Hello everyone, and welcome to the first installment of #MythMonday here at the Wandering Mythologist. In this occasional feature I hope to explore some ideas about myth and how it manifests in the world today. Myths are a lot more than just dusty old bits of folklore; from ancient tales that have endured since the beginning of human history to the latest superhero cinematic universes, they are the stories that move us, that help us determine our own beliefs about right and wrong, that give shape to the metaphors we use to create meaning in our lives.
There are as many definitions of myth out there as there are mythologists (indeed, they don’t let you out of mythologist school until you can articulate yours to anyone unlucky enough to stand still long enough in your vicinity), so I’ll take a moment here to outline mine.
If you imagine a Venn diagram of the overlapping circles of religion, psychology, and lore, I see myth as residing at the point where they all meet. The general meanings of ‘religion’ and ‘psychology’ are more than close enough in this context, and the way they can serve as components of myth is pretty clear, but the word ‘lore’ probably wants a bit more explanation.
This somewhat archaic term is broad and flexible enough to encompass all of the things two people could possibly share between them for the purpose of establishing a narrative. Scripture, literature, folklore and fairy tales — these are all obviously lore. But so also are superstition, proverb, legend, ritual, fable, saga. And I go on to expand the idea even further, to include the many new shapes taken by tales in our modern technological world: a TV show can be lore, or just an episode of one, a film series or a single film, a board game or a computer game, a hand gesture like Spock’s greeting or the metal devil horns, a carefully-researched costume worn to a convention, or even a sport fan’s ritual involving a specific kind of pre-game beer. In the cultural studies field the term ‘text’ is often used for a similarly inclusive concept, but that term has specific semiotic connections (and I’m honestly not qualified to get into the endlessly specific definitions required by semiotics here). So just think about the most inclusive concept of the idea of ‘story’ that you can imagine, and then reference that when I describe ‘lore’ as a specifically story-related text.
Lore is absolutely foundational to myth. The other components can’t exist without it; neither religion nor psychology would make any sense without the stories defining them, from Genesis to the DSM. It is possible to imagine religion without psychology or vice versa. There certainly could be lore that is neither psychological nor religious. But, importantly, neither religion-without-psychology, psychology-without-religion, or lore without either is myth.
So if we accept that myth resides at the junction of religion, psychology, and lore, the next question is: what does it do there? Why do we have myths in the first place?
Joseph Campbell, the founding father of the field of comparative mythology, laid out in his 1968 book The Masks of God: Creative Mythology what he believed to be the four functions of a myth:
- “to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is.” He called this the Mystic function.
- “to render an interpretive total image of the same, as known to contemporary consciousness.” This is the Cosmological function.
- “the enforcement of a moral order; the shaping of the individual to the requirements of his [or her] geographically and historically conditioned social group.” Campbell described this as the Sociological function.
- “to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity” in accord with the other three functions, which he termed the Psychological function.
The first two of Campbell’s functions map pretty clearly into my component of religion, as well as the way I see it defining how people characterize their relationships to the things that are BEYOND human consciousness. His fourth function straightforwardly ties into my component of psychology, which defines a person’s relationship to of the world WITHIN a single human consciousness. His third function maps less directly to my concept. I view ethics and sociological norms, the things that characterize the relationships BETWEEN one human consciousness and another, not as something that goes into a myth (like religious or psychological ideas) but as something that comes out of it (as beliefs about right action based on religious or psychological ideas). But, even if it doesn’t have its own component, a mythic framework that does not answer people’s needs in this third function is not a living myth.
So, there we are. All of that is probably enough long-haired myth theory for one blog post. Next time on #MythMonday we’ll examine the difference between living myths and dead ones, and take a look at the state of traditional and modern mythic frameworks active in the world today.