How important is myth to your practice?
In what way is your practice rooted in ancient Pagan religions, if not by myth?
Do ancient myths play a large part in your practice, or only a minor role? Perhaps even no role at all?
By myths, I mean historical traditions of stories that have come down to us from specific cultures, and which typically involve pantheons of gods and sometimes other fabulous creatures and beings. For example: Greek myths of Dionysos and Persephone, Norse myths of Freya and Odin, Irish myths of the Dagda and Cerridwen, etc.
Please take part in the poll, then leave a comment on the issues discussed below.
One thing I’ve noticed in the Naturalistic Pagan community is that myths get much less air-time than in other Pagan circles. They may be talked about indirectly, i.e. as the abstract phenomenon of myth, or not at all. Here at HP, most of it has been of the indirect variety. This makes me wonder how central myths really are to Naturalistic Paganism.
On the one hand, the issue is almost certainly a bias effect resulting from the nature of our community: what distinguishes us is not the myths but our beliefs about them, so we tend to dwell more on the nature of myth than myths themselves.
On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that for many of us, such as environmental types and perhaps other varieties, myth may be minor or even absent entirely.
If that is the case, and the poll above ought to give some sense of whether it is or not, then that leaves me with a question:
- In what way is your practice rooted in or inspired by ancient Pagan religions, if not by myth?
Please leave a comment with your reply.
Upcoming work
New at Naturalistic Traditions
For any who have not been following, the Naturalistic Traditions column at Patheos has begun a new monthly series exploring the diversity of Pagan beliefs in history, focusing on naturalism. So far, two articles have been published, with a third due out at the beginning of April:
- Exploring the Historical Roots of Naturalistic Paganism
- Modern Cosmology
- Evolution and the Meaning of Life (check it out on April 1st)
This Sunday
Is myth fading into the background in Naturalistic Paganism?
How important is myth to your practice?, by B. T. Newberg
Appearing Sunday, March 24th, 2013
Next Sunday
The do’s and don’ts of dealing with atheist Pagans.
Care and feeding of your atheist Pagan, by Rhett Aultman
Appearing Sunday, March 31st, 2013
Recent Work
Magic services: Taking money out of the equation, by Drew Jacob
Pagan Atheists: Yes, we exist, by Stifyn Emrys
Trees, by Bryan Beard
World Water Day
This is a little late, but I just learned about World Water Day, an event observed on March 22nd since its 1993 inception after a United Nations General Assembly. This year’s theme is water and food security.
Learn more at Unwater, and check out this article from the Huffington Post.
The HPedia: Myth
This entry is from the HPedia: An encyclopedia of key concepts in Naturalistic Paganism.
In HP, myth generally refers to historical traditions of stories that have come down to us from specific cultures, and which involve pantheons of gods and sometimes other fabulous creatures and beings. For example: Greek myths of Dionysos and Persephone, Norse myths of Freya and Odin, Irish myths of the Dagda and Cerridwen, etc.
Myth is often inseparable from ritual; the two tend to go hand in hand whenever talking about a living mythical tradition that plays a large part in one’s life, rather than a handful of quaint stories handed down to us. When HP refers to “developing a relationship with myth”, it is in the former sense rather than the latter.
To develop a relationship with myth is to live with myth. It begins with reading or hearing the stories, but moves beyond that. Incorporating it into ritual or meditative practices, associating it with seasonal changes or other natural phenomena, and relating its themes to one’s own life, the individual attunes to the myth on a deep level. Through such attunement, a myth becomes cognitively, emotionally, and morally significant to the individual. Cognitively, the myth may inspire one to see new patterns in nature, society, or oneself, especially patterns that make meaningful sense of one’s place in the world. Emotionally, the myth may inspire feelings of connection and integration with, as well as aesthetic appreciation for, the world as seen through the lens of the myth. Morally, it may inspire a sense of responsibility within the world in which one is now thought and felt to be integrated.
It must be noted that the role of myth in this process is to inspire, not to dictate. Patterns perceived may be stimulated by the myth, but are rarely inherent to it. A key characteristic of myths, in fact, may be their eternal openness to interpretation. This openness allows them to inspire a range of different meanings in different peoples, at different times and in different places. Down through the ages, myths remain precisely because new meanings are able to be read into them, according to the needs of the era.
It is sometimes thought that modern people may be better off creating their own myths rather than renewing ancient ones, or that science fiction and other genres are our modern myths. This view seems to underestimate the evolutionary process ancient myths have undergone. Centuries and centuries of selection pressures have evolved myths to play on the deepest levels of the human psyche, to appeal to a broad variety of different people, and to embody new meanings according to the needs of the current age. Newly invented “myths” may be valuable, but they have not proven themselves, as it were, by this long-term process. There is no reason not to experiment with creating new myths, but trashing the ancient for the new seems a hasty measure.
Myth is sometimes used by philosophers and theologians to mean a grand narrative or metanarrative, without necessarily involving stories of a pantheon of deities or other supernormal beings. For example, Loyal Rue uses myth as synonymous with narrative core (see “Narrative Core”), and the Epic of Evolution is sometimes called a myth (see “Epic of Evolution” above). While the validity of this usage is acknowledged, HP generally sticks to the meaning outlined in the first paragraph above in order to avoid confusion.
See also “Fourfold Path”, “Epic of Evolution”, “Narrative Core”, and “Fourfold Path.”
Check out other entries in our HPedia.
Spring Equinox: Ostara / Mabon
In the Northern Hemisphere, the Vernal Equinox is celebrated as Ostara (also spelled Eostar, Eostre, or Eastre), deriving from the name of a Germanic goddess to whom the month of the same name was holy. It is the same word from which we get Easter. This time of year is a moment of bursting forth, of life emerging from darkness out into the light.
Nature333 by Annika Garratt
Glenys Livingstone of Pagaian recommends discovering the balance of light and dark in your own breath:
Feel the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun. Feel for your own balance of light and dark within – this fertile balance of tensions. Breathe into it. Breathe in the light, swell with it, let your breath go into the dark, stay with it. Shift on your feet, from left to right, feel your centre…breathe it in.
In our part of the Earth, the balance is about to tip into the light. Feel the shift within you, see in your mind’s eye the energy ahead, the light expanding. Feel the warmth of it. Breathe it in. (Livingstone, 2008)
She also suggests representing the Spring Equinox with a daffodil with bulb and roots exposed, “signifying the full story of Spring Equinox, which is, emergence from the dark: the joy of this blossoming is rooted in the journey through the dark.”
See also John H. Halstead’s Spring Equinox ritual script, which is especially useful for those with children.
Those in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Mabon at this time.
Magic services: Taking money out of the equation, by Drew Jacob
“What if we took money out of the equation?”
She sat on my couch and wept. Not because her husband left. Because he wanted the kid.
“He abuses him. He abuses both of us,” she said between sips of pekoe. “Now he’s going to take my son.”
I didn’t know if any of it was true. It wasn’t my job to judge, just to listen. At least for now.
The husband had hired a private investigator to dig up dirt. He also had a very expensive lawyer. The hearing was in a month and it didn’t look good.
She took a quiet tone. “Can you cast a spell?”
Read more…
for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.