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Why Myth Has Power |
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I have heard the argument that myths are for children so many times that people must believe it! However, the statement that the "developement of humankind reflects the developement of an individual," is more in tune with Vico than with those skeptical of myth. Children are hugely fantastical, middle aged adults are realistic and the older adults begin to return to myths and stories, creating more myths for the next generation of children. So, humanity has reached its adult stage and is maturing beyond utilitarian views, though how we gan get it to retire is a mystery to me. I personally do not believe myths to be hard facts, but do believe that myths have power if only in the effect they have on the way a person acts and thinks. For example, there is the age old miasma around the number thirteen which leads people to avoid it unless they decide to tempt fate and are fascinated with it. The number itself has no power, it is just a 1 and a 3, but the effect of a person acting differently in reaction to his or her encounter with the number causes one to jump the thirteenth step only to miss the next step and fall to the bottom of the steps, or makes another refuse to dine with thirteen to avoid an accident to the first one to stand up then they make a scene when that scenario is unavoidable causing the first stander to do something clumsy. In short, myth permeates our subconcious and we create the power of the myth. |
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Creation Story
My favorite Creation Story is the Scandinavian story of Audulma and Ymirr. Though the spellings on the two names differ in different tellings of the tale the content is the same in all of them. True to the geography of the Scandinavian part of the world the tale begins with a chaos of ice. From this ice first Ymirr comes into being, hungry and alone then Audulma the cow comes into being to nourish him. As the story unfolds there are many striking similarities to Tolkien's Silmarillion in both content and name types. Both tales have the world based on a tree or trees of some sort, both tell of the seperation of the valiant and the mundane, both require magic to bridge the distance between the two realms and the list could continue on. I checked with different sources to make sure that Ymirr's story was older than Tolkien and the tale as it is told now dates back to 350 C.E., definately older than Tolkien. This discovery leads me to believe that Tolkien used this story as the background for his novels. |
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What is Love? |
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What is love? Is it something that can be defined? Maybe, but the task is not easy. Is love a sense of chaos or a sense of peace? I believe love is a sense of peace, a feeling of belonging and devotion that is present even if the object of that devotion is ignorant of the fact. It is something that must come from the individual feeling it: you cannot force another to love. That is why "true Love" is so hard to find, because both lovers must love the other as much as the other loves them. |
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Epic Weekend |
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Last Friday we were given an assignment to have a mythological weekend, no problem. Directly after class my weekend started with my playing Hurcules at a local stable. Then the evening appeared to be over, I did not want to go to any of the parties I had been told about so I lounged around the house for a while. It was dull and depressing until many hours after dark.
I was getting restlessdreading my ultimate task for the weekend when the bodyless messenger informed me that I needed to listen to it. Upon my answering the summons it told me that my active friends would be competing in an athletic event involving one on one competition. Eager to avoid my previous plans I rapidly accepted the summons and went to the competition. The intensity was high and after a small amount of bloodshed and a few injuries my friends were triumphant.
Apparently the muses do not want the full details of the epic because they have deleted them three times. So this shall be the end of the tale. |
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