish compared to liquid drops) are simple mathematical transformations. 
• Legacy: Thompson is considered the grandfather of "evo-devo" (evolutionary developmental biology) and mathematical biology, as his work paved the way for understanding how simple mathematical laws generate complex life forms. 
In summary, D'Arcy Thompson viewed the Fibonacci sequence in nature as a bridge between the mathematics of growth and the physical world—a "single and indivisible principle of unity." 

CGI D Aarcy Thompson

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1917 masterpiece On Growth and Form pioneered the use of mathematical and physical principles to explain biological shapes, directly influencing modern computer-generated imagery (CGI), morphing techniques, and 3D modeling. His "theory of transformations" used Cartesian grids to show how biological shapes evolve, a method that underpins modern 3D morphing. 
ScienceDirect.com +3


🎶see wiki's take on the book, On Growth and Form-the chapter log line like summaries...lot to hold in mental suspension!...

I imgine Graves has comment on D. Arcy...looked, no luck...here and there in the White Goddess, the Roebuck in the Thicket, are mentions of Nature-Roebuck for one thing-"close observation of Nature"...bbk...

✨️Robert Graves, a prolific 20th-century British poet and author, utilized close observation of nature as a central component of his poetic philosophy, connecting it to themes of love, death, and the shifting seasons. His work frequently reflects an intimate understanding of the natural world, both in his detailed nature imagery and in his theoretical writings, such as The White Goddess, which argue that true poetry derives from a connection to the natural world.
whatabout Darwin...bbk...following are searches
:  Robert Graves comments on
Darwin
D Arcy Thompson
Archaeology

✨️Based on available literature and academic commentary, Robert Graves does not appear to have a prominent or substantial body of work specifically focused on commenting on Charles Darwin.


robert graves comments on d arcy thompson



+3
Based on available, albeit limited, scholarly and bibliographical references, Robert Graves was familiar with the work of the Scottish biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948).
• Context in Reading: D'Arcy Thompson's seminal 1917 book, "On Growth and Form"—a classic study of natural geometry, mathematics, and morphology—appears in lists of the working library of Robert Graves.
• Significance: Thompson’s work is highly regarded for bridging biology with physical sciences and classical literature. Graves, as a poet who often focused on natural form, mythology, and the underlying structure of reality (later in his work), likely found common ground in Thompson’s assertion that biological forms are manifestations of physical forces.
• Thematizing Growth: While Graves is better known for his mythological writings (like The White Goddess), Thompson's On Growth and Form was often cited by poets and thinkers of that era studying the unity of nature. 
Instagram +4
While there is no record of extensive personal correspondence or explicit, public critical commentary by Graves on Thompson's work, their areas of interest overlapped, particularly in the intersection of classical scholarship (both were noted classical scholars) and the study of natural form. 

Robert Graves (1895–1985) was a poet, novelist, and mythographer who held complex, often critical, and highly idiosyncratic views on archaeology, which he frequently blended with anthropology, mythology, and poetic intuition. While he was not a formally trained archaeologist, he engaged deeply with archaeological findings to support his theories about ancient matriarchal societies and the evolution of Greek myths. 
Poetry Foundation +4
Here are the key themes and comments from Graves regarding archaeology:
1. The "Analeptic Method" and Intuition
• Intuitive Discovery: Graves described his approach to the past as the "analeptic method," which he defined as "the intuitive discovery of forgotten events by a deliberate suspension of time". This approach often favored imaginative, poetic reconstruction over strict academic, fact-based interpretation.
• "Good Nose" over Academic Training: Graves acknowledged his unorthodox approach, once stating in a letter, "I am not a Greek scholar or an archaeologist or an anthropologist... but I have a good nose and a sense of touch, and think I have connected a lot of mythical patterns which were not connected before".
• Dismissal by Professionals: He was well aware that his methods—specifically the "iconotropy" (re-interpretation of images) in The Greek Myths—would "infuriate" classical scholars and scientists, who often regarded his interpretations as unsupported. 
PhilArchive +3
2. Archaeological Context of The White Goddess (1948)
• Matriarchal Premise: Graves used archaeological and anthropological data, particularly from the Bronze Age, to argue that European culture was originally based on a matriarchal belief system worshipping a "White Goddess".
• Reinterpretation of Relics: He interpreted archaeological artifacts—such as those found in Crete or early Greece—not just as physical items, but as clues to an ancient, lost poetic religion that was later suppressed by patriarchal, rationalist invaders (like the Dorians and Achaeans).
• Reconstructing Myth: His interpretations, such as in The Greek Myths, were described by critics as taking myths out of their chronological context and interpreting artifacts in ways "no archaeologist would dare". 
PhilArchive +2
3. Views on Specific Archaeological Finds
• Roman Infrastructure: In Claudius the God, Graves spoke passionately about Roman roads, describing them as the "greatest monument ever raised to human liberty".
• Contrast with Monuments: In the same text, he famously criticized the Great Pyramid of Giza, labeling it a "rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery".
• Location of Atlantis: Graves proposed unconventional locations for mythical places, suggesting that Atlantis was located in the region of modern Tunisia and Libya, specifically as a result of the collapse of old harbor works in the Lake Tritonis area. 
Goodreads +1
4. Relationship with Scientific Archaeology
• Uneasy Relationship: While he used archaeological findings to support his mythological theories, Graves maintained an uneasy relationship with "academic" archaeology, often viewing it as too rigid or "sterile" in its focus.
• "Poetic Mythography": Critics and supporters alike often describe his work as "poetic mythography" rather than scientific archeology, which focused on the imaginative narrative over chronological accuracy.
• Source Usage: Critics noted that Graves was not strict in his evaluation of source reliability, often pulling from various sources without differentiating their reliability, though later critics praised the sheer breadth of his research. 
PhilArchive +2
In summary, Robert Graves viewed archaeology as a vital source of material for understanding the ancient mind but believed that this material had to be interpreted through poetic intuition to reveal the true, hidden history of myth.
Objections to Robert Graves's The Greek Myths The scholarly ...
Jul 27, 2022 — Faux ancient claims. Graves's tellings of the myths are supposed to be based on ancient sources and he introduces claims which are like claims from such sources...

PhilArchive

•

🎶Jeanna on the Feed has taken up the cause of Atlantis...there next...

:)

DavidDavid