The Language of Vision: Meditations on Myth and Metaphor

by Jamake Highwater

An exploration of the relationship among art, myth, and contemporary culture discusses such subjects as myth as discovery, imagination as political power, homosexuality as metaphor, cultural piracy, the death of the sacred, and the reinvention of the past.

Genres: Mythology, Art

342 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Jamake Highwater, born as Jackie Marks, and also known as Jay or J Marks (14 February 1931–June 3, 2001), was an American writer and journalist of eastern European Jewish ancestry.[1] From the late 1960s he claimed to be of Native American ancestry, specifically Cherokee. In that period, he published extensively under the name of Jamake Highwater. One version of his shifting story was that he had been adopted as a child and taken from his Indian home in Montana to grow up in a Greek or Armenian family in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

[Laura Eppinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

I checked this out of my university library while researching the history of tarot cards. It's an OK overview and leans heavily on Joseph Cambell and the work of others. Something seemed off about the tone--again, this is a book about the tarot cards that started appearing in Europe in the 1400s, but the author kept referring to "primal/Asian" cultures and what IS that as a descriptor?! I understand terms evolve but some of the phrasing was so odd that I started reading more about this author, born Jackie Marks, who was a scammer! He falsely claimed Cherokee heritage and made himself an expert on cultures he was not a part of, most famously (poorly) advising Star Trek Voyager as a sensitivity reader for an indigenous character. YIKES.

More info here: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archiv...

I am so shocked that a University library system has this in its catalogs, and I'm not seeing this show up on Goodreads descriptions, either.