ancient myths are strange

[Student Mommie]

Can someone enlighten me about the significance of myths?  That is, someone who thinks they are important :)  It is sort of interesting that so many cultures share some common themes in their mythology.  But myths always struck me as bizarre pointless tales with no significance or relevance to real life.  I know i am not in the cultures, so looking in from the outside i cannot grasp much-- it feels totally inaccessible.  For example, the creation story of the Mayas, i looked at that today.  I feel like i'm missing something deeper... it's weird, two twin brothers became the sun and moon after helping turn their dad into the maize god... is that supposed to mean something?  And what's with the feathered serpent?  i guess what i am wondering is... is it inaccessible because i have a science mind instead of a primitive world-full-of-demons mind, or is it inaccessible because i am not tapped into the intuitive fundamental essence and archetypes of humanity.  I have a feeling that I have just been mislead by literalism when looking at myths, using the wrong part of my brain to hear them.

 

Well now these old tales are swimming in my son's head from listening to SOTW 1.  He is play acting things out and crowning himself Jupiter etc.  He loves these old myths while i watch him, disturbed, cursing the day i brought home SOTW (j/k).  I usually support my kids' interests but today i couldn't take it any more and told him that no, he couldn't make me one of the gods in his myth game, because i don't like those old nonsense tales.   :cursing:

[Elfknitter.#]

Well you could research myths and their roles in history... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

 

Or maybe watch this one youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWcIcOcDvU

[Mrs Mungo]

Have you read The Well Trained Mind and/or How to Read Literature Like a Professor? Myths and ancient stories are an important part of our modern literary canon. They are an important part of "the great conversation." One should know that there are characters, archetypes and tropes that have existed throughout literary history. Knowing them will help you better understand literature.

 

The Bible is equally important. One should know that Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" chooses the name she does for the trial for a reason. It isn't plucked out of the blue.

 

This is part of why we study history in order and study literature alongside history.

 

Why would a video game character featuring a mythological character be different from any other literary figure? I am not sure I understand why there is a problem?

[Onceuponatime]

I recommend A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.

[Rosie_0801]

Have you read The Well Trained Mind and/or How to Read Literature Like a Professor? Myths and ancient stories are an important part of our modern literary canon. They are an important part of "the great conversation." One should know that there are characters, archetypes and tropes that have existed throughout literary history. Knowing them will help you better understand literature.

 

 

And, by extension, people. 

 

If there is anything in this life we need to understand, it is people. We spend our whole lives either with them or avoiding them, and even when we're avoiding them, we're still stuck with ourselves!

 

If ancient myths are strange, so is everything else ever written.

[Ravin]

If you had no other knowledge of Christianity or Judaism, and the only thing you learned from the Bible were the creation story in Genesis, the story of the flood, and, say, the tale of Daniel in the lion's den, those stories would be probably just as nonsensical to you. From an outsider's perspective, stories from the Bible are myths. They are Christian myths.

 

Myth does not equal "untruth" in this context.

 

A myth is a story that helps explain cosmology, worldivew, and how the universe works, metaphysically. They aren't necessarily "pre-scientific" because many people still find meaning in such stories even in the modern era. Their deeper layers of meaning aren't literal, and probably weren't (or weren't only) to the people whose culture they came from in the first place. For example, in the ancient period, plenty of Greek philosophers were agnostic at best, but they provided cultural value nonetheless. 

 

The commonalities in myths from disparate cultures is one way to explore those deeper meanings. As Rosie said, it's about the way humans think--which can vary some from culture to culture, but also has universal aspects to it.

[scwendy]

There is a documentary called Mythic Journeys.  I watched it on Amazon prime or Netflix a month or two back.  It explains exactly why myths are important in the larger context of our human experience and has a panel of people weigh in from a variety of backgrounds.  It also covers how the definition of myth has changed through time.  As a scientific and spiritual (not religious) person, I found it very informative!

 

FYI: No, the whole documentary is not told with puppets.  Once you watch, you will no why I add that!

 

I hope you enjoy it.

[Reefgazer]

I used to not see the point of myths either, and didn't particularly enjoy them, until I started thinking of them in a different way.  I think they are valuable to our kids because they give us insight into how our forebearers saw the world, and many myths are referred to in more modern literature, so it helps to be familiar with those old tales.  Myths and stories also fire-up a child's imagination in a way few other things do.  Their value in drawing kids into reading is also important.  I would let your DS run away with his imagination and nurture that ability to draw on his own creativity.

[Critterfixer]

I use a lot of mythology from various sources when I write. Sometimes just sitting down and reading through multiple tales of descent to the underworld, as an example, can help me understand the various scenes and sequences I would need to use if I have a character undergoing a similar descent in a story.

I tend to find that if I'm off in that sequence, I'll feel it, and it helps to go back and look at the process via mythology. Don't know why that is, but just offering another practical reason to study mythology.

[Χά�ων]

Love myths here! They are very important part of history imho

[shawthorne44]

I love myths, but I do think that there is something cultural in the understanding.  There are some from cultures remote from mine where I thought ?!#?

 

Although, my paternal ancestors are Norwegian, and I don't get the appeal of Valhalla.  Maybe because I'm a woman.  

[NotSoObvious]

I guess I'm confused. Do you allow him to act out fairy tales? Disney? A favorite cartoon? Does make believe bother you in general?

 

What is it specifically about ancient myths that makes you disturbed? 

 

 

[KarenNC]

I love myths, but I do think that there is something cultural in the understanding.  There are some from cultures remote from mine where I thought ?!#?

 

Although, my paternal ancestors are Norwegian, and I don't get the appeal of Valhalla.  Maybe because I'm a woman.  

 

For me, the connection is cultural rather than ethnic. My ancestors are primarily Celtic and Germanic, but it is the sacred stories of my cultural ancestors, the Greeks and Romans, which resonate most deeply and from which I can draw the most meaning. Perhaps it's because those have been kept alive in Western culture to a much greater degree than the Celtic and Germanic.

[Haiku]

I'm sorry that you don"t appreciate myths. They are foundational to an understanding of human history. Not that you would understand every nuance of every myth, but that you would develop some understanding of the worldview of people who came before us. Our culture is based on myths, too.

 

If you cut your son off from myth, you are cutting him off from humanity.

[Amy in NH]

Modern myths are strange too.

[chiguirre]

The lectures in the first week of this course do a good job of explaining the cultural purposes myths serve.

 

https://class.coursera.org/mythology-003

[texasmama]

As others have said, myths are the wild explanations that our forebearers came up with to explain the world around them.  I find them fascinating in that regard.

 

Mythology offers some beautiful allegory, as well, as does Shakespeare and most or all of our great literature.  Boiled down to "just the facts, ma'am", we lose a great deal of the human experience, both historical and present. 

 

You say that you have been using the wrong part of your brain to hear them, and I think that is spot on. 

[Tanaqui]

two twin brothers became the sun and moon after helping turn their dad into the maize god... is that supposed to mean something?

 

 

Meanings can get lost when you aren't immersed in a culture, yes. But if you want answers, maybe it helps not to ask us, but to ask yourself and your son. IS this supposed to mean something? Why would their father turn into the maize god? Why would the final set of people, the ones the Mayans thought we were descended from, be made of corn? Animals were unsuitable, mud was unsuitable, wood was unsuitable, why is corn the right material for thinking beings? What does that suggest about the value of corn? Or of humans, for that matter?

 

These hero twins become the sun and moon. Why twins? Is there something special about twins? And what's the purpose of having a sun and moon, from a human-centric perspective? (Can you grow corn without a sun? Remember, also, that one of the earliest methods we had for marking the passage of seasons was with lunar months.)

 

Of course, if you aren't much enamored with supernatural events, that can make it harder. I feel you. Let's try a secular founding myth.

 

A long time ago, when George Washington was a little boy, he had a brand new axe. And he wanted to try his axe, so he tested it against a young cherry tree in his yard. His axe was very sharp, and he was very happy, and before he knew it he had cut the tree down.

 

When his father saw the tree had been cut down, he was angry and went to look for his little boy. He asked young George what had happened, and George Washington replied "I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree".

 

 

That example is sort of cheating, because if you're American you already know this story. You know why we tell this story to little kids, and there's an even a snappy moral at the end that doesn't take too much thought to figure out. (An ironic moral, given that this story was made up decades after his death, but there's more than one form of truth.)

 

But what if you were a Martian, or even an ancient Mayan? What happens? Some kid cuts down a tree and then fesses up to his dad. Okay, well, then what? Who cares? The meaning isn't just in the bare words. (That's another potential problem. If your source for these myths is stripped down to the bare details, you might be missing all the information that makes the stories interesting and meaningful.)

 

[Starr]

He's a child. He takes the myths in a whole different way than you do. My children were imaginative, loved myths, fairy tales, fiction. They grew up with a clear understanding between the reality of the moment and mythology. I say,"let him play."

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

Have you read The Well Trained Mind and/or How to Read Literature Like a Professor? Myths and ancient stories are an important part of our modern literary canon. They are an important part of "the great conversation." One should know that there are characters, archetypes and tropes that have existed throughout literary history. Knowing them will help you better understand literature.

 

The Bible is equally important. One should know that Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" chooses the name she does for the trial for a reason. It isn't plucked out of the blue.

 

This is part of why we study history in order and study literature alongside history.

 

Why would a video game character featuring a mythological character be different from any other literary figure? I am not sure I understand why there is a problem?

 

I often agree with Mrs. Mungo, and this time is no exception.

[HS Mom in NC]

Myths can reflect the religious beliefs of a people group. 

They can reflect the priorities and social values of a people group. 

They are a reflection of the value and power of story telling in the human experience.

 

CS Lewis told us to read "old books" so we don't develop a myopic view of the world.  As someone who has adopted a child internationally, I can tell you that the average American claims to think other people groups are different that our people group, but their comments and questions demonstrate just how profoundly ignorant they are of different contemporary people groups.  It's embarrassing really. I'm talking about people who consider themselves educated because of their college degrees just as much as those without one.

 

The more you study people groups chronologically and historically along with their mythology and folklore, the more parallels you see in how they act as a group in history.  It should be no surprise the Vikings acted the way they did and valued what they did when you understand their religious mythology.

 

It adds dimension and insight to the foreignness of foreign groups of people. Line them up and see how they are similar and how they differ in their mythology.  It's an incredibly useful tool for Christians in a Christ centered education to compare and contrast other religious groups and teachings along side their own.  If you want to have intelligent conversation with someone of a different faith about your own, you need a basic understanding and framework for other faiths.  We call that missionary training when someone does that as an international missionary.  We call that a liberal arts education at my house.

[poppy]

 

 

i guess what i am wondering is... is it inaccessible because i have a science mind instead of a primitive world-full-of-demons mind, or is it inaccessible because i am not tapped into the intuitive fundamental essence and archetypes of humanity.

 

I would go with "incredible feats of imagination in the face of the great gaping unknown". I don't think there's anything primitive about it. I think it's at least as rich as our own world in a literary sense.