Book Review: The Global Myths: Exploring Primitive, Pagan, Sacred,
and Scientific Mythologies – by Alexander Eliot (Penguin, 1994)
This was mostly a fun and fascinating read with analysis of
mythology intermingled with stories and biographical accounts of people. The
introduction by Jonathan Young compares Eliot to Joseph Campbell and indeed he
was praised by Campbell as a masterful storyteller. Eliot tells stories, some according
to known depictions but others considerably enhanced and some entirely spun to
make points.
Eliot dismisses overly dogmatic analyses of myths. He admits
that myths can be frustrating to the rational mind and “inhospitable to the
inhibited.” He suggests approaching the ‘mythic dimension’ or ‘mythosphere,’ as
one would approach a love affair – with all the daring and uncertainty.
The first story is of Thor who found himself among giants.
He proclaimed his ability to out-wrestle anyone. An elderly female giant
grabbed him by the throat until he surrendered. The daughter giant then sought
to help him heal by giving him a horn of mead but he was unable to drain the
mead which kept refilling and soon passed out. He woke up on a lonely moor
wondering if he had been dreaming but he had a bad hangover. He asked Odin
about his experience but Odin could only say that the giants were a tough lot
and hard to figure out. Eliot then recalls his own experience in northern
Norway of unexpectedly encountering a wild reindeer herd that ran right through
where he was standing.
Myth and religion co-evolve with our quest to find meaning
in life, and death. Myth and dogma seem to overlap and co-evolve as well,
guiding our actions and reactions. He notes that psychology has clarified that
myth does indeed affect us. Myth also often defies codification and analysis so
psychological theories are limited. I think the work of James Hillman may have
led him to a similar conclusion. Heroes, characters, ideals, and metaphors give
us morphic and anthropomorphic “forms” with which we can identify. Psyche and
identity seem intertwined. It is perhaps the subjectivity of individual
experience, the phenomenology of experience that makes myth hard to codify. We
chase our own tales! (he says, as Aesop might say). The Ancient Greeks assigned
both life and death to the hero Herakles. After his death as a human he was
reborn among the immortal gods. Myth can envelope such contradictions.
He mentions the two biggest sources of classical myth in our
times: Bullfinch and Edith Hamilton. He notes Bullfinch’s efforts to make myth
more suitable for children. Since then classical myth has merged with myths of
other societies as well as with psychology, sociology, and ethnology.
He mentions camping for a few months in Hopi and Navaho
territory when he was young where he encountered and interacted with them in
their own domain. This helped him break out of his own cultural bubble as well
as develop an appreciation for their myths and culture.
He says there is no ‘true myth’ nor ‘mythic truth.’ The
‘mythosphere’ dwells within, in the human mind. The mind is fluid, inclusive,
and inconclusive, he says, and thus can accommodate myth. We participate in the
mythosphere. We all help construct myth to some degree. Myth often houses
contradictions. It is one way we deal with contradictions and competing ideas. He
sees it a bit like the wave/particle duality of light in quantum mechanics.
Apart from personal myths and fairy tales he sees four kinds
of myths: the main two are primitive and pagan myths. Less prominent and rarely
thought of as mythic are the scientific and sacred myths, those centered around
scientific ideas and the contemporary religious ideas. He likes to compare them
to the four winds.
Regarding primitive myth he says it involves humans in
nature and likes a definition given by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, “The
re-arising of primordial reality in narrative form.” Eliot sees it as unanalytical,
intuitive, and bold.
Primitive myth is sourced and kept by shamans and medicine
people. Primitive myth derives from oral traditions and is best presented that
way, he says. It is way to connect to ancestors. Here he tells the Navaho story
of Bead Woman’s two sons, part of a rarely performed ceremony called Bead Woman
Way.
Pagan myth in his classification is mostly classical Greek
and Roman myth.
“Pagan myth generally concerns ironic and tragicomic
interactions between human and divine beings.”
It concerns human nature more so than nature. Greek and Roman
cultures were fairly patriarchal. Here he tells the story of Amphitryon and his
hound Laelaps, who meets his strange fate when in pursuit of a fox vixen.
Sacred myth stems from the major religions. He recalls
William Blake who noted that ancient poets animated all of nature and such
notions were later exploited by priesthoods to enslave people to dogma.
Dogmatists seem to hold that only their own dogmatic scenarios are divinely inspired
and thus “real.” Eliot sees no clear dividing line between divine revelation
and human inspiration.
“Religionists say, in effect: “God told me; this is how it
is.” Scientists argue: “The relevant data arrayed itself before me and showed
me; this is how it is.”
Science also has technology to back it up. It is void of the
emotion of religion. Karl Popper noted that science too is dependent on
precedent so that it is often fallible. Thomas Kuhn noted that science is paradigmatic,
that it is often girded by these “temporary allegorical umbrellas of shared
belief.” Truth and/or falsehood in science often implies – being true or false within
the context of the currently prevailing paradigm.
“Scientific myths are valid while they last, very nearly as
influential as religious ones… These four myth-types {primitive, pagan, sacred,
and scientific}, along with fairy tales and personal myths constitute a
luminous although self-contradictory miracle: namely, the mythosphere –
thousands of years in the making – as it exists today in my psyche and yours.”
In Part 2 he explores the ‘Labyrinthine Ways’ of knowledge.
He first explores a few mythic explanations about how fetishes and statues get empowered.
Between and among stories he explores some of the many myths involving twins.
Even considering the psychological aspects of mythology he suggests Freud and
Jung as mythopoeic twins! Freud saw the sex-drive as prime motivator. Our childhood
wishes could become an Oedipus complex, said he. Jung pronounced Freud’s work
as incomplete. The “unconconsious” of Freud, he said, was incomplete and so he
theorized the notion of a “collective unconscious,” made up of universal
anthropomorphic forms, or Archetypes, such as Anima, Animus, Shadow, Wise Old
Man, and Cosmic Mother. Mythology was fertile ground for both Freud and Jung.
However, Eliot notes, we should be little wary of them:
“They were jealously ambitious mythmaker-poets, disguised as
doctors in white tunics.”
He analyzes the Legend of Io who wandered as a cow/cow
goddess. Zeus is callous, Hera cruel, and Prometheus obsessed.
Zeus/Jupiter/Dzeus-pater likely came from conquering Indo-European tribes from
the north and ruled the Mediterranean for over a millennium, possibly replacing
goddess-based agricultural cults. The Hellenes, he notes, never developed
hierarchical priesthoods like the Egyptians. Prometheus is a provocateur responsible
for the fate of humans not unlike the biblical Eve, many have noted. Knowledge
was the bane of both Eve and Prometheus. Eliot suggests that intellectual
knowledge and ‘know-how’ splits the psyche by favoring intellect over instinct.
By Roman times belief in the gods had changed form somewhat
with different styles of belief. The emperor was seen as a divine king.
Christianity grew in importance with its war between good and evil. By the
Middle Ages to know was to know Latin and by the Renaissance knowledge of Greek
and Greek knowledge was revived.
He tells the story of Semele and Zeus, with Hera’s discovery
of the tryst, the immolation of Semele, and the birth of Dionysus. He sees Zeus
here as representing the patriarchal Dorian invaders, Semele as the
agricultural goddess-based indigenous people, and Dionysus as the new, the
bringer of wine which had both a maddening and civilizing affect. Perhaps
coincidentally writing became widespread in Ancient Greece at the same time the
Dionysian cults spread. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, Dionysianism led to
the arts of drama and tragedy and they did it, said Aristotle, ‘by inducing
heavy doses of pity and terror. Dionysus is dangerous, says Eliot. Below he
gives his own rendering of lines from Euripedes’ play Hippolytus:
Whatever far-off world exists
dearer to man than life itself
darkness keeps it in her arms
and shrouds it in a cloud.
No one has found a way beyond
What lies beneath is unrevealed
Adrift upon a glittering stream,
We sigh for some nameless thing.
It is perhaps simple acknowledgement of the frustrating
yet intriguing nature of mystery itself and our longing for meaning.
Also coincident with the spread of Dionysian cults was a
contrasting movement toward purely rational thought begun by the pre-Socratic
philosophers, here called by Eliot, the ‘bold cosmologists.’ It was Thales who
essentially said that the invention of deities was not necessary to explain
nature. Thales is often seen as a founder of speculative science. His student
Anaximander and Anaximander’s student Aniximenes continued this lineage of
speculative science albeit with differing conclusions. Further in the lineage
came Xenophanes who noted that the gods of different peoples always looked like
their people. Next in line was the enigmatic Heraclitus who also disparaged the
poet Hesiod. His declaration that “Everything is in flux, and nothing is at
rest” predates the Buddha’s declaration that all that is composed is
impermanent. Finally, there was Empedocles, who offered yet another version of
reality. After him there would be Socrates, Plato, and the myriad offshoots of
dialectic philosophical inquiry. This, says Eliot, is not only the beginning history
of science, but also of scientific myth. By downplaying the relevance and
importance of the gods and their stories they made a new paradigm, and new narrative,
of speculative science with its corresponding stories.
He tells a story of Empedocles teaching in Athens when an
11-year old ‘brat’ named Socrates asks him a question. I am unsure if the story
is from text, lore, or if Eliot spun it. He says that Nietzsche failed to
appreciate the pre-Socratic philosophers, but then he quotes Nietzsche saying
they are dangerous poets just as he is. Nietzsche did say that we have been
molded, or even trapped by rational Greek thought. The Greek scientists like
Euclid, Archimedes, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Hippocrates, and Pythagoras seem
to represent another branch of scientific myth, which Eliot acknowledges, is
less evident to many than other forms of myth.
He tells the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. He sees
it as representative of “the eternal conflict between the analytical and
creative aspects of human consciousness.” Theseus is the analytical/objective
aspect and the Minotaur is the creative/subjective aspect. Ariadne’s thread is
the memory device that defies the forgetfulness magic of the labyrinth. Ariadne
is the restorative element of the psyche. A healthy psyche has these two aspects
in balance, says Eliot.
Next he muses about Cleopatra and the nexus of myth and
history. At this time Roman aristocrats followed two main rival Hellenic philosophies:
Epicureanism and Stoicism. Epicurus recommended a reclusive style of controlled
hedonism while Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, recommended a hardcore style of
introspection said to be derived from the real Socrates rather than the one
from Plato’s dialogues. Cleopatra probably died a Stoic. Marcus Aureleus was a
Stoic as were several of the early Christian martyrs. Eliot notes Jose Ortega y
Gasset’s Prologue to a History of
Philosophy, where he states the usefulness of philosophical pluralism:
“The impossibility of comprehending the whole universe
from any single position justifies the existence of a variety of fundamental
conceptions – which thus prove inevitable.”
Eliot thinks it is the same with the study of myth – that
it can and should be approached and studied from multiple perspectives. He says
that imaginative participation in reality is a necessity of nature.
Next he describes the nine-day recitation of the stories
and songs of the Navaho Mountain Chant, an occasional ceremony for healing. In
a key part of the ceremony two painted dancers appear to swallow their arrows
but it is an illusion as the hollow shafts are simply telescoped together.
However, the illusion can be effective for the person(s) being healed, to
increase their belief and thus the placebo effect. Such techniques are fairly
common in shamanistic societies. Deception thus can be used for ill or for
good.
He explores the strong connection between art and myth,
from Paleolithic cave paintings to Renaissance and later nostalgic depictions
of classical mythology scenes. The Paleolithic artists, he thinks, were closely
connected to the animal kingdom and were aided by visions of their art perhaps
enhanced by flickering tallow-lamp firelight in the deep dark caves. The
ability to depict in visual artistic form things that were idealized. Art could
tell stories and art could heal. It need not be permanent, like the Navaho sand
paintings. The Ancient Greeks document, describe, and praise the works of several
great painters whose works did not survive. Zeuxis was one such painter and his
depiction of centaurs with the torso and above as men and below the body of a
horse was said to be so well done as to restore belief in their existence which
had declined. It was the artist that had the ability to shape myth. He praises
the sublime art of Michelangelo and notes that there is pagan-mythic esotericism
within.
He tells a story of Perseus returned with wealth and his
bride Andromeda and being summoned to King Dectes to explain, be stripped of
his wealth, and punished. Having his basket with the head of Medusa the king’s
court ends up turned to stone. Eliot calls Perseus the patron saint of poets.
With the imaginative wings of Hermes, the inner invisibility helmet of Hades,
and the mirroring shield of Athena, he found his heroic destiny. Here he quotes
Socrates:
“The experience of poets is akin to that of seers and
prophets, who offer many fine utterances without understanding a word of what
they say!”
Socrates spoke of “ancient strife between philosophy and
poetry” and sought the banishing of the Muse. Such rhetoric aided his own
forced demise. Plato, from whom the stories of Socrates derive, thought that
poets should be censored and re-interpreted by the philosophers. The Renaissance
would oddly enough revive pagan myth and interpret it in Neoplatonic fashion.
Says Eliot:
“Classical philosophical values are not what sparked the
Renaissance. The resurgence of deathless poetic instinct did that.”
The mythic poets were Ovid, Hesiod, and Homer, with
Virgil coming up a distant fourth, according to Eliot.
He tells a story of the famed Greek playwright Aeschylus:
“What intrigues me
most about Aeschylus is his ability to seize history in his right hand, legend
in his left, and bring the two in concert. No poet, not even Shakespeare, has
done that better.”
The early historians, Hecataeus of Miletus and Herodotus,
began the process of untangling myth and legend from the study of the past
(although Mircea Eliade demonstrates that it was both the Hebrews and their
alphabetic writing - which was an unparalleled recording device - that really
began the process).
He also mentions that the 300 B.C. Sicilian-Greek
Euhemerus published a now lost history that asserted that myth is nothing more
than natural history enhanced with legend through the mechanisms of oral
re-tellings. We now know that this euhemerism is true of much of myth and
legend. Euhemerist assumptions have also led to scientific discoveries such as
the excavation of Troy and the migration paths of Native American tribes. He
mentions the euhemerism of Robert Graves who favored historical and
anthropological interpretations of myth over Jungian psychological interpretations.
He also wrote of the White Goddess,
of the goddess-based agricultural societies that the patriarchal Indo-European
Zeus-based conquerers overran and replaced. Yet she is not dead but
occasionally reappears as the muse of poets. Of course, one of the most
emphatic classical depictions of this universal goddess of nature was provided
by Lucius Apuleius’s comical story, The
Golden Ass, where he as the protagonist penetrates the initiated mysteries
of the goddess inadvertently and unbeknownst to others after being magically transformed
into an ass.
Other aspects of myth are intertwined with the sky. Several
classical mythic figures were transformed into constellations and astrological
interpretations of myth abound in many cultures. Some can be quite fascinating
and perhaps derive from the Hermetic axiom: as above, so below – an idea older
than Hermeticism that is intuitive in some sense. The gods live on high
mountains and in the heavens and we mirror what happens there in some sense.
This book is divided into four parts: 1) myth/truth or
the mythosphere as actual (The House of Four Winds); 2) how myth works (The
Labyrinthine Ways); the mysteries of myth-shaping (The World Reborn); and 4)
morality and compassion (From Eternity to Here).
Eliot adds to Socrates’s famous quote – “the unexamined
life is not worth living” by countering with “the unlived life is not worth
examining.” Another scholar, Theodor Gomperz in 1896, said pretty much the same
as Nietzsche, that we inherited our intellectual history from Greece. They themselves
inherited ideas not only from the Dorian invaders and the indigenous people but
also from Afro-Asiatic cultures: Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, and Mesopotamia.
Eliot notes that our cultural heritage is not bounded but global in scope.
He tells the story of Aesop and his accidental demise at
the hands of the young Delphic oracle maiden Phemonoe. Aesop was around mid-6th
century B.C. as were the pre-Socratics, and Pythagoras, Sappho, and the
Thracian magician Salmoxis. Aesop is credited with ‘inventing’ the form of the
fable. Later around the time of Jesus the Roman poet Phaedrus committed 150
fables to verse. In the 2nd century C.E. the Syrian Valerius Babrius
also wrote these tales down. In the 15th century it was the British translator
and publisher William Caxton who first rendered Aesop’s tales in English.
Although they have since been approached as children’s literature the tales are
enduring. Eliot compares them to the Jataka tales of the Buddha and the Islamic
Turkish ‘Tales of the Hodja’ all three of which he says he read to his kids.
Aesop’s tales explore social realities through fantasy, often with animal
forms.
He observes that Chinese myth like Greek myth delights in
irony. He thinks it is because both cultures were philosophically inclined. He
tells the tale of the Jade Emperor’s mother, who fills in for him answering
prayers but soon realizes that the prayers of some counteract and contradict
the prayers of others. When he returns he teaches her to moderate and adjust
the boons. He tells the story of Li Pin and his magic piglet and another story of
lost love by the poet Po Chu-i. Both stories are about men who lived a year and
a day married to the Dragon King’s beautiful daughter.
It was said that as Socrates waited in prison for his
death he occupied himself by turning some of Aesop’s fables to verse. Plato’s Dialogues and the reminiscences of him from
Xenophon are the only textual sources for Socrates life. Eliot tells of
Socrates’ fascinating dream of his long dead lover Aspasia.
Eliot also spent a year practicing Zen meditation in
Japan with teacher Maseo Abe. He asked his teacher what he thought of a statue
replica of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ at the Kyoto Museum of Art. The teacher said
teasingly “pursuing illusion.” Eliot considers the difference between noting
thoughts without following them as in meditative contemplation and following
trains of thought as in science and speculative philosophy. He considers that
both are important although the East and West emphasize differently. He
compares the philosophical stances of Plato and Chuang Tzu and throws in a story
of Manu and Vishnu’s incarnation as a fish. Plato’s outlook was fueled by reason,
Chuang Tzu’s by intuition.
He tells the story of Psyche and Eros and their daughter
Concord – of how Psyche inadvertently drove away her lover and went to his
mother Aphrodite for help. Aphrodite set tasks for her and Eros reunites with
his love. Eros loves Psyche, the human soul and in the story she finds the
courage and skill to complete the tasks.
The last story involves the Biblical story of God
creating Adam in his image, as both male and female. He gives an explanation
from The Zohar, by Moses de Leon, who
says that a true holy image must be composed of a union of male and female
elements.
Eliot tells the tales skillfully and yet concisely with a
story teller’s flair. He is easy to read. He offers unusual ways to explore the
uniqueness of myth. Delightful and thought-provoking book.
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