Myth

Myth is a form of Story.

The ancient Greeks used myths to add information to the random world about them: they sensed things and their past learning and cognitions helped them process that which was new; they added the new to the structure of the old; and the stories of myths helped them structure the world physically, dynamically, religiously, and morally, for these myths were their pre-existing structures of consciousness - the scaffolds they used to carry the new marble images to the parthenon of their awareness.

There are narratives that entertain, there are narratives that inform, there are stories that amuse and stories that establish facts; there are stories with political points and there are stories about ethical issues.

There are many kinds of narrative or story; they are not all the same.

Myth is Story that is used to aid in understanding Life.

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Trickster Figures In Myth

 

Coyote The Cunning 

Myths and stories need the Trickster figure to incorporate an element of Play and Cunning into Creation.

Since most myths conceive of God or the Creator as being very sober and very staid, essentially being One who creates the rules and pretty much follows them.
So we need the rule-breaker, the prankster, the cunning weasel who escapes by thinking outside the box of Creation.

It is unseemly for us to think of God as playful or cunning. That would never do. The crux of the problem is in our "thinking" and "imagining" God at all, but the brain is an unruly organ that bends us to its will.

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Atomic Age Mythology

Excellent article in Foreign Policy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,0
The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... Stalin Did
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?
BY WARD WILSON | MAY 29, 2013

I approached it very skeptically, ready to argue every point, but the author did a fine job. It is a piece well worth reading, if not for History, then for getting a sense of how Mythology rules our lives.

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Myths We Die By

 

King David Hotel, 1946, After Irgun Bombing

One of the most shockingly memorable experiences of an intelligent entity must be the realization that the myths we learned as children are mere fluffery... and often iniquitous, to boot.

In particular, myths about situations where at least two parties are in dispute, or what we may call the Bipolar Separation Myths, wherein one party is thoroughly good, the other thoroughly vile.

We spend much of our adult life learning that "it takes two to tango", and attempting to overcome our Edenic visions of hero myths about family, state, and nation.

There were myths of particular salvation; we learned that people of our faith would go to heaven, and people of other creeds were doomed.
We also learned that certain nations were saintly underdogs, veritable Davids fighting against villains that were the worst of Goliath and Saul.

Yet in our heroic myths of Israel, never once did the bombings of the King David Hotel enter in, a disaster where the Zionist terrorist group Irgun had planted bombs at the busy hotel and killed many people on July 22, 1946:  91 deaths and 46 injured.

Wikipedia: King David Hotel bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

The hotel was the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, principally the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and the Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan.
In July 2006, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center organized a conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the bombing. The conference was attended by past and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of Irgun. A plaque commemorating the bombing was unveiled, stating "For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated."
The British Ambassador in Tel Aviv and the Consul-General in Jerusalem protested, saying "We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated", and wrote to the Mayor of Jerusalem that such an act of terror could not be honoured, even if it was preceded by a warning. The British government also demanded the removal of the plaque, pointing out that the statement accusing the British of failing to evacuate the hotel was untrue and "did not absolve those who planted the bomb."

 (the mention of "evacuation" refers to a part of the story that Irgun telephoned the British beforehand to alert them to the coming blast. Awfully sporting of Irgun, what?)

I never learned of the slaughtered British and Arabs in my myths, and I believed my heroes hands unsullied.

What do you say to such murderous nonsense? I made up a song in 2006:

Hello, Central, Irgun calling,

are the Britsh there?

Get them out - but leave the Arabs! -

down the old back stair.

It is hardly as thoughtless and nasty and 70 years of ongoing conflict in this Hundred Years War... and counting.

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Eschatological and Scatological

James and John, sons of Zeedee

I was driving around in Vero Beach, Florida, and Kathy in the back seat asked if I believed in the Mayan end-of-time thing coming up at the end of 2012.
I said that the Mayan calendar was just going to go to  zero and reset. Although there were a lot of scarey stories among the Mayan mythology, there was not a full fledged Twilight of the gods or End-of-Times as we are used to..., that takes a bunch of people with a Christian background to take every weird story that comes along and then change it into The End of the World As We Know It.
Ask Harold Camping; he predicted the end at least twice in 2011.

I said that some Christians just never heard an end of time tale that they didn't grab hold of: charter a plane and print your tickets and reserve picnic tables in Jonestown!
"Never saw an End-of-Times Party I didn't like!", I said.
Kathy said, "I'll bring the kool-aid!"
I never understood why people are so in love with end of time, so much so that they will fools of themselves over and over again trying to pin it down to year, month, day, hour, and minute... or commit suicide.

I do not think John of Revelations is John the son of Zebedee, either. I believe the Book of Revelations was describing what was going on at the time and possibly what was to happen in the near future, not some distant point in time.
The expression "whore of Babylon" only appears here. Elsewhere, Jerusalem itself is described as a harlot for running after false gods, but the whore of Babylon is John's expression alone: not bad for a fisherman with little schooling. He had to not only learn to write and read extremely well, but he had to delve into ancient philosophies about Logos and such. Remembering that he and James were the "Sons of Thunder", I think Zebedee let fly with rich and complex invectives when irritated.., such, perhaps, as when his sons left him high and dry mending the nets alone.
Even though it is intriguing to consider "whore of Babylon" to be one of Zebedee's more descriptive curses, I doubt it.
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The Chemist of Freedom

I recently wrote a post titled "XLIS" which prominently featured a drug named XLIS and two old guys who took some without so much as so sort of lengthy process of examination of conscience.

Some people did not like it. Seems like if someone takes drugs in a story, the story should always bring in the down sides, whether the troubles are due to drugs or merely an accompaniment; they wanted one of those House episodes where Dr. House walks along a via dolorosa, suffers, and emerges a possibly better man, even though that is not apparent - it is only promised to us because he suffered... we believe that when someone does something bad, they must suffer, and then they will be better for their penance.

OK by me.

In the mists of antiquity, Demeter was the consort of Zeus; not the Olympian Zeus, but the more archaic Zeus of Crete. Demeter was the mother of all agriculture, and she bore barley and poppies in her arms.
Poppies.
The Greeks must have truly loved their poppy seed rolls.
Dionysos was said by some to be the son of Zeus and Demeter, and he was the god of the Ivy and the Vine, as well as fermented honey - mead - and fermented grape juice - wine. He was known for his revels fueled by wine drinking.

Having said this, one of the names of Dionysos was Eleutheros, and eleutheros is the basis of the word eleutheria, or freedom. Eleutheros is one who is free and unrestrained by law, mores, and custom... at least for some period of time, probably the time of intoxication where the moist spirit of the wine or mead... or the spirit of the poppy.... mixed with the dry, bright soul of man and snatched it away for a spell.

When we fear anarchy, we often end up fearing freedom also.  We need to learn meden agan: nothing in excess, for even law and order in excess become repression and totalitarianism.

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Trickster Figures in Myth

The Trickster is an actor who may mimic another reality or portray a story so well that we are enchanted and believe it to be real. People usually refer to this as a "willing suspension of disbelief",  but I prefer to think of it as pushing aside the mundane stream on consciousness and jumping on the back of the Harley of enchantment.

The original flash mobs were trickster events. The Trickster is Improv also: the quick and mercurial improvisational acting and comedy, and when done well, we truly see the "power" behind it. So also do we see these "powers" and dynamics in the work of regular actors, rehearsed and working from the script and direction and choreography. However, the improvs are stunning in their immediacy.

The Improvs at their best bring to mind peoples benignly possessed by powers of great acuity and far-seeing wit and wisdom.

To understand Raven or Kokopelli and the energy they represent, we need to experience the suddenness of Improv or the studied grandeur of Theater,  wherein the actor or comedian is "on a roll" and is, in a sense, possessed by the dynamism of the moment... and we are spellbound.
Our sense of being spellbound is our own state of quasi-possession as our participation in viewing the actors' possession endures. We are not infused with the comedic spirit that animates the Improv, for example, but we are very susceptible to suggestion... more like a trance, perhaps.

(It may be that most mythology is based on normal possession experiences of a people, the Trickster being a comedic possession and other figures being other roles, such as tragic figures or heroes. In each case, there is a turning aside from the mundane stream of consciousness and a jumping into a different consciousness, all of which - if done well - enchants the onlookers to lose track of time and space.
It is like a great film during whose running time you are aware of nothing else.
Thus, in the present, films and the characters within may become mythic figures. Darth Vader is surely as ominous as Baron Samedi or Dracula or Nosferatu or the Grim Reaper ever were to most of our eyes.

We may note that this is usually a Group event.)

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Faerie Circles

 Ruth at Synch-ro-ni-zing has a great "working-of-consciousness" (also called a "poem", from the Greek poesis = a working).
http://ruthie822.blogspot.com/2011/07/poem-moons-question.html

She incorporates an illustration from Arthur Rackham, described as Moon-Hair Woman:

I immediately recognized this lady, and commented:

She stands not far from shorelines, indicating an amphibious nature (just as the Egyptian Sphinx, or that of Boeotia in Greece).
Her footprints are the faerie rings seen within an enclave of young trees, where the grasses are gracile and tender, not rigid in structure like bulrushes and phragmites.

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Thanks and a Tip of the Hat to Sarah Palin

I'm kidding. Really. I am.
Just because I've come across the second instance of "blood libel" this year, I'm kidding when I said that Sarah was responsible for bringing back the concept and introducing it again to the the modern world. Kidding.

Anyway, full blown accusations of child sacrifice (Two girls ) according to the Talmudic ritual! It is front page news in certain areas of the Caucasus and in Russia. I will not reference the news journals by name, but there has been protests  by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress which reminded " the Chief Public Persecutor of Byelorussia that anyone committing a premeditated action aimed at stirring up ethnic and religious hatred, humiliating ethnic pride and dignity, is to be imposed a penalty under Article 130 of the Criminal Code of Byelorussia."
http://www.eajc.org/page32/news848.html

The Homeric Hymn To Hermes... And Secular Religion

Hermes 
 

There is a collection of poetry referred to as the Homeric Hymns. It is not the case, nor is it known whether Homer himself was the author of any of these, but they are all ancient, they are in hexameter, and follow the language and usages of the poems of Homer, yet without the heroic epithets so common in heroic poetry, nor with the extended similes: someone is not just "like" something in Homer's Iliad; they are "like" followed by 10 extensive lines of description.

Hermes is the Greek god who became Mercury in the ancient Roman version of the Greek pantheon. Hermes was polytropos - shifting, many faced, many sided, and cunning - and reminds one of Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey, who was an individual no longer the hero like Achilles, who in his literary essence was the hero and fighter who would live fast in war and die young.
A new breed of man became important, the skillful debater and negotiator, who did not have immediate recourse to arms to solve a problem, but rather inspected things and thought about them with cunning: turning the world and its paradoxes on the spit of Reason until they were ready to be consumed by his fertile mind!

Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the Pleiades. He invented the lyre made from tortoise shell, he sang songs, and - pondering sheer trickery in his heart - he stole fifty head of cattle from the herds of the god Apollo, doing this when he was but a few days old and still slept in a cradle at night: Fear not, little swaddling baby, son of Zeus and Maia. I shall find the strong cattle presently by these omens, and you shall lead the way.'
In addition to being dolios - the schemer, a god of robbers, and those who profit by cunning, and those who profit by force and forceful persuasion, he was the messenger of the gods, the god of boundaries - keeping boundaries sacred - perhaps on the notion of setting a thief to catch a thief -and was also a god of roads: enodios, "on the road"; god of contests and sports" enagonios, "in the contest" or "having game"; and the leader of the souls to the underworld: psychopompos, "drum major of the soul".

 In the pagan pantheon, the gods take on many human characteristics, becoming icons of the areas of life which are under their control. Thus we see Hermes playing human roles, and read his biography as a mixture of what we consider the Holy and the Profane. We are amazed at the ancient pagans, and how they scandalously portrayed their gods, the symbols of their highest aspirations.
This was considered by some to be one of the aspects of Western Christianity and higher religion that separated the civilized man from the primitive: the fact that religion no longer turned gods into men and women, and religious rites no longer described their flaws and fights and shameful couplings outside the holy bonds of matrimony, as did the old paganism, which revelled in the liaisons of Zeus - whose devotion we see somewhat reflected in our inordinate love of sexual scandals even now today...in the midst of our Christian devotions: Bibles in the right hand, National Enquirer in the left.

We no longer do this, right? Wrong. Of course, wrong, else I wouldn't be here writing about it.

And here is where I define what "secular religion" is: secular = of this age, coming from saeculus= and age or century or time of life. I call the religion secular, because it is the religion of this age I speak of, not the eternal religion, not the essence of religion, but the Icon of religion we have created for our present generations, the Golden Calf we worship. What, indeed, is all that nonsense about WWJD - what would Jesus do? - if it is not a conscious effort to create scenarios about the humanity of Jesus? To create scenarios about things which are hidden, but using the logic that all humans are likely to experience similar situations, we create the scenario where Jesus is in the same situations we face today. Cute. In other words, we emphasize the humanity, not the divinity.

Our interpretation is guided by ourselves - we are setting thieves to pass judgement on thieves...or ourselves as children to judge the transgressions of our childlike innocent greed and guiltless lusts. Of course, the religious will say that by emphasizing the humanity, we see the script where Jesus knows what to do, makes the right moral choice, assisted by his divinity...that same divinity we should all pray to.
I say that such a procedure is a pagan myth-making machine. It is worse than pagan myth; it is an entirely new religion which humanizes and belittles the spiritual injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount into a mush of nothingness. If the intent of such a process is to bring the difficult spiritual regimen of Jesus into focus for people, it does not work.

When people wonder WWJD, they rarely come up with radical answers, answers that say leave everything behind, take up your cross, and follow me. When we ask WWJD???, do we ever jump out of the fishing boat of Zebedee?...leaving old Zebedee plumb out of luck, two of his fisher-sons jumping ship and gallivanting around Galilee with Jesus? Not often, if ever. What about films, like Mel Gibson's The Passion? Did not the ancients wail when Adonis died? Did they not weep for Attis? Scratch and claw your rosy cheeks, rend your garments, roll in the dust and ululate with grief...you are not doing anything the ancients did not do, and your unhealthy spectacle of torture and death - often shown at churches themselves! - is nothing different from the pageant presented by Nero in the Colosseum: miscreants and unfortunates dressed as the old gods that die and resurrect being cut down for the approbation of the slavering eyes of the Roman populace.

We have human gods. Our morality is human morality. When the leaders of our society decided to destroy the financial fabric of civilization - who was their master? and when will he return to reward their good and faithful service? (Or consider Islam: what will one say on the Day of Resurrection about jihad that seeks not to elevate man, but to feed the maw of death? ) "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me," said the Lord. The cross is a symbol of death; not a simple death, a calm death in hospital, feeling no pain, surrounded by loved ones. The cross is a painful death, but symbolic of the painful transition from being a child within a religious community to being an adult who must bear witness to religion, and who must even pass it on to new generations: witness, teacher, worker, fighter, priest, scribe, and hero.

The saying tells us to let the old person in us die and wither away: do not weep for our youth and childhood. St. Paul tells us to put away the things of a child; he was not talking about tops and jacks. In all the Abrahamic religions, we have been called to do the most difficult things for mankind: to transcend its nature and become more. Time is running out on us. The dress rehearsal for our age was the victory of the USA-USSR not destroying each other in nuclear conflagration. That was a great moral victory. Indeed, the greater it is, the more we ignore it! There is going to be need for many more moral victories, great and small. Farewell, the peaceful mind; farewell, content! Our occupation is gone, and our new job is to transform the world.

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quotes from Evelyn-White translation.

Myths Of Our Fathers

We call the World War II generation the Greatest Generation because of the Myth. This is not to imply that it is a myth in the derogatory sense that those that fought WW II were great. No. One of the elements of that generation's greatness was their Myth. Churchill created a myth, a hyperreality if you please, when he stated that the defense of Britain would be their finest hour. Even if the Empire endure a thousand years, this would be their finest hour. And FDR and great American people created the defense of democracy, creating it and living in it. This generation drew courage and strength from their belief, their Myth, their story; this was their history. The same phenomenon was apparent in the years following the American Civil War in which mens' souls were forged in battle and struggle. As the WW II generation gets older, we shall miss them, but even more shall we miss their spirit and their belief. They were by no means perfect. They countenanced much that was wrong. Yet we shall truly miss an entire generation that was united in Belief, for Belief is something we no longer share communally. The great advances of civilizations are done by societies bound in common Beliefs. The best are those based on good beliefs. The worst are those based on vile beliefs. We are goin nowhere now. We feel the Age of Belief slipping away from us with each passing moment.