"Time"
© James Wanless, Ph. D. and used with permission

James Wanless is the author and creator of the internationally best-selling The Voyager Tarot. He has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He has traveled the world studying philosophy and anthropology while training others in self-mastery. He resides in Carmel, California.

Nothing can bring us down to earth from the mythic heights faster than time. Mythic time is forever time, for archetypes are eternal, embedded in our collective unconscious. And in a mythic sense, there is only one time, and that is now.

Human time is an artifice, a mechanical way of insuring unity and continuity in society. And it's a way of keeping us in the box, ordinary like everyone else, and insuring the lowest common denominator way of living. Time acts as a device for social control, keeping us from being in our own time, where original genius resides.

Do you know the only thing that most people who live over 100 have in common? They don't wear watches. This is a fact.

Do you know when the greatest number of heart attacks happen? Nine o'clock Monday morning. This is true.

So, is it possible that a society can live without a concept of time? Yes. There is a small Amazon tribe that lives with a vocabulary that does not have numbers. Can you imagine living in the present with no past, no future, and no stress! Sounds heavenly to me. How do I get to Manaus?

But to live timelessly is like being the mythic Fool in the Tarot. As the number zero, the Fool is the "nowhere," "nowtime" man. Anything is possible at any time and hence a Fool — out of place in our time-ordered, lock-step life. For the Fool, time is compressed, not just to "be here now," but to "be the future now" and "be the memory now." All bets are off. All life becomes the creative Chaos, the first Greek mythic creature from which all is born and in which past and future merge into the primordial soup of all creation.

When we step into the past today, we are mythic (see Renaissance Faires). When we become the future today, we are mythic (see Hollywood movies). Mythic transcends the mental concept of fitting into the agreed upon present. Time is mundane, dense and predictable — "unmythic," if you will.

Step into the timeless. Be the acronym of MYTH... Make Yourself The Hero, or in this case, the universal Hustler. Do it Now! Hustle. And so I've got an email to write this introduction late on a Thursday night, and it's supposed to be done by the weekend, and I am super busy these days. So what? I am mythic, I am heroic, and I am writing...now.

Oh, but I have an early morning consultation and podcast to do. What time is it? Wow, it's "late." I "must" get to bed. So, no more writing. Back to the habitual routine of Chronos (Father Time). How cruel you are, Saturn, ruler of obedience and conformity. I refuse.

But I'll spare you from more words. Good night. (My choice, not the clock's). Who runs this world anyway?

Read more by James Wanless at his website
JourneyOfWholeness.com

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