Mystery Revisted...First Function of Myth

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

Andreas
Associate
Posts: 2274
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:07 am

Post by Andreas »

Thanks jd and Clemsy. I remember that Campbell was always saying that we have no mythology today and if there was one that was the exploration of the moon. Now that was pretty amazing but for the recent generations i think it will not do the job of proper functioning myth since like you said jd our cosmology of the universe has changed.

It seems i have misunderstood or have not yet fully realized what myth might be. So again lets me ask some questions to clarify some things in my mind. Dont you think that lets say for example movies, novels or art in general can fill that gap in our society? I know for sure that movies can relieve some anxieties.

As i write this iam thinking of lets say Harry Potter. Now for the grown up it might seem very childish reading or watching it but lets get rid of that thought. I was always amazed by the mythology that it had and i really think it helped in the development of the children s psyche. What i mean is that it created an image (in metaphorical sense) of how the world operates and what are the dangers in it. It seems (to me) it is doing a good job going from dependency to maturity, to reconcile consciousness to existence, to validate and maintain a certain given moral order and to harmonize and deepen the psyche—the psychological structure and experience of the individual and perhaps even the cosmological since it has very strong meanings on how to present an image of the universe through which the sensed meaning, or power, or nature of life will be rendered. I know for sure that some of these stories talk to me and let me understand how the world works and you really get a feeling of how organic life is how much you are connected with everyone and everything you do affects in some way or another how the world is shaped. Isnt that myth?

Other examples of movies would be Lord of the Rings, Last of the Mohican, Kingdom of heaven. Iam talking only about movies here since its in my professional field. Other might find this in novels or a painting or something else.

From what you wrote Clemsy it seems to me that these cannot substitute the experience of a rite or initiation on an individual or a group. You have to experience the pain in other words to realize what life is about. Is this the case here or iam missing something? So in order again to have myths that would mean that our whole society and the way it works will need to be restructured in a modern way around those rites and initiations in order to help the psyche develop in a proper way? hmm?

Edit: I was writing this post before you answered Cindy and Clemsy again. I think this is more specific on what i was thinking. But iam definetely not looking for myth in religion or any tribal societies since that would be impossible to work in our modern societies?

Cindy B.
Working Associate
Posts: 4719
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Cindy B. »

If I understand you correctly, Andreas, what I hear is a reflection of how we moderns tend to create "personal myths" by which to live given the absence of a fully functioning cultural mythology as Campbell describes and defined by his four functions of myth. What do you think?

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Andreas
Associate
Posts: 2274
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:07 am

Post by Andreas »

Yeah Cindy you understand correctly what i was trying to put into words. Personally i believe that the "personal myths" work at least on the surface and my confusion comes by how myth and rites work together. I am gonna quote Campbell from Myths to Live By p.45
Myths are the mental supports of rites; rites, the physical enactments of myths
So even though we are creating "personal myths" they dont get into full effect because there are no rites to support them? Isnt that why Clemsy said "that we dont have an effective myth at the moment"?

I hope this make sense... sure my head feels like exploding when trying to think all that stuff. :lol:

Neoplato
Associate
Posts: 3907
Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:02 pm
Location: Virginia
Contact:

Post by Neoplato »

Andreas Wrote:
So even though we are creating "personal myths" they dont get into full effect because there are no rites to support them?
Since the "Church of Neoplatonic Souls" doesn't exist, I find myself coming up with my own daily ritauls. Nothing complicated, but it's kind of like small prayers. Taking a shower I'll mutter to myself something like "water that gives me life, cleanse me from this world" or before eating something like "I must partake from this world in order to give it life".

These little "reminders" help me stay aware of the meaning of my own "myth". Unfortunately, most religions have lost thier meaning, so all that's left are rituals and the belief of metaphors as literal fact. Sigh....
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

Cindy B.
Working Associate
Posts: 4719
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Cindy B. »

Andreas wrote:So even though we are creating "personal myths" they dont get into full effect because there are no rites to support them.
I would say that depends on the individual and his/her expression of a personal myth. Take me, for example. :wink: I've never been one to be attracted to the ritualistic since such collective experiences don't resonate with me on a personal level. The only reason that my marriage was a traditional one, for example, with all the usual Protestant trappings was to accommodate the needs of my husband and his family; nor did I go to either of my college graduations for the same reason, but I did participate in my high school graduation ceremony for my mother's sake. It was the coming of the Age of Enlightenment and the rise of individualism in opposition to the Church's religious/mythological hold on Western culture and its members that led to the erosion of mythology's collective influence as Campbell speaks of. I'm an obvious reflection of that change, and an example of those so-called "free thinkers" who exist as a result of that "enlightenment" and its focus on individual responsibility and the rise of science’s influence.

Which brings me back to my earlier comment to you, Andreas, about taking a look at the role of religion and its cultural influences when you said: “Also can you give some examples in myth like maybe just point out a myth and I can try see how does it work or something.” Pick any time and place prior to and up to the end of the Medieval period if you want to see how a fully functioning mythology worked that incorporated all four of Campbell’s functions of myth. Pure examples on a cultural scale simply no longer exist today except for pockets of small societal groups around the world.

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Andreas
Associate
Posts: 2274
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:07 am

Post by Andreas »

Neo yes i said a prayer once it was at school lol. Funny because i never came close to any church again. Anyway i really can only hope for a "Church of Neoplatonic Souls" in the future. Socrates is one of my favorite philosophers by the way the force was pretty strooong with him i can say. :lol:

Cindy i also avoid these rituals which now have become "traditions" if i can say that. Ofcourse some people still believe at them but honestly with the impact of science or modern society this is something that my mind cannot accept no matter how hard i try. However the rituals that some tribal societies had or still have are much more stronger at integrating the individual in society. These individuals really knew how to look death in the face and say iam not afraid.. can we say the same today? even though we have all this knowledge on how the human body works we still struggle to accept the inevitable, at least me.

About the second part of your post iam looking about those mythologies up to medieval age and iam trying to understand them but i hoped for an example in modern society. I guess ill have to wait :)

Cindy B.
Working Associate
Posts: 4719
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Cindy B. »

These individuals really knew how to look death in the face and say iam not afraid.. can we say the same today?
For whatever reason, I've never had such a fear. Hmm...perhaps Freud would say that I have a death wish, you think? :P (Actually I view death as an inevitable stage of life, so why worry about it? Living has its shares of worries enough to address.)

Cindy
Last edited by Cindy B. on Mon Sep 07, 2009 2:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

Folks, I really have to tell you that this is an excellent and fresh line of inquiry. I don't recall this particular question coming up before in these forums. (Which doesn't mean it hasn't, my memory being what it is.)
So even though we are creating "personal myths" they dont get into full effect because there are no rites to support them.
Great thought! Gives me a reason to post, once more, my personal favorite Campbell quote:
For even in the sphere of Waking Consciousness, the fixed and the set fast, there is nothing now that endures. The known myths cannot endure. The known God cannot endure. Whereas formerly, for generations, life so held to established norms that the lifetime of a deity could be reckoned in millenniums, today all norms are in flux, so that the individual is thrown, willy-nilly, back upon himself, into the inward sphere of his own becoming, his forest adventurous without way or path, to come through his own integrity in experience to his own intelligible Castle of the Grail—integrity and courage, in experience, in love, in loyalty, and in act. And to this end the guiding myths can no longer be of any ethnic norms. No sooner learned, these are outdated, out of place, washed away. There are today no horizons, no mythogenetic zones. Or rather, the mythogenetic zone is the individual heart. Individualism and spontaneous pluralism—the free association of men and women of like spirit, under protection of a secular, rational state with no pretensions to divinity—are in the modern world the only honest possibilities: each the creative center of authority for himself, in Cusanus's circle without circumference whose center is everywhere, and where each is the- focus of God's gaze. -- Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology
In terms of how I've assimilated Campbell's ideas, this is where the Hero's Journey and the Bliss Path come together. Now, what I hadn't considered before, and this thread has brought up, is the relationship between the four functions of the myth and the Creative mythology of the individual. A primary purpose of the sociological and pedagogical functions is to integrate the individual with the community and the environment. I'm thinking that the cosmological function also impacts the communal as social structures will reflect the shape of the universe as conceived at the time.

I'm just brainstorming here, but on the individual level, as reflected in the above quote, we have to start with the metaphysical/mystical function: Our journey into the "forest adventurous without way or path" should bring us to an individual understanding of each function and result in a sort of evolved individual who doesn't need his model of the functions to be perfectly reflected in everyone else around him.

In such a scenario, what is the purpose of rite and ritual which are the enactments of the common myth?

Cool. Very cool.

Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Cindy B.
Working Associate
Posts: 4719
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Cindy B. »

Clemsy wrote:In such a scenario, what is the purpose of rite and ritual which are the enactments of the common myth?
For those who primarily adhere to personal myths, it boils down to social tradition and habit, perhaps. Yet consider those in modern societies, too, who do try to adhere to their mythological heritages, say, those who sincerely embrace Christianity and live it. This, for example--what percentage of these folks today, do you think, genuinely understand and/or experience the numinous implications associated with the seasonal ritual of putting up their Christmas tree?

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

For those who primarily adhere to personal myths, it boils down to social tradition and habit, perhaps.
How's this: myth is a tool, a lens through which people can access the Big Stuff. On an individual level, is myth necessary? I think not. Doesn't mean social tradition has no importance.

Those who do indeed "experience the numinous implications associated with the seasonal ritual of putting up their Christmas tree" are not necessarily all within the confines of traditional religion. Even those who are and do, well, their local communal bonds are strengthened thereby.

But it doesn't mean the myth they are acting out is relevant to the technological age we live in. I'm not saying it can't be, but as long as the story is considered history it won't be because the historical impulse will always be in conflict with the realities of the present. How many Christians see the baby in the creche and see the myth and not the history?
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Cindy B.
Working Associate
Posts: 4719
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Cindy B. »

Yep, Clemsy, I can agree.

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Neoplato
Associate
Posts: 3907
Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:02 pm
Location: Virginia
Contact:

Post by Neoplato »

Andreas Wrote:
Anyway i really can only hope for a "Church of Neoplatonic Souls" in the future.
Socrates is one of my favorite philosophers by the way the force was pretty strooong with him i can say
Just as a disclaimer the "Church of Neoplatonic Souls" is a running gag of mine that represents my "displeasure" with modern religious institutions. It's abbreviation is CONS. :D

Point being that once an idea becomes institutionalized, it takes on a life of its own.

As for "rituals", IMHO, are performed as a representation of an accepted social norm. If you don't put up a "Christmas Tree" some people may think that strange. However, If I were to say to them, "this is a pagan ritual not associated with early Christianity", I'd be flogged.

I've posted my opinion on marraige somewhere. IMHO, the only thing that really "changes" is that a group of people now accept the relationship which is now under a separate set of laws.

"Boogedy Boo ,,,Boogedy Boo...I love you...TA DAAA" :D

My in-laws didn't accept my wife and I were married until we got married in "their" church. I thought it was funny when the first questionfrom the pastor was "you really did get married by a justice of the peace, didn't you?" :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

richard silliker
Associate
Posts: 243
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 6:28 pm
Contact:

mystery

Post by richard silliker »

What is the mystery that you behold?

Why?

Richard

jonsjourney
Associate
Posts: 3191
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:24 pm
Location: Earth

Post by jonsjourney »

Thank you, Clemsy, for clarifying the "42" reference. I was out for a few days.

Reading all the above posts makes me wonder if we are at a point in human evolution in which we need to redefine the mythological era, so to speak. You know, like the break in Common Era and Before Common Era.

Our existence has become so personal. We are quite capable of controlling the vast majority of what gets into our brains. We create our own mythology. It is like myspace...a place in which individuals use the creative work of other individuals in order to create their own identity.

I have a modern ritual I perform from time to time. Every now and then, if it is especially cold or rainy and I am housebound, I pull out the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition DVD sets and watch the whole shebang over the course of one 12 hour day. I think the run time is in the 11 hour range. So...I am using the work of Tolkien, which was interpreted by Jackson and turned into a visual version of a mythological story that I love and am familiar with.

I am able to see the "larger" concepts of Tolkien's mythology and relate it to my own experiences in some way. If I am touched by a story in an emotional way, I am connecting with the mythology, right? Even if I am not the one walking into the forest. Another example of the emotional connection created in modern work, to stay with the above-mentioned possibilities, is Harry Potter. During the film The Order of the Phoenix, if you care at all about Harry, you feel the strong pang of pain and sorrow he experiences when his godfather, Sirius Black is killed. You feel Harry's pain because you have grown with him and the story.

So...I wonder if we need to begin to redefine what myth is today and how it is applied today in order for it to remain relevant. A new four functions, perhaps?

Neo....Can I be a bishop, or fou (French for bishop and fool! No joke) in CONS? pretty pleeeeze???
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

jd101
Associate
Posts: 80
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 3:06 am
Location: Encinitas, California, USA

Post by jd101 »

Andreas, I am on the same page as you regarding myth. Sometimes I think I know what a myth is, and other times I get more and more confused. Here is a Campbell quote from “The Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell on his life and work” p.160
“There’s a famous line at the close of Goethe’s Faust; ‘Everything phenomenal or temporal is but a reference, but a metaphor.’ And then Nietzsche topped that a few years later by saying, ‘Everything eternal is but a reference, but a metaphor.’

Now the function of mythology is to help us to experience everything temporal as a reference. And also to experience the so-called eternal verities as merely references. Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words—in short, what we call transcendence. Without that you don’t have a mythology. Any system of thinking, ideologies of one kind or another, that does not open to transcendence cannot be classified or understood mythologically.

The first function of mythology then is to function by showing everything as a metaphor to transcendence. The first field that has to be transcendentalized this way is the field of the environment that we’re in, the world that we live in. So that we can see the whole world as opening to a dimension of wonder and mystery. Every object in the world speaks of this mystery, the mystery of life, and consciousness pours in through the various bodies and beings round about. It must then show you yourself that you are similarly transparent to transcendence. And finally, in a mythologically organized society, all of the rituals are organized in such a way that they help you to experience yourself, the world, and the social order of which you are a part, in this mystical way.”
In the examples you give of movies, Harry Potter etc., I am reminded of some statements Campbell made about the difference between Myth and Ideology. I am operating from memory(which is getting old and error filled), but I seem to recall that JC did make the distinction, saying for instance that Communism was an ideology and not a mythology because it did not offer the first function of a mystical participation in life.

In this quote above, Campbell seems to be re-defining a fully functioning mythology to be something quite narrow. One of the potential problems with this is that it really elevates the importance of the mystical religions and diminishes the relevance of many traditional non-mystical religions, say that of Judaism. As a matter of fact, it has been argued that Campbell show a definite anti-Judaism bias at times, and here is another quote from “The Hero’s Journey” p. 161.
“The mystical function is opening the transcendence, opening the heart and mind, pointing out that the ultimate mystery that we all try to solve lies beyond the range of human thought or naming. When you have given it a name and a thought you have fallen short. You’re no longer in the mystical tradition. For instance, in Judaism where God is named and he tells you what’s good and what’s right, these are the fire words and reduces mythology to ethics. There are moments of reverence, of what I call worship, where one gets an experience that seems to correspond to something named in the scriptures; but this isn’t mysticism. Mysticism actually goes beyond this whole field of separation, I and thou; and when a deity says, ‘I am It’ he becomes a roadblock. As they used to say in the second and third centuries, the problem with Yahweh is that he thinks he’s God.”
While I am probably personally biased towards the elevation of the mystical myself, I am a bit clouded in my thinking about this. I would probably agree that movies and novels can’t offer a fully function mythology. Clemsy offers some interesting comments after your Harry Potter post, and I hope to talk about that later…
john

Locked