# Primal Myths  ## Metadata - Author: [[Barbara C. Sproul]] - Full Title: Primal Myths - Category: #creation-myths ## Highlights - At some point, the myths step back from the mystery and affirm the essential and unbreakable unity of the creator and creation. Ultimately they insist on the interdependence of being and not-being, and it is the inexplicable transcendent unity of these two that they recognize in wonder and awe as absolute and call Holy. ([Location 397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=397)) - And Buddhism, like some current cosmological theories in science, insists that the universe expands and contracts, dissolves into non-being and re-evolves into being in an eternal rhythm. ([Location 420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=420)) - Thus the Holy is here as well as everywhere; it is now as well as always; it is the basis of this and that, of you and me, as well as of being itself. The Holy is immanent as well as transcendent. This is one of the central messages of creation myths. ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=475)) - For any of these terms to have meaning, their counterparts must also exist. In themselves, in isolation, these terms are meaningless; they have no absolute validity. ([Location 487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=487)) - It argues that in all these relative ways and aspects of being an absolute aspect, a dimension that is unique, independent, and of eternal validity is revealed. That is what religions mean when they affirm that people are “sacred,” that they have dignity as well as worth. Religions see that people are not only relatively valuable as parents and children but that they are absolutely valuable as themselves; your parents could have had another child, but never another you. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=490)) - This absolute dimension of the self is often named and called soul (or jiva, or ka, or some other term). Problems arise only when we forget its formal nature and come to think of it as material, as a thing, something we have in addition to our other physical organs. Having misunderstood soul in this fashion (just as we often misunderstand God), we become disappointed when we cannot find it and dismiss it as an illusion, another fraud perpetrated by religion. But soul is not a thing; it is a dimension of depth in a thing. Like justness in a judge’s decision or beauty in a painting, soul is a quality of absoluteness revealed in something relative. And myths argue that, understood profoundly, people are connected to the holiness of the world in such a way that they reveal a dimension of holiness in themselves, a dimension of depth that is absolute. ([Location 494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=494)) - Myths are not merely static pronouncements; they are not just pictures or images that might be meaningful to the already convinced but that would be meaningless to the unenlightened. Rather, they are whole stories, dramas placed in the familiar world of time and space that attempt to reveal, through their common details and particulars, truths that are uncommon and universal. ([Location 503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=503)) - What is most evident when you read them is that myths use symbols to express their truths. ([Location 506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=506)) - To really comprehend myths, you have to grant other cultures in other times the same freedom with language we grant ourselves. And to grasp their meaning, you must see what kinds of associations are being made and used by the myth in its metaphors. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=540)) - The world, after all, and all life within it is sanctified by this act, sacrifice: sacer—holy, facere— to make. ([Location 656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=656)) - As the myths that use the physical model come to understand a “creator” as the source of creation, myths that speak metaphysically claim the absolute as the ground of being and not-being. Being-Itself (or Not-Being-Itself), the Holy, the Unknowable—these are the terms that myths employ to describe this indescribable and absolute ground. Recognizing how difficult all of this is to understand abstractly, myths use symbols and metaphors to make their point concretely. ([Location 679](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=679)) - If the reason for this is still not clear, if these essentially religious responses are difficult to comprehend because of their religiosity, forget religion and put yourself in the place of the mythmakers who invented it. Just think about the universe and about the fact of existence. It is difficult, because to do this you have to think beyond and through all the relative values you ascribe to things. ([Location 685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=685)) - In all of this, myths assert that the Holy is absolutely real and that the world, perceived ungrounded, is only relatively so. But, they argue, if you just understand how the world is grounded in the absolute, how the eternal flow of being and not-being reflects the internal dynamic of the Holy itself, then you will be able to see the absolute dimension of all relative realities. You will be able to understand, too, in what way all relativities have absolute value, are eternal and true and sacred. And this applies to your own being and your own situation, here and now. ([Location 699](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=699)) - What the myths do is to assert that the structure of the absolute pervades the relative: the Holy is the ground of being. And further they argue that the ways of the absolute are appropriate models for the relative: they are eternal, abundantly powerful and vital, endlessly productive of being, existence, and life. Not only are these ways the ground of all being, definitions of what we essentially are, but they should also be understood as the goal of being, indications of what we should become. Live as the world lives, the myths advise; be as God is. ([Location 743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=743)) - African myths, which, more than any others, stress this loss of absoluteness, speak of the fall as the result of man’s distinguishing himself from the rest of nature. ([Location 756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=756)) - Other myths imagine a sort of spatial hierarchy with the relative below on earth and the absolute above in heaven (a wonderfully appropriate symbol in that the sky is both transcendent and immanent, and is also the domain of the sun, moon, and stars, whose regular movements so impress people). In this case, the two are connected by an axis mundi, a huge pole, rope or pillar that stretches from one realm to the other. After the fall, this axis mundi is destroyed, and the traffic between the worlds comes to a halt. Now all attempts to reach the absolute realm, like the Old Testament’s Tower of Babel or, in the Eskimo creation myth, Raven’s feeble efforts to fly upward, are thwarted. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=761)) - Ritual is the other half of the mythic statement: when myths speak only of the absolute reality, rituals ground it in the relative. ([Location 806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=806)) - The purpose of such ritual myths is sometimes misperceived as an attempt to escape the moment, to refuse history and pretend that temporal existence is as timeless as the static dimension of the absolute, the “realm of the gods.” How pleasant to dream of heavens and deities when the “real” world of politics and economics is so painfully imperfect and changing! And to be sure, some people in all cultures misuse religion as such an escape. But this is not religion’s purpose; this is not what the myths intend. On the contrary, people such as the Yami or Bushmen (or the Jews when they repeat the Passover story, or the Christians when they tell the Easter story) are not trying to escape the temporal but are taking it seriously, trying to understand it in its depths as an expression of eternality. They are trying to ground the momentary in time itself and to understand how the immanence of now expresses the transcendent reality of always. ([Location 826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=826)) - In comparing a great number and wide variety of creation myths, it becomes clear that the origins of which they speak are important not for their historical and prototypical value alone but for their religious and archetypical value as well. The difference is subtle but crucial. Prototypes are acts or events that happen in time and are effective through history. ([Location 833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=833)) - Archetypes, on the other hand, have universal application. And, whether or not they took place in time, it is not their historicity but their timelessness that people value. Archetypes reveal and define form, showing how a truth of the moment has the same structure and meaning as an absolute and eternal one. Prototypes were true once and may still be so; archetypes are true always. ([Location 839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=839)) - But to understand their point you have to realize that by “first” they mean “always.” Adam is relevant to us because he represents the essential man (an archetype), not just the first man (prototype). ([Location 843](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=843)) - Similarly, the Jews celebrate Passover not just because it describes the prototypical act of deliverance whose benefit they inherit historically as free men; religiously, they celebrate Passover because it symbolizes the archetypical deliverance of all men (now as well as then; always) from enslavement (to Egyptians, or to an oppressor in any form). ([Location 847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=847)) - While creation myths often speak of events as prototypical, then, their real interest lies in recognizing them as archetypical. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=850)) - The archetypical beginnings described in creation myths are absolute and essential. Their truths are always valid. ([Location 856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=856)) - But if you consider the myths more profoundly, you will find that they are not projections but revelations. ([Location 898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=898)) - CREATION MYTHS attempt to reveal the absolute dimension of the relative world. ([Location 903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=903)) - They encourage people to understand themselves, physically, mentally, and spiritually, in the context of the cyclic flow of being and not-being and ultimately in the absolute union of these two. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BEFNX9U&location=905))