Mythology
Dancing with the Deities: Exploring Yoga’s History Through Her Myths
What is a myth? The answers can be found in fossils as old as the Neanderthals. Karen Armstrong in A Short History of Myth says, “Human beings have always been mythmakers. Archaeologists have unearthed Neanderthal graves containing weapons, tools, and the bones of a sacrificed animal, all of which suggest some kind of belief in a future world that was similar to their own… [W]hen these early people became conscious of their mortality, they created some sort of counter-narrative that enabled them to come to terms with it.” She claims that this shows five important things about myth:
- “[I]t is nearly always rooted in the experience of death and the fear of extinction.”
- “[I]t is usually inseparable from ritual.”
- “The most powerful myths are about extremity; they force us to go beyond our experience.” Myths take us beyond the known….into the mystic.
- “[I]t is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how to behave.”
- “[A]ll mythology speaks of another plane outside, but parallel to, our own world. Belief in this invisible but more powerful reality, sometimes called the world of the gods.”
In summary, she says, “Mythology was therefore designed to help us to cope with the problematic human predicament. It helped people to find their place in the world and their true orientation.”
What is not a myth?
• Folktales – not BIG enough
• Theology
• Concrete Fact, they are not “non-fiction” but rather, like a novel, an art form
Why Study Myths?
In The Power of Myth, Betty Sue Flowers described Joseph Campbell’s exploration of myth as a study of the “literature of the spirit.”