Myth


Encyclopaedia Britannica
 

Traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the worldview of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.

Myths relate the events, conditions, and deeds of gods or superhuman beings that are outside ordinary human life and yet basic to it. These events are set in a time altogether different from historical time, often at the beginning of creation or at an early stage of prehistory. A culture’s myths are usually closely related to its religious beliefs and rituals. The modern study of myth arose with early 19th-century Romanticism. Wilhelm Mannhardt, James George Frazer, and others later employed a more comparative approach. Sigmund Freud viewed myth as an expression of repressed ideas, a view later expanded by Carl Gustav Jung in his theory of the “collective unconscious” and the mythical archetypes that arise out of it. Bronisław Malinowski emphasized how myth fulfills common social functions, providing a model or “charter” for human behaviour. Claude Lévi-Strauss discerned underlying structures in the formal relations and patterns of myths throughout the world. Mircea Eliade and Rudolf Otto held that myth is to be understood solely as a religious phenomenon. Features of myth are shared by other kinds of literature. Origin tales explain the source or causes of various aspects of nature or human society and life. Fairy tales deal with extraordinary beings and events but lack the authority of myth. Sagas and epics claim authority and truth but reflect specific historical settings.

A symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and that is especially associated with religious belief. It is distinguished from symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (temples, icons). Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience. The term mythology denotes both the study of myth and the body of myths belonging to a particular religious tradition.

As with all religious symbolism, there is no attempt to justify mythic narratives or even to render them plausible. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the narrated events are at variance with natural law or ordinary experience. By extension from this primary religious meaning, the word myth may also be used more loosely to refer to an ideological belief when that belief is the object of a quasi-religious faith; an example would be the Marxist eschatological myth of the withering away of the state.

While the outline of myths from a past period or from a society other than one’s own can usually be seen quite clearly, to recognize the myths that are dominant in one’s own time and society is always difficult. This is hardly surprising, because a myth has its authority not by proving itself but by presenting itself. In this sense the authority of a myth indeed “goes without saying,” and the myth can be outlined in detail only when its authority is no longer unquestioned but has been rejected or overcome in some manner by another, more comprehensive myth.

The word myth derives from the Greek mythos, which has a range of meanings from “word,” through “saying” and “story,” to “fiction”; the unquestioned validity of mythos can be contrasted with logos, the word whose validity or truth can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths narrate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that they are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception. In the study of religion, however, it is important to distinguish between myths and stories that are merely untrue.

The first part of this article discusses the nature, study, functions, cultural impact, and types of myth, taking into account the various approaches to the subject offered by modern branches of knowledge. In the second part, the specialized topic of the role of animals and plants in myth is examined in some detail. The mythologies of specific cultures are covered in the articles Greek religion, Roman religion, and Germanic religion.

 

The nature, functions, and types of myth
Myth has existed in every society. Indeed, it would seem to be a basic constituent of human culture. Because the variety is so great, it is difficult to generalize about the nature of myths. But it is clear that in their general characteristics and in their details a people’s myths reflect, express, and explore the people’s self-image. The study of myth is thus of central importance in the study both of individual societies and of human culture as a whole.

Relation of myths to other narrative forms
In Western culture there are a number of literary or narrative genres that scholars have related in different ways to myths. Examples are fables, fairy tales, folktales, sagas, epics, legends, and etiologic tales (which refer to causes or explain why a thing is the way it is). Another form of tale, the parable, differs from myth in its purpose and character. Even in the West, however, there is no agreed definition of any of these genres, and some scholars question whether multiplying categories of narrative is helpful at all, as opposed to working with a very general concept such as the traditional tale. Non-Western cultures apply classifications that are different both from the Western categories and from one another. Most, however, make a basic distinction between “true” and “fictitious” narratives, with “true” ones corresponding to what in the West would be called myths.

If it is accepted that the category of traditional tale should be subdivided, one way of doing so is to regard the various subdivisions as comparable to bands of colour in a spectrum. Within this figurative spectrum, there will be similarities and analogies between myth and folktale or between myth and legend or between fairy tale and folktale. In the section that follows, it is assumed that useful distinctions can be drawn between different categories. It should, however, be remembered throughout that these classifications are far from rigid and that, in many cases, a given tale might be plausibly assigned to more than one category.

Fables
The word fable derives from the Latin word fabula, which originally meant about the same as the Greek mythos; like mythos, it came to mean a fictitious or untrue story. Myths, in contrast, are not presented as fictitious or untrue.

Fables, like some myths, feature personified animals or natural objects as characters. Unlike myths, however, fables almost always end with an explicit moral message, and this highlights the characteristic feature of fables—namely, that they are instructive tales that teach morals about human social behaviour. Myths, by contrast, tend to lack this directly didactic aspect, and the sacred narratives that they embody are often hard to translate into direct prescriptions for action in everyday human terms. Another difference between fables and myths relates to a feature of the narratives that they present. The context of a typical fable will be unspecific as to time and space—e.g., “A fox and a goose met at a pool.” A typical myth, on the other hand, will be likely to identify by name the god or hero concerned in a given exploit and to specify details of geography and genealogy—e.g., “Oedipus was the son of Laius, the king of Thebes.”

Fairy tales
The term fairy tale, if taken literally, should refer only to stories about fairies, a class of supernatural and sometimes malevolent beings—often believed to be of diminutive size—who were thought by people in medieval and postmedieval Europe to inhabit a kingdom of their own; a literary expression of this belief can be found in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The term fairy tale, however, is normally used to refer to a much wider class of narrative, namely stories (directed above all at an audience of children) about an individual, almost always young, who confronts strange or magical events; examples are “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Cinderella,” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The modern concept of the fairy tale seems not to be found earlier than the 18th century in Europe, but the narratives themselves have earlier analogues much farther afield, notably in the Indian Katha-saritsagara (The Ocean of Story) and in The Thousand and One Nights.

Like myths, fairy tales present extraordinary beings and events. Unlike myths—but like fables—fairy tales tend to be placed in a setting that is geographically and temporally vague and might begin with the words “Once upon a time there was a handsome prince….” A myth about a prince, by contrast, would be likely to name him and to specify his lineage, since such details might be of collective importance (for example, with reference to issues of property inheritance or the relative status of different families) to the social group among which the myth was told.

Folktales
There is much disagreement among scholars as to how to define the folktale; consequently, there is disagreement about the relation between folktale and myth. One view of the problem is that of the American folklorist Stith Thompson, who regarded myths as one type of folktale; according to this approach, the particular characteristic of myth is that its narratives deal with sacred events that happened “in the beginning.” Other scholars either consider folktale a subdivision of myth or regard the two categories as distinct but overlapping. The latter view is taken by the British Classicist Geoffrey S. Kirk, who in Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (1970) uses the term myth to denote stories with an underlying purpose beyond that of simple story-telling and the term folktale to denote stories that reflect simple social situations and play on ordinary fears and desires. Examples of folktale motifs are encounters between ordinary, often humble, human beings and supernatural adversaries such as witches, giants, or ogres; contests to win a bride; and attempts to overcome a wicked stepmother or jealous sisters. But these typical folktale themes occur also in stories normally classified as myths, and there must always be a strong element of arbitrariness in assigning a motif to a particular category.

A different and important aspect of the problem of defining a folktale relates to the historical origin of the concept. As with the notion of folklore, the notion of folktale has its roots in the late 18th century. From that period until the middle of the 19th century, many European thinkers of a nationalist persuasion argued that stories told by ordinary people constituted a continuous tradition reaching back into the nation’s past. Thus, stories such as the Märchen (“tales”) collected by the Grimm brothers in Germany are folktales because they were told by the people rather than by an aristocratic elite. This definition of folktale introduces a new criterion for distinguishing between myth and folktale—namely, what class of person tells the story—but it by no means removes all the problems of classification. Just as the distinction between folk and aristocracy cannot be transferred from medieval Europe to tribal Africa or Classical Greece without risk of distortion, so the importing of a distinction between myth and folktale on the later European model is extremely problematic.

Sagas and epics
The word saga is often used in a generalized and loose way to refer to any extended narrative re-creation of historical events. A distinction is thus sometimes drawn between myths (set in a semidivine world) and sagas (more realistic and more firmly grounded in a specific historical setting). This rather vague use of saga is best avoided, however, since the word can more usefully retain the precise connotation of its original context. The word saga is Old Norse and means “what is said.” The sagas are a group of medieval Icelandic prose narratives; the principal sagas date from the 13th century and relate the deeds of Icelandic heroes who lived during the 10th and 11th centuries. If the word saga is restricted to this Icelandic context, at least one of the possible terminological confusions over words for traditional tales is avoided.

While saga in its original sense is a narrative type confined to a particular time and place, epics are found worldwide. Examples can be found in the ancient world (the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer), in medieval Europe (the Nibelungenlied), and in modern times (the Serbo-Croatian epic poetry recorded in the 1930s). Among the many non-European examples are the Indian Mahabharata and the Tibetan Gesar epic. Epic is similar to saga in that both narrative forms look back to an age of heroic endeavour, but it differs from saga in that epics are almost always composed in poetry (with a few exceptions such as Kazak epic and the Turkish Book of Dede Korkut). The relation between epic and myth is not easy to pin down, but it is in general true that epics characteristically incorporate mythical events and persons. An example is the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, which includes, among many mythical episodes, an account of the meeting between the hero Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, the only man to have attained immortality and sole survivor (with his wife) of the flood sent by the gods. Myth is thus a prime source of the material on which epic draws.

Legends
In common usage the word legend usually characterizes a traditional tale thought to have a historical basis, as in the legends of King Arthur or Robin Hood. In this view, a distinction may be drawn between myth (which refers to the supernatural and the sacred) and legend (which is grounded in historical fact). Thus, some writers on the Iliad would distinguish between the legendary aspects (e.g., heroes performing actions possible for ordinary humans) and the mythical aspects (e.g., episodes involving the gods). But the distinction between myth and legend must be used with care. In particular, because of the assumed link between legend and historical fact, there may be a tendency to refer to narratives that correspond to one’s own beliefs as legends, while exactly comparable stories from other traditions may be classified as myths; hence a Christian might refer to stories about the miraculous deeds of a saint as legends, while similar stories about a pagan healer might be called myths. As in other cases, it must be remembered that the boundaries between terms for traditional narratives are fluid, and that different writers employ them in quite different ways.

Parables
The term myth is not normally applied to narratives that have as their explicit purpose the illustration of a doctrine or standard of conduct. Instead, the term parable, or illustrative tale, is used. Familiar examples of such narratives are the parables of the New Testament. Parables have a considerable role also in Sufism (Islamic mysticism), rabbinic (Jewish biblical interpretive) literature, Hasidism (Jewish pietism), and Zen Buddhism. That parables are essentially non-mythological is clear because the point made by the parable is known or supposed to be known from another source. Parables have a more subservient function than myths. They may clarify something to an individual or a group but do not take on the revelatory character of myth.

Etiologic tales
Etiologic tales are very close to myth, and some scholars regard them as a particular type of myth rather than as a separate category. In modern usage the term etiology is used to refer to the description or assignment of causes (Greek aitia). Accordingly, an etiologic tale explains the origin of a custom, state of affairs, or natural feature in the human or divine world. Many tales explain the origin of a particular rock or mountain. Others explain iconographic features, such as the Hindu narrative ascribing the blue neck of the god Shiva to a poison he drank in primordial times. The etiologic theme often seems to be added to a mythical narrative as an afterthought. In other words, the etiology is not the distinctive characteristic of myth.

Approaches to the study of myth and mythologyThe importance of studying myth to provide a key to a human society is a matter of historical record. In the middle of the 19th century, for instance, a newly appointed British governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, was confronted by the problem of how to come to terms with the Maori, who were hostile to the British. He learned their language, but that proved insufficient for an understanding of the way in which they reasoned and argued. In order to be able to conduct negotiations satisfactorily, he found it necessary to study the Maori’s mythology, to which they made frequent reference. Other government officials and Christian missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries made similar efforts to understand the mythologies of nations or tribes so as to facilitate communication. Such studies were more than a means to an end, whether efficient administration or conversion; they amounted to the discovery that myths present a model or charter for man’s behaviour and that the world of myth provides guidance for crucial elements in human existence—war and peace, life and death, truth and falsehood, good and evil. In addition to such practically motivated attempts to understand myth, theorists and scholars from many disciplines have interested themselves in the study of the subject. A close study of myth has developed in the West, especially since the 18th century. Much of its material has come from the study of the Greek and Roman classics, from which it has also derived some of its methods of interpretation.

The growth of philosophy in ancient Greece furthered allegorical interpretations of myth—i.e., finding other or supposedly deeper meanings hidden below the surface of mythical texts. Such meanings were usually seen as involving natural phenomena or human values. Related to this was a tendency toward rationalism, especially when those who studied myths employed false etymologies. Rationalism in this context connotes the scrutiny of myths in such a way as to make sense of the statements contained in them without taking literally their references to gods, monsters, or the supernatural. Thus, the ancient writer Palaiphatos interpreted the story of Europa (carried off to Crete on the back of a handsome bull, which was actually Zeus in disguise) as that of a woman abducted by a Cretan called Tauros, the Greek word for bull; and Skylla, the bestial and cannibalistic creature who attacked Odysseus’ ship according to Homer’s Odyssey, was by the same process of rationalizing interpreted as simply the name of a pirate ship. Of special and long-lasting influence in the history of the interpretation of myth was Euhemerism (named after Euhemerus, a Greek writer who flourished about 300 bce), according to which certain gods were originally great people venerated because of their benefactions to mankind.

The early Church Fathers adopted an attitude of modified Euhemerism, according to which Classical mythology was to be explained in terms of mere men who had been raised to superhuman, demonic status because of their deeds. By this means, Christians were able to incorporate myths from the culturally authoritative pagan past into a Christian framework while defusing their religious significance—the gods became ordinary humans. The Middle Ages did not develop new theoretical perspectives on myth, nor, despite some elaborate works of historical and etymological erudition, did the Renaissance. In both periods, interpretations in terms of allegory and Euhemerism tended to predominate.

In early 18th-century Italy, Giambattista Vico, a thinker now considered the forerunner of all writers on ethnology, or the study of culture in human societies, built on traditional scholarship—especially in law and philosophy—to make the first clear case for the role of man’s creative imagination in the formation of distinct myths at successive cultural stages. His work, which was most notably expressed in his Scienza nuova (1725; The New Science of Giambattista Vico), had no influence in his own century. Instead, the notion that pagan myths were distortions of the biblical revelation (first expressed in the Renaissance) continued to find favour. Nevertheless, Enlightenment philosophy, reports from voyages of discovery, and missionary reports (especially the Jesuits’ accounts of North American Indians) contributed to scholarship and fostered greater objectivity. Bernhard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, a French scholar, compared Greek and American Indian myths and suggested that there was a universal human predisposition toward mythology. In De l’origine des fables (1724; “On the Origin of Fables”) he attributed the absurdities (as he saw them) of myths to the fact that the stories grew up among an earlier, more primitive human society. About 1800 the Romantics’ growing fascination with language, the postulation of an Indo-European language family, the study of Sanskrit, and the growth of comparative studies, especially in history and philology, were all part of a trend that included the study of myth.

The relevance of Indo-European studies to an understanding of Greek and Roman mythology was carried to an extreme in the work of Friedrich Max Müller, a German Orientalist who moved to Britain and undertook important research on comparative linguistics. In his view, expressed in such works as Comparative Mythology (1856), the mythology of the original Indo-European peoples had consisted of allegorical stories about the workings of nature, in particular such features as the sky, the sun, and the dawn. In the course of time, though, these original meanings had been lost (through, in Müller’s notorious phrasing, a “disease of language”), so that the myths no longer told in a “rationally intelligible” way of phenomena in the natural world but instead appeared to describe the “irrational” activities of gods, heroes, nymphs, and others. For instance, one Greek myth related the pursuit of the nymph Daphne by the god Phoebus Apollo. Since—in Müller’s interpretation of the evidence of comparative linguistics—“Daphne” originally meant “dawn,” and “Phoibos” meant “morning sun,” the original story was rationally intelligible as “the dawn is put to flight by the morning sun.” One of the problems with this view is, of course, that it fails to account for the fact that the Greeks continued to tell this and similar stories long after their supposed meanings had been forgotten; and they did so, moreover, in the manifest belief that the stories referred, not to nature, but precisely to gods, heroes, and other mythical beings.

Interest in myth was greatly stimulated in Germany by Friedrich von Schelling’s philosophy of mythology, which argued that myth was a form of expression, characteristic of a particular stage in human development, through which men imagine the Absolute (for Schelling an all-embracing unity in which all differences are reconciled). Scholarly interest in myth has continued into the 20th century. Many scholars have adopted a psychological approach because of interest aroused by the theories of Sigmund Freud. Subsequently, new approaches in sociology and anthropology have continued to encourage the study of myth.

Allegorical
An example of an allegorical interpretation would be that given by an ancient commentator for the Iliad, book 20, verse 67. Referring to an episode in which the gods fight each other, the commentator cites critics who have explained the hostilities between the gods allegorically as an opposition between elements—dry against wet, hot against cold, light against heavy. Thus, the gods Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus represent fire, and the god Poseidon and the river Scamander represent water. Similarly, the goddess Athena is interpreted as wisdom/sense, the god Ares as the absence of that quality, the goddess Aphrodite as desire, and the god Hermes as reason. An allegorical interpretation of a myth could be said to posit a one-to-one correspondence between mythical “clothing” and the ideas being so clothed. This approach tends to limit the meaning of a myth, whereas that meaning may in reality be multiple, operating on several levels.

Romantic
In the late 18th century artists and intellectuals came increasingly to emphasize the role of the emotions in human life and, correspondingly, to play down the importance of reason (which had been regarded as supremely important by thinkers of the Enlightenment). Those involved in the new movement were known as Romantics. The Romantic movement had profound implications for the study of myth. Myths—both the stories from Greek and Roman antiquity and contemporary folktales—were regarded by the Romantics as repositories of experience far more vital and powerful than those obtainable from what was felt to be the artificial art and poetry of the aristocratic civilization of contemporary Europe.

This new attitude is illustrated in a work of the German critic and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder entitled “Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker” (1773; “Extract from a Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples”). Ossian is the name of an Irish warrior-poet whose Gaelic songs were supposedly translated and presented to the world by James Macpherson in the 1760s. Although largely the work of Macpherson himself, these songs made a colossal impact when they were published. Herder believed that the more “savage,” that is, the more “alive” and “freedom-loving” a people (ein Volk) was, the more alive and free its songs would be. In opposition to the culture of the educated, Herder exalted the Kultur des Volkes (“culture of the people”). In 1769 Herder abandoned his job as a schoolteacher and took a boat from Riga, on the Baltic, to Nantes, on the Atlantic coast of France. In Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769 (1769; Journal of My Travels in the Year 1769), a description of the experience, he wrote:

In everything [on board ship] there is experience to illuminate the original era of the myths. Then [i.e., in antiquity] every man, ignorant of nature, listened for signs and had to listen for them.…Then, Jupiter’s lightning was terrifying—as indeed it is [i.e., now] on the Ocean.…There are a thousand new and more natural explanations of mythology…if one reads, say, Orpheus, Homer, Pindar…on board ship.

In other words, for Herder ancient myths were the natural expressions of the concerns that would have confronted the ancients; and those concerns were the very ones that, according to Herder, still confronted the Volk—e.g., ordinary sailors—in Herder’s own day.

Comparative
Since the Romantic movement, all study of myth has been comparative, although comparative attempts were made earlier. The prevalence of the comparative approach has meant that since the 19th century even the most specialized studies have made generalizations about more than one tradition or at the very least have had to take comparative works by others into account. Indeed, for there to be any philosophical inquiry into the nature and function of myth at all, there must exist a body of data about myths across a range of societies. Such data would not exist without a comparative approach.

Folkloric
The classic folklore approach is that of Wilhelm Mannhardt, a German scholar, who attempted to collect data on the “lower mythology,” which he considered to be more or less homogeneous in ancient and popular peasant traditions and basic to all formation of myth. Mannhardt saw sufficient analogies and similarities between the ancient and modern data to permit use of the latter in interpreting the former. Like Herder, he saw the source of mythology in the traditions passed on among the Volk. He collected information not only about popular stories but also about popular customs. He interpreted ancient Greek rituals by relating them to customs of the agricultural peoples of northern Europe, proposing this link in his book Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877; “Ancient Wood and Field Cults”). Other people who examined myth from the folklore standpoint included Sir James Frazer, the British anthropologist, the brothers Grimm (Jacob, who influenced Mannhardt, and Wilhelm), who are well-known for their collections of folklore, and Stith Thompson, who is notable for his classification of folk literature, particularly his massive Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955). The Grimms shared Herder’s passion for the poetry and stories of the Volk. Their importance stems in part from the academic diligence and meticulousness that they brought to the recording and study of popular tradition. In addition to their collection of Märchen (“tales”), they published volumes of Deutsche Sagen (“German Legends”). These were tales that purported to record actual events and that were ostensibly set in a specific place and period, as opposed to the “once-upon-a-time-in-the-forest” setting characteristic of the Märchen. Collecting and classifying mythological themes have remained the principal activities of the folklore approach.

Functionalist
One of the leading exponents of the functionalist approach to myth was the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, who used the phrase “total social facts” in reference to religious symbols and myths and their irreducibility in terms of other functions. In his Essai sur le don (1925; The Gift), Mauss referred to a system of gift giving to be found in traditional, preindustrial societies. Observing that there was a mass of complex data on the subject, Mauss continued: in these “early” societies, social phenomena

are not discrete; each phenomenon contains all the threads of which the social fabric is composed. In these total social phenomena, as we propose to call them, all kinds of institutions find simultaneous expression: religious, legal, moral, and economic.

In his introduction to the English edition Edward Evans-Pritchard commented on that passage:

“Total” is the key word of the Essay. The exchanges of archaic societies which he examines are total social movements or activities. They are at the same time economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, mythological…phenomena.…Their meaning can therefore only be grasped if they are viewed as a complex concrete reality.

Functionalism is primarily associated with the anthropologists Bronisław Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, however. Both ask not what the origin of any given social behaviour may be but how it contributes to maintaining the system of which it is a part. In this view, in all types of society, every aspect of life—every custom, belief, or idea—makes its own special contribution to the continued effective working of the whole society. Functionalism has had a wide appeal to anthropologists in Britain and the United States, especially as an interpretation of myth as integrated with other aspects of society and as supporting existing social relationships.

Structuralist
Structuralist approaches to myth are based on the analogy of myth to language. Just as a language is composed of significant oppositions (e.g., between phonemes, the constituent sounds of the language), so myths are formed out of significant oppositions between certain terms and categories. Structuralist analysis aims at uncovering what it sees as the logic of myth. It is argued that supposedly primitive thought is logically consistent but that the terms of this logic are not those with which modern Western culture is familiar. Instead they are terms related to items of the everyday world in which the “primitive” culture exists. This logic is usually based on empirical categories (e.g., raw/cooked, upstream/downstream, bush/village) or empirical objects (e.g., buffalo, river, gold, eagle). Some structuralists, such as the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, have emphasized the presence of the same logical patterns in myths throughout the world.

In earlier anthropology, “primitive mentality” was characterized by the inability to make distinctions, by a sense of “mystic participation” or identity between man, his cosmos, and all other beings. Beginning with complex kinship systems and later exploring other taxonomies, structuralists argue to the opposite conclusion: the supposedly primitive man is, if anything, obsessed with the making of distinctions; his taxonomies reveal a complexity and sophistication that rival those of modern man.

Formalist
In contrast to the structuralists’ search for the underlying structure of myths, the 20th-century Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp investigated folktales by dividing the surface of their narratives into a number of basic elements. These elements correspond to different types of action that, in Propp’s analysis, always occur in the same sequence. Examples of the types of action isolated by Propp are “An interdiction is addressed to the hero”; “The interdiction is violated”; “The false hero or villain is exposed”; and “The hero is married and ascends the throne.”

An important development of Propp’s approach was made in the late 20th century by the German historian of religion Walter Burkert. Burkert detected certain recurrent patterns in the actions described in Greek myths, and he related these patterns (and their counterparts in Greek ritual) to basic biologic or cultural “programs of action.” An example of this relation is given in Burkert’s Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (1979). Burkert shows how certain Greek myths have a recurring pattern that he calls “the girl’s tragedy.” According to this pattern, a girl first leaves home; after a period of seclusion, she is raped by a god; there follows a time of tribulation, during which she is threatened by parents or relatives; eventually, having given birth to a baby boy, the girl is rescued, and the boy’s glorious future is assured. The reason for the frequency and persistence of this pattern is, in Burkert’s view, the fact that it reflects a basic biologic sequence or “program of action”; puberty, defloration, pregnancy, delivery. Another pattern Burkert explains in a similar way is found in myths about the driving out of the scapegoat. This pattern, Burkert argues, stems from a real situation that must often have occurred in early human or primate history; a group of men, or a group of apes, when pursued by carnivores, were able to save themselves through the sacrifice of one member of the group. The persistence of these patterns through time is explained, according to Burkert, by the fact that they are grounded in basic human needs—above all, the need to survive.







Functions of myth and mythology


Explanation
The most obvious function of myths is the explanation of facts, whether natural or cultural. One North American Indian (Abenaki) myth, for example, explains the origin of corn (maize): a lonely man meets a beautiful woman with long, fair hair; she promises to remain with him if he follows her instructions; she tells him in detail how to make a fire and, after he has done so, she orders him to drag her over the burned ground; as a result of these actions, he will see her silken hair (viz., the cornstalk) reappear, and thereafter he will have corn seeds for his use. Henceforth, whenever Abenaki Indians see corn (the woman’s hair), they know that she remembers them. Obviously, a myth such as this one functions as an explanation, but the narrative form distinguishes it from a straightforward answer to an intellectual question about causes. The function of explanation and the narrative form go together, since the imaginative power of the myth lends credibility to the explanation and crystallizes it into a memorable and enduring form. Hence myths play an important part in many traditional systems of education.

Justification or validation
Many myths explain ritual and cultic customs. According to myths from the island of Ceram (in Indonesia), in the beginning life was not complete, or not yet “human”: vegetation and animals did not exist, and there was neither death nor sexuality. In a mysterious manner Hainuwele, a girl with extraordinary gift-bestowing powers, appeared. The people killed her at the end of their great annual celebration, and her dismembered body was planted in the earth. Among the species that sprang up after this act of planting were tubers—the staple diet of the people telling the myth. With a certain circularity frequent in mythology, the myth validates the very cultic celebration mentioned in the myth. The cult can be understood as a commemoration of those first events. Hence, the myth can be said to validate life itself together with the cultic celebration. Comparable myths are told in a number of societies where the main means of food production is the cultivation of root crops; the myths reflect the fact that tubers must be cut up and buried in the earth for propagation to take place.

Ritual sacrifices are typical of traditional peasant cultures. In most cases such customs are related to mythical events. Among important themes are the necessity of death (e.g., the grain “dies” and is buried, only to yield a subsequent harvest), a society’s cyclic renewal of itself (e.g., New Year’s celebrations), and the significance of women and sexuality. New Year’s celebrations, often accompanied by a temporary abandonment of all rules, may be related to or justified by mythical themes concerning a return to chaos and a return of the dead.

In every mythological tradition one myth or cluster of myths tends to be central. The subject of the central mythology is often cosmogony (origin of the cosmos). In many of those ceremonies that each society has developed as a symbol of what is necessary to its well-being, references are made to the beginning of the world. Examples include the enthronements of kings, which in some traditions (as in Fiji or ancient India) are associated with a creation or re-creation of the world. Analogously, in ancient Mesopotamia the creation epic Enuma elish, which was read each New Year at Babylon, celebrated the progress of the cosmos from initial anarchy to government by the kingship of Marduk; hence the authority of earthly rulers, and of earthly monarchy in general, was implicitly supported and justified.

Ruling families in ancient civilizations frequently justified their position by invoking myths—for example, that they had divine origins. Examples are known from imperial China, pharaonic Egypt, the Hittite empire, Polynesia, the Inca empire, and India. Elites have also based their claims to privilege on myths. The French historian of ancient religion Georges Dumézil was the pioneer in suggesting that the priestly, warrior, and producing classes in ancient Indo-European societies regarded themselves as having been ordained to particular tasks by virtue of their mythological origins. And in every known cultural tradition there exists some mythological foundation that is referred to when defending marriage and funerary customs.

Description
Inasmuch as myths deal with the origin of the world, the end of the world, or a paradisiacal state, they are capable of describing what people can never “see for themselves” however rational and observant they are. It may be that the educational value of myths is even more bound up with the descriptions they provide than with the explanations. In traditional, preindustrial societies myths form perhaps the most important available model of instruction, since no separate philosophical system of inquiry exists.

Healing, renewal, and inspiration
Creation myths play a significant role in healing the sick; they are recited (e.g., among the Navajo Indians of North America) when an individual’s world—that is to say, his life—is in jeopardy. Thus, healing through recitation of a cosmogony is one example of the use of myth as a magical incantation. Another example is the case of Icelandic poets, who, in singing of the episode in Old Norse mythology in which the god Odin wins for gods and men the “mead of song” (a drink containing the power of poetic inspiration), can be said to be celebrating the origins of their own art and hence renewing it.

The poetic aspect of myths in archaic and primitive traditions is considerable. Societies in which artistic endeavour is not yet specialized tend to rely on mythical themes and images as a source of all self-expression. Mythology has also exerted an aesthetic influence in more modern societies. An example is the prevalence of themes from Greek and Roman Classical mythology in Western painting, sculpture, and literature.





Piero di Cosimo
1462-1521
The Myth of Prometheus


 

Myth in culture


Myth and psychology
One of the most celebrated writers about myth from a psychological standpoint was Sigmund Freud. In his Die Traumdeutung (1899; The Interpretation of Dreams) he posited a phenomenon called the Oedipus complex, that is, the male child’s repressed desire for his mother and a corresponding wish to supplant his father. (The equivalent for girls was the Electra complex.) According to Freud, this phenomenon was detectable in dreams and myths, fairy tales, folktales—even jokes. Later, in Totem und Tabu (1913; Totem and Taboo), Freud suggested that myth was the distorted wish-dreams of entire peoples. More than that, however, he saw the Oedipus complex as a memory of a real episode that had occurred in what he termed the “primal horde,” when sons oppressed by their father had revolted, had driven out or killed him, and had taken his wives for themselves. That subsequent generations refrained from doing so was, Freud suggested, due to a collective bad conscience. The relevance of Freud’s investigations to the study of myth lies in his view that the formation of mythic concepts does not depend on cultural history. Instead, Freud’s analysis of the psyche posited an independent, trans-historical mechanism, based on a highly personal biologic conception of man. His anthropological theories have since been refuted (e.g., totemic [symbolic animal] sacrifice as the earliest ritual custom, which he related to the first parricide), but his analysis is still regarded with interest by some reputable social scientists. Criticism, however, has been leveled against the explanation of myths in terms of only one theme and in terms of the “repression” of conscious ideas.

Another theorist preoccupied with psychological aspects of myth was the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who, like Freud, was stimulated by a theory that no longer has much support—i.e., the theory of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, a French philosopher, associating myth with prelogical mentality. This, according to Lévy-Bruhl, was a type of thought that had been common to archaic mankind, that was still common to primitives, and in which people supposedly experienced some form of “mystical participation” with the objects of their thought, rather than a separation of subject and object. Jung’s theory of the “collective unconscious,” which bears a certain resemblance to Lévy-Bruhl’s theory, enabled him to regard the foundation of mythical images as positive and creative, in contrast with Freud’s more negative view of mythology. Jung evolved a theory of archetypes. Broadly similar images and symbols occur in myths, fairy tales, and dreams because the human psyche has an inbuilt tendency to dwell on certain inherited motifs (archetypes), the basic pattern of which persists, however much details may vary. But critics of Jung have hesitated to accept his theory of archetypes as an account of mythology. Among objections raised, two may be mentioned. First, the archetypal symbols identified by Jung are static, representing personal types that conflate aspects of the personality: they do not help to illuminate—in the way that the analyses of Propp and Burkert do—the patterns of action that myths narrate. Second, Jungian analysis is essentially aimed at relating myth to the individual psyche, whereas myth is above all a social phenomenon, embedded in society and requiring explanation with reference to social structures and social functions.

Myth and science
Attention has sometimes focused on changes occurring in the way the real world is apprehended by different peoples and how these changes in “reality” are reflected in myths. This reality changes continually throughout history, and these changes have especially occupied philosophers and historians of science, for a sense of reality in a culture is basic to any scientific pursuit by that culture, beginning with the earliest philosophical inquiries into the nature of the world. Though it would perhaps be going too far to identify the images and concepts that make up a culture’s scientific sense of reality with myth, parallels between science and myth, as well as the presence of a mythological dimension to science, are generally reckoned to exist.

The function of models in physics, biology, medicine, and other sciences resembles that of myths as paradigms, or patterns, of the human world. In medicine, for instance, the human body is sometimes likened to a machine or the human brain to a computer, and such models are easily understood. Once a model has gained acceptance, it is difficult to replace, and in this respect it resembles myth, while at the same time, just as in myth, there may be a great variety of interpretations. In the 17th century it was assumed that the universe could be explained entirely in terms of minute corpuscles, their motion and interaction, and that no entities of any other sort existed. To the extent that many models in the history of science have partaken of this somewhat absolutist character, science can be said to resemble myth. There are, however, important differences. Despite the relative infrequency with which models in science have been replaced, replacement does occur, and a strong awareness of the limitations of models has developed in modern science. In contrast, a myth is not as a rule regarded by the community in which it functions as open to replacement, although an outside observer might record changes and even the substitution of a new myth for an old one. Moreover, in spite of the broad cultural impact of theories and models such as those of Newton and Einstein, it is in general true to say that models in science have their principal value for the scientists concerned. Hence, they function most strongly for a relatively small segment of society, even though, for instance, a medical theory held in academic circles in one century can filter down into folk medicine in the next. As a rule, myth has a much wider impact.

Modern science did not evolve in its entirety as a rebellion against myth, nor at its birth did it suddenly throw off the shackles of myth. In ancient Greece the naturalists of Ionia (western Asia Minor), long regarded as the originators of science, developed views of the universe that were in fact very close to the creation myths of their time. Those who laid the foundations of modern science, such as Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Leibniz, were absorbed by metaphysical problems of which the traditional, indeed mythological, character is evident. Among these problems were the nature of infinity and the question of the omnipotence of God. The influence of mythological views is seen in the English physician William Harvey’s association of the circulation of the blood with the planetary movements and Darwin’s explanation of woman’s menstrual cycles by the tides of the ocean.

Several thinkers (e.g., the theologian Paul Tillich and the philosopher Karl Jaspers) have argued convincingly for a mythological dimension to all science. Myth, in this view, is that which is taken for granted when thought begins. It is at the same time the limit reached in the course of scientific analysis, when it is found that no further progress in definition can be made after certain fundamental principles have been reached. In recent scientific researches, especially in astronomy and biology, questions of teleology (final ends) have gained in importance, as distinct from earlier concerns with questions of origin. These recent concerns stimulate discussion about the limits of what can be scientifically explained, and they reveal anew a mythological dimension to human knowledge.

Myth and religion


The place of myth in various religious traditions differs.

Ritual and other practices

The idea that the principal function of a myth is to provide a justification for a ritual was adopted without any great attempt to make a case for it. At the beginning of the 20th century many scholars thought of myths in their earliest forms as accounts of social customs and values. According to Sir James Frazer, myths and rituals together provided evidence for man’s earliest preoccupation, namely, fertility. Human society developed in stages—from the magical through the religious to the scientific—and myths and rituals (which survived even into the scientific stage) bore witness to archaic modes of thought that were otherwise difficult to reconstruct. As for the relationship between myth and ritual, Frazer argued that myths were intended to explain otherwise unintelligible rituals. Thus, in Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906) he stated that the mythical story of Attis’ self-castration was designed to explain the fact that the priests of Attis’ cult castrated themselves at his festival.

In a much more articulate way, biblical scholars stressed the necessity to look for the situation in life and custom (the “Sitz im Leben”) that mythical texts originally possessed. A number of scholars, mainly in Britain and the Scandinavian countries and usually referred to as the Myth and Ritual school (of which the best-known member is the British biblical scholar S.H. Hooke), have concentrated on the ritual purposes of myths. Their work has centred on the philological study of the ancient Middle East both before and since the rise of Islam and has focused almost exclusively on rituals connected with sacred kingship and New Year’s celebrations. Of particular importance was the discovery that the creation epic Enuma elish was recited at the Babylonian New Year’s festival: the myth was, it was argued, expressing in language that which the ritual was enacting through action. Classical scholars have subsequently investigated the relations between myth and ritual in ancient Greece. Particularly influential has been the study of sacrifice by Walter Burkert titled Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (1983).

Connections between myths and cult behaviour certainly exist, but there is no solid ground for the suggestion, following Frazer, that, in general, ritual came first and myth was then formulated as a subsequent explanation. If it is only the subsequent myth that has made the sense of the earlier ritual explicit, the meaning of the ritual may remain a riddle. There is in fact no unanimous opinion about which originated first. Modern scholars are inclined to turn away from the question of temporal priority and to concentrate instead on the diversity of the relationship between myth and ritual. While it is clear that some myths are linked to rituals, so that it makes sense to say that the myth is expressing in the language of narrative that which the ritual expresses through the symbolism of action, in the case of other myths no such ritual exists.

The content of important myths concerning the origin of the world usually reflects the dominant cultural form of a tradition. The myths of hunter-gatherer societies tell of the origin of game animals and hunting customs; agricultural civilizations tend to give weight to agricultural practices in their myths; pastoral cultures to pastoral practices; and so on. Thus, many myths present models of acts and organizations central to the society’s way of life and relate these to primordial times. Myths in specific traditions deal with matters such as harvest customs, initiation ceremonies, and the customs of secret societies.

Religious symbolism and iconography
Sacred objects are found in all religious traditions, and sacred images in most. They are the material counterparts of myth inasmuch as they represent sacred realities of figures, as myths do in narrative form. Representing does not entail faithful copying of natural or human forms, and in this respect religious symbolism is again like myth in that both depict the extraordinary rather than the ordinary. Many symbolic representations have their sources in myths. Representations in human form, especially “natural” human form, are rare. The sculptures of divine figures in Classical Greece (by sculptors such as Phidias and Praxiteles) are the exception. Usually the degree of representation occurring in cult practices and the depiction of mythical themes has been considerably less humanistic. An example is the way geometric and animal figures abound in the history of religions. Another example is the use of sacred masks, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, an ecstatic cult in the Aegean world of Classical antiquity, and the indigenous traditions of Australia, America, prehistoric Europe, and elsewhere.
 

Sacred texts
The Hebrew Bible is usually regarded as embodying much material that anthropologists would regard as containing mythical themes in just the same way as the practices of the ancient Greeks, Chinese, or Abenaki Indians are bound up with myths. Yet the religion of Israel was in many respects critical of myths (in the sense of noncanonical, approved narratives). Similarly, it rejected any representation of God in natural forms. Anti-mythological tendencies exist in the religions that have their roots in Israel. The New Testament of Christianity in some instances derogates myths by describing them as “godless” and “silly.” Islam’s emphasis on the transcendence of God, as attested in the Qurʾān, similarly allows little room for mythological stories. The activities of the supernatural beings known as jinn, however, are acknowledged even by official Islam, besides being prominent in popular belief (as in The Thousand and One Nights); and other mythological themes, for example motifs relating to the end of time (eschatology), also figure in Islamic religion, above all in its Shīʾite form. Orthodox Shīʾite Muslims believe in the existence of 12 imāms, semidivine descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through his son-in-law ʿAlī. Toward the end of time, according to the beliefs of Shīʾism, the 12th imām will return to bring truth and justice to mankind.

Other traditions with sacred scriptures are more tolerant of myth, for example Hinduism and Buddhism. Running through certain central texts of the Hindu sacred tradition is the theme of the contrast between the One and the Many. Thus, the philosophical poem known as the Bhagavadgita contrasts the person who sees Infinity within the ordinary finite world with the person who merely sees the diversity of appearances. Yet this ascetic and abstract view by no means excludes a rich and extraordinarily diverse mythology, which is reflected in the tremendous variety of Indian religious statuary and which mirrors the religious complexity of Indian society. A justification for the coexistence of an ideal of unity with a pluralistic reality is found in the Rigveda, where it is written that although God is One the sages give him many names. Buddhism also finds room for exuberant mythology as well as for the plainer truths of sacred doctrine. Buddhism embraces not only the teachings of the Buddha about the pursuit of the path to enlightenment and Nirvana but also the exotic mythical figures of Yamantaka, who wears a necklace of skulls, and the grossly fat god of wealth Jambhala.


 

Giulio Carpioni
1613-1674
Neptune Chasing Coronis




Myth and the arts


Oral traditions and written literature

Myths in ancient civilizations are known only by virtue of the fact that they became part of a written tradition. In the case of Greece, virtually all myths are “literature” in the form in which they have survived, the oldest source being the works ascribed to the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod (usually dated, in written form, to the 8th century bce). Literary forms such as the epic have frequently served as vehicles for transmitting myths inasmuch as they present an authoritative account. The Homeric epics were both an example and an exploration of heroic values, and the poems became the basis of education in Classical Greece. The great epics of India (Mahabharata and Ramayana) came to function as encyclopaedias of knowledge and provided models for all human existence.

Visual arts
In principle, the sort of relationship that exists between myth and literature exists also with respect to the other arts. In the case of architecture and sculpture, archaeological discoveries confirm the primacy of mythical representations. Among the earliest known three-dimensional objects built by man are prehistoric megalithic and sepulchral structures. Mythological details cannot actually be discerned, but it is generally believed that such structures express mythological concerns and that mythical images dictated the shape. An especially intriguing example is the stone circle at Stonehenge in southern England. Axes of this construction are aligned with significant risings and settings of the sun and moon, but the idea that the circle was built for a religious purpose must remain likely rather than certain.

Grave monuments of rulers are among the most important remains of ancient civilizations (e.g., the Egyptian pyramids; and the sepulchral structures of Chinese rulers since the Zhou period, c.1046–256 bce). There is worldwide evidence that in archaic cultures man considered the points of the compass to have mythological affiliations (e.g., the west and death or the east and a new beginning). Mythological views even influenced building activity. One architectural feature that can have mythological significance is the column. In a number of popular traditions the sky is believed to be supported by one or more columns. The relatively strict separation between religious and civil architecture that modern man is perhaps inclined to take for granted has not existed in most cultures and periods and perhaps is not universal even in modern times.

Even when art ceases to represent mythological matters outright, it is still usually far from representational. That art has ceased to represent mythology is challenged by some theorists, who argue that what seems to be abandonment of mythological forms is really only a change in mythology. The opposing arguments are analogous to the favourable or unfavourable attitudes toward myth that religions have developed.

Performing arts
Myth is one of the principal roots of drama. This is particularly obvious in the earliest Western drama, the tragedies of Classical Greece, not only because of the many mythological subjects treated and the plays’ performance at the festival of Dionysus but also because of the playwrights’ mythlike presentation of events and facts. An example of such presentation is the story pattern, notably the way retribution follows transgression. Another feature of Greek drama that is relevant to the subject of myth is the fact that the role of the chorus was taken by a group of ordinary citizens. In Greek tragedy the heroic past was presented and explored by a chorus of nonheroic individuals; hence the meaning of the inherited myths was examined by a collectivity that can be seen as standing for the wider collectivity (more than 10,000 in number) that constituted the audience at the plays. In its songs the chorus frequently had recourse to expressions of a proverbial kind, using the distilled wisdom of the community to account for the strange and often disturbing events represented in the plays. The origins of drama are obscure, but Theodor Gaster, an American historian of religion, has suggested that in the ancient eastern Mediterranean world the interrelationship of myth and ritual created drama. Elsewhere, dramatic presentations (as in Japanese nō plays and the Javanese wayang) are similarly rooted in myth.

Dance has been a medium for the expression of mythological themes throughout the world and in all periods for which there is evidence. Especially common are dances aimed at ensuring the continuity of fertility or the success of hunting, at curing the sick, or at achieving shamanistic trance states. An aspect of the decay of ritual in the modern West is the tendency for dance to lose its close and direct connection with the life of the community. A further consequence is that the role of dance in embodying and exploring a community’s myths has often been overlooked, and dance may have become further removed from myth than any other form of art in the Western world. There are important and significant exceptions, however. One of the most notable is the work of the American choreographer Martha Graham, who frequently used mythical themes—often drawn from Greek antiquity—as the inspiration for her ballets.

Music
Myth and music are linked in many cultures and in various ways. For example, numerous stories ascribe the origins of music to a figure, usually divine, who lived in the mythical past. Thus, in ancient Greece the lyre was said to have been invented by the god Hermes, who handed it on to his brother Apollo as part of a bargain. From then on Apollo played the lyre at the banquets of the gods, while the Muses sang to his accompaniment. An ancient Chinese myth tells of the discovery of the “foundation tone,” which, in addition to being a musical note of specific pitch, also had political implications, since each dynasty was thought to have its own “proper pitch.” The foundation tone was produced when Ling Lun, a scholar, went to the western mountain area of China and cut a bamboo pipe in such a way that it produced the correct sound.

Throughout the world music is played at religious ceremonies to increase the efficacy and appeal of prayers, hymns, and invocations to divinities. The power of music to charm the gods is movingly expressed in the Greek story of Orpheus. This mythical figure goes to the underworld to try to have his dead wife, Eurydice, restored to life. By means of his lyre playing and singing he is able to win over even the god of death, so that Eurydice is allowed to leave the underworld. The continuing potency of the myth (including its tragic conclusion—Orpheus is forbidden to look back at his wife but does so and thus loses her again) is shown by the fact that it has been retold in Europe by numerous composers of opera since the early 17th century.

That a particularly close connection exists between myth and music has been argued by Claude Lévi-Strauss. In an analysis of the myths of certain South American Indians (Le Cru et le cuit, 1964; The Raw and the Cooked) he explains that his procedure is “to treat the sequences of each myth, and the myths themselves in respect of their reciprocal interrelations, like the instrumental parts of a musical work and to study them as one studies a symphony.” His treatment is divided into such subsections as “The ‘Good Manners’ Sonata,” “Fugue of the Five Senses,” and “The Opossum’s Cantata.” In Myth and Meaning (1978) Lévi-Strauss returned to the link between myth and music, which had proved difficult for his readers to understand. To make his point clearer Lévi-Strauss took the example of a theme from an opera by Richard Wagner. Each time the theme is repeated its overall meaning grows clearer, as each instance is superimposed on the others in the series, so that it becomes possible to see what the different occurrences of the theme have in common. Analogously, the meaning of a myth is found not simply by reading its narrative in sequence, but by superimposing upon one another similar mythical events from one narrative and boiling down each resulting “bundle” to a common denominator. It is the relationship between these bundles that constitutes the logic of the myth.

The use of music for religious ends has declined in modern Western societies, but mythical themes (e.g., in opera and oratorio) are still used with genuine artistic effect. The repertoires of late 20th-century opera companies may include, for example, Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, about a princess who asks her suitors three riddles and beheads them if they fail to answer correctly and a prince who will die if his name is discovered; Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (“The Woman Without a Shadow”), about a princess who must gain a shadow or her husband will be turned to stone; and Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Parsifal, all loosely based on tales from medieval Germanic mythology.

Myth and history
Myth and history represent alternative ways of looking at the past. Defining history is hardly easier than defining myth, but a historical approach necessarily involves both establishing a chronological framework for events and comparing and contrasting rival traditions in order to produce a coherent account. The latter process, in particular, requires the presence of writing in order that conflicting versions of the past may be recorded and evaluated. Where writing is absent, or where literacy is restricted, traditions embedded in myths through oral transmission may constitute the principal sources of authority for the past. Hence, myths may be cited when a situation in the present is materially affected by what version of the past is accepted. For instance, if a dispute arises among the Iatmul of Papua New Guinea over the rights of different clans to possess land, the contending parties take part in oral contests involving the recitation of long lists of mythological names and other details from the myths. Since each clan’s view of the mythic past has implications for the ownership of estates by persons living in the present, victory in these contests is a matter of direct practical importance to the participants.

Even in societies where literacy is widespread and where a considerable body of professional historians is at work, it may still be the case that a majority of the population form their views of the past on the basis of inherited mythlike traditions. Examples from the 20th century in Europe would be the polarized communities (Protestant and Roman Catholic) of Northern Ireland, or pro- and anti-Communist sympathizers in Greece. In the former case, the two communities have different and irreconcilable pictures of the events related to the partition of Ireland. In the latter case, the course of the civil war (after the end of World War II) is viewed quite differently by the two groups. These rival traditions may be described as mythlike because they are narratives with a strong validating function—the function of justifying current enmities and current loyalties—and they are believed with a quasi-religious faith against which objective historical testing is all but powerless.

Finally, similarities to myths may be present even in the work of those who are justifiably described as historians. A clear instance of this is the ancient Greek writer Herodotus, the so-called “father of history.” He had the radically original idea of writing an account of the struggle between the Greek world and its “barbarian” neighbours during the Persian Wars, an account that combined and evaluated a range of disparate and often conflicting pieces of information. On these grounds he should certainly be described as a historian. Yet, his work is full of themes and story patterns that also occur in Greek myths—for example, transgression against the gods leads to retribution; again, people who live at the margins of the Greek world are imagined as having customs that are the exact inverse of their Greek equivalents. In the work of Herodotus there is no incompatibility between myth and history; both historical events and the patterns into which such happenings are perceived as falling form part of his overall enterprise: namely, to conduct an inquiry (the meaning of the Greek word historia) into the past. As with the distinction between myth and science, then, that between myth and history is by no means a straightforward one.






 

Major types of myth


Myths of origin
Cosmogony and creation myth are used as synonyms, yet properly speaking, cosmogony is a preferable term because it refers to the origin of the world in a neutral fashion, whereas creation myth implies a creator and something created, an implication unsuited to a number of myths that, for example, speak of the origin of the world as a growth or emanation, rather than an act. Even the term origin should be used with caution for cosmogonic events (as well as for other myths purporting to describe the beginning of things), because the origin of the world hardly ever seems the focal point of a mythological narrative—as a mythological narrative is not a matter of inquiry into the first cause of things. Instead, cosmogonic myths are concerned with origins in the sense of the foundation or validity of the world as it is. Creation stories in both primitive and advanced cultures frequently speak of the act of creation as a fashioning of the earth out of raw material that was already present. In African cosmogonies, especially, the earth is preexistent. A creation out of nothing occurs as a theme much less frequently, for all that such creation myths are more satisfying to the philosophical mind. Philosophical questions, however, are less important in the justificatory systems set up by myth.

Water, though important everywhere as a source of life and image of endless potentiality, has a special role in Asia and North America, where the creator (often an animal) is assisted by another figure, who dives for earth in the primordial ocean. The earth-diver helper sometimes develops into an opponent, or Satan-like character, in other areas—e.g., those touched by Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian dualistic religion. Though hardly an explanation in the ordinary sense of the word, the theme accounts for the fact that evil is constitutive of the cosmos without holding the creator responsible for it. Other widely diffused motifs are: the cosmogonic egg, found in the Pacific world, parts of Europe and southern Asia (e.g., in Hinduism); the world parents (usually in the image of sky and earth); and creation through sacrifice or through a primordial battle. Creation through the word of the creator also occurs outside the biblical account (in Polynesia).

Cosmogony sets the pattern for everything else in most traditions; other myths are related to it or derived from it. Because man’s inhabitable world, the cosmos, is the crucial issue, no matter how various the contents may be and how different from one period to another, cosmogony probably is the clearest expression of man’s basic mythological propensity. All cosmogonic accounts have certain formal features in common. They speak of irreconcilable opposites (e.g., heaven and earth, darkness and light) and, at the same time, of events or things totally outside the common range of perception and reason (e.g., a “time” in which heaven and earth were not yet separated and darkness and light intermingled). In other words, the basic ingredients of man’s world and orientation are presupposed yet are realized, constituted, or brought about anew in the narration. The narrative can arrive at such a reconstitution only by transcending the limits of ordinary perception and reason.

The origin of man is usually linked immediately to the cosmogony. Man, for instance, is placed on the earth by God, or in some other way his origin is from heaven. Nevertheless, it is only in mythologies influenced by philosophical reflections that the place of man becomes the conspicuous centre of the cosmogony (e.g., Pythagoreanism, a Greek mystical philosophical system; Orphism, a Greek mystical religious movement; Gnosticism, a Christian dualistic and esoteric movement; and Tantrism, a Hindu and Buddhist esoteric meditation system). Man is sometimes said to have ascended from the depths of the earth (as with the Zuni, an American Indian people) or from a certain rock or tree of cultic significance. These images are often related to the idea of a realm of ancestors as the origin of newborn children. Man is also said to be fashioned from the dust of the ground (as in Genesis) or from a mixture of clay and blood (as in the Babylonian creation myth). In all cases, however, man has a particular place (because of his duties to the gods, because of his limitations, or even because of his gifts), even though—especially in many hunters’ civilizations (e.g., the African San peoples and many North American Indian tribes)—the harmony of man and other forms of nature is emphasized.

In most cosmogonic traditions the final or culminating act is the creation of man. The condition of the cosmos prior to man’s arrival is viewed as separate and distinct from the alterations that result from the beginning of the human cultural world. Creation is thus seen as a process of periods or stages, frequently in a three-stage model. The first stage consists of the world of gods or primordial beings; the second stage is the world of the ancestors of man; and the third stage is the world of man. The three stages are sometimes seen as interrelated; for example, the gods may be the creators of man or the ancestors of man, or ancestors may undergo a transformation to become men.

Among innumerable tales of origin, one of the most common types is related to the origins of institutions. Certain initiation ceremonies or ritual acts are said to have originated in the beginning, in mythical times, this primeval moment of inception constituting their validity.

Myths of eschatology and destruction
Myths of eschatology deal with “the end.” The end is conceived of as the opposite of the cosmogony; it means first and foremost the origin of death but also, in a wider sense, the end of the world. Special forms of eschatology are prevalent in messianism (belief in a future salvation figure) and millenarianism (belief in a 1,000-year reign of the elect).

Myths about the origin of death, for which an added explanation has to be found in the sense that death is not seen as automatically the end of life, are probably as widely diffused as creation stories. One of the most common types of such myths speaks of a primordial time in which death did not exist and explains that it arose as the result of an error, as a punishment, or simply because the creator decided the earth would get too crowded otherwise. One example of a myth about the origin of death may be regarded as characteristic; it occurs, with variations, in many parts of the world. Among the Zulus the story is told that the supreme being Unkulunkulu instructed the chameleon to take a message to mankind, saying that they would be immortal. But the chameleon moved slowly, since he stopped to have something to eat (or, according to a variant, basked in the sun and fell asleep). In due course the supreme being changed his mind and sent a lizard to men, telling them that they would die. The lizard arrived and delivered his message. When the chameleon eventually arrived, his message conflicted with what mankind had already been told by the lizard. The chameleon was not believed, and men were mortal from then on.

Expectations of a cataclysmic end of the world are also expressed by myths. A universal conflagration with a final battle and defeat of the gods is part of Germanic mythology and has parallels in other examples of Indo-European eschatological imagery. In many “primitive” religions specific expectations about the end of the world do occur, but until recently they have not received much scholarly attention. An example of such a belief about the end of the world is found among the Pawnee Indians. In their view, there will come a time when everything will disappear and the star of death will govern the world. The moon will turn red, the sun will be extinguished, and men will be turned into stars flying along the route to heaven now taken by the dead.

Messianic and millenarian myths
The hope of a new world surges up from time to time in many civilizations. Many such religious movements have flourished in the 20th century in Melanesia, Africa, South America, and Siberia. Christian elements are usually detectable, but the basic element in virtually all cases is indigenous. These cults and movements centre on prophetic leaders, often emphasize the return of the dead at the renewal to come, and are convinced of a catastrophic end of the present world. In many cases, the culture hero is expected to return and lead believers in battle against the evil forces. In the history of Judaism and Christianity, as in many primitive millenarian and messianic movements, there is an expectation of a new heaven and a new earth.

Myths of culture heroes and soteriological myths
A great many nonliterate traditions have myths about a culture hero (most notably one who brings new techniques or technology to mankind—e.g., Prometheus, who supplies fire to mankind in Greek mythology). A culture hero is generally not the person responsible for the creation but the one who completes the world and makes it fit for human life; in short, he creates culture. Another example of a culture hero is Maui in Polynesia, who brought islands to the surface from the bottom of the sea, captured and harnessed the sun, lifted the sky to allow man more room, and, like Prometheus, gave fire to mankind.

The bringer of culture is often also the bringer of health. Thus, the culture hero of the Woodlands and Plains Indians in North America is at the same time related to the foundation of the medicine society. A comparable figure occurs in many traditions of Classical antiquity or the Mediterranean basin generally as the “good son”—e.g., Horus, the son of the god Osiris in Egypt, or the figure of the king in the Psalms. Health and (spiritual) salvation are synonymous, and this is implied in the Greek word sōtēr, which can mean both “saviour” and “preserver from ill health.” Related to soteriological myths in many cases is the hope for a final and total salvation in which the “good” powers will triumph, such as through Saoshyant, the saviour in Zoroastrianism. In fact, Zoroastrianism shared with the Judeo-Christian tradition the notion of a Last Judgment followed by the ultimate salvation of the world. According to Zoroastrian belief, as the end approached heroes from the past would come to life and help in the struggle of good against evil. Saviours, the Saoshyants, would work toward the triumph of virtue and the spreading of heavenly light over all creation.

Myths of time and eternity
The apparent regularity of the heavenly bodies long impressed every society. The sky was seized as the very image of transcendence, and what seemed to be the orderly course of sun, moon, and stars suggested a time that transcended man’s—in short, eternity. Many myths and mythological images concern themselves with the relationship between eternity and time on earth. The number four for the number of world ages figures most frequently. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew of a complete world age of 12,000 years, divided into four periods of 3,000 each, at the end of which Ormazd (Wise Lord) would conquer Ahriman (Destructive Spirit). Similarly, the Book of Daniel (in the Bible) mentions four kingdoms—of gold, silver, bronze, and a mixture of iron and clay, respectively—after which God will establish an everlasting kingdom. The notion of four world ages, sometimes associated with metals, occurs also in the works of Classical writers and in later speculative writings on human history. Judaism developed the view of a 1,000-year period between the four world ages and the everlasting kingdom (hence the words millennium and millenarian). Although other numbers occur (three, six, seven, 12, and 72), four is dominant. In ancient Mexico this world was held to be preceded by four other worlds. India, in both Hindu and Buddhist texts, has developed the most complex system of world ages and worlds that arise and come to an end. Here, too, the number four is important—e.g., the four ages (yugas) of decreasing length and increasing evil. Many writings, often with large numbers, reflect exact astronomical observations and calculations. Some mythologies—e.g., those of the Maya in Central America—have developed sophisticated views interrelating time and space. Mythological accounts of repetitions of worlds after their destruction occur not only in India but also elsewhere, such as in Orphism and in the Stoic philosophy that flourished in Classical antiquity.

Myths of providence and destiny
In attitudes to the idea of a link between human activity and the stars, the most familiar example of which is probably astrology, there is a broad range of mythical motifs between astrological calculations (in the sense of an attempt at an intellectualized account of what is happening) and devotional self-surrender. There are many occasions at which a man may be filled with doubt about his own fate or the fate of his community. In some myths divine supremacy is marked by a god’s mastery over fate. Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, acquires the “tablets of fate” in his primordial battle preceding the creation. There is no doubt about Zeus’s supremacy in the Greek poet Hesiod’s genealogical account of the gods, yet in the works of Homer, Zeus is powerless to defy fate and save the life of his son Sarpedon. Mythological views of providence, destiny, or fate are given precise shades of meaning vis-à-vis dominant views in a tradition concerning justice and divine law, the philosophical problem of determinism, the theological problems of theodicy (justification of a good god with observable facts of evil), and predestination. An important difference in mythological accounts of providence exists between those traditions that speak of the creation of the world as a result of God’s will (as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and those that attribute worldly phenomena to causation by a lesser being (as Buddhism does).

Myths of rebirth and renewal
Myths of archaic traditions generally imply a conception of the world, nature, and man in terms of cyclic time. According to Australian Aboriginal myth, man is reincarnated into profane life at the moment of his birth. At his initiation he reenters sacred time, and through his burial ceremony he returns to his original “spirit” state. Similar beliefs are held by many tribal peoples, and their myths are expressed in terms of cosmic cycles. Special myths are narrated in many places in preparation for initiation procedures. In agricultural societies, in addition to the themes of cosmic renewal, renewal through birth, and rebirth through initiation ceremonies at the attainment of manhood and womanhood, the theme of seasonal renewal is of great importance. The cyclic concept of time in all these traditions is present in many of the great religious and philosophical systems, such as Brahmanism (a Hindu system), Buddhism, and Platonism, and to some extent it is at variance with the idea of linear time typical of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But no culture, not even that of Jews, Christians, or Muslims, completely disregards the cyclic patterns of the seasons, work, festivities, or existence. Such patterns seem to be engraved on man’s perception of the world.

Myths of memory and forgetting
Some of the North American medicine men claim to remember their prenatal existence. Such memory, according to their mythology, is lost in ordinary people. Similar myths of memory and forgetting are related to the hierarchy that exists in all archaic societies. The fundamental knowledge of the world, transcending ordinary consciousness, is not equally attainable by everyone. Myths of memory can take the form of collective nostalgia. In South America the Yaruros, whose material existence was so simple that they lacked the skills of the agricultural and pastoral life, were one of the many tribes that in the face of modern Western cultural expansion gave up the struggle for their own social and cultural identity, becoming assimilated into a more complex society. As the Yaruros ceased to struggle for the preservation of their tribal identity, they expressed a yearning to return to the Great Mother ruling the land of the dead and awaiting them in her paradise. Mythologies of memory and forgetting have a role in many traditions. They are of great significance in traditions where the idea of rebirth or reincarnation exists. Some people have claimed to remember previous existences, and a few (among them the Buddha) the very first. The veil of maya (“illusion”) in many Indian stories prevents a man from remembering his true origin and goal. In Gnosticism there is talk of a similar forgetfulness, which must be resisted. In ancient Greek myth, Mnemosyne (Memory), the mother of the Muses, is said to know everything, past, present, and future. She is the Memory that is the basis of all life and creativity. Forgetting the true order and origin of things is often tantamount to death (as in the case of Lethe, the river of death in Greek mythology, which destroys memory). Anamnesis, “commemoration” or “recollection,” is one of the crucial parts of the Christian celebration of Holy Communion. Through the anamnesis, the Passion and death of the Lord is “applied” to the congregation. In philosophy, the imagery of forgetting and remembering occurs in the thought of Shankara, a medieval Indian philosopher, and of Plato in connection with the paramount calling of the thinker and the difficulty of living up to that calling.

Myths of high beings and celestial gods
Supreme celestial deities occur in many mythologies, with various qualities and attributes, in many shapes, and with great diversity in cultic significance. A cardinal distinction exists between the supreme being in many archaic or polytheistic traditions and the God of the great monotheistic systems (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Even though certain qualities seem alike in many cases (e.g., transcendence, omniscience), the God of the latter arose historically in a reaction to polytheistic views and practices and demonstrates his supremacy accordingly, whereas the more archaic types of supreme beings nowhere show that aggressive aspect in their mythologies. The exalted status of archaic supreme beings and celestial gods does not necessarily involve exclusion of other supreme beings. Outstanding examples are Vishnu, Shiva, and the great goddess in Hindu literature, who are each described as supreme yet do not reduce the “reality” of the others. “Supremacy” is not as unambiguous and general a term as it seems, and in Hinduism it refers first and foremost to the perfection (i.e., the idea that a deity is supremely perfect) of a deity in himself.

The sky seen as a sacred entity is an all but universal belief. It is often related to or identical with the highest divinity. Nevertheless, supreme beings are always more than what can be explained from celestial phenomena alone, for they are often called creators of the world, founders of the order of the world, and protectors of law; and they are praised for their eternity and goodness. Often, the supreme being that created the world does not—or has ceased to—receive attention in the cult, although he may still be invoked in moments of great crisis. In a good many ancient agricultural societies, the idea of a great goddess prevailed instead of a male creator-god. The great goddess (as in the ancient Middle East and India) is venerated principally because of her omnipotence, especially her power over life. The sky god-creator sometimes cedes to a divinity who is also related to the sky but apparently is experienced more concretely because of his activity. Such a divinity (especially in pastoral cultures) can be a god of atmospheric phenomena (storm, rain, thunder, or lightning), whose power for the good of the people is extolled. In spite of his power, however, he is one of several gods, and in some cases (Yahweh in ancient Israel and Allah in Islam) one such God retains the full creative function of early creator gods, and in him all “true” divinity is concentrated. In addition, a divinity related to the sun rather than the heavens can assume preeminence; this has happened in some ancient imperial traditions (e.g., Egypt, Inca empire). Among sky gods who remained important in the mythologies of ancient civilizations are Zeus in Greece, Jupiter in Rome, and Tian in China.

Myths concerning founders of religions and other religious figures
Although the founders of great religions (Confucius, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad) are generally conceded to have had actual existence, information about them is couched in legendary terms that have many mythological features. The same is true of many other religious figures (prophets, saints, or gurus [Hindu spiritual teachers]). Those traditions that have preserved the memory of their founders have, as a rule, carefully emphasized the elements that function most mythologically, in the sense that they state categorically realities that could not be known in any ordinary fashion or that raise the founder above ordinary historical conditions. Examples are the account of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, which no one heard according to the text itself, his statement that he was before Abraham, and his prophecies. Buddhist texts state that the Buddha not merely surpassed all yogis in knowledge of previous existences but, in fact, had conquered time. Well known too are his predictions concerning the course and decline of Buddhism and (in Mahayana texts) his promises as to the future spiritual attainments of the bodhisattvas. Other examples are Muhammad’s eschatological teachings in the Qurʾān and those of Zoroaster.

Myths of kings and ascetics
Genuine myths concerning kings are found only in traditions that know a form of sacred kingship. Temple records from ancient Babylon mention offerings to kings who were considered divine. Hymns addressed to them make references to the king’s union with a goddess—i.e., the mythological motif of the “sacred marriage.” One of the epithets for the king in ancient Egypt was “endowed with life” or “imparting life.” The twofold meaning of the epithet is significant and can serve to make the mythology of sacred kingship understandable in other places as well, because the function of the king is in fact double. He mediates between the divine world and the world of man, representing each to the other. Hence, in Egypt a sacrifice by an individual was understood as offered to the king and at the same time by the king. The king’s role of mediator and protector brings royal mythologies close to myths of culture heroes. Solemn procedures in which kings become divinities occur relatively late in history. An early and most conspicuous case of such an apotheosis (becoming divine) is that of Alexander the Great, who was called a god in his lifetime. Later, apotheosis took place for Roman emperors, although there are no cases of an emperor being accorded divine honours in his lifetime. A great many legends have accumulated around the figures of kings (e.g., around King Ashoka of India and King Arthur in Britain). Stories about the Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and Charlemagne have a somewhat eschatological mythical flavour, because they are said to dwell each in his mountain (in the Kyffhäuser and the Untersberg, respectively) until they appear again to act as saviours in a crisis.

Most narratives about great ascetics, as well as other saints, could be regarded as legends rather than myths. There are, however, instances of saints or ascetics who are presented as a more than worldly model, so that a case can be made for the mythological function of their legends (e.g., al-Hallāj in Islam and St. Francis in Christianity). In the case of traditions that have asceticism as an integral part, certain figures and the legends around them do indeed function as exemplars.

Myths of transformation
Countless stories exist concerning the origin of peculiar rocks, properties of animals, plants, stars, or other features in the world. In addition to such etiologic tales there are several myths that speak of cosmic changes brought about at the end of primordial times. An altogether different and extensive mythology exists concerning initiation rites and other “rites of passage” that involve transformation of man’s being.

Cosmic transformation may concern an original world, without proper human means of existence and without death, that was transformed through a certain event (e.g., the death of Hainuwele, a type of primal being known as a dema, or ancestral, deity) into the world known to mankind, a truly inhabitable world with vegetation, animals, and other features that had not existed before.

On a wider scale are myths that could be appendages to cosmogonic myths but that have not turned into mere etiologies. Many myths akin to the type of the dema deity (like Hainuwele) and to the culture-hero type (like Prometheus) account for events—such as the invention of agriculture, domestication of animals, and the use of fire—that have transformed the world for the benefit of man. Many others are just as closely related to cosmogonic accounts but tell of “setbacks” in primordial times. In agricultural societies, for example, myths have been collected that ascribe the unevenness of land or the formation of mountains to an ancient mishap or evil force.

In rites of passage (e.g., rites accompanying birth, attainment of maturity, marriage, death) the contents of myths are acted out. In each case the intention behind the rites is that man’s mode of being be affected, indeed transformed. Through the birth ceremony the child “becomes” a person, and through initiation an adolescent “becomes” an adult, a member of a sodality, or a warrior. There is a great variety of customs in different communities and traditions, but everywhere these rites dramatize graphically the cosmic processes and realities expressed in language in myths. In many traditions the myths of the community are conveyed to the novice at the time of his initiation. Even in the major world religions rites of passage are still performed, as evidenced in such ceremonies as circumcision, Baptism, weddings, and mortuary rites. In all instances, the rites derive their meaning from the core of the tradition, and for that reason man’s existence is regarded as transformed. In some cases the transformation derived from the dominant myth is far-reaching. The initiated shaman is able to transcend the ordinary human condition and overcome dangers that would cause the death of a noninitiate. Through his initiation he is believed to have gone through death and thus conquered it. In certain Hermetic (an occult magical tradition) and Gnostic texts the certainty of attaining divine being is clearly expressed.

Myth in modern societySecularization of myth and mythology
Deciding the extent to which there has actually been any secularization of myth involves a problem of definition. If myth is seen as the product of a past era, it is difficult to determine at what actual moment that era ended. Thus, it is virtually impossible to state precisely when a certain mythical theme becomes a mere literary theme or to determine in general when myths are no longer being created. It is more fruitful to recognize that symbols, myths, and rituals are all subject to change over time. Nor is secularization an irreversible process. It is instead a process that takes place time and again. Secularization movements and movements toward “mythification” of a phenomenon, narrative, or idea are aspects of the same historical processes. There have also been many types of secularization; the one brought about in Western society since the Middle Ages is only a single example. Another instance was the development in Archaic and Classical Greece (sometimes referred to—with great oversimplification—as a movement “from myth to reason”) whereby fundamental questions about the nature of the universe came increasingly to receive answers in terms of philosophical, as opposed to mythical, reasoning.

On the other hand, although the secularization of modern times is not a unique phenomenon, it is a new and complex type, to which many factors have contributed. Scientific, particularly astronomical, discoveries of the late medieval and Renaissance periods were accompanied by a new trust in cosmic laws and an increasingly abstract notion of God. More or less Euhemeristic historical accounts that were common in the Middle Ages and were a symptom of a certain secularization process themselves gave way to history writing, focusing on psychological, social, and economic facts. In philosophy, naturalism of various sorts opposed notions of transcendence that earlier systems had taken for granted. The most common tendency in modern society has been to regard the characters and events in mythical accounts as not real or as by-products of realities that are not transcendent but rather immanent.

This secularization in modern society, like earlier secularization processes, is accompanied by a process whereby new myths are formed.

Demythologization of major religious traditions
Demythologization should be distinguished from secularization. Every living mythology must come to terms with the world in which it is transmitted and to that extent inevitably goes through processes of secularization. Demythologization, however, refers to the conscious efforts people make to purify a religious tradition of its mythological elements. The term demythologization (Entmytho-logisierung) was coined by Rudolf Bultmann, a German theologian and New Testament scholar. In the strict sense of the word, demythologizing efforts have been limited to theological discussions in 20th-century Christianity.

Even after secularization has taken place, a certain mythological residue may persist. Edward B. Tylor, one of the founders of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 19th century, coined the use of the word survival for customs and beliefs that continued to be adhered to long after the context in which they had had their meaning had ceased to exist. Because such customs and beliefs may be regarded as mere superstitions, the word survival usually has a slightly derogatory overtone. There are many survivals of myth in this sense. The myth of “the noble savage,” well known from the 18th-century writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, can be understood as a survival of a paradisiacal mythology: Western man expecting to find evidence of paradise on earth.

The secularization process in modern times has affected symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual, liturgy) and symbolic objects (sacred places) more than myth, however. Nevertheless, commonly accepted forms of mythology in modern society do not permeate all parts of society or fulfill all needs. (In all likelihood, no society has ever been perfectly homogeneous in its myths.) At the same time there exist profound mythological needs in modern society, and some are filled by myths borrowed from submerged or alien traditions. Modern society’s neglect of cosmic symbolism (which in contrast was widespread in archaic tradition) has provoked certain reactions, such as the continuing interest in astrology, which may even be seen as an attempt to present a coherent account of the cosmos. And the huge scientific advances of the 20th century have given rise to a literature, science fiction, that resembles myth, even down to an eschatological element.

Political and social uses of myth
In the industrialized Western society of the 20th century, myths and related types of tales continue to be told. Urban folklorists collect stories that have much in common with the tales collected by the Grimm brothers, except that in the modern narratives the lone traveler is likely to be threatened, not by a werewolf, but by a phantom hitchhiker, and the location of his danger may be a freeway rather than a forest. Computer games use sophisticated technology to represent quests involving dragons to be slain and princesses to be saved and married. The myth of Superman, the superhuman hero who saves the world and preserves “the American way,” is a notable image embodying modern Americans’ confidence in the moral values that their culture espouses. Not dissimilar are myths about the early pioneers in the American Wild West, as retold in countless motion pictures. Such stories often reinforce stereotypical attitudes about the moral superiority of the settlers to the native Indians, although sometimes such attitudes are called into question in other movies that attempt to demythologize the Wild West.

A particular illustration of the power that myths continue to exert was provided as late as the 1940s by the belief in the existence of an Aryan racial group, separate from and superior to the Semitic group. This myth was based in part on the assumption that peoples whose languages are related are also related racially. The fact that this assumption is spurious did not prevent the Aryan myth from gaining wide acceptance in Europe from the 18th century onward, and it was eventually to provide a supposed intellectual justification for the persecution of the Semitic Jews by their Aryan Germanic “superiors” during the period of Nazi domination. This episode suggests that, in politics, a myth will take hold if it serves the interests and focuses the aspirations of a particular group; the truth or falsity of the myth is irrelevant. In a sense, of course, this function is merely an extension of its more general role in religion, where a myth, as well as addressing questions such as a society’s place in the cosmos, may serve to justify a particular kind of governmental organization.

Although politics is often regarded as having taken over the role once played by religion or myth in Western society, the situation is more complex than such a generalization would imply. Just as myth has always had a strong social and political element, so political movements and theories have mythical dimensions. For instance, a mythological component has always been important in keeping political units together, from villages to nations. Recently, however, this mythical dimension has gained prominence with the rise of competing mythlike ideologies such as capitalism and communism; the word ideology might indeed be replaced, in much contemporary discussion about politics, by the term mythology. Finally, crucial terms in modern sociopolitical discussion, such as freedom and equality, although they have a long and complex philosophical history, are often posited in a manner analogous to the function of myth presenting its own authority.

Kees W. Bolle
Richard G.A. Buxton

Animals and plants in myth

Animals and plants have played important roles in the oral traditions and the recorded myths of the peoples of the world, both ancient and modern. This section of the article is concerned with the variety of relationships noted between man and animals and plants in myths and popular folk traditions and in so-called primitive and popular systems of classification.

Man has always been intrigued by the problem of boundaries: what distinguishes him from another man; what marks off his culture from another; what the dividing lines are between man and plants, man and animals, or man and his gods. At times he has maintained a rigid sense of separation and viewed the breaking of distinctions as transgression. At other times he has sought to cross the boundaries in order to gain power or knowledge. In some myths, he has glorified an age when distinct categories had not yet come into existence, and he has yearned for a return to this paradisiacal condition. In other traditions, he has viewed with horror the monsters that result when different spheres of being are mixed.

According to a view prevalent in many traditional societies, man was formed by the gods. His history is given in the myths of the primordial establishment of things, and his solemn responsibility, along with every other living thing, is to fit himself within this given world. This does not mean that people living in such traditional societies lack distinctions. Among the African Lele, for example, animals are distinguished from man by their lack of manners, their immense fecundity, and by their sticking to their own sphere and avoiding contact with humans. Animals that violate this third characteristic are understood to be human-animals, the product of sorcery or metempsychosis (transmigration of souls).

The Great Chain of Being that dominated Western thought throughout the Middle Ages made man both the highest of the animals and the lowest of the gods. Man’s body was like that of the animals: corporeal, sensate, and mortal. Man’s spirit or intellect resembled the gods: incorporeal, rational, and immortal. The great surge of ethnological and biologic data and theories from the 16th century on tended to undermine this point of view. New forms of men were encountered (e.g., the “savage”) who seemed to their first describers closely akin to the brute; new biologies were proposed that placed man wholly within the animal kingdom, merely as one species among many, and postulated man’s descent from animals. More recently, psychology and ethology have emphasized the irrational (or brutish) elements in man and suggested close analogies between animal and human behaviour. Since the 18th century man has been defined in a new, nonbiological way: as a cultural being rather than as the inhabitant of a natural realm. There have been many forms of this dichotomy: man is the only being who has a language, uses symbols, employs tools, freely plays, is self-conscious, or possesses a history. Man, in short, creates himself as a cultural being in distinction to the animal or plant, which is created by its environment or heredity. These questions of man’s identity and the way he resembles or differs from other sentient beings may be found in every culture and during every age.

Man is a creature who tends to draw boundaries, both conceptually and practically. Not only does his being demand that he find a position in a complex system of relationships but also his social life and his biologic survival depend on the making of distinctions. To speak with the gods, have relations with another human, take possession of another’s territory, or eat this or that plant or animal involves man in a host of decisions upon which his existence depends. One of his chief resources for answering such questions is that of the myths and legends mapping the world in which he dwells.

Myths and legends concerning animals and plants employ a wide variety of motifs but express a limited number of relationships. Man, animals, and plants may stand in a relationship of (1) opposition or difference, (2) descent, (3) mixture, (4) transformation, (5) identity, or (6) similarity. These are determined by and expressive of the total worldview of a people. The hunter, for example, has a different understanding of the animal from that of the agriculturalist or pastoralist; the tuber planter has a different view of plants from that of the cultivator of grains. Even within these broad categories sharp differences occur. The Kalahari San of southern Africa, who, alone, naked, and crawling on the ground, blends in with his environment in order to kill an animal for food, reveals a way of looking at man’s relation to nature different from that of the Masai tribesman of eastern Africa, who, costumed and walking upright as part of a line of chanting hunters in order to slay a lion as a symbol of his manhood, stands forth visibly as the ruler of the world through which he moves. The Cretan bull dancer of ancient Mediterranean culture, playing with the animal by somersaulting over his back, expresses a conception of man’s relation to this powerful animal and the forces of fecundity and death that it symbolizes different from that of the Spanish bullfighter who slays the beast.

Relationships of opposition or difference
The fundamental religious boundary is that between the sacred and the profane, the sacred being conceived of as a sphere of power superior to or opposed to the mundane. That which is sacred may be either creatively or chaotically powerful. If the former, it is primarily expressed in creation myths; if the latter, in demonic traditions.

Cosmogonies
The notion of a creator deity in animal or plant form is comparatively rare. There are stories of animals, birds, or insects creating the world and of creators with animal attributes or animal companions, but these are isolated traditions. Even in the widespread motif of the birth of the world from a cosmic egg there is rarely the notion of a bird laying or incubating the egg (the most notable exception is the world egg laid by a beautiful bird in the beginning of the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland). There are, however, a number of cosmogonic (origin of the world) motifs that employ a fundamental animal or plant symbolism: the cosmic tree that supports and nourishes the world; the earth surrounded by a serpent or supported on a turtle or on some other animal’s back; the features of the present world created by the actions of some primeval animal—e.g., lakes and rivers caused by the digging of an animal or hills raised by the flapping wings of a bird. Sacrificial motifs abound, such as the world being formed from the cut-up parts of an animal or restored by its primordial sacrifice.

A number of important traditions associated with animals occur in dualistic creation accounts in which animals oppose creation, acting as a foil to the creator, or creation is accomplished by combat between the creator and animal monsters representative of chaos who must be slain or bound before the world can be established. The widely distributed earth-diver myth is the most familiar example of dualistic creation (see above Myths of origin).

Other oppositions occur with respect to the creation of man (see below Relationships of descent). Perhaps the most frequent myth of the origin of death is that of the “perverted message” or “two messengers.” In one, an animal is sent with a message from the creator that man is immortal, but the animal alters the message to state that man must die. In the other, two animals are sent, one with the word that man is immortal, one with the message that man will die. A mishap occurs to the first, and only the fatal message reaches man.

In some traditions, there is a union of disparate features or opposites in a given mythic being. This does not express a chaotic hybrid but rather a creative totality (the “coincidence of opposites”). Though most frequently expressed by androgyny (having both male and female characteristics), either in traditions of an androgynous creator or first man, the theme is present in some animal and plant traditions as well (e.g., the emergence of man from the androgynous rīvās plant in Iranian mythology). Although it occurs in cosmogonic settings (e.g., the tree that unites heaven and earth), motifs of the reconciliation of animal and plant opposites more usually occur in paradisiacal imagery that promises the harmonious mingling of realms (e.g., the “peaceable kingdom” of Isaiah 11:6–8 or Virgil’s Eclogue IV).

Animal and plant deities
Belief in sacred plants or animals is widespread. Common to all of these is the notion that the plant or animal is a manifestation of the sacred and thus possesses the dual attributes of beneficence (in healing, hunting, or agricultural magic) or danger (as expressed in taboos against their destruction or consumption). More rarely, gods are believed to have animal (theriomorphic) or plant (phytomorphic) forms. Influenced by ancient Greek disparagement of contemporary Egyptian religion and Judeo-Christian antipathy to “idolatry,” Western scholars have tended to speak of such traditions as “animal worship,” although it is usually not the animal itself but rather the sacred power revealed by the animal that is being revered. Other deities possess animal or plant attributes or are incarnations associated with particular animals or plants. Here the animals or plants possess a symbolic function. Certain qualities are associated with certain species (e.g., wisdom with the owl, strength with the lion, immortality with the eagle, inspiration with the grape), and the god’s possession of these qualities is indicated by his being identified with the appropriate animal or plant. In other traditions, natural phenomena are associated with the actions of certain species (e.g., wind as a bird, lightning as a snake), and the god who controls such phenomena is identified with the species. At times, the animal or plant achieves a divine identity of its own—e.g., the thunderbird or the earthquake monster.

Hunting and agricultural deities
In the traditions of archaic hunting peoples there is frequently a figure whom scholars term the master of the animals or the protector of game. He is the ruler of the forest, of all animal species, or of only one particular species (usually a large game animal—e.g., the northern master of the caribou). The master controls all game animals (frequently by penning them up). He dispenses a certain number to man as food and can be invoked by a shaman when he withholds game. He guides the hunter and, in some traditions, avenges the spirits of slain animals, whose souls return to his enclosures when they die. He is sometimes pictured in human form, on occasion having animal attributes or riding an animal; in other traditions, he is a giant animal or can assume animal form.

In a related complex, a deity in animal form demonstrates to man the art of hunting, serving as the first victim (a motif found in some of the American Indian bear mother or buffalo woman tales). Or the deity appears among men as an animal who must be slain and eaten so that he may return to his heavenly home (e.g., the Ainu Iyomante feast in Japan).

A similar pattern is found among archaic agricultural peoples. An ancestral (dema) goddess, at times in plant form, produces food asexually from her body. She is slain by the tribe, and from the dismembered portions of her body crops appear.

The archaic pattern of the dema deity needs to be distinguished from the widespread tradition among technically more sophisticated agricultural peoples of the bountiful mother earth or the god or goddess of vegetation or special crops. In the latter case, the deity, frequently depicted or associated with the appropriate animal and vegetative characteristics, is the principle of inexhaustible vitality. The god frequently has a human consort who participates in a sacred marriage in order to gain fecundity for man (this happens in ancient Mesopotamian religions, for instance).

Culture heroes
The master of the animals or corn mother is frequently found in association with animal culture heroes. An animal or trickster who can assume animal form secures for man the various attributes of culture (acting either in consort with or opposition to the gods). These traditions are found in etiologic stories about how man first learned to hunt, discovered tobacco, and accomplished other things. The most frequent motif is that of the animal who stole fire from the gods for man. Frequently, such traditions lie behind etiologies of specific animal or plant characteristics; e.g., the bat is black and blind because it stole fire and was singed by the flames and blinded by the smoke. In other tales, the animals oppose the acquisition of culture by man and must be overcome by a human culture hero.

A closely related theme is the myth of a life-giving tree or other healing magical plant, growing in paradise or some other inaccessible place, to which the culture hero must travel in order to gain a boon for mankind. He is frequently assisted by or has to overcome supernatural animals. This is an especially widespread type of myth, with numerous instances found throughout the world.

Demonic plants and animals
Opposed to these positive conceptions of the creative powers of plants and animals is the notion that their sacred power is chaotic or demonic. Rather than aiding man, they are destructive. The most common examples are monstrous plants and animals, which figure especially in heroic quests as guardians of boons or threats to be overcome; mythical animals associated with destructive natural phenomena, such as the earthquake monster or the monster who according to some traditions causes eclipses by devouring the Sun or Moon; and personifications of evil powers such as death or disease (e.g., the hound of hell) or chaos beasts (such as dragons) whose release marks the end of the world or who will be slain in a final battle by a saviour deity. A universal phenomenon is the association of certain species of animals with sorcerers and witches. The most frequent form of this belief is that of the familiar—an animal whose soul is bound up with that of the sorcerer, whose form the sorcerer can assume, and who may be commanded to serve his evil master.

Some species (e.g., animals such as the serpent and various narcotic plants) exhibit the ambivalence of the sacred—they are conceived as being both beneficent and dangerous. This reflects a crucial aspect of the sacred—that it is a region of power. As was stated above this power is ambivalent—i.e., it can act for mankind’s benefit or detriment—and is perceived therefore as the location either of creativity or of chaos.

Relationships of descent One of the major ways man has of organizing his world is through genealogy or relations of descent. In theogonies, or tales of the origin of gods (e.g., that by Hesiod), or in legendary lists of human offspring (such as the genealogies in the Old Testament), relations of descent and the association of characteristics, territories, and spheres of influence with descendants provide a means of mapping the cosmos and the human world. In traditions concerning animals and plants, relations of descent are most prominent in myths of the origin of man and in totemic (animal-clan relational) materials. Central to both is the figure of the plant or animal ancestor.

Creation of man from plants or animals
A widespread motif, especially among archaic peoples, concerns man’s supposed descent from plants or animals. These descent traditions usually name a particular species as man’s ancestor, and the tribe frequently takes its name from the plant or animal.

In some myths, an asexual mode of creation is implied; a child, for example, appears from the bud of a tree or from a split fruit, or man is a featherless bird sent from the sky. Even the motif of the birth of man from an egg is predominantly an asexual motif inasmuch as no preliminary coition is mentioned. Other traditions, particularly agricultural ones, see man as the product of the mating of a plant or animal species. In some myths, fabrication rather than descent is emphasized. Man is fashioned from a plant or animal by the gods, or his parts are modeled after other species. In these descent traditions, the primal man who results is usually the progenitor of a particular people. Other peoples are created from different or less favourable species. These traditions persist in folkloric accounts of the birth of individuals from plants or animals. Such myths express a close relationship between man and the animal and plant world. Man does not represent a new type of being but rather a new manifestation or form.

The widely distributed notion of animal or plant ancestors places considerable emphasis on transformation (see below Relationships of transformation). The ancestral myths describe a primeval time of creation (or successive creations) followed by a decisive alteration in the conditions of life in the shift from the ancestral to the present human mode of being. Compared with the “fixed” characteristics of the present period, the ancestral era is represented as having been one of flux, lacking definite boundaries. In it animals, plants, and men are much the same: they can speak with each other, have sexual relations with each other, and engage in other relationships. The ancestors are polymorphic (many formed) and are frequently depicted as emerging from the ground. In such cases their movement toward the surface is represented as an increasing differentiation, away from compound hybrids and toward forms somewhat resembling present species. But even on the surface, the ancestors remain relatively fluid: some resemble plants, others animals or men, and all have shared characteristics and the power to change their form at will.

The ancestors are depicted as primordially powerful beings, but due to a variety of causes their world becomes transformed, and the present order of things comes into existence. Human culture and the decisive features of the world as man now knows it are established during the transformation: man’s labour, sexuality, and death are due to some action of the ancestors; the topography of the land is the “tracks” left by the ancestors; men, animals, and plants are depicted as having received their present form after the ancestral age.

Totemism
The relations to an animal or plant ancestor are frequently associated with the complex phenomenon of totemism. Totemism is primarily a social relationship. It expresses the belief that there is a connection between a group of persons, on the one hand, and a species of animal or plant, on the other. The relationship to the totem (animal or plant symbol) occurs in a variety of forms; associated phenomena (e.g., exogamy, or marriage outside the clan, and taboos against killing the totem species) may or may not be present. The myths associated with such traditions narrate the origin of a social group and the discovery of its totem. It was commonly believed in the 19th century that there was a stage in the development of human thought that could be called “totemic,” a stage at which primitive peoples perceived a mystical connection between particular social groups and the animals or plants that were their totems. Totemism apparently covered a bewilderingly wide range of phenomena: the list of totems among the Nuer, for instance, includes lion, waterbuck, tortoise, papyrus, rafters, and certain diseases. Utilitarian explanations for the choices of totems—“good to eat,” “useful,” etc.—do not fit the ethnographic data, and to say that the totems are chosen because they have some special mystical significance is merely to rephrase the problem, without identifying why only certain items have mystical significance. In Le Totémisme aujourd’hui (1962; Totemism) Lévi-Strauss advocated a different approach. He suggested that totemism, far from being a special stage in human development, was merely an instance of the use, within so-called primitive systems of classification, of objects and categories from the world of everyday experience to divide and order that experience.

A phenomenon that has, at times, been confused with the social relations of totemism is that of the individual guardian. It involves a relationship between a particular person and a particular species, usually revealed to the individual in a vision, such as in the vision quests among the North American Plains Indians. These guardians become a source of knowledge and good fortune for the individual. To these traditions, other folkloric motifs may be related, such as the birth of various individuals from intercourse between humans and animals or plants; the animal wife; animal nurses; or the ability of certain persons to understand or converse with animals or plants.

Hierarchy
The fluidity of boundaries characteristic of relations of descent raises important questions as to the status of man or of culture in relation to nature. Are animals and plants more like men than not? Is the human world superior to or inferior to the natural sphere? Such questions lie behind a variety of motifs associated with descent traditions: that the first men were undeveloped, amorphous, or resembled animals; that animals resisted the creation of man; and that the primordial man is the ruler of the natural world. The characteristic fluidity of the descent traditions persists in traditions such as the wild man and in relations of transformation and identity (see below Relationships of transformation; and Relationships of identity).

Relationships of mixture
For some societies boundaries and the maintenance of distinctions guarantee the continued existence of the cosmos as an integrated totality. There are rituals that periodically reenact the original process whereby the cosmos was divided up and established in its present form. In such cases a new beginning, for example New Year’s celebrations as carried out in modern Western society, re-create the original beginnings of things as they are today. Other rituals foster remembrance of the decisive deeds of the ancestors in fixing the present state of things; ritualized social structures (such as the caste structure of India) maintain a complex system of distinctions; and religious ideologies (such as astrology) foster the notion of spheres of power that control all members of a class, be they gods, planets, animals, plants, minerals, or men. In such societies, to be real is to affirm and repeat the structures of the cosmos. Each being is called upon to dwell in a limited world in which everything has its given place and role to fulfill. To be sacred is to remain in place. To break out, to cross boundaries, is to open the world to the threat of chaos, to commit transgression. Associated with this worldview is the notion that the mixing of realms is the result of evil influence and leads to monsters, hybrids, and uncleanliness. An alternative view in the history of religions sees positive sacred power to be gained from the violation of the given boundaries of the world. Each being, in such a view, is called upon to challenge its limits; to break them and to create new possibilities for existence, to achieve freedom. Associated with this view is either the necessity for a periodic loosening of restraint or the celebration of gods or sacred persons who have achieved freedom. Religiously expressed, for the one view, the sacred is the ordinary, that which remains in place; for the other, the sacred is the extraordinary, that which is not restricted to its allotted place.

These two points of view—i.e., that power comes from conformity to class or freedom from class—may be illustrated by the widespread category of taboo. Research in the second half of the 20th century has led to the conclusion that taboo is primarily a taxonomic (classificatory) system. Those things that are forbidden involve the crossing of boundaries or are beings that fall between classes. Thus, one may not with impunity enter other spheres (e.g., the realms of the gods) or touch sacred objects, transport an object from one realm to another, cross sexual or class lines, or have relations with a being not of one’s class. Many food taboos have been shown to reflect taxonomic anomalies. An animal such as the bat is tabooed because it has fur like a mammal but flies like a bird; it has wings like a bird but has fur rather than feathers—and therefore is neither mammal nor bird and must be shunned. On the other hand, the consumption of forbidden foods or engaging in forbidden sexual practices (including homosexuality and bestiality) is part of the ritual of transcendence in many cultures. If an individual can survive the crossing of boundaries, he will obtain extraordinary sacred power (e.g., adherents of Tantrism, a system of esoteric practices performed in both Buddhism and Hinduism, who violate both eating and sexual taboos; the Jewish magicians mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, chapter 65, who eat the forbidden swine and say “. . . do not come near me, for I am holy”).

From the earliest times man has shown a readiness to be fascinated by monsters. Monsters are chaos beasts, lurking at the interstices of order, be they conceived as mythical creatures who preceded creation, survivals from an archaic era, creatures who dwell in dangerous lands remote from human habitation, or beings who appear in nightmares. Though the forms and types of monsters are numberless, a single principle holds good for the majority of them: a monster is out of place, conforming to no class or violating existing classes. This is most frequently expressed by the monster’s having hybrid form (the result of a mixture of species, attributes, sexes, and other categories), being the result of a transformation, or having dislocated or superfluous parts. Because modes of locomotion and other bodily characteristics are prime modes of classification, the superfluity or lack of organs removes the monster from the ordinary taxonomic divisions. The dragon, for example—perhaps the most widespread monster in myth and folklore—is born through a mixture of species: it is a serpent born asexually from a rooster’s egg incubated in manure; by the transformation of an animal; or by the joint generation of a man or worm and a metal. Its form is a compound of species: the body of a serpent or crocodile with the scales of a fish; feet, wings, and occasionally the head of a bird; the forelimbs and occasionally the head of a lion; or, in another dominant type, the ears of an ox, the feet of a tiger, the claws of an eagle, the horns of a deer, the head of a camel, the eyes of a demon, the neck of a snake, the belly of a mollusk, and the scales of a fish. In other types of dragons, organs or attributes of the snake, lizard, fish, mollusk, toad, elephant, horse, pig, ram, deer, eagle, falcon, octopus, or whale predominate. In many traditions, the dragon has the power to transform itself at will. Its possession of superfluous organs is most frequently expressed by its being many headed, and it has both subterranean and aerial characteristics and habits.

The most common hybrid monster generally mixes differing species—e.g., the Centaur (horse-man), the Minotaur (bull-man), Echidna (snake-woman), Pegasus (horse-bird), Sphinx (woman-lion-bird), Siren (bird-woman), and Empusa (animal-metal) of Greek mythology and the griffin (lion-eagle), mermaid (woman-fish), vegetable lamb (plant-animal), barnacle goose (mollusk-bird), and mandrake (plant-man). In other instances, the characteristics are juxtapositions of different species—e.g., the tree that bears human heads as fruit; horses born from eggs; flesh-eating mares; milk-producing birds.

The most extreme form of the fluidity that is characteristic of monsters is the Protean figure who can change into any form or combination of forms at will. In all of these monstrous forms, the central notion appears to be the danger associated with beings that are out of place or are fluid. But some contemporary anthropologists have argued the opposite conclusion; i.e., rather than being threats to the classificatory system, monsters, through their startling combinations and juxtapositions, force men to think more clearly about and distinguish more sharply between the different boundaries of their world. In this interpretation, the monsters are ultimately supportive of order rather than a destructive threat to it.

Relationships of transformation
One of the largest groups of animal and plant traditions in folklore and religious material is that of transformation. Familiar stories—such as Beauty and the Beast; the transformation of a man into an ass in the Metamorphoses by Apuleius, a Roman writer of the 2nd century ad; the frog king or the swan maiden, as well as such well-known traditions as that of the werewolf, the vampire, or leopard man—testify to the wide dissemination of this theme. Every permutation and combination exists: man into mammal, bird, fish, insect, reptile, amphibian, or plant; animal into man or plant; animal into another species of animal; or plant into animal. There are also partial transformations resulting in hybrid forms as well as alternating transformations—e.g., animal, man, or tree by day and the reverse at night. Another great series of transformations concerns the dead, who either transmigrate into or return in animal and plant forms.

The power to compel another to change form, or to cross boundaries oneself at will, may be judged good or evil depending on the assessment of order in the worldview of the particular culture. In the majority of instances of transformation of another, the transformation is considered to be the result of evil magical powers, and most tales conclude with the disenchantment of the subject, his release from the evil power, and his return to his original form. Many of the instances of self-transformation are for the positive purpose of transcendence.

Several of the motifs present in the folklore of transformation suggest cultic procedures (e.g., transformation into an animal by putting on its skin). Cultic practices probably lie behind and lend credibility to many such tales.

In many societies, ritual change involves a transition period in which boundaries are broken and chaos rules, only to be overcome as order is restored. This is common in festivals in which the social order is temporarily suspended or reversed (as in the ancient Roman Saturnalia and the carnival celebrated in many Roman Catholic countries) and in rites of passage (such as initiation). Animal and plant transformations play a significant role in such ceremonies, both as negative symbols of chaos (e.g., return of the dead in animal form to mingle with the living; ritualized combats against the primordial dragon) and as positive symbols of the breaking through of bounds and the release of the forces of life (e.g., the presence in many of these ceremonies of young males dressed as animals who engage in sacred sexual intercourse). Prominent in such Saturnalian traditions are deities such as the Greek god Dionysus, who can assume vegetable, animal, or human forms at will, who is a god of sudden, dramatic epiphanies (manifestations) and license, and whose devotees, through orgiastic rituals, participate in his freedom to break all bounds in order to recover the boundless vitality and fecundity of primordial chaos. A new life for the cosmos, society, and the individual is supposedly obtained through the abolition of the order of the old.

Initiation ceremonies make use of transformations to a somewhat different end. The initiant receives new birth by the dying of his old self after a series of ordeals. Antagonists, frequently in masked animal form, torment him, and his “death” and rebirth are analogous to the hero’s successful fight against monsters. Alternatively, the culmination of initiation is frequently the narration of the myths of the ancestors and the vision of them. Masked men, in mixed animal and plant forms, appear to the initiant to remind him of his true origin as opposed to his biologic origin as a product of his parents. (Other ritual uses of masks achieve the same effect: the ritual transformation of the “actor” into the sacred animal, plant, or deity.)

Frequently, although the nomenclature for plants and animals is learned by a child from birth, the logic of the system is revealed only at initiation, at which point the initiant, as an adult, becomes responsible for the proper observance of all the boundaries required by his society (e.g., among the Senufo of Africa, 58 figurines are presented to the initiant in a carefully prescribed order that provides an inventory of the basic classes of animals, men and human activities, and social distinctions).

Within many cultures there are religious specialists in the breaking of bounds. Perhaps the most widespread example is that of the shaman who is deemed able to journey at will to heaven or the underworld, mingling with both the gods and the dead. His journey occurs through magical flight (frequently in the form of a bird) with animal psychopomps (soul conductors) or guardians or by ascending the sacred tree that connects heaven and earth. The shaman may transform himself into an animal and know how to converse with animals. Another similar phenomenon is the existence of leopard societies in Africa. In these a practitioner is believed to be able to transform himself into an animal frequently considered to be his incarnate “second self.”

Relationships of identity
Works on the supposedly primitive mentality published in the 19th and early 20th century usually presumed that primitive man could not distinguish between plants, animals, and men. This “hazy vision,” as it was often called, was believed to lie at the root of religious phenomena such as animism (belief that inanimate objects and natural phenomena have souls) and totemism. More recent studies have demonstrated the presence of complex taxonomies among peoples sometimes described as “primitive,” although they do not usually employ the criteria of a modern biologist. Relations of identity, when compared with the other forms of relationship already described, are comparatively rare, occurring most frequently in traditions about the soul. Relations of similarity are more common, usually in literary settings, such as plant or animal fables. The most common expression of identity relates the soul of man to that of animals or plants.

Soul-stuff
Although man tends to associate the soul with personal survival or continuity after death, there is an equally ancient view that emphasizes the continuity of life. This view, to which the Dutch anthropologist Albertus Christiaan Kruyt gave the term soul-stuff (a term he contrasted with the postmortem soul), is chiefly found among the rice cultivators of the Indonesian culture area, although it is also witnessed elsewhere. Central to this belief is the circulation of vitality throughout different levels of existence. The soul-stuff is created by the deity as an indestructible reservoir of life. It is eternally reborn—either by returning to its creator, who will redistribute it, or by transmigrating into an embryonic human, animal, or plant. Whatever form it assumes, the same “stuff” is common to all beings.

Death, or postmortem, soul
The majority of traditions concerns the postmortem soul, which leaves the body or comes into existence only after death. A number of motifs reflecting different assessments of the nature of life and death occur. The soul may assume an animal or plant form or there may be animal psychopomps, most frequently a winged creature such as a bird or butterfly. The soul may transmigrate into or be reincarnated as an animal or plant. These traditions need to be distinguished from those concerning spirits of the dead who reappear in animal form. Related to these are traditions about the separable soul, which is capable of removing itself or being removed from a person while still living. This most usually occurs in sleep. While detached it may be placed in or assume the form of an animal or, more rarely, a plant. In general, where the notion of soul-stuff predominates, relations of identity are prevalent; where the notion of a death soul is present, the traditions are more closely akin to relations of transformation (see above Relationships of transformation).

Plural souls
A more complex pattern, of wide distribution, is that of the plurality of souls. Man’s vitality and personality are viewed as the result of a complex set of psychic interrelations. A classic example is that of the Apapocuva-Guaraní of Brazil, as described by the anthropologist Curt Nimuendajú: a gentle vegetable soul comes, fully formed, from the dwelling place of the gods and joins with the infant at the moment of birth. To this is joined, shortly after birth, a vigorous animal soul. The type of animal decisively influences the recipient’s personality: a gentle person has received a butterfly’s soul; a cruel and violent man, that of a jaguar. Upon death, the vegetable soul enters paradise; the animal soul becomes a fierce ghost that plagues the living. The plurality of souls provides a complex taxonomy accounting for and relating the distinctive character traits of plants, animals, and men.

The alter ego, or life index
Other religious and folkloric traditions view the life of man as bound up with that of a plant or animal: if one is destroyed the other dies as well. In some traditions, this is confined to the familiar or guardian of a witch or shaman; in others, it is an individual relationship possible for any man. An example of the latter relationship is nagualism, a phenomenon found among the Indians of Guatemala and Honduras in Central America. Nagualism is the belief that there exists a nagual—an object or, more often, an animal—that stands in a parallel relationship to a person. If a man’s nagual suffers harm or death, the man suffers harm or death as well. According to one story, during the initial hostile encounters between the Indians and the Spaniards, the Indians’ naguals fought on their side against the invaders. When the nagual of the Indian chief—which was in the form of a bird—was speared and killed by the Spanish general, the Indian chief died at the same moment.

Nagualism relates the life of each individual to the life of an animal or other object. More rarely, there is a relation between an entire tribe and a particular plant or animal. In some societies, a ritual of identification is performed, usually at birth (e.g., planting a tree or burying the placenta at the roots of a tree). In others, an individual has a vision or undertakes a vision quest to identify his alter ego.

Relationships of similarity
Relations of similarity between human beings and plants or animals usually depend upon the perception of an attribute or aggregate of attributes that they have in common. This process is apparent in colloquial expressions such as when someone is called a “cool cat,” a “bitch,” a “clumsy ox,” a “greedy pig,” or “foxy.” A similar process appears to lie behind many of the so-called totemic names or theriophoric or phytophoric personal names (e.g., Swift Deer, Bold Eagle) and is concealed in a number of familiar Western names (e.g., Leo, “the lion”; Deborah, “the bee”; and Jonah, “the dove”). The reverse process, the giving of human names to plants or animals, also depends in a majority of instances on the discernment of character similarities. Care must be used, however, in the interpretation of proper names. Every plant or animal name does not necessarily reveal the perception of similarity. For example, the Seminole Indians combine a character name with a shape and animal name in an arbitrary fashion that appears to pay no attention to their meaning, resulting in unusual combinations such as that of a well-known Seminole medicine man whose name translates as “crazy, spherical puma.”

The same process is at work in the universal literary form of plant and animal fables. The fable depends for its point upon the association made by the reader or listener between himself and one of a limited number of characteristics possessed by each animal or plant. More complex forms, verging on allegories, such as the beast epic and the debates between various plants and animals as to which are superior, also exist. The popular Physiologus (“Naturalist”), a Greek work from the 2nd century ad, and the medieval bestiary traditions draw morals particularly from monstrous or wondrous animals and plants. Both the fable and the bestiary traditions contributed to the formation of the stereotyped bird, beast, and flower emblems that figure in heraldry and religious iconography.

The process of discovering similarities of personality between plants and animals, on the one hand, and human beings, on the other, also plays a significant role in certain archaic sciences. Physiognomy, which claims to find correspondences between bodily features and psychological characteristics, often makes use of such supposed similarities. The earliest Western systematic treatise, the Aristotelian Physiognomonica, maintains that people with facial characteristics resembling certain animals have the temperaments ascribed to those animals (e.g., persons who have noses with slight notches resemble the crow and are impudent just as the crow is). These views persist in popular figures of speech, such as “bulldog jaw.” The same structure underlies the use of plants and animals in archaic healing practices, alchemy, and astrological tables in which animals, plants, and minerals, as well as human personality traits, are associated with the birth signs of the zodiac or planets.

Jonathan Z. Smith
Richard G.A. Buxton