In Defense of Mythology

 The ancient Greeks are known for little else than their Mythology.  That these stories are still told or even known about 2000-3000 years later is a testament to their narrative power, human drama and epic scale.  Care must also be taken to give credit to the Romans as well, since they wholesale adopted these myths and refashioned them with Roman gods and people and then spread them from Northern Africa all the way to the island today known as Great Britain.

Whether the Greeks believed in their myths is a continuing question and the answer varies from age to age.  But at least a few of the myths had explanatory power that we reference even today.  Most Greek epics begin with an ode to the Muses: Goddesses associated with memory or inspiration, but in the Greek world, specifically associated with Truth.  The poet would open with a prayer that the Muses would inspire the poet to remember and speak Truth.  Today we speak of a "muse" as a source for inspiration, but not necessarily "truth".  Perhaps that's a subject that deserves more attention.  Why "truth" isn't the goal of our art or literature.  But perhaps another day.

A specific story I want to discuss is the Greek story of Demeter and Persephone (Roman: Ceres and Proserpina).  Demeter was the goddess of wheat, but perhaps broadly speaking she had some role in general fertility including other crops.  Her daughter Persephone was a notably beautiful young woman and one day when she was out and about Hades (Roman: Pluto), the ruler of the underworld saw her and immediately fell in love.  Thus he snatched her up and took her to the underworld to be his queen.  When Demeter noticed that Persephone was missing she searched all over, finally asking Apollo who as the Sun god saw everything that happened under the Sun if he knew were Persephone was and he reported that Hades had taken her to the underworld to be his queen.  This understandably threw Demeter into a state of depression and she wandered the Earth dressed as an old hag and refused to permit the crops to grow.

Now things are getting serious. No crops means no food and no food means a famine and Zeus (Roman: Jupiter) couldn't let that pass so he sent emissaries to Hades to demand Persephone's return.  Well, Hades can't deny Zeus but through trickery he had given Persephone some pomegranate seeds to eat, which she did and anyone who eats the fruits of the underworld can no longer live on Earth among the living.  But Zeus won't be denied so a compromise was reached: Persephone will live on Earth for 8 months out of the year, and in the underworld for 4 months of the year.  And during the 8 months that Persephone is with her mother Demeter is filled with joy and the crops grow, but during the 4 months when Persephone is in the underworld, Demeter is filled with sorrow and no crops grow.

And that, my friends, is where the growing season and winter come from.

The story of Demeter and Persephone was one of the more significant myths and the feasts dedicated to Demeter and Persephone were incredibly important. In the ancient world, you were one bad harvest from starvation and death so making your observances to ensure a favorable harvest was obviously a priority.  And the story was adopted as a major feast in Rome as well and later would inspire one of the great statues of the Renaissance: Bernini's Rape of Proserpina.

Not all Greek mythology is like that. In fact, that may be the only mythology that has such explanatory power.  But my point is that it does explain whey crops grow in part of the year but not during the rest of the year.   It's a useful and interesting story. It has depth. You can consider how the seasons change, how gods treat mortals or lesser gods, fate, loss and redemption.

A characteristic of Greek mythology is that it happened primarily in Greece, or in lands that the Greeks would have been familiar with like Troy.  The gods and centaurs and nymphs and stories occurred in the same lands where the people were living as they heard the stories.  The gods lives on Olympus, the centaurs lived in Arcadia, the entrance to Hades was a known place.  And the interaction between gods and humans was detailed in vivid and often tragic detail, as seen above.

The Greeks could easily travel to Arcadia and note the absence of centaurs and other incongruities so the poets often had to have a reason for modern day inconsistencies.  And to what extent they were successful or if the Greeks believed it is unknown to me.  But the idea of woods teaming with dryads and rivers babbling with the happy laughter of naiads is a compelling idea. And the fact that these nymphs were mercurial in nature and could help a wayward traveller or play tricks on him as the mood took them was a warning to beware.  A simple walk in the woods is thus presented as a private drama that might yield good fortune (perhaps catching tonight's dinner) or bad luck (perhaps tripping and falling in a crevice, or being attacked by a wild animal) and respect and care was warranted.

We have nothing like that today.  People will sometimes say that superhero movies are a modern day mythology, but I don't think that really counts: though it comes close.  To be actual mythology, the monsters would have to exist here, there'd have to be some remnant of their presence, I'd have to be able to travel to and visit where the story happened and there'd have to be a public commemoration of the event.  And the latest excretion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't count as a public commemoration.

The Catholic Church is positively festooned with saints.  And perhaps in the middle ages and Renaissance times, saints filled the role. Pilgrimages were definitely taken to the site of a saint's martyrdom, famously depicted in the Canterbury Tales.  But after Vatican II, the Catholic Church has put the saints back on the shelf in the name of ecumenism and it's rare to hear a homily about the live of whichever saint has his feast day that day or week or even see a saint in the stained glass windows: those also having been jettisoned for some unknown reason.

Our public discourse is also dominated by people that generally hate our country. So any mythology about the Founding Fathers would be couched in post-modern revisionist history and it's hard to get excited about visiting where they lived.  While the Greeks may have chuckled at the dim-wittedness of their heroes, we tear our heroes' statues down and replace them with ... bullshit.

But the absence of a viable and common mythology leaves the world thin.  I'm and engineer and a scientifically oriented guy and I know that the change of the seasons is due to the tilt of the Earth in it's orbit around the sun and subsequent weather patterns as different parts of the globe are heated and cooled.  But the story of Demeter and Persephone explain the matter just as well and provide drama and depth, and perhaps a little suspense.  You don't get any human drama and sympathy from a rock dumbly orbiting around a star.  

And when I walk through the park, I know that my movements are observed by squirrels and birds and skunks, snakes, bobcats and coyotes which I know live in the park, even if I rarely see them.  Being a good monotheistic Catholic Christian I don't believe in nymphs and satyrs and the like.  But I can make room for a guardian angel or patron saint of the neighborhood who has a sense of humor and causes squirrels to throw nuts at me when she thinks I need it (which has happened).  Restricting my world to what can be seen and calculated results in a thin existence of mere chance and circumstance and robs it of an encounter with the unknown.

So I think we need to revive the art of telling stories about our place.  Stories that took place on the soil where we stand while listening to them.  Stories of God and Angels and Heroes and Devils and Villains.  Stories where the good guys are mostly good and the villains are thoroughly evil.  When Good wins out but Evil is always plotting a return.  Stories that add drama to our lives today, even while recounting events that happened in the past.  Stories that tell a truth, and explain the world with the thickness you can't get from fact-checking websites.

And we should start now.