Notes on A Short History of Myth.

Alix — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:15:41 +0000

Notes on A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.

What is Myth?

Paleolithic Period

Everywhen
- example: Dreamtime
- a stable backdrop to reality in which myth takes place
Lost Paradise/Golden Age myth
Everything was sacred; nothing was profane
Symbol
- from Greek, “to throw together”
- animism
- nature as symbolic
Sky Father
- sky as…
  - essence of transcendence and otherness
  - numinous
  - dynamic
- sky becomes personified as Sky Father
  - examples: El, Anu, Ouranos
  - first cause
  - no images, cults, priests, or shrines
  - the “gone away” or “disappeared” god
  - inexpressible
- prehistoric monotheism
Mistress of Animals
- examples: Artemis, Inuit Mistress of Animals, Catal Huyuk goddess
- aka the Great Goddess
- exacts bloody revenge for violation of hunting taboos
- hunting as sacred rite
- animal sacrifice
- animals as relatives, guides
Religion as mystery
- fails if too impersonal
Height as divine symbol
- mountains
- flight
- sky
- tree
  - World Tree
- myths of ascent
  - examples: Jesus, Mohammed, Elijah, shamans
- descend to ascend
  - from depths of the earth to the heights of heaven
  - from death to life
Hero myth
- examples: Prometheus, Aeneas, Herakles
Logos
- scientific, rational, pragmatic thought
- complement of mythos

Neolithic Period

Agricultural revolution
- farming as sacrament
Holistic reality
- ritual replenishing of earth
  - first seeds thrown away
  - first fruits left on crops
- sex as metaphor of earth’s fertility
  - earth as womb
Creation myth
- people emerging from earth as plants
- profound identification with place
- respect for natural rhythms
- creative force
Mother Goddess
- examples: Ereshkigal, Asherah, Anat, Inanna, Isis, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite
- fused with paleolithic Great Mother
  - retained warrior and blood imagery
    - farming as warfare against sterility, famine, and death
    - seed dies, the earth is torn up, crops are ground, etc.
- consorts all brutally killed and renewed
  - examples: Adonis, Osiris, Baal
- female hero restoring harmony and balance
- mistress of life and death
- goddess of mysteries

Early Civilizations

City builders
- mythos of city life
- writing
- Bible: civilization as disaster
- Mesopotamia: civilization as nearly paradise
- every city a holy city
  - a new axis mundi
  - gods live side-by-side with men
Flood myths
Withdrawn gods
- patron deities
Theogony
- creation from void
- creation and evolution of gods
  - elemental separation by couples/pairs
  - sky, sea, earth
  - slaying of chaos monster
  - establishment of law
  - alternate: creation as self-sacrifice
Human legends
- celebrating human achievement
- example: Gilgamesh
- civilized man parting from gods
- unrealized quest for immortality

Axial Age

Beginnings of modern religion
- prophets and sages
- four movements:
  - Confucianism and Taoism
  - Buddhism and Hinduism
  - monotheism
  - Greek rationalism
Commonalities
- conscious of suffering inherent in human condition
- more spirituality, less ritual
- conscience and morality
  - ethics
  - karma
- compassion and justice
- questioning religion
- interior interpretation of myth
  - gods as mental states
Gulf between the human and the divine
- no longer shared the same nature
- the Infinite/the Good
Ancestor worship
- Perfect Ancestor
Culture heroes
- also: tragic heroes
Creativity
- true creativity as selfless
  - new Great Mother
- effortless creation by command

Post-Axial Period

Move from myth to history in the West
Mysticism
- cognate with “mystery”
- from Greek: “to close the eyes or the mouth”
Word of God
- Shekhinah
  - wisdom
  - God on earth
Hidden Imam
- hidden light and knowledge
- long-awaited sage
No official versions of myths

Great Western Transformation

Modernization
- technological
- entrepreneurial
- death of mythology
  - useless, false, outmoded
- triumph of logos
  - pragmatism
  - science
  - efficiency
  - rationalism
- scientist/inventor as hero
Effects of loss of myth
- despair
- depression
- loss of sense of significance
- impotence
- rage
- anxiety
- loss of trust in own perception
- alienation
- loss of control over irrationality
  - loss of control over darker aspects of human nature
  - “un-reason”
    - fearful
    - destructive
- nihilism
- spiritual regression
Separation of the symbol and the symbolized
Science’s infinite universe as Eternal Silence
Rise of religious literalism
We need myths that…
- help us identify with all our fellow humans
  - recognize humans as sacred and numinous in their own right
- promote compassion
- promote spirituality and engender transcendence
- venerate earth as sacred
Modern mythwork
- T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”
- Picasso, “Guernica”
- Orwell, 1984

Splinters of God