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Mythology
*** Shopping-Tip: Mythology
The word '''''mythology''''' (
Greek language Greek: μυθολογία, from μυθος ''mythos'', a story or legend, and λογος ''logos'', an account or speech) literally means the (oral) retelling of '''
myths''' – stories that a particular
culture believes to be true and that use
supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. In modern usage, "mythology" is either the body of myths from a particular culture or religion (as in ''
Greek mythology'', ''
Egyptian mythology'' or ''
Norse mythology'') or the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths.
In common usage, ''myth'' means a falsehood — a story which many believe but which is not true. The field of mythology does not use this definition.
Definition
Myths are generally narratives passed down
traditionally intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("
creation myths" and "
founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. Not all myths need have this explicatory purpose, however. Myths are by definition sacred and usually involve a supernatural force or
deity. There is some overlap with
legends — stories containing heroes and historical trappings — depending on the level of supernatural content.
In
folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both
secular and
sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being believed and deeply held as true. In the study of folklore, all sacred traditions have myths, and there is nothing pejorative or dismissive intended in the use of the term, as there often is in common usage.
This broader truth runs deeper than the advent of critical history which may, or may not, exist as in an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (Preliterate oral traditions may vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate become "the authority"). However, as
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development." (Mâche 1992, p.8) Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales from very old cultures, such as
Greek mythology or
Roman mythology. Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions.
According to the eighth chapter of
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling F. W. J. Schelling's ''Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology'', "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding."
Religion and mythology
Mythology figures prominently in most
religions, and most mythology is tied to at least one religion. Some use the words ''myth'' and ''mythology'' to portray the stories of one or more religions as false, or dubious at best. While nearly all dictionaries include this definition, "myth" does not always imply that a story is either false or true. The term is most often used in this sense to describe religions founded by ancient societies whose belief systems are nearly extinct. By extension, many people do not regard the tales surrounding the origin and development of modern dominant religions as literal accounts of events, but instead regard them as figurative representations of their belief systems. Many modern day rabbis and priests within the more liberal Jewish and Christian movements, as well as most
Neopagans, have no problem viewing their religious texts as containing myth. They see their sacred texts as indeed containing religious truths, divinely inspired but delivered in the language of mankind. Others separate their beliefs out from the similar stories of other cultures and refer to them as history. These people object to the use of the word ''myth'' to describe what they believe.
For the purposes of this article, therefore, the word mythology is used to refer to stories that, while they may or may not be strictly factual, reveal fundamental truths and insights about human nature, often through the use of
archetypes. Also, the stories discussed express the viewpoints and beliefs of the country, time period, culture, and/or religion which gave birth to them. One can speak of a Jewish mythology, a Christian mythology, or an Islamic mythology, in which one describes the mythic elements within these faiths without speaking to the veracity of the faith's tenets or claims about its history.
Classifications
''Ritual myths'' explain the performance of a certain
religious practices or patterns and associated with
temples or centers of worship. ''Origin myths'' describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object. ''
Cult myths'' are often seen as explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify the power of the
deity. ''Prestige myths'' are usually associated with a divinely chosen hero, city, or people. ''Eschatological myths'' are stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be described in ''mythic'' terms. Some myths fit in more than one category. Apocalyptic literature such as ''The Revelation of St. John the Divine'' is an example of a set of eschatological myths.
Related concepts
Myths are not the same as
fables,
legends,
folktales,
fairy tales,
anecdotes or
fiction, but sloppy usage has blurred the distinctions in many people's minds.
Other examples of stories that are not mythology but are frequently confused with myth:
* Sentimental or moral fable,
parable or
anecdote
**
Cupid and Psyche
**
Prodigal Son
**
Cornelia's jewels
*
Romance (genre) Romance
* Cultural
propaganda
**
Betsy Ross
* "Rationalized" explications of myths that are no longer understood
** This is an approach attributed to
Euhemerus
* Narrative drama
* Enriched history
**
Song of Roland
Formation of myths
What forces create myths?
Robert Graves said of Greek myth: "True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially." (''
The Greek Myths,'' Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced, perhaps too strongly, by Sir
James George Frazer's
mythography ''
The Golden Bough,'' and he would have agreed that myths are generated by many cultural needs (''more on the forces that generate myth is needed'').
Myths authorize the cultural institutions of a tribe, a city, or a nation by connecting them with universal truths. Myths justify the current occupation of a territory by a people, for instance.
All cultures have developed over time their own myths, consisting of narratives of their history, their religions, and their heroes. The great power of the symbolic meaning of these stories for the culture is a major reason why they survive as long as they do, sometimes for thousands of years. Mâche (1992, p.20) distinguishes between "''myth'', in the sense of this primary psychic image, with some kind of ''mytho-logy'', or a system of words trying with varying success to ensure a certain coherence between these images.
A collection of myths is called a mythos, e.g. 'the
Roman mythos.' A collection of those is called a mythoi, e.g. 'the Greek and Roman mythoi.' One notable type is the
Creation myths creation myth, which describes how that culture believes the universe was created. Another is the
Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by
gods or heroes.
Joseph Campbell is the most famous modern author on myths and the history of
spirituality. His book ''
The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' (1948) outlined the basic ideas he would continue to elaborate on until his death in 1987. His theories, popularized in a series of books and videos, are more inspirational than scholarly, being more accepted among the general public than in academic circles.
Roger Caillois (1972) contrasts myths of situations determined from outside by historical events with myths of heroes determined from inside by their psychic life. However Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that, "on this level he [Caillois] refers only to the presentation of images in the form of stories, which in themselves are more ancient than stories, not yet submitted to this kind of distinction."
Myths as depictions of historical events
Although myths are often considered to be accounts of events that have not happened, many historians consider that myths can also be accounts of actual events that have become highly imbued with symbolic meaning, or that have been transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant.
This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events,
Euhemerus euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiquity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to
Euhemerus Evhémère's ''Histoire sacrée'' (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, ''Everything-Good'', in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the ''nature'' of things" (Mâche 1992, p.20).
This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local
epithet of one of the
Twelve Olympians Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or account for the deities' attributes or
entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "explain" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by some
Conservatism#Religious conservatism religious conservatives in America with text from the
Bible, notably referencing the many
prophecy prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the
Book of Revelation especially. It was also used during the Russian Communist era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until
World War II the fitness of the
Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical descent from the
Shinto solar deity sun goddess,
Amaterasu.
Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that euhemerist exegesis, "was applied to capture and seize by force of reason qualities of thought, which eluded it on every side." This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as "disguised propaganda in the service of powerful individuals," and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the "social order" to establish "its permanence on the illusion of a natural order." He argues against this interpretation, saying that "what puts an end to this caricature of certain speeches from May 1968 is, among other things, precisely the fact that roles are not distributed once and for all in myths, as would be the case if they were a variant of the idea of an 'opium of the people.'"
Contra Barthes (quote above) Mâche (1992) argues that, "myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it" (p.21), "beyond words and stories, myth seems more like a psychic content from which words, gestures, and musics radiate. History only chooses for it more or less becoming clothes. And these contents surge forth all the more vigorously from the nature of things when reason tries to repress them. Whatever the roles and commentaries with which such and such a socio-historic movement decks out the mythic image, the latter lives a largely autonomous life which continually fascinates humanity. To denounce archaism only makes sense as a function of a 'progressive' ideology, which itself begins to show a certain archaism and an obvious naivety." (p.20)
Other theories
"For
Claude Lévi-Strauss Lévi-Strauss, myth is a structured system of signifiers, whose internal networks of relationships are used to 'map' the structure of other sets of relationships; the 'content' is infinitely variable and relatively unimportant." (Middleton 1990, p.222)
A modern interpretation of myths, primarily as indicators of astrononomical events, has been put forward in such works as ''Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And It's Transmission Through Myth'' by Giorgio De Santillana, Hertha Von Dechend (ISBN 0879232153), and serves as a counterpoint to numerous Jungian (often psychological or mystical) interpretations as put forward by Joseph Campbell.
Catastrophism Catastrophists such as
Immanuel Velikovsky believe that myths are derived from the oral histories of ancient cultures that witnessed cosmic catastrophes. For example, Velikovsky believes the
dragon represented a fiery cosmic object such as a
comet. Believers in catastrophism are only a small minority within the field of mythology.
Modern mythology
Film and book series like ''
Star Wars'' and ''
Tarzan'' have strong mythological aspects that sometimes develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items are not mythology, but contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet the same psychological needs. An excellent example is that developed by
J. R. R. Tolkien in ''
The Silmarillion'' and ''
The Lord of the Rings''.
Fiction, however, does not reach the level of actual mythology until people believe that it really happened. For example, some people believe that fiction author
Clive Barker's ''
Candyman'' was based upon a true story, and new stories have grown up around the figure. The same can be said for the
Blair Witch and many other stories.
Mythology is alive and well in the modern age through
urban legends,
New Age beliefs, certain aspects of religion and so forth. In the
1950s Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book ''
Mythologies''. Swiss psychologist
Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths.
Myths by region
Africa
:
Akamba mythology -
Akan mythology -
Alur mythology -
Ashanti mythology -
Bambara mythology -
Bambuti mythology -
Banyarwanda mythology -
Basari mythology -
Baule mythology -
Bavenda mythology -
Bazambi mythology -
Baziba mythology -
Bushongo mythology -
Dahomey mythology (Fon) -
Dinka mythology -
Efik mythology -
Egyptian mythology (Pre-
Islam) -
Ekoi mythology -
Fan mythology -
Fens mythology -
Fjort mythology -
Herero mythology -
Ibibio mythology -
Ibo mythology -
Isoko mythology -
Kamba mythology -
Kavirondo mythology -
Khoikhoi mythology -
Kurumba mythology -
Lotuko mythology -
Lugbara mythology -
Lunda mythology -
Makoni mythology -
Masai mythology -
Mongo mythology -
Mundang mythology -
Ngbandi mythology -
Nupe mythology -
Nyamwezi mythology -
Oromo mythology -
Ovambo mythology -
Pygmy mythology -
San mythology -
Serer mythology -
Shona mythology -
Shongo mythology -
Songhai mythology -
Sotho mythology -
Tumbuka mythology -
Xhosa mythology -
Yoruba mythology -
Zulu mythology
Asia (non-Middle East)
:
Ayyavazhi mythology -
Buddhist mythology -
Bön Bön mythology (pre-
Buddhism Buddhist Tibetan mythology) -
Chinese mythology -
Hindu mythology -
Hmong mythology -
Japanese mythology (mainstream) -
Hotsuma Tsutae Japanese mythology (Hotsuma version) -
Korean mythology -
Philippine mythology -
Turkic mythology-
Vietnamese mythology
Australia and Oceania
:
Aboriginal mythology (natives of
Australia) -
Maori mythology -
Melanesian mythology -
Micronesian mythology -
Polynesian mythology
Europe
:
Anglo-Saxon mythology -
Basque mythology -
Catalan myths and legends Catalan mythology -
Celtic mythology -
Corsican mythology -
Chuvash mythology -
English mythology -
Etruscan mythology -
French mythology -
Germanic mythology -
Greek mythology -
Finnish mythology -
Irish mythology -
Latvian mythology -
Lithuanian mythology -
Lusitanian mythology -
Norse mythology -
Roman mythology -
Romanian mythology -
Sardinian mythology -
Slavic mythology -
Spanish mythology -
Swiss mythology -
Tatar mythology -
Turkish mythology
Middle East
:
Arab mythology (pre-
Islamic) -
Biblical mythology -
Christian mythology -
Islamic mythology -
Jewish mythology -
Persian mythology -
Mesopotamian mythology (Babylonian, Sumerian, Assrian)
North America
:
Abenaki mythology -
Algonquin mythology -
American folklore (non-
Indigenous peoples of the Americas Native American) -
Blackfoot mythology -
Chippewa mythology -
Chickasaw mythology -
Choctaw mythology -
Creek mythology -
Crow mythology -
Haida mythology -
Ho-Chunk mythology -
Hopi mythology -
Inuit mythology -
Iroquois mythology -
Huron mythology -
Kwakiutl mythology -
Lakota mythology -
Leni Lenape mythology -
Navaho mythology -
Nootka mythology -
Pawnee mythology -
Salish mythology -
Seneca mythology -
Tsimshian mythology -
Ute mythology -
Zuni mythology
South America and Mesoamerica
:
Aztec mythology -
Incan mythology -
Guarani mythology -
Haitian mythology -
Maya mythology -
Olmec mythology -
Toltec mythology
Mythological archetypes
*
Culture hero
*
Earth Mother
*
First man or woman
*
Hero
*
Life-death-rebirth deity
*
Lunar deity
*
Psychopomp
*
Sky father
*
Solar deity
*
Trickster
*
Underworld
Mythological creatures
*
Legendary creature
*
List of species in folklore and mythology
*
List of species in folklore and mythology by type
*
List of species in fantasy fiction
Books on mythology
* ''
Bulfinch's Mythology'' by
Thomas Bulfinch
* ''
The Golden Bough'' by
James George Frazer
* ''
The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' and other titles by
Joseph Campbell
* ''
Mythology (book) Mythology'' by
Edith Hamilton
* ''
Chinese Mythology (book) Mythology '' by
Anne Birrell
* ''Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis
See also
{{wiktionarypar2|myth|mythology}}
{{portal}}
*
Artificial mythology
*
Claude Lévi-Strauss
*
Folklore
*
Folkloristics
*
List of deities
*
List of legends and myths
*
List of mythical objects
*
Metanarrative
*
Monomyth
*
Mytheme
*
Mythical place
* ''
Mythologies'', a book by
Roland Barthes
*
National myth
*
Religion
*
Urban legend
*
Summary of Christian eschatological differences#Allegorical or Mythical Mythological and eschatological Biblical interpretation
References
* Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, ''Social Psychology''. Addison-Wesley,
1997.
* Kees W. Bolle, ''The Freedom of Man in Myth''. Vanderbilt University Press,
1968.
* Caillois, Roger (1972). ''Le mythe et l'homme''. Gallimard.
*
Joseph Campbell, ''
The Hero with a Thousand Faces''. Princeton University Press,
1949.
*
Mircea Eliade. ''Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return''. Princeton University Press,
1954.
* Louis Herbert Gray [ed.], ''The Mythology of All Races'', in 12 vols., 1916.
*
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
**''Mental Functions in Primitive Societies'' (1910)
**''Primitive Mentality'' (1922)
**''The Soul of the Primitive'' (1928)
**''The Supernatural and the Nature of the Primitive Mind'' (1931)
**''Primitive Mythology'' (1935)
**''The Mystic Experience and Primitive Symbolism'' (1938)
* Charles H. Long, ''Alpha: The Myths of Creation''. George Braziller,
1963.
* Mâche, François-Bernard (1983, 1992). ''Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion'' (''Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion'', trans. Susan Delaney). Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3718653214.
* Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). ''Studying Popular Music''. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
* Santillana and Von Dechend (1969, 1992 re-issue). "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth", Harvard University Press. ISBN 0879232153.
*
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
**''Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology'', 1856.
**''Philosophy of Mythology'', 1857.
**''Philosophy of Revelation'', 1858.
External links
-
Myths and Myth-Makers Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by comparative mythology by John Fiske
-
Godchecker Easy-to-use searchable encyclopedia of gods and goddesses from around the world; currently has over 2,500 gods listed, including many obscure deities.
-
Using Mythic-Archetypal Approaches in the Language Arts. ERIC Digest.
-
www.mythologyweb.com Information about myths, legends and folklore, as well as a message board.
-
How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives
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'''Mythology''' is the study of
myths: stories of a particular culture that it believes to be true and which feature a specific
religion religious or
belief system.
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