Playing Games

Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"
And - "A blind understanding!" Heaven replied.
from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

So what is all this guff called art for?!...I hear this all the time echoing through the philistine air of our culture. What a sorry state to feel so empty that some utilitarian purpose must be found to excuse that which comes so naturally to the human being.

But if some explanation is necessary then perhaps this might send a jolt back through cold veins...

The extended quote that follows is from the book "Alchemical Active Imagination" by Marie-Louise von Franz (famed pupil of C.G. Jung).

"If we look at what has been written on the religious life of primitive societies, it seems most likely ....that in the most primitive populations which still exist, religion consists mainly of certain rituals, which are to a great extent physical enactments: totems, meals, dances and other activities, praying gestures, and so on. A ritual like the Mass comprises vocal prayers and gestures. Man probably has never been conscious that these rituals are performed in much the same way as those of animals, we know that many of the patterns of behaviour of animal life do not serve (or at least one cannot prove they serve) any immediate utilitarian purpose such as propagation of the species, eating, or survival.

"Adolf Portmann explains these "rituals", as zoologists now call them, by saying that they express the meaning of the animals existence. By performing them, it manifests its own being, or, one could say, it expresses the meaning of its existence on earth, and even the most skeptical zoologist cannot find any further practical purpose in them. If you stop animals from performing such rituals, they get sick and their vitality is lowered. We may assume that even on that level already there is a need to express - let us use Portmann's expression - the meaning of one's own existence, without further practical purpose, and it is most likely that the most original and most archaic human rituals were of a similar nature.

"That is also the reason why, when you go further back in the history of religion, you can no longer distinguish between play or games and rituals. The history of games such as still exist in primitive societies - like dice, ring-toss, and all group and ball games - shows that these are played both as rituals and, at the same time, as games. .... The most reasonable investigators say that one cannot make a distinction between the two things. In other words, when a man is not occupied in hunting, eating, making love, or sleeping, if he has any further energy left, then - let us use the zoological expression - he moves about and does things which to him expresses the meaning of his existence, and such things are generally ritual-games or game-rituals. And according to the material I've seen, at least ninety percent if not all of them cluster around what we now would call the symbolism of the Self."

After having read the above, would it be too much for me to say that art is one of these fundamental expressions of humanity? or would that be too obvious?

William Blake seemed to understand when he wrote in the introduction to Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (early 1800s), "The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art and Science."

*Image above: Kabuki actor applying kumidori make-up, from the 1976 Kubuki Exhibition catalogue of the Waseda University Theatre Museum Collection in Sydney.

Tags: Design Dramaturge, dramaturg, dramaturge, theatre, Jung, alchemy, ritual, Florence Forrest