Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts

Monday, January 20, 2020

the problem comes not from mythos itself, but from mythmongers demanding that their story be validated by logos institution

--- Peter Heehs, in Myth, History, and Theory, History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb 1994)

Excerpts:

Since the Greeks, logos (word as demonstrable truth) has been opposed to mythos (word as authoritative pronouncement). […] The Agastya-Aurobindo narrative is an example of an account based on factual materials that gradually became transformed into fiction. […] The Ramjanmabhumi narrative (at the center of sectarian conflict in India) took form in much the same way.
[...]
Clashes between logos and mythos are not uncommon, and are not confined to the third world. Greece's blocking of the European Community's recognition of Macedonia on account of that country's name and flag is the result of a mythos notion even if couched in logical language. The debate over the suitability of basing the teaching of geology and biology on the Hebrew scriptures is another example. And when a prominent speaker tells the Republican National Convention, "There is a religious war going on for the soul of America," he clearly is using the language of myth in what is often thought of as a logos forum. In each of these cases the problem comes not from mythos itself, but from mythmongers demanding that their story be validated by logos institutions.

Friday, January 04, 2019

Zeus does not arrive at decisions which he then enacts in the mortal world; rather, human events are themselves an enactment of divine will

--- Harold Bloom. Quote taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus, which seems to be citing Bloom's Major Dramatists: Aeschylus (2002), p. 14-15. (I wasn't able to verify the reference.)

Quote in context (taken from the Wikipedia article):


Much critical attention has been paid to the question of theodicy in Aeschylus. For generations, scholars warred incessantly over 'the justice of Zeus,' unintentionally blurring it with a monotheism imported from Judeo-Christian thought. The playwright undoubtedly had religious concerns; for instance, Jacqueline de Romilly suggests that his treatment of time flows directly out of his belief in divine justice. But it would be an error to think of Aeschylus as sermonizing. His Zeus does not arrive at decisions which he then enacts in the mortal world; rather, human events are themselves an enactment of divine will.


Tuesday, December 25, 2018

He had done as his dreams had told him, but dreams know more than they reveal

--- Neil Gaiman, in the Chapter "The Children of Loki" of his Norse Mythology (2017), p. 96.

In context:

Odin took the serpent to the shore of the sea that lies beyond all lands, the sea that circles Midgard, and there on the shore he freed Jormungundr, and watched it slither and slip beneath the waves and swim away in loops and curls.
Odin watched it with his one eye until it was lost on the horizon, and he wondered if he had done right thing. He did not know. He had done as his dreams had told him, but dreams know more than they reveal, even to the wisest of the gods.



Friday, November 09, 2018

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream

--- Joseph Campbell, from The Hero With a Thousand Faces (from The Monomyth, ch. 1, “Myth and Dream”)

Extended quote:

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.

I found this via Steven Aizenstat, who said in Dream Tending: "A myth is a story that expresses something meaningful about a culture, from origins to values to sanctioned social interactions.   Every night the dreaming psyche is generating something of our own personal mythology, informing us about our origins, values, and so on."