What is a Myth?

Notes from - A Short History of Myth �Karen Armstrong (Chapter One)

Starting Assumptions...

• Humans are meaning-seeking creatures
• Humans have imagination
• This faculty, human imagination, produces religion and mythology.
• Imagination also enables scientists to bring new knowledge to light (e.g. technology).
• Religion, Mythology and Science each extend the scope of human beings.

Archaeological

First Appearance:

230,000 yrs. ago.

(fossil records)

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Disappearance:

40,000 yrs. ago.

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Genetic evidence of some mating between Neanderthals and early humans.

Let’s imagine that it is possible

to learn something from our cousin

Neanderthal man

Senior Living Community... Cool Man!

The Mythic Adventure…“What if?”

• What if this world were not all there is?
• How would this affect our lives -- psychologically,socially, and personally?
• Would we become different? More complete?
• A Myth is essentially a guide. We must apply the stories to our own lives or they will remain incomprehensible and remote...

Five Important Lessons about Myth from Neanderthal Graves

• 1) Myth - rooted in the experience of death and the fear of extinction.
• 2) Myth - usually inseparable from ritual. Animal bones in graves indicate sacrifice.
• 3) Myth - recalled besides a grave, at the limit of life. Myths force us to go beyond our experience and within our experience

“Myth is about the unknown...

...Myth looks into the heart of a great silence.”

“And you may find yourself in another part of the world.

And you may ask yourself…

Well…

How did I get here?

And you may ask yourself

Where does that highway go to? And you may ask yourself

Am I right?... Am I wrong?

And you may say to yourself My God! What have I done?!”

Five Important Lessons about Myth from Neanderthal Graves

• 4) Myth - shows us how we should behave. ...puts us in the correct spiritual or psychological posture for right action, in this world or the next (the corpse was placed in a fetal position - rebirth).
• 5) Myth - speaks of other planes of existence alongside of our own world.

Every earthly reality is only a pale shadow of its archetype.

Myths enable men & women to imitate the powerful beings of the divine realm and experience divinity themselves.

Definition of myth

1a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon

History and Etymology for mythos��Borrowed from Greek mŷthos "utterance, speech, discourse, tale, narrative, fiction, legend," of obscure origin.

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Devils Tower -- the name was mistranslated by Colonel Dodge. The Lakota 'wakansica' meaning evil spirit & 'wahanksica' for black bear. More aptly called Bear Lodge or Bear Tipi. No evil spirits here; in fact, it is sacred.

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The politics of myths: H.R. 401

One year ago

• “So literally, “Mythos” means “by mouth.” It is that which is spread, a fabric woven of memes. A “story” implies a series of events.
• So, stories — once they’ve become culturally embedded or repeated — are generalized into myths, and those myths serve as a kind of connective tissue for human societies.
• There may be some sense in considering myth a story that has been repeated, and solidified with that collective repetition and remembrance, which at one and the same time permutes with each retelling, in each mind
• Myths define who we are, defines where we are in time, what role we serve, and what the nature of that role should be
• All our relationships with ourselves and with one another are composed of stories. Identity, especially, is grounded in myth.
• All that is represented, all that we form an opinion on, as we form an opinion on it, is in that process entering the realm of myth” (Curcio, J.)

Mythology is not Theology

(Mythos = story and Theos = god)

• Myths are stories about human experience.
• Myths are designed to helps us cope with the problematic human predicament.

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• Where did we come from?
• Why are we here?
• Where are we going?

Why did I take this class?

What do I want from it?

What does it want from me?

Myth is an eternal mirror in which we see ourselves.

So...What if “Once there was only a great chaos, Hundun...

What does this course want from you before our next class?

• Complete/Revise your response to the three questions about you and this course.
• Read pages 3 - 6 from Bierlein’s Parallel Myths.
• Come prepared to discuss the similarities and differences between this text and the PPT notes based on Susan Armstrong’s first chapter, especially as it pertains to the question: What is a Myth?