Lesson 5.1. The Message of The Myth

Lesson 5.

1
THE MESSAGE OF THE MYTH
(Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth)
The aim of the lesson is to teach you to formulate the value of an abstract phenomenon.

1. In common parlance, a myth is an “old wives’ tale,” a generally accepted belief unsubstantiated by fact.
Thus, it is a myth that professors are absent-minded or that women are intuitive rather than rational. We also
classify as myths the stories of gods and heroes of cults in which we do not believe, tales that once had
religious significance. The stories of the exploits of Zeus and Hera, Theseus, Perseus, and Odysseus are in
this sense myths. Collections of the myths of particular cultures are called mythologies: the exploits of the
characters just mentioned form parts of Greek mythology; the stories of Osiris and Isis are part of Egyptian
mythology. We also use the word “mythology” to refer to the academic field concerned with the study of
myths and mythologies. We can also speak of myth as an abstract reality, like religion or science.
Four types of myths serve as the organizing principle: cosmic myths, theistic myths, hero myths, and
place and object myths. Cosmic myths are concerned with the great facts of existence (e.g., the Creation, the
Flood, the apocalypse). The theistic myths involve cultural hierarchies (e.g., the Twelve Olympians, the
Egyptian Gods). Hero myths, perhaps the best known, are stories dealing with individuals (e.g., Achilles,
Odysseus, Jesus, Moses). Place and object myths concern either mythical places (e.g., Atlantis, the
Labyrinth) or objects (e.g., King Arthur’s sword, the Golden Fleece).
a) What could have been the reasons for creating myths of each type?
b) Why do we read them now?

2. The English word “myth” is derived from the Greek mythos, meaning word or story. Human beings have
traditionally used stories to describe or explain things they could not explain otherwise. Ancient myths were
stories by means of which our forebears were able to assimilate the mysteries that occurred around and
within them. In this sense, myth is related to metaphor, in which an object or event is compared to an
apparently dissimilar object or event in such a way as to make its otherwise inexplicable essence clear. In
short, both as story and as extended metaphor, myth is the direct ancestor of what we think of today as
literature. The meaning of myths, like the meaning if any literature, is, as Northorp Frye has said, “inside
them, in the implications of their incidents” (Fables of Identity).
But in its explanatory or etiological aspect myth is also a form of history, philosophy, theology, or
science. Myths helped early societies understand such phenomena as the movement of the sun across the sky
and the changing of the seasons… Myths also served as the basis for rituals by which the ways of humanity
and those of nature could be psychologically reconciled. Many of these myths and rituals are still operative
in the world’s religions.
World mythology, considered as a whole, is the eternal story of humanity’s quest for self-fulfilment in
the face of entropy, the universal tendency towards disorder.
What definitions of myth does Joseph Campbell give in the program? Explain their essence.
3. Translate into good Russian (to be done at home and handed in!!!) and be ready for back
translation in class:
The connection between dreams and myths is crucial for a proper understanding of the significance of
the latter. An assumption of modern psychology popular at the turn of the century was that dreams are a
symbolic language by which information about the dreamer is conveyed. More specifically, with the help of
an analyst – a sort of modern shaman – the individual can find reflected in dreams messages drawn from the
inner self, the self-buried beneath the debris of childhood training, adult repression, and mental prejudice.
When the dreams of an individual are studied as a whole, a pattern – a personal mythology – emerges. When
the dreams of many individuals are compared, a universal dream language, a language of dream symbols,
takes form.
Like the myths of an individual, the myths of a given group are created unconsciously, as it were. Myths
are anonymous, they exist only as elements embodied in a tradition, they develop on their own, they come
from “nowhere.” Yet few anthropologists would deny that to read a culture’s myths is to gleam information
about that culture – about its inner identity, hidden beneath the mask of its everyday concerns. To go one
step further, when we study the world’s mythologies and discover the archetypal patterns (also common to
our individual dreams) that essentially unite those mythologies, we study what we might reasonably call the
dreams of humankind, in which we find information about the nature of humanity itself. In a real sense, the
world reveals its inner self through its common mythology.
4. As we explore the world of myth, we should remember that we are journeying not through a maze of
falsehoods but through a marvellous world of metaphor that breathes life into the essential human story: the
story of the relationship between the known and the unknown, both around and within us, the story of the
search for identity in the context of the universal struggle between order and chaos.
In the Western world, myths have traditionally been tales of pagan (i.e., non-Judeo-Christian) religions.
We speak of Egyptian and Greek myths and sometimes of Hindu and Buddhist myths. Yet if “myth” has
always implied falsehood, if we have not believed in Zeus or the Golden fleece, we have accepted the
mythical tales of cultures we value – especially Greco-Roman culture – as somehow important and worth
teaching out children.
What purposes do myths serve?
5. In recent times we have gradually broadened our understanding of myth. Psychologists, linguists, and
anthropologists have taken us beyond an appreciation of myth as primitive literature, science, or history to a
realization of their importance in our own lives today. When we study mythology now, we tend to concern
ourselves with basic assumptions that define a person, a family, or a culture – with the informing reality that
resides at the center of being. We find ourselves talking not only about pagan tales but also about national,
religious, and aesthetic essences. In other words, we have come to think of myths as conveyors of
information rather than odd examples of pagan superstition, and we have learned that the mythic tales of
particular cultures are masks for a larger, less tangible mythic substructure that we all share.
Are new myths emerging today? Provide examples.
6. Final discussion:
a) Write out a set of quotations from the program “The Message of the Myth” that might generate a
discussion and be ready to comment upon them.
b) What ideas expressed by Joseph Campbell seemed illuminating / astounding / contradictory to
you?

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