Once upon a time,
our ancestors looked into the glimmering tapestry of nature and felt that the world was speaking back to them. The hidden patterns of the stars, the ominous outline of a distant mountain, the snake-like flow of a river–all became gods and goddesses, mythic beings full of personality and meaning. No matter your recent heritage, this is a cultural and psychological fact.
Greek mythologist Karl Kerenyi said, “In mythology, we hear the world telling its own story to itself”. Myths are expressions of the soul of the people and place from which they emerge. They do not “represent” aspects of a culture, but instead form that culture’s psychic and spiritual lifeblood. This lifeblood flowed into a coherent cultural identity, weaving a landscape and a people into a single tapestry of meaning and belonging. In the modern world, we’ve come a long way from understanding what living in such a world might feel like.
As we encounter myths and folktales, we are often tempted to interpr…