Making Mythology

The picture here is taken from the BBC. This depicts a tribe that lives on the border of Brazil and Peru and shows a tribe that has no contact with the outside world. Apparently there are about 100 known tribes in the world that have not been contacted. Since this is deep in the Amazon, it is unlikely that there will be contact, but the government of Brazil is keeping the territory free from logging and other developments that might affect their way of life.

The question that comes to my mind is this: Has the plane that flew over twice become a part of their mythology? How do they explain its existence? Is it a new monster or the form of an angry god? Seeing how they are shooting arrows at it, I doubt it would be conceived as a good thing. Unfortunately, I guess we will never know how this plays out.

There is a fairly decent Dirk Pitt novel called Inca Gold that starts with a similar event and shows how it was worked into the Inca mythology. All Dirk Pitt books are decent reads. This one is at least worth reading the first chapter (one day when you are in the library and bored).

You can read the BBC article on the tribe here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7426794.stm

What is Mythology?

I read an editorial by A. Asohan today that I thought was interesting, but wrong. It is about how comic books and movie superheroes are filling in our need for myths in today's society. The claim of the editorial is that "myth" means the Truth as seen through the eyes of a specific culture. It was the framework by which people viewed the world and their place in it. The stories in a body of myths expounded the virtues and warned about the vices that defined that particular culture. They were lessons that taught us about ourselves."

I guess if you are using that loose of a definition, then it works. Personally, I need the belief aspect. If people didn't worship particular gods or believe that a hero told about actually existed, then it is just a fairy tale, not mythology. However, I know that we do mimic what made myth stories great in our movies.

George Lucas is a Joseph Campbell disciple. He follows the Hero's Quest formula that Campbell devised after studying heroes of all cultures. There is a great site that puts the Hero's Quest in a simple chart and shows how Star Wars and The Matrix. You can find that here: http://www.moongadget.com/origins/myth.html. It is a fantastic introduction to the monomyth idea (all cultures are connected by the similarities in their myths).

Take the Harry Potter stories for example. Not only does he follow the Hero's Quest, but there are so many mythical allusions in there. even if the average reader doesn't recognize all of these, he/she is still enchanted (bad pun) by them.

Back to the editorial, the author goes on to point out how movie superheroes teach us lessons (which, once again, is the author's definition of mythology). He or she points out that Batman teaches us not to become the enemy we fight, Superman shows core values, and X-Men show us not to hate others because we don't understand them.

Great, but these are life lessons, not mythology. Mythology is wrapped in our heroes, but not just because they deal with these lessons. Sometimes it is about fate. Why does Hercules do all those wondrous deeds? Fate (in the form of Hera) played all kinds of nasty tricks on him, resulting in the death of his family. Same goes for Batman. Fate plays a part in the death of his parents, thus shaping the way for him to do his deeds. Why is Odysseus tormented? Because of the choices he makes. Same goes for Spider-Man.

But mythic heroes do not always teach us life lessons. Achilles is glorified because he wanted to be glorified. He fought well (I struggle to say bravely since how brave is it to fight when one can't be hurt). Jason is scum of the earth.

What makes myth is more than a life lesson. That is a fable or fairy tale. It is us and belief. We see heroes with powers and bravery beyond us, but they are flawed like us. They teach us to rise above where we are (but not too high as in Bellerophon's case) and to be nice to others (just in case Zeus is slumming again). They also teach us that some things just happen. These things are unavoidable. Every oracle story teaches us this. Oedipus teaches that. The true test of a hero is how he reacts.

I guess what all my rambling comes to is what is my definition of mythology. I have always defined it as a what used to be believed by a culture but is now no longer. I looked it up in the dictionary (we English teachers like to do that sort of thing). It told me mythology was a collection or study of myths. O.K. I should have known that one was coming. I looked up myth. Alpha Dictionary says it is, "a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people." Encarta says, "a traditional story about heroes or supernatural beings, often attempting to explain the origins of natural phenomena or aspects of human behavior." That's not bad. I would really like to hear your viewpoint on what a myth is.

Doubtfully I cleared up anything, but at least you got a great web site for the Hero's Quest. By the way, the picture at the top is of the Spider-Mobile. It was in a very bad Spider-Man story arc back in the 1970s. This also teaches us a lesson. The good old days were not always what we remember.

The editorial that sparked this nonsense can be found at http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?file=/2008/5/12/movies/21194060&sec=movies

Where's Waldo?

Nixa Mythology, a web site created by a mythology teacher, has this FIND IT on its teacher resources page. You can get the page size view at http://teacherweb.nixa.k12.mo.us/~zhamby/Trojan%20Find-It.pdf, or you can go to his web site in general at http://teacherweb.nixa.k12.mo.us/~zhamby/ to see all of his stuff. This guy is very creative and has some interesting ideas. The page is good for teachers of mythology or just someone who wants to find Waldo or see the Athena Barbie (Zeus with head splitting action sold seperately). To engage his students, Mr. Mythology also has a class related blog you can access through his site and a list of mythology related books that they can read for extra credit. He also incorporates local legends in a project. If you live in MO, you might want to check these out. All around, a pretty ingenious way to teach mythology.

While not the place to go for standard information on gods and goddesses, this web site does provide a fresh look. Four our of Five Lightning Bolts.

Occupational Hazard

Myth-ing Links

I'm heading off soon to see my niece graduate and from there I'm off to celebrate my anniversary, so I probably will not update this blog until next week. So until then, I am going to ask you to do me two favors.

1. Forgive the bad pun for the title. Those who have been reading for a while know I like corny puns. If you do too, try www.punoftheday.com or http://thatspunny.blogspot.com/.

2. I'm looking for some good mythology web sites. It can be anything - Greek, Roman, Norse, Celt, Egyptian, Japanese, Aztec, teacher pages, art, constellations, blogs, compilations, you get the idea. If you wish to review the site for me - great! If you only leave the web address - great! If you want to plug your own site - great! I know I tend to frequent the same pages repeatedly and would like to see where others go.

On the side panel you'll see just a few sites that I have started with and a little lower are some blogs as well. If we get several replies, maybe I'll send the one with the best link a No Prize (a little something Marvel comics used to do - I am the proud recipient of the first electronic No Prize).

Happy surfing!

Duality Synchroblog

This is a part of the May Synchroblog (where many bloggers write about the same theme) on Duality. See below for a list of other blogs that participated and check them out.


I jumped into this thing late, but wanted to find the right perspective for it. The answer literally fell into my lap. I am a big Raiders of the Lost Ark fan. I know it is loosely based on facts, but who cares. When I was kid, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. My name and state didn't have the right sound, though. North Carolina Alford just doesn't have the same ring to it. So I gave up a career in archeology and became a teacher instead.

Anyway, I'm at home watching my new DVD of Raiders and I can't help but wonder if the idol in the beginning scene has any basis in real life. There is a basis for the other stuff (the ark, the grail, the Sankara stones, the crystal skulls), so why not. Being a bit lacking in Hovitos mythology, I had to do some research.

What I found is that this idol (of a woman giving birth) is based on one of two Aztec fertility goddesses: Omecihuatl or Tlazolteotl. Both deal with duality and I'll handle the most frequently cited one first.


Omecihuatl is a dual deity. In fact her title is Lady of Duality (see, I told you this stuff fell into my lap). She is never seen by herself. She must have her brother/twin/life partner with her at all times. They represent the male/female duality which the world must have to survive. She and her brother (Omecutli) make up one deity known as Ometeotl. They preside over Omeyocan (Two Place), which is the thirteenth and highest heaven. Sometimes they are referred to as Tloque Nahuaque, which means "Owner of the Near and Far." Yes, there will be a test and you will need to know spelling.




You see here a real statue of the two. Ometeotl lived in a world of darkness. All she or he or they could see were the eyes of monsters glittering around them (like on Scooby Doo). They did what anyone would do stuck in a world of darkness with monster eyes all around. That's right. They poked the eyes. What happened was that the monsters became stars when their eyes were poked (wish I had known that as a kid). They got all into it and made a bunch of stars.


Finally, they found a monster that was all eyes and mouths and made the land and sea out of it. Since this is mythology and we have a brother/sister pair, what happens next is inevitable. They give birth to several children and completely ruin their school life by giving them impossible to pronounce names (Xipe Totec, Huitzilopochtil, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Coatlicue). Some of these go on to become a sun to light the world and end up destroying the world. After destroying the world four times, they decide to use a human to be the sun. We live in this world now and if we are not careful, this too shall end.


The biggest problem with this is that the statue looks nothing like the film statue and there were no temples to worship Omecihuatl. I only had other people's word on the Omechihuatl so I continued to research and found another goddess this child birthing idol could be. I found Tlazolteotl - the Two Faced Eater of Filth. Her statue looks a lot like the idol in the movie and is probably the one being referenced to despite the popularity of Omecihuatl. Tlazolteotl is a goddess of filth; however, she is also a goddess of forgiveness. This is how it works: when people are dying, she comes along and eats their filth thus cleansing them and granting them forgiveness. When she is not eating filth, she is usually seen giving birth in her role as a fertility goddess. She goes beyond duality - her roles are: goddess of fertility filth, sex, witches, carnal desires, earth, childbirth, prostitution, temptation, gambling, and purification. She is able to do all these things since she changes like the moon. In each stage she is a bit different.


Although this is supposed to be a synchroblog, as usual, I am out of synch and am a bit late. Thanks to A. Venefica for still letting me participate. Check out http://symbolic-meanings.com/2008/04/21/synchroblogging-symbolic-style/ for more blogs in this synchroblog.

St. Brendan the Navigator, Part II

Last post we talked about St. Brendan and his fantastical voyage. Many historians looked at it as just that - fantastic and nothing more. Just fiction. To the die-hards who wanted to believe it, they would merely say, even if you could explain all the mythical creatures, you still have the problem of an Irish curraugh (a canoe-esque type boat) being able to make it across the North Atlantic. Cannot be done. Tim Severin said it could. Nobody believed him, so he set out to prove it.

Severin is one cool guy. He regularly risks his life retracing legendary voyages. He had already retraced Marco Polo's trip and later went on to retrace the Odyssey, Sinbad's voyage, and even searched for Moby Dick. He could not pass this one up. So in the 1970s, he and a few buddies built a boat, in the same manor that St. Brendan and his monks would have.


Upon finishing the leather and wood boat, he christened it Brendan and blessed it with the following chant: "Bless this boat, O True Christ/Convey her free and safe across the sea…/To go to the land of promise is your right/ You are like a guide of Brendan’s time/Guide our boat now."

During his voyage, he found many things that was comparable to St. Brendan's story. Brendan mentioned seeing God's Stepping Stones - Severin found the Hebrides, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. Brendan wrote of crystal columns rising from the see - Severin found icebergs. Brendan had encounters with fire giants hurtling flames from their forge - Severin found volcanoes erupting in Iceland. Brendan had moving islands like sea monsters - Severin said that whales often came and swam steadily beside the boat (maybe interested in the cow hide the boat was made of). Eventually Severin made it to America, proving that such a voyage was possible and moving Brendan out of myth and back into possible reality.

So should we Begin a campaign to change North, Central, and South America to North, Central, and South Brendan? Works for me. If you want to read first hand how Severin did it, he wrote a book about his journey. You can find information about it on his web site: http://www.timseverin.net/brendan.htm.

St. Brendan the Navigator, Part I

What if someone said that he saw a person with a pig head running around? Chances are he is a liar, right? What if that person was someone trustworthy, say Honest Abe Lincoln (the man did walk through a snowstorm just to return a library book)?

That is the problem we have with today's story. St. Brendan is a monk that started many churches in the early 500s. Some of them still exist today. He is a person from history that would, at first glance, seem to be trustworthy. However, there is one journey that he made that seems to be a bit of a stretch to be believable. One reason for this is that the accounts of this journey were written down in the 1200s and may have been a bit stretched.

Here it goes:

St. Brendan, after many years of devoted service to God, is visited by an angel. This could happen for one of two reasons, either the angel is happy with him and wants to show him paradise, or the Isle of the Blest (which, incidentally, Spaniards named Brazil after) or the angel is mad at him because he burned a book because it had a truth about creation that Brendan didn't believe. Either way, the angel says (basically), "Go west, young man. Go west."

So off Brendan and a few of his favorite monks go in a little boat out to sea. The accounts of his journey have him seeing all kinds of wondrous things, such as swine headed men, an island of fire giants that hurl fire at them (well, duh, what else would a fire giant hurl), columns of crystal rising up to the sea, and a large fish named Jasconious that they mistook for an island until it swam down when they tried to build a fire on it. You know, like in Pinocchio.

Eventually he winds up on land. His monks explore for 40 days and can find no end to the land. The angel then tells them to go home and they load up their boats with strange fruits and jewels (fruits are strange, not the jewels) and off they go.

Great story and widely believed for a while. Many maps included St. Brendan's Isle (in various places, of course). It is even said that Columbus studied St. Brendan before his trip in hopes to land on the isle to stock up on supplies (remember, everyone knew that the world was round in Columbus's day - the problem was that it was too big to sail completely around (and would have been if not for America in the way)). By Columbus discovering America (yeah, yeah, I know that Native Americans were here first), people then questioned whether or not Brendan's Isle was indeed America. Could America have been discovered as early as 521 AD?

In later centuries, we grew wiser and said that it was a bunch of baloney. Fire giants - pshaw! Even if all the stories were added later, he still couldn't have sailed in the North Atlantic in those little cow hide boats that Irish monks loved to sail in so much. Poor St. Brendan was reduced to being a fiction, a legend, a fairy tale - but not to everyone.

Next post, Tim Severin puts his money (and life) where his mouth is to prove St. Brendan not only sailed the Atlantic, but found America.

Sword in the Storm

Again with the Gemmell book. I know the last review was of Troy, but when I went to the library to get the latest Troy book, they didn't have it. So I picked up Sword in the Storm, book 1 of The Rigante.

While this is not the historical fiction that Troy is, it is deeply rooted in mythology - Celtic mythology, that is. It is obviously taken place in England, although it is never called that, and it is obviously taken place during the Rome expansion, though it never refers to Rome. Instead the empire comes from the city Stone. Other than that, the Celtic gods and goddesses as well as holidays and customs reign here. Taranis, a Celtic god of thunder and war, is mentioned quite frequently, as well as Celtic spirits (the Sidthe in the book are the banshee and other faerie spirits). Morrigu is mentioned as well as her ravens and Samhain is an important time throughout the book.

If you are looking for a fun introduction to Celtic mythology, this is a good place to start. Whenever a name is mentioned, go to http://www.godchecker.com and look it up. When you are done, you will have a pretty good idea of the Celts. They are a pretty hard group to follow.

To top it all off, David Gemmell has proven to me again that he is a master writer, able to create characters that are believable and to provide a plot that has enough twists and turns to keep you wanting to find out what happens next. Three and a half out of five lightning bolts.

Ammut

Ammut does not really fall into the realm of the unknown god that we give tribute to here at Bubo's Blog; however, if you are not familiar with Egyptian mythology, then she probably is.

Ammut goes by many names - Eater of Hearts is my favorite. Seems like the Egyptians had a thing about eating hearts (see http://bubosblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/eating-hearts-and-reading-comic-books.html for the Khonshu entry).

Without getting too involved in what happens to you when you die (that might be a good multi-part series for future entries), eventually you end up standing before three deities - Thoth, Ma'at, and Ammut. Ma'at is a large scale/goddess and weighs your heart against the feather of justice. Thoth records the weight of the hearts in his handy dandy notebook. If you heart weighs less than the feather - Yippee! it's time to enjoy the afterlife (which is pretty much like regular life). However, if your heart weighs more - which it probably won't since most of the wicked are weeded out by the different obstacles you encounter after death - then Ammut eats your heart, condemning you to non existence forever.

She has a crocodile head (no, not an alligator head - you can tell by the rounded snout), a leopard body, and legs of a hippo. Apparently, all those hearts goes straight to her thighs. (Some sources go with dog, lion, hippo).

Another name for her is the Dweller in Amenta. Amenta is west of the Nile where all people (or at least the important ones) were buried. The setting sun is a universal symbol for death. It is also the name for the underworld in some sources (most sources have it named Duat).

Sadly, there is no temple of Ammut. Thankfully is no feast day! Nobody worships her.She is to be feared and stand as a warning not to be wicked in life.

We'll end with a quote from Thoth that lucky dead Egyptians hear Thoth say:
The Osiris, whose word is true, is holy and righteous. He has not committed any sin, and he has done no evil against us. The devourer Ammut shall not be permitted to prevail over him.

"Fields of Gold" Revisited

Before I go further into this, if you are reading this blog for the first time, you'll want to skim down and read the "Fields of Gold" entry first.

Sadly, I'm not a music fan. My wife is and neither of us understand the other's interest or lack thereof. However, I do like the Police and Sting. Knowing a little bit about his history also intrigues me. He was an English teacher and if you listen to his lyrics you often find allusions to literary classics, such as to Lolita in "Don't Stand so Close to Me," Canterbury Tales in the CD title Ten Summoner's Tales (I have read that is a double allusion - to his real name as well), and others. So the precedent has been set for allusions. Knowing this, I didn't think it was too far a reach that "Fields of Gold" might match the mythological image in my mind. I have found no conformation of this interpretation, but I hold to it anyway.

I'm going with the Rape of Persephone and look at it with a more compassionate Hades than is usually shown. Many try to portray him as a devil figure, but to me, he's just a guy who fell in love and was a bit too awkward in trying to ask her out. Come on, heroes were all the time kidnapping girls.

"You'll remember me when the west wind moves" Here we have west, which is an archetype for death, so the Hades connection and we have west wind, which is Zephyr in Greek mythology and used quite a bit in scenes of love, like Cupid and Psyche.

"You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky" The only way to forget the sun is if you can no longer see or feel it. Thus the underworld. The sky is jealous because it was Helios, the sun titan, that tattle-taled in Hades. Hades has the beautiful woman that Helios can no longer gaze upon.

"As we walk in the fields of gold" Hades/Pluto has another name - Dis. He was usually called this when he was referred to as the the god of wealth. Since gold and other precious metals as well as precious gems come from underground, they must be part of the underworld. Makes sense. Especially here, where they would walk in fields of (literally) gold.

"So she took her love /For to gaze awhile /... In his arms she fell as her hair came down" See, don't let the rape word fool you (it only means kidnapped here), she does love him back. She just didn't appreciate being taken without her consent.

"Will you stay with me, will you be my love" O.K., a bit tricky, but even though he was holding her against her will, he was hoping that she would want to stay with him. The saying, "If you love something let it go," had not been invented yet. We are talking ANCIENT Greece.

"We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky" Now it is "we." He's making his move.

"Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth" I don't care what interpretation you take, this switch in point of view is odd.

"I never made promises lightly/And there have been some that I've broken/But I swear in the days still left/We'll walk in the fields of gold" Here Hades resolves to make sure she'll come back to him with the pomegranate seeds.

"Many years have passed since those summer days/Among the fields of barley/See the children run as the sun goes down/Among the fields of gold" In summer (when Persephone is home) she is in the barely - with her mom. When the sun goes down (archetype of death), she is in the underworld with Hades.

O.K., maybe a stretch, but I can't help feeling that way when I hear it. Ailia had a fantastic alternative by suggesting Demeter and Iasion and the Thrice Plowed Field. I guess the barley had us both thinking Demeter. If you are not familiar with that story, it is a good one and works in the jealous sky a bit better. Zeus, no happy that Demeter is with someone besides him (you know how those overprotective incestuous brothers can be) strikes down Iasion with a lightning bolt as they lay in a field. I like that possibility too. FYI - Iasion found immortality int he stars. The Gemini twin stars (visible tonight int he west), usually mean Castor and Pollux, but some references show that one of the stars in Iasion.