THE CREATION OF MYTH
On Myth as Preliterate Cultural Memory
           
On Myth as Preliterate Cultural Memory
All the old myths, in that sense, were all matters of hearsay to begin with. — But it wasn’t just an idle game of gossip, or some kind of sophisticated poetic conceit — all this — making mountains of mythic meanings out of the mysterious words their ancestors handed down from mouth to ear. It wasn’t all nothing but empty air. — They were not novel inventions presented for mere entertainment, nor mere tales told to while the time away; nor were they quick answers for questions improbably itching at our ancestors’ anxious intellects. 

These myths, and their accompanying rituals, were, rather, examples of mankind’s earliest known means of interpreting and coping with the devastating natural disasters that had beset societies of earlier eras.  They were the once well-esteemed beliefs of the world’s first wordsmiths and culture-originators, beliefs regarding crucial issues in the lives of local communities worldwide — beliefs such as the peoples’ common origin and ancestry;  carefully conserved details concerning their original homeland;  the earlier history of the heavens and the earth — as well as specific ritual prescriptions for ensuring the vital integrity of their community, and the future viability of the community’s present day earthly home.

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These myths were not merely stories told, but stories actually lived. They were ‘foundational narratives,’ stories that explained the present in terms of momentous events that had occurred in the past — stories that were taken seriously; stories that had passed into, and become vividly remembered cultural history. 

— And prior to the modern possibility of exact preservation in writing, living human memory was the only viable means available to cultural groups who wished to indefinitely store such beliefs, and the knowledgeable wisdom encoded in their myths, as a means of securing their community’s vitality, identity, and long-term chances for future survival. 

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Myths like these may also be considered the fundamental forerunners of both ancient and modern forms of religion — in that the operations of natural cosmological forces and geophysical events, and occurrences in human history, were commonly represented or personified as the supernatural actions of divine or superhuman beings ... in tales that were perpetuated by generation after generation for hundreds and sometimes even thousands of years. 
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— As such, mythologies of the Bronze and Iron Ages often share many obvious affinities with (so-called) primitive or pre-logical folk-beliefs of later eras as well. ...

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Above everything else, In all places and at all times that we know of, myth meant both the stories retold by teachers and performers, as well as the watchful silence of a local community audience. The traditional storytellers led the muthos, while the rest of the community carefully observed and listened, and were summarily inducted thereby into the tale of the muthos and its teachings. To be properly inducted into what myth had to teach, the audience simply had to be readily receptive, and ready to receive, what was shown or acted out or said aloud about the sacred things their honored forebears had purportedly heard and seen.

 — As such it is not enough for us to consider only the mouthing of the muthos undertaken by those authorized to tell or perform the stories; nor can we continue to ignore the passive acceptance and docile assimilation exhibited by the community:  for both aspects of their social situation are equally valid and equally important to our study here. Only when we acknowledge both sides of myth-making — both the spoken utterance and the receptive silence, both the muthos and the mutus —  can we begin to understand how the open mouths of the myth-makers and the closed mouths of the community formerly corresponded to, and complemented one another, in the creation of myth. 

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