The Burning Times and The Civilization of the Goddess: New Pagan Myths?

I just read a post by John Halstead in his blog, The Allergic Pagan. It was entitled  “Believing in Our Myths, Without Believing in Them”. I don’t always agree with what this guy has to say, but he always makes me think, and this post was no exception. It is definitely worth reading.

One thing it made me think about is that perhaps we don’t understand the ancient myths in the same way that their creators–the Egyptians, Celts, Greeks, Norse, etc.–did. The ancients didn’t have history, they had stories.* Some of these stories were so effective on a spiritual/emotional level that they were  told and retold and eventually became myths. The myths of these cultures were as true to them as what they did yesterday, but I think they understood in a way that we don’t that there are different truths. Today we look at stories as either true or untrue, fact or fiction. If something actually happened it becomes history which we lump into the category of fact, if it didn’t we call it fiction or myth.

We also live in an essentially a monotheistic culture of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, etc. Your average, run-of-the-mill monotheist believes there is only one true God.** And most, but not all, monotheists believe that their myths are historically true. The fact that they are”true”, according to modern thought,  makes them somehow more “right” than the Greek, Norse, Celtic, and Egyptian myths. But we pagans now have more recent stories that inspire us–The Burning Times and The Civilization of the Goddess to mention just two. And these stories are actually based on historical fact, and so, like any conservative monotheist, we insist that the stories we tell each other about them are “real truth.”

In my opinion, this is both unnecessary and spiritually counter-productive. These stories should be viewed primarily (but,  not totally) as myths. When a story is told as “real, historical truth”–although I would debate whether such a thing actually exists–it, by definition, tends to become correct or incorrect, which then implies right or wrong, which then degenerates to good or bad, black and white, good guys and bad guys, and, ultimately, and here is the problem, us and them.

Myths always occurs outside of our own socio-political context and are therefore timeless. The Burning Times and The Civilization of the Goddess are events that we know actually took place in our own world and we tell them in our socio-political context:

• “Between the 15th and 16th centuries the Catholic Church, the religious patriarchy of the Western World, in it’s effort to totally eradicate paganism in

  

  Europe, burned almost 60,000 people at the stake, most of whom were helpless women…”

• “In Neolithic times “God was a Woman”. And what is today Eastern Europe was ruled by women and The Goddess. There were no wars and everyone lived in peace, harmony, and abundance until warlike, patriarchal invaders from the steppes of Asia swept in…”

But I think it is more productive to tell these stories in a mythical context:

• “Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, a king decided that everything would be better if everyone in his kingdom  believed the same thing. His courts, when charged with making his desires come true, found that the people who were most different in their beliefs and whose influence was most insidious were women. To make these women confess what they believed, the judges developed cruel tortures and when the women were found guilty, they burned them alive as an example to others…”
• “Once upon a time there was a land that was ruled by women. There was no war and everyone lived in peace, harmony, and abundance until the civilization was destroyed by warlike nomads…”

Do you see the difference between the two tellings? When we tell these stories as actual happenings, segments of our society become villains and we are tempted to direct our anger and hate toward them instead of looking at the deeper meaning behind the events. But if we look at these stories as mythic events that happened long ago and far away  they become useful spiritual lessons that do, indeed, stir up intense emotions and energies, but these emotions and energies are aimed at our own souls, not at a specific country, religion, gender, or institution. Like any other myth, they challenge each of us to change our ways of thinking and being in the world, which affects how we treat others and how we choose to exert our power in the world.

Which, actually, are the only things we can change.

Enjoy Halstead’s post!

*Herodotus (400BCE) is often called “the Father of History.” He is also called “the Father of Lies,” because not everything he wrote was accurate. Which means he was actually telling stories?

**Actually, there are many flavors of Monotheism.