Realms of Myth Playlist, Part 1: Unraveling the Mythic

What is mythology and why is it so important? Find out...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Christian Seger. Here
on Stuff to Blow your Mind. We talk about myths
from lottop on mythology either, you know, sometimes it's directly

(00:23):
tied into a topic. Sometimes it's just kind of the
icing on the cake, you know. Yeah, you'll hear us
often refer to mythos a lot, like in the background,
especially like if we bring up topics like I don't know,
pop culture, uh HP, Lovecraft type stuff that we we
talked about often. So we're applying both myth as like
the large general sense of the term, and then mythos

(00:45):
as like these sort of like fictional shared universes with
histories to them. Right. Yeah, So it's it's something we're
always talking about. So it seemed fitting to do an
episode where we say, hey, let's talk just a little
bit about mythology now, would Don't worry, We're not gonna
attempt to do a like complete overall of world myth cycles.

(01:06):
What we're hoping to do here is to, uh it,
to provide you some of the basic tools to to
roll through some of the different ways that we look
at myth, the different ways that we dissect myth and
understand what they mean to us and what the power
of myth really is. Yeah, this is like very much
like a bare bones intro. And I imagine that if

(01:26):
there are people out there who have done any kind
of cultural or anthropological studies of myth before, you're gonna say, oh,
but what about this detailer, what about this thing that
you missed? And you know, there was only so much
that we could fit into a one hour episode, right,
And likewise, when it comes to examples, we're gonna We're
gonna not We're probably not gonna use a lot of

(01:47):
examples in here, but we are going to end up
using some of the basic Greek examples that most of
our listeners are gonna be familiar with. This is not,
in a by any means intended to slight any of
the fascinating cultures out there, but we're probably going to
draw cards from the deck that most people familiar with,
and probably some cards from the decks that we've you know,

(02:07):
built ourselves out of things that interest us. Yeah, in particular,
like I should probably just state this upfront, like I
if you listen to the show before, you know that
I'm a comic book nerd. You know that I like
superheroes and have done research on superheroes in the past.
In particular, like the research I did when I was
at a university was about mythology, rhetoric, and Captain America ironically,

(02:32):
because that Captain American movie just came out. Um, And
so yeah, I have a lot of like superhero type
examples or pop culture examples that will probably come to
mind as we're talking about this, but also I'm gonna
try to stay on target. Yeah. Likewise, I've been reading
a lot of Chinese mythology recently, and so some of
my examples are going to draw from that, just because
it's fresh on my mind. But all of it is

(02:54):
going to be intended to to to provide you with
the tools to to go through these different ways of
looking at myth and uh and you know, provide something
that that the listeners of the show can't take with
them as we explore other mythologies, even as a tangent
in the future. So I have a challenge for us
and a challenge for you the listener as well as
we proceed, Um. Let's also consider, right, this is a

(03:16):
science podcast, and as we've been we've been, we've been
sort of inching our way towards this over the last
i don't know, two or three months with episodes like
we Could Problems and cargo cult science and things like that.
But let's consider is it possible that some form of
science is used today as mythology for our present culture?
Because I think that's something that there might be something there. Uh,

(03:40):
and if so, how is it? And then just for funzies,
who are our scientific deities? Uh? You know, Robert and
I have joked many times before on the show about
how like we're putting together was slowly putting together a
psychedelic Avengers of all these psychedelic scientists that we talked
about on the show. But in general, like I feel
like there are some scientists when you refer to them,

(04:01):
they're referred to with the reverence that people used to
refer to Zeus or thor with. Right, It's like Carl
Sagan can do no wrong or Einstein. You know, well,
they these are legendary individuals and science. And we'll get
into the connections between myth and legend here. As we
roll all right, So we'll keep that in mind, but

(04:22):
let's hit it all right. So let's start with the basics.
Just the word mythology. What does it, What does it
come from? Well, myth an ology, myth and logos myth
being the proto Indo European root move is involved. Here
is then to murmur and from this we get the
Greek mythos, meaning word or story. So this is gonna

(04:43):
be very important because as we go through this, you're
going to see that you know, and and this sounds
like a no type thing, but there's an inherent connection
between myth, mythology and human language and how that defines
both culture and how we understand the world. Right, So
of course it would be named after murmuring and words.

(05:06):
All right. So that's the word mythology. And certainly I
think when most when when a lot of us here
the word mythology, the first thing that enters your mind
is maybe just a you know, a quick glance at
the Greek pantheon. Yeah, I think I like a clash
of the Titans. Yeah, like old old gods, stories that
have a very human aspect to them. Um. And it's

(05:26):
one of those things that it makes it difficult then
to talk about myth in other areas such as like,
for instance, been talking about Christianity to talk about myth.
People here you say myth and they take it as
an insult because they think, oh, myth is a thing
that's not true and that is just mildly amusing in
big budget sandals movies exactly exactly, And that's something I
think we should try to dispel today too, is like

(05:47):
that myth is is larger than just these ideas we
think of them today as being fictionalized stories, right, But
to the Greeks and the Romans that worshiped those gods,
they were just as real to them as uh Einstein
and Carl Sagan are to us. Yeah, and it in
mythology as well. Discuss here is a powerful force. And
even though you might you might think of Greek gods

(06:10):
and whatever is just you know, mirror window dressing is
just something that's just aesthetically pleasing. We are all living
in the shadows of mythology. And yet at the same time,
the human experience cast the shadow of mythology. So keep
it very nice to keep that word shadow in mind
for when we get the good old Carl Young, Oh, yes,
all right, So under this heading, though, is there anything

(06:32):
that we can agree upon this kind of universally considered. Yeah,
that's what a myth is, generally speaking about. The only
thing we can everyone agrees on is that mythologies are stories,
their narratives. There's a lot of disagreement on whether those
narratives are inherently sacred, you know, which is to say
they involve gods in the supernatural. Can you have a

(06:54):
myth that doesn't involve a god or god like being? Well,
that's an issue of discussion and another thing to consider here.
This is from just the basic definition in the Salem
Press encyclopedia is that myths are stories, beliefs, fables, legends,
whatever you wanna call them. We're gonna sort of slice
that pie up a little bit later. But they reflect

(07:16):
the culture of the people who write and listen to them,
right So, and what they're often trying to do is
provide explanations for how the world works. Ironic, because we
are working for How Stuff Works this is How Stuff
Works podcast. So, uh, you know, while we provide explanations
for how stuff works, uh, the old way of doing

(07:37):
so was to say, well, the reason why that lightning
struck that tree over there was because Zeus was angry, right,
something like along those lines. Uh. So, for example, it
was natural phenomena that human beings didn't quite understand yet,
and so they told stories of heroes that were up
against good and evil steaks to explain those things. So

(07:57):
they explain our place in the world, or at least
they try to write to us. It's it's that old
like sort of very meta thing of like the stories
are us looking at ourselves Like fiction mythology is just
like uh, us creating an eyeball that's looking right back
at ourselves and then trying to explain ourselves to us,

(08:18):
which is is a weird thing to think about. Um,
but it's everything from creation myths like well, how the
world start? How? How why am I here? Who rules
the world? What's the afterlife? Like? Like? All of that
stuff stems from mythology, and there's so many shared similar themes.
We're gonna see that throughout all the things we talked
about today, from virgin births to great floods. Uh, they're

(08:41):
constantly being reinvented and passed down. And I would argue
even into today's you know, a huge popular culture epics
of whether it's your superhero movies or your Lord of
the Rings or Star Wars or whatever, we see these
played out in similar ways. They're uh anthropolo just in
cultural critics have been trying to trace these connections for centuries,

(09:04):
and we're going to talk about some some like key
points I would say in the last what like two
hundred years of mythological study. But it's complicated, uh, and
nobody has like a singular answer, so I kind of
want to dispel that right away, Like there's no this
is how it is right there. There are certainly interpretations

(09:25):
that are more popular. For instance, the etiological explanation that
you just mentioned, the idea that myths are about explaining
what the world is and how the world works, like
that is one that a lot of views say, Yeah,
that that is one of the powers of myth, that's
one of the reasons for myth. But there are a
number of different ways to look at it, and a
number of these different ways to look at them are

(09:46):
tied to specific um uh, specific areas of study, specific
academic approaches. Yeah, and like it's easy to trace that
back to like very simple things that we feel like
we have a grasp on now, like the changing of
the seasons or something like that, right, but at the
time it was explained through mythology. Al Right, Before we

(10:07):
roll into some of the views on mythology, let's take
a few minutes just to talk about the formal features
of prose narrative as they relate to myth, legend, and folklore,
because these are three terms that are often used interchangeably,
but they really kind of refer to different things. Um. Yeah,

(10:28):
and I think to like, uh, we should point out
that the distinctions that we're about to give come from
a book on Chinese mythology by is it in Barrel?
I believe so. Yes, Yeah, it's a book I've picked
up recently, and in addition to being just a great
exploration of Chinese mythology, it has a wonderful some wonderful
introductory material that summarizes some some key stuff about mythology. Yeah,

(10:50):
and this is great stuff, but it's also like, I
think that we should also question some of the definitions
too as we go. Yeah, I mean that's the that's
the thing when you like something to keep in mind
with any any of this one we're talking about mythology,
like mythology is almost a It exists outside of our
attempts to neatly categorize it. And so there's a and

(11:11):
throwing too many classifications at it. But but I I
tend to like this idea of just sort of breaking
it up so it's nice myth, legend, and folk tale.
There's there's a table in this book, um that that
lays it out in terms of like, what's the conventional opening?
Can you tell this story after dark? Is this scene
as a factor of fiction? What's the setting, like the

(11:33):
attitude the principal character. So I'm not gonna roll through
the whole list, but for instance, in a myth, you're
you're generally talking about a non human character. A legend
is going to be more of a human character, and
then a folk tale can be either one. Um, A
myth definitely has a sacred feel to it, you know
that the gods, superhumans, godlike entities. Legend can be either

(11:58):
sacred or secular, and then a folk tale tends to
be secular in terms of setting. Uh, myth and legend
are just sometime in some place where folk tales are timeless. Uh,
as far as belief goes, myth and legend are essentially facts,
and that's kind of a that's a problematic term, but well, yeah,
let's address that in a second. You go, Yeah, but

(12:20):
the myth and the legend as it is told it
is real in some way, shape or form, whereas the
folk tale is just pure fiction, like nobody is actually believing,
you know, in the Boogeyman, nobody thinks Johnny Appleseed I
actually walked all across actually with apple seeds. Yeah. So,
so these are just some of the ideas to keep
in mind to flesh this out a little bit. Let's
roll through some examples. First of just straight up myths.

(12:43):
So I think the the Greek examples that come to
mind most easily, probably you know, stuff having to do
with the origin of the universe though, the fall of
the Titans, the rise of the gods, that sort of thing. Yeah,
that's like the go to I think most of us. Uh.
And it's interesting, I wonder why that's the one like
mythological pantheon that, especially in Western culture we still like

(13:04):
really gravitate too. But I loved reading stories about that
and Norris mythology to a certain extent when I was
a kid. Well, those tales have been They've been told
and retold so many times as part of Western literature
that that they're that they've just been carried and held
on a pedestal this whole time. One of the interesting
things about looking at Chinese mythology is that you don't

(13:25):
see that case. There's not there's not a homer that
is that is retelling these things necessarily, So you have
we have less of our tradition of the mythology being
upheld by the scholars throughout the ages um. In the
Christian world you have Adam and Eve, the whole you know,
Garden of Eden, that the origins of Man, the Origins
of sin Um certainly classifies as as mythology um elsewhere

(13:50):
in the world Um. Chinese mythology, for instance, there's an
archer by the name of Ye and shoots down the
extra nine sons in the sky, so that the world's
not we don't need so many sons. So this is
a good segue into me talking about superheroes for a second,
because you just wrote a fantastic piece on Chinese mythology
connecting to the world of superheroes. Uh, and in particular

(14:15):
you wrote about a recent d C comics uh team
called the Great Ten that we're based on Chinese mythology.
So listeners, I highly recommend, uh you go and find
that piece. It's on now dot how Stuff Works dot com, right, yeah, uh,
and and go take a read because Robert does a
great job with that. But I will segue from that

(14:36):
from Chinese myth into superheroes and into Western superheroes. I
will make the argument throughout this episode that, especially like
our big budget uh d C comics, Marvel comics, superheroes
are archetypes for myth in the same way as like
the Greek gods were, right, so real quick, like think

(14:59):
of like pretty much every myth has like some kind
of solar deity, right, well, that's Superman. They've always got
an Earth Mother, it's wonder Woman. Wonder Woman was made
of clay in one of her origin stories. You've got
the death Slash Underworld deity, Batman, right yeah, and then
there's always like the Trickster, the Joker. So like it's interesting,

(15:20):
like and I'll keep coming back to this, uh, but
there are like paar ups like you can apply these
models of these archetypes across both you know, whether it's
thousands of years old Greek Roman pantheons or modern day
like comic books or even like I'm kind of wondering
with this this example of science, like who's our science Zeus?

(15:44):
Is it Nicola Tesla mm or Ben Franklin. It's not.
I don't think it's been Franklin. So but you know,
things like that to consider anyways. So that's that's my
spiel about comics to start off with. And I'll be
I think bringing it into yeah, an important fact to
night because much like the gods, what you walk around,
say to deaths in an office space and you see

(16:04):
the action figures on people's death totally in many cases
they are superheroes. Are superhero characters? What are they but
the the the avatars for little gods that are the amulets,
the protective presence. Yeah, and I would you know, i'd
also point out to that, like in our sort of
breakdown of of how myth, legend and folk tales work out, right,

(16:25):
like we said myth is considered to be fact, Well,
nobody actually considers, you know, Superman to be fact, right,
Nobody thinks that he's a real person, or at least
most people don't. Uh. And but the caveat being there
is that there is such an intense devotion to the
cannon that's within these myth myth mythologies of whatever shared

(16:51):
universe it is, whether it's Star Wars or Marvel or whatever. Right,
but there's constant arguments about what is true and what
is not within the canon. Uh. It doesn't necessarily explain
how the world works to us, but it represents how
we think it works and how we want it to work. Uh.
And it represents our ideologies too. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean,

(17:13):
it's Superman. Even though no one is gonna gets into
the whole idea of hyper real religions that we've covered
in a previous that absolutely and that this thing that
is certainly fictional still takes on mythological even religious uh
power to the individual two large groups of people. So
if anyone out there is thinking, oh, you mentioned Superman

(17:33):
and Adam and even the same breath that is insulting
or whatever, um, I encourage you not to take it
that way and to listen to the rest of the
podcast as we explore the power of myth and I
think I would also say watched the last two Superman
movies very carefully because there's a lot of christ imagery
in there. There's a lot of him in cross like poses,

(17:55):
him being back lit by the sun in the same
way that Jesus is back lit in certain painting. Yeah,
there's a lot of that stuff going Alright. So onto legends,
as we discussed, you know, might be sacred, might be secular,
but you have more of a human character, there's more
of a grounding and reality, um, though there are still
mythic elements to it. So in the Greek world, the
example that came to my mind is Alexander, the great

(18:17):
legendary figure, but definitely a real guy that existed with
some possible uh fiction, you know, springing off on the edge.
It still allows for big budget movies to be made
about him, right, And it's and it's more, um, it's
not in like pure mythic time like it's it's it's
more relatable to the present. Likewise, in the Christian and

(18:39):
Christian traditions, you have various martyrs. You can maybe even
make a h an argument for some of the apostles.
These are definite historical figures, like st When we talked
about Stigmata on the Shadow before. Some of those guys
that is definitely an example of Christian legend. Yeah, and
then elsewhere in the in the world. One example from
Chinese histor three is the Yellow Emperor who reigned from

(19:03):
two thousand six to UC Definitely a real ruler, but
there's a lot of additional information he's taken on extremely
lifendary status. Yeah. My experience, um, living in Southeast Asia
as a kid too, is that Chinese mythology and legend

(19:24):
is popularized in pop culture and movies and television just
as much as like our Alexander the Greats or superheroes
or Greek gods are Um, are you familiar with the
Ones upon a Time in China series? Um? Yeah, Well
I've never seen it, but I'm familiar with it. It's
this like martial arts Woushia series of movies starting Jetly,

(19:45):
and it's ostensibly about the history of China at the time,
although there's a lot of argument about whether or not
it's been influenced by the state or not, and it's
sort of like a revisionist history. But it reminds me
of things like this, or like a lot of Jetly movies,
like what's that other one hero? Is that? What it's
called anyway, the Wuhia movies in general tend to play

(20:06):
around with these legends. They're like historical figures that they
make larger than life. And then finally we have folklore
and uh, certainly like in the Greek tradition they have
they have their boogeyman, just as anybody else has a boogeyman.
Believe it's called the baboos. And then you could maybe
make an argument that a sub's fables count as folk
floor you know what I mean, nobody, I mean they're

(20:28):
almost like extreme folklore, like nobody's believing one of these
stories with these interactions between animals briar rabbit. Yeah, but
they're but they still they carry weight, and that that's
um Christian tradition. You have an inherited pagan folk tales.
You have stuff about witches, there's a lot of Yeah,
and that's an interesting example where fable can become something else,

(20:52):
starting to find the world for us in a way
that isn't necessarily accurate. Yeah, and then elsewhere in the world,
what you have vampire? Do you have fox, spirits, beast men,
all in that manner of of supernatural entity that it's
just a folk tale, you know, it's like it doesn't
have legendary and mythic status. So let's talk about the
like how sacred some of this stuff has to be? Right?

(21:14):
Like again like sticking to Uh, that's that table of
splitting up myth, legend and folklore. Well, it says right
here myths are always sacred. So how sacred are they? Well?
I think it's definitely hard to find examples of older
myths that are that are secular. Like most mythology as
as we experience, it is going to be sacred. But

(21:36):
the comic book examples really bring to mind a possible
example of of of secular mythology, you know, in a
kind of hyper real fashion. So um. Interesting side note here.
Often mentioned writer on the show, Grant Morrison. I don't
know if you're you've ever read his run on The
Justice League of America happened. Uh. He's given many interviews

(21:58):
where he said, well, his version of writing The Justice
League was he saw it as, oh, this is the
mythological pantheon of our times, and he set it up
so that his roster of who was on the team
uh lined up are typically with all of the Greek
and Roman gods uh. And he had like this infamous

(22:19):
breakdown of how that all worked out, how he chose
who would be on on the team. Like, you know,
you have your usuals like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Then when you add somebody like plastic Man, like why
is he there? And Morrison says, well, everybody needs a Dionysius. Interesting, yea,
And of course Morrison also responsible for Alright. So here's

(22:39):
the thing with with myth is we're discussing it now
and and again. This gets down to the problems of
classifying it. Myth is like a narrative mold that grows
over our lives, and it grows over everything from big
cosmological questions to what's on the dinner table. So you
can think of it as as mold growing over a
statue of a man or a woman, and that body
is kind of a physical symbology for our concerns. Or

(23:04):
if you're so inclined, you can think of chakras on
a figure. Okay, So myth grows over the heart and
the mind that it goes over all the senses of
the head. It grows over the sex, organs, the breasts,
the gut, It covers the dreadful scars of battle and
the ever humor as buttocks. Uh, and is the butt
sacred or secular? Humans will always disagree on that one.

(23:24):
But but myth is ultimately poly functional, so it grows everywhere.
It takes on various meanings. And that's not just the
nature of of myth as as a whole, from you know,
as just in general. I mean we're talking about individual tales. Uh,
that mean a host of different things. Uh. The human
experience exists, again, is the shadow of myth, but it

(23:44):
also casts the very shadow. So I think polly functional
is a good um description to keep in mind as
we talk about all of these, because the more you
try and pin it down and say, oh, well, this
this myth is about your obsession with your mother, that
is to limit the power of mythology to this one
specific thing, when it really is more amorphous than that.

(24:05):
And that's what we see in a lot of the
attempts and conflicts over what myth means over the last
you know, hundred two hundred years of academic inquirery. I
guess is sort of like attempts to constrain it and
then attempts to balloon it back outwards again. Yeah, because
you end up with say a psychologist or an anthropologist,
story or a historian. They're coming in. They're taking their

(24:26):
discipline applying it to mythology, and it's going to be
sort of the vision of mythology that fits to their
discipline well. And the funny thing is, too, is like
they're human beings and they're just a subject a myth
as the rest of us, and they want their answer
to be the one answer, right Like they all think
like young thought like his answer was the answer, and
so did I don't know, Roland Bard or uh, you know,

(24:49):
the Claude leavestros whoever, Like all these people were going
to talk about today, they wanted to be the ones
with the answer in just the same way as the
people who u uh talked about Zeus as being responsible
for storms wanted that to be the one true answer.
So we have a lot of different interpretations and one

(25:10):
individual will come back around to him at the very end.
But there is a religious study scholar and mythologist William G.
Dotty nine. He's still around, but he's retired. To understand,
he identified no fewer than fifty definitions of myth and
this was in the nineteen eighties. And again this is
due to just all the anthropologists, psychologists, religious studies, uh,
individuals of theo theologians, etcetera, chiming in on mythology. All right,

(25:35):
so we're gonna take a quick break and when we
come back we will roll through some of these big
ideas concerning the nature and power of myth. Okay, so
here we go. Let's first talk about sort of this
nineteenth century universalistic theory approach. One of the key individual

(25:57):
visuals here Frederick Max mu There eighty three nine hundred,
generally known just as Max Mueller, German born English philologist
and orientalists. As the term of the was used at
we probably wouldn't call him that, not not today, but it's, uh,
it's it's a good description to keep in mind in
terms of the attitudes towards uh uh, you know, other

(26:19):
people's belief systems and mythological roots. He argued that overtime
humans lost the original meanings of words such as sun, moon, thunderstorms,
you know, the basic terms we used to describe the
cycle of things in the world around as planets. Yeah,
and that we gradually misunderstood them as myth figures and
incorporated them into superstitious and religious world views. Yeah, it's

(26:42):
no coincidence that we named all of our planets after
God's right. Uh. In fact, like our solar system has
its own sort of pantheon of characters and archetypes as well.
That there you go again, science the application of science
to myth. H. Yeah. So with Mueller's in particular zs
of language thing, this is something we're going to see

(27:02):
come up over and over again. That language is like
the culprit of myth. It's where it all originates. Right,
Like if we were uh without language speaking animals, feral
children for instance, feral children would maybe not need mythology,
right anymore than like a squirrel would. Uh. And it
goes a long way towards understanding again human cultural communication,

(27:26):
all our differences and our similarities, and especially how we
other other people. So I'm talking about capital, oh other
uh and how we understand the world in general. Right.
So uh, Muller seems to think more about nature as
being personified as supernatural characters, right, But he's also talking

(27:49):
about language as being the step that leads us there. Right.
And I think this is a great example to kick
off with because certainly if you took this as the
only explanation from myth. That would be a very limited
understanding of mythology. But you consider, I can certainly see
where this would be a part of the overall energy
of myth as it exists in human history. Um up, next,

(28:13):
let's talk about the evolutionist school. One of the key
individuals here Edward B. Tyler, that's T. Y L. O. R.
Through nineteen seventeen English anthropologist. So he was a cultural
evolutionist and he saw myth as expression of primitive philosophy.
So this is another example of myth as considered by

(28:34):
individuals immerged in a specific discipline. In time, evolutionary theory
was changing the way we think about the world. On
the Origin of Species by Darwin came out in eighteen
fifty nine. So there's there's another science, mythological and Darwin
and origin. I'm not sure which superhero here, Yeah, I
don't know, but you know, so some went in this,

(28:55):
Some individuals picked up on the evolution craze and they
went and decidedly racist and xenophobic directions with this. But
it's worth noting that the Tyler at least believed that
human minds had the same global capability, regardless of their
position on what he saw as the ladder of cultural ascension.
So he saw myth is an attempt to explain the world. Again,

(29:17):
getting back to the ideology that we're talking about earlier,
he saw it as a proto science. He also saw
ritual as an application of myth, just as technology is
an application of science to exert control. So myth is
our understanding of how the world works, and ritual is
our attempt to exploit that understanding for control. Yeah, ritual
is in his sense, the application of how we're trying

(29:39):
to control outcomes in a totally chaotic world that we
don't know what's going to happen next. Right, there's gonna
be a storm that's gonna hit and kill my family,
or maybe it won't rain and my crops won't grow.
So I'm gonna perform these rituals to try to make
these particular things happen. I want to change the outcomes
of reality. Okay, And you know it's it's interesting to
try and like apply that to the previous theory. So

(29:59):
you can imagine, like this this thing we see in
the sky, we we give it a certain amount of
personality and then as we reach out to it, as
we you know, at a loss of anything else, you know,
amid say that the ruins of our village, we might
ask it for help and then therefore personify it more
and create more narrative energy for it. And this brings

(30:21):
us to the myth as ritual school and one of
the key individuals here Jane Ellen Harrison eighteen fifty through
who was a British classical scholar, linguist and feminist. Harrison
expanded on this notion of ritual and myth as the
spoken correlation of the acted right, the thing done and uh.
And this reminds me of some of the views that

(30:41):
will discuss from Mercelle Elliotti in the country here. And
up next we have the ipeological interpretation of Andrew Lang.
He was a Scottish poet and anthropologist lived eighteen forty
four through nineteen twelve. Yeah, and so you know, as
we we mentioned this earlier, but aedeological means assigning or
seek to assign a cause to things. It's the study

(31:02):
of causation in myth in particular, we're talking about origin stories, right,
how how did this thing happen? Why is it happening? Yeah,
Lane wrote, Uh, wrote a book Myth, Ritual and Religion,
Volume one, And this is like a number of these
older text is available and full online if you just
poke around for him. Um, but I wanted to read
one line from it to give you sort of a

(31:24):
sense of some of the some of the attitudes that
were thrown around and trying to figure out what myth
is and what its power is. Uh. And he was
talking about some Greek and um and Sanscrit writings about
about myth. Here he says, quote, we conclude that in
Greek and Sanscrit, the myths are relics, whether borrowed or
inherited of the savage mental status. Yeah. So now we're

(31:49):
getting into Uh, this is that period of time where
I think like a lot of uh philosophical thought was
struggling with what we now view as i'd say, quasi
racist territory in terms of, like, you know, whether these
theorists see themselves as being superior to quote unquote primitive
people's but then not exactly applying the same lens to

(32:11):
themselves in terms of like how we understand culture and
how we use myth. Right, Yeah, it's kind of like,
let me, I guess is there a term for this,
like white splain you or the colonial splain you. I mean,
what I keep thinking of is like, and you see
this in a lot of these guys, is the idea
of the quote noble savage, right, Like the the idea
that um particular primitive peoples have these two aspects of

(32:34):
themselves and once we crack the code, we can figure
out what makes them tick. And it's it's um kind
of grossly elitist. Yeah, it's it's like, there's this beautiful
thing about your whole situation. You're blind to it, but
I I am. I am far enough at the ladder
that I can I can reach in there and figure
it out for exactly. So, Yeah, there's sometimes you get

(32:56):
into that that kind of itchy area with some of
these especially some of the early writings on the subject um.
Up next, we're going to briefly discuss friends bows. He
had this um this interesting take that was that has
been referred to but as autobiographical ethnography, all right, and
that that was a description that was thrown out in

(33:16):
that book I mentioned earlier by and Beryl about Chinese mythology.
He was a German American anthropologist lived fifty eight through two,
and the basic idea here was that the specifics of
a primitive culture can be deduced from kind of a
postmortem of its myths um, which you know, sounds like,
in a sense, kind of an oversimplification and maybe and

(33:36):
that's probably an oversimplification of his work, but you know,
I can I can see the value in it. Like
if you look at a person at a people's mythology,
then you're going to learn certain things about who and
what they are. Yeah. So Bois is an interesting contrast
to Land because I think both of them are in
this sort of weird period of time or like intellectuals

(33:57):
saw themselves as like defining quote pre bit of people's right.
But at the same time, if you look into Bois,
like he was pretty staunchly against what he called white
prejudice and racial superiority, uh, and that he didn't think
that it was like the job of anthropology to sort
of apply that mindset to other people's. But at the
same time, like there's it's complex, Like I think it's

(34:19):
too complex for us to get into in this episode,
especially since we're trying to tackle such a big subject
to begin with, it might be worth returning to Bois
in a future episode. But just this contradiction between like
not wanting to, as we're calling it, like white splain
uh to these particular peoples, but then at the same
time like saying like, oh, yeah, I get you figured out,

(34:41):
like once once I look at your rituals and your myths,
like I know what's going on here. Yeah. Yeah, it
is difficult because on the other hand, you have individuals
in a different culture with a different language trying to
understand individuals in another culture in a different language, and
speaking about it within their own culture, within in the
own language, within their own discipline. And yeah, it gets
it gets complicated pretty quickly. There's something going on here

(35:04):
too about using myth to understand the world that also
leads us to our fear of other people in like
different ways of which we can try to apply that
and make sense of it. Uh. And I think you
see a little bit of that here, But Bois was
obviously trying to push against it all. Right. Up next
we have Polish anthropologist Brunus Law Malinowski lived eighty four

(35:27):
through nineteen forty two, and Uh, his whole thing was
that that myth is a sociological charter. So, in other words,
if you want to know what's morally acceptable within a society,
look to their myths, which end up reflecting and informing
these standards. They spell out the important values, the rituals
of behavior. Um claude. Levi Strauss, who we're gonna get

(35:49):
to in a second, described this as myth is a
charter for social action, and then Levi Strauss expanded on
this view with a a structural analytical approach. The highlights
the binary oppositions in myth that bring the reader, listener,
or the individual to a place of deeper meaning. So
you're kind of narratively juggling the notions of social action

(36:11):
in a way that a mere you know, a mere
set of rules, carbon and a piece of stone cannot. Yeah.
Levi Strauss is one of sort of the you know,
first major thinkers in the last century to do that
uh language application thing here, and in particular he's considered
a father of structuralism, which we've talked about recently on

(36:33):
the show. Some people have asked us to please do
an episode on structuralism or post structuralism. We might it's
such an incredibly complex, uh theory that I don't know
that we could do justice to it. Well, sometimes what
you have to do is just to dip your toes,
and maybe we'll do that. But in the case of Strauss,
he wrote a four volume study called Mythologies. Uh And,

(36:56):
and the the idea here was that he followed a
single myth as it traversed from South America all the
way up to the Arctic Circle, sort of like how
we are tracing the origins of cannabis in that episode
a couple of weeks ago, right, So he's tracing its
cultural evolution. Uh And. In particular, he has an essay.
He has multiple things he's written about this, but there's
a widely read essay that is free on the internet

(37:17):
if you just google it, the Structural Study of myth
in which he says, and keep in mind this is
sixty years ago. Myths are interpreted in conflicting ways, right,
So he's looking at all the different ways that all
these other theorists are trying to interpret them, whether it's
through collective dreams or ritual or play or archetypes. All
these things that we're we've either talked about already or

(37:38):
we will talk about. None of them go beyond what
he calls quote a crude kind of philosophic speculation. So
he kind of looked down on them, right, But then,
like any good academic, he was like, well, I have
the one single answer and here um, he says, well,
the paradox is that myth is both full of elements
that contradict one another. Right, anything can happen in a myth,

(37:59):
but the same time between different cultures in different regions
that seemingly haven't interacted at all their similarities between their myths. Uh.
And one of the examples he uses is the Native
American trickster myth. As an example, he says, well, it's
a it's a meditation on both life and death, right,
and it's a it's symbolized by both like a raven,

(38:20):
and I think it's either a coyote or a wolf.
And those seem like they would be diametrically opposed, but
they're not. And here's why. And I'm not going to
dive down the whole Levi Strouss thing, but you can
take a look. It's it's really interesting stuff. Um. He
also used Oedipus as an example, and he said, since
myth is made of language, uh, and it can't be
told without human speech. This is why we need to

(38:42):
apply linguistics and structuralism to it in order to understand it.
He takes Oedipus and he breaks it apart, kind of
like a musical arrangement, like an orchestral a score with
assigned beats to it, and he breaks up those beats
into four columns. Uh. And through this he tries to
discern what a myth actually means, right, what that means, meaning,

(39:05):
the etiological nature of that meaning, uh, by finding that
the fourth column is the universal characteristic of man. Okay,
so this is like his his prime answer to what's
going on with myth? Uh? And in particular, he also said,
there isn't one authentic version of a myth, but there's

(39:26):
different manifestations, and we see this throughout all of them. Right.
So even like in the examples of like that, I've
been giving modern day superheroes as being sort of mythic, right,
Like their continuity is constantly changing, and and it's you're
talking about Superman the Sun God or Superman the Reagan
as figure and what the Dark Knight returns? Yeah, yeah,
exactly right, So like they're interpreted in different ways and

(39:48):
applied in different ways. So he's like, he was trying
to figure out what the fundamental units of myths were,
and he called them my themes, which I like because
if you split it, it's my theme. Um. And I
believe this was before the conceptualization of memes too, but
there's there's something connected there as well. Uh. He tried

(40:08):
breaking them down in this very strict structuralist linguistic manner
to find out what those fundamental units were, and he
thought that there had to be some kind of universal
law to all of them. All right, so we have
some good material here. We have, we've were, We've already
rolled through a number of different ways to take apart
the myth and figure out what it means. So let's
talk about Sigmund Freud. Just a little bit about your mother. Yes,

(40:33):
so Freud is mostly known for for psychoanalysis, but of
course myth was also hugely important to him. He would
keep all these these different uh uh, you know, mythic
depictions of God's just sitting around his office. And he
saw myths as reflections of our unconscious fears and desires.
So he viewed ancient religious characters as the manifestations of

(40:54):
submerged human desires, and therefore all religions is kind of
a mass delusion or maybe a paranoid for one of
wish fulfillment. This is where we get our edipal complex
and our electric complex room exactly. And so the idea
here is that in these religious figures you could find
the universal truth of the human condition. The edifice one,
of course, is probably the big one, probably the most
well known one, the classic example drawn from the the

(41:17):
the actual myth here of edifice Rex mythical Greek king.
He's a solver of riddles that have to do with
the human condition. So, you know, Freud dug that. But also, uh,
the myth underlies the edifice complex, the idea that on
and I'm and I'm summarizing super paraphrases, super paraphrasing, but
that this is like the dime store understanding of it,

(41:39):
but that all children want to kill their father and
marry their mother. Yeah, it's the Jim Morrison version, right,
So that that's that's kind of Freud's contribution in a
nutshell to our understanding of myth. Yeah. And then Freud's
contemporary and you know, sometime rival Carl Young had a

(42:00):
psychological explanation for everything. All these guys, man, everybody's just
coming up with their universal laws. I've got it figured out. No,
I've got it figured out. Here's my universal law. Uh.
Willam Reich, who we talked about in a previous episodes,
spun out of these two guys as well with his
universal law of how everything worked out. So Young he's
all about collective unconsciousness, in particular archetypal patterns of thoughts

(42:23):
and symbolism. He thought that myths were projections of the
collective unconsciousness that we all share. Uh. And again like
super dime store version of this is that there's like
this uh, shared imaginary space between all of us that
we're all pulling our ideas from. And it's it's natural
to humans, right Uh. And we can't quite define it,

(42:45):
but we're all pulling from that same space no matter
where we are in the world. And this seems to
explain why all these myths from varied locations are so similar.
So Young argues, well, like deities, for example, in mythology,
those are expressions of these universal archetypes. Uh. And so
it's been done with Young's work, is the psychological archetypes

(43:08):
that he came up with are applied in a certain
kind of literary criticism. Uh, and you can pretty much
apply to any story, right. Uh, it's usually very basic.
One of my former advisors in grad school would refer
to it as the model fits kind of study, right
where you're just you're taking his model and you apply
it to a text and you go, Yep, that works,

(43:30):
and that's you know, for for a lot of people,
that's good enough. For some people they want more meat
on the bone. But a lot of the young iun
criticism is done as such. So right, we've got examples
like the hero, the animal and the animals, the mother,
the father, the child, the sage, the trickster, the fool.
Right there, These are all archetypes that show up in

(43:51):
in many of our texts, whether they're literary, mythological, or
or superhero movies. Right. A really good example I think
of how young and archetypes are applied in world building,
and like a fictional setting is Game of Thrones, Like
that's like reverse engineered uh mythology there right in that

(44:14):
like George R. And Martin like clearly he had either
looked at this or other archetypal versions of mythology and
said Okay, Well, when I create my religion in this world, right,
like we've got a God of Light and then the Seven,
there's like what there's like Maiden, Mother and Crone, and
then there's the Stranger Strange Ponification, and I would imagine

(44:35):
the Stranger lignes up pretty well with the Young's version
of the Shadow, and the Shadow is this immoral remnant
of our instinctual animal past. So it's sort of like
this weird, like dark side of ourselves that we don't
want to admit to, but it's always with us. It's
always following us, right, like our shadows to um. And
so yeah, you can take this and you can PLoP

(44:56):
it on top of like almost any story and map
it out and it works. Uh. And in the same
way you can do that with Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey,
which is another very popularized sort of explanation of mythology
in the last what fifty years. Yeah, I mean it's

(45:16):
it's becomes synonymous with Star Wars, right absolutely. Yeah, so
Campbell is renowned today as a pop mythologist. Uh. And
it's similar to, uh, there's way more to it than this.
I we're really just diving in the shallow end here. Uh.
If you're interested in this, I highly recommend you go
out and read more about these these theorists and these thinkers.

(45:38):
But yeah, we're providing you with the IKEA toolkit if
you want to. If you want a real Alan wrench
for for extended use. Uh, there's a there's a different
tool kit out there for you. We're just giving you
the you know, a good overview. Campbell basically argues that
like almost every story follows this formula that he calls
the hero's journey and it play is out and Star

(46:01):
Wars is the one that everybody uses as an example
for this, not only because it fits it perfectly, but
also because George Lucas himself claimed, oh yeah, I was
influenced by Joseph Campbell, and I intentionally did all that stuff. Uh.
So he claims that he intentionally applied this three act
structure that breaks down into seventeen sub acts. Uh. And

(46:22):
I'm not gonna go through the whole thing here, but
you know, if you're familiar with sort of just like
generic uh film storytelling, it's going to be very familiar
to you in the way that, like, you know, stories
have rises and arcs. There's calls to adventures. Uh, there's
particular challenges that they have to go through and then
they have to return with something. And in this particular

(46:44):
Joseph campbell formula. He always says that you have to
the the hero has to refuse to return back to
the real world, but then they eventually do on some
kind of magical flight. Uh. It's it's interesting. And when
you again the model fits. You lay this on top
of Star Wars and it works out perfectly, even even
more interesting, like you lay it on top of a

(47:05):
New Hope and it works perfectly. And then if you
lay it on on top of like all of the
movies as well, the arc still works out. So okay,
I tend to believe George Lucas that he looked to
this quasi academic for you know, a narrative application. I
don't know about you, but like when I've written fiction
before in the past, I've actually tried to play around

(47:26):
with Campbell's uh formula. Yeah I have. I have at
times the dipped into it for sure, because then, yeah,
I mean you have this ultimately, which is a great
universal narrative arc too. I don't know which to follow
a mythic characters. Yeah, it's it's hard not to be
inspired by it, or at least to look at it
and say, all right, was this idea that I was
thinking of? How do how does that match up with

(47:47):
the blueprint here? For me, it was like it was
along the lines of like, okay, am I sticking to
this blueprint? All right? Like how do I break that
a little bit so that it's something that's the story
isn't so expected? Exactly? Yeah? Alright, So next we're gonna
discuss Mercella Eliade, who he mentioned earlier, um and he

(48:07):
was influenced by myth as ritual school of thought as
well as union archetype concepts. He recognized the etiological aspects
of myth, but he saw it as a vital link
between ancient sacred past in the modern profane present. So
imagine this bridge or even though like a time portal
between our modern linear experience and it's inherent terror of history,

(48:30):
which is a big deal over him. The idea that
you know, in brief that since we are experiencing time
as this linear progression, it's all the more horrifying when
we realize, oh well, we as as a as a
species keep making the same mistakes over and over again,
and we're never gonna get him fixed. Uh, that makes
more sense in a cyclical mindset, which you would have

(48:51):
had in the in the ancient past. So imagine this
portal connects our modern world to an age in which
sacred time is cyclical. This means that the meaning of
life is in the circle of things, and in this
ancient age, people are one with the cosmos and the
cosmic rhythms, while modern humans, according to Deliade, they're connected

(49:11):
only with history. So myth is the portal. Myth is
that that bridge that brings these two worlds together. Plus
he also gets into some of the other ideas we've
discussed here. I just want to read a quick quote
from his his excellent book Um the myth of the
Eternal Return. Myth is a history that can be repeated indefinitely,
in the sense that the myths serve as models for

(49:33):
ceremonies and periodically reactualize the tremendous events that occurred at
the beginning of time. The myths preserve and transmant the paradigms,
the exemplary models for all the responsible activities in which
men engage. By virtue of these paradynamic models revealed to
men in mythical times. The cosmos and society are periodically regenerated.

(49:57):
So uh at my encapsulation of that would be like
the Battlestar Galactica version of all this has happened and
it will happen again, right, that kind of thing. Yeah,
you can summarize it as saying that this linear experience
of reality, it works for us, but it's missing something,
and when the terror of history begins to creep in,
it's good to reconnect, to jump in that portal and

(50:18):
reconnect with the sacred experience of reality. Well that's an
interesting segue into um, two guys who I feel like
we have to mention here there again uh connected to
the sort of linguistic aspect, but they're also uh sort
of along the lines of Mars Marxist philosophical thinking. Uh.

(50:39):
Roland Bart is the first one, and he is infamous
for having written a book called Mythologies. Uh and man,
there's one chapter in there that I really think that
you would love. Mythologies is actually more about messages and
media than it is about myths per se. But he's
using Levi stress the same linguistic analysis and structuralism to

(50:59):
apply Marxist approach to myth and in particular media. So
he's writing this in the fifties late fifties, as the
rise of mass media is coming on. Uh. And he
interprets media with linguistic terms, applying them to socio political analysis.
So I think it'd be fair to say, like, without
Bart there would be like no Noam Chomsky. Okay, Uh.

(51:20):
And so he he does this, and it's interesting. He
finds that most of our modern myths are created by
a ruling class through media. Okay, now again again, like
I'm not going to dive deep down that rabbit hole
and make those arguments or or argue with them. But
there's a section in there that's all about wrestling, uh.

(51:42):
And it's uh one of the first sort of pro wrestling, right, well,
they didn't really have pro wrestling, but they had that
sort of narrative wrestling at the time that you could
still go watch. It's one of the first sort of
revelations of what we now call k fabe that I've
ever heard or read on the sport. Uh. And he
basically says, look, they're pantomim ing the archetypes of myth

(52:06):
in every single fight, and these are direct quotes from
the book. He says, the function of the wrestler is
not to win, it is to go through the motions
that are expected of him in the same way as iLiads,
Like you know, history is repeating itself. We watched the
wrestling match. We have expectations of what will or will
not happen, and we experienced pleasure by seeing this enacted.

(52:28):
And he says that it's enacted through three archetypical acts suffering, defeat,
and justice. Uh. And it's fascinating. I actually in grad
school went to school with the guy who took this
and ran with it and wrote his dissertation all about
modern day wrestling and mythology. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's
a lot of myth inet. You see it less, I
guess in the so the modern American models, But if

(52:53):
you look too, especially if you look to the more
traditional modes of Luca Libre in Mexico, you see like
straight up like by the by the books, um mythological
representations in many cases, to the to the point where
sometimes American viewers look at it and they're like, well,
I don't understand, Like I knew that this the good
guy was gonna win. I knew that the the Technico

(53:14):
was going to defeat the Rudeau, and it played out
exactly like I expected. There was no surprise. That's the
kind of the point. Yeah, that's the myth, that's this
myth reenacted in the ring for you. Yeah. Uh. And
so then there's also Frederick Jamison and again disservice like
this is going to be a very like bare bones
Jamison thing. But Jamison argues that myths actually attempt to

(53:35):
disintegrate history rather than repeat history, by emptying history out
of what their original meanings were and replaced them with
a narrative that seems like it's always been that way.
So my example, uh, from comic books would be, so
comics had the comics code that tried to bottle realize
and regulate and ignore entire aspects of American life for decades,

(53:59):
right like ex and profanity, which is completely cut out
of comic book stories. So you have these superhero mythologies
without any of uh, like the real world that they're
trying to explain within them, and these mythologies were pretending
like that wasn't an aspect of the American community and
acted like it had always been that way, right. Uh

(54:20):
So it's an interesting sort of take on it that,
like we're constantly revising history in the same way that
we're constantly revising our mythologies. And again, like I come
back to these the scientist examples, right, like we think
of Einstein and our Einstein that we talk about, and
Revere is kind of a fictional Einstein, right. Yeah. It
just also brings to mind the earlier example of myth

(54:40):
as a as a moral instructional tool. So, yeah, you're
changing You're you're changing the comic book mythos and then
using it as a way to or an attempt to say, hey,
this is how you live, which is there's there's no
well there is sex, but sure you're trying to make
a moral stamount part of the mytholo morality of the readers. Yeah.
So the last one that I wanted to throw in there,

(55:02):
and in particular because the thesis that I wrote when
I was in grad school was all about Captain America
and mythological applications to ideology and rhetoric. Uh. There's these
guys Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, and they've written
multiple books about something they called the American mono myth,
and they've argued that Captain America as a character is

(55:24):
indicative of this mono myth. Uh. They define it as
an anti democratic fantasy where a superpowered everyman saves society
by stepping outside of institutions to violently punish villains. There's
more to it than that. I mean, these guys have
written books and books and books on this, But look
at the last three Captain American movies. That's pretty much

(55:45):
what it is, right, Uh, Captain America, even though he's
an embodiment of America, he's always stepping outside of whatever
institution he's part of. Right. If he's part of the military,
has to do something without them. He's part of Shield,
he has to reveal that Shield has been co opted
by Hyde or whatever. If he's a part of the Avengers,
he has to step outside of the Avengers to set
things right. It's kind of like this ideal for what

(56:07):
the system should be, but he's not. Yeah, yeah, in
a way. But it's also like incredibly violent and sort
of fascistic as well. Uh. And so he's demonstrative this
so much that they call it the Captain America complex.
And much like with Young and his archetypes, you can
apply the Captain America complex to a lot of pop
culture examples and find that exact formula playing out. Especially

(56:30):
I find in a lot of our like eighties action movies,
the Captain America complex is pretty prevalent. Like lethal weapon
or total recall, the stuff like that. Like it's always
you know, some strong badass who has to step outside
of authority to get things done, you know that kind
of thing. Uh. And it's interesting they argue that it
permeates not only our media, but our political language as well.

(56:53):
And I would say, look at Donald Trump's campaign right now.
That's why a lot of people are attracted to it
is but because he steps outside of the institutions, right,
or at least he claims to to save society by
punishing the wicked. I do want to say, though, like, well,
I think that there's something to this. Their evidence is
only from like a few scattered, uh sources of at

(57:16):
least in the Captain America case. Uh. And so that's
one of the reasons why I wrote the thesis. I
did because I wanted to cover like the seventy years
of American history that sort of goes on during the
Captain America continuity. Uh. And one thing that's interesting with
Captain America in particular, and I wonder if we're going
to see this show up in these Marvel movies pretty soon,

(57:36):
is he goes through these cycles where he's all of
a sudden apathetic about everything. Uh. And in particular, he
gives up his role as a national symbol because he
no longer believes in the myths that define the nation
that he believes in. Right, so he like, there's the
first big example of this is in the early seventies
is this Captain America story that's crazy where like it

(57:58):
turns out like the big villain behind everything is the
President of the United States. Captain America storms into the
Oval Office, confronts him in the in the President United
States shoots himself in the face. And so after that,
Captain America is like, America, I don't believe in this
fantasy anymore. I am no longer Captain America. And he
discards his costume and his shield. If he moved to

(58:19):
Canada to so he joined Alpha Fi. He becomes a
biker and he calls himself the Nomad and rides around
on a bike and and is a vigilante that way,
and then like eventually finds his faith in America again.
Then it happens again in the eighties. It happened in
the two thousands as well. Like this is like this
recurring storyline with Captain America and kind of from a

(58:41):
Christian perspective, like kind of like a harrowing of hell,
maybe even the idea that even the Great Savior has
to fall and descend and then ride. Oh yeah, and
it's in the hellish thing about it too, is right,
Like he's never allowed to die or retire. Like every time,
like you think Captain America is dead or he gets
old or something, they replaced him with a new guy.
He inevitably comes back. It just happened like to three

(59:04):
weeks ago comics again, like he'd been replaced by someone
and then and he had he had turned really old,
he was like ninety years old. And then you know,
some science fiction anything happened and he's back. But yeah,
he's gonna have to go through the whole cycle over again.
All right, Well, um, you know, I just want to
close out by mentioning William G. Dotty again. He's that
religious study scholar, mythologist. Um, he summarized a lot of

(59:27):
what we've talked we've talked about in this episode in
what is, in my opinion, a highly effective kind of
eightfold view. So he said that, and I'm just gonna
roll him out here for you. Number one, myth as
is an esthetic device. It is narrative literature. Okay, myth
is a tale of God's in other worlds, it's number two.
Number three is myths explain our origins. Number four is

(59:48):
that myth is essentially mistaken or primitive science. Number five
is that myth is a text for a right or
ritual that application again. Number six is that myth is
a means to make universal ideas or truths concrete and
intelligible for the average consumer. Number seven, myths are all
about explicating beliefs, collective experiences, or values. And number eight

(01:00:10):
myths constitute spiritual or psychic expression, so that that would
play out well with both like the sacred nature of myth,
but then also Young's uh collective unconsciousness, which is sort
of a psychic expression in a way. Yeah, And I
think the big take com and one of the reasons
I like like this approach is that that I feel

(01:00:31):
like a lot of us can agree that myths are
poly functional. You know, they have they have various functions
that they're carrying out at the same time, sometimes to
the same consumer, to the same you know, the same
person that's listening to, viewing, or hearing the myth or
just thinking about it in the back of their mind. Again,
it's this, it's this weird thing because that we're all

(01:00:52):
living in the shadow of myth, and we're casting the
shadow of myth. Um. We may not think that that
myths play a big role in our lives, but regardless,
if we're talking about the Greek gods, uh, you know,
the the Old Testament or just the pages of your
favorite comic book, those uh, those that mythic energy is

(01:01:12):
very much in play in our world. Yeah. I think
if any lesson we can take from like this overview
of all of these ideas about mythology, it's that there's
no one universal law. Like a lot of these thinkers
tried to say, I've figured it out. This is the
key to the universe, and the key to the universe
is figuring out how these stories about what the key
to the universe is work right and in a way,

(01:01:35):
they're creating their own mythologies. But there are applications that
you can you can dip into from from many of
these things and pull them out and think about uh,
anything really in modern day settings, whether it's science, politics,
pop culture, and you apply those and you can sort
of pull out the strings and go, oh, wait a minute.

(01:01:56):
This is like the sort of behind the scenes of
how society works, right, or or at least how we're
trying to make sense of the world. Still, we're still
looking up at the sun and the moon and the
planets and nature and the seasons and going I don't
really know how this whole thing works. But this answer,
this is the answer I'm gonna go by, and if
I'm gonna try to control it, I'm going to perform

(01:02:17):
these rituals and everything will be fine. I'm gonna see
what Batman has to say about it, and then I'm
gonna touch back in with my my normal linear life.
Absolutely yeah. I trust Batman every day over. Carl Sagan
all right, all right, well there you have it again.
We're just hoping to provide you with some tools, with

(01:02:37):
some different perspectives on myth in your life, in your world,
in the things that you consume. We'd love to hear
back from all of you on this topic. How does
myth factor into your life? How do how do these
different ways of looking at myth factor into your belief systems,
in your culture, etcetera. Yeah, and going forward to as
we cover you know, we dive back into more science

(01:02:58):
the topics as we continue with the show. You know,
now we've got sort of a foundational framework for myth
when it comes up again when we're talking about crazy
space satellites or tiny bone worms that devour whales at
the bottom the ocean. Right, So, uh, this is a
nice way for us to have a framework, you know,
as you're listening and myth pops up in your head

(01:03:19):
again for a future episode as well, please let us know. Uh,
let's synthesize some of this information together and learn together
from it. The ways to talk to us about those
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(01:03:40):
to reiterate, I say this on every episode, I think,
but we don't just like post the podcast there, and
that's it. Like we talk about what what we're working
on outside of the podcast, whether it's writing or videos.
We also share all this totally bizarre science and news
information that we come across in our weekly endeavors. That's right,

(01:04:01):
and be sure to check out stuff to bow your
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