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omphalos |
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omphalos (ōm`fəlŏs), in Greek and Roman religion, navel-shaped stone used in the rites of many cults. The most famous omphalos was at Delphi; it was supposed to mark the center of the earth. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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Gosse, who became a notable literary figure, was the son of Philip Henry Gosse, a great naturalist and marine biologist who was also a Plymouth Brother, who attempted in 1857 to forestall Darwin's theory of evolution--which was in the air, as it were--by publishing a book called Omphalos, in which he explained the presence of the fossil record, created coterminously with the world, as God's test of man's faith. An archetypal reading posits wells as omphalos (umbilical cords) connecting the living people in the upper world with the "loving and terrible Mother" in the underworld, almost precisely Miranda's experience when she uncovers the well at the other place and hears "[c]ircles and circles of screaming" from two long-dead mothers, Sapphira and Ophelia, and one baby daughter, Peace, issuing from the depths of the well. The book's final section entirely lets go of both aesthetic and social theory in favor of Jungian analysis, replete with references to the omphalos, initiation into the Eleusian Mysteries, Sumerian myth, female menstrual cycles, shamanism, alchemy, and psychopomps. |
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