Myth vs Rite

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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ShantiSong
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Post by ShantiSong »

I'm a long time Campbellist but new to this website. Hi ya'll.

Several years ago,when I read the two volume version of James G. Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH I wrote down these lines from the text-
For while many cases can be shown in which a myth has been invented to explain a rite, it would be hard to point to single case in which a myth has given rise to a rite. Ritual may be the parent of myth, but can never be its child.
-James G Frazier
This quote has always haunted me because it seems counter intuitive, so I thought I'd put it to a panel of experts. Does rite precede myth?

How would Joseph Campbell respond?


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Post by Martin_Weyers »

Welcome to the JCF forums, Tom! I'm eagerly awaiting our expert's response. I have read a lot of stuff about myths, but not so much about rituals. I thought rituals were a practice to make a myth part of the social reality, and hence the child of myth, rather than the other way round. But that was just my personal impression.

Our retired moderator November17 is a specialist on ritual. I have no idea what he's doing now after he gave up moderating, but there are some of his posts in which he articulated a point of view different from Campbell, worth though to be read.

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Ruiz
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Post by Ruiz »

Hi TomGix and Martin!

Good observation TomGix!

I had the same impression Martin did.

I recall reading something by Carl Jung in which he said that man had been performing certain rituals before he knew what he was doing. It's not till later when man became aware of himself that he began to question his actions.

Maybe those actions are remnants of instinctual patterns of behavior. (like the mating dance of certain birds)

I'm almost sure I read this in Carl Jung's "Memories, Dreams, and Reflections."
Since I don't have the book handy maybe an associate who has the book can relate that passage.

I think it is to be found in the part of the book where he visits Africa and the natives have a ritual of facing the sun at a certain time. When asked why they did that they didn't know. It just happened!

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Post by Martin_Weyers »

On 2004-11-07 17:38, Ruiz wrote:
I recall reading something by Carl Jung in which he said that man had been performing certain rituals before he knew what he was doing.
Maybe we eggheads just distinguish between things too strictly! And reading your words, Ruiz, I remember (no kidding!) that Konrad Lorenz wrote something about the origin of ritual - he was not observing people but camels!

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ShantiSong
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Post by ShantiSong »

Thx Martin and Ruiz. I've read many of your posts. After lecturing Joseph Campbell ideas to many people in bars, on planes, and in coffee shops, it's nice to hear from people that at least know what I'm talking about.
I read November17's very long thread. I wish I had been there to defend some of his views.
You may remember Joseph Campbell saying that Frazer's ideas are a bit outdated.(POM) But the answer to this particular question is no trivial matter - methinks.
We all agree that we are in a period of mythic transition, but if Frazer is correct on this point, perhaps our focus should be on rituals rather than stories. The stories will come as soon as we figure out what we're doing or what we should be doing. So we can talk about being re-ritualized rather than re-mythologized.
A few examples to argue Frazer’s view:
1.) A child learns the gestures of prayer long before she actually prays.
2.) Our ancestors were probably slaying beasts long before they felt guilty enough to come up with a cathartic story.
3.) Burial rites were probably practiced long before the self-appointed shaman dazzled them with stories to emphasize the importance of the rite.
4.) I always felt that Thanksgiving, unlike our other major holidays, is based on a rather weak and plotless story.
5.) Near my home, in the high desert of Nevada, there’s an annual festival called Burning Man. It is an event filled with mythless ritual.
I remember, in one of his lectures Joseph Campbell saying, "Young people ask me, 'but what rituals can we have', and I tell them, 'you have rituals, your just not meditating on them.'"

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Post by Siddha »

I'm not an academic expert in these matters but somehow creating a myth around something we are already doing doesn't sound right to me. So I have a couple of questions:

1) What makes a ritual a ritual?
2) What makes a myth a myth?
3) Can something else precede both?

I'll start with #3 since I don't have any textbook answers for 1 or 2. When I think of "burning man" I think of a group of people who feels disenfranchised, who are angry and frustrated with the system run by the man. People also go there to connect with like minded individuals, like this web site for them it is a sort of oasis in the dessert of conformity and mediocrity.

I think what precedes both is a mystery and/or a psychological state of awe, fear, frustration or rapture. It's not that we don't know why we are doing the rite and need an explanation, its that we have been moved beyond words and need to do something!

A somewhat off tangent but related idea I got from watching "what the bleep" If you show someone a pear a certain sequence of neurons will fire, if you then ask them to close their eyes and imagine the same pear the same neurons will fire. Now it is my understanding that neuron's fire in reaction to a chemical signal. My question then is what part of the brain triggered those chemicals to be sent in the first place, and if it was "another part of the brain" what chemicals triggered it into action? As you can see we could follow this back indefinitely. So, maybe we just have this huge chemical cocktail in our head which triggers thoughts and behaviors we have no control over and all we really do with our mind is rationalize why we did what we just did. Maybe every life from it's first breath to its last is a sort of rite, and our whole purpose is to construct an explanation (myth) to make sense out of something that makes no sense. :wink:




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Post by ShantiSong »

Your probably correct Cliff, in that the answer to my original question will come down to a definition of both ritual and myth.
Ritual, in it's most basic sense, is our tendency to imitate the rhythms of nature, to put ourselves in accord with the Universe, and with our fate, bleak as it may be.
Myth has been defined to death, and yet remains stubbornly elusive. My favorite comes from C.G. Jung: "Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition." The only problem with this definition is that we would have to define consciousness, and that, just may be the holy grail of the 21st century. But most of us agree that myth is a story, with characters, and events, and usually supernatural forces at work.
Can myth and ritual occur independently?
I think so, just as a music can occur without a dance, and dance without music.
As for something preceding both, I can't agree with you more; awe, fear, desire, and angst. It just seems to me, worth considering, that long before we crossed the cognitive threshold and became aware of the passage of time, we were dancing to the wordless song of nature. Just dancing.

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Post by Siddha »

And maybe before we even started dancing we where dreaming... :wink:

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Post by ShantiSong »

And perhaps before we were dreaming we were eating and making love. LOL

This reminds me of a conversation between parent and child where the child keeps saying, "Why.....why.....why. Eventually the parent just has to say, "Oh,shut up and drink your milk"
-Frieden

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Post by Will-i-am »

As a shaman I have found that ritual and myth are intertwined. I have developed rituals, for instance, that when examined later contain elements of myth to them. Myth can explain ritual. If you can imagine a person asking me about a ritual I undertook in order to Spirit Walk and heal an injured soul. I may have created that ritual at that moment, as far as I could tell, using elements which seemed appropriate and instinctive. To explain the ritual I may have to use phrases and references relating to various myths. I may use a myth to design a ritual, like the sand paintings in curing ceremonies. A ritual involves a person, here and now, moving upwards. A myth involves a concept, now and forever, reaching downwards to the person. A ritual will use knowlege and faith to create a change in consciousness. A myth will contain concepts which allow you to share in that "ancient" ritual. For instance, many stories of the Hero's journey involve actions which can be duplicated in ritual and form the foundation of a ritual of initiation. It is a myth which backs up a ritual. Rituals never support a myth because a myth is transcendent of the here and now. In a ritual it is the actor who attempts to transcend current reality. In myth there is a record of a transcendent experience but not neccessarily a record of the ritual. We hear that one has gone to a place and done a thing, but we are not sure what was thought, what was said, what the elements of the ritual were. So ritual is one example of knowlege being attained by action based in myth. Myth is the cookbook, ritual is the meal. That's my take on it anyway.

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Post by JR »

Not that this response is worth much academically, but in thinking about such rites and rituals as the pollen path or sand painting, it's hard to immagine that these would arrise of their own accord and for a myth to explain them later.
JR

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Post by bodhibliss »

On 2005-01-04 08:41, JR wrote:
Not that this response is worth much academically, but in thinking about such rites and rituals as the pollen path or sand painting, it's hard to immagine that these would arrise of their own accord and for a myth to explain them later.
Good point, J.R.

Frankly, this area will remain controversial for some time to come - it's a hotly debated topic within the field of mythological studies. An excellent anthology on the subject, The Myth and Ritual Theory, edited by Robert Segal (who authored the first book-length critique of Campbell's work), includes contributions from James Frazier, Jane Harrison, Lord Raglan, Bronislaw Malinowski, Mircea Eliade, Northrop Frye, Walter Burkert, Claude Levi-Strauss, and some twenty other anthropologists and mythologists over the last century and a half (none, though, by Campbell).

Some, such as William Robertson Smith, aver "in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth" - in other words, ritual is primary, and myth is simply a later religious explanation. Others, like Edward Tylor, claim that "myth is more important than ritual, which is the application, not the subject of myth."

Mircea Eliade points to rituals in Mesopotamian culture performed before beginning construction, whether of a peasant's hut, king's palace, or a god's temple, which are reenactments of the Creation myth

... makes sense - erecting a house is an act of creation that mirrors the creation of the cosmos. The Creation myth clearly antedates the construction rituals

... but where do the cosmogonic creation myths come from? Do they arise out of an earlier ritual?

Campbell believes myth (and ritual) arise out of the visionary experience: first comes the vision. He offers the example of Black Elk, who in adolescence experienced a powerful vision arising out of the shamanic crisis. This vision pointed to changes in Sioux culture with the predominance of the white man, and signaled changes in the mythic imagination. Eventually, Black Elk constructed rituals based on his visions that his fellow Sioux could follow to realize and assimilate the mythic imagery. Here at least is one instance of rituals developed after a mythic vision - and there are others.

Did the rituals of the early Church come first, and then were followed by the detailed Christian mythology we find in the New Testament and later traditions - or did the visionary experience of Jesus and his disciples give birth to the rituals that reenact the Christian myth?

We might say the myth - the story of Christ - came first, and the rituals developed later, which would be accurate ... but then, several of these rituals - Christmas, Easter, eating and drinking the body and blood of the God - were practiced long before Jesus was born - which is also accurate.

Myth first, or ritual? Chicken, or egg? I'm drawn to both positions at once - myth and ritual are so closely intertwined, and there are strong examples on both sides of the divide - so part of me wonders if maybe it depends on circumstance?

Nevertheless, when Campbell claims ritual is a reenactment of myth, this too makes sense to me (and doesn't necessarily mean that myths are always the cause of ritual and never the other way around).

As J.R. points out, the elaborate sand painting of the Dine (or Navajo) is an enactment of myth - an individual who needs healing is placed in the center of a sand painting depicting a scene from a healing story, and then becomes the hero of the story the ritual depicts.

Which came first? Probably doesn't matter to the person who is healed through the collaboration of ritual and myth

... but it is fun to speculate.

blessed be
bodhibliss

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Post by ShantiSong »

Thanks BodhiBliss,

I went to the Amazon.com site to peek into the Robert Segal book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

It's certain that if this book can't appease my curiousity on the subject of myth and ritual, nothing will.



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Post by bodhibliss »

There's a wealth of material in the Segal book, Tom. What i like most about it is that the contributions present a variety of opinions, documenting how the argument has unfolded over the past century-plus (and there are more than just two sides to the question)

... but you, as reader, are left to draw your own conclusions (or confusions, as the case may be).

bodhibliss

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Post by dbronzeh »

maybe someone already said this: a rite is the act of living a myth. It is the most intensive form of story telling.

I personally believe myth came first because it is based on history. The purpose of ritual is to initiate a person through psycological transformation.

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