Myth-making

and the

Logic of Myth

Figures from the Sami mythology on a shaman’s drumSerhat UyurkulakSep 30, 2013.

Mythos, Epos, and Logos

Mythos: Story(-telling), tale, moral tale, legend, fable;word that is recited or heard.

Epos: Words (statements) recited according to a certain order and meter. Metered and ordered story-telling is gods’ gift to humankind.

Mythos: content of the recited word/storyEpos: the artful form this content takes/plot

Due to this proximity, the Myth and the Epic have often been used interchangeably. Epics work with myths; mythic materials;mythologies.

The Epic of Gilgamesh takes as its subject the mythified adventures and heroism of Uruk’s king.

Its world is the mythic world of Sumerians; the experiences depicted reveal the mythic world-views of Mesopotamia.

Logos: The revelation/recitation of Truth through words.

An order of laws in human bodies and souls, in nature and in cosmos.

One must discover the logos (set of laws common to all entities) and express it by means of words; must not inventor create these laws-Truth

Myth-makers and epic story-tellers are the ancient poets;artists; (imaginative-creative) writers; inventors of Truth

Homer and Hesiod from the 8th C. BCE are the two great myth-collectors, -makers, and epic writers

Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad are also catalogues of the Greek gods and demi-gods; of their function in the creation of cosmos, earth, and their role in major historical events

Hesiod’s Theogony is about the very creation of gods themselves; it gives the family trees of gods. His Works and Days refers to mythology to explain some of the existential questions of humankind.

The Epic of Gilgamesh too is concerned with gods and how theyhave effected the creation of the universe and humankind

In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology and mythic world-view:

•Divine beings pre-exist matter. Personified supernatural powers are key to creation. Matter is secondary.

(According to one Sumerian legend, the earth and the heavens had been created as a single unit and then were divided by Enlil.In another version, the heavens and the primitive form of earth get coupled to create the rest of the world.)

Myths: Foundations and origins of things and humansNATURE, STRUCTURE, and the WORKING of Creation

•The mythic world-view is Anthropomorphic and Animistic

Anthropomorphism sees the nonhuman as human; attributes human characteristics to objects or animals

(Humbaba the monster having emotions, speaking.Gods imagined as humans, having human ambitions.)

Animism interprets inanimate objects as living; attributes will and spirit to them.

(Monuments; temples; totems have spirits of their own. Even the Cedar Forest in Gilgamesh functions as an enchantedspace.)

•In the mythic world-view, there is a continuum betweenthe conscious and the unconscious experiences, revelations, discoveries, etc.

In Gilgamesh, the dreams serve as an interface between theconscious daily life and the otherworldly fears, unconsciousdesires, and the future. They are real in their effects.

•In the mythic world, the identity logic may not work – one thing can be another thing at the same time. A may equal B, B may also turn to be C…

Gilgamesh is God and not-God; he is man and not-man simultaneously. (Jesus Christ?)

Philosophical Revolution of the 6th C. BCE

Poets and myths are questioned; they lose their power to explainthe Arche (fundamental principle, first element, beginning)

Physio-logoi (natural scientists) and philosophers; the ancient physicists, mathematicians, geologists, astronomers, and historians replace the myth-makers

Thales of Miletus: 624-546 BCE (For many, founder of Western philosophy; water is the primary matter)

Pythagoras: 585-497 BCE (Mathematician; founder of a religious movement; transmigration of souls; Arithmos [numbers] as the foundation of Being)

Heraclitus: 540-475 BCE (Philosopher of change and unity of opposites as the forces making the universe)

Herodotus: 485-425 BCE (Author of The Histories; founder of scientific, rational historiography; Historia meanslogical reasoning or inquiry; no longer the stories of gods)

Plato: 428-348 BCE (Founder of the Academia in Athens; influenced by Pythagoras; philosopher of Ideas as archeand their secondary appearances – us and our world)

These men of LOGOS reject the stories of gods and creationimagined by MYTHOS and expressed by EPOS.

For them, these myths are irrational popular stories about the universe, nature, and humankind.

The 18th C. Enlightenment critique of myth, theology, andreligious dogma dates back to the Philosophical Revolution.

‘Myth’ taken as fairytale; a body of lies; incredible stories impossible to observe, repeat, prove or disprove.

This pejorative definition still with us?

Detached objectivity of reason vs. Affective charge of mythic mind

Technological domination of nature vs. Mythic relation to itas a power to reckon with

Empiricist rationalism vs. Mythic symbolism and ritualism

Rational equality of quantities vs. Mythic diversity of qualities

The thinking, knowing, closed Self vs. Mythic openness to unknown (super-)natural forces in and outside the Self

Is the mythical world-view sheer ignorance; obscurantism; plain and simple stupidity? – NO.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Concept of Enlightenment” (1944)

“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters.”

-- Fear of the unknown and being masters by pulling it intothe realm of the known and knowable as best as possible.

“Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts tomythology.”

-- Myth attempts to create a narrative, an explanation, a loose theory of almost everything existing, and of their reason for being.

MYTH is a particular way of making sense of the world.

It produces a certain body of knowledge and systems with which to record and represent an immense array of natural and historical phenomena.

Mythic world-view as enlightenment generally seeks to immerse in, identify with, or fully become the unknown and fearful forces in nature. (If outright domination is not possible. Gilgamesh – Humbaba)

This mythic “becoming the unknown” or praising the unknownis a mode of knowing it (making it much less fearful).

The long enlightenment ever since the Greeks seeks to externalizeor exterminate what we fear; to make it our negative term – Other.

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that the opposition betweenMYTHOS and LOGOS might be a fake one.

Myth is already logos, and enlightenment creates its ownmyths (national, historical, political myths supported by rational ‘facts and figures’).

Narrative, story-telling or myth-making could be a propertyof reasoning.

Reasoning could be a property of story-telling; production ofsymbolic structures.

Mythos and logos; two modes of rational inquiry and representation?

Implications of Göbeklitepe

Discovered by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt in 1994

“The World’s First Temple: Built 12.000 Years Ago” (from the official website)

T-shaped limestone pillars erected in circular forms. Each stone is perfectly cut and shaped. Each pillar weighs 16 tons.Stones transported in a world with no writing, tools, pots, metal, etc.First known structure more complex than a simple hut. (NGM)

“To Schmidt, the T-shaped pillars are stylized humanbeings….The stones face thecenter of the circle….a representation, perhaps, ofa religious ritual. As for the prancing, leaping animals onthe figures, he noted that theyare mostly deadly creatures:stinging scorpions, chargingboars, ferocious lions. Thefigures represented by the pillars may be guarded by them,or appeasing them, or incorporating them as totems.”

(Charles C. Mann, NGM)

The pilgrims visiting the site werenomadic hunter-gatherers.

There is no sign of habitation around the temple.

No sign of agriculture. Thousands of gazelle bones, wild barley and wheat seeds concentrated in one place. (Food brought from faraway placesand consumed during constructionand ceremonies)

The Old Testament – 500 BCEStonehenge – 2200 BCEThe Great Pyramid of Giza – 2450 BCESumeria – 4000 BCEGöbeklitepe – 10,000 BCE

“Within minutes of getting there,Schmidt says, he realized that he was looking at a place wherescores or even hundreds of peoplehad worked in millennia past.”(Charles C. Mann, NGM)

Initially laboring in huge numbers not to produce goods, to cultivate the land, or to do exchange…

They work to produce the very communal feeling; the symbol, myth, around which collectivity is imagined and structured in the first place.

Maybe agriculture and settlement followed the mythic gathering and organization around a story, a representation…

Should the findings in Göbeklitepe change the established, materialist explanations of the rise of civilization?

Is the narrative of the Neolithic Revolution discredited?(agricultural revolution – earliest settled communities –multiplication of population – new order, hierarchy and law – myth and religion byproduct of complex social organization)

Not necessarily: Symbols, images, stories, myths (the production of them) are part and parcel of our species life/being.

We are narrativizing, symbolizing, story-telling, myth-makinganimals.

Art, story-telling, myth-making, religious imaginaries are various modes of representation essential to human mind.

Symbolizing or formulating relations, origins, results, and prospects is a human need – no less material or real than the need for shelter or food.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (The Dawn of Man)Dir: Stanley Kubrick

What is the process by which Kubrick imagines (human) civilization has come into existence?

What is the role of myth or symbol in this sequence?

How important is the role of ‘ontological scarcity’ in the forming of collectivity?

…suddenly, the black monolith. (A Space Odyssey)