myth and belief

[egypturnash]

Growing and changing, getting older. Wondering.

Lately I've been feeling more like maybe there's something to myth and religion. I've always been a little bit vaguely neopagan, what with reading (semi child-safe) Norse and Greek myths early in childhood, and the odd intriguing African tale, but never any form of the Christian myths. I'm undecided as to if it's metaphor for the human condition and the parts of the mind deeper and larger than the verbal "I", or if 'the divine' does have some existence outside of my mind and yours... forming an opinion on that will have to wait for some personal experience with divinity, I think.

I find myself wandering into the 'new age' section of the bookstore and browsing. I dunno. So much out there, no idea where to start, where to find a loose end to start tracing in further, where to find fragments here and there to put together into something personal. Suggestions from those of you who are practicing neo-pagan types are quite welcome. You know, 'Neo-Paganism and Shamanism For Dummies' kinds of stuff, though probably without the 'helpful tip!' icon box-outs.

---

Spawned partially by talking about Trickster in general and Raven in specific. And thinking about a ritual I deliberately chose to not take part in, once upon a time: a practicing neopagan friend wanted the assistance of several of his close friends in blessing his new home. I declined politely, feeling that my general sarcastic detachment from belief might spoil any potency this would happen, and that if anything, I'm probably associated with Trickster rather than any other myth archetype, and do you want to draw his attention when you're asking for your home to be kept safe and secure? (and, um, being associated with Trickster is not necessarily a desirable thing, saying I might be is as much rueful as proud.)

Obviously, that sort of thinking behind a polite refusal shows there's some level of belief in me. In something. Despite years of denying that and trying to be thoroughly materialist.

Comments

I'm surprised I'm up at this hour...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...though I simply think the NyQuil is working backwards on me like most stimulant/depressants do, due to my wonderfully-fucked brain chemistry.

In actual response to your query, I've honestly found simply hunting up books of collected folklore and myths to be a wonderful source to start 'sniffing around' in if you have at least a reasonably-acute brain between your ears, which you most definately do. If you'd like, I can see if I can locate a few of the native-american folklore books before the cafe at tesstheredpony's on the 13th IIRC.

I can definately relate to the whole there's something out there mindset. I don't really believe that choices of names makes a difference, or the specifics of ones beliefs, only the strengths of those beliefs. Yeah, collective belief is what makes things works, and all that hog-wash. =^.^=

Re: I'm surprised I'm up at this hour...

[(Anonymous)]

Actually collective belief is not what makes things work. Truth is truth regardless of who believes it. A group of people may insist 2+2=5. Overtime the facts became distorted, someone lied, someone misunderstood, etc., but the truth will always be that 2+2=4. No matter what, 2+2 will never equal 5, regardless of what a group says.

There's a distinct boundary between belief, and science.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Math, such as the example you give, is a science. There's no belief allowed inside it, it's a purely factual realm.

Collective belief manipulating reality is more along the lines of a person being rammed between a Mac truck and a brick wall, but ending up with only minor bruises and scratches. Later investigation may reveal some 'scientific' explanation, like the axle caught on the fire hydrant just in front of her, slowing the truck enough to not turn the victim into red-misted pancake.

And in all that, 2+2=4 is still true. Unless you're counting in base 3, then 2+2=11. :-)

Re: There's a distinct boundary between belief, and science.

[(Anonymous)]

The existence of God is a factual realm, too.
God either exists, or does not exist. There's no middle ground, God can't only sort of exist.
A collective belief does not manipulate reality, a belief that a tree can fly will not suddenly make the tree fly. A belief in God won't make God, is simply believing in something that is fact. On the other hand, a belief in no God it won't make God dissappear. If a group believes God does not exist, then it becomes the standard belief for all of them, but it's not a truth. Regardless of collective beliefes, truth still remains truth.
The existence or non-existence of God is a factual realm, there are some who are right, and some who are wrong. Both can't be right.

There's other possibilities as well...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...what if there's more than one God? Or what if one God pretends to be many Gods to some, one God to others, and even Evil Incarnate to a select few? Or what if there ARE multiple Gods, and they present a unified 'Single God' to those that want one?

Or what's to say he simply hides from some, effectively giving them an existance of 'No God' as they request? There'd be no way for the 'No God' people to tell there is a God, if he hides for their benefit.

You are always limited by what you can observe, and what one can observe may well be different than what another can observe, for numerous reasons I'll avoid going into right now.

Re: There's other possibilities as well...

[(Anonymous)]

Regardless of the obvservations made truth is still truth.
I could see the sky as being green. I obviously just have a skewed obervation, if that's the case. There is something wrong that's not allowing me to see the correct and complete picture.
If God appears in different ways to different people it doesn't change the fact that He still exists. Other people just see a differnt side of Him, or don't see Him at all. But, the fact is that He still exists.

Re: There's other possibilities as well...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Funny. I read a 'there is no god' undercurrent to your remarks. Go figure. I'm agnostic with long-standing atheistic/cynical tendencies, though.

Re: There's a distinct boundary between belief, and science.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The divine exists in our minds. The divine may or may not exist in reality.

This is a "sort of" existence. There's no known test for the presence or absence of divinity, no God-meter you can wave around to get a crackling reading on how deificly charged the area is.

Different kinds of truths. Some of them do not have any verifiable grounding in pure physical realms. Not immediate and obvious ones. The more fluid, slippery kind of truth is what you find in belief and religion, IMHO.

I'm not looking for dogma here. I'm looking for some new ways to think about the world and my place in it. This is the realm of 'ha ha only serious', not of 'absolute binary truth'; I'm not speaking entirely on a factual level when I say I may have a black hole as a spirit guide, or even on a wholly serious one. It's patently absurd and I know it. But there's also something there beneath the silliness, something true: I'm kinda dancing with something in my head, maybe not entirely from inside it, and the mask it uses happens to be this.

Metaphorical truths.

Which I suppose might just be a flowery way of saying 'pretty bullshit'.

Re: There's a distinct boundary between belief, and science.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a meter for seeing if God exists? No. But, you can also make observations to determine an existence of something.
Everythign that we see here is proof. The unievrse, for example, could not have come to be without a higher source.
A clock isn't simply formed by accident. A skyscraper can't be made by random bricks falling.
The materials of the clock have to come from somewhere, and someone build the clock. Same for the sky scraper, there must be an architect.
The Universe coming into existence without a higher being creating it is unsicentific and impossible. It breaks the basic rules of science.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

You're confusing different kind of truths. There are simple ones like "2+2=4" or "I have two eyes", easily verifiable and testable.

And then there are truths about human behavior and observations of how the social world works... and those are based in collective belief. Which is malleable and manipulable, which can feed back into how people act and behave. Religion and spirituality is something that's definitely in this domain of truth - what works for me may not work for you.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Exactly. "The atomic number of plutonium is 94" is objectively true, once you have accomplished the (potentially relevant) task of agreeing on what an "atomic number," "plutonium," and "94" are, not to mention was "is" is. :) (And, of course, if you speak e-Prime, you can't even use the word "is.") But how on earth are you going to make a case for the absolute, objective truth or untruth of assertions like "Joanie loves Chachi," or "Peggy has $5.68 in her pocket," or "Postvixen is a thirty-first degree Mason," or "The Iraqis are an independent and autonomous people, and they don't consider being dismembered by Ba'athists to be oppression," when half the terms of those sentences don't have any existence in the material world? Most of human mental life is not simply the detached, computerlike processing of raw, objectively real perceptual data. Instead, the human mind is a huge web of abstractions, categorizations, and symbolic contamination. The very efficiency and speed of human thought depends on such arbitrary assignments of linguistic and figurative value, and we eliminate or denigrate such practices in favor of purely rational thought at our own grave risk. That's what many magical types mean when they're referring to "consensus reality" -- playing, deliberately and effectively, with that virtual layer of symbolism imposed on human existence.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The only coherent response I can provide to this is to note that "Peggy has $5.68 in her pocket" is demonstrably false, because at the moment you wrote that (and the later moment I am writing this) I was wearing a nightgown, which of course has no pockets.

Assuming, of course, we agree that "Peggy" is a term unequivocally meaning me rather than some other entity identifiable as "Peggy". But I think this sort of proves the point you're making about language being a slippery thing, hard to really grasp any sort of "inviolable truth" with - which is, amusingly enough, a truth people are reluctant to acknowlege. People tend to really hate meta-thinking games.

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

In the year 2103, we'll all be speaking raw algebra.

God damn, would I hate writing essays then.

Re: I'm surprised I'm up at this hour...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

For one thing, you're presuming we're reading your sentence as "the mathematical quantity of two sums with the mathematical quantity known as two to equal the mathematical quantity of five." But we could be reading your assertion as "if you perform the mathematical operation represented by '+' upon the mathematical quantity represented by the symbol '2' and the mathematical quantity represented by the symbol '5'" Do you get the distinction? The usual rationalist/objectivist response to my argument is to dismiss it as "mere semantics," but I don't think that's a valid response when semantics is the very subject. Like any linguistic expression, "2 + 2 = 4" comes with its own set of givens: base and notation just for starters, not to mention the common -- dare I say "collective" -- acceptance that we're both using mathematical systems with the same axioms. I'm not a math major, so I don't know if there are internally valid systems where 2 + 2 <> 4, but there are certainly valid systems where A = B but B <> A, for example -- and some of these systems describe certain parts of the material world better than the standard set of axioms. (Any mathematicians out there are welcome to back me up or correct me, though obviously I'd prefer the former. Of course, if you can demonstrate that you have a choice in the first place, you've pretty much disproven this person's point about objective truth. :) )

Re: I'm surprised I'm up at this hour...

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I will back you two ways -- one, in math, 2+2 does NOT equal 5 in, say, base 4. In that numbering system, 2+2=10. In base 3, 2+2=11. You had it right and mentioned bases.

And using logic, mouse = mammal but mammal <> mouse. (Not quite the right symbols...)

I am not a big fan of "relative truth" for things that are evidentiarily supportable. And yet, certain concepts such as "freedom", "integrity", and "responsibility" are important to me.

One learns to balance the objective and subjective -- as you correctly pointed out, such symbol processing is a key element of thinking efficiently and well.

===|==============/ Level Head

Re: I'm surprised I'm up at this hour...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*nod* I've been doing that a lot lately, maybe a little for that reason, and also because it's just fun raw information to have. I'm looking more for, I dunno, directions other people have found productive (and ones that're unproductive in a lot of people's experience), techniques and cautions in somewhat more 'applied' explorations ("Never call up anything you can't put down" being a good thing to keep in mind, IMHO).

I don't think I'm going to make Tess' this month after all - not unless I get seriously ahead of work. And being sick half a week ate up most of my hope of that.

Okay, in that case...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Most of this is probably stuff you've already thought of, but anything beyond this relies on these being out of the way first.

Settle on a terminology and semantics you're comfortable with, but remember others may choose different terms, so be ready to keep some internal translations handy. This is one of the most obvious places a shared book to learn from can be useful, to sync terms.

Learn to not avoid conflicting viewpoints. As crazy as that may sound to some, you can probably understand why. Avoiding conflicting viewpoints results in fanatacism.

Know there's a distinct difference between talking at/around, to/with, or for/as something. If you're talking at them, they don't have a chance to respond, even if they won't respond at all. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing, we all need to vent occasionally. =^.^=

Re: Okay, in that case...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

And as a side-note... if you're not gonna make it to Tess's, you want me to bring that bicycle of mine over to you then at some point? =^.^=

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Suggestions from those of you who are practicing neo-pagan types are quite welcome.

Worship Ashy. I'd like an altar, please. Smear it with hair dye and arrange black rubber sex toys on it in an interesting fashion.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's hard to worship someone when you've seen them naked.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, but I think in my case that would make it even easier!

[electricgecko.livejournal.com]

That depends entirely on who. ^_______^

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It depends on the kind of worship, too. Seeing Ashy naked is not conducive to worshipping her as a divine force.

Plus I've seen her eat.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm really ugly. Never look at me naked.

*snrks*

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

You, hon, just made me snort my frosted flakes. =^.^=

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

Religion provides comfort. s you get older and feel the chais of mortality tugging at you, and know your time is drawing nearer, you naturally want to feel that there's something else out there. a lot of people go atheist in their younger years, then later on fall hardcore into religion. I will withhold comment on my opinion of this, but as a matter of observance, this is because they get scared when they see themselves losing hair, getting wrinkles,age spots, and not being able to do what they used to do. The doom of men, as Tolkien puts it, is a great burden to bear, and even a possible fictional belief system provides some comfort in this face of this inevitability. After all, what feels better? Being told you're going to be thrown in a hole and eaten by worms and cease to exist entirely, or being told your true form will leave your body and ascend to continue existance in paradise forever? Damn sure I know which one sounds nicer!

[obonicus.livejournal.com]

Religion also provides comfort to those whose life was never so great to begin with. Opiate of the masses and all that.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

So far as the truths up above go, I think it's the difference between 2+2=4 and "All men are created equal" or "'Tis better to give than to recieve." The latter two may, indeed, be true, but they're based on mental and cultural constructions, not anything you can prove in a lab.

The problems arise when people start claiming their latter sort of truths contradict the rather more concrete former sort, which is how you get Creationists and other such ilk.

Annnyway, that said, why not go for the man who devoted his life to questions about myths as metaphors for human condition? I speak, of course, about good 'ol Joseph Campbell. Some of it's some Jungian slow going, but generally his work holds up pretty well--I'm reading "Myths to Live By" as we speak, which is about the replacement of the mythic worldview with the scientific worldview, and the resulting mental crises in our species, which has as one of it's near universal traits the building of mythologies. Plenty of other pagan writers will address this, sure, but a lot of 'em have this unfortunately Luddite-esque view that this is wholly a bad thing and we should go back to sheep herding, whereas someone like Campbell loves science and myth with this profound enthusiasm for both, and I generally find it much more readable.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thoughts on 'building mythologies' are certainly something I could use, given that I'm sort of trying to work out how to cobble together my own personal one. I've been meaning to read Campbell for a lot of reasons, and there's definitely worse places to start than the guy who weaseled monomyth theory out of vast readings!

[paka.livejournal.com]

Religion provides comfort, but I'd like to think that this can be in a larger sense than the fairly superficial definition of divinity as a nice teddy bear. I'd second the reccomendation for Joseph Campbell, starting with The Power of Myth - he has his own biases (being a former Catholic, he thinks that ritual is a vital human need, and I don't think he's always right there) but no especial religious bias. What he talks about is largely patterns in myth and religion, and how and why it might work in general.

[delcan.livejournal.com]

This comes from an Otherkin perspective, so brace yourself. Not that it's very 'kinny at all, but fair warning is good.

The first and most important thing to do when you get into anything - ANYTHING - metaphysical, is to turn the bullshit detector to a lower setting. Don't turn it off completely, that'll get you into a load of trouble more often than not - but at least turn it down low enough so the "this is nonsense" knee-jerk reaction is muted. Unless you can approach it with the mindset of "This can work for me" instead of "This doesn't make sense", you're not going to get very far.

Metaphysic requires faith more than anything else, and it's the faith part that gets most people turned off to it. It might sound crazy or extreme, but the first big step is to approach the entirety of magic, fantasy, weird science, ALL of it, and say to yourself with all honesty and conviction that it COULD be true. Despite what common sense and science have to say.

It's a lot like logic puzzles, in a way. You know the ones. "All Franks are mean, this guy is named Frank, therefore this guy is mean." If you can make the assumption and accept it, you can start to build a self-consistent worldview on it. If you have enough of a basis to not want to join a ritual on the grounds of Trickster orientation, then hell, there's probably enough of a working metaphysical infrastructure to build on pretty easily.

I hope that all made sense. Ultimately it's all about accepting irrationality, and being rational about it.

I hope THAT made sense too.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It did make sense. That's about where I am, right now. At least I think. Open to stuff that's not the immediate cause-and-effect of the purely rational view of the world I clung to, along with clinging to certain views about myself.

It's funny, really, how accepting one thing you refused to see for years can cascade, leaving a bunch of other stuff you thought was solid open to questioning.

I've been known to say that some important truths are too important to speak straight on, they have to be cloaked in metaphor so that you piece them together for yourself. And the truth itself may be a metaphor when you get to it. "2+2=4" kinds of truth (see above *g*) versus much more slippery sorts of truth. All the mystical, spiritual stuff is firmly in the territory of slippery truth.

[delcan.livejournal.com]

The cascade effect is indeed pretty universal. And after the first, it actually gets to be sort of fun, in a deep sort of way, when you come across a preconceived notion for the second time and think, "Let's think about it from this perspective." It's amazing how much can change when just a few little beliefs start popping up.

It's sort of like Reimannian geometry - and pardon me, I'm getting into geek mode. Normal geometry implies that parallel lines exist. Some guy named Reimann asked the question "What if they didn't?" and got an entirely new form of geometry and mathematics as a result. A little assumption can work wonders on one's views.

It can get scary sometimes, but the important thing to remember is that it's not going to eat you alive. No matter how imposing things get, the ball is always in your court - spirituality is a solitaire game, even if someone's calling out tips from the sidelines.

It's also interesting how straightforward truths are never as interesting to think about - or really as important - as the slippery ones. Too bad that, on a fundamental level, the objective truths are the easiest ones to find. And the important ones we can never fully grasp unless we put metaphors to them... it's like fluffy Lovecraft, the mind isn't capable of grasping the whole Truth. Only without the insanity from trying. *grin*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

spirituality is a solitaire game

Except maybe, just maybe, for the moments when it isn't. Or maybe I've been reading too many cautionary myths. But on the other hand I could also make a case for having been posessed by my own personal demons for the past two decades. But this is getting into the stuff that's starting the cascading, which is something I'd rather keep mildly private.

Life is strange, and change is scary.

[delcan.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. I almost forgot about the parts where it suddenly isn't. On those, I've never had much personal experience, unfortunately... or fortunately, depending.

Spirituality is generally a solitaire game, with people calling out hints from the sidelines. But you never know when rain will come and hit the court. Or a flash flood. Or a meteor.

(Although admittedly, and to carry the allegory just a little further, it's when the meteor comes that things get their most interesting.)

[rainwing.livejournal.com]

I had a dream last night, with you in it, that I can actually remember somewhat clearly. We were part of a small group exploring a ruinous area of forbidding but crumbly-lovely towers and keeps that a forest had grown up through. You said you had a story to tell about something you'd witnessed in one of the towers: a strange ritual involving mysticism and machinery and crows (or ravens). The poor crows were heavily compressed into some sort of carbonous plate of an especially Wolfeish fuligin, supposedly with magical properties. It broke apart into roughly crow-shaped chunks and was to be distributed to New Age bookstores.

When you were done, I said, "What was the point of that story?"

It's still nonsense to me now, but maybe you can help me figure it out. :D

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I think the point was that it was Signifying. Not everything that's Significant has to actually signify one thing in particular; some things are just fraught with potential meaning without actually meaning anything in particular.

In realistic logic, the point was probably kinda 'be careful in this place, bad shit happens'. And I could ponder other more private significances and metaphors. But in dream logic... I can't even begin to guess right now! I'm just amused that you had me describing these concentrated crows in such interestingly-byzantine language. Unless "carbonous plate of especially Wolfeish fuligin' is your flight

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

The whole thing to Christian mythology is that it's just obfuscated stories from other, older religions. I think it's pretty amazing how tales were able to traverse thousands of miles across Europe, Rome, Egypt, and other areas. Even more amazing, how these stories survive today, hundreds and possibly thousands of years later across the entire planet.

I'm not sure about the actual historical occurrences, but there are so many similarities between several religions, that the entire Christian faith was spawned as a means of unifying all those existing religions. Possibly for the reason of taking political control. Jesus, the first Illuminati.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

and, um, being associated with Trickster is not necessarily a desirable thing, saying I might be is as much rueful as proud.

And mentioning this seems to have brought his fucked-up genius into my heart again! Hooray. Uuuuggghhhh. What a week this's been. What a week I've made it through my half-assed attempts for Something Great. Past couple of weeks, overall, have been almost as Interesting as my twelfth birthday. Except there's been some obvious potential good in these days.