Axial age civilizations as a project of north-hemispheric masculinity
the antipodean myth
pp. 117-125
in: , Phenomenology of the Winter-city, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The myth of Axis mundi has been shown earlier (Chaps. 2 and 3) to be a case of gender projection upon nightly sky patterns. Possibly ensuing from such attitude, Plato's universe appears to possess gender attributes as well, the celestial "upper" hemispheres in Plato's "Myth of Er" consisting of mechanic whorls controlled by feminine deities, while the rest of the universe, its "lower" half is a capricious, unpredictable realm, ruled over by the masculine demiurge. Projection of human features, gender in this case, upon the physical environment could be said to be cognitive embodiment, essentially a mythical assignment of anthropomorphic attributes to some parts of the physical environment.