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-ŕ-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