(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.

 

 

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.

 

TOP 10 SUBJECTS OF MYTHOLOGY

 

So many topics for top tens, so little time – hence my top tens on the spot, shorter shallow dips as opposed to my longer deep dives.

And what better topic for shallow dip than the Top 10 Subjects of Mythology? Although that prompts the obvious retort that’ll be a shallow dip indeed – it’s mythology, innit? There – done!

Well, yeah nah – as mythology meaningfully overlaps with or includes many other subjects that are interesting in themselves.

So here we go all in one go – my Top 10 Subjects of Mythology.

 

(1) MYTH

 

Well, obviously – and such that it also obviously had to be in the top spot, although defining myth or mythology is less obvious, except perhaps at their core, for example as with the Olympian gods in classical mythology.

Partly that’s because of the extent that myth or mythology overlaps with other subjects – particularly with…

 

(2) LEGEND

 

Legendary!

A subject so intertwined with myth and mythology that it tends to be virtually synonymous with them – although funnily enough calling something a myth often is dismissive in contemporary usage while calling something a legend or legendary usually is a term of acclaim.

That might be because of the usual distinction drawn between myth and legend – that the main characters in myth are usually non-human, such as gods or other supernatural beings, while legends involve everyday humans in historical settings.

“Myths are sometimes distinguished from legends in that myths deal with gods, usually have no historical basis, and are set in a world of the remote past, very different from that of the present.”

So while we’re taking a step down from myths to legends as it were, that brings me to…

 

(3) FOLKLORE

 

In a sense you could say I’ve got this ass-backwards as myth and legend are more properly genres of folklore – and that I really should (or could) be doing a top ten subjects of folklore.

It’s just that folklore is so broad as to encompass the entirety of “the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture” – including oral traditions of myth and legend as well as many more besides.

Also, I tend to see folklore (and legend) in a more ‘low church’ sense involving figures or narratives closer to humans and nature, as opposed to the ‘high church’ sense of myth or mythology involving divine beings or sacred narratives.

 

(4) RELIGION

 

Probably the most obvious overlapping subject with mythology apart from legend or folklore – and perhaps even more obvious than those.

“Myths are often endorsed by secular and religious authorities and are closely linked to religion or spirituality”.

And while mythologies without a religion tend to come to mind – such as classical mythology, alas! – it is harder to think of a religion without its mythology, even such apparently atheistic religions as Buddhism or Taoism.

The link between mythology and religion brings me to…

 

(5) RITUAL

 

Given how much religion overlaps with or is comprised by ritual, it’s not surprising that mythology does as well.

For one thing, you have the depictions of ritual in mythology, which are then followed by the community that holds that mythology to heart.

For another, there’s the theory of mythology that holds that myth is tied to or even originates in ritual – to the extent “that every myth is derived from a particular ritual”. It even has a school of thought named for it – the “myth and ritual” school or “ritual school of myth”, based in Cambridge (and sometimes styled as the “Cambridge Ritualists”, conjuring up images of lurid secret societies in that university).

For example, animal-headed gods or beings like the Minotaur originate in masks worn by priests or priestesses – and so on

 

(6) HISTORY

 

Wait – what? Isn’t mythology the antithesis of history, as the latter is concerned with verifiable evidence of factual events?

Well yes – but also no.

For one thing, communities that hold mythologies also tend (or tended) to hold them to be true in a historical sense, at least in part – although fortunately for those communities myths also tend or tended to be ahistorical, as occurring in a realm outside historical time or space.

For another, legends as opposed to myths tend to have a historical setting – which have a surprising tendency to turn out to have more historical truth to them than skeptics give them credit. People believed Troy was a myth until they found it.

And for yet another, communities often have historical myths about themselves and their history – origin myths or national myths.

 

(7) POETRY

 

The gods speak in verse.

No, seriously.

From the Iliad and the Odyssey to substantial parts of the Bible, it’s striking how often myths or legends are written (or spoken or sung) in verse. Even when in prose, it often has a lyrical resonance to it.

Speaking of which…

 

(8) EPIC

 

“Do you have it in you to make it epic?”

Closely resembling legend in popular usage, originating from its origin in long poetic narratives, “typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures of the past history of a nation”.

Obviously overlapping with poetry, it’s striking how much poetic epic is at the core or origin of myths and mythology. The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Iliad and the Odyssey. The Hindu epics. Much or even most of the Bible.

Speaking of poetry and epic, particularly in classical Greek literature, brings us to…

 

(9) DRAMA

 

Particularly that originating in classical Greece – most strikingly with tragedy, a name that literally translates from the original Greek as “goat song” and seems to originate in or overlap with religious festivals, especially for Dionysus, hence the goats (or satyrs). Don’t dismiss comedy however, which also originated in or overlapped with the same religious festivals, translating as (drunken) “revel song”. Funnily enough that prompts to mind something I always recall reading (in some sort of dictionary of Christian thought) that the gospels of Christianity are ultimately comedy, effectively reversing tragedy into a happy ending – further prompting to mind the Christian passion play, yet more mythic drama (albeit Greek drama might also be described as pagan passion plays – Euripide’s Bacchae for example).

It’s striking how much classical drama (or the passion play) reenacts mythology – to the extent that it might be regarded as similar to ritual as the reenactment of myth (or vice versa).

 

(10) FANTASY

 

On the one hand, the term that perhaps best reflects the pejorative contemporary usage of myth – dismissing myths as fantasy or fantastical.

On the other, the modern genre of fantasy comes closest to being like our original mythologies or their literal and figurative enchantment of original mythology – deliberately so with founding figures of literary fantasy such as Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of The Rings as a modern mythology for England.