#david leeming

Portrait of David Leeming (1966), oil on canvas by Beauford Delaney.

[writing] LitLectures – Mythology 101

It’s 2020. As we grapple with changes to popular franchises and stories, we might wonder what is going on. Some may recognize ongoing negotiation surrounding concepts of myth and canon. What is myth and mythology? What role does have in modern society, if any?

Base Definition

According to the Oxford Lexicon, myth is…

The Origin of Witches: Inspiration #2

“Three general types of myth have been central to human societies and continue to influence the way we think, speak, and act today. Creation myths tell us where we came from, how things began. They are our primary myths, the first stage in what might be called the psychic life of the species. Creation is almost always linked to the concept of Deity, one of the strongest but most corruptible expressions of our collective being. Deities are metaphors for—dreams of—our ultimate progenitors, and psychology has taught us how important our mental depictions and memories of our parents are to any real understanding of our own identities. The story of the Hero is the most human and overtly psychological of the dominant myth patterns. Hero stories can be said to be metaphors for our personal and collective (p.8) progress through life and history. Creation, Deity, and Hero all seem to lead inevitably to that very strangest and most mystical expression of the human imagination, the concept of union, which, depending upon era and tradition, has been called by many names, of which nirvana, individuation, self‐identity, and wholeness are a few.”

“Used in the ceremonies of various cultures, especially by shamans, a bullroarer is a piece of wood containing a spirit - sometimes a literal one, as in the cast of the Melanesian culture hero Tiv’r’s son - that is spun around the head to activate the spirit’s voice” (pg 57).

“Many thinkers have used the term “archetype in slightly different ways in connection with mythology. The two modern myth scholars who have made the most use of it are Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade. Although he used the term somewhere differently at various stages of his life. Jung thought of archetypes as universal psychic tendencies or “primordial images” of a “collective unconscious” that, when given individual or cultural form - in dreams, art, or literary expressions such as myths and fairy tales, and later, literature - become universally familiar human motifs. These motifs, then - the trickster, the father god, the hero and his monomyth, the flood, and so many more - wear various individual and cultural masks but strike a familiar chord in people everywhere. Ananse is clearly a trickster, and an African will recognize Coyote and Raven, for instance, as Ananse’s archetypal Native North American relatives. The reader of the Osiris and Jesus resurrection myths will recognize in these heroes’ overcoming of death a common human human concern or “thought.”

Eliade’s use of “archetype” is more religious and less psychological than Jung’s. For him archetypes are “sacred paradigms” or “exemplary models” that characterize the sacred or transcendent aspect of life that springs from primordial “myth time” - archetypal time - as opposed to the profane aspect of life, that which is dominated by material things and linear time. Eliade believes, however, that the sacred can appear to the archetypally oriented person in the world of the profane through various revelations or hierophanies (27)”.  

Jealous Gods & Chosen People ~ David Leeming

David Leeming

from the preface of:

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