CHESMAYNE

el paso

 

 

Hero

Warlords hand decorated chess set.  Sculpted in intricate detail, these fascinating pieces represent the age-old struggle between the forces of good and evil.   Prince Vallior, the hero, combats the evil forces led by Demonas, Lord of the Underworld.   Craftsmen have allowed their imagination to run riot in their interpretation of the mythical characters and creatures that inhabited the dark regions of the earth in times long past.  Many of these fabled creatures seem to come to life in this beautifully hand decorated set.  Printed Parchment Story Sheets are supplied with each of these sets which give the history of the set and details of their characters.   Packaged in a fitted presentation box. Crafted and imported from England.

01 The Hero is basically the Sun Hero, and related to the symbolism of the KI, and his task is to fight bulls, dragons and monsters and retrieve treasures or rescue damsels.   It is often like a play within a play, a pattern within a pattern.   Each individual child is the sole carrier of the treasure of the Gods, namely consciousness.   Like the hero, consciousness itself does not exactly grow old - it cannot be identified with the body.   The hero is equipped with cloaks or invisibility or winged shoes - or other spectacular features not normally found in the outside world.   They refer to inner gifts, latent powers within the psyche which are needed for the battle.   Every story has a hero of some sort: the spy must enter alien territory and retrieve something from it.   A hero is usually initiated by a fairy or priestess.   Heroes who do not know fear, learn it from women.   A common film motif is the secondary characters who help the main hero, but do not make it alive to the last reel themselves.  

This motif goes back to the oldest of stories ie, in the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ there is a character called Ea-bani.   Joseph Campbell wrote a four volume study of world mythology (The Masks of God).   He was the first to recognize in the myths, fairy tales, heroic stories and religious texts of many cultures and eras a skeleton framework for a universal hero-myth.   He summarized it: “The hero ventures from the commonplace world into a supernatural ‘other world’ and encounters magical forces there and wins a victory against them and then he returns to the everyday world with some great prize”.   The Joseph Campbell Foundation WEB site is on http://www.jcf.org   Also try: http://www.yahoo.com  (to search ‘mythology’).   The hero may be a heroine ie, Psyche or Atalanta in Greek myth, Inanna in Sumerian myth, or Gerda in ‘The Snow QU’.   Why do the story motifs appear again and again?   Campbell’s view was that they are symbols that come from the deeps of human psychology, the hero’s quest being symbolic of the difficult passage to adulthood and self-knowledge.   The ‘Star War’ films have created a modern mythology.   Today, we may not be telling the old stories around our fireside but the ancient plots continually emerge in other forms!  

02 Apollo/Dionysus: the heroic side of man’s nature.   Both are associated with the serpent oracle at Delphi and Thrace and both gods of destiny.   The tragic tale of Osiris and the heroic struggle of Horus to regain the throne served as a model throughout Egyptian history.   Greek religion places in the hierarchy between gods (theoi) and men not only the daemones but also the heroes.   They may be warriors, seers, athletes, founders of cities, founders of race or culture heroes.   All function at crucial points of the interaction of human affairs with the divine.  

03 Itihasa (India): epic poem dealing with legendary heroes. 

04 Bard: Celtic minstrels (Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and Gaul).   These bards celebrated the exploits of gods and heroes, incited to battle, acted as heralds and sang at festivities.  

05 Heldenbuch: ‘Book of Heroes’ (German), epic poetry - stories based on national sagas. 

06 Hero and Leander: a priestess fell in love with Leander and swam across the Hellespont every evening to visit her.   One night he drowned and Hero heart-broken, drowned herself in the same sea. 

07 Hiawatha: hero who appeared among the North American Indian tribes to bring peace and goodwill and married Minnehaha (Laughing Water).   Don Juan: legendary hero of many poems, stories, plays and operas.   Heroon: a sepulchral monument dedicated to a hero (Greek: ‘heroos’, of or pertaining to a hero). 

08 Heroes: Joseph, Moses, Samson, Job et al rooted in history rather than in mythology.   KIs are the focal point of the corporate identity and destiny, but also provide the archetypal background for the pattern and sequence of individual destiny.   12 Tribe arrangement (Amphictyony) are preserved because of their lasting symbolic appeal and symbolic quality of the narrative.   Drama and fiction are usually symbolically richer than factual reports.   Symbols point outwards through time and space, beyond the confines of any symbol - however concrete or abstract and symbols are always, in the final analysis, inadequate.   The ultimate symbol is no symbol. 

09 A role model is someone you meet or know in ordinary life.   An idol is somebody whose example it is probably impossible to follow.