Creation and Mythology

In 1642 the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Dr. Lightfoot, proclaimed that the world was created at 9 a.m., on October 23, 4004 BC.  This refined dating was based upon the slightly earlier work of Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who had already decided upon the year 4004BC, though his studies and calculations were based upon the Old Testament. Such authoritarian statements had heralded in the Age of Reason.

The urge to reduce an enigma or the power of mystery by labelling and filing it from a dogmatic or pre-contrived system, is one of the most dangerous and inherently weakening of western consciousness.

The mystery of creation is not a problem to be solved either through dogma or logical and evolutionary systems. It may only be approached through levels found in mythology, which speak directly to the imagination in a language of timeless imagery and powerful, potentially transformative, narrative. A question like who was the first man, or who was the first woman is answered by mythology which comes from deep levels of consciousness, in which universal symbolic patterns are grasped.  The recounting of myth at its deepest and most powerful level is a reverberation of the event which it originally characterized Myths are not allegories but manifestations at the heart of our nature. Intuitively, if we lose contact with the key images within myth, or with mythic patterns, we will lose contact with a reality that both underpins and transcends the superficiality of our civilization.

A myth is a story embodying and declaring a pattern of relationship between humanity, other forms of life, and the environment. It has many implications extending far beyond a materialistic or psychological definition and interpretation. The definition of myth is divided into three parts.

1.      A myth is a story. Myths are found initially in oral tradition: this means they are tales handed down by word of mouth and preserved collectively and anonymously, though specific story-tellers or creative poets and writers often work with them. The earliest known literary use of the word myth is in the works of Plato where mythologia is used to mean the telling of tales customarily legendary characters such as gods, goddesses, heroes and revered ancestors. Most traditional myths come to us in a literary form from an early cultural period, as texts     forming a critical turning point between oral tradition and written dogma or history. True myth can express many truths in an emblematic, poetic manner which is most efficient and effective, and often more communicative than many thousands of highly reasoned words. Myths reveal their content to other levels of awareness than the merely logical or reasoning mental processes; in some cases they can leap beyond these processes to convey truth.

2.      A myth embodies and declares a pattern of relationships. This aspect of myth should be given very careful attention. The content of myth, and its relationship to collective tradition (from which popular ideas are generated) is often far more subtle than that of a mere narrative.

The unfolding of any myth includes sequences, structures and relationships, which form very specific patterns often called mythic patterns. The pattern with a relationship in myth, if it is part of a sequence deriving from an enduring tradition with roots deep in early human history, is often a visual exposition of specific concepts. These concepts are expressed as tales or verses concerning magic, metaphysics, energies of life and death, or of creation and termination.

3.      The mythic relationship is between humanity, other forms of life, and the environment. The involvement of myth with natural history or cultural history is a later expansion stretched out upon the foundations of creation mythology. We must consider that ‘the environment’ ranges from the immediate locality of a story-teller, through the land, the continent, the planet, the solar system, and ultimately the universe. Myths deal precisely with both. A local and a universal environment. It’s often difficult to separate the two because the local environment mirrors a universal one, and myth leaps instantaneously from what appear to be localized occurrences to what are, universal or cosmic events often using the same characters, symbols, and relationships to define both.

The astrological content of mythology often works in this way; one moment a character is human involved in some drama, the next he or she is a heavenly entity  related to a pattern of stars or planets found in the night sky at a certain time of year. This paradoxical role of myth was rationalized by the ancient Greeks, when they stated that their heroes were placed among the stars by the gods as reward for their valour. On the deepest level of all, the environment is not only one of space, energy and time, but of consciousness, which unifies those three into one, and from which, according to ancient tradition, all other forces were generated. To imagine, therefore, is to echo the original creation of the universe. A concept which only the human mind can create.