Myth & Metaphor

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!

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
 
 

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