iom is myth dead

This excerpt is from THE IMMANENCE OF MYTH order it now!

The Immanence of Myth

Published by Weaponized August 2011.

Editor James Curcio

Copy Editors Lucy Harrigan, Jazmin Idakaar

Reference Assistance: Jazmin Idakaar

Internal layout: Julie Greystone

Cover design: James Curcio

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ContributorsJames Curcio

Stephane GriswoldTony Thomas

Mr. VIRowan Tepper, MAYakov Rabinovich

Brian CorraStephen Hershey

Catherine Svehla, Ph.DBrian George

David MetcalfeMichael Anthony Ricciardi

Damien WilliamsJason Kephas

Mica GriesTons May

ConversationsDavid Mack

Rudy RaubenS Jenx

David Aronson (with writing by Leslie Powell)John Harrigan Laurie Lipton

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Special Thanks

To family, friends, lovers and collaborators, past and future. Especially to my wife, Jazmin,

who helped cull the bibliographies and weed out typos, and Allison Fastman, William Clark, and

Rowan Tepper, for the endless hours of conversation that fed many of the ideas I explore in this

book. Finally, thanks to Professor John Lobell, for giving me critical advice about the formation of this

project, which brought me to reconsider many things, even if we didn't necessarily come to the same

conclusions.

The dialog started in this book continues online at http://www.modernmythology.net

Contributor's works used under Creative Commons 3.0 License

in the name of their authors.

Additional internal artwork by P. Emerson Williams.

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http://www.modernmythology.net/


Introduction to the First Edition

James Curcio

“Myths and legends die hard in America.

We love them for the extra dimension they provide,

the illusion of near-infinite possibility

to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality.

Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions

exist as living proof to those who

need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”

Hunter S. Thompson [1]

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Myth is immanent. Myth is alive.

I know, the idea of living myth is kind of

hard to swallow at first. We imagine that

thoughts cannot be alive. What does it even

mean for myth to be immanent, let alone

alive? What is myth, really? That’s where

this investigation began, and I think — now

that it is in preparation to be published —

that this book has opened up the floor for the

discussion of these ideas, more than having

proven any of them. Which is as it should be.

This book is meant to pose questions, to

start conversations. It is a question mark,

not a period.

So, where did it begin? Much of the

material I first wrote for this book expands

on the ideas I first presented in “Living The Myth,” my contribution to the Generation Hex anthology,

published by Disinformation Press in 2005. [2] The idea of “living myth” implies at once two

interpretations: that myth is in some way alive, and that we can live it. These two are, to use a cliché,

like two sides of a coin.

This idea underlies everything else that is to follow. My essays for this book, though varying in scope

and content, all deal with the overarching concepts of myth and art, and all of the issues that invariably

are tied into them: from the nature of representation to initiation and its psychological and social

roles.

Immanent myth is a concept that has guided all of the creative work I have done. Implicitly so, before

I came to explore and reflect on it these past few years. However, as I have collaborated with other

artists over the past decade, I also realized that I was not at all alone in this perspective of art, even if

all of our processes differ somewhat. In this context, I often use the word “artist” when I mean to

include filmmakers, writers, musicians, and so on all under that term, because there is no better

common term. The same is true for the term “art” which could just as well mean any myth with an

intended aesthetic dimension. Art is not one particular medium, and I don’t play favorites amongst

medium in terms of which is “more” artistic.

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This book began as a solo endeavor, a collection of essays based around the issues and ideas that

arose naturally as I worked on various collaborative creative projects. Eventually, it dawned on me that

I should open this process up to others who might contribute their own thoughts on the subject. My

pieces still represent a substantive part of this written project. For more of the thoughts from the

contributors to this work, I suggest you explore our collective website, ModernMythology.net.

I believe myth is an assemblage, and that we are ourselves a set of overlapping systems, which

interact in one way or another with all of the other systems in the universe. No systems are closed.

How could I get any kind of grasp, however admittedly biased, of this subject without opening it up? In

retrospect, it is almost self-explanatory that an anthology such as this one would need to come about.

I’d like to think that The Immanence of Myth provides a sideways glance at an artistic movement

already well underway, which, even with the release of this book, will likely remain somewhat in the

shadows. Even if artists themselves attain some kind of fame, the cultural mythic process remains

obscured. It is complex. It is not neat or clearly understood.

“Man's world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold”, Walter Kauffman writes in the prologue to

his edition of Buber's I-Thou. [3] “What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and

simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.”

It is for this reason that I expect there will be some who find this exploration frustrating, as we do

not present any final solutions. If anything, we seek to open up the floor for more possibilities. Myth

cannot be closed; it is the enemy of intellectual or ideological tyranny, even if it is a tool often used by

tyrants. Myths can support xenophobia, they can support and re-enforce racism and all other

ideological divisions. In fact, those ideological divisions are nothing other than myths themselves. But

the nature of myth is not only divisive, even when it is destructive. For instance, animals that prey

upon one another, bacteria that infects and destroys our bodies — all these things are acting in accord

with one another in a systemic sense.

The mythic current of art has always been underway. All art, except the exceptionally conceptual or

technical, is at least partially mythological. Yet, to be blunt, much of the modern art world has lost

touch with a conscious sense of this mythological foundation. Instead it wanders endlessly in a hall of

mirrors, a kind of neurotic self-analysis, shrilly proclaiming autonomy from the market powers that

still control it.

Perhaps it all comes down to Duchamp's urinal, “Fountain.” The urinal is not art, unless everything

is. A message you can take away from the urinal is: the art world is a farce. If you place a piece of

garbage in a gallery, it has been magically transformed into art. This comments on the nature of

galleries and how we view art as a commodity far more than it does on the actual nature of art. In

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much contemporary, abstract art, signifier and signified are externally decoupled; the piece becomes

completely self-referential, a conceptual ouroboros with no real entry or exit point back into personal

experience.

A piece such as “Fountain” also raises the question, “Why does something require a point?” Right

now, an artist I live with is building a four foot tall pink penis in the living room. This became the

spring-board for “Clark,” the gonzomentary series we shot between October 2010 and January 2011.

Everyone is drawn to ask what the motivation behind something like this might be, what purpose does

it serve?

On the surface, its point is that it has no point. An object or event can only have a “point” thanks to

myth. There is an argument to be made that much art in the past fifty years asks this question, “Why

do I need a purpose, an underlying narrative? Why can't I just be?” This changes nothing: we still

mythologize these pieces and the lives of the artists that make them, even if they exist entirely without

inherent purpose or narrative. A purposeless piece of art without a surrounding myth can be of interest

to no one. Additionally, no work of art can actually be purposeless any more than any utterance can be.

The subconscious plays a key role in the creation process. We'll discuss this at length later.

An art world quarantined from everyday life is also a myth that may have outlived any imaginable

purpose that doesn't have to do with art industry. As I discovered in my gonzo journalistic forays while

working as editor of Alterati in 2007, much of the “real” art scene is isn't happening in the galleries. It

is often occurring on the street, in seemingly abandoned factories, or behind closed doors in small

studios. Art needn't be obsessed over either self-commentary or being terrified into proving its worth

in the face of blind industry. There is much more to explore in the psyche, which is where art excels. If

there is a universal bias in this work about the nature of art, it is that.

We will be exploring from many angles, through articles, essays, and interviews from a variety of

people actively engaged in mythic work and research. As our exploration progresses, we will move

from a rather abstract view of myth as an existential dimension to increasingly specific instances of

personal myth.

Much as with the experience of viewing a painting, at twenty feet, ten feet, five feet, and up close, our

experience will vary. It may even seem that the painting changes forms, as you'd see with an

impressionist like Monet. This methodology and format will also shift to match our ongoing change of

perspective. The tone is also going to shift, not just in the natural modulations of voice from one writer

to another, but also because our focus is going to move from the general to the specific. As this book

progresses you will notice this shift of tone and style from more abstract and formal to more personal

and conversational. Keep this shifting scale in mind as you read through, as it should provide a frame

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of reference.

The book is broken into four parts.

In part one, we will take on a big picture exploration of immanent mythology as a philosophical

concept. Many of these investigations will come from the initial materials I prepared for this book. In

part two, we will take a look at examples of modern myth in a variety of fields. Part three will open up

yet more personal perspectives on immanent mythology, and the final section of this book is composed

of conversations that I've had with artists and other would-be myth-makers.

As you progress, you will likely discover that many of us have similar perspectives, framed in slightly

different ways. Some of us may, on the other hand, flat out contradict one another. (Though, amongst

the contributors of this volume, this happened so infrequently that it seems worthy of note.)

The purpose of this introduction is to comment on the book itself, rather than myth, however it

seems an opportune moment to make this preliminary point. Variety is the nature of myth. Myth is

naturally idiosyncratic. No one can expect a truly homogeneous tradition to arise, as myths naturally

do, from life experiences in one location, and then another. The task of building a homogenized

syncretism from a diverse tradition like Hinduism is not a mythological impulse, even if it's the

bureaucrat's dream.

All of this answers why I organized and wrote this material. Next, of course, is who is it written for?

That's where you come in. The Immanence of Myth was written for anyone who wants to explore the

possibilities myth provides, but especially for creative artists who, like myself, wish to inform their

work with knowledge of the internal world that myth connects us to. It is this internal current that I

hope to both amplify and emphasize. Together we will explore some of the endless possibilities

provided by myth as a creative dimension, even if an essay must necessarily remain in the field of

didactics. For those that work in some creative medium, it is my intention to assist you in shaping

genuinely mythic experiences for your audiences. If you want to get the most out of it, you must read

this book with an attentive and open mind. That seems a tall order these days, but I know you are up

for it.

To the next and final question that follows from our reportorial trinity: what is mythically inspired

art? What is myth? That's a great deal more difficult to answer.

Though there is no true tabula rasa, let’s begin from a place of vulnerability: let's propose that

everything we know about myth is wrong, or at least, subject to re-interpretation. Mythology is itself a

myth. Admittedly, this is putting the cart before the horse, but it is the only way that we can resurrect

what so many seem to consider dead. Myth defies understanding, for the process of 'understanding'

obscures objectivity, or at the least, serves as a means by which myth reproduces itself. The critic, the

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philosopher, the commentator, the guy standing on the street corner preaching, the news-caster, the

politician, the painter — they’re all myth-makers. But what do they have in common? You see the

problem.

I will give a very provisional definition for myth which stands as a refinement of the common

definition. Myths are our symbolic interface with the world, often but not always presented in

allegorical or metaphorical form. There are immediately problems with this proposition however, for

instance,

Friedrich Schelling with his Philosophie der Mythologie set a new tone by rejecting all attempts to impose on myth a secondary ‘meaning,’ be it euhemeristic or allegorical. Instead he applied to myth the term ‘tautological,’ implying that it must be understood on its own terms as an autonomous configuration of the human spirit, with its own mode of reality and content that cannot be translated into rational terms. [4]

The semiotic intricacies of myth are explored by Roland Barthes in his essay “Myth Today.” [5] The

following quotation from the introduction is especially relevant, in that it exposes just how broad our

investigation must be if we want to provide a legitimate inquiry into the subject,

Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message: there are formal limits to myth, there are no 'substantial' ones. Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. (Emphasis mine.)

We may use myths to explore why something is the way it is, or what we are to do with it, but a given

myth remains just an interface. It is through us, through embodiment and direct interaction, that it is

made immanent. There is no transcendent realm beyond the symbols, and in themselves, the symbols

are empty shells. The myth is living because we are ever-changing and transitory. In other words, we

are living, and myth too is living. It is a part of us, our mirror. It is like the moon in relation to the sun

— without the sun, the moon would cast no light, but in the presence of the sun, it appears to have a

light of its own. If this seems far-flung, consider this statement: coming world conflicts will be driven

by ideological forces along cultural fault lines. In other words, by our ideas about ourselves, others,

and the nature of the world we live in. Ideas are not just ideas, when they take hold of us.

In many ways, this provisional definition remains unsatisfactory. The function of myth is too

complex to cleanly codify. In the final reckoning, myth is a process of creative participation in reality,1

1 What is reality but the elements of our experience that we have no control over? Our imagination is not real, until it gets out of our control. Then it appears to come from the outside. A car slams into ours. That is real. The solidity of matter, of gravity. Time, death. If we could control them with a thought, would any of these

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and so there is no way to dissect it, label its parts, and offer it up for analysis without rendering yet

another myth.

Further, we are nowhere with this word “myth” until we can determine what its personal and cultural

function is, and where the intersections and overlaps are between the cultural and personal elements

of myth, in the general or the particular. In other words, we need to build a map of a cognitive terrain

that is not necessarily a “where” or even a “when,” and so this book is dedicated towards exploring an

ideological topology of myth. You may even say that such a topology can serve as a rough map of the

potential elementary ideas of divinity. To that extent, a book such as this can only serve as a doorway

rather than a destination. From these fragments we can begin to piece together the Gods of our image.

It is worth noting that many books already exist which provide a systematic philosophical analysis of

the history and function of myth. Though in various ways this work is indebted to those, my ultimate

mission is not to explore what myth has been, except inasmuch as that can shed light on what its

function is at present, nor is it to merely further the thesis of these works. Indeed, there is no system

at all. Rather, it is my aim to continue a movement already well underway, namely, the re-

legitimization of myth and myth-making as one of the principal — if not the principal — means of

human creative representation.

The approach we take nevertheless flies in the face of the majority of scholarly works in comparative

mythology in the past. That is, in part, because the intention of this book is contrary to a historical,

anthropological approach to the subject. It is invariable that some will encounter this work and write it

off much in the same way Jaan Puhvel writes of Claude Levi-Strauss,

The obvious danger is that the approach is by nature generalist, universalizing, and a-historical, thus the very opposite of text-oriented, philological, and time conscious. Overlaying known data with binaristic gimmickry in the name of greater “understanding” is no substitute for a deeper probing of the records themselves as documents of a specific synchronistic culture on the one hand and as outcomes of diachronic evolutionary processes on the other. In mythology, as in any other scholarly or scientific activity, it is important to recall that the datum is more important than any theory that may be applied to it. [4]

This leaves no room for differing intentions, and presupposes only one method of

inquiry. His research in Comparative Mythology has been of use to me, but this is a different

endeavor. I am not interested in a broken record written in cuneiform on a block of clay unless it can

remain “real”? Our emotions in regard to others are “real” to the extent that we cannot change them with a thought, otherwise they too were invented. Acted. This perspective on the real sheds an interesting light on the nature of gods, even if obviously it contains confusing correlaries: I don't think my perceived ability to get up and walk means that walking isn't real. By lack of control we're referring more to ontological necessity, the conditions that we can't change even if we want to. Thus people say “get real.”

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be used to shed some greater light on who we are right now, and furthermore add a deeper

understanding to our own understanding of the world. It would appear that most of the contributors to

this volume would agree with me. The chronological view of comparative mythology is not the only

approach one can use to engage in a study of myth, though it is a valuable one.

What you have before you is something quite different: an unconventional whisper in a dark room or

the amplification of a long-standing movement that most recently could be tied to the Surrealists and

Situationists. Only time will tell.

—James Curcio, February 14, 2011.

www.jamescurcio.com

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http://www.jamescurcio.com/


Is Myth Dead?

James Curcio

“Everything is flux.”

Heraclitus

The word “myth” has lost its meaning

to us as a psychological or spiritual

term.

No, the situation is more drastic than

that. Myth has become the opposite of

fact, something that is generally

accepted but untrue; “it is a myth that

reading by flashlight ruins your

eyesight.” The popular television show

on the Discovery Channel, MythBusters,

uses this definition, attempting to

disprove “myths” with something

vaguely resembling science.

The myths of antiquity are looked

upon as quaint stories, despite the fact

that they have shaped our cultural

history. It is neatly overlooked that myths remain at the center of the bloody stage of modern religious,

national, economic or ideological dynamics, not to mention our personal and everyday lives.

The fact that the word “myth” has become synonymous with untruth belies an underlying shift in

epistemological focus over the past several thousand years, especially in the secular corners of the

world, though it does not end there. This is clearly a sweeping generalization, and in these we are also

inventing a myth, but bear with us.

We have become, in this juncture of time and culture, more concerned with verifiable facts and less

concerned with existential experiences which appear to have little relation to fact. This happened as

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the result of an Enlightenment history, focused on rationality and the scientific method, an ideology of

Enlightenment the supported the birth of colonization and industrialization; but perhaps more

pervasively, we can see our redefinition of myth following from the needs of industrialization.

This shift from the superstitions of the sacred to the superstitions of the profane, though not

concocted as some conspiratorial scheme in a cigar-smoke filled boardroom, does serve a purpose. Or

perhaps it re-orients us, creating a solar system where productivity itself is the central star.

Productivity, not experience. This has re-valued all other myths; paths, present and future. Our myths

have reformed the definition of “myth” itself.

Business principles rely on actions that are easy to reproduce, and which produce similar (if not

identical) results with each repetition. A vast array of myths keep workers productive, en masse, for

the sake of the corporate or national entity. This cultural homogeneity promotes an economy of scale

that is absolutely necessary for so-called big business.

Similarly, the myths of a culture oriented around productivity, with profit as the sole representative

of this formula, must ultimately serve the best interest of industry. Without a mythic framework, such

massive cultural shifts could never occur. The evolution of such co-related myths is often symbiotic;

for instance, it is through the spread of industry as the backbone of a civilization that myths which

better serve industrialization spread. These in turn effect the further growth and spread of an

industrialized infrastructure. It is likely a linear process until other systems inhibit or otherwise

regulate the reproduction of living myths. These forces synergize and catalyze one another, and myths

can certainly serve many functions — acting as catalysts, as enzymes, as sorting mechanism.

Living within the confines of the reality sculpted by the history of industry, we must come to terms

with it, but only once we have first explored the rough contours of myth itself. The expectation that

myth is a failed epistemology seems to come as a by-product of the enlightenment-industrialist-

capitalist worldview2, and provides a certain cultural insight that we will be exploring throughout this

book.

In its proper sense, myth has no necessary relation to fact whatsoever. Asking if a myth is factually

true may make as much sense as asking if your elbow can play Beethoven's 5th Symphony in the key of

purple. It depends on the myth. Generally speaking, a myth is true insofar as it renders a psychological

effect, and false insofar as it doesn't.

2 What is a worldview? “Generally, it is assumed that worldview, in the sense of a cognitive set by means of which people perceive, consciously or unconsciously, relationships between self, other, and cosmos, and the day-to-day living of life, is patterned.” (Kluckhon 1949:358; Redfield 1953:86). [7] We will be looking more at the mythological underpinnings of this particular worldview in part 2 of this book.

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This is not to say that historical or empirical fact has no bearing on myth, however. Far from it. That

our inner and outer lives appear as mirror images of one another, separated by what appears to be a

vast divide, is another issue that we must contend with. This Cartesian crisis of the mind and body is

also the result of a shared mythic history, not an inherent, insurmountable limitation of our biology.

This crisis has mythological repercussions, as do all points at which we must re-orient or interpret

much of anything that does not fit a pre-established order.3 Chaos produces a mythological crisis. This

will be one of the themes we explore at length in this text.

The “modern” idea that myths are merely untrue beliefs also exists within the archaeological

approach to mythology, originating in the 19th century. It has remained there, in many cases, ever

since. For example, consider this quote from the introduction to the 1897 edition of Andrew

Lang's Modern Mythology,

The essence of myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception of the things in the world as all alike animated, personal, capable of endless interchanges of form. Men may become beasts; beasts may change into men; gods may appear as human or bestial; stones, plants, winds, water, may speak and act like human beings, and change shapes with them. Anthropologists demonstrate that the belief in this universal kinship, universal personality of things, which we find surviving only in the myths of civilized races, is even now to some degree part of the living creed of savages. Civilized myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a parallel state of belief once prevalent among the ancestors of even the Aryan race. But how did this mental condition, this early sort of false metaphysics, come into existence? (Emphasis mine.) [8]

However, an academic approach towards the study of myth presents a different attitude than the

common idea that all myths are false. A scholar of comparative mythologies attempts to maintain a

so-called objectivity towards the subject. In other words, the truth or untruth of the myth is, or at

any rate should be, entirely irrelevant to them. They are studying, comparing, and uncovering myths

as if they are empirical objects. A clay pot or rug from the 4th century BCE is neither “true” nor

“false,” it simply is, and from it, we may be able to ascertain things about the people who made it.

The myths of anthropology reside not in the objects themselves, but rather in the narratives that

those artifacts help inform. They approach the narrative content of myths with similar detachment.

3 All such binary anti-poles (inner/outer, mental/material, order/chaos, etc), or linear or teleological schemas, (end/beginning and all of the myriad ways that could factor into our lives), or circular ones (the various phases of recapitulation and repetition, the center of the circle, the perimeter, to “leave the circle,” leave the domain and enter a new one...) are points of mythic necessity; that is, they demand to be contested with. They are existential dilemmas that we must directly content with in our lives— and the myths we spin as a result of those crisis points defines our way of being in that world. “We are segmented from all around and in every direction. The human being is a segmentary animal. Segmentarity is inherent to all the strata composing us. Dwelling, getting around, working playing: life is spatially and socially segmented.” For more on this, and many other ideas of segmentation, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. [9]

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The idea that myths are false seems distinct from the approach of the social sciences, though as it

turns out, there may be a connection. Jaan Puhvel gives us a brief history of the word “myth” in the

introduction to Comparative Mythology,

There are many notions that the ancient Greeks not only defined but named forevermore, such as “hybris,” [sic] “irony,” and “tragedy.” Another such is “myth.” No modern language has a substitute — the word comes with the concept. ... In Homer and the tragedians it can also mean “tale, story, narrative,” without reference to truth content. But starting with prose writers such as Herodotus, the word muthos [sic] takes non a polarized image of “fictive narrative,” “tall tale,” “legend.” As such it contrasts with logos, another term for “word,” which came to denote “true story” to Herodotus; the father of history had no compunction about terming his own hodgepodge of legendary “Logoi” and reserving the term muthos for things that not even he could believe. From Plato onward a technical sense of “myth” begins to emerge in muthos, while logos takes on ever more rational, philosophical, and even transcendental overtones. ... It is in retrospect ironic that modern usage has managed to defeat such exalted semantic monopolies and revert at least to the pre-Platonic colloquialism of the ancients. “It's a myth” means to the average American that there is not a shred of truth in it. [4]

This distinction between mythos and logos isn't necessarily a clear one. Yet through it, we come to

the issue which is probably paramount in many of our minds: the imagined division between myth and

science. Though this may come as a surprise to some, science is also a mythology in a general sense.

This is not a new observation, so rather than belabor the point; I'll refer to a few poignant instances

out of many. Mauthner's Critique of Language deals with this topic in no uncertain terms, [10]

Mauthner's Critique of Language thus appeared to have dire consequences for science. ... Mauthner considered hypotheses to be good guesses — successful “shots in the dark,” so to say. The foundation of all science is exceptionally good inductions; the so-called laws of nature are nothing more than historical generalizations, and Mauthner spared no effort to explain the historical origin of the notion that physical laws are inexorable.4 [11]

Mauthner has certain concepts about the nature of myth that we are availing ourselves of, as his

work was a product of his time as much as this is a product of ours. However, the point is

nevertheless valid in regard to the deification of axioms and principles in science.

4 The continuation of this quote is worth including, “...He considers that the term “law of nature” is a metaphor left over from the bygone days of mythological explanation, when Nature was personified in the endeavor to comprehend it. He traces the origins of the notion back to Plato and Aristotle, and particularly to Lucretius, who first used the phrase explicitly. In the Middle Ages, the notion became incorporated into theology as the “natural law” of God. With Spinoza's Deus sive Natura it became secularized, along with much else that had earlier belonged exclusively to the sphere of theology. Thus did the myth of the “laws of nature” pass down to the present time; the phrase began as a metaphor and later became reified and universally adopted by scientists.”

16



Compare that with the following,

Any study of myth that does not recognize myth's potential to be alive and existentially powerful, even in modern life, has missed something. Myths are not truth in any scientific sense — nor are they true philosophically, theologically, metaphysically or ontologically. Myth's power arises from its ability to articulate the existential need for identity. [12]

George Williams point is well taken, especially in regard to an understanding of the vitality and

primacy of myth. But it also overlooks an underlying complexity, that the models and stories rendered

by science, theology, and so on are all essentially mythological, even if they aren't accepted as myths in

the traditional sense.5 “Science must begin with myth,” Karl Popper writes,

...and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them. [13]

This is where most concepts about the nature of myth immediately run aground, as science attempts

to deal with the empirical world (far-flung theoretical physics notwithstanding), and the real function

of myth is to be found in the subjective intersections between self, culture, and world. Their intended

functions differ.

Scientists teach their intellectual children at an early age to be wary of the wily Personification. Should Personification appear — in any of its several guises of animism, anthropomorphism, and projection — it should be treated as an evil, to be avoided or stamped out. The Particular is also not to be trusted. It can mislead. Those in the charge of nomothetic science quickly learn to banish The Particular by immediately labeling it, then ignoring it. These anathematizing labels include: merely anecdotal, a single case, an n of one, a single data point, an uncontrolled observation, a single instance, an exception, a suggestive indication, an interesting possibility to be followed up by more careful study. [14]

This is the clearest distinction one can draw between what has been misapprehended as the

opposing spheres of the scientific and the mythological viewpoints. I say “misapprehended” because,

of course, science is a mythologizing process along with being a method, and myth is derived from

experience — psychological if not physical — in a way which makes the modeling processes used in

science useful for analyzing it, as well. Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms explores this

distinction clearly, but did not seek to find their unity, how they apply one to the other.

5 Also see Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms Vol 2 for some relevant ideas on the relationship between mythic and scientific thought. [15]

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Science models, myth generates narrative. Models are designed to be tested. Narrative cannot, but

more to the point, there is no reason we would want to, in many cases. A scientific proof of the

existence or non-existence of God misses the point. The method of science is not inherently mythic,

but when the results of that method enter our world, when we interpret it, when we frame it and build

beliefs from it, this matter becomes confused. We try to remove the scientist from science, and say

that, should we still see the fingerprints of the scientist in their work, then they have done us all a

disservice. Is there science without scientists? Of course not. Science, derived from and used to

represent nature, is, yet again, a form of mythology.

But there’s still an important distinction to be made between a model which can be tested, and a

narrative which cannot. Theoretical physics has implications not just in terms of cosmology but also

mythology. It is beyond the scope of science-as-method to derive a meaning from the big bang theory.

Science does not concern itself directly with the existential “why?” However, a scientific theory still

has a cultural effect and value, and it will generate myths, especially if the theory permeates the culture

thoroughly enough. Relativity had a dramatic effect on the art that followed it, for instance. If it is

scientifically postulated that the universe is structured a certain way — or that for instance every star

will eventually burn out — it'll have cultural implications that go far beyond the strict scope of the

scientific method. And this is not the only entanglement we find between the two.

Some of the functional axioms of the mythology of science — especially that of pure physics — make

it quite dissimilar from other forms of mythology. Mathematics and formal logic are able to unearth

the relationship of specific facts and truths axiomatically, without an actor, and serve as the requisite

tools for a mythology unlike any previously known to Western Civilization.6 It is a myth so uniquely

suited to modeling the empirical world, and of removing and reducing the consciousness of the minds

in which it occurs to nothing, that we have almost completely lost sight that it is still a mythology at

work. This is where we can begin to see the import and significance of mythos shrinking in regard to

logos.

On the other hand, we mustn't forget the representation inherent in all models posited by science,

or of the removal of the subject so as to derive any clearer view of a world, which of course requires a

mind to call it into existence.

“The world is my representation” is, like the axioms of Euclid, a proposition which everyone must recognize as true as soon as he understands it, although it is not a proposition that everyone understands as soon as he hears it. To have brought this proposition to consciousness and to have connected it with the problem of the relation of the ideal to the real, in other words, of the world in the head to the world outside of the

6 Though let's not suppose that there is one universal set of axioms that can be applied to all of mathematics — see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

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head, constitutes, together with the problem of moral freedom, the distinctive character of the moderns. [16]

Of course, there is no singular “myth of science” but in fact countless scientific myths supported on

the back of various cultural or personal suppositions, and many scientists are anything if not aware of

— or at least burdened by — the lurking shadow of the subject, of the hall of mirrors or infinite regress

posed by consciousness and its own self awareness. This point is more important to make in regard to

concepts of “science” held by the general public, rather than most professional scientists, who regard

“science” as nothing more than an iterative method for testing and refining theories.

However, it has nevertheless been made apparent that science is presently facing its own post-

modern crisis. This crisis is well summed up by Hawking and Mlodinow in Scientific American,

These examples [Ed: they covered the discontinuity between quantum physics and relativity, among others] bring us to a conclusion that provides an important framework with which to interpret modern science. In our view, there is no picture — or theory-independent concept of reality. Instead we adopt a view that we call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. [17]

Even if Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is frequently misunderstood as a thought experiment or

some kind of mystical maxim, it poses the useful insight that experiments cannot be conducted free of

bias and perception. Theories of cognitive science that don't presuppose a static, underlying strata of

materialistic or positivist myth are all burdened with similar levels of uncertainty. Only in those

corners of belief where a claim has already been staked can certainty of any kind be defined. Reality

and truth myths are, in other words, tautological. We'll talk about this much more closely in the next

section.

This, too, further muddles the unity and distinction between mythology and science, and narrative

and model. Referring back to Barthes' essay “Myth Today” once again, he says “...myth in fact belongs

to the province of general sciences.” [5] Can we safely say myth and science are one and the same? No.

But can we untangle them and say they are entirely separate, as some would have us do (possibly

misleadingly) with painting and mathematics? Again, the answer is no.

However, these quandaries don't seem to permeate deep enough to cleanse the modern psyche of

the certainty of its intrinsic materialism. Science and mathematics have already dealt with many of

these issues, but cultural myths of “science” and “math” within the public mind never quite caught up.

Nonlinear equations and dynamics, systems theory, not to mention quantum physics and so on all

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punch holes in the incredibly outmoded “static” worldviews that support the idea of a clear distinction

between science and myth, or of world and self.

However, in a culture fixated on the external world it is no wonder that myth became misconstrued

with untruth. We will begin the exploration of these intersections, and the problems that will

undoubtedly arise from our approach, in the essays to follow.

To anyone who winces at the thought of a story being just fiction, the relegation of myth to the status

of untruth should appear incredibly unfortunate. Myths have been the lifeblood of culture since the

birth of civilization, and they live on in all of the beliefs that structure our experience of reality. So the

modern definition, “a commonly accepted but untrue belief,” is not at all what we mean when we say

“myth” in this book. However, the common definition tacitly defines the predominant myth of our

times, our cultural stance in regards to spirituality, our dependence upon fact as our only source of

psychological nourishment. (It also belies our misunderstanding of the purpose of a symbol, but that

will have to wait until we dig a bit deeper.)

The value that myth provides is demonstrated in the fact that it has been with us since the birth of

civilization. The myths, art, and religions of antiquity sprung into existence together. The earliest

artistic artifacts are religious, or is it the other way around? It is hard to say. Myth and art, still nearly

inseparable terms, provide a distorted mirror for us to regard ourselves in. We see ourselves in a new

light, the best artists showing us existential truths through the distortion or even complete

abandonment of empirical truths. Thus artists, and the myths they weave from their own lives, direct

our eyes inward, both as individuals and as a culture, in a new way.

It is a self evident fact that myths speak to our humanity. They convey meaning. This was clear to me

from an early age. As a youth I remember staring at the television in befuddlement as documentaries

would attempt to discover the supposed “historic truth” of a myth. Did giants actually walk the Earth

before the time of King Arthur’s court? How did Noah manage to get every species of animal aboard a

single ship? These are the wrong questions to ask, and for the wrong reasons. Myths speak to the

narrative, the qualitative, to the side of us which quite simply need stories and images, both grand and

mundane, for us to relate ourselves to. It can provide psychological nourishment, and cultures that are

devoid of the ability to distinguish myth from literal truth suffer for it. Such a thing could hardly be

called a culture at all.

If you bear with us a moment in the premise that myth is something vital to our nature, then an

absence of it, or more accurately, an absence of the ability to recognize it, would be a deep cultural and

existential crisis. A quick glance at current events makes it clear that we are in just such a position,

even though no solid connection between the two has yet been drawn. This is a feeling that I

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experienced strongly as I passed through adolescence, and I discovered that it was something many

others were feeling, though few were inclined to voice it. I tried to convey this in my first novel, Join

My Cult!,

Spiritual, cultural apocalypse is much more subtle than mushroom clouds, fallout, and radiation burns. People can deny it. No statistics can prove it. The only evidence we have is a feeling of profound loss, and hope for a future that does not reduce the qualitative values of life to quantities, and for companions to share these stories with so that they can have value, and pass on to our children in the next world. [18]

Apocalypse literally means “lifting the veil.” (Greek: Apokálypsis.) I'm using the more modern

version, but maybe not without a hint of the possibility for great transformation in times of

uncertainty and turmoil. Lurking in even the most mundane hearts lies the possibility for

transformation, however distant. The symbolism of the Blasted Tower in the Major Arcana of the

traditional Tarot deck reflects this idea: moments of revelations most often occur at the points when

all previous expectations have been utterly destroyed. Emmanuel Kant even hints at this with his

aesthetics which include the sublime. The sublime could be the beatific vision, but at the same time,

it can include the powerful, horrific forces of nature and the psyche. This is apocalypse, and it is an

idea closely linked with the sacred, as we will see moving forward.

Neil Stephenson's novel Anathem deals with the modern crisis of the sacred as well. The following

passage is especially relevant,

So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same each day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer other to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. [19]

An obvious conclusion of modernity is that we have no unifying myth, as Georges Bataille

proposes:7 we live in a myth which is an absence of myth. [20] Our world is a fast-paced,

materialistically oriented, cultural melting pot, in which it seems that any need for mythology would

quickly boil away. We are, at the same time, untethered from any common shared myth, so that the

7 “If we state simply, for the sake of lucidity, that today’s man defines himself by his avidity for myth, and if we add that he defines himself also by the consciousness of not having the power to gain access to the possibility of creating a true myth, we have defined a sort of myth which is the absence of myth.” [20]

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task of simply creating a new mono-myth that possess the collective imagination is generally less

fruitful than the artist may hope, as Bataille himself discovered in his rather ill-conceived idea of re-

instituting human sacrifice.8

Even amongst the ranks of those who are generally most sympathetic to the psychological value of

myth, there has been increasing question of if myth has any place in our modern lives. For instance,

Michael Vannoy Adams presented this material at the “Psyche and Imagination” conference of the

International Association for Jungian Studies,

Recently, one Jungian, Wolfgang Giegerich, has argued that, at this stage in the history of consciousness, myth no longer has any psychological function... Ancient mythological figures, he contends, “do not suffice.” They are insufficient because, he says, “even though they may display certain formal similarities” to the modern situation, “they are incommensurable” with it. ...Giegerich, however, maintains that the modern psychological situation is utterly without precedent, without parallel. It is so radically different — or, as he says, so logically different — from the ancient mythological situation that any similarity is merely formal and thus insignificant. Giegerich says that the modern situation has “fundamentally broken with myth as such, that is, with the entire level of consciousness on which truly mythic experience was feasible.” [21]

The most obvious conclusion is often not the most poignant one. We do have myths, though

they often exist in mediums not surrounded by the aura of the sacred. This will be demonstrated time

and again throughout this work, as it is demonstrated in our daily lives if we know what to look for.

Modern myths are so pervasive that they are nearly invisible. Those that are considered archaic, that

is, they have ceased to function in the manner that they were meant to, become more apparent to us.

We call our relics “myth,” but they are not. They are the myths that have died.

On its face it certainly feels more accurate to say that we have lost touch with an understanding of

the sacred rather than with myth, though exactly what that means, and whether it is ultimately

accurate, also remains to be explored. It is far more likely that we have lost a sense of the sacred, but

we cannot as a race lose our myths — certainly not before such a point that we have no beliefs or

culture whatsoever. The history of civilization is, at one and the same time, the history of myth. Mircea

Eliade explores this subject in The Sacred & The Profane.

For our purposes at the moment it should be enough to highlight that the sacred represents not a

single idea, but rather an entire category of ideation — a world-view. It is a world-view that perceives

the world manifest to our senses as itself symbolic of an invisible world.

By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to be itself. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from the profane point of

8 See the introduction to The Absence of Myth written by Michael Richardson. [20]

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view), nothing distinguished it from all other stones. But for those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality. [22]

This conception of the sacred seems to demand the transcendent, the invention of the supernatural.

This category is required for no other reason than to draw a contrast with the profane.

It stands to reason that everything is natural; even if the universe is unexplainable, it would still

remain “natural.” Forgive the tautology: nature is what is. The distinction between “natural” and

“supernatural” is only relevant, only meaningful, in the context of the profane when contrasted with

the sacred. Needless to say, inventing the “supernatural,” a new category of being to house the sacred,

creates its own slew of problems that must be dealt with, such as superstition.

In Eliade's conception, and I believe it is a point well taken, a sacred object is so because it is a

symbol, a link, with the archetype standing “behind” the physical, profane object. A sacred canoe is not

just a canoe, it is “canoe,” or it is a canoe within the context of a specific myth pertaining to canoes, or

the sacred river, etc.

This distinction also cuts across experiential boundaries. The sacred and profane show themselves

not only in the perception of things but also in the perception of time. For instance during a sacred

festival — a concept that we have mostly lost touch with in our purely profane holidays9 — one enters

into the time before time, recapitulating the birth of the world, or some other mythological event

which occurs outside of profane time. The phrase “time before time” is an odd approximation, a

metaphor created from within the field of time. Sacred time and sacred objects do not truly stand

“outside,” “behind,” or “before” their profane counterparts; they are distinguished as occupying two

separate ontological categories simultaneously, and there may even be some kind of exchange or

interplay between the two, as sacred festivals and rituals demonstrate.10

It is to that point, the crossroads of the sacred and profane, that this work is ultimately aimed; for it

is in this intermediary zone that myth actually occurs. The constructed supernatural realm loops back

into the otherwise inaccessible elements of our own being, as a piece of psychological sleight-of-hand

that allows us to conditionally stake a claim in the ever-shifting, dark chaos that is nature itself, un-

sculpted by human sensation, consideration, organization and expectation. The condition we must

accept when engaging with myth is that we pretend the shadows on the wall, the image on the screen,

or the entities in our dreams represent some type of reality.

9 All of the major holidays in the United States, for instance, are profane: means of re-enforcing consumer behavior or an excuse to drink. They borrow iconography, of course, most commonly from Christianity, many of those symbols themselves taken wholesale from Pagan sources.

10 This is to some extent shown in the distinction between kairos and chronos, the time of experience which stands on its own, divine or sacred time, perhaps even an “eternal” moment, and chronological time.

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The realm we call the sacred cannot be left to sociologists, even if … the use of this word has become questionable if we do not frame with reference to sociology. … Science always abstracts the object it studies from the totality of the world. … It might in turn be pointed out that the sacred can just as easily be envisaged on its own. … But a question remains: suppose that the sacred, far from being like the other objects of science, subject to separation, is defined as the exact opposite of abstract objects (things, tools, and clearly definable elements), precisely as the concrete totality itself is resistant to it. [20]

It may come as a surprise to some that we are never too far from the trappings of mythology in our

daily lives. They are in movies, books, our mutually created narratives on the Internet, even on

television. They permeate our ideas about ourselves, our relation to the world, and our relationships

with others. They can be insightful or vapid. The very drive for people to make complete fools of

themselves on reality TV is also the attempt to fulfill a mythic need. To be famous is to be externally

mythologized. The thing that many of us find so repellent about these trends in pop culture is the

complete and utter lack of the sacred. Myth is not absent.

We relate with these stories differently than people who lived in a world before the computer,

television or typewriter. There seems to be something different about how we experience stories, even

though the analogy of campfire storytelling and Internet communication is occasionally drawn.11

Modern myths of this nature often don't strike their audiences as deeply because they are perceived

as just stories, or movies. The lights come up in the theater and the illusion is dispelled. Or, more

frequently nowadays, we lose attention entirely mid-stream and surf to another channel or web-page,

to take another fragment into the bricolage of our wandering consciousness. In a capitalist society,

myths too take on a capitalist bent. Further, they serve its ends. They are more readily consumed than

engaged with, but this does not mean that they do not leave their mark. All of this hearkens back to the

lack of the sacred, rather than of myth. The formative or even subliminal effect of the media we're

steeped in is hard to say, but certainly the multi-billion dollar industries of marketing and advertising

would be useless if it was not far-reaching.12

11 The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking, Jennifer Ryan. [23]

12 A note about characterization, and the usage of terms such as “capitalist society.” It should be obvious that, within the contexts we are beginning to explore, “capitalist society,” “existential philosophy,” “corporate culture,” and so on are all myth-structures that were at one point posed, and which have since been presupposed so frequently that they are taken for granted. Like any other myth, they may or may not relate to a series of facts, but more important the effects of the characterization is real. In other words, there are sufficient people that believe in such a thing as “capitalist society” as to make it worth talking about, even if, speaking very strictly, there may be no such thing. Even “culture” can be considered a myth in this sense. This applies equally to phrases like “world-view,” a term which has become fairly commonly even outside anthropological writing. Terms like this sometimes create more questions than they answer. What exactly does it mean? Is it a passive or active process? Can it be willfully changed, or is it provided fully-formed? We will attempt to engage with as many of these terms as possible, but there must be a level of approximation in using such terms, or else we would be footnoting every couple words, and the book in front of you would be

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There are many examples of what could be considered modern myths embodied in media. Rather

than saying that The Lord of the Rings is a modern myth, though clearly it is, it is more relevant to say

that every piece of media available contains layer upon layer of myth. Any given myth is implicitly built

upon other myths, and myths are used to make them readily accessible to us.

For instance, there are a variety of common myths which allow access to the viewership of a news

broadcast with a particular political agenda. The broadcast can further establish or re-establish these

myths, and build new ones, but it is already working upon certain expectations. So, you don't find

many polyamorous bisexuals watching Fox News in rapt attention. This is an example of myth acting

both as amplification and sorting device.13 Myths even affect our evolutionary selection processes, but

that'll have to wait.

In the case of the myths that resonate with the multitude on a level deeper than entertainment, the

anxiety that underlies the wholesale exchange of the profane for the sacred can produce a nostalgic

throwback to the “old time religion.” The mythic aura of a yesterday that never existed drives such

cultural movements as we see demonstrated in the movie Jesus Camp, and this trend is evident in

many revivalist and reactionary groups across the world, not just Christianity. It is also the basis of

many American myths that sprang out of the 1950s, of idyllic family values, which reach from that

time, and before, right up to the present.

This defensive reaction, to look backwards in times of chaos, cannot be restricted to one ideology. It

is one of the forms of modern mythology that we most frequently encounter. As Samuel P. Huntington

explores in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, the coming world

conflicts will be driven along ideological and cultural fault lines, even if underlying motivational

factors in some cases include more material concerns, such as territory or overburdened resources.

[24] In other words, even resource-driven conflicts are likely to be painted in ideological terms,

especially in regard to the motivating force presented to the people who make up the backbone of any

military force. The idea of the US as a “global peacekeeper” is such a myth as well, as much as the idea

that jewels could be cut from the bellies of Muslims, a story ostensibly propagated during the third

crusade.

thousands of pages long. Let us say that it could be either of these things, in different contexts, and move forward.

13 Many rhetorical devices of modern news broadcasts utilize a knowledge of the power of mythology with startling effect, crippling the rational capacity of the audience with the use of a few well times key words and some ideological hand-waving. Fox News is most well known for this approach, but it is at its core a methodology without any inherent political stance. A “liberal agenda” is as easily served by this approach as any other. If you're preaching to the choir, amplification both further indoctrinates and further excites the converts.

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In the Third Crusade, after Richard the Lion-Hearted captured Acre in 1191, he ordered 3,000 captives — many of them women and children — taken outside the city and slaughtered. Some were disemboweled in a search for swallowed gems. [25]

The drive behind fanaticism, and fascism — which is an affliction not unlike fanaticism — is

psychological, not material. William Reich explored this in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Consider

this, taken from a chapter appropriately named Ideology as a Material Force,

Those who followed ... the revolutionary Left's application of Marxism between 1917 and 1933 had to notice that it was restricted to the sphere of objective economic processes and government policies, but that it neither kept a close eye on nor comprehended the development and contradictions of the so-called 'subjective factor' of history, i.e., the ideology of the masses. [26]

The extremists driving ideological conflicts are borrowing from mere echoes of myths originating

thousands of years ago, catalyzing the existential fear, hate, or desire latent in a culture, and more

pointedly, within the individuals that comprise that culture. Again borrowing from Reich's study on

fascism, or Deleuze and Guittari's examination in Anti-Oedipus, the principles of personal psychology

also control mass-psychology. [27] The fascist of the state is the fascist within. This alchemy produces

poisonous splinter factions, fundamentalist groups that cause many of the pathological habits our

cultures otherwise exhibit, in concentrated form. The atrocities perpetrated by the State far exceed

those any one individual could account for, but the will to those ends must be spread through a

sufficient public body for any of them to occur.

Far from being an exception, these splinter groups have been responsible for much of the history of

the 19th and 20th centuries that has made its way into the books, whether we are speaking of the rise

and fall of Soviet communism, the second World War, or the ongoing strife in the Middle East.

Exploring politics or even religious ideology as the only lens to gaze at myth in modern forms is

misleading. We want to look at the very mechanisms of myth, not how it manifests in just the relation

of nations, or corporations, or individuals, or the religio-politics of previous eras. It is nevertheless

worth noting that the mythologies utilized by these groups have all been re-purposed, whether we

speak of the selective use of scripture by religious fundamentalists, or the more bizarre relationship

between National Socialism and occultism, which underlined the rise of the Third Reich despite

Hitler's professed abhorrence for the occult. These fringe elements are at most times culturally inert,

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but have the potential to overcome the whole of a culture during crisis points, as the Nazis did after

World War I.

However, myth as a whole cannot be considered a result of such use. Nor can myth be “killed,” in

any event. It can be a healing, as well as destructive, force. But we've only given the most tentative

glimpse at the many roles myth plays in our lives.

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iom is myth dead

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