A Myth and Buying it

Introducing people of all ages to mythology... in pre-college educational curricula, youth orgs, the media, etc. Share your knowledge, stories, unit and lesson plans, techniques, and more.

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Doxa
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A Myth and Buying it

Post by Doxa »

Hi ya'll. I'm new here. I had a question that's pondered my mind for a long while, that just seems like a hurdle I can never get over.

I love listening to different Myths, and I see the value and power in them. I identify with the values, and I identify with the hero's quests in various myths.

My problem though seems to be that I have a hard time buying into a Myth knowing that it's a Myth.

It feels almost disingenuous. Like I'm lying to myself in order to make myself feel better. Like myths are a coping mechanism -- and they may be, that's fine. I see the power in them, but I have these resistances still. It feels like I'm lying to myself. Like they're all just facades. And that's maybe the point of them, I'm not sure. Maybe I've got it all wrong.

Any thoughts on this? Any input is greatly appreciated. :D

tonyd
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Post by tonyd »

Hi Doxa,
Bill Moyers asked Campbell the same question and he gave a fairly decent reply.

It's no harm too to keep an eye on what Campbell said about Creative Mythology.
In the context of traditional mythology, the symbols are presented in socially maintained rites, through which the individual is required to experience, or will pretend to have experienced, certain insights, sentiments and commitments. In what I'm calling creative mythology, on the other hand, this order is reversed: the individual has had an experience of his own - of order, horror, beauty, or even mere exhilaration-which he seeks to communicate through signs; and if his realization has been of a certain depth and import, his communication will have the force and value of living myth-for those, that is to say, who receive and respond to it of themselves, with recognition, uncoerced.
and
In the earlier volumes of this survey the mythologies treated are largely those of the common world of those who, in the poet Gottfried's words, can bear no grief and desire but to bathe in bliss: the mythologies that is to say, of the received religions, great and small. In the present work on the other hand, I accept the idea proposed by Schopenauer and confirmed by Sir Arthur Keith, the intention being to regard each of the creative masters of this dawning day and civilisation of the individual as absolutely singular, each species unique in himself. He will have arrived in this world in one place or another, at one time or another, to unfold, in the conditions of his time and place, the autonomy of his nature. And in youth, though early imprinted with one authorized brand or another of the Western religious heritage, in one or another of its known historic states of disintegration, he will have conceived the idea of thinking for himself, peering through his own eyes, heeding the compass of his own heart. Hence the works of the really great of this new age cannot combine in a unified tradition to which followers can then adhere, but are individual and various. They are the works of individuals and, as such, will stand as models for other individuals: not coercive but evocative.
and
..with what I'm here calling creative myth, which springs from the unpredictable, unprecedented experience-in-illumination of an object by a subject, and the labor, then, of achieving communication of the effect. It is in this second, altogether secondary, technical phase of creative art, communication, that the general treasury, the dictionary so to say, of the world's infinitely rich heritage of symbols, images, myth motives, and hero deeds, may be called upon - either consciously as in Joyce and Mann, or unconsciously, as in dream - to render the message.
Coping though is a good word. In instances where a community suffers the worst of the worst of the worst it is noteworthy that the spontaneous visions that appear in the aftermath as a response to the collective trauma are rich in mythological motifs (post famine fairy tales, Black Elk Speaks etc). My impression is that the universe having endured so much to achieve a modicum of self awareness is reluctant to let it go.
Tony D.
Fare Forward

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