Myth Makers and the End of Myth
[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha'Tara]
"Freedom is. It's the natural state of being. Before limitation and slavery, there was freedom. It had no party, no law, no mandate. It just was. Freedom was and is the simplicity in the tangle, the force that has no equal. Without it, everything withers, everything is turned into a program." (Jon Rappoport)
In a previous essay I stated that myth makers were religion makers. In retrospect I realize this is not correct. There is a giant leap made from myth maker to religion maker. Myth makers are found on the ascendant end of the making of a civilization whereas the religion makers are found on the descending end. To understand this cause and effect is crucial to understanding man and his civilizations, how they arise and why they fall - and they always fall because they must. Institutionalized "civilizations" are, de facto, unsustainable.
At the beginning of any civilization one finds the necessary myth that gives the event its raison d'etre. Let's look at the best known civilizations: Greece and Rome. Grecian civilization developed under the tutelage of its pantheon of gods and goddesses ruling from Mount Olympus. From these gods came the demigods and the great heroes of Greek history. Of course it really was vice versa, the heroes became the gods but until now it seems no one has been able to grasp that not-so-subtle point.
What would become Rome began with a simple myth borrowed in part from the Etruscans: a pair of twins were born from a vestal virgin through the intervention of a god, cast off to die, suckled by a she-wolf and later returned to their place of birth. One of the twins, Romulus, founded the city of Rome, etc. Gods "borrowed" from surrounding conquered civilizations were later added to Rome's pantheon with a face-lift and a name change. By then of course Rome no longer drew its inspiration from its founding myths; it had become an institution replete with the usual pointless rituals within a war-o-holic oppressive, extortionist empire.
From the Jews came a more enduring myth: the concept of the one god that had given rise to the Jewish nations of Israel and Judah. Some time after the Romans subdued Judea, and long after the Israelite one god myth had become totally institutionalized and bubble-wrapped, a new myth, based in part on the old one-god concept but built upon a charismatic individual called "Jesus" who claimed to be the "son of god" sprung up literally from nothing and soon took in thousands. Within a few decades this zealous movement morphed into a loosely organized Christian church, later splintering into two main branches, Roman and Orthodox and eventually splintering even more with the Protestant Reformation which the Roman Church was unable to suppress. Today the world is "festooned" with remnants of this religion and its thousands of sects and sub-sects, non of which bear any resemblance to the original movement that wild-fired it upon an unsuspecting world.
As one after another of the old many-god civilizations collapsed, the one god concept became the platform upon which rose new political and religious powers from Asia Minor and what is now called the Middle East to the farthest reaches of Europe; to the Americas and the Far East. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three main religions based on the one god concept and while both Christianity and Islam owe their foundation to Judaism, they distinguish themselves from their mother religion by the addition of a new god or prophet and most importantly, with new "sacred" writings to support the add-on or in today's parlance, a new operating system upgrade.
That is, in essence, the background. To broaden the introduction by including the many phases of mythology of China, Mongolia, India, Africa and the Pacific regions would only confuse the issue here and not add anything to the theme I'm developing, which is, the link between myth and religion coupled with the link between the rise and fall of civilizations or empires.
What then is the difference between myth and religion? First, myth always precedes religion. Myth: cause. Religion: effect. And why does this matter? Because to understand where we are at, as an intelligent, sentient, self-aware species, we need to know how, and why, we got here and if we can allow ourselves to think about it for a bit, to understand why, as a more or less "global" civilization, we are currently precariously perched on the wall, like Humpty-Dumpty, teetering over an abyss of our own making, contemplating what seems an inevitable fall from which we may never rise again, or not for a very long and terrible time.
If the first difference between myth and religion is one of position in a civilization, the most important distinction lies in what sort of power moves the one as opposed to the other. A myth is a popular belief that leads to a groundswell of change, therefore a myth is always revolutionary. It is zealous but not usually, certainly not necessarily, violent in nature. It is a spiritual force that creates a spiritual movement that draws people in because of what it makes them feel. It offers a new truth that touches people in powerful waves of new awareness, drawing them away, fearlessly, from their daily concerns with survival and/or one-upmanship to something that gives a sense of new-found freedom and a more careless attitude to life. A myth cuts through the Matrix barriers between races, genders, ages and social strata; an equalizer that activates cooperation even between enemies. A myth breaks down old taboos and awakens empathy between individuals. While myths do bring people together in groups, they do not destroy the individual, hence why myths can be so powerful at their onset and so dangerous to the status quo.
Now let me slip in the problem with grouping under myth. A myth is not meant to be an institution. It does not have power in itself, it only brings people together so they can share their own power. So a myth is a temporary effect, sort of like falling in love. It creates a temporary state of craziness, or madness where individuals get a chance to taste what freedom from Matrix institutionalization feels like and what can come from this freedom. Obviously that is a great weakness of myth-making.
A perfect example of what I am attempting to flesh out is found in any Christian New Testament. The first four books expound the myth of Jesus: the prophet, the saviour, the god or demigod of Christianity with all the ancient "pagan" attributes of such leaders: born of a virgin impregnated by a god, able to perform miracles including raising people from the dead, condemned to death by the status quo, his spirit sent to "hell" and then rising from the dead to be taken up into the skies to then take his rightful place in the divine pantheon. Every major ancient religion has such a character in it because he or she, is the power myth, the more impossible, the more powerful.
The next book (Acts) expounds in brief what the "mad" followers of Jesus were able to do following the demise, departure or disappearance, of their guru. Their "madness" empowered them to do some pretty radical things, including sharing all they had with one-another so that no one was left destitute. All properties and monies were handed over to the ruling apostles to be equally distributed among the believers. Men, women and children shared in this exuberant extravagance. Yeah, go tell that to Rome, the multi-billionaire televangelists and their billions of sycophants!
That was the power of the myth at work. What was supposed to happen next was for individuals to realize this power came from being together and trusting each other; not from any divine force external to themselves. They were supposed to realize it was a collective of their own individual power through free choice that made these things possible and they were supposed to let go of their training wheels divine myth and learn to trust in themselves. They were supposed to become self-empowered in other words. And that might have happened but it was not to be. Such power cannot be allowed to exist in any Matrix-controlled environments.
Enter the ultimate Manchurian Candidate; the false apostle Saul who in a brilliant move to take over the "Christian" movement, changed his name to Paul, gave a fabricated story of meeting "Jesus" on the road to Damascus, became the effective leader of the movement as it spread outside of Judea and Galilee, making rules based on his upbringing as a Jewish Rabbi and eventually, by legally claiming his rights as a Roman citizen, turning the movement into an organization, a Church. He then focused its beliefs on "love" for those inside coupled with fear and hatred of the Jews so as to quickly and effectively move the institution away from its roots, aligning his new power with the fortunes of the Roman empire; re-igniting a virulent anti-Semitism and effectively canceling out any remaining spirit-power effects from the founding myth.
Paul had help in re-directing the movement. It came from the aging apostle John who went along with the idea of changing Jesus from a Jewish personality to "the Christ" - a Greek title - basically giving Christianity a Greek pantheon god for a divine mascot. Thus a new religion was created, a religion based on control of individuals, particularly women and children, elitism and political power within an ever-expanding imperial global vista. Gone the dreams of freedom for slaves and servants: the new Church made it very clear they were to remain subservient to their masters and accept whatever fate was meted them, all of that being for the glory of god.
As with Judaism, and later, Islam, serious attempts were made to re-direct the political religious machinery back to the "footsteps" of the Jesus entity; back to the myth. Two things happened immediately: the Church with the help of the State, slave owners and the military ruthlessly destroyed those forces that attempted to point out the obvious. If these voices were small in number, they were marginalized in abbeys and monasteries and kept safely out of the main power-trading centers. With the blood of innocents on its unholy hands it was a safe bet that this new Power would never relinquish its temporal power and return to the original myth. In fact it was, and remains, impossible. The myth is dead and gone. Individual power, as in individual thought, is controlled and just as ruthlessly eliminated today as it was hundreds of years ago against the Gnostics, the Cathars and some of the early reformers.
It may take what a short-lived Earthian considers a long time for some institutions to die but once it completely distances itself from its founding myth, its death is never in doubt. What should be obvious to all is that institutions once based on myths, however successful in terms of political power, numbers of adherents and financial wealth, are quite dead. When the myth dies; when the movement becomes institutionalized, whatever you call the resultant structure, it's nothing but a coffin, even if it is a trillion dollar coffin with billions of living dead bodies within. This is true of organized religion, the State and money.
In conclusion then, lets take a quick look at Earthian civilization in current terms: alive, or dead? Is man evolving spiritually and mentally anywhere on earth today? If such happens only when a myth is ascendant, where is that myth surfacing today? What is man's focus upon? Is it not on a technology out of control floating in a sea of communication hyped on speed, each day more bubble packs hiding more gadgets, providing less value; each day more data, more information, giving less understanding?
If what I have concluded is even close to some kind of truth, then it is transparently obvious that it isn't modern scientific materialism, or atheistic humanism, that has brought the species to the end of its tether: religion and the so-called democratic state have a much longer track record of destruction of civilization. Look around at all the major and expanding cities world-wide: see any that are based on a truly new concept; radically different, more human in scope? Do you see any kind of leadership arising that is also radically different than any we've had to date? More importantly, do you ever ask yourself why this is not happening; why, despite the obvious decadence happening all around, nothing radically different is spontaneously springing up to create real change?
And the answer is, there is no new myth to coalesce any meaningful change so that any change being seen is spurious, sporadic and specious. This begs the question: in today's global surveillance State could a new myth arise and survive long enough to present a seriously challenge the status quo?
In closing, here is a quote from "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert: "It must certainly be more dangerous to live in ignorance than to live with knowledge." Indeed, awash in information, the earth is drowning from lack of knowledge; from basic understanding of the underlying principles that sustain life, not just on earth, but in the whole cosmos. Look not to religion, nor to science, to reveal these principles: their job is to deny their existence.
hug
Kathy
TRUST Is 2 WAY Street-
It Is Exactly Why I Live Alone...
Ignorance: Most Illiterates Humans Rather Get
High Loaded On Something Than Accept Fact That
They Are Stupid!
TRASK...
Love ya!
Jane
I have been observing, via real TV, individuals who are attempting to live "off the grid" while admittedly still tethered to it for the most part. Sure, they are paid by and followed by camera crews, making sure that they have a "good" story and tend to easily get rescued where they fall into deep trouble. True realism would not set up artificial circumstances to make the story more interesting and would allow death, however gruesome, to occur. But it wouldn't be good for ratings.
What I've noticed from these experiments in sociology is that, while working together as a team for survival can be very trying if thrown together. Those in long-term isolation, crave contact with others and are the most helpful, friendly, and resourceful when it comes to sharing with their fellow isolationists. With the matrix thrown off, it's easy to be friendly and helpful, not suspicious and warlike.
Ron