Our modern soul and world are in sore need of mythical understanding, wrote Karen Armstrong in A Short History of Myth. With that in mind, I've decided I might as well provide a little in the way of said mythic sustenance, though I can't promise my interest will extend to fleshing out this mythic morsel to what might be imagined to be required depths of literary matter.
There is a wound in the mind of God, and the drops that pour from his wound are the words that flow into the mind of man. Thus the Word was with God and the Word was God. These words, or drops of blood from the mind of God, when coalesced wisely, form ideas which take us back towards the mind from which they flowed. However the words are emanations of the mind rather than the mind in its fulness, and just as the wound heals and the external blood dries up, so words should not be mistaken for autonomous beings in themselves apart from the mind which is their life-source, otherwise they too dry up and die. Thus the dried-up intellectual who takes the drops of blood for the all, feasts on them as if they were life itself, and becomes more and more a refugee from living truth.
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6 comments:
We definitely need new or at least rejuvenated myths. Problem is they can't be consciously contrived - the real power circumvents the mere thinking mind.
But the very existence of myths shows they can be contrived, or created by the mind, else they wouldn't exist. Their source may go very deep into reality, but it's still ultimately an intellect that gives birth to them as intellectual constructs.
Elberry is right on one point. Myths are incomplete interpretations of unfathomed reality, which is a mystery beyond the intellect. But, they are obviously only historical, so the idea of new myths is a dumb contradiction in terms. And myths are also not out of circulation, they ARE being rejuvenated in the present; if you don't think so, you should read more.
I know what Elberry means and essentially agree that they are not the product of simple conscious reasoning. But they do exist in the realm of language; thus they are products of the language manipulating mind, even if we argue that they are 'released' by this mind as opposed to created by it.
My piece stems from having the thought of language pouring from a wound in the mind of God; all else is a slight perhaps necessary, perhaps not, fleshing out of that including the false intro as a scene setting. I also didn't say myths are out of circulation; I merely mentioned a point made by Karen Armstrong in her book.
It's interesting to read Ancient Greek drama and note the diminishment in power from Aeschylus & Sophocles to Euripides. Euripides is good but he's essentially a satirist (and a very acute one) - to him, gods are just larger versions of some swaggering king figure. Sophocles' gods are powers.
i think Sophocles (my favourite!) started out to write a play because that was his trade, and as he was writing these deeper energies coalesced around the old myth he was retelling. Perhaps similar to Shakespeare - he probably only started writing for money but as you can see from his Hamlet being unplayably long, once he began, all kinds of energies gathered and made themselves forcefully present.
Hamlet is another of our myths, as is Don Juan, The Wandering Jew, Faust, Satan, King Arthur.
i would theorise that when a myth is vital it is 'uncanny' (Harold Bloom's description of 'canonical literature'). When it is not vital it is just a matter for pedantic observation or cheap films or jingles.
A genuine power will unsettle if fully apprehended.
Language as blood dripping from a wound in the mind of God is a bit unsettling to me!
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