On Myth

            By Frater Serpentis Satori 9=2

       16 jan 02ve: Sun in Cap;Moon in Pis

 

                Ever since Nietzche proclaimed, “God is dead”, it has been a slogan for the worst sort of majickians and Khaomancers. Today, they often claim myths are useless and just stories from dead cultures. Were that true, we would not have any suffering or doubt about our place within The Cosmos. Instead, those old stories have merely changed garments and surround us in our modern culture.

              Myths were always a form of truth that was impersonal and cultural. Osiris is both Egypt’s Great King Figure, like Arthur is in Wales, but also the first sacrificed god. These similarities between ancient myths should lend them greater validity, rather than just provide intellectual amusement.

              The reason myths were birthed, was both to understand why some events occurred and show a human place within them. Every Creation begins with Khaos being held at bay, because it is only reasonable that Cosmic Order needed to first struggle with its Shadow of Cosmic dis-Order. Thereafter gods enter, then Humanity, and each cycle then differs a bit more: but the Pattern is irrefutable.

            Every cast of godlings does share its personalities with Humanity to some degree, otherwise they would never have been comprehensible. This is the actual meaning of myth, Jung and Campbell taught the 20th Century, this basic fact of the pre-Xian Eras. Each Divine Being, is a representative of a class or type within the varieties of human life. From Isis to Bacchus and all the Knights of The Round Table, each pantheon has yourself as some member, somewhere within its mythos.

           Learning all of those Myths, living them, and associating with those Divine Powers is the basis of all polytheistic systems. Choosing the first myth and pantheon is the most difficult, but after those subtle initiations of theomancy it becomes less difficult. Then others can be explored to find the similar archetype, even current media and fiction.

           That is what myth was told for, and why even as we escape so much of the earlier phases of history, our myths refuse to change. True today superheroes and TV Characters may resemble something new from the gods of old, but how many new Merlins has the 20th Century spawned, or Mars’? And that is why each culture continues to return to myths, usually of their own tribe, but try to give them new forms.

          Rather than say that the Divine Family is dead, understand that now it is possible to know them better than ever. Now one can easily find myths from every culture easily, and with work see how those characters have reinvented themselves for our age. Then the myths and gods will help us all again.