The ferryman Charon, and a soul being brought by Hermes
Note: Following this brief introduction
below, I offer a list of links to many pages on Myth & Metaphor
(See below). Enjoy!
Note: Following this brief introduction
below, I offer a list of links to many pages on Myth & Metaphor
(See below). Enjoy!
This page of Mythos & Logos is dedicated to Myth & Metaphor. Yet, in a way, the entire Mythos & Logos Web Site is dedicated to Myth. How so? First, I suggest you read my paper, Phenomenology, Psychology, Science, and History: A Reading of Kuhn in Light of Heidegger as a Response to Hoeller's Critique of Giorgi. In this essay, I explore how we can understand the hidden meaning and ground of a particular historical people as the Mythos. The Logos (discourse) of a particular historical people always conceals the Mythos. But, in my paper, I argue that there can be at least two kinds of Logos: 1) A Logos which denies its meaning and ground as the Logos or 2) a Logos which presevers and shelters its meaning and ground. I believe we live in an age, as in the former type of Logos, which denies its meaning and ground.
How do we deny the meaning and ground, our Mythos, in our particular historical age? I believe we do so by failing to recall that we are claimed by Being to take up things in a certain way (see the why page or Heidegger). The discourse of our particular age is dominated by the "mathematical," which, as Heidegger points out in Question Concerning Technology, is "that 'about' things which we already know. Therefore we do not first get it out of things, but, in a certain way, we bring it already with us" (p. 276). The technological character of our everyday discourse (gerede) doubly conceals the Mythos our age, because it denies that it is a Mythos at all. Yet, the "enframing" of our technological epoch is itself a form of revealing and concealing; it, too, is a form of poesis. By claiming it holds the sole access to "Truth," it marginalizes other means of seeking truth as Aletheia -- truth as revealing what has been concealed, the revealing-concealing advent of Being. Other forms of revealing-concealing which send us on our way include poetry, art, history, religion, etc., all of which find themselves in our age defending themselves and attempting to legitimate themselves in the face of science. In other words, when we understand "Myth" in this way, we are not speaking of something that is "false" or "untrue," but rather, we are speaking of that which is the meaning and ground which is taken up into language with our everyday discourse or Logos. Science is not the only means of taking up our Mythos into language -- in fact, as I've attempted to show, it holds the danger of holding itself as the sole arbitor of sense-making, of revealing, of poesis.
What might be an alternative? I submit that an alternative to denying our Mythos with our discourse is to view our discourse or Logos as a sanctuary for the Mythos. The Logos can be understood as that which preserves the Mythos as we tarry about in our everyday lives, doing and making. In this case, we can understand our discourse as the 'common sense' of a historical people which shelters and preserves the 'sensus communis.' The 'common sense' serves the purpose of being a container which preserves the 'sensus communis' so that it can be retrieved. Through the retrieveal of the 'sensus communis,' the community is reoriented through the transformation of the everydayness of 'common sense' through a ritual recovery. This ritual recovery, for example, is evident in Eliade's description of "religious man" in The Sacred and Profane.
Through ritual, a culture allows for an opening in the 'at-homeness' of everydayness through an existential transformation of everydayness by which 'common sense' becomes "uncanny" and in which the 'sensus communis' may shine forth as the latent meaning and ground. Certainly, Eliade makes this evident in his descriptions of, for example, the festivals of the Australian Arunta and the Polynesia people of Tikiopa.
With that said, I offer these pages as a means to explore the Mythos of various historical people, and, doing so, perhaps, we too can come to understand our own way, our own Mythos -- and maybe even find ourselves on the way in a different way.
Below, you will find a whole host of links to pages on various mythologies of many different cultures. You will also find links to pages on various thinkers who have studied the role of myth and metaphor in our lives. Enjoy!
LINKS
GENERAL MYTHOLOGY & FOLKLORE SITES
Aadizookaanag,
Dibaajimowin
Adventure
Articles
African
Myths
American
Folk
American
Folklore Society
The
Ancient Vine
Ashliman's
Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts
Asian
Myths
Bulfinch's
Mythology
The
Camelot Project
Classical
Myth: The Ancient Sources
Creation
and Flood Myths of the World
Creative
Minds: Mythology and Literature
The
Encyclopedia Mythica
Electronic
Texts
Folklore,
Myth and Legend
Folklore
and Mythology at Harvard University
Folktales
Quiz
Hittite/Hurrian
Mythology
Indigenous
Peoples' Literature
Legendary
Site of the Week
Mything
Links
MythSearch.com
Mythology--Suite
101.com
Mythology
in Western Art
The
Mythology Project at Princeton University
Myths
& Legends
Ring
of Folklore and Urban Legends
Yoruba
Art and Folklore
FAIRY TALE SITES
Asian
Fairy Tales
The
Book of the Lost Tales
Brewer's
Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable
The
Cinderella Project
Cinderella
Stories
Fairy
Tale -- A True Story (film)
Fantasy
Realm's Castle
The
Frog King
The
Legendary String Fairy
Pure
Gold Fables & Fairy Tales
Russian
Fairy Tales
A
Story of Children's Stories
The
Story of Mac Datho's Pig
Storytime
Theatre
Tir
Nan Og (The Land of the Young)
METAPHOR SITES
Analogy
vs Metaphor
Conceptual
Metaphor Home Page
The
Metaphor Home Page
Center
for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online
Chaos,
Complexity and Flocking Behavior: Metaphors for Learning
Death
is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism
Five
Big Clusters of Metaphors
Knowledge
Is Not Infrastructure: Applying Metaphorical Lessons From Complexity Science
Lakoff
on Conceptual Metaphor
Magic,
Metaphor and Power
Making
Sense of Metaphors
Metaphor
- a propositional comment and an invitation to intimacy
Metaphor--from
C. Brooks and R. P. Warren: Modern Rhetoric
Metaphor--From
Plato to the Postmodernists
Metaphors
Along the Information Highway
Metaphor
and Metonymy Group
Metaphor
and War
Metaphors
for Biology and Engineering
Metaphors
in Language and Thought
Metaphor,
Metonymy and Binding
Metaphor
Models
Metaphor,
Morality and Politics
Metaphors
of Mind Databank
Metaphors
We Live By--Review
Metaphor
in Rhetoric
Metaphor
in Scientific Thinking
Metaself
Metaphor
Project
Nelson
Goodman's Theory of Metaphor
On
the Search for Metaphors
References
on Narrative and Metaphor
Internet
Metaphor Project
PEOPLE
Jerome
Bruner
Ernst
Cassirer
Joseph
Campbell
Jacques
Derrida
Mircea
Eliade
Sigmund
Freud
Clifford
Geertz
Ernesto
Grassi
Martin
Heidegger
James
Hillman
Jean
Houston
Carl
Jung
George
Lakoff
Susanne
K. Langer
Rudolf
Otto
Paul
Ricoeur
Robert
Romanyshyn
Claude
Levi-Strauss
Giambattista
Vico
Alan
Watts
PERIODICALS ON-LINE
Black
Raven: Journal of Myth and Symbolic Studies
Janus
Head
Metaphor
and Symbol: A Quarterly Journal
Marvels
and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies
Mythology
Web
ORGANIZATIONS
Dallas
Institute of Humanities and Culture
The
Folklore Society of Greater Washington
Keepers
of the Lore
SOME RECOMMENDED READINGS
The
Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion
by Joseph Campbell
Our Price: $12.00
Metaphors
We Live by
by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson
Our Price: $10.40
Metaphor
and Thought
by Andrew Ortony (Editor)
Our Price: $32.95
Essays
on a Science of Mythology
by Carl Gustav Jung, Carl Kerenyi,
R. F. C. Hull (Translator)
Our Price: $13.95
A
Blue Fire : Selected Writings
by James Hillman
Our Price: $11.20
The
Interpretation of Fairy Tales
by Marie-Louise Von Franz
Our Price: $15.96
Myth
and Reality
by Mircea Eliade
Our Price: $13.50
Language
and Myth
by Ernst Cassirer, Susanne K.
Langer (Translator)
Our Price: $5.95
The
Language of Vision : Meditations on Myth and Metaphor
by Jamake Highwater
Our Price: $12.95
God
and the Creative Imagination: Metaphor, Symbol and Myth in Religion and
Theology
by Paul D. L. Avis
Our Price: $24.99