Well, that was a longer absence than intended. Moving into my new home, starting my dissertation, and a flurry of life happenings pushed my mythology blog onto the back burner for nine months. Let me jump right back in on a current topic: politics and myth.
The recent U.S. election campaigns revolved largely around myth in a way that Joseph Campbell often discussed: myth as a story that is neither factual nor false, but instead expresses a guiding metaphor. A couple of Campbell’s Four Functions of Myth were in evidence: myth as a way to make sense of the world around us, myth as a means of encapsulating the norms and mores of society.
We’ve had the War on Terror as our guiding metaphor for seven years. It frames our worldview in terms of terror, insecurity, mistrust, fear, paranoia, siege mentality. This mythically-evocative metaphor has justified the U.S. suspending constitutional rights and launching preemptive wars. It’s also led to an extremely polarized “us versus them” outlook that tends to pigeonhole Americans into “patriotic” or “anti-American” and non-Americans into “friend” or “foe.”
Two leaders emerged during the election with startlingly mythic names. Barack (”blessing”) and McCain (”son of Cain”). Many stories were told about these two semi-mythical figures.
In this election, I think, people reached for the myth of Hope partly as a reaction against the myth of Terror we’ve been living under (again, remember, I’m defining myth as meaningful metaphor, not falsehood). During the post-election punditing, op-ed columnist Roger Cohen of the New York Times writes about Obama’s message of Hope by calling on him to carry out the myth of Pandora’s Box:
In Greek myth, when Pandora opened her box, she let out all the evils except one: hope. The Greeks considered hope dangerous; its bedfellow can be delusion. Nietzsche later saw hope as the evil that prolongs human torment.
But in the end Pandora opened her box again and released hope because, without it, humanity was filled with despair.
Cohen seems to me to be implying that the previous few years have seen a release of many evils (including despair), and it’s Obama’s job to release hope. That last paragraph intrigues me; it’s a revision of the myth not present in ancient sources. It sounds to me like an attempt to solve the perplexing paradoxes of this myth: (a) WHY is Hope grouped with all the evils of the world? and (b) If evils are released into the world, but Hope is still trapped in Pandora’s Box, does that mean we have no hope?
I’d love for people to comment with their own take on Pandora’s Box and what it means that Hope was trapped in it — do you have answers to (a) and/or (b)?
Below the cut, I give a little more about the origin of the Pandora’s Box myth.
Of Lady Demeter, goddess of the golden grain, I sing, and her fair-ankled daughter Persephone whom the ancients addressed as Kore, The Maiden, in whose laughter is the promise of spring. 
Now Kore was playing away from the protection of her mother, who is also the lady of the golden sword. In a meadow she found two flowers she had never seen before, narcissus and hyacinth, and gathered them in her apron to make a garland. Alas, had she known their history, she might not have been so grasping! Did not Narcissus waste away upon the riverbank pining after his reflection far below? Did not Hyacinth’s blood stain the grass after he was struck by a faithless discus cast from his lover Apollo?
The lure taken, the trap was sprung. A chasm opened. Hades on a chariot drawn by dreadful horses erupted from the earth and bore her down. The jaws of the ground closed over Persephone’s cry of Father. Futile, for Zeus her sire had secretly promised her as bride to lord Hades. No one knew what had happened save Hekate in the ear of her cave and Helios the all-seeing Sun.
Demeter searched for nine days, abstaining from food and drink. At last wise Hekate found her and reported what she had heard, and they sought out Helios to learn what he had seen. He told them of the chariot and the maiden, and, more, he told them of Zeus’ secret meeting with the underworld god.
All right! Thank you everyone for your votes and suggestions. Here’s the new name:
Mythphile
The ending -phile comes from Greek philia, “affection/love,” as seen in Anglophile.
The new URL/domain name will be:
Please change your links accordingly! If you’re a subscriber (or want to be), add the new Mythphile RSS Feed!
(Syncroblog suggested by Mahud: Theme “Landscapes”)
I’ll tell you a story about Atlantis, the Lost Land.
Once upon a time, a Greek philosopher named Plato was writing about his mentor Socrates and their circle of learned friends. Sometimes they would talk about right and wrong, the soul and other erudite matters by telling stories that illustrated what they meant. In the Republic, Socrates told of a man who died and learned the nature of the soul, but that myth isn’t so well remembered. In the Symposium, Aristophanes told a myth about how people are descended from separated twins, to explain love and why some people are homosexual. That story was written off by the Middle Ages as a joke. In the Timaeus and Kritias, Socrates’ old friend Kritias told about a powerful civilization that Athens had fought 9000 years before his own day. That story, the legend of Atlantis, has taken on a life of its own, so that people who have never read Plato have heard of it, and many people who did read Plato have spent their lives searching for it.
Plato wrote that Kritias said that Solon said that he heard the story from some Egyptian priests. Have you got all that? That’s the first report we have of Atlantis; everyone afterwards was writing with Plato’s story in mind. We’ve never found any records about Atlantis in Egypt. The archaeological record shows no major settlement at Athens 9000 years before classical Greece. The civilization Kritias describes sounds Bronze Age, not Stone Age, which it should have been so long ago. But historical accuracy was irrelevant to these philosophers. They were using stories instead of just dry dusty reason to show how people ought to live in harmony with the land and with their gods.
The marvellous thing about Atlantis, the lost land that may not even have existed, is that so many people have found it. They’ve found it in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas and in the Yucatán. Eden is more elusive, and the Tower of Babel — well, we know where that is. There’s oil wells instead of a single tower in Babylonia nowadays, but we’re still fighting over it.
There have been many myths of Atlantis. Atlantis wakes something in us that yearns for a Lost Land, a golden age when civilization and the land were one — until the land (or rather, the sea) ended it.
Let me tell you about my Atlantis.
I thought I was being both original and clever with this title, to misquote Frodo in the “Conspiracy Unmasked” chapter of Fellowship of the Ring. Alas, it turns out I have been clever, but not original.
Behold: Mythprint, the monthly newsletter of the Mythopoeic Society. As active as I’ve been among Tolkien-enthusiasts over the years, I really ought to have known. It may be a case of cryptoamnesia. (For example: C.S. Lewis has Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum travel through “Ettinsmoor” in The Silver Chair, probably an unconscious recollection of Ettenmoors in the northern area of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.)
I can’t keep the name of a well-known publication, especially one that is the mouthpiece of an organization I respect, a vessel embarked on the same seas as this blog! So out of courtesy I need to change my blog title, and more importantly, its domain name. So please check back here in about a week to find out the new URL. I’ll leave the old domain up for a while to redirect people to the new web address.
Right now I’m brainstorming: Mythpress, Mythperception, MythFile, Myth-log. I’m leaning towards Mythpress, but I have a fondness for puns, so I wish I could think of something a little more snappy.
It depends on what your definition of “true” is, to misquote a slippery politician in a tight place.
I’ve decided to pose this as a true/false question on Wis.dom. Click here to answer:
Now, let me tell you a story about Joseph Campbell, which will explain why I asked the question. Warning: Deep Thoughts Ahead!
In ancient times, there was not simply Apollo or Athena. Each area, city, or shrine had its particular god, who may have evolved from an earlier local deity that later became merged with one of the popular, Olympian gods that spread throughout the Greek-speaking world. (Amazingly, the popular epics about the Trojan War composed by Homer may have done much to solidify the Greeks’ views of the “chief” gods.) Greece itself was not unified in the classical period. It consisted of powerful city-states like Athens, Sparta, Delphi, each of which consisted of a city and the surrounding farmland or grazing lands. So there were many regional customs, religious festivals, and variations of each god. Each city or temple tended to have one chief god and a few other gods that were given special reverence. Myths arose to explain why one god was popular in one place, another in another.
In general terms, Athena was the daughter of Zeus, the supreme or chief god of Olympus, originally a sky-god. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, tactics, war, and crafts like weaving — arts that employ planning and intelligence, not just physical abilities. Athena Polias was the particular Athena that protected the city of Athens.
Normally I mean to share my own research and retellings of world mythology, but I have stumbled across a bard who truly deserves the title. Her performances speak for themselves; so do the myths she tells.
Here’s Unity’s performances of The Story of Durga Part II, The Story of Ganesh and The Rabbit and the Moon.
Photo credit: Ed BrambleyPhaethon was the son of Helios the sun-god and the ocean-goddess Klymene. She later married Merops, King of Ethiopia, who raised the boy as his own son. One day Phaethon’s best friend Epaphos, a prince from a neighboring kingdom, began to taunt him about his parentage.
“Son of Helios?” Epaphos said. “A likely story. Your mother is ashamed to admit that she dallied with some commoner, and so she claims a lofty lover who’s too far away to deny it.”
Phaethon was beside himself, but there was nothing he could say to silence his friend’s jeers. At last he went to his mother seeking proof. “Your father is Helios,” she promised him. “I swear by the River Styx, the dread river of the underworld on which the Olympian gods swear binding oaths. If you doubt me, go to him yourself, for his halls are east of Ethiopia, a land blessed by the sun.”
Delighted, Phaethon set forth to seek his father’s house, following the directions Klymene had given him. Many were his adventures in the eastern lands, but they are no longer remembered. In those days there were not searing deserts in the east, but lush gardens, verdant forests, and shallow lakes. Still, he was wandering in wild lands where they say dwell creatures whose faces are in their stomachs, and giant furry ants that can devour a camel in a matter of minutes: that according to Herodotus, at least. So it was by feats of courage and caution that he reached at last the Mountain of the Sun.
Photo credit: TimDan2 on FlickrAkrisios, king of Argos, had a daughter of surpassing beauty, but no son. At last he sent a messenger to the oracle at Delphi to ask what hope he had for an heir. The oracle’s reply was grim: Akrisios would have no son, and his grandson would kill him.
In the world of Greek mythology, Fate was an implacable force which the gods themselves could not escape. That didn’t stop people from trying. Often, their efforts caused the fate they feared.
So the king imprisoned his daughter, Danae, in a bronze chamber buried beneath the palace courtyard. Servants fed and cared for her, but she never saw the light of day. How many daughters have felt walled in by a father’s fears?
Walls, however, could not bar Zeus, the promiscuous father of the gods. Smitten by her beauty, he descended in the guise of golden rain, a splash of sunlight in her dreary cell. Small wonder the lonely girl succumbed to his advances. But Zeus nipped out as soon as he’d had his way with her, since the one thing he feared was Hera’s fury when she caught him cheating. Lonely once more, Danae gave birth to Perseus nine months later.
Her nurse helped hide the boy for a few years, but eventually his gleeful shouts ringing up through the courtyard gave them away. Akrisios dragged his daughter before the altar of Zeus and commanded that she confess the father’s name. Her answer sounded like blasphemy. Enraged, the father bound his daughter and grandson in a chest and commanded it to be tossed into the sea.
