Monomythopoly—Eternal Return Edition™

Origins of the Idea

Walt Disney, in a Time Magazine interview in 1937, said “we just try to make a good picture. And then the professors come along and tell us what we do.do it and then they tell us what we do” (Watts, 1997, p. i) Like Walt, I actually created this game without realizing consciously the full extent of what I was doing. I saw that this pattern of death and rebirth depicted by Grof's cartography was pervasive and satisfying. It made sense to me, and I had also experienced it for myself during holotropic breathwork sessions. [link to GTT] In fact, I actually got the idea for the game after a breathwork session in March 2003. I saw that many of the concepts that were covered in different courses at Pacifica were essentially similar, although our class had not formally been introduced to Grof’s model. At the beginning of the movie Zoolander (Stiller, 2001), Derek Zoolander, to demonstrate his versatility shows a calendar of his different "looks," but all of the expressions are the same. Later in the movie, the villain Mugatu, played by Will Ferrell, on the brink of insanity shouts: “What am I taking crazy pills, doesn’t anyone notice this but me, it's all the same look?” Well, essentially, this is what had happened with me when I saw that this pattern had played itself out through all of my coursework.

To remedy the situation, not my craziness, but to show how pervasive this pattern was, I presented Grof's cartography as my final project.

For my oral exam at the end of my coursework, I was required to make a presentation on a topic that was among other things personally, socially, and culturally meaningful. Since I considered Grof's work to be the most important thing I learned during my graduate work, I created the game as a simple, easy and fun way to describe his cartography to my classmates. This would also remedy the situation of my classmates being unfamiliar with Grof's work.

So here is my first version of the Cosmic Game, Monomythopoly: Eternal Return Edition™, which revolves around this death-rebirth pattern of the eternal return and Grof’s cartography of the psyche. To get to know the cartography better, we will begin by taking a brief tour of the board, followed by a more detailed look, first zeroing in on the corners, and then on the spaces where the railroads are found on a traditional Monopoly board, and finally describe the different property spaces themselves.

Tour de Board

I named the game Monomythopoly™ as a way to honor Joseph Campbell, who was the reason I went to Pacifica. As just mentioned, Monomythopoly™ was a school project and is essentially a parody of the game Monopoly, and my game has never been manufactured or sold. Monopoly is essentially a race game. Parlett (1999), in tracing Monopoly's history reveals that Monopoly itself is based on a game called the Landlord Game, which was patented in 1904 and then renewed again in 1924, by a Quaker named Lizzie Magie. Partlett further remarks that it:

can be deconstructed into a distant descendent of primitive race games . . . not one in which the aim is to get home first, since the track is looped and the play unbounded, but one in which it is to be the last one circulating when everyone else has dropped out through exhaustion of energy. Energy is represented by, and measured in terms of money. (p. 349)

Synchronistically, I met the owner of a company called USAopoly, which manufactures custom-themed monopoly games, on the same weekend that I was attending the Pacifica conference where I first met Grof and Tarnas, back in 2001.

As previously mentioned, I added “Eternal Return Edition” playfully without realizing at the time what I was doing. At the center of the board, there is a very faint image of the baby in the womb from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968). On the corners of the board are the different perinatal matrices, with the second matrix, fittingly corresponding to jail, as we will soon see. There is an image from a corresponding movie that captures the flavor of each matrix on each corner. The different perinatal matrices also have corresponding description cards, which are drawn when one lands on that particular matrix, so you can get a feel for what the experience is like; the color and typeface also reflect this as well. The railroad spaces contain pictures of the outer planets, whose characteristics mirror the different matrices, the first railroad space, thus mirrors BPM I, etc. In place of the utilities, we have Third Space Threshold, and Transcendent Function Junction. The properties represent some of the different classes we took and how the corresponding pattern of the perinatal matrices BPM II, III, and IV were described in that particular class, their aliases, as it were. For the different property groups, the course title and teacher are noted in bold and blue. The bracketed and italicized names refer to the originators of te particular set of princples languaged by the different sets of properties. I took the liberty of taking the different taxes off the board, so that each group of properties would have the three stages of physical birth represented. I also replaced chance and community chest with synchronicity and alchemy cards. The following descriptions will be presented without the strictures of sentence structure, so you can see in a more compact way how the cosmic game pattern game play out.

The Basics of Basic Perinatal Matrices

THE BIRTH PROCESS

[Otto Rank / Stanislav Grof]

BPM I—PRIMAL UNION WITH MOTHER—AMNIOTIC UNIVERSE AND COSMIC UNITY

Intrauterine environment: tropical paradise—good womb, oceanic Apollonian ecstasy—cosmic unity—heaven and paradise—nature at its best—unio mystica—experiences of being a sea creature, whale, dolphin, fish, etcetera.

Also bad womb experiences (attempted abortions, toxic reactions, fetal crises, mother’s emotional upheaval) universal threat, paranoid ideation, being poisoned, encounter with demonic forces and evil.

MOVIES: South Pacific (beach and tropical scenes), Jurassic Park (when Grant first arrives), Blue Lagoon, Contact (beach scene), Sound of Music (mountains above Salzburg). Toxic Womb: The Matrix, Spirited Away (bathhouse washing scene)

BPM II—Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit or Hell— Expulsion from Paradise, First Stage of Birth

Womb before cervix opens: cosmic engulfment, immense physical and psychological suffering—helpless victim, hopelessness, no end situation— images of hell—feeling of entrapment, agonizing guilt and inferiority, apocalyptic view of world—concentration camps—meaninglessness, oppression, difficulty breathing—devouring or entangling archetypal monsters—giant spiders or boa constrictors— dark night of soul begins, abysmal despair, starvation, jail, whirlpool.

MOVIES: Jurassic Park (T-Rex attacking car scene), Star Wars (trash compactor scene), Raiders of the Lost Ark (trapped with Snakes and dead bodies scene), and Wizard of Oz (cyclone scene)

BPMIII—Death-Rebirth Struggle— Propulsion through the Birth Canal

Birth canal—death-rebirth struggle—tremendous pressure—volcanic forces—titanic life and death struggle—aggressive and sadomasochistic aspects, scatology, pornography, especially bondage—torture, war and bloody revolutions—intense sexual orgiastic feelings: agony and ecstasy fusion— demonic aspects, Walpurgis Night, satanic—vital threat, extreme danger, observer or identification with aggressor or victim—feelings of suffocation, anoxia, crushing and choking—Dionysian ecstasy, carnivals and harems—dying and being reborn—adrenaline rush, amusement park rides—mythological hero encounters, ego death—element of fire, phoenix rising,—death-rebirth deities.

MOVIES: Die Another Day (torture scene during opening credits), Armageddon (asteroid drilling scenes), Chicago ("Cell Block Tango"), Volcano (encounters with the volano), and Twister (destructive power of the tornados).

BPM IV—Death-Rebirth Experience—Termination of the Birth Process

Crowning, final expulsion from birth canal—death-rebirth experience—ego death, total annihilation—union with the goddess—identification or encounter with Christ, Shiva, other deities—epiphanic ecstasy—expansion of space, illuminative ecstasy—radiant light, beautiful colors, or white and golden light—feelings of rebirth and redemption—escape from dangerous circumstance—humanitarian tendencies—divine epiphany—enormous decompression, expansion of space—visions of gigantic halls—peacock feathers—appreciation of simple way of life—sensory enhancement—brotherly feelings—manic activity, grandiose feelings, transition to elements of BPM I.

MOVIES: Raiders of the Lost Ark (map room scene), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Monolith encounters), Volcano (ending after the volcano hits the ocean) Twister, (final scene inside the tornado and surviving afresh afterwards) and Contact (space/beach scene).

Space, The Final Frontier—Transiting Planetary Typology

PLANETARY ARCHETYPES: PSYCHE AND COSMOS

[Stanislav Grof and Richard Tarnas]

NEPTUNE

Transcendent ideal reality, imagination and spiritual, ocean of consciousness, dissolves boundaries—escapist fantasy, illusion, deception, maya, divine play, mystical bliss, madness and mysticism—thirst for transcendence, experience flow of love and compassion. Governs myth, dreams, symbols, watery things—narcissus, absorbed in own reflection, drug addict—selflessness and unworldliness—increased intuition, sensitive to everything, but projects onto others, too, weakening ego.

Saturn

Limit, structure, necessity, material world, time, tradition, aging, death, ending of things—contracts and inhibits, oppresses and opposes, limits but strengthens, grounds, forges, gives gravitas to soul—defines, principle of judgment, planet of karma—cuts off from primal union, consuming power of time, stands alone and knows solitude, superego, inner judge—guardians of threshold—skeleton—disciplines and orders existence.

Pluto

Primordial energy, universal life force, impels evolution and transformation, elemental force, Dionysian energy, power itself—compels, empowers, overwhelms, transforms, destroys resurrects, death and rebirth—upheaval, breakdown and decay, purifying fire of catharsis, underworld, dark mysterious terrifying reality beneath surface—volcanic eruption—primal libido and aggression—id, boiling cauldron of instincts.

Uranus

Change, freedom, rebellion, revolution—unexpected phenomenon, sudden surprises, insights, awakenings, breakthroughs, sudden breakup of established structure—invention and technology—individualism and originality—exciting, electric—Prometheus stole fire from heavens, rebellion against gods for greater freedom—changeability, restlessness, new experience—mediates creativity and innovation, eccentricity, genius, personal and cultural breakthrough—radical expansion of horizons.

The Properties of The Properties

In this section, we will see the different classes, and through the miracle of Microsoft Word’s different formatting options will see the different matrices play out, as has been the case above. Properties corresponding to the second matrix, BPM II, and the corresponding planetary archetype Saturn, will be indicated by bold print; properties corresponding to the third matrix, BPM III, and the planetary archetype Pluto will be in Italics, while properties corresponding to the fourth matrix, BPM IV and the planetary archetype Uranus, will be underlined. After we explore the properties, Third Space Threshold and Transcendent Function Junction are explicated as well.

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