Myth is everywhere. It is in the trees. In the rocks. In the rivers. In the sky. You just have to look for it. As I mentioned in the previous few blogs and in the presentation yesterday, myth is alive, almost as if the polyphonic voices of nature were coming together to craft a story. Myth is not static, it changes every time someone retells it. This is similar to how memory works, in that each time we relive a memory we mismember it subtly. It morphs to fit the arch we believe ourselves to be on. Because of this, a myth will die away if it's no longer relevant to the group of people it's associated with, just like we bury a memory which no longer fits in with our story. But others transform. The holiday of Easter is a pertinent example. It began as a pagan festival, as reports this article written by Heather McDougall in The Guardian. Jesus' story was in the tradition of the dying-and-rising gods of the Neolithic peoples. "The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness," McDougall writes, "was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too." She mentions the Sumerian Inanna, who was also hung on a stake; the Egyptian god Horus, who was the resurrected Osiris; Mithras, who was celebrated on the Spring Equinox of sol invictus; and the Greek Dionysus, who died many times and came back again. Many of these gods were born on December 25th, which was near the Winter Equinox, an obviously pagan date, and the Saturnalia festival was also held during this time in Rome. It was easy for the early Church founders to gain converts if they placed Jesus' birth near this date (there is nothing in the Bible proclaiming when the Son of God came into the world). The celebration of Easter itself changes with "the phases of the moon", and even today "many churches are offering "sunrise services" at Easter – an obvious pagan solar celebration."
Another famous example of a dying-god competing with modern Christianity was in Rome on Vatican Hill. Attis, like Jesus, died but rose again. This was a mother goddess cult, one which worshiped Attis' lover Cybele. McDougall says, "This spring festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday, rising to a crescendo after three days, in rejoicing over the resurrection. There was violent conflict on Vatican Hill in the early days of Christianity between the Jesus worshippers and pagans who quarrelled over whose God was the true, and whose the imitation." She opines that Christianity flourished the most in Pagan-dominated areas because of its natural crossover with polytheistic traditions. Interestingly enough, we receive the word Easter from the pagan Eostre--a mother goddess who was associated with rabbits. The Easter bunny was first mentioned, according to Wikipedia, "in Georg Franck von Frankenau's De ovis paschalibus (About Easter Eggs) in 1682 referring to an Alsace tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs." The image of three rabbits was a popular one in the in ancient era, appearing across the world in as diverse locations as China, the Middle East, and Europe, apparently originating in the Orient in Buddhist cave drawings and then traveling West on Islamic coins. Hares were thought to be hermaphrodites by Pliny, Plutarch, Philstratus, and Aelian, which is humorously opposed to the modern association of rabbits with copious sex (this is also tied into their linkage with fertility). However, this perception was an easy symbol for the virgin birth of Christ. Easter Eggs are also associated with new life and sometimes the Germanic goddess Ostara or Eostre. Another story states that during Lent, Catholics were not permitted to eat eggs, thus when Easter came it was necessary to devour them quickly to prevent them from spoiling.
In some aspects, stories are like a river. They change over the centuries, moving over new land, creating new streams, and if they last long enough, morph the landscape itself. However, during man's time on earth, he has tried to control these paths of water, damming them and siphoning off water from the mother stream to irrigate his lands or fulfill the needs of his cities, or the perverse mirror, throwing his waste into the rivers with disregard or overfishing from her waterways. This is similar to Heidegger's standing reserves concept. One poster on reddit named gatelessgate put it this way:
"I think his main point was that the aletheia of technology, which he calls enframing, is such that everything is revealed as standing reserve--that is, something to be exploited for the sake of some end. What makes enframing so dangerous is that it is dictatorial. It subsumes all other modes of revealing. Once the river is dammed, it cannot present itself as artistic, natural, or historical--only as standing reserve. It is important to note that Heidegger is not attacking technology itself, but the aletheia of technology, enframing. Overcoming the homogenizing force of enframing does not call for Luddism. We do not have to do away with the internet and power plants. What we need is to appreciate the danger of enframing and then alter our relationship with technology accordingly. If done successfully, this ought to usher in a new era of Being."
I believe Heidegger would state that controlling the waterways, as opposed to using them as a natural path for your boat, is a bad thing. It reduces nature to an artifact, one which can be exploited. If we can perceive nature instead as an equal than we can refrain from killing the earth with our technologies. This is similar to the conscious and subconscious state. One completes the other, just like nature completes civilization.
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