What is Myth?
Myth is the symbolic language of God speaking to and through you in an effort to commune with his/her creation. Myth undulates within the psyche guiding you, sometimes gently and often violently, in the direction of your genius, your destiny, your cross and your purpose. Myths are active agents controlling you until you become aware of the unfolding, timeless, ageless mythic drama in your life. Myths reverberate through your soul, tearing into your heart making you feel your emotions, physiology and biology. When you experience myth, you know it in every pore as the resonating draw of universal, genetic, ancient consciousness. Myth-making awakens you to illuminated states of awareness and enlivens your connection to God. Myths shout that YOU ARE ALIVE!
Myth Making Begins
Approximately 4.5 billion years ago the Earth was created in a Big Bang. From this primordial, cosmic void humans (homo sapiens sapiens) miraculously evolved 4.5 million years ago into a mammalian species capable of fire making, tool producing and abstract thought and communication. Around 35,000 BCE Paleolithic people ritualized the creative process with female statuettes and cave carvings to honor the Great Goddess as mother, life-bringer and life-sustainer. Somewhere between 135,000 to 30,000 BCE Neanderthals began burying their dead with flowers and beads. Anthropologists surmise that this practice in conjunction with massive underground shrines built for the Goddess demonstrated an appreciation for the process of life, death and rebirth. These examples show how our ancestors began myth-making as a method to explore, share and celebrate the reproductive, creative and destructive cycles of nature and humans.
The Purpose of Myth
Myths map the cultural and spiritual evolution of humankind. In addition myths serve many vital functions, the least of which includes the impetus for the organization and creation of civilizations. Myths also provide the foundations for world religions; infuse the ordinary with wonder and meaning; drive the urge to invent rituals; and ultimately, communicate transcendental ideas that would otherwise be impossible to express in words. Emile Durkheim, noted sociologist and mythologist, cited the utilitarian function for myth as a social institution that orders rituals, economy and history. He described it as the unconscious of a society. Author Jean Genet said that myth is a global way of thinking through which all social agendas emerge. And, Joseph Campbell, the world's premier mythologist, sited four goals of myth:
- To awaken wonder by bringing us back in touch with the child within
- To fill all corners or niches of an image with the Mystery
- To validate social order
- To teach us how to conduct ourselves during the stages of our lives
Global Mythological Themes
Myths are influenced by landscape, geography and topography. Myths from the Australian Aborigines include barren, dry land and infinite, starry skies unlike the Celts' whose myths incorporate moist, lush, green forests and hidden underground caves. However, the transcendental nature of mythology defies the laws of time and space by connecting geographically unrelated cultures through their similar myths and symbols. Examples of common mythological themes found worldwide are:
- Creation myths - cosmologies - how and why we got here. Mircea Eliade, religious historian and professor, noted that there are approxmiately 5,200 different creation myths worldwide. Examples: the Genesis story and Native American Indian Spiderwoman myths
- Hero quests (for men) - the life journey of every man which includes a departure from home, trials, tribulations, descent to the underworld, rebirth and celebration. There is always a woman in the guise of the Triple Goddess as sexual maiden, kind mother or frightening crone and an old, wise man or mage to lead the hero on his/her way. Examples: King Arthur and the Quest for the Holy Grail, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Siegfreid and the Dragon, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The X-Files
- Heroine quests (for women)- the personified life journey of every woman as the Triple Goddess as she goes through the stages of virgin, mother/wife and crone that involves a passionate lost love; a period of intense mourning; wandering the earth; and a descent into the underworld where she is faced with tests and tribulations and must shed veils of illusion in order to be reborn. In indigenous cultures these myths often follow the cycles of nature with planting, harvesting, dying and rebirth. Examples: Demeter and Persephone, Psyche, Isis, Ishtar/Innana, Gone with the Wind, Out of Africa, The Color Purple
- Flood myths and other forms of natural destruction - ice, fire, earthquakes - may be related to the precession of the equinoxes which causes changes in Earth's crust and atmosphere. Examples: Noah and the Flood, Hopi cosmology myths, Epic of Gilgamesh
- Rebirth myths - related to agriculture and the planting, harvesting, death and rebirth cycles of nature. Examples: Mystery Religions of Osiris, Orpheus, Mithras; Cerrunos and Jesus
- Astronomical themes - myths pointing to astronomical events and the position of stars and star systems. Examples: Number systems in the Norse Valhalla myths, Pyramid alignment and Dogon tribe of Africa
Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell remains the world's premier mythologist. He was responsible for popularizing the impact and importance of myth as spiritual metaphor that drives people's lives and modes of being. A professor at Sara Lawrence College, Campbell spent his life dedicated to the comparative study of mythology and religions across the globe. He traveled internationally meeting with holy people from all cultures and walks of life. He pioneered the concept of the Hero Quest, now internationally famed after consulting for George Lucas during the making of Star Wars. Campbell's candor, gentle humor, compassion and brilliance brought myth into the forefront of religious, anthropological, psychological and spiritual studies. His life acts as a beacon, a guiding force, to those who strive to achieve a direct, mystical experience of and with God.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung was the founding father of Depth Psychology, the science of reconciling the unconscious and conscious halves of the human psyche. Jung identified a mythic dimension within the mind, the collective unconscious, as a result of discovering cross-cultural, non-temporal, synchronistic, reoccurring symbolic themes, archetypes, within his patients' dreams and art. He explained that the psyche provides a religious, mythic function in that it receives divine inspiration and utters it in words or shapes them into art (Storr: The Essential Jung). Jung's groundbreaking work humanized psychiatry by introducing the realm of spirit and soul into healing people's lives. Today, Jungian analysts use myth, fairy tale, art and poetry as tools to reach and mend people's pain without the intervention of pharmaceuticals or surgical treatments.
Mythology and Depth Psychology
One cannot discuss myth without considering the tenants of depth psychology. The two subjects are irrevocably connected and intertwined. Depth psychology describes and makes sense of the genetic, biological and psychological impact of the cosmic, mythic force on humankind. Archetypes and synchronicity are functions of the active, elemental force of myth, making its way into people's dreams, art, language, history Understanding mythology can be complicated and illusive. These concepts are God's language uniting humankind on unconscious, sacred levels that attempt to heal the materialism, economy, stress and tragedy of daily life. Myths are the remnants of humanity's one birth from God through the heavenly realms down into our disparate human forms. Depth psychologists endeavor to rejoin this singular creation by assisting us in marrying the masculine and feminine psychic halves through recognition, analysis, awareness and internalization of our own divinity.
Mythology Definitions and Guide Posts
Understanding mythology can be complicated, even tricky, like trying to catch the white rabbit in the forest, a visible yet intangible specter. When you're working with transcedent mystery words dance around an idea without always being able to stop quick, right on the spot. Myth alters lives, enlives perceptions and heals wounds. Singing the language of the universe in story, ritual and celebration, myth uncovers the hearts of humankind. Definintions of myth vary according to genre and speaker, yet all point to one thing: myth matters.
Myth is the song of the imagination, infinite and endless. - Joseph Campbell
Myths are religious recitations conceived as symbolic of the play of eternity in time. - Joseph Campbell
Myths present in pictorial form cosmogonic and ontological intutions. - Joseph Campbell
Myths give us story solutions to lessen fear, elicit doses of adrenaline at just the right times, and most importantly for the captured naive self, cut doors into walls which were previously blank. - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The old Inuit say that the breath of a god and the breath of a human, when commingled, cause a person to create an intense and holy poetry. - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The fables and legends we associate with mythology are spiritual metaphors devised to represent what Rudolf Otto describes as numinous: a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will but actually a force that seizes and controls a person who becomes victim rather than creator. - Anthony Storr
...the mythic image lies at the depth of the unconscious where man is no longer a distinct individual, but his mind widens out and merges into the mind of mankind, not the conscious mind, but the unconscious mind of mankind, where we are all the same. - Joseph Campbell
Myths are pictures that involve us both physiologically in our bodily reactions to them and spiritually in our higher thoughts about them. - Naomi Goldenberg
...in fairy tales and mythos are initiators; they are the wise ones who teach those who have come after. - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
When a person is aware of living myth she/he is experiencing life intentionally and reflectively- such people experience life as meaningful. - Naomi Goldenberg
All variations of a myth are equally true. - Claude Levi Strauss
Harsh are the gods on him who see them manifestly. - Homer, The Iliad
Myth is sacred history. - Mircea Eliade
Myths guide, direct and lead others to the vast, often indecipherable language of the soul.
- Jeffrey Collins
Mythology is a spiritual hologram. No matter what way a hologram is cut up or in how many pieces, each piece still has the full image. Each myth no matter how small contains the whole. - Jeffrey Collins
Myth is a metaphor that is transparent to transcendence. - Emile Durkheim
Myth maps the spiritual and psychological evolution of humankind. - Paula Vaughan
Myth is God's language for communing with creation. - Paula Vaughan
Myths are humankind shown inside-out through story. - Paula Vaughan
Resources for Further Study
Myth, Campbell, Jung and related topics and web sites: Link Repository
Glossary of mythical and Jungian terms: Glossary of Mythical and Jungian Terms
Joseph Campbell
Mythology
Jungian Psychology
Reprint and Contact Information
Please contact Paula Vaughan for reprint information and guidelines.
Mythological timeline information was supplemented with the help of Harold Terrell, professor of English at the University of Memphis.
© Copyright Paula Vaughan
Not to be reprinted without permission.
