MYTHIC STUDIES
by Iona Miller, 2020
About Us
Learning Objectives:
Discovery, Awakening, Integration, Implimentation
1. To compare traditional, contemporary and psychological thinking about
symbols, myths and themes;
2. To analyze the creation, use and misuse (exploitation; coercion) of symbols in cultural and personal life;
3. To create symbolic meaning and describe its impact on individuals and culture;
4. To describe symbolic processes and expression in individual and group transformation;
5. To critique new conceptualizations of global historical symbols and the creation of symbolic meaning.
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MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES & MYTHIC FORMS
"Myth reveals old and new patterns of thinking and self-reflection and while
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation" (Jung 1951c: 355).
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
Through Mythology We Walk Our Ancestral Past
Jungian & Post-Jungian Perspectives
Mythological studies unpacks the issues, concepts, and characteristics of the archetypes in the contemporary world. Soul-making allows us to express that relationship within our daily lives -- a process of continuous remembrance for the sake of tending the soul of the world.
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth. Knowledge is reading about it; wisdom is participation.
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient genealogical lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
A Mythologist interrelates with archetypes and images to reveal meaning and create change in perspectives in groups and individuals. They use the power of archetypes for remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, and change lives. Much depends on whether we take a psychological, aesthetic, orthodox, or heterodox approach.
"It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth...The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch." --Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
"Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented."
~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 387
"When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed.". --James Hillman
Holographic Gods
by Iona Miller, 1983-2015
https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html
Archetypes generate (or "cause") an endless variety of transformations that are experienced as images and ideas had in dreams, fantasies and visions. These images, ideas and beliefs bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning, and the archetypes themselves are involved in the development of consciousness. The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego.
The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by "spirit" we mean the order of the quantum sea. Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal - the transcendental - through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.
""For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth". --Joseph Campbell
Holographic gods remain true to their own primordial patterns and domains of influence, effectively exerting their wills over our own and apparently usurping or overriding our rational agendas and plans for our own lives. Which of these patterns intrudes on our lives determines whether we are in resonance with the broader environment or at odds with it and ourselves. Try as we might, we cannot separate ourselves from this spiritual component that underlies our existence and all existence, as archetypes are in no way limited to the human sphere.
Holographic Gods produce their own forms of archetypal intoxication; they can possess, frustrate and even defeat our best intentions. But we are not the eternal slaves of these behavior paradigms. Jung's methods of individuation and other transpersonal therapies open the way to developing more conscious relationships with these cosmic patterns, leading to more individual freedom from archetypal role-boundedness and spiritual parochialism.
The story of gods in our lives and the universe is still being written. Extra-dimensional truths are encoded in the descriptions traditionally described as gods and goddesses. The ancient classical gods are well documented, but the Gods of the gaps are less well-known, occupying those parts of the Universe that are unexplored and unexplained, that science is just beginning to explore, such as the so-called god particle.
"Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self." --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I
"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell
Holographic Gods challenge our own beliefs in God or not, putting them to the secular acid test. The catch-22 is that even all those notions are conditioned by the very archetypes we seek to illumine, whether or not we identify with them consciously. They are just as likely to produce misguided inner authority as perennial wisdom. Whether we like it or not they enter us, intrude on our personal dramas, by modulating the playing field in the game of life.
All archetypes are a form of human expression that is both holographic and physical. Physical formations of archetypal sequences cause humans to behave in parallel ways to each associated ancestor, experience or process. Integration is a function of intentionality -- conscious and unconsciously maintained, or incorporated. Integration occurs both without effort, as a redesign of the central processor of our minds, and voluntarily as a deliberate effort to understand, find meaning, and rectify our behavior towards self, other and world. Sometimes when we lose ourselves in transcendent experiences, we somehow come back reborn and full of compassion. We are nurtured by the depths.
Images, like the holographic universe, have a deeper enfolded dimension. Memories aren't localized in one place, but are spread across the associative areas of the brain. Associative areas aren't set aside for particular functions like speech production, language comprehension, and memory encoding. Instead, they are responsible for all "miscellaneous" tasks. Each associative area seems to contain echoes of all of the information. Symbols arise from and are embedded in the environment as holographic fields of energy. There are innumerable morphogenic veils of primal forces.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model or template. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or culture evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts.
This is the Alpha/Omega principle. As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience. Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today.
This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition.There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or super-historical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else."
The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually re-actualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archaeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
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COLLECTIVE MEMORY
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or over-elaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history. Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors. (Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity)
Discovery, Awakening, Integration, Implimentation
1. To compare traditional, contemporary and psychological thinking about
symbols, myths and themes;
2. To analyze the creation, use and misuse (exploitation; coercion) of symbols in cultural and personal life;
3. To create symbolic meaning and describe its impact on individuals and culture;
4. To describe symbolic processes and expression in individual and group transformation;
5. To critique new conceptualizations of global historical symbols and the creation of symbolic meaning.
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MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES & MYTHIC FORMS
"Myth reveals old and new patterns of thinking and self-reflection and while
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation" (Jung 1951c: 355).
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
Through Mythology We Walk Our Ancestral Past
Jungian & Post-Jungian Perspectives
Mythological studies unpacks the issues, concepts, and characteristics of the archetypes in the contemporary world. Soul-making allows us to express that relationship within our daily lives -- a process of continuous remembrance for the sake of tending the soul of the world.
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth. Knowledge is reading about it; wisdom is participation.
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient genealogical lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
A Mythologist interrelates with archetypes and images to reveal meaning and create change in perspectives in groups and individuals. They use the power of archetypes for remembrance, to create amazing viewpoints, and change lives. Much depends on whether we take a psychological, aesthetic, orthodox, or heterodox approach.
"It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth...The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch." --Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
"Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented."
~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 387
"When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed.". --James Hillman
Holographic Gods
by Iona Miller, 1983-2015
https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html
Archetypes generate (or "cause") an endless variety of transformations that are experienced as images and ideas had in dreams, fantasies and visions. These images, ideas and beliefs bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning, and the archetypes themselves are involved in the development of consciousness. The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego.
The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by "spirit" we mean the order of the quantum sea. Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal - the transcendental - through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.
""For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth". --Joseph Campbell
Holographic gods remain true to their own primordial patterns and domains of influence, effectively exerting their wills over our own and apparently usurping or overriding our rational agendas and plans for our own lives. Which of these patterns intrudes on our lives determines whether we are in resonance with the broader environment or at odds with it and ourselves. Try as we might, we cannot separate ourselves from this spiritual component that underlies our existence and all existence, as archetypes are in no way limited to the human sphere.
Holographic Gods produce their own forms of archetypal intoxication; they can possess, frustrate and even defeat our best intentions. But we are not the eternal slaves of these behavior paradigms. Jung's methods of individuation and other transpersonal therapies open the way to developing more conscious relationships with these cosmic patterns, leading to more individual freedom from archetypal role-boundedness and spiritual parochialism.
The story of gods in our lives and the universe is still being written. Extra-dimensional truths are encoded in the descriptions traditionally described as gods and goddesses. The ancient classical gods are well documented, but the Gods of the gaps are less well-known, occupying those parts of the Universe that are unexplored and unexplained, that science is just beginning to explore, such as the so-called god particle.
"Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self." --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I
"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell
Holographic Gods challenge our own beliefs in God or not, putting them to the secular acid test. The catch-22 is that even all those notions are conditioned by the very archetypes we seek to illumine, whether or not we identify with them consciously. They are just as likely to produce misguided inner authority as perennial wisdom. Whether we like it or not they enter us, intrude on our personal dramas, by modulating the playing field in the game of life.
All archetypes are a form of human expression that is both holographic and physical. Physical formations of archetypal sequences cause humans to behave in parallel ways to each associated ancestor, experience or process. Integration is a function of intentionality -- conscious and unconsciously maintained, or incorporated. Integration occurs both without effort, as a redesign of the central processor of our minds, and voluntarily as a deliberate effort to understand, find meaning, and rectify our behavior towards self, other and world. Sometimes when we lose ourselves in transcendent experiences, we somehow come back reborn and full of compassion. We are nurtured by the depths.
Images, like the holographic universe, have a deeper enfolded dimension. Memories aren't localized in one place, but are spread across the associative areas of the brain. Associative areas aren't set aside for particular functions like speech production, language comprehension, and memory encoding. Instead, they are responsible for all "miscellaneous" tasks. Each associative area seems to contain echoes of all of the information. Symbols arise from and are embedded in the environment as holographic fields of energy. There are innumerable morphogenic veils of primal forces.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model or template. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or culture evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts.
This is the Alpha/Omega principle. As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience. Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today.
This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition.There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or super-historical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else."
The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually re-actualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archaeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
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COLLECTIVE MEMORY
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or over-elaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history. Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors. (Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity)
