But wait – there’s more!

Yes – I’ve done my shallow dip into the Top 10 Subjects of Mythology but there’s yet more subjects for my usual twenty special mentions, albeit also with my usual wilder entries the further I go.

Indeed, there were enough subjects that I could do my first round of special mentions (from first to tenth special mention) entirely by alliteration with the letter m from mythology – mmm! I even had a couple to spare so I threw them in as well.

So here we go with my first round of shallow dip special mentions in one go or on the spot.

 

(1) MAGIC & MIRACLES

 

Yes – I have a separate special mention for magic for my Top 10 Mythologies, but magic seems such a definitive quality of mythology that it earns special mention as subject of mythology as well. That flows from mythology being so intimately intertwined with the supernatural, for which magic is a quintessential trait.

Mythology typically has a magical setting – or at least backdrop – of an otherworldly or supernatural realm, beyond time and space with their natural laws. It also typically is populated by supernatural beings – including gods. Hence magic in mythology overlaps with miracles – the supernatural intervention of gods or other such beings into the natural world.

Which perhaps overlaps with…

 

(2) MYSTERY

 

My myth and mystery

By its nature, mythology is mystery. It is what it is. It may be seen or spoken at its surface but at its heart it is mysterious.

That can be seen in the Greek origin of the word mystery in the various religious denominations known as mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries, or mysteries that proliferated throughout the Greek-Roman world, most famously the Eleusian Mysteries.

Sometimes I feel we would be better off if we still called our religions mysteries – and even more so kept to their essential nature as mysterious with beliefs as somewhat loose rather than to something to be defined with endlessly more precision from which others are excluded.

For example, if Christianity proclaimed itself as the Christian mysteries – perhaps aptly enough as the Greek-Roman mysteries are sometimes argued to be an influence or source for no less than Christianity itself, “a Greek hero cult for a Jewish messiah”.

The mystery religions are also sometimes delineated as one of the three main types of Hellenistic religion, along with the imperial cults or ethnic religions of particular states or tribes, and philosophical religion – a tripartite classification that still holds for mythology or even more so religion today.

Which brings me to…

 

(3) MYSTICISM

 

God-tripping!

The natural expression of the inherently mysterious quality at the heart of mythology or religion. Mysticism is typically known as becoming one with the divine or supernatural – at-one-ment as it were – but more generally “any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness”, “attainment of insight into ultimate or hidden truths”, and “human transformation” or apotheosis.

 

(4) MYSTIQUE

 

Mystery and mysticism lead by alliteration and theme to mystique, that combination of mystery and charisma.

Mythology might well be summed up as mystique or supernatural charisma, but I intend it here also to connote mythology as aesthetic or art.

On the flip side, there is also mythology as…

 

(5) MORAL

 

As in the moral of the story, that definitive quality of fable – but also of morality. Mythos is ethos. All too often the defining trait of mythology is the morality it codifies, implicitly or explicitly.

Which is perhaps a subset of mythology as…

 

(6) MEANING & METAPHYSICS

 

Yes – arguably the primary subject of mythology is its expression of the search for meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Or dressed up in fancy philosophical terms – its metaphysics.

Although that can often lead to the sense of the world as illusion or ‘veil’ or…

 

(7) MASKS & MASQUERADE

 

The world as masquerade – a common trope used also in fantasy in which the fantasy ‘world’ is hidden from our own by various degrees of masquerade, as demonstrated by the trope of Masquerade in TV Tropes.

The mythic world – the divine or supernatural – often has the same quality of masquerade in mythology.

For that matter, it’s intriguing how often masks or being masked occurs as motif in mythology, literally or figuratively. The former tends to overlap with at ritual and drama in my top ten. Joseph Campbell used the latter in his magnum opus The Masks of God

 

(8) MATTER

 

As in The Matter of Britain – Arthurian and other British legend – and the various ‘Matters’ as that term is used for foundational legendary history of various nations.

The Matter of Britain is the most famous but there’s also the other two classic Matters – the Matter of Rome, and the Matter of France.

 

(9) MYTHOPOEIA

 

Leading on from fantasy as subject of mythology in my top ten, there’s the term coined as mythopoeia or mythopoeisis – “a narrative genre in modern literature and film, where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose, poetry or other literary forms…the authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of creating a mythology”.

Although it preceded him, it was famously popularized by Tolkien – in a poem of that title but even more so in his legendarium that became The Lord of the Rings, written as a modern mythology for England.

There’s even a Mythopoetic Society, which also awards annual Mythopoetic Awards in fantasy and SF.

Which leads me to…

 

(10) MYTHOS

 

To an extent synonymous with the previous entry but with a focus more on delineating the elements or motifs of a mythology, typically a fictional mythology or universe – for example the Cthulhu Mythos.

Also used as a modern synonym for myth or myths because of the latter’s contemporary usage in a pejorative sense.

 

(11) ALLEGORY

“Narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance…symbolic figures, actions, images, or events…personification of abstract concepts.”

Mythology has quite the overlap with allegory – indeed with mythology often being interpreted as allegory.

 

(12) FABLE

Often used synonymously with myth – a literary genre (of folklore) ” defined as a succinct fictional story…that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying”.

 

(13) PARABLE

Essentially a fable but only with people (or supernatural beings) – a fable that “excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature as actors that assume speech or other powers of humankind”.

The archetypal parables of course being those of Jesus

 

(14) STORY & TALE

The heart of mythology – mythology is narrative. One might also say that it’s the heart of humanity as well. Above all, humans are narrative animals – or myth-making ones

 

(15) SUPERSTITION & TABOO

Yes – I like the alliteration of superstition and taboo following from story and tale but there is quite the overlap with mythology (and some would argue that mythology is superstition). Superstition – folk belief or practice invoking fate, fear, luck, magic or supernatural influence – tends to have a mythic origin or mythology of itself.

Taboo of course is a negative superstition – folk belief or practice avoiding or prohibiting something, typically with social sanction. The word itself is borrowed from its usage in Polynesian languages for such beliefs or practices – one of the highest profile such loan words, along with the similar magical or supernatural mana.

 

(16) SYMBOLISM

Mythology is virtually synonymous with symbolism. Mythology might well be described as symbolic narrative – and symbols tend to have their own myths behind them.

 

(17) DREAM

“Your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams”.

As Joseph Campbell famously opined, mythology overlaps with dream – “myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths”. Mythology and the mythic world is the dreaming. It is not coincidence that Australian Aboriginal mythology is known by the denomination of the Dreamtime – or that has been borrowed for other mythology (as Jonathan Kirsch does for the Bible prior to King David). Freud arguably made his (sexual) mythology from dreams.

For that matter, it is striking how often dreams themselves recur within mythology. Again to borrow from the Bible – prophetic dreams and their interpretation recur surprisingly frequently in the Bible, from Genesis to the Gospels and arguably to Apocalypse. And when they are not actual dreams, it is striking how often God or angels reveal themselves by night rather than day – in divine dream-like revelations.

It can be argued – and effectively has been by anthropologist Pascal Boyer – that religion and mythology originate in dreams. Among other things, we see dead people in our dreams – prompting us to believe that they live on or have some continuity in a spirit realm or supernatural reality.

 

(18) RIDDLE

Similarly a genre or type of folklore – with a substantial overlap between riddles and mythology. One might say mythology and myths are riddles writ large – “having a double or veiled meaning”, albeit “put forth as a puzzle to be solved”.

“Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.”

On the other hand “whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, riddles make a point of playing with conceptual boundaries^[ and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem”.

Not to mention one of the most famous riddles was mythic – the Riddle of the Sphinx.

 

(19) JOKE

Life is the laughter of the gods – but sometimes they have a black sense of humor.

It does not take too much to see mythology – and religion – as divine comedy. And perhaps we should see both that way more often.

 

(20) EROS & HIEROS GAMOS

Mythos is eros – and hieros gamos.

I like to reserve my twentieth special mention for my kinky entry – but mythology is indeed intertwined with ethos. I like to quip that I have a sexual mythology but to a large extent we all do.

Hieros gamos (or hierogamy) is sacred marriage – “a sacred marriage that plays out between gods, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities”. It was particularly notable in Mesopotamian or Near Eastern ritual practice.