A mythological order is a system of images that gives consciousness a sense of meaning in existence, which, my dear friend, has no meaning it simply is. But the mind goes asking for meanings; it can’t play unless it knows (or makes up) some system of rules.
Mythologies present games to play: how to make believe you’re doing thus and so. Ultimately, through the game, you experience that positive thing which is the experience of being-in-being, of living meaningfully. That’s the first function of mythology, to evoke in the individual a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence.
The second function of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos, art image of the universe round about, that will maintain and elicit this experience of awe. This function we may call the cosmological function of mythology.
The question of truth doesn’t matter here. Nietzsche says that the worst point you can present to a person of faith is truth. Is it true? Who cares? In the sphere of mythological imagery, the point is, I like it this way; this is the source of my life. Question the cosmological authenticity of a clergyman’s archaic image of the universe, his notion of the history of the world—“Who are you, pride of intellect, to question this wonderful thing that’s been the source of all my life?”
People live by playing a game, and you can ruin a game by being Sir Sobersides who comes in and says, “Well, what’s the use of this?” A cosmological image gives you a field in which to play the game that helps you to reconcile your life, your existence, to your own consciousness, or expectation, of meaning. This is what a mythology or a religion has to offer.
Of course, the system must make sense. One of the most bewildering experiences I ever had was during the Apollo 10 moon flight. This was the one just before the actual moon landing, when these three wonderful men were flying around the Moon just at Christmas. They were talking about how dry and barren the Moon looked. And then, in honor of the holiday, they began reading from the first Book of Genesis. Here they were, reading these ancient words that had nothing to do with the cosmos they were flying through, describing a flat three-layer cake of a universe that had been created in seven days by a God who lived somewhere below the sphere that they were in at the time. They talked about the separating of the waters above and the waters below, when they had just pointed out how dry it was. The whole discontinuity between the religious tradition and the actual physical condition struck me very strongly that evening. What a calamity for our world that we do not yet have anything that can wake people’s hearts the way that those verses do and yet would make sense in terms of the actual, observable universe!
One of the problems in our biblical tradition is that the universe presented is one posited by the Sumerians five thousand years ago; we’ve had two universe models since then. There’s been the Ptolemaic system, and, for the past four or five hundred years, we’ve had the Copernican universe, with the solar system and the wheeling galaxies. But here we are, stuck with that funny little story in the first chapter of Genesis. This doesn’t have anything to do with any of the rest, not even the second chapter of Genesis. The second function of mythology, then, is to present an image of the cosmos that will maintain your sense of mystical awe and explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you.
No comments:
Post a Comment