Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

[JamesByrne]

Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and how do you view myth as a whole

Would you study myth to find out about gods or maybe to get information on Pagan theology? Would you see myth as similar to the bible, stories intended to impart religious belief? or maybe as just stories from a long time ago?

Mythology plays a large role in my neopaganism, second only to folklore and Id look at it for information on gods and how the people of the day might have seen the world around them.

Personally I see it as fiction though, not a religious expression and Id put it well into the historical christian era. To me its essentially fiction that uses indigenous motifs as well as motifs from continental lit. Id say it also has political propaganda and biblical dogma in there too. I try and understand all those things and sift through the different beliefs implied outside the narrative of the stories.

[Celtic Tiger]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Myth, contrary to popular belief, is not a synonym for fiction. Myth is sacred narrative or ideology in narrative form. Thus the Bible is myth, but saying so is not the same thing as saying that the Bible is false. Most Christians (and indeed, most people) do not understand the distinction, and thus get offended when the Bible is called myth or when the creation narrative is called creation myth.

So myth is not similar to the Bible, as similarity implies a lack of sameness; the Bible is myth, or more accurately, a collection of myths, some of which have historical value and some of which have ideological or theological value, and some of which have both.

To answer your question, myth has been very important to me in the finding of my own path, as well as folklore and historical accounts. Given my interest in Celtic spirituality, surviving myth and folklore is about all that there is to go on. There is no body of written scriptures that has been maintained by the Celts for a couple thousand years; much of what we do have is either transcribed/translated by monks of another religion or recorded secondhand by people (mostly enemies) who encountered the Celts. Which makes actual reconstruction pretty much impossible, though I have great respect for those who try to do so.

[JamesByrne]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Thanks for replying Celtic Tiger

The bible as a myth is something Im into myself. In your neopaganism would you have myths as a type of bible? If a less intact one?
When you say you view myth as a survival, would you say that they are representative of a body of pre christian oral tradition? Thats an interesting idea that Ive met a few times but its not something I understand. Surely by virtue of christians being around to write it down its not pre christian...

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

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Personally I see it as fiction though, not a religious expression and Id put it well into the historical christian era.

I think we have to be a little wary of saying that myth all dates from the historical christian era. Obviously a great deal does not. And of course not all myth is in literary format, either. There are examples in art, carvings etc., plus we can recover things from archaeology. The temptation of course is to stir it all together and come out with some sort of homogenous whole. This is risky at best and leads to some awful statements at worst.

And I agree with Celtic Tiger that myth is not a synonym for fiction. At one time, the words logos and mythos were virtually synonymous, meaning ‘thing said’; eventually their meanings shifted, until mythos meant a story unlikely to be true, while logos could mean ‘rational account’ or even ‘theory’. So meanings can and do change. I think it's very important to understand this.

Another point worth making is that even in ancient times some authors had their doubts. In his Early History of Rome, Livy often included disclaimers, stating for example that the myths of Aeneas ‘chime well enough with the belief in his divine birth....’. Yet he also included precise dates, place names and genealogies, along with myth and history suggesting at least a partial use of mythos in order to explore historical reality.

I think to be honest that we should each use myth as suits us best,. That way it does no harm to anyone, while at the same time we need to be aware of the limitations that myths may have.

I use some myth in my own path, but not much. I do however use the underlying understanding of myth in general to make sense of much of the world around me - i.e. I use myth as a vehicle of exploration rather than as an end in itself.

[Celtic Tiger]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Thanks for replying Celtic Tiger

The bible as a myth is something Im into myself. In your neopaganism would you have myths as a type of bible? If a less intact one?
When you say you view myth as a survival, would you say that they are representative of a body of pre christian oral tradition? Thats an interesting idea that Ive met a few times but its not something I understand. Surely by virtue of christians being around to write it down its not pre christian...

Monks at the time were essentially scribes. Ireland was a hinterland where monks went to get away from worldliness and civilization, but the monks that went there were literate. They put stories, myth, and folklore that had previously been transmitted orally to paper. The issue isn't so much that they altered it or misrepresented it, but that myths change over time or are told differently in order to make different points; using the Bible as an example, you have four canonical gospels, three of which are kind of similar and one of which is very dissimilar, plus numerous non canonical gospels.

One thing that a lot of people are not aware of is that the gospels were written for different audiences. The gospel of Mark was written to a Roman audience, the Gospel of Matthew and John to Jewish audiences, and the gospel of Luke to a Greek named Theophilus. While John and Matthew were written to Jewish audiences, their writing styles were markedly different. Mark's gospel emphasizes Jesus' authority; he says to disciples to come and follow him and they immediately drop their nets and go follow him. Respect for the chain of command, submitting to authority, etc. were all Roman virtues. Luke's gospel was written as an investigative account and reads in a more story like form, citing dates and places. Matthew's emphasizes Jewish values and John's emphasizes Christ's divinity and the immediacy of salvation. Non canonical gospels also read differently.

Now, imagine if only one of these gospels had been written down: it would likely have been the one most popular in the region at the time. It may have simply been the one that the author happened to hear. Supposing it was only the Gospel of John. Now you have no nativity. There goes Christmas retailer profits.

So getting back to the myths of the Celts, what was written down may have been written without alteration, but it was unlikely to have been the only version of the myth. Consider that in some accounts, Danu is Dagda's mother but in others, his daughter. I believe that she is also associated with Brigid, and it is possible that Brigid was originally not the daughter figure at all, but was given that particular place at a certain point.

Most of the Irish gods have equivalents in Britain and continental Europe among the other Celts, as well as strong similarities in both purpose and name in other continental cultures. Dagda, good god, is itself a derivative of Dia, from which we get deity, deva, Deus, Ju(pater), Dis(pater), and Zeus. So you potentially have the same figures migrating west and their stories changing and in some cases, combining with other stories over time. We see this with Brigid, who survived into the next mythological cycle to become Saint Brigit, foster mother of Christ. In this instance, Jesus was grafted onto Brigit's myth and Brigit's myth was altered and blended with the life of an abbess in Kildare (an avatar of Brigid?).

It should be unsurprising that the Jews rejected the idea of Yeshua, the dying and rising king, but that he was embraced by western cultures where that theme was already present. It should also come as no surprise that it was theologians from western cultures that had triplicity of gods and goddesses who introduced the trinitarian doctrine to Christianity.

So myth blends, changes, adapts, and retcons as need be. The Celtic myths that we have are but a snapshot, a moment in time, of what those myths looked like to the Celts of the time that they were written down. So yes, it is representative of pre-Christian Celtic beliefs, but not inclusive of all or inclusive of all variants of the beliefs embodied in surviving myth.

Sorry for the long winded answer!

[Zephyranth]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

I am very fascinated by mythology, so I study it at length for my own personal reasons. I find that the stories help me better understand the deities that I'm working with. Once I begin to understand the bigger picture, I can understand how the deities relate to each other and how I can connect them together in order to make associations between them. Just a personal preference of mine

[Witcher]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

I am a far cry from a reconstructionist so I don't use the myths to find my personal religious truths very often, but I do find them beautiful. I am particularly interested in the mystery religions and the "foreign cults" of the Roman Empire such as Magna Mater, Hellenized Isis, Mithras, etc. I do appreciate the beauty in some myth. The so-called "Homeric Hymns" are a personal favorite and I find myself reciting the one dedicated to the "Mother of the Gods" almost like a rosary. I also like myth because of the timelessness I often see, the celebration of courage, devotion, love, etc. There's something very Humanist in a lot of myth and I find that inspiring.

[thalassa]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

The word "myth" is Greek...and the Greek myths were written by Greeks pre-Christianity. So...I have problems with this statement "Surely by virtue of christians being around to write it down its not pre christian..." as having anything to do with Paganism as a whole, or towards any but possibly a few specific Paganisms in the first place. Although, I find the idea false in its premise anyhow--the transcription (or even translation) of an idea from one culture to another does not change the culture of origin...it just adds a layer of bias that one has to move beyond--both within themselves, and from the history.

Myth is not synonymous with being merely fiction--myth embodies a truth that deeper and more meaningful that a literal truth could be because it is not a literal truth. Some fiction can be mythic...but not all of it is good enough.

As such, myth is the primary way in which human ideas from specific eras and cultures are transmitted...and by human ideas, I mean the collective ideas that define groups of humans at their most basic level of how they view and interact with the universe and each other.

[JamesByrne]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

The word "myth" is Greek...and the Greek myths were written by Greeks pre-Christianity. So...I have problems with this statement "Surely by virtue of christians being around to write it down its not pre christian..." as having anything to do with Paganism as a whole, or towards any but possibly a few specific Paganisms in the first place..

I dont want to be purely contradictory but 2 reasons: 1 Poetry, Drama and wisdom texts can be older but types of prose literature like myths are medieval no exceptions and 2 the prose mythology we have are in manuscripts from the medieval so empirically they are not prechristian.

Maybe the medieval literature we have now is based on earlier lit but the likelyhood of the fragments of poems on papyrus from homor or hesiod being anything other then an inspiration for a manuscript like the one we get the illiad from in the 10c ad is tiny. Greek lit is self referential and deliberately archaeic that makes it seem older but thats not the same thing. Thats a method of legitimising the prose, the myth reflects the political status quo of the day, promotes patrons and presents christian dogma as an ancient truth just like all myths do.

The majority of greek myths we have come through Pseudo-Apollodorus and the earliest it was mentioned was 8th C ad by a Patriarch of the greek church and the earliest copy we have is the 15th C ad. by a cardinal. Granted it could have been reproduced for a few centuries but itd be altered beyond recignition and theres no way it was preserved from the 1st C bc when Appollodorus was supposed to have been around.

Emotionally we might believe that the medieval literature is based on a literary tradition 1500 - 2000 years earlier but its unlikely without a time machine.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Ovid wrote his metamorphoses in the first century CE - and these dealt with myth. I accept they are poetry. But why insist on prose literature for myth? Plus of course there are references to myth in inscriptions.

Just curious why you're making the distinction.

[thalassa]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Ovid wrote his metamorphoses in the first century CE - and these dealt with myth. I accept they are poetry. But why insist on prose literature for myth? Plus of course there are references to myth in inscriptions.

Just curious why you're making the distinction.

Ditto this.

Myth is myth--regardless of HOW its written, WHEN its written or WHOM its written by...its the collective search of humanity for truth, meaning and significance, of the experience of life, so that it resonates beyond the merely physical (and short) time that we are alive into something more.

Speaking as a sailor...its a bit like a sea story. Actually, sea stories are the mythology of Naval service. Regardless of what country you come from, and what era you served in, and whether or not you might have been on a Naval vessel or a commercial one, they are a universally shared (by anyone with that background) language of the experience of life at sea (or on shore) that is ultimately timeless.

The greatest myths have revealed themselves to be less like dogmatic structures than garments…woven and unwoven and rewoven through the generations, composed always of the stuff from the same source: wisdom from the heart of mankind. Revision (is) essential for understanding and overcoming our past (and) that great human promise of moving towards the future with the spirit of truth.


~ from the introduction of Varitan’s Illustrated Greek Myths by Yonah Ignacio Varitan…

[JamesByrne]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Ovid wrote his metamorphoses in the first century CE - and these dealt with myth. I accept they are poetry. But why insist on prose literature for myth? Plus of course there are references to myth in inscriptions.

Just curious why you're making the distinction.

I didnt know who ovid was thanks for that Tylluan. Ive seen medea twice over the years and read the play but didnt know.

I suppose you could call them both mythology if all you meant by myth was something to do with a god but prose is more complex and less codified then poetry and that means we can get more info out of it.

Taking the imagery in poetry and prose as an example Poetry uses strict forms so every word and image generated through them is contrived by the poet to directly impart their intended message. Thats the skill of a poet. Prose its more open in form and its imagery more likely to reflect a common world view experienced by the writer. In the prose of the Iliad the horses hooves throw up white dust towards the bronze sky as the achaeans gallop towards their enemies. The intention is to progress the story and to create drama but it also tells us the sky is bronze which indirectly imparts something significant about a secular or pre christian world view. I dont know what Bronze conveys Ive no context for it because prose is only imparting a belief indirectly and while some poetry is gnomic the language has a direct meaning thats an intergral part of the poem and wed never get the bronze sky tossed around in the same way.

Superfluous details like that arent included in poetry so if we look at it as mythology itd be crap mythology in comparason to prose. Poetry shouldnt be viewed like that it is its own thing, it serves a different social function. Like youd never see someone recite the Iliad at an occasion like you would a poem. If we looked at prose in the same way itd be crap poetry.

Anyway thats just my opinion. I like poems like The Caileach Beare and I mine it for info like I do prose and folk lore about the cailleach so I dont really know what my point was in saying ones myth and the other isnt theyre both valuable to me as a neopagan... the difference is kind of irrellivant if youre focus is neopaganism and not comparative myth or something.

- - - Updated - - -

Ditto this.

Myth is myth--regardless of HOW its written, WHEN its written or WHOM its written by...its the collective search of humanity for truth, meaning and significance, of the experience of life, so that it resonates beyond the merely physical (and short) time that we are alive into something more.

Speaking as a sailor...its a bit like a sea story. Actually, sea stories are the mythology of Naval service. Regardless of what country you come from, and what era you served in, and whether or not you might have been on a Naval vessel or a commercial one, they are a universally shared (by anyone with that background) language of the experience of life at sea (or on shore) that is ultimately timeless.

Thats an intereseting way of looking at myth Thalassa. Would you see myth and folklore as the same thing?

Sea stories would that be stuff like biddy earlies family drowning in a neamhog stuff that happens at sea or would it be stuff like dont go to sea on good friday because the devil tries to trick you followed by a story of when it happend or superstitions/folk trads like the knife in the mast that youd throw into the sea to calm the storm...

[thalassa]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

Or, for another example, (in addition to Ovid), Enheduanna's Exaltation of Inanna...which is one of the first recorded poems and one of the first recorded myths.

Would you see myth and folklore as the same thing?

Sometimes. IMO, they are more like...overlapping circles. I think that myth has an epic component (the common definition, not the literature type) that folklore can have, but doesn't always. Mythology has a scope that transcends culture and time. Folklore is a good entertaining story that belongs to a particular culture and time. Campfire stories are a type of (modern) folklore. Sometimes the entertainment has a bigger scope....in which case, I think it classifies as myth. A body of folklore, taken all together though, can classify as myth, because it makes a transcending statement about people and humanity in general in the context of culture and time.

Sea stories would that be stuff like biddy earlies family drowning in a neamhog stuff that happens at sea or would it be stuff like dont go to sea on good friday because the devil tries to trick you followed by a story of when it happend or superstitions/folk trads like the knife in the mast that youd throw into the sea to calm the storm...

Both. It depends on the context of how it is told, and what statement it makes beyond the literal telling of the story.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

I suppose you could call them both mythology if all you meant by myth was something to do with a god but prose is more complex and less codified then poetry and that means we can get more info out of it.

James I don't agree with your comments about prose and poetry. We can get plenty of information from both. Poetry basically has its roots in the oral tradition. And yes, it does use strict forms, but I think you would need very specific examples to convince me that this detracts from its mythological content.

Also - and here I have to admit to being a bit flummoxed - you describe the Iliad as prose, which it isn't (or only in translation). It is comes from Homer, 8th century BCE and is about as pre-Christian as you could wish for. The example about the bronze sky has no bearing on this particular thread.... I think you might be referring to genre passages, which are a different thing entirely?

As for:

Superfluous details like that arent included in poetry so if we look at it as mythology itd be crap mythology in comparason to prose. Poetry shouldnt be viewed like that it is its own thing, it serves a different social function. Like youd never see someone recite the Iliad at an occasion like you would a poem. If we looked at prose in the same way itd be crap poetry.

But the Iliad IS a poem. And it's an extremely ancient one, written in the dactylic hexameter. And yes, people did recite the Iliad. They recited it in full sometimes, and they also recited sections of it.

So - with respect - I do feel here you're barking up the wrong tree.

I think your original question was fine...'Does myth play a role in your neopaganism'.

But this particular part of the argument has some big holes in it. I am happy to discuss myth, but I really think we need a much tighter rein on the discussion. Making a distinction between poetry and prose is not really the issue, plus there are other sources that haven't even been considered.

[ChainLightning]

Re: Does Myth play a role in your neopaganism and...

I must concur with Mrs. P.

And refer back to Thal's post...

Myth is myth--regardless of HOW its written, WHEN its written or WHOM its written by...

The style of writing is completely irrelevant to the myth. The oral standard is not in the writing, by any language, any time-frame or anybody.


Please, get back to the original topic, myths and neo-Paganism, and feel free to start a different one, for debating prose versus poetry.