Our assignment for this week is to find five epiphanic moments in To the Lighthouse. I'll admit I've been excited to come to this, being that I am something of a Woolf-ophile. Not that I intend to raise expectations with this statement.

There is a point, talked about by Aldous Huxley in his 1945 book Perennial Philosophy, where all religons meet(perhaps despite themselves)and that is the mystical(this is also something that Huston Smith, a teacher of Mr. Sexson's, talked about to in his book Religions of the World). The mystical is the level at which To the Lighthouse, and indeed pretty much all Woolf, demands to be read. The mystical and the mythological(which are tied so very close together) are woven throughout the entire novel, which on the low-rung Literal level is so, dare we say, boring and mundane. For example, part 4 of the Time Passes section features time being interpreted in its eternal process by Mrs. McNabb, the ancient cleaning lady. It could almost be said that Mrs. McNabb is like Sibyll, from Greek Mythology. I was also interested to see the corallation with a Theodore Roethke poem about three cleaning ladies named Frau Baughman, Frau Schmidtz and Frau Schwartz, whom he metamorphosizes into the Three Fates. And also the personification of the night on page 142, and the idea of Mr. Ramsey as Cronos(devourer of his children).

I think I'm going to enjoy this.