Myth

Contextual Quote

"Myth, the concentrated world picture, which, as an abbreviation of appearance, cannot work without the miracle. However, it’s likely that almost everyone in a strict test would feel himself so thoroughly corrupted by the critical-historical spirit of our culture that he could make the previous existence of the myth credible only with something scholarly, with some mediating abstractions. However, without myth every culture forfeits its healthy creative natural power: only a horizon surrounded with myth completes the unity of an entire cultural movement. Only through myth are all the powers of the imagination and of Apollonian dream rescued from their random wandering around. The images of myth must be the unseen, omnipresent, daemonic sentries under whose care the young soul matures and by whose signs a man interprets for himself his life and his struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation which guarantees its own connection to religion, its growth out of mythic ideas."

- Nietzche (Birth of Tragedy, section 23) [1]

Characteristics

Brendan Graham Dempsey:

"According to Campbell, myths fulfill what he calls a psychological, metaphysical, cosmological, and a sociological function:

• Myth’s psychological function is to center the individual, carry them through the stages of development, and harmonize them with their world.

• Myth’s metaphysical function is to awaken in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude for the ultimate mystery, reconciling them to reality as it is.

• Myth’s cosmological function is to present a total image of the universe through which the ultimate mystery manifests.

• Myth’s sociological function is to validate and maintain a certain moral order of laws for living with others in society.

In premodern/traditional societies, the inherited cultural myth-systems functioned (more or less) successfully on all of the levels, providing individuals guidance through

1) their life’s developmental crises and transformations,

2) a framework for relating themselves to the Ultimate Mystery,

3) an explanatory orientation for meaningfully navigating their world, and

4) a sense of how to treat other individuals in their community.

When all of these needs are met and harmoniously integrated, the individual will feel in alignment with herself and her world: a state experienced as a sense of meaning and wholeness.

As noted, however, the transformation of our horizons has reconfigured society along entirely different lines from the old premodern, mythic ones—a process completed in the 20th century, though set in motion much earlier. As of yet, no one has found a means to put the pieces back together in our new world—that is, to re-integrate a meaningful mythic existence with the developments of modern life. I believe that personal myth offers us a path to do just this."

(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/building-the-cathedral-1-surveying)