Exploring Mythology

As we all know, life is a series of phases and stages, each full of it's own trials which present to us opportunities for making choices in how we grow as individuals. Unfortunately, as we are also keenly aware, life does not come with an instruction manual.

As mankind has grown in consciousness and self-awareness, to the same degree, we seem to also be tuning out, or losing, the sense of instincts which guide our animal brothers through their existences.

So considering these predicaments, how does one navigate through the tumultuous life of a human being?

Fortunately we have managed to develop a solution, in fact we've been crafting it and utilizing it, much like any tool, since we've been able to speak and draw images.

It's a uniquely human trait which not only guides, but brings us together communally. And it's the one creative drive which has remained consistent throughout our history, all the world over. We know it as mythology.

Myths indeed are more than just entertaining stories or attempts at explaining nature. Scholars believe they arise spontaneously from our collective unconscious, where archetypes, or, hidden instincts dwell. Our myths provide us with allegorical imagery which in turn activates our unconscious psychology as if illuminating the deeper aspects of the mind. And therefore, as Joseph Campbell simply puts it: Myths give us a road map with which to experience and discover ourselves. They're clues to the spiritual potentialities to the human life.

Or, as Campbell poetically puts it: Dream is a personalized myth, myth is the depersonalized dream.



Myths are narratives which transmit modes of behavior, patterns of action and ways of experiencing the world that promote a healthy psychological development and meaningful life. The myth, in other words, embodies wisdom of generations past, offering solutions to our shared existential dilemma and helping unite a culture under a shared vision... Myths help us shoulder our existential burdens and alleviate our psychological sufferings.
(From the video, Nietzsche and Jung: Myth and the Age of the Hero - by Academy Of Ideas)

In other words, myth is the experience of life, according to Campbell.



Myths help us understand the world. They provide insight into how previous civilizations made sense of their circumstances. Myths hint at some of the deep structures of our collective psyche, and even offer a glimpse into our own minds.
(From the video, Freud, Jung, Luke Skywalker, and the Psychology of Myth - by Crash Course)

Myth is a repository of allegorical instruction, to shape the individual to his group.
- Émile Durkheim

Myth is a group dream, symptomatic of archetypal urges within the depths of the human psyche.
- Carl Jung

Myth is the traditional vehicle of man's profoundest metaphysical insights.
- Kumaraswamy

The images of myth must be the unnoticed, omnipresent guardians under whose protection the young soul grows up, and by whose signs a man interprets his life and struggles for himself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy



Nietzsche also says that myth and art serve as a bulwark against the universal pessimism which would otherwise paralyze us. And that there is a deep connection between the things we create and the lives that we live.

Mythology is a shared medium with which to make sense of the world around us. It is the unifying narrative of our identity and destiny. Myth gives us a shared narrative with which to find meaning in even the hardest trials.

Myths give us powers of orientation. Myth acts as a framework by which fickle and unpredictable fortune can be comprehended. It serves as a structure in which one could embed one's self.
(From the video, Art & Culture in Nietzsche: the Birth of Tragedy - by Perceptua)



Campbell states that the purpose and actual affect of rites, which are enacted myths, was to conduct people across those difficult thresholds of transformation that demand a change in the patterns, not only of conscious, but also of unconscious life.

Myth often contains allegorical wisdom pertaining to life's problems and is often able to illuminate the subtler, more poignant aspects of existence. The myth of the hero overcoming the dangerous foe contains psychological insights which pertain to how we ought to behave in life and what we need to do in order to overcome the challenges which we may be confronted with.
(From the video, Carl Jung and Religion - An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion - by Nexus Void)

We are all heroes struggling to accomplish our adventure. As human beings we engage in a series of struggles to develop as individuals and to find our place in society. Beyond that, we long for wisdom: we want to understand the universe and the significance of our role in it.
Eva Thury & Margret Devinney

Or, as Campbell explains: the Individual hero is symbolic of the psychological journey we all go through. Your consciousness is transformed by the hero's trials and tests he/she undergoes, or certain illuminating revelations.



Campbell illustrates in this video:
Myths come form down here [the Collective Unconscious], where the energies come from, as dreams do. And it's the business of Ego not to try to dictate to this circle to say how square it should be, but to try to bring it's impulse system into relationship to the conditions of the environment which Ego has constructed. Culture is a cooperation - it's the result of a cooperation between the Self, you might say, and the Ego. And mythology is the language of the Self speaking to the Ego system, and the Ego system has to learn how to read it. And for the most part, we in our world have forgotten.


Now, a big problem plaguing modern times is the disappearance of myths.

As said in this video, in the western world, myth exists only in small pockets, a lack of myth does a lot to scatter the force of a people, to drive out the spirit of unity and to leave them searching for meaning in any avenue open to them.

As Nietzsche said: Let's imagine a culture which has no fixed and sacred primordial seed but which is condemned to exhaust all possibilities and to live on a meager diet from all other cultures, and there we have the present.

And in Campbell's discussions with Bill Moyers we have this:
Moyers: So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

Campbell: What we've got on our hands. As I say, if you want to find what it means to have a society without any rituals, read the New York Times.