the birth of myths...
Intellect introduces a whole new aspect to human existence. Instead of having instinctual reactions to external stimuli, we have emotions and vices/virtues, which carry a whole load of interpretations and judgments. For instance, the wariness an animal feels when threatened by a predator becomes Fear - an emotion with its own set of associations. The action of an animal facing a predator, that is to say, either fighting or running away, becomes a vice or a virtue: cowardice or courage - also with specific value judgments inherent in their meaning. A society comprises essentially the behaviors necessary for the survival of a species, but we have turned these actions into rituals, art, symbolism, complex theories and any number of abstract conceptions.
I am reading a book on the evolution of Greek religious thought, and the first chapter proved very thought provoking. The author posits that at first, Greek religious practices mirrored that of many "primitive" societies - people ritualizing their fears and desires. Festivals of appeasement included sacrifices (sometimes human) and were designed to pacify the unknown forces of darkness, death, disease and misfortune. Fertility rituals symbolically mirrored the cycle of nature and reflected people's desires for bountiful harvests and the renewal of their tribe through procreation. Festivals held in honor of the dead served to make peace between oneself and deceased ancestors in case they held any sway in the spirit world, or in case they were reborn into the tribe. Some celebrations included dancing as a way to access spirits or the spiritual realm (that sounds familiar...) and many rituals dealt with animal worship - a person of influence in the tribe would don the skin of a particularly powerful animal and thus gain its superhuman life force and attributes.
Here we see the beginnings of religious thought, of magic, of ceremony and ritual. Humans, seperated from raw nature by villages and settlements and an intellect that allows them to concieve of the world in abstract ways (rather than simply responding to biological imperatives - i.e. an adrenaline rush or other chemical reaction in the brain), are yet bound by nature... threatened continually by wild animals, natural disasters, bad harvests, diseases. It makes sense that humans saw divinity in nature and sought to obtain the special powers, strengths and knowledges of animals. It also makes sense that they would, in an attempt to minimize their fear of the unknown, create rituals addressing inarticulated forces in the world - the beginnings of gods - forces of death and destruction and darkness. Alternatively, rituals developed to help humans obtain desired results - fertility rituals for food and new births, death rituals for good connections with the spirit realm.
Eventually, as humans became more technologically advanced and more intellectual, nature became less of a dire threat and more of a symbolic language. The living bull lost its great power and became merely an emblem of raw strength, vitality, and virulity. The man wearing the bull's skin (probably a medicine man or village leader) was no longer regarded as a sort of living god, but as a representative of the real god, who remained forever out of the reach of human beings. Fears and desires were also given names: fertility cycles became Demeter and Persephone; prayers and supplications became Zeus, the highest of gods and the great listener to pleas; death became Hades; youth and virulity became many of the young male gods like Apollo and Ares and Hermes.
So I pose this question to you: Did the gods create human beings, or did we create the gods? Is divinity no more or less than the fears, desires, ideals, and hopes of human societies (or of individuals)?
Although I identify myself as "kind of pagan", the real truth is that I fit no specific classification - or rather, the best spiritual classification I can think of is "I'm a poet." I have both actively and passively encountered certain forces, voices and visions in the world that I attempt to interpret through poetry. Part of me believes there really are divine forces in the world - both in the form of some essential divine/creative force woven through everything and in the form of gods or spirits - and part of me believes that I am simply fashioning meaning and significance from an existence that inherently includes neither. Interestingly, the movie Travis and I watched last night (called "Storytelling") was an exploration of how "true" events change as soon as a person attempts to record them - a real encounter that a girl writes about for a creative writing class suddenly becomes fiction and is ridiculed by her classmates as "unbelievable" and "hollow" while a documentary about a suburban family becomes ridiculous on film - there's real suffering among the family members, but when the documentarian puts it together, he simply makes them all look stupid because he has no respect for rich white suburbians.
Adrienne Rich once wrote "the stories of our lives become our lives" - that seems true both of an individual or a society practicing a religion or spiritual belief. On some fundamental level, our gods and our myths simply reflect our emotions and ideals... what we fear, what we want, what we think we should want, who we wish we were, powers we'd like to have or control...
I looked out the window after finishing chapter one of "Five Stages of Greek Religion" with all of these thoughts tumbling through my head. Is there any divine force? Am I a fraud as a supposed "magick practioner"? Am I living a life devoid of meaning save what my feeble intellect can invent? Is a raven really just a black bird? Are the pantheons of great religions just various manifestations of human emotions and needs and thoughts?
There is a brick building, rich orange hues, and the beautiful straggling lines of a tree's branches held up against the faintly blue sky... memories and contrasts and light and color and forms that I have loved since childhood... and for just a second, I thought - this is enough for me, the world and the fact that I exist.
Does it matter, in the end, whether there is or is not a divine power? I can dream of symbols that are not just symbols. I can write and rewrite and explore and revise the universe in poetry. I can watch life happening. I can choose to believe there is more out there knowing that I can not prove it - even knowing that it could be only a matter of imagination, drugs and brain chemistry.
This is how myths are born, and they need not be true for us to create lives of them.
I am reading a book on the evolution of Greek religious thought, and the first chapter proved very thought provoking. The author posits that at first, Greek religious practices mirrored that of many "primitive" societies - people ritualizing their fears and desires. Festivals of appeasement included sacrifices (sometimes human) and were designed to pacify the unknown forces of darkness, death, disease and misfortune. Fertility rituals symbolically mirrored the cycle of nature and reflected people's desires for bountiful harvests and the renewal of their tribe through procreation. Festivals held in honor of the dead served to make peace between oneself and deceased ancestors in case they held any sway in the spirit world, or in case they were reborn into the tribe. Some celebrations included dancing as a way to access spirits or the spiritual realm (that sounds familiar...) and many rituals dealt with animal worship - a person of influence in the tribe would don the skin of a particularly powerful animal and thus gain its superhuman life force and attributes.
Here we see the beginnings of religious thought, of magic, of ceremony and ritual. Humans, seperated from raw nature by villages and settlements and an intellect that allows them to concieve of the world in abstract ways (rather than simply responding to biological imperatives - i.e. an adrenaline rush or other chemical reaction in the brain), are yet bound by nature... threatened continually by wild animals, natural disasters, bad harvests, diseases. It makes sense that humans saw divinity in nature and sought to obtain the special powers, strengths and knowledges of animals. It also makes sense that they would, in an attempt to minimize their fear of the unknown, create rituals addressing inarticulated forces in the world - the beginnings of gods - forces of death and destruction and darkness. Alternatively, rituals developed to help humans obtain desired results - fertility rituals for food and new births, death rituals for good connections with the spirit realm.
Eventually, as humans became more technologically advanced and more intellectual, nature became less of a dire threat and more of a symbolic language. The living bull lost its great power and became merely an emblem of raw strength, vitality, and virulity. The man wearing the bull's skin (probably a medicine man or village leader) was no longer regarded as a sort of living god, but as a representative of the real god, who remained forever out of the reach of human beings. Fears and desires were also given names: fertility cycles became Demeter and Persephone; prayers and supplications became Zeus, the highest of gods and the great listener to pleas; death became Hades; youth and virulity became many of the young male gods like Apollo and Ares and Hermes.
So I pose this question to you: Did the gods create human beings, or did we create the gods? Is divinity no more or less than the fears, desires, ideals, and hopes of human societies (or of individuals)?
Although I identify myself as "kind of pagan", the real truth is that I fit no specific classification - or rather, the best spiritual classification I can think of is "I'm a poet." I have both actively and passively encountered certain forces, voices and visions in the world that I attempt to interpret through poetry. Part of me believes there really are divine forces in the world - both in the form of some essential divine/creative force woven through everything and in the form of gods or spirits - and part of me believes that I am simply fashioning meaning and significance from an existence that inherently includes neither. Interestingly, the movie Travis and I watched last night (called "Storytelling") was an exploration of how "true" events change as soon as a person attempts to record them - a real encounter that a girl writes about for a creative writing class suddenly becomes fiction and is ridiculed by her classmates as "unbelievable" and "hollow" while a documentary about a suburban family becomes ridiculous on film - there's real suffering among the family members, but when the documentarian puts it together, he simply makes them all look stupid because he has no respect for rich white suburbians.
Adrienne Rich once wrote "the stories of our lives become our lives" - that seems true both of an individual or a society practicing a religion or spiritual belief. On some fundamental level, our gods and our myths simply reflect our emotions and ideals... what we fear, what we want, what we think we should want, who we wish we were, powers we'd like to have or control...
I looked out the window after finishing chapter one of "Five Stages of Greek Religion" with all of these thoughts tumbling through my head. Is there any divine force? Am I a fraud as a supposed "magick practioner"? Am I living a life devoid of meaning save what my feeble intellect can invent? Is a raven really just a black bird? Are the pantheons of great religions just various manifestations of human emotions and needs and thoughts?
There is a brick building, rich orange hues, and the beautiful straggling lines of a tree's branches held up against the faintly blue sky... memories and contrasts and light and color and forms that I have loved since childhood... and for just a second, I thought - this is enough for me, the world and the fact that I exist.
Does it matter, in the end, whether there is or is not a divine power? I can dream of symbols that are not just symbols. I can write and rewrite and explore and revise the universe in poetry. I can watch life happening. I can choose to believe there is more out there knowing that I can not prove it - even knowing that it could be only a matter of imagination, drugs and brain chemistry.
This is how myths are born, and they need not be true for us to create lives of them.