Quotes about Mythology

In the Old Testament story God points out the one forbidden thing. Now, God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life. Life really began with that act of disobedience.

Yes. What you have here is what might be translated into raw individualism, you see, if you didn't realize that the center was also right there facing you in the other person. This is the mythological way of being an individual. You are the central mountain, and the central mountain is everywhere.

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know.

In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next chapter says, "Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it." That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other.

The symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche.

Mythology -and therefore civilization- is a poetic, supernormal image, conceived, like all poetry, in depth, but susceptible of interpretation on various levels.

Greek mythology tells of a beautiful youth who loved no one until the day he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with that reflection. He was so lovesick, he finally wasted away and died, and was turned into a flower that bears his name — Narcissus.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

Ona and Yagan people.

in this wonderful human brain of ours there has dawned a realization unknown to the other primates. It is that of the individual, conscious of himself as such, and aware that he, and all that he cares for, will one day die. Fig. 2.2 — Neanderthal Burial This recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology.

this grand and cacophonous chorus began when our primal ancestors told stories to themselves about the animals that they killed for food and about the supernatural world to which the animals seemed to go when they died.

My definition of mythology is "other people's religion," which suggests that ours must be something else. My definition of religion, then, is "misunderstood mythology"—and the misunderstanding consists in mistaking the symbol for the reference.