Myth-making

and the

Logic of Myth

Serhat Uyurkulak
Figures from the Sami mythology on a shamans drum Sep 30, 2013.
 Mythos, Epos, and Logos
Mythos: Story(-telling), tale, moral tale, legend, fable;
word that is recited or heard.

Epos: Words (statements) recited according to a certain order

and meter. Metered and ordered story-telling is
gods gift to humankind.

Mythos: content of the recited word/story

Epos: the artful form this content takes/plot

Due to this proximity, the Myth and the Epic have often been
used interchangeably. Epics work with myths; mythic materials;
mythologies.
The Epic of Gilgamesh takes as its subject the mythified
adventures and heroism of Uruks king.

Its world is the mythic world of Sumerians; the experiences

depicted reveal the mythic world-views of Mesopotamia.

Logos: The revelation/recitation of Truth through words.

An order of laws in human bodies and souls, in nature

and in cosmos.

One must discover the logos (set of laws common to all

entities) and express it by means of words; must not invent
or create these laws-Truth
Myth-makers and epic story-tellers are the ancient poets;
artists; (imaginative-creative) writers; inventors of Truth

Homer and Hesiod from the 8th C. BCE are the two great
myth-collectors, -makers, and epic writers

Homers Odyssey and Iliad are also catalogues of the Greek

gods and demi-gods; of their function in the creation of
cosmos, earth, and their role in major historical events

Hesiods Theogony is about the very creation of gods

themselves; it gives the family trees of gods. His Works and Days
refers to mythology to explain some of the existential questions
of humankind.
The Epic of Gilgamesh too is concerned with gods and how they
have effected the creation of the universe and humankind

In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology and mythic world-view:

Divine beings pre-exist matter. Personified supernatural

powers are key to creation. Matter is secondary.

(According to one Sumerian legend, the earth and the heavens

had been created as a single unit and then were divided by Enlil.
In another version, the heavens and the primitive form of earth
get coupled to create the rest of the world.)

Myths: Foundations and origins of things and humans

NATURE, STRUCTURE, and the WORKING of Creation
The mythic world-view is Anthropomorphic and Animistic

Anthropomorphism sees the nonhuman as human;

attributes human characteristics to objects or animals

(Humbaba the monster having emotions, speaking.

Gods imagined as humans, having human ambitions.)

Animism interprets inanimate objects as living; attributes

will and spirit to them.

(Monuments; temples; totems have spirits of their own.

Even the Cedar Forest in Gilgamesh functions as an enchanted
space.)
In the mythic world-view, there is a continuum between
the conscious and the unconscious experiences, revelations,
discoveries, etc.

In Gilgamesh, the dreams serve as an interface between the

conscious daily life and the otherworldly fears, unconscious
desires, and the future. They are real in their effects.

In the mythic world, the identity logic may not work

one thing can be another thing at the same time. A may equal B,
B may also turn to be C

Gilgamesh is God and not-God; he is man and not-man

simultaneously. (Jesus Christ?)
Philosophical Revolution of the 6th C. BCE

Poets and myths are questioned; they lose their power to explain
the Arche (fundamental principle, first element, beginning)

Physio-logoi (natural scientists) and philosophers;

the ancient physicists, mathematicians, geologists, astronomers,
and historians replace the myth-makers

Thales of Miletus: 624-546 BCE (For many, founder of Western

philosophy; water is the primary matter)

Pythagoras: 585-497 BCE (Mathematician;

founder of a religious movement; transmigration of souls;
Arithmos [numbers] as the foundation of Being)
Heraclitus: 540-475 BCE (Philosopher of change and unity of
opposites as the forces making the universe)

Herodotus: 485-425 BCE (Author of The Histories;

founder of scientific, rational historiography; Historia means
logical reasoning or inquiry; no longer the stories of gods)

Plato: 428-348 BCE (Founder of the Academia in Athens;

influenced by Pythagoras; philosopher of Ideas as arche
and their secondary appearances us and our world)
These men of LOGOS reject the stories of gods and creation
imagined by MYTHOS and expressed by EPOS.

For them, these myths are irrational popular stories about

the universe, nature, and humankind.

The 18th C. Enlightenment critique of myth, theology, and

religious dogma dates back to the Philosophical Revolution.

Myth taken as fairytale; a body of lies; incredible stories

impossible to observe, repeat, prove or disprove.

This pejorative definition still with us?

Detached objectivity of reason vs. Affective charge of mythic mind

Technological domination of nature vs. Mythic relation to it

as a power to reckon with

Empiricist rationalism vs. Mythic symbolism and ritualism

Rational equality of quantities vs. Mythic diversity of qualities

The thinking, knowing, closed Self vs. Mythic openness to

unknown (super-)natural forces in and outside the Self

Is the mythical world-view sheer ignorance; obscurantism;

plain and simple stupidity? NO.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
The Concept of Enlightenment (1944)

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance

of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from
fear and installing them as masters.

-- Fear of the unknown and being masters by pulling it into

the realm of the known and knowable as best as possible.

Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to

mythology.

-- Myth attempts to create a narrative, an explanation,

a loose theory of almost everything existing, and of their
reason for being.
MYTH is a particular way of making sense of the world.

It produces a certain body of knowledge and systems with which

to record and represent an immense array of natural and
historical phenomena.

Mythic world-view as enlightenment generally seeks to

immerse in, identify with, or fully become the unknown
and fearful forces in nature. (If outright domination is not
possible. Gilgamesh Humbaba)

This mythic becoming the unknown or praising the unknown

is a mode of knowing it (making it much less fearful).

The long enlightenment ever since the Greeks seeks to externalize

or exterminate what we fear; to make it our negative term Other.
Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that the opposition between
MYTHOS and LOGOS might be a fake one.

Myth is already logos, and enlightenment creates its own

myths (national, historical, political myths supported by
rational facts and figures).

Narrative, story-telling or myth-making could be a property

of reasoning.

Reasoning could be a property of story-telling; production of

symbolic structures.

Mythos and logos; two modes of rational inquiry

and representation?
 Implications of Gbeklitepe

Discovered by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt in 1994

The Worlds First Temple: Built 12.000 Years Ago
(from the official website)
T-shaped limestone pillars erected in circular forms.
Each stone is perfectly cut and shaped. Each pillar weighs 16 tons.
Stones transported in a world with no writing, tools, pots, metal, etc.
First known structure more complex than a simple hut. (NGM)
 To Schmidt, the T-shaped
pillars are stylized human
beings.The stones face the
center of the circle.a
representation, perhaps, of
a religious ritual. As for the
prancing, leaping animals on
the figures, he noted that they
are mostly deadly creatures:
stinging scorpions, charging
boars, ferocious lions. The
figures represented by the
pillars may be guarded by them,
or appeasing them, or
incorporating them as totems.

(Charles C. Mann, NGM)

The pilgrims visiting the site were
nomadic hunter-gatherers.

There is no sign of habitation around

the temple.

No sign of agriculture. Thousands of

gazelle bones, wild barley and wheat
seeds concentrated in one place.
(Food brought from faraway places
and consumed during construction
and ceremonies)

The Old Testament 500 BCE

Stonehenge 2200 BCE
The Great Pyramid of Giza 2450 BCE
Sumeria 4000 BCE
Gbeklitepe 10,000 BCE
 Within minutes of getting there,
Schmidt says, he realized that he
was looking at a place where
scores or even hundreds of people
had worked in millennia past.
(Charles C. Mann, NGM)

Initially laboring in huge numbers

not to produce goods, to cultivate
the land, or to do exchange

They work to produce the very

communal feeling; the symbol,
myth, around which collectivity is
imagined and structured in the
first place.

Maybe agriculture and settlement followed the mythic gathering

and organization around a story, a representation
Should the findings in Gbeklitepe change the established,
materialist explanations of the rise of civilization?

Is the narrative of the Neolithic Revolution discredited?

(agricultural revolution earliest settled communities
multiplication of population new order, hierarchy and law
myth and religion byproduct of complex social organization)

Not necessarily:

Symbols, images, stories, myths (the production of them) are

part and parcel of our species life/being.

We are narrativizing, symbolizing, story-telling, myth-making

animals.
Art, story-telling, myth-making, religious imaginaries are various
modes of representation essential to human mind.

Symbolizing or formulating relations, origins, results, and

prospects is a human need no less material or real than
the need for shelter or food.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (The Dawn of Man)

Dir: Stanley Kubrick

What is the process by which Kubrick imagines (human) civilization

has come into existence?

What is the role of myth or symbol in this sequence?

How important is the role of ontological scarcity in the forming of collectivity?

suddenly, the black monolith. (A Space Odyssey)