MYTHIC CONNECTIONS (MYTH IN PRACTICE): MYTH AS POETRY The second important component of myth is its poetic nature. This might be the more obvious fact, since we have been privileged enough by the survival of the great epic poems such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, The Mahabharata and many more across the globe. Arguably, these works are a collection of generations of oral stories that have been accumulated and eventually written down. While such “fossilization” destroys the flexibility of an oral story and its memorization, as it loses its performance factor and the differentiations of every further storytelling, the written preservation of the cultural legacy is surely a greater factor … whether or not the great Socrates would agree. The question of either orally preserving a story, thus furthering its “growth” through the generations, or writing it down and rationally offering a better chance of its survival is not as dubious as one might think at first glance, since the actual loss of the story of Theseus would be far worse than losing the ability of differentiating its many incarnations. Once you know of Theseus, you can theorize and research the tradition of the story and character, even its possible versions, but without the knowledge of this famous Athenian’s existence, Greek mythic legacy would be colossally bleaker. There is unquestionable wonder surrounding greater artistry or rather artistry of a different degree in poetry and especially epic poetry. Pragmatically, the ability to compose poetry may nowadays seem more as a “poetic gift” than a learned skill; however, we have to understand that poetic, musical and to large extent general artistic skills dwindle in the shadow of arithmetic and language skills, as the more formalistic, scientific culture sets the trends. While prose functions differently, it is the emotional and participatory nature of poetry that has a powerful effect on its audience. The poetic value and nature of myth is closely connected with rituals, as many sacred stories have been annually used in religious procedures, part of fertility rituals or as a spiritual gateway to the sacred reality. In such a way, we can distinguish between two modes of dissemination of a myth: through the bard and through the priest. While the phonetic value of assonances and repetitions can for example serve both to orally inspire the public, the difference between the two can be for the sake of simplification through the lens of religious doctrine. If the bard represents the more “laid-back” mythic reenactment of the story, the priest serves as the more “serious” religious counterpart, where the sacrality of either the text (Koran), the tradition (Islam) or the actual live religious process takes center stage. The poetic value of myth shares in the almost transcending effect of poetry and songs throughout history and their appeal to their public, whether referring to Bach or pop songs (not to deny that there is a world of difference in just about everything else but their shared affect). Traditionally, the Hindu Vedas are to be experienced rather than cognitively understood, which further directly reflects the Daoist paradox that the Dao cannot be understood by any of the means the Western culture rationally employs. What is more, the vocalization and correct pronunciation of sounds in the sacred incantations places phonetic power above the actual meaning of the sacred narratives. While the Hindu tradition represents the most widespread use of sacred incantations, the African Bambara mythology for example also places vast importance on the sound of creation; namely, the sound yo as the source of the highest state of consciousness. Thus, the visualization of the symbol for aum is as arbitrary as the images on this paper. The more common Anglicized version for \ is om. The tree-letter aum variation is used to visually and phonetically emphasize the three stages of the sound, followed by the emptiness. Nevertheless, the sacredness of the sound transcends its conception like the mind transcends the body in the larger Hindu belief system, connecting the person with the tradition, ritual, enactment of the myth and through the three stages of the sound with the divine (emptiness) in the end … at the end … or beyond the end.
In such a way, the poetic value of myth shares a strong connection to the previous observation of myths as oral stories. Sikhs for example follow a Socratic (or Platonic to an extent) premise that writing cannot capture the essence of being, thought, or in this case magnitude of the divine which is transcended through the songs and rituals. The “inappropriateness” or the limits of (finite) writing as a medium for sacred narratives is central to many traditions. While the divine (eternal) “word” of Allah in Koran refers to about the most sacred writing of any culture, Muslims have a long-standing tradition of learning literally the whole of Koran verbatim, appropriate with the transcendent vocalization. Whether or not myth is externally vocalized through the mouth or internally through reading in the mind, the ensuing story nevertheless in one way or another takes center stage, as it offers various stages of learning, serving as the stepping stone towards life experience every one of us requires.
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November 2017
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