Finding the Worry Stones

Tales of the Three Worlds, 2020

2014

Folklore, 2012

Myth and the Cloaca Theory . A Story of Stones, 2003

A psychoanalytical explanation for the unconscious significance of stones in myth, legends, religions and figurative representations

... The point of this activity is, of course, to bump into all of the connections and inferences that nature, or more broadly, reality throws at me. Then, if I pay close attention, and do not let the details sneak by I can take all of these threads and cleverly weave them into the suggested pattern. I say “suggested” because this is like a model kit that came without directions. While it seems clear that some pieces fit together, and some do not, there are an abundance that lie untouched spread over the floor, waiting to be considered and met with their fellows...

The Yearbook on History and Interpretation of Phenomenology 2013, 2014

The essay compares the conceptions of reverie of Gaston Bachelard and Roger Caillois in his texts about stones. Caillois in contrast with Bachelard doesn't emphasize the separation of rationality and reverie, rather he considers the later as a continuation of ratiocination. One of the central analogies between both authors is the influence of the object upon the dreaming self. Bachelard speaks about an "infusion of being" by the image/object. It is possible to describe this determination of the self by the object along a scale of affectional states which are not only attributes of the one Self but create multiple Selves. ere are two important affectional stances in Caillois's reveries: meditation transcending human time, in which consciousness escapes from the body and is cast back into it afterwards; and the body as it instrumentally acts upon the stones, removing them from their original hiddenness-cutting, grinding, polishing, which are all attempts to penetrate and intrude upon the stone. The shapes and designs of the stones seem in this respect to be structures to which man always contributes even though he is not their creator. On the level of inevitable interaction between man and stones, Callois arrives at a "diagonal" analogy, accompanied by the harmonization of "elevated melancholy" (Ficino, Starobinski).

Folk Life - Journal of Ethnological Studies, 2003

Two Early Medieval carved stones from Milnrow.

Program and Book abstracts.