The Top 10 Ways to Read Myths

Originally Submitted on 6/30/2003.

1. Read myths with the eyes of wonder transparent to their universal meaning ... [and] their meaning transparent to its mysterious source.

The hounds of Diana tore Actaeon the hunter apart when he stumbled upon her bathing in the nude. So, then, what is it about the stumbling upon fountains of godheads that tears one apart, a thousand years ago in Greece and today in Omaha?

2. Read myths in the present tense: Eternity is now and you are Coatlique.

Coatlique was first impregnated by an obsidian knife and gave birth to Coyolxanuhqui, goddess of the moon, and to a group of male offspring, who became the stars. Then one day Coatlique found a ball of feathers, which she tucked into her bosom. When she looked for it later, it was gone, at which time she realized that she was again pregnant. Her children, the moon and stars did not believe her story. [Aztec creation myth]

In the present tense, read instead and with great excitement: Coatlique is impregnated by an obsidian knife and gives birth to Coyolxanuhqui, goddess of the moon, and to a group of male offspring, who become the stars. Then one day Coatlique finds a ball of feathers, which she tucks into her bosom. When she looks for it later, it wis gone, at which time she realizes that she is again pregnant. Her children, the moon and stars do not believe her story. ["What happens next!?" is the feeling this kind of reading evokes.]

3. Read myths in the first person plural ("we"): the Gods and Goddesses of ancient mythology still live within you.

Reading an Australian Aboriginal creation myth in the first person plural and in the present tense, we discover much about ourselves: We, the eternal ancestors arise, in the Dreamtime, and wander the earth, sometimes in animal form -- as kangaroos, or emus, or lizards -- sometimes in human shape, sometimes part animal and human, sometimes as part human and plant.

Two of us self-create out of nothing, and are the Ungambikula. Wandering the world, we find half-made human beings. They are made of animals and plants, but are shapeless bundles, lying higgledy-piggledy, near where water holes and salt lakes can be created. The people are all doubled over into balls, vague and unfinished, without limbs or features. [Wow! What comes next? we wonder.]

Are you ready for this one? "And we so love the earth that we create our only begotten son." [Remembering, always, that our religion is another man's myth.]

4. Any myth worth its salt exerts a powerful magnetism. Notice the images and stories that you are drawn to and repelled by. Investigate the field of associated images and stories.

Can you accept that a turtle created the world or would you prefer to have a goddess who tires of masturbating and mates with a snake? Or how about a patriarch who makes the letters of the alphabet dance and sing? It's your world. Create it your way.

5. Look for patterns; don't get lost in the details. What is needed is not more specialized scholarship, but more interdisciplinary vision. Make connections; break old patterns of parochial thought.

I noticed in reading creation myths from all over the world that most of them told of a god/goddes/deity who created a "first" world which did not please them, destroyed it and created another better world.

Using Campbell's system, I discover that: We create a "first" world which does not please us. We destroy it and create another better world. [I think this is a life long process and isn't it a wonderful opportunity?]

6. Resacralize the secular: even a dollar bill reveals the imprint of Eternity.

What was that golden apple in the Hesperides and how did it wind up causing the Trojan War?

Ask instead: What is it that is so numinous that we seek it to the farthest reaches of the universe, beyond the bath of all the western stars, the bestowing of which gives power to control the hearts and minds of men?

7. If God is everywhere, then myths can be generated anywhere, anytime, by anything. Don't let your Romantic aversion to science blind you to the Buddha in the computer chip.

I do believe that the Internet is preparing us to understand the reality of telepathic communication. Telepathic communication is something that many do not recognize at the present time. The fact that it is not recognized does not mean that it isn't happening.

The Internet is also preparing us for a reality where we do not judge others by appearance, including age and gender. We find each other on the Internet through a similar esoteric vibration. We are learning to relate to others without the hindrance of the physical. Affinity becomes much more obvious and is more reliable in this form since this is the law that operates anyway. It is the spiritual law of affinity that brings any person into your sphere of influence.

8. Know your tribe! Myths never arise in a vacuum; they are the connective tissue of the social body which enjoys synergistic relations with dreams (private myths) and rituals (the enactment of myth).

Egyptians, with the predictable flooding of the Nile, created a static pantheon of deities while Sumerian myths of the Tigris and Euphrates Valley are among those that focus on a "great flood". The Chinese of the Yangtze River valleys know in their bones that "all things are always changing to their opposites" because change was a constant factor in their alluvial existence. The soil deposited by the Yantze blew away easily in the winds.

Who are your people and where do you find affinity?

9. Expand your horizons! Any mythology worth remembering will be global in scope. The earth is our home and humankind is our family.

Odin hangs himself on Ygdrasil, the World Tree, and discovers the Runes or alphabet. Christ is hung on a cross and the Judaeo-Christian world discovers the logos. What are these myths trying to tell us about the power of language?

10. Read between the lines! Literalism kills; Imagination quickens.

Just reading a myth in one of these ways will quicken your imagine, so give it a try!

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