Parzival, by William Morris
“Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life." (Joseph Campbell)
Myths are often dismissed as primitive attempts to explain the visible world, a kind of pseudo-science. Advanced societies have their science, and societies that either have no science, or lack the knowledge to understand it have their myths. Who but the simple-minded could believe that earth was built from the bodies of defeated monsters, that the first humans pushed earth and sky apart, or that gods came down to teach humans to cook food, build shelters, write etc.?
Well, the ancient Mesopotamian and Meso Americans did, and their remarkable knowledge of mathematics and astronomy and perhaps other as yet unknown technologies enabled them to construct huge edifices with unbelievable precision. So did the ancient Polynesians whose intimate knowledge of the stars, the oceans and weather allowed them to make great sea voyages.
One thing I learned from my studies in anthropology is that every culture (our own included) has its ‘lore’ about how things should be done, and sometimes, that lore is incorporated into their myths, but more than that, myth is iconic, the carrier of profound spiritual truths. At the heart of myth is precious knowledge of the transcendent, “information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort” about being human in a cosmos that is intrinsically spiritual.
While the majority of people might not look past the surface of their cultural myths, there are in every culture, every tradition, some individuals who have encountered, experienced and understood those deep esoteric truths of which the majority of people have absolutely no idea, and try to help the rest of us understand. They could be scientists, psychologists, writers, artists and poets as well as monks and spiritual teachers, but whatever else they are, they are our mystics, those who see into the heart of our most cherished myths and share their light.
(Philomen, from The Red Book of Carl Jung.)
And once in an Age, it is said, comes a Teacher, a Master who brings those truths to us in such new and powerful form that they are planted like hopeful seeds in the sleeping consciousness of Mankind, giving rise to new mythologies that can, over much time, help to awaken humanity to its true purpose and significance.
Christ, by Ivan N. Kramsky.
For what is hidden will always find channels through which to break into the ordinary world, for those with the ears to hear, and eyes to see.
One reason that myth is so widely, I think, misunderstood and under appreciated is that it speaks in the language of metaphor, of poetry. How many people really feel comfortable with the language of sacred texts, or the subtle, rich metaphors of Yeats, William Blake and other writers of metaphysical poetry? How many understand them?
To ‘get into’ such poetry requires a shift from our usual ways of perceiving, that is, the opening of the ‘gates of perception’ and of our heart that restrict what we are able to perceive (or allow ourselves to).
I learned about making this shift many years ago when I had to write about Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass for a class assignment. I was struggling through what I felt was a flood of clever-sounding words when I stopped and asked myself, “What if he really means all this? What if this is how he really feels?” Everything changed, and from then on, it was as though Whitman’s metaphors became paradoxically both full and transparent to me. I had been “caught by” the poem and what mind did not grasp, heart understood.
That is what Campbell means when he says he was “caught” by myth, that something in him switched to a different way of seeing, and he tuned into its language.
The “Creative Imagination....allows us to see things that we otherwise cannot see ... not with bodily eyes” (Cheetham, All the World an Icon).
“You cannot see Me with your present eyes, Therefore I give you divine eyes.” (Baghavad Gita).
"He who has eyes to see, let him see, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 13:13).
That seeing differently, through heart as well as mind, is the only way we can go into myth, into its depths and receive its treasures.
I often come across those who say that myths are for the ancients, that we have no real myths. Of course we have them! We've just lost touch with them. Religion at its mystical core is mythic, not because the key stories of the religion are not true, but because they are true in the very deepest sense of the word, stories of such beauty, truth and power that they change the world.
And as might be expected in these times of great confusion, myths are being made without our realising it. Some good. Some bad.
One mythic motif that has developed in western culture is the motif of artificial intelligence and non-biological being. The ambivalence of conservative Judeo-Christian mythology regarding the relationship between humanity, nature, and God is taken to a new level in the repeated confrontation of human and machine in both cinema and literature, a motif that I think is becoming part of a new mythology that anticipates either conflict between man and machine, or darker still, the end of the biological human being. In a great many cases, nature is simply irrelevant in this man-machine conflict which often takes place in great cities or spaceships where nature has no part, and where nature is included, it reaps the destructive consequences of that conflict.
In the ambiguous way of myth, films like Blade Runner, Artificial Intelligence, Transcendence, and Lucy hint at positive possibilities as well as disaster for mechanised human beings or humanised machines, in Transcendence, also optimistically imagining a future where man, machine and nature can coexist for mutual benefit. Avatar presents an alternative where the human-machine opposition is resolved with the destruction of the machine and the reunification of man and nature. It is, tellingly, machines (the transference capsules) that enable that re-unification, restoring machine to its original function as a tool to serve rather than to meld with or to become master.
What these films demonstrate to me (aside from deep anxieties in the modern human psyche) is the intimate relationship of myth and humanity, reflecting and responding to the other, collectively and individually. Science likes to deal with definites, but reality is in fact ambivalent, always hanging on potentiality. It is that very ambivalence that keeps myth open to new interpretations, and gives myth its immense capacity for revitalizing, expanding and deepening itself. Without this living aspect of myth, we have dogma. I believe that Christian mythology is at such a place.
While Joseph Campbell notes the dogma of separation that is inherent in the conventional understanding of the Christian myth - separation of humanity from nature, and of nature and humanity from God - at its heart, at its unadulterated core as originally taught and received, Christianity is a religion of oneness reflected in the myths about Jesus - his words - “the kingdom of heaven is within” "I am in you and you in me" - and his continual references to nature (seeds, vines, lilies, trees, waters, rock etc.) as key metaphors in his profound spiritual teachings. These repeated motifs of God-man/woman-nature in the teachings of the Christ are clear messages that we live in a unified reality that is not apart from God but totally permeated with the Holy.
Whether or not believers in the Christ myth or whatever sacred mythology they cherish take up the challenge of going deeper into that mythology, of drinking from its precious waters and bringing new life to their religion or spiritual tradition, their attitude to those sacred stories will determine whether they can serve humanity's evolution or not. We see examples of that in our world today, inspired spiritual teachers speaking and writing with soul-shaking new insights and understandings of their particular tradition, bringing down the fire of the Holy, of God to inflame and inspire the spirits of those who hear them. And we see examples of once sacred mythologies being reduced to the lowest level of the human spirit, their once pristine ideals ground into dust by those without any understanding at all of what they are destroying.
As myth-makers, we human beings must carefully consider what kinds of stories we are fostering, what they are revealing to us about ourselves, and what they will contribute to the world - for good or evil.