The Power of Myth

[Teheuti]

Myths aren't usually "timeless" - in contrast to an earlier statement. They have mostly an author, who started the myth. Naturally, for some myths (or the most of them) we don't know any author ... but this doesn't change the general condition.

Actually, some people separate myth from story by saying that myths don't have an author, whereas stories do. What is meant is that a myth takes such a powerful hold over the minds of a people that it transcends any authorship. It's like it catches fire. Particular versions and 'updates' of myths can be started by someone, but they quickly take on a life of their own. They are timeless in that they are characterized by universal themes that keep reappearing again and again in many different cultures. When John F. Kennedy's life was compared to Camelot it was only a particular manifestation of a great myth that everyone recognized immediately.

One thing that characterizes tarot myths is that so many people say, "Of course . . . That's why . . . Yes . . ." And many have no need to look further because they feel satisfied at some deep elemental level. That's what I'm hoping we'll begin to get at here.

 

[Yygdrasilian]

“Veiled Language”

☆
Mythopoesis is an Art whose power lies in the magic of storytelling...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqlnSi9KNs4

 

[Huck]

Actually, some people separate myth from story by saying that myths don't have an author, whereas stories do. What is meant is that a myth takes such a powerful hold over the minds of a people that it transcends any authorship. It's like it catches fire. Particular versions and 'updates' of myths can be started by someone, but they quickly take on a life of their own. They are timeless in that they are characterized by universal themes that keep reappearing again and again in many different cultures. When John F. Kennedy's life was compared to Camelot it was only a particular manifestation of a great myth that everyone recognized immediately.

One thing that characterizes tarot myths is that so many people say, "Of course . . . That's why . . . Yes . . ." And many have no need to look further because they feel satisfied at some deep elemental level. That's what I'm hoping we'll begin to get at here.

Hm ... that's not my definition or understanding of myth. Greek mythology for instance has authors, even when the authors go back to unknown older material or even only to oral tradition. Also one can often enough detect concrete politic in Greek mythology with opportunities to place myths in specific times.

Maybe I'm too fixed on research questions ... where the presence of myths is (real or possibly) connected to something else in history. Myths - if successful researched - are then occasionally related back to an often trivial background.

If I would be a diviner and I would focus really on it, maybe my perception of the "myth"-word would be different.
Divination tools like I-Ching and perhaps also Tarot would generate a scheme, by which the world gets certain partitions, which naturally repeat, as the excessive use of the requested system make them repeat. I think, I wouldn't like the terminus "myth" for them, but perhaps would think of them as "archetypical patterns".

... ... luckily I'm not a diviner and I need not to care for clients, who talk their "Of course . . . That's why . . . Yes . . .". Actually I hope to find more interesting partners in communication, perhaps with some own ideas, with some critique, with some specification to special points etc. This sort of stuff runs better with me in my world ...

 

[gregory]

Interesting that. To what extent does the oral tradition have an "author" ? Who was the author of nursery rhymes, for instance...

 

[Teheuti]

Greek mythology for instance has authors, even when the authors go back to unknown older material or even only to oral tradition. Also one can often enough detect concrete politic in Greek mythology with opportunities to place myths in specific times.

I disagree. They were recounting the myths, not creating them. A story that is based on a myth is what you are talking about. You wouldn't say that the screenwriters of the recent movie Thor are the authors of the myth--despite their putting a new twist on it. Some myths derive from a specific author - sure - but they usually have a more universal base.

Myths - if successful researched - are then occasionally related back to an often trivial background.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is not a myth. But, it's based on a whole body of related myths. Talk about timeless . . . ;-)

Of course, as wikipedia notes plenty of people and groups have their own understanding of any particular word:

For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures,[2] whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. In the study of folklore, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form.[3][4][5] Many scholars in other fields use the term "myth" in somewhat different ways.[5][6][7] In a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story.[8]

My perspective derives from Jung, Campbell, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Von Franz, etc. and a group I've belonged to for about 12 years that meets a couple of times a month to study myth and symbols.

 

[Titadrupah]

Hm ... that's not my definition or understanding of myth. Greek mythology for instance has authors, even when the authors go back to unknown older material or even only to oral tradition. Also one can often enough detect concrete politic in Greek mythology with opportunities to place myths in specific times.

Myth is like a universal mental matrix. According to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, it can be a story pattern that will appear in different cultures, perhaps at different times, with no kind of connection between them, with strong similarity (Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell are among those researchers that explored the same line of thought, throughout the five continents). Of course myths are related to political, economical and social structures. These structures originate from the myths and the myths from them, myths consolidate cosmologies and customs. Naturally, the majority of myths is so ancient that authorship can turn irrelevant. Through repetition, even when there are variations and contributions, the story stabilizes. There exists the phenomenon of myths in formation, just a few centuries old, or even decades, which can be called legends too. ///////////////////
Certainly some of these recent myths can be particularly convincing and easy to identify with. One can only imagine how gypsies were perceived by such rigid and closed societies as the European aristocracies of the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries. Being nomads, stateless, aesthetically challenging and colorful, poor but beautiful, excellent musicians (Franz Liszt's famous Hungarian Rhapsodies are actually gypsy. He took inspiration and borrowed melodies directly from them), free spirits, they have since then carried with the reputation of knowing the secrets of love and destiny. But being different they were also feared. Here in Mexico there is a considerable presence of the romani, and during my infancy I could hear people say: -Gypsy women can read minds and bewitch...and steal little boys and girls!-. No wonder they can be idealized as the embodiment of freedom and mystery. And peril. Therefore, a perfect vehicle for the transmission of things unknown, supernatural, or forbidden.

 

[Teheuti]

☆
Mythopoesis is an Art whose power lies in the magic of storytelling...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqlnSi9KNs4

Brilliant talk! Although myth is never mentioned. But if you are implying that Alan Moore's entire discussion is about myth, it thus includes all forms of art and magic (which he equates), then it becomes so broad that it would include, as Moore says, all advertising as well as all stories and all works of art. I don't think that to get that broad is going to help the discussion unless we get specific as to what is the magical effect of the major tarot myths that keep getting repeated over the past 250 years.

 

[Teheuti]

Yygdrasilian - I see what you meant by Mythopoesis in relation to the tarot myths. From wikipedia

Mythopoeia is sometimes called artificial mythology, which emphasizes that it did not evolve naturally and is an artifice comparable with artificial language, so should not be taken seriously as mythology. For example the noted folklorist Alan Dundes argues that "any novel cannot meet the cultural criteria of myth. A work of art, or artifice, cannot be said to be the narrative of a culture’s sacred tradition...(it is) at most, artificial myth."

And, yes, tarot "myths" would, IMHO, fall into this category. But, as Joseph Campbell tried to explain, myths need to be relevant to our time. And so, they get 'upgraded' through the culture of the time and place. But, the question then is: do they work for that group? And I think tarot myths work as the core myths within the culture of tarot readers.

So, if they work—what are they doing?

 

[Teheuti]

In another video Alan Moore makes the point that if you create a work of art in a magical state, then viewing it later is a way back into that magical state.
http://youtu.be/nBfP0nblI_s
(When I was last in London I went to this Austin Spare exhibit (see video) as I was staying with some people who had contributed pieces - incredible!)

Like art, certainly this is part of the function of myth/story, especially when it is used as the basis of ritual.

So, the tarot myths, created perhaps when the authors were in a magical-visionary state, provide an entrance into that dimension of the tarot experience. Are those who see the tarot myths only as lies forever barred from entering???? What do you think?

 

[Titadrupah]

Don't mean to get off topic again, but I just found this book, which might add more to the whole debate:

Kabbalah in Italy: 1280-1510 by Moshe Idel

http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300126266

Idel brings to light the rich history of Kabbalah in Italy and the powerful influence of this important center on the emergence of Christian Kabbalah and European occultism in general.

Moshe Idel is Max Cooper Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He has received many awards, including the National Jewish Book Award, for his previous books on Kabbalah. He lives in Jerusalem.

Thank you for this. Also worth reading is The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah, by Gershom Scholem (1954). It can be fetched in pdf format in several sites around the web. It's a short essay.