Window Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 4, 1992 Copyright 1992 [Permission is granted to use, print, reproduce this article provided the following acknowledgment is given: From Window Quarterly 2, 4 (1992); ACRAG c. 1992. *** WHAT IS MYTH? by Paige Lindsey Shaw Why is everybody suddenly talking about "myth?" What is a myth? Am I supposed to understand by a myth that a story is a true story, or a made-up story? Does "it's only a myth" mean something is a fairy-tale? Does an "event of mythic proportions" mean something never really happened? Aren't myths just stories from folk religions? Nothing in the Bible is a myth, is it! Is it? A myth is about something that is true. It is a story --or a tale embedded in a cultural tradition--about a universal, recognizable truth. The story as it unfolds may not be factually true, but that is not the point; it may be set in a no- time, a "dream-time" (as Australian Aborigines call it), or the "creative-era" (as Mircea Eliade calls it) of the world. There is nothing in a myth that we can "prove" objectively, nor do we want to--but we find ourselves moved, gripped, enlightened by the story. Subjectively, we, as individuals, and we in society, or as a people, find ourselves transformed with a new understanding. We may learn what is expected of us in a new stage of life, how to express our identity, how to understand and face the inevitabilities and mysteries of life. Myths are so important to every culture in every stage of its development, that we have continued, in every age, to try to explain them--and we interpret them or propose a formal key to them by the lights of what is most important to us in that age. If you were to take a course or to read a set text on myth or on mythology (a word that can mean either the study of myth itself, or a collection of the mythic tales of a people), you would learn, first of all, that six major and exclusive theories have governed the study of myth in modern times. Speculation on the earliest origins of religion--a pursuit that can really only be guesswork--led nineteenth century scholars to declare that all mythology was allegory: myths were about the personification (called "anthropomorphism") of weather, seasons, or astronomical phenomena. A story about a young hero who fights and kills a monster, for instance, is really about daylight conquering darkness, or spring overpowering the winter. Of course, there are nature myths, but they hardly make up the majority of "traditional tales" (G.S. Kirk's term) in any culture. Yet, it is true that in all mythologies the whole natural world appears to be infused with countless anthropomorphic powers. By the end of the nineteenth century educated people had come to believe in the triumph of science--all things could and would be explained scientifically. Therefore, it made sense that myths were simply primitive (or proto-) science. They were etiological--they gave people a cause-and-effect explanation of something in the real world, usually something profound or disturbing, as well as important physical aspects of the world. Why is there death, or evil? Or, where did we as a people come from? Why is there sea, and then land? Why animals and also humans? Well, clearly, today we have "science"--and we still need myth. We also now recognize that "primitive man" is neither as credulous or as ignorant of the actual processes of nature, as scholars previously supposed. Yet, if one explores a myth using this key one can often discover a deep and subtle philosophical interpretation of human problem. "Why does - - ?" can reveal a surprisingly sophisticated solution that still obtains. Modern anthropologists, however, insisted that the study of myth belonged only to the actual study of primitive cultures and of the function of society. Mythology was not infantile science but instead a society's way to establish and legitimate its social institutions and conventions. This is called the charter theory. It depends on several academic disciplines, including psychology and comparative religion. Yes, in many important ways, a society's mythology tells much about how it works. Also, this concept is crucial to an informed understanding of primitive cultures, how they explain their customs, and the logic informing their underlying societal structures. At the same time, though, many scholars of the nature of religion maintain that myths serve the very special purpose of bringing us, the hearer or participant in a rite, into an intentional relationship with, or an experience of, the creative era, the moment when all that is was made, and when the Makers and Powers themselves were reachable. This is why some myths go with certain "rites of passages;" their telling puts the initiate in contact with the generative and transforming power of creation, and the essentially sacred. An earlier concept that was important, and is so even today, is the Myth and Ritual School that was made popular by the publication of J.G. Frazer's lengthy The Golden Bough (1890-1915). Myths, these scholars said, are vestiges of important rituals--most of them forgotten or radically changed. Any story that cannot be related to an actual cultic act or ritual cannot, therefore, be classed as a proper myth. Clearly, we can connect many myths to cults and rites. But did the action and rite come first, and then give us the tale? Some questions about the origin of religion can never be answered; furthermore, this view leaves us with a massive body of clear-cut mythologies that cannot fit the mold. Last, we have the school of thought popularized today which is derived from the studies of the human psyche made by Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung. The late twentieth century is assuredly the age of the individual. Our age is manifestly concerned with how one becomes an individual, and the well-being and wholeness of that individual. And we expect psychology to explain and to determine that well-being. At the same time, it is a tenet of modern belief that traditional society is falling apart, so we experience concern for the structures and beliefs that used to hold that society together. In addition we recognize an organic integrity between an individual and his or her society. A current school of understanding the meaning of myth, therefore, rests on the work of Freud, Jung, Ernest Cassirer, and its popularizer, the late Joseph Campbell. Myths, this explanation goes, can be determined to have their ultimate reality in the human psyche. As each person tries to understand and internalize his or her own individual experience, these myths, depending usually on symbols (which are revealed in dreams and in all mythologies), express crucial ideas and emotions repressed deep within his or her self. We often come across significant "archetypes" like the all-important "earth mother" or mother-goddess, or perhaps the developmental process reflected in the common "quest" story. This interpretation describes how society and each person needs ritual, mystery, transcendence, awe, and myth in order to fulfill the whole self, and to achieve well- being and inner integrity. All cultures up until our day understood these things, and we must recover them. While myths may be like dreams and may have developed to meet the unconscious needs of those who told them--much as Freud's "dream work" of the individual does-- myth's role as an inchoate clue to some vaguely-defined "dream-thinking" of a people depends on erroneous assumptions about the evolution of any given human culture. Myths do indeed plainly deal with common and basic human ideas, but they are only one expression of the unconscious human mind or any given human culture. Furthermore, some cultures do not seem to use the conventional "archetypes." Also, we are left with questions of definition such as, what does "symbol" or "archetype" actually mean? Anyone who is well-read finds himself uncomfortable with Campbell's attempts to stretch out obscure legends and etiologies to put them on a par with obviously highly significant, central, and complex cosmic stories. Still, the contributions of Freud, Jung and Cassirer, that myth is one of the primary facets of cultural expression, has illuminated the entire study of mythology. G.S. Kirk, in The Nature of Greek Myths, maintains that myths are a unique form of expression; they make us respond imaginatively and emotionally. They are most clearly "psychologically satisfying" on their own, and in some way they evoke in us a particular feeling, "a visceral thing, like a response to great music or poetry." What then is it about a particular story that creates this response? What is it that is the mythic quality? Some say that the story must be about sacred events or about deities, but this would exclude many powerful stories--stories that contain important messages about life, in general, and our place in the world, in particular. Every absolute and exclusive theory ends up dismissing or marginalizing some stories, and sometimes even an entire culture's body of traditional tales. Certainly we have to apply, in order to understand the full import of any given story, several methods of analysis -- and even then some tales will defy analysis. If you should successfully explain a myth to your satisfaction, you want to still keep exploring and examining that story. Myths are subtle, and may surprise you if you keep applying different keys. Myths are changeable things--a traditional tale may have evolved, have re-located in time and place, and have developed new ambiguities. True myths will always work on several different levels and respond to several kinds of examination and there is not always a "right" key to every story. Some scholars are careful to separate proper myths from other kinds of traditional stories. The legends, for example, could be described as tales about plausibly historical figures like Hercules, or Odysseus, or George Washington. Yet books of Greek mythology contain tales about the Trojan War and about Hercules. Then there is the animal fable like Aesop's Fables or the Uncle Remus tales; some of these overlap into the traditional moral or cautionary tale. Finally there is the great body of stories called folk-tales like those of the Brothers Grimm. Nevertheless these folk-tales, as we call them, contain mythic elements, and a good many myths have folk-tale motifs. Several child psychologists point out that "fairy tales" have important things to tell children about developmental tasks ahead of them; children, it seems, are reassured by the solving of problems in these stories. They identify with the characters and their actions, and they sense that small and powerless though they are, their day will come at last. An examination of some folk-tales such as "Beauty and the Beast" in light of its relation to the tale of "Eros and Psyche" lifts it out of the mainstream of ordinary fairy tales. Clearly, few hard and fast rules can be absolutely applied to all bodies of traditional tales. Sometimes the attempt to find the right "key" to myths to explain all its elements separately, can rob a story of its power-- and its point. Perhaps, trying to analyze a myth is like explaining a joke: the power to amuse or awe us is gone. For example, take the story told in Exodus of the parting of the Red Sea that allowed the Israelites to pass through safely. By trying to "prove" the story (according to western notions of factuality) and showing that the Red Sea dried up as the consequence of an earthquake or volcanic eruption -- one has reduced a major event in the sacred history of Israel and its relationship with God to a mere accident of the weather (and hence, one assumes, a rather gratuitous misunderstanding on the part of the Hebrews!). The truth in the story, the point of telling it, is that in real human history God acted to save His people; He is a God Who acts, and Who works out His purpose in our world because we matter so much to Him. God acts in this world and makes our human history a transcendent thing. On the other hand, we can point to more recently recorded, historical events--the sort in history books--and speak of them as having gained "mythic proportions" because of royalty, no ancient history, and no indigenous connection to the land, have events which when described move us all profoundly. The bleeding feet of Washington's soldiers at Valley Forge, the Constitution--these images and documents recounting our nation's founding have the power to evoke strong, universal feelings in all Americans. They describe something essential about our common identity and beliefs. They are not simple nor easily "unpacked" either. Here our history is lifted up and we see a sort of transformation begin as we sanctify our past. One would, today, point to the images repeatedly shown of the Berlin Wall tumbling down, of the tanks rumbling away from Red Square--as long as the twentieth century is remembered these images will remain. Myths grip us when tricky moral problems are described-- things we do not understand, where justice does not seem to apply, where an inevitable end is foredoomed. Human death, for instance, in almost every culture, seems to be explained as the tragic consequence of some apparently trivial kind of accident or wrong choice. We can point to the fixed dichotomy between the goddesses Artemis and Aphrodite. Why is this? Then there is the tragic tale of Oedipus--which is not about incest, but about the terrible fact that ignorance is not innocence, that our most unknowing act may be our most guilty, and that countless people suffer from one man's deed. Why are such images, tales, recountings, and retellings repeated over and over, from generation to generation and culture to culture? One answer lies in just that emotional and ineffable power that draws one across language and culture. This writer remembers, as a child, being utterly and repeatedly entranced by two compelling stories -- the story of "The Death of Baldur" from Norse mythology, and the story in Iroquois mythology of the self-sacrificing death of Mondamin at the hands of Hiawatha (the Algonquin Manabozho) and how the maize grew from his body in the earth. Such stories, poetic and mystical, make us all human together, in the same way, and make our common human heart a transforming, transcendent thing. Something to tell stories about. *** SUGGESTED READING Joseph Campbell, Hero With a Thousand Faces. New York, 1949. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth. New York, 1988. H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Harmondsworth, 1958. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. New York, 1961. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion. London, 1958. T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland." London, 1922. Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough. New York (one- volume edition), 1922. G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths. Harmondsworth, 1974. S.N. Kramer (ed.), Mythologies of the Ancient World. Garden City, New York, 1961. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion. New York, 1948. Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Piety. New York, 1948 (1969). J.B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Third Edition), Princeton, 1969. *** =================================================== _ _ _ _ _ |_| ___ _| | ___ _ _ _ | | | | | | _ / _ \ / _ | / _ \ | | | | | | | |_| |_| || |_ | | | || |_| || |_| || |_| |_| | \_________/\___||_| |_| \___/ \___/ \_________/ View Of The Armenian Church ===================================================