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In its broadest academic sense, the word "myth" simply means a traditional story, whether true or false. (—OED, Princeton Wordnet) Unless otherwise noted, the words "mythology" and "myth" are here used for sacred and traditional narratives, with no implication that any belief so embodied is itself either true or false.
For the Derek Sherinian album, see Mythology (Derek Sherinian album).

A mythology is any body of myths gathered into a collection usually by culture and they study and interpretation of those myths. A myth is a story with the ability to impress listeners with profound and universal truth by sparking response from the human unconscious. They typically feature larger than life characters and supernatural events and may explain the origin of part of nature.

A myth consists of mythemes, irreducible plot elements which are the manifestation of the collective unconscious archetypes such as serpents, trees, and death and resurrection. Entire stories are also repetitive across mythologies such as creation myths and the hero myth. Their purpose, therefore, is to remind and empower the listener of the collective wisdom perfected by the storytellers who pass it down.

Mythology encompasses not only ancient folklore but every story with these elements including Christian and Islamic scriptures and epic literature and films such as The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The identification of religious texts as myth is controversial among their followers because most myths are not historically or scientifically accurate. However, Christian theologian C.S. Lewis popularized the idea that a myth is not always historically false.

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[edit] Term

The word mythology comes from Ancient Greek language: μυθολογία "story-telling", from μῦθος muthos, "story, legend", and λόγος logos, "account , speech". The word μῦθος itself is of unknown origin.

English mythology is in use since the 15th century, in the meaning "an exposition of myths". The current meaning of "body of myths" itself dates to 1781 (Oxford English Dictionary (OED)).[1] The adjective mythical dates to 1678.

Myth in general use is often used interchangeably with legend or allegory, but some scholars strictly distinguish the terms. The term has been used in English since the 19th century. The newest edition of the OED distinguishes the meanings

1a. "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon", citing the Westminster Review of 1830 as the first English attestation[2]
1b. "As a mass noun: such stories collectively or as a genre." (1840)
2a. "A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief" (1849)
2b. "A person or thing held in awe or generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories (whether real or fictitious)." (1853)
2c. "A popular conception of a person or thing which exaggerates or idealizes the truth." (1928)

The second meaning (which English myth shares with Greek μῦθος) of a rumour, misconception or mistaken belief, is in marked contrast to the meaning "stories of deep cultural or spiritual significance". In this article, the term is used in the latter sense, detached from the notion of historical truth, throughout.

[edit] Characteristics

Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests. Once this link to the spiritual leadership of society is broken, they lose their mythological qualities and become folktales or fairy tales.[3]

In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being more than a simple "tale", by comprising an archetypical quality of "truth".

Myths are often intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions or rituals, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. This broader truth runs deeper than the advent of critical history, and it may or may not exist as in an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (preliterate oral traditions may vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate class becomes "the authority"). However, as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development."[4] Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales of historical cultures, such as Greek mythology or Roman mythology. Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions.

According to F. W. J. Schelling in the eighth chapter of Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology, "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding."

Individual myths or mythemes may be classified in various categories:

  • Ritual myths explain the performance of certain religious practices or patterns and associated with temples or centers of worship.
  • Origin myths (aetiologies) describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object.
  • Creation myths, which describes how the world or universe came into being.
  • Cult myths are often seen as explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify the power of the deity.
  • Prestige myths are usually associated with a divinely chosen hero, city, or people.
  • Eschatological myths are stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be described in mythic terms. Apocalyptic literature such as the New Testament Book of Revelation is an example of a set of eschatological myths.
  • Social myths reinforce or defend current social values or practices.
  • the Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by gods or heroes.


[edit] Religion and mythology

Main articles: Religion and mythology and Myth and ritual

Myth is not intimately connected with religion. Myth in this sense does not imply that a story is either objectively false or true, it rather refers to a spiritual, psychological or symbolical notion of truth unrelated to materialist or objectivist notions.

Literalism refers to the attitude of some adherents of modern dominant religions that regards the traditions surrounding the origin and development of their faith as literal historic accounts. Such a position has only become possible with the advent of the critical method that counters mythos with logos. Literalists often object to the classification of their traditions as myths because of the connotations of "falsehood" mentioned above, while the mythologist's classification is not a statement on historical truth or falsehood, but refers to the subjective importance of the theme within the community in question. Thus, one can speak of a Hindu mythology, a Christian mythology, or an Islamic mythology, in which one describes the mythic elements within these faiths, without implying any statement as to the veracity of the faith's tenets or claims about its history.

[edit] Related concepts

Myths are not the same as fables, legends, folktales, fairy tales, anecdotes or fiction, but the concepts may overlap. Notably, during Romanticism, folktales and fairy tales were perceived as eroded fragments of earlier mythology (famously by the Brothers Grimm and Elias Lönnrot). Mythological themes are also very often consciously employed in literature, beginning with Homer. The resulting work may expressly refer to a mythological background without itself being part of a body of myths (Cupid and Psyche). The medieval romance in particular plays with this process of turning myth into literature. Euhemerism refers to the process of rationalization of myths, putting themes formerly imbued with mythological qualities into pragmatic contexts, for example following a cultural or religious paradigm shift (notably the re-interpretation of pagan mythology following Christianization). Conversely, historical and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time, for example the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, based on historical events of the 5th and 8th centuries, respectively, were first made into epic poetry and became partly mythological over the following centuries. "Conscious generation" of mythology has been termed mythopoeia by J. R. R. Tolkien[5], and was notoriously also suggested by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.

[edit] Formation of myths

Robert Graves said of Greek myth: "True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially." (The Greek Myths, Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced by Sir James George Frazer's mythography The Golden Bough, and he would have agreed that myths are generated by many cultural needs.

Myths authorize the cultural institutions of a tribe, a city, or a nation by connecting them with universal truths. Myths justify the current occupation of a territory by a people, for instance.

All cultures have developed over time their own myths, consisting of narratives of their history, their religions, and their heroes. The great power of the symbolic meaning of these stories for the culture is a major reason why they survive as long as they do, sometimes for thousands of years. Mâche distinguishes between "myth, in the sense of this primary psychic image, with some kind of mytho-logy, or a system of words trying with varying success to ensure a certain coherence between these images[6].

Joseph Campbell is one of the more famous modern authors on myths and the history of spirituality. His book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948) outlined the basic ideas he would continue to elaborate on until his death in 1987.

[edit] Myths as depictions of historical events

As discussed above, the status of a story as myth is unrelated to whether it is based on historical events. Myths that are based on a historical events over time become imbued with symbolic meaning, transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed.

One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant. A classical example of this process is the Trojan War, a topic firmly within the scope of Greek mythology. The extent of a historical basis in the Trojan cycle is disputed, see historicity of the Iliad.

This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiquity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère's Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the nature of things". [7]

This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local epithet of one of the Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or to account for the deities' attributes or entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "explain" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by some religious conservatives in America with text from the Bible, notably referencing the many prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation especially. It was also used during the Russian Communist-era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until World War II the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical descent from the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu.

Mâche argues that euhemerist exegesis, "was applied to capture and seize by force of reason qualities of thought, which eluded it on every side."[8] This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as "disguised propaganda in the service of powerful individuals," and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the "social order" to establish "its permanence on the illusion of a natural order." He argues against this interpretation, saying that "what puts an end to this caricature of certain speeches from May 1968 is, among other things, precisely the fact that roles are not distributed once and for all in myths, as would be the case if they were a variant of the idea of an 'opium of the people.'"

Contra Barthes Mâche argues that, "myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it" [9], "beyond words and stories, myth seems more like a psychic content from which words, gestures, and musics radiate. History only chooses for it more or less becoming clothes. And these contents surge forth all the more vigorously from the nature of things when reason tries to repress them. Whatever the roles and commentaries with which such and such a socio-historic movement decks out the mythic image, the latter lives a largely autonomous life which continually fascinates humanity. To denounce archaism only makes sense as a function of a 'progressive' ideology, which itself begins to show a certain archaism and an obvious naivety."[10]

Catastrophists [11] such as Immanuel Velikovsky believe that myths are derived from the oral histories of ancient cultures that witnessed cosmic catastrophes. The catastrophic interpretation of myth, forms only a small minority within the field of mythology and often qualifies as pseudohistory.

[edit] Theoretical descriptions

Middleton argues that, "For Lévi-Strauss, myth is a structured system of signifiers, whose internal networks of relationships are used to 'map' the structure of other sets of relationships; the 'content' is infinitely variable and relatively unimportant."[12]

In their book Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend suggest that myth is a "technical language" describing cosmic events, [13] They write:

"One should pay attention to the cosmological information contained in ancient myth, information of chaos, struggle and violence. [..] Plato knew .. that the language of myth is, in principle, as ruthlessly generalizing as up-to-date "tech talk". .. There is no other technique, apparently, than myth, which succeeds in telling structure [..] The main merit of this language has turned out to be its built-in ambiguity. Myth can be used as a vehicle for handing down solid knowledge independently from the degree of insight of the people who do the actual telling of stories, fables, etc"

[edit] Modern mythopoeia

Film and book series like Star Wars and Tarzan sometimes have strong mythological aspects that sometimes develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet similar psychological needs. An example is the "legendarium" developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. Fans will sometimes refer to a complex fictional world such as that of the Star Trek series as a mythology.

In the 1950s French structuralist thinker Roland Barthes published a series of semiotic analyses of such modern myths and the process of their creation, collected in his book Mythologies.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ In extended use, the word can also refer to collective or personal ideological or socially constructed received wisdon, as in "At least since Tocqueville compared American society to 'a vast lottery', our mythology of business has celebrated risk-taking." (2000 The New Republic, 29 May 2000)
  2. ^ Earlier editions of the OED also present this quote as the earliest attestation of myth, but consider it an example of the definition corresponding to definition 2.
  3. ^ Simpson & Roud (2000). Dictionary of English Folklore, 254. 
  4. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 8. 
  5. ^ Tolkien (1997). The Monsters and the Critics. HarperCollins; New Ed edition. 
  6. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20. 
  7. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20. 
  8. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 10. 
  9. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 21. 
  10. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20. 
  11. ^ Researchers include Dwardu Cardona (author of God Star ISBN 1-4120-8308-7), Ev Cochrane (The Many Faces of Venus ISBN 0-9656229-0-9), Alfred de Grazia (Quantaevolution series), David Talbott and (Saturn Myth ISBN 0-385-11376-5), and authors at Catastrophism! Man, Myth and Mayhem in Ancient History and the Sciences
  12. ^ Middleton (1990). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 222. 
  13. ^ Santillana & Dechend (1990). Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth, 222. 

[edit] References

  • Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)
  • Kees W. Bolle, The Freedom of Man in Myth. Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
  • Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology (1880s).
  • Caillois, Roger (1972). Le mythe et l'homme. Gallimard.
  • Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, 1949.
  • Mircea Eliade. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. Princeton University Press, 1954.
  • James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890).
  • Louis Herbert Gray [ed.], The Mythology of All Races, in 12 vols., 1916.
  • Edith Hamilton, Mythology (1998)
  • Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
    • Mental Functions in Primitive Societies (1910)
    • Primitive Mentality (1922)
    • The Soul of the Primitive (1928)
    • The Supernatural and the Nature of the Primitive Mind (1931)
    • Primitive Mythology (1935)
    • The Mystic Experience and Primitive Symbolism (1938)
  • Charles H. Long, Alpha: The Myths of Creation. George Braziller, 1963.
  • Barry B. Powell, "Classical Myth," 5th edition, Prentice-Hall.
  • Santillana and Von Dechend (1969, 1992 re-issue). "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth", Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-87923-215-3.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
    • Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, 1856.
    • Philosophy of Mythology, 1857.
    • Philosophy of Revelation, 1858.

[edit] See also

Look up myth, mythology in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

[edit] Mythological archetypes

[edit] Misc from the old version

C. S. Lewis identifies[1]Mythopoeia as an art form distinct from literature or poetry

[edit] Myth and religion

[edit] Lists

[edit] External links

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