Myth - what is to be said before all else

by Ensio Kataja

The myth is, as Mircea Eliade puts it, “creative and exemplary”, revealing how things come into being, defining their underlying structures. According to Martin Heidegger, the myth preserves an understanding of Being as “what shows itself in advance and in everything as that which [actively] presences in all ‘presence’”. In short, it expresses “what is to be said before all else”.

However, the myth has little to do with rationalist notions of truth. The myth unveils dimensions of spiritual-poetic truths inaccessible to disenchanted, rational experience. It doesn’t describe reality “objectively”, but is rooted in a cultural heritage of significance, evoking deep emotions and effects, inspiring man’s being into perpetual becoming.

Yet it is the myth that gives life, and in a way “creates”, the reality. There is an Indian saying, “Shiva without Shakti is a corpse”. Similarly we might say that logos without mythos would be a “corpse”, ie. unable to flourish and “come into being”. Like Shakti, mythos represents a power that gives a culture its meaning, its health and wholeness. We ignore the myth only at our peril, for logos without mythos empties the world of sacrality and fails to supply meaningful models of behaviour for the present.

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