Welcome to Myth and More. My name is margo and I will be your correspondent providing a series of mythologues as we travel into the land of myth, epic, legend and fairytale. Joseph Campbell says in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
“Story” has a potent power of attraction. Stories in the form of oral narrative, enactment, art, and ritual go back into the far distant past of human history. Story will no doubt continue on into our future and will embrace newer and newer technologies.
Is there something about “story” that we seem to be hard-wired for? It does seem to be one of those elements unique to humanity that differentiates us from other life forms. Most of the oldest stories we have available to us are myths. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and James Hillman studied myths and found, in a modern psychological sense, myths are vessels for images, themes, and metaphors arising out of, and connecting directly with, psyche.
Modern study of these ancient stories has revealed that myths touch on or are metaphors for the human condition that, in many ways, appears to be amazingly constant and not infrequently, universal. For example, even after tens of thousands of years, human beings continue to travel through life passages that seem to be our lot in life: birth, puberty, procreation, maturation, decline and death. These human conditions have not changed all that much over the course of humanity’s history.
These life passages, according to anthropologists, are ritualized in the society’s of indigenous peoples. And, archeologists have found evidence of ritualized human behavior dating back tens of thousands of years. Even in modern times, the wedding ceremony and burial rites are examples of how we formalize life’s transitions. Ritualizing the transition from one phase of life into another was common to humankind at one time, and in some societies, it still is.
The whole psyche, both consciousness and the unconscious, was the primary focus of study by both Freud and Jung. Freud’s psychotherapy has been nicknamed the talking cure. In these therapeutic sessions, the “stories” told and personal dreams relayed were often similar in content to ancient myths.
In the study of comparative mythology, certain mythic themes recur. For example, the theme of death and resurrection can be found in Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek, Norse, and Christian mythologies through the stories of Dumuzi, Tammuz, Adonis, Wodan, and Jesus.
Michelangelo’s Pieta
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In addition to the mythic themes contained in these narratives, there seems to be a mythic structure to them as well. The Hero’s Journey (click_for_description) tends to follow along the lines of the Rite of Passage. Various Rites of Passage involve a separation, initiation, and return. The structure itself seems to be mythic as the successful Rite of Passage takes the participant to a new level of existence. It might be helpful to consider this structure analogous to a map. A map is a helpful device to navigate with, but it is not the landscape any more than a menu is the meal.
These story types: myth, epic, legend and fairytale are also peopled with archetypal characters. From the image of Apollo as the far-shooter with a brilliance of intellect to the image of the orgiastic celebrations of Dionysus; and from the image of wisdom in Spider Woman to winds of change in the orisha, Oya, these stories show us what the many archetypes might look like when brought into form.
Stories that offer us a window onto the “secret opening” that Campbell refers to, their corresponding archetypal characters, story structure, mythic themes, and modern relevance are the focus points of
Saddle up and enjoy the journey through this landscape.
