MYTHS ARE HISTORY
1. A New Impartial Gathering ...
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First:
A new impartial gathering of the world’s wide range of creation myths must be undertaken. |
Concentrating on the central idea of cosmogony — the narrative of our cosmic origins in orders of ages — we begin by gathering and collecting an unprecedented array of source texts, images and other available materials. — By subdividing pertinent passages from each culture’s creation mythology into the smallest possible component episodes — such as [.... ... , and ....]. — each culture’s body of myths can be gradually broken down, and each incident of the unfolding story can be isolated among a number of universally recognizable tropes and themes. Then, pursuing the appearances and reappearances of these tropes and themes throughout the mythologies of the world, we can continue to ascertain where similar component episodes occur in every culture’s mythos — dividing them where their natural joints are, and not trying to overly fragment any part.
For this revaluation of myth as history to be universally applicable, however, we must first analyze each myth individually — by effectively identifying, isolating and categorizing each constituent episode according to the particular mythological trope or theme that was being exemplified. And because we often find these same tropes and themes shared with other related episodes, or combined with other elements in more complicated relationships in various ways, it seems necessary to pay careful attention to the way the episodes were combined with one another, and study the larger patterns and structures they form when bundled together with related episodes from other cultures, near and far. In order to be properly understood, the mythologies of the world must be observed as a whole, by any means and methods which will permit this. For a complete understanding, both the detailed properties and the way they were combined into larger patterns are equally essential. The meanings to be found in mythology do not only reside in the isolated tropes and themes of myth, but also in the way those elements were put to use and connected. — It would thus seem that only a renewed collection and revaluation of the whole gamut of creation myths will allow us to solve the riddle of how each culture’s mythos exactly fits with all the others. |
One of the main obstacles to the progress of mythological studies, so far, has been the so-called quest for the true or earliest version of a given mythic trope or theme. But if, on the contrary, we define a mythic trope or theme as consisting of all its cultural renditions, as observed via all respective fields-of-view, our analysis should instead take all of them into account and treat all of them in the same way. A systematic approach demands that, if the whole is to be made known, then each aspect of the whole must be carefully analyzed. The whole does not contain all by exclusion — but rather encompasses all by all representative examples being included.
As such, we must cultivate the habit of moving around to as many viewpoints as we can find. For all cultural renditions were but partial glimpses of one and the same global narrative. All referred to one and the same underlying reality, manifest through a variety of cultural forms. The study of one rendition, as such, invariably sheds light on the study of all the other renditions. Thus, to understand what a particular mythic theme or trope was really talking about, we will have to observe each cosmogonic situation from all pertinent points-of-view. It simply cannot be too strongly emphasized that all available fields-of-view should be taken into consideration. While due preference must be given to accounts in which heavenly bodies, geological upheavals and displacements of human populations are referred to unambiguously, the only real solution to negotiating a common global history is to rid ourselves of all preferential prejudices and biases, and instead choose to acknowledge and embrace the cultural memories of all peoples and places. All salient points of evidence, no matter how similar or how different from the rest, are to be included. We shall not omit or dismiss any inconsistencies or contradictions — and all notable distinctions between cultural accounts shall be clearly and integrally explained. For, as we noted earlier, the global multiplicity of thematic variants does not mean that any one of them is somehow more basic or true, with all the others being derivative or false. There were as many memories as there were cultural groups. Particular myths can mean different things to different people, with many equally valid versions. Thus all available versions and variants shall be deemed equally valid and included in this study. Each rendition is to be considered equally valuable as an partial witness of events observed from multiple points-of-view. — Therefore we shall ardently endeavor to investigate each single one of them, aiming to reveal and to explain things concerning them which are not yet generally known to the multitude. |
Thus, each cultural rendition gathered here is to be taken at face value, and regarded as an independent memory of historical events — somewhat after the fashion of fractal iterations, each cultural rendition being a fragment that more or less repeats the overall configuration of the global whole — all of them being regarded as equally valid and true, each from their own respective geophysical point-of-view.
Taking the mythological testimonies of the ancients at face value here begins with the working hypothesis that all stories reported as direct observation in the ancient chronicles were not originally symbolic or metaphoric, but rather visibly metonymic to the naked-eye-view of a given culture’s situational context in nature. — What they saw was what they got: and likewise, whatever they got is what we must learn how to see. This approach differs considerably from the manner in which myth has been portrayed by most anthropologists and mythographers. While myths do have important psychological and structural aspects in addition to the basic fundamental values given to the myths within their traditional cultural settings, we chose instead to emphasize that myths originally represented a true and coherent form of history that today can be studied and reevaluated more objectively. |
Coming to terms with cultural memory as a conscious aspect of human heritage and experience, it is essential to deconstruct concepts that are particular to our own mindset if we want to understand actions that arise as a result of the mindsets of others. Since we will not always know what we are looking for in advance, it’s important that we avoid all prejudices and preconceptions. Independent cultural details that at first sight seem irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to hold vital pieces of the global puzzle.
To study these things objectively we must also abandon many outworn prejudices and disbeliefs regarding the intellectual and artistic achievements of our Stone age and Bronze age ancestors. The legacy of mythopoeic thinking and its implications for our own understanding of the past and the present must be reexamined from many perspectives. In doing so, many long-instilled biases against the ancients’ mythopoeic intellect and its sense of concrete, personalized reality must be put aside, and replaced by a more appreciative view of our ancestors’ early cultural developments. In a nutshell, in order to actually understand what exactly happened in prehistory, we must choose instead to re-experience the myths through the eyes of many ancient witnesses. We must learn to regard every aspect of any given culture as being directly expressive of the people’s respective cosmovision. By applying an historical approach to the study of creation myths, and considering them as the direct record of the way in which the early men perceived and conceptualized the world, we must learn to recognize that the oral narratives and other symbolic interpretations of historical reality which the ancients so seriously believed in were no different to them than the physical conditions in which they actually lived. This is ultimately the only way in which we will ever recover the whole global narrative. |