Mythology—and therefore civilization—is a poetic, supernormal image, conceived, like all poetry, in depth, but susceptible of interpretation on various levels.(pp. 472)
Mythology—which we tend to think has already become just antiquity—is the main topic in Masks of God. Different from my pre-understanding, he mentions that mythology is alive and even universal. According to him, “Man, apparently, cannot maintain himself in the universe without belief in some arrangement of the general inheritance of myth “(pp.4). My interest, then, changed towards why we need such a mythology in our lives, how mythology functions, and how we can find any mythological things in our societies.
The reason why we need mythology is shown in this book like this: “a mythology is an organization of images conceived as a rendition of the sense of life, and that this is sense is to be apprehended in two ways. Namely: 1) the way of thought, and 2) the way of experience” (pp.179). In other words, mythology gives us the meaning of life and our thoughts are based on this mythology!
This idea somewhat astonished me because I got the idea why so many people nowadays are confused of their meaning to live in this contemporary world. Mythology is, in a sense, like a package of the meanings of life. Indeed, mythology is our basic concept of how we perceive the world.
Mythology, however, does not only give us the meaning of life through the images but also involves some activities.
Ritual is one of the most essential elements of mythology and it is also based on it. He describes “ritual is mythology made alive, and its effect it to convert men into angels” in his work. How do rituals function in human societies then?
Shamanism is a good example for describing what rituals are. In fact, shamanism is the most fascinating topic for me in this book. What is shamanism? According to him, Shamans have an occult power over nature and they can use either to harm or to profit his fellow (pp.249).
In short, shamans have great abilities to enforce their own powers through their techniques. For example, animism is one of their techniques. Although he never refers the word “animism” in this work, it is obvious that shamans use the concept of animism: the power of symbolism. In this sense, it is interesting for me that he explains that animal species tend to be stereotyped in comparison with human beings(pp.292) because symbolism involves a sort of stereotyping.
Since each animal has the own characteristic, stereotyping animals is easy to understand and useful for shamans. Indeed, he quotes “Every shaman must have an animal-mother or origin-animal” by Pavlov Kapiton. Different from contemporary urban people, shamans have such a strong connection with animals and they regard animals as the source of their powers.
This book allowed me to think how we can enforce our powers in our cultures. Before reading this text, I thought shamanism, myths, witchcraft, etc. were just nonsense and superstitions.
Now, I am thinking it is quite natural for human beings to have those behaviors in their cultures because it is reasonable to enforce themselves socially, psychologically and physically.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿