Applied Remythologization: Pneumatic Exercises for Moral Clarity Through Acquisition of a Multivalent Cosmology

Applied Remythologization

 Pneumatic Exercises for Moral Clarity Through Acquisition of a Multivalent Cosmology 

I. Introduction

II. Myth, The Use of Myth and DeMythologizing 

A. Creative Myth

B. The Extinction of myth?

III. Two Techniques of Applied Remythologization

A. A second look at Myth

B. Mythic-lens reconstruction Part 1: The World of Magic

C. Mythic-lens reconstruction Part 2:  Terrestrial Mythic Beings

IV. Cohesive Applied Remythologization: A Multivalent Cosmology 

A. Mythic-lens Reconstruction Part 3: Celestial Beings

B. Celestial Mythic Beings Interface with the Terrestrial: Wizards and Warriors

C. The Final Twofold Use of Applied Remythologization

V. Conclusion

My memory of junior high is one of being very often confused.  One of my many many confusions concerned dwarves (in a less PC time).  I was confused as to why the old stories and tales had sprites, dwarves, fairies, elves et al, but only dwarves were real.  I remember asking my mother, “If we have dwarves, where are the elves?”  My mother and I discussed the possibilities in detail, she was good at suffering my quirkiness.  In junior high, and probably as far along as high school I prayed, “God, please, I want to live in the fantasy world.  I want to live with wizards and elves, knights and dwarves, I want a world where a quest involving fantastic creatures is possible.”  Sooner rather than later I shifted from praying that petition to simply wishing or fantasizing about it.  I “grew up” and realized it was foolish to conceive these things as even possible.   

Then in my mid thirties, something quite unexpected happened.  It may help to remind the reader that God answers prayers.  Of course sometimes the answer is “no”, but I have found out that I am the type of person who gets the answer “Yes, but not how you expected” an inordinate percentage of the time. In this case I found myself standing in my fairly newborn son’s room at two o’clock in the morning.  Blaring from my daughter’s room was the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid “ . . . Part of your wooooorld.” 

“No!” I thought, “No. No. No more mythical creatures in this house!”

The unexpected thing that happened was that my wife gave birth to an elf.  That birthing process, seems to have kicked off a transformation in her fundamental nature, which changed her into a very specific type of medieval mythic creature known as a harlequin (of the red and white variety).  I want to assure the reader that I am not insane.  I am not engaged in any sort of fantastic wishful thinking.  It actually was, and sometimes still is, a very stressful situation.  I am not being analogous.  I am being one hundred percent literal when I say, my son is an elf, my wife is a mythic harlequin.  These things happening awoke in me the ability to see the physical world as I always have, yet at the same time see the world in a very different way.  I live in a world where the beings and realities of the ancient myth are quite present all the time and what started it was that long ago wondering, “why dwarves? Where are the elves?”.

The purpose of this treatise is to explore the spiritual technique of applied remythologization.  We will explore the development of a need for applied remythologization, the technique itself and then the practical moral application that it will have for it’s practitioner.  The end result will be the ability to experience a multivalent cosmology such that one can have a wider worldview and through that experience attune one’s clarity of moral vision. 

In the first section we will review the nature and purpose of myth in human culture and as a human need. We will explore the terrestrial nature of the Bible and how, as a work of myth, it is not as “fantastic” as one would expect given the reputation of religious myth.  We will go on to discuss the creative nature of pagan myths, and how they defy our observations of the physical world by reaffirming the interrelationship of dream, myth, and ritual.  We will wrap the first section up by exploring the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment.  Here we will pay close attention to the program of Rudolf Bultmann to demythologize the Bible.

In the second section we will begin defining our skills that will lead to applied remythologization.  There will be three major skills which together will allow the practitioner a multivalent cosmology.  We will begin in this section with a brief comment on the necessity of myth for humans.  We will then lay out the practice of the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magic and learn to overlay our notion of the empirical physical world, informed by post enlightenment cosmology, with a view of magical practice.  In this section we will also cover applied remythologization using a more complicated mythic-lens reconstruction revolving around terrestrial mythic beings. 

In  the final section we will  discuss the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  With each technique discussed we will explore how applying these techniques allows for a multivalent cosmology, the ability to see the world with the modern empirical/materialist cosmology and at the same time see the world through a lense where mythic realities are present and active.  We will end this section with practical moral application.  First we will demonstrate how this technique invests the practitioner with a sense of moral clarity, the ability to see the powers that dominate our world against the will of God.  Lastly we will discuss how one can use this technique understand the imperative of applying cosmic evangelization through calculated ritual to the current cultural gods.                 

       

Myth, The Use of Myth, and DeMythologizing

In this first section after reviewing the nature and purpose of myth we will explore the terrestrial nature of the Bible.  We will go on to discuss the creative nature of pagan myths, and how they defy our observations of the physical world.  We will wrap the first section up by exploring the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment.  

For the remainder of the treatise we  will explore the three major skills which together will allow the practitioner multivalent cosmology.  The overarching skill is mythic-lens reconstruction practiced under three varieties, magic, terrestrial mythic beings and celestial mythic beings.  We will explore how applying these techniques allows for a multivalent cosmology and end with practical moral application.  

   

Creative Myth

In modern times it is an effective slight to tell someone they’re living in a fairy tale.  But as is often noted in these treatises myth is of utmost importance for human formation.  Rudolf Bultmann states in his treatise Kerygma and Myth,

The real purpose of myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, but to express man’s understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially. 

Myth speaks of the power or the powers which man supposes he experiences as the ground and limit of his world and of his own activity and suffering. He describes these powers in terms derived from the visible world, with its tangible objects and forces, and from human life, with its feelings, motives, and potentialities. He may, for instance, explain the origin of the world by speaking of a world egg or a world tree. Similarly he may account for the present state and order of the world by speaking of a primeval war between the gods. He speaks of the other world in terms of this world, and of the gods in terms derived from human life. . . . Myth is an expression of man’s conviction that the origin and purpose of the world in which he lives are to be sought not within it but beyond it -- that is, beyond the realm of known and tangible reality-and that this realm is perpetually dominated and menaced by those mysterious powers which are its source and limit. 

Myth is also an expression of man’s awareness that he is not lord of his own being. It expresses his sense of dependence not only within the visible world, but more especially on those forces which hold sway beyond the confines of the known. 

Finally, myth expresses man’s belief that in this state of dependence he can be delivered from the forces within the visible world. Thus myth contains. elements which demand its own criticism -namely, its imagery with its apparent claim to objective validity. The real purpose of myth is to speak of a transcendent power which controls the world and man, but that purpose is impeded and obscured by the terms in which it is expressed. 

Bultmann then famously goes on to talk about how we must demythologize the Bible, especially the New Testament.  His basic idea is to whitewash the stories of the Bible to reach a nuclear kerygma that can be presented in pure form to the modern mind without outdated mythic distraction.  Indeed when one reflects on walking on water or talking snakes, these things can be distracting for anyone seeking meaning.  The Bible has a different worldview than our own and seeming impossible miracles appear to be much more accepted in that world than our own.  However, when one actually reads the Bible, there is a lot less of the seemingly impossible than one might suspect.

There are actually two talking animals in the Bible, the snake in the garden and Balaam’s talking donkey.  Angels do appear in the Bible, but, again, more rarely than one might suspect.  When they do, they are usually mistaken for humans, or they are a means of communication by God and are not described at all, which means they could just as easily be an intuition or voice rather than a sensorily perceived being.  These interactions are usually extremely brief in the Bible, getting some important information across.  In the Bible if some kind of “mythic” being is met and described in any form besides human, it is clearly not met in the physical world.  It is either met in the dream world such as in the book of revelations, or in some area of the waking world that is not verifiable, such as in the book of Ezekiel.  The Bible is extremely mundane compared to the myth of the Greeks, Romans, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, the myths of the far east or the myths of the Americas.  God is an ever present figure in the Bible, but the narratives themselves are anthro-cetric.  The rare angelic appearance is a plot device that futher’s a human situation, not vice versa.  

Other cultures most definitely had anthro-centric stories and epics.  But they also contained a vast array of myths that take place only in a heavenly realm, or in a place of the gods.  They often have myths that contain no characters but divinities such as the stories of Indra or Osiris.  In other cultures, there are stories of humans interacting in the physical world with mythic beings such as the sphinx or minotaur.  Bultmann’s call for a demythologization of the scriptures seems to have ignored an already anthro-centric tact present in the Bible.  It is born out of the modern desire to reduce “everything” to the physical world and reduce that to only the physical world we accept as such.  Bultmann states,

Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world-in fact, there is no one who does. What meaning, for instance, can we attach to such phrases in the creed as "descended into hell" or "ascended into heaven"? We no longer believe in the three-storied universe which the creeds take for granted.  . . .

Now that the forces and the laws of nature have been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil. We know that the stars are physical bodies whose motions are controlled by the laws of the universe, and not demonic beings which enslave mankind to their service. Any influence they may have over human life must be explicable in terms of the ordinary laws of nature; it cannot in any way be attributed to their malevolence. Sickness and the cure of disease are likewise attributable to natural causation; they are not the result of demonic activity or of evil spells. The miracles of the New Testament have ceased to be miraculous, and to defend their historicity by recourse to nervous disorders or hypnotic effects only serves to underline the fact. And if we are still left with certain physiological and psychological phenomena which we can only assign to mysterious and enigmatic causes, we are still assigning them to causes, and thus far are trying to make them scientifically intelligible. Even occultism pretends to be a science.    

Bultman is correct.  It is somewhat enjoyable to take a miracle and apply scientific rigor to it in order to discover a “way it happened” theory that suits the worldview.  But the treatise Sacramental Cosmology laid more emphasis on the point of first quote of Bultmann.  What is Myth for?

There’s a certain type of person that likes to take miracles in the Bible and show how they are easily explainable as natural phenomenon.  In the former view of overemphasis on God as creator, this becomes worrisome; especially given the philosophical developments explained above.  According to this explanation fewer gaps means less need for God.  Thus these explanations usually end with an implied, “so . . . do we really even need God?” When balanced with an understanding of God as sustainer such natural explanations of miracles becomes not only less worrisome, but actually useful.  

Thus, with a sustaining understanding of God the fact that all the plagues of the Exodus are explainable by natural phenomenon does not in the least take away from the power of the story or the power of God.  God gives force to the rules, he can use them, he can break them, but to worry about whether God did these things or whether they were “just natural phenomenon”, is irrelevant once one accepts that God is intricately involved in every aspect of creation and not a distant troubleshooter.  Conversation concerning whether this was “really” a miracle tends to alienate the true point of the story a saving God who loves his people, the downtrodden and oppressed.  From the latter point of view, if it happened in creation it’s already a miracle.  When regarding scripture questions of historical and scientific accuracy may be important, but not nearly as important as questions of human meaning, relationship and salvation.  Natural science and historical fact simply aren’t the types of questions the texts were meant primarily to address.  

But how and why did he pagans have such active imaginations and effectively buy into a world where such myths were possible?  Doubtless it was in part a lack of scientific knowledge.  But there seems to be more at work than this.  The reader will remember Somnium Spirituality where we stated, “in this treatise we shall distinguish not just between the dream world and the physical world, but also between the “waking world” and the “physical world”.  The waking world is one’s every experience as they are awake, but the secular scientific definition of knowledge concerning the “physical world” and public verifiability would exclude ghosts, hallucinations, visions etc.” There are myths that involve other worlds and myths that involve the waking world, but it’s the myths that involve the physical world that are the most interesting for our purpose. When one hears the term “myth” one thinks of fantastic feats and fantastic beings.  The ancients had a multivament cosmology that provided a multivalent epistemology as discussed in the Somnium Spirituality treatise.  Mythic fantastic feats, such as magical feast,  that take place in the physical world could be explained by a historically developing hyperbole.  But fantastic creatures in the physical world, i.e. terrestrial mythic beings, make a harder sell.  

One possible solution to problem of myth with fantastic creatures in the physical world is a similar tack to hyperbole with great feats.  I this case it could be a historically developing conflagration of an event in the dream world or more likely the waking world with the physical world that has happened of a telling and retelling.  Another possibility is that the myth is simply a fiction that has been mistaken for history.  The extremely archetypal and symbolic nature of myth leads to a feeling that the events are not recorded as an objective account.  The ancients we much less interested in any sort of objective record of historical fact.  In truth, post-enlightenment history is not related in an objective manner simply for factual record either.  The common knowledge that “history is written by the winners” reminds one that even in our time it history is nowhere near an objective science.  “History” in ancient times served the purpose of giving meaning to a people, both existentially and ritually.  The treatise  Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment discussed the interface of ritual, myth and dream,

Calculated ritual is a ritual action that utilizes a symbolic language symbiotic with dream and myth, which seeks to invest one in and actualize deep human meaning.  It is calculated because it adds or is the interface of the collective unconscious expressed as myth and how this myth is consciously acted upon ritually.  This type of ritual is calculated for an effect.  The ritual allows for participation in meaning and myth and allows the participant to activate myth and meaning in their own life. 

                  

It could be that the power of the ancient ritual system was so prominent and the multivalent epistemology so entrenched, that no one thought to worry about historical fact when it came to myth.  It didn’t make much sense to ask, “did this really happen?” because that’s not the point.  Asking that question would be the same as asking it of Little Red Riding Hood.  Upon reflection, any adult knows it’s a fictional story.  But the power of it’s lessons beggs one off even wondering.   Perhaps the ancients were not quite as concerned as we were with objective facts, especially, historical ones.

The convergence of ritual and myth, by means of ritual song, ritual dance, ritual drama and the like, places the ritual participants in that the world of myth.  This happens by the convergence of sacred time sacred space and ritual action as we discussed in  Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment,

Sacred space in a ritual system works in conjunction with sacred time. . . [Each] is a situation set apart from the hurly burly of life in order to reconnect with the deep meaning that should in the ideal always be present.  As Mircea Eliade states in Myth Dreams and Mysteries the purpose of sacred time is to, “transcend the human condition and regain a non conditioned state which preceded the fall into time and the wheel of existences.”  

  

Or It may be the situation at hand, a thematic grappling with the issues of life and death, stability and mutability, man and woman, or any of the converging opposites we experience in this world.

If one takes ancient ontology at it’s face, a thing get’s is being from “participation” in the forms (plato) or substance (aristotle).  What we have with myth and ritual is the same dynamic existentially.  One gets one’s meaning or character by participation in myth.  The myth is the “form” or “substance” of the “human person”, as opposed to the human nature.  One participates in the forms by means of physical abidance.  One participates in myth by means of action, ritual action to be specific.

The Extinction of myth?

The empirical cosmology began to dominate when there was a shift from platonic ontology focused on participation with “the forms” (located in the heavens) to an aristotelian ontology focused on “substance” (located in the thing itself).  As the gaze of the learned moved from the heavens to the object, the object became more and more the focus, thus an ontological materialism based on empirical validation developed.  The entire first section of the treatise Somnium Spirituality is an attempt to show how this process systematically devalued the dream world to the point of meaninglessness. It is now pertinent to show how this same process devalues myth as well.  

Once empirical validation became the dominant acceptable means, the study of history became an “objective” task.  Myth was then categorized as, at best, fiction, at worst, lies.  Given the symbiosis in calculated ritual between dream, myth, and ritual one can see how the absolute weakening of the two foundations of ritual have had an effect.  Now there is a need for Conscious Ritual Investment instead of simply Intuitive Ritual Investment.  A claim of the secular empiricism is that religious ritual is meaningless, but this is only because the empirical worldview has spent vast energy robbing the world of a multivalent epistemology and convincing us that the two foundational experiences, dream and myth, are meaningless. They are simply cognitive whitenoise and fairy tales for children. Without any sense of buy-in to these two, ritual is naturally rendered meaningless and ineffective.  This causes a cycle of meaningless ritual that then further devalues meaningless myth.  All of this in order to extol utility and efficiency as paragons of the secular world.

Utility and efficiency are both the morality and the meaning of the secular empirical mindset.  Life is seen as meeting our bio-basics in the most efficient way possible.  Technology itself is taken out of the realm of morality or meaning. Narrative expression is simply entertainment that facilitates bio-basics, because to be happy is to be healthy.  To look to technology itself for meaning or analyze it morally seems out of place.  To look for the beings that inhabit mythic tales seems delusional.  To try to discuss the meaning or mortality of a modern story or to seek to apply the themes of myth on modern society existentially or morally seems academic and “out of touch.”  The goal of modern society is an efficient utility backed by an enlightened hedonism.  

This entire cultural shift leads to the writing of Rudolf Bultmann Kerygma and Myth, where his well intentioned effort is to make the seeming archaic writings of the Bible accessible to the modern mind.  

If the truth of the New Testament proclamation is to be preserved, the only way is to demythologize it. But our motive in so doing must not be to make the New Testament relevant to the modern world at all costs. The question is simply whether the New Testament message consists exclusively of mythology, or whether it actually demands the elimination of myth if it is to be understood as it is meant to be.

Bultmann assumes that if the New Testament is only myth, then it is worthless to the modern man.  His program is to present the New Testament absent “mythology” and approach the objective historical information with an existential interpretation.  Bultmann equates this existential interpretation with the “kerygma” of the gospel, upon which he places summative value.  Bultmann seems to believe that scripture has a manifest content and a latent content, similar to Freud's dream theory.  Except in this case, according to Bultmann, the latent content is the revelation of God to humanity concerning redemption through the cross.  Again, because of the empirical worldview, the manifest content becomes so much white noise.  

The fact that any moral lessons or existential meaning is carried by the genre of myth itself in the Bible becomes irrelevant.  Myth as revelation seem an accident of humanity, not part of the plan of God.  So we must clean the Bible from mistakes, such as mythic beings or miracles.  Unfortunately this process can syncs to what was discussed in the treatise Sacramental Cosmology about the purpose of the miraculous according to an empirical cosmology,

Miracles in this cosmology are when God “tweaks the machine” so to speak, and breaks the rules of nature in order to help people out.  The sense became that God created a mechanism at the beginning, but every once in awhile he does a favor for someone special.  That something special would be known by how it is contrary to the rules of nature, usually specifically contrary to the rules of physics which are most easily observable and codified, therefore most obvious when they are broken.  Other than that the universe is a closed system and works by itself.  This lead to a view of God as the “God of the gaps”, where the function of the concept of God is simply to explain parts of creation we don’t (yet) understand.

 Again, once we feel that we can understand all that needs be understood the enlightened hedonistic view reduces narrative is entertainment.  Any seeming supernatural myth is reduced to a “wow factor” effect for validating divine power or sheer entertainment.  Bultmann's absolute stripping barely even allow for use of myth as a fiction invested with lessons.  His only recourse is to assert the existence of God and combine the observable (the cross) with the existential.  He seems to constantly defend his bold stripping from those who would assert that any mention of God already assumes myth, and understands that such an assertion does strip even the little he has left away.  Thus his reliance is on faith in God, objective observation, and the existential interpretation of that observation is all that is left.  But Bultmann’s haphazard non-defense of faith, given the empirical rigor of the rest of his program, obviously leaves us with the question, why stop here? 

There have basically been two approaches the cosmological shift that Bultmann is trying to navigate here.  One is to demythologize as he is doing in his famous paper.  But it is difficult to pull off for the reasons just demonstrated.  Once one buys into the empirical world view, then the physical world is a given and any other “world” is cut away.  Anyone wishing to keep any unseen reality must make great effort to validate why. Those efforts will be philosophical and not empirical.  The empirical buy-in leaves any such methodology open to attack as the proponent straddles two cosmologies without accounting for why two are necessary, or how two are possible.  In the end the extreme option is to all but destroy myth and with it any sense of kerygma.

The other option, or reaction, is to return by sheer will to the previous cosmology.  Should one avail themselves of this strategy, they should also be ready to take on the ridicule of living in a fantasy world.  The worst examples of this strategy reach the extremity of the “flat earth society”.  More tempered examples are the Biblical fundamentalists who subscribe to the modern “objective” view of history and take the Bible as subscribing to the same view.  What one gets is a blend of pseudoscience and biblical literalism.  Bultmann feels that this tact is completely untenable,               

Can Christian preaching expect modern man to accept the mythical view of the world as true? To do so would be both senseless and impossible. It would be senseless, because there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age. Again, it would be impossible, because no man can adopt a view of the world by his own volition -- it is already determined for him by his place in history. Of course such a view is not absolutely unalterable, and the individual may even contribute to its change. But he can do so only when he is faced by a new set of facts so compelling as to make his previous view of the world untenable. He has then no alternative but to modify his view of the world or produce a new one. The discoveries of Copernicus and the atomic theory are instances of this, and so was romanticism, with its discovery that the human subject is richer and more complex than enlightenment or idealism had allowed, and nationalism, with its new realization of the importance of history and the tradition of peoples.

Here we can suggest two possible tacts that strike a middle ground.

The first tact is to take Bultmann’s half hearted attempt to overlay existential philosophy onto an empirical cosmology and “go all in”.  This basically means understanding that myth has meaning.  The first step toward a multivalent epistemology to realize that empirical validation is not the only indicator of truth.  Most people would not go as far with this as we went in the treatise Somnium Spirituality.  But many people would go as far as to value a liberal arts education which finds meaning in art and narrative beyond simply entertainment.  This was Bultmann’s basic tack.  But in his work, he tried to force an empiricism that reduced the scope of the Bible to the cross of Christ not because the cross fulfills all meaning, but because the cross is historically validatable.  With a little historical context and basic literary skills of interpretation, one can get at the existential meaning of even the most “incredible” miracle or mythic story of the Bible.  This is not a new technique, it is basic form and narrative criticism that any first year theology major should learn.      

Literary mindedness is certainly to be exalted.  This strategy is attractive and pragmatic for most modern believers who wish to accept science yet also accept revelation of scripture.  But at this point one may be tempted to get bogged down in an ongoing scholarly debate; does it matter if the entire Bible is a fiction if we can find meaning in it? How do you know the line between myth (fiction) and historical events? Do we regard each category differently?  My stock response is to say that this debate is distracting from the point of scripture (that is what I tell my students).  But that response elicits a just critique, “So you would be okay if it was ALL fiction?  How does that make the Bible different than any other fiction?”  I may respond that the ancients never would have engaged in such debates, but the ancients assumed these things were all historical, so am I now to take everything as objectively historical and fall into Bultmann’s previously quoted dilemma?  The escape from all this is to adopt a multivalent epistemology that is rooted in a certain agnosticism based on faith in revelation, but one cannot get that when one only buys into the empirical cosmology.

The second strategy is what we shall develop in the next section and what we shall exemplify in the last section.  The strategy we will call applied remythologization. This strategy does not abandon the empirical cosmology.  Neither does this strategy see as foolish any older cosmology.  This strategy seeks a multivalent cosmology, giving one the ability to run parallel cosmologies in a compatible way.  If one can get the hang of this, it will certainly lead to a multivalent epistemology and the ability to be more accepting of anything presented in scripture, which as we said is comparatively mythologically tame, and possibly lead to a greater investment in ritual life.

In this first section we have reviewed the nature and purpose of myth in human culture and as a human need. We explored the terrestrial nature of the Bible and how, as a work of myth, it is not as “fantastic” as one would expect given the reputation of religious myth.  We discussed the creative nature of pagan myths, and how they defy our observations of the physical world by reaffirming the interrelationship of dream, myth, and ritual.  We finished by exploring the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment, paying close attention to the program of Rudolf Bultmann to demythologize the Bible.

In the second section we will begin defining our skills that will lead to applied remythologization.  There will be three major skills which together will allow the practitioner   multivalent cosmology.  We will begin in this section with a brief comment on the necessity of myth for humans.  We will then lay out the practice of the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magic.  In this section we will also cover applied remythologization using a more complicated mythic-lens reconstruction revolving around terrestrial mythic beings. 

In the final section we will discuss the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  With each technique discussed we will explore how applying these techniques allows for a multivalent cosmology, the ability to see the world with the modern empirical/materialist cosmology and at the same time see the world through a lense where mythic realities are present and active.  We will end this section with practical moral application.  First we will demonstrate how this technique invests the practitioner with a sense of moral clarity, the ability to see the powers that dominate our world against the will of God.  Lastly we will discuss how one can use this technique understand the imperative of applying cosmic evangelization through calculated ritual to the current cultural gods.   

Two Techniques of Applied Remythologization

In this first section we explored the terrestrial nature of the Bible, the creative nature of pagan myths, and the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment.

In this second section we will begin defining our skills that will lead to applied remythologization.  We will discuss myth as carried over in the genre of science fiction and fantasy, but only barely tolerated as fictitious art.  We will then lay out the practice of the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magic.  In this section we will also cover applied remythologization using a more complicated mythic-lens reconstruction revolving around terrestrial mythic beings.  

In  the final section we will  discuss the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings and discuss the practical moral application of each of these techniques.  

A Second Look at Myth

We have already begun to address the sophomoric criticism of myth.  Such criticism generally dismisses as “fairy tales” and asserts that myth is simply “trying to explain science by gods and magic because they don’t understand it.”  Such an attempt to dismiss myth is the fruit of a constant campaign since the enlightenment to shed all but the rational-empirical model for both epistemology and cosmology.  At one time this agenda was the discourse of a portion of elite and educated.  Now it has filtered down past those who simply wish to appear elite and educated to those who really don’t even care, they simply want to justify some action or other, and this maneuver allows one to dismiss any “antiquated” sense of morality. 

But myth does not so easily die.  As we have pointed out, humans have the need to find meaning.  Dreams, myth and ritual are inborn mechanisms of this quest.  We will briefly foray in to the mirror of our task in this section and seek to identify modern mythological expressions.  We do this in order to see the importance of myth to drive home why it is so hard to kill.  It is also necessary to understand how modern myths appear and function because applied remythologization is not simply looking at ancient myth, but seeking to actualize mythic narrative appropriation, and what better tool to do this that the myths available in the culture.  

The most obvious example of modern myth is the genre of science fiction.  How the two are thematically related was discussed in the treatise Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission,

It is often hard to remember that there actually are books in the bible where people encounter celestial beings from the heavens and even one where a person goes to the heavens and interacts with those beings.  Apocalyptic literature was like the sci-fi literature of the ancient near-east.  It is not a useless idea to make the connections between the function of this genre and the genre of science fiction literature in the modern western world.  Both genres serve many similar functions.  Each serves to allow the author to discuss the future as they envision it.  Each genre allows the author to talk about socially dangerous topics in a coded way.  Both allow for the use of the imaginative aspect of the human spirit as it is applied to the heavens, a boundary that begs imaginative interpretation.

        

Sci-fi is a modern genre that supplies many of the themes and uses of ancient myth.  Interesting for us is that there are mythic beings, that many in our culture believe that these beings exist and some claim to have met them in the physical world.  The function of science fiction in our culture is to attempt to instill a code of social and personal morality and invest a worldview with character archetypes that will be useful.  The “powers” of these myths are the powers of science, the mythic beings are aliens, which exemplify the diversity, the best and the worst of humanity.  There is an interplay in our culture is between those who believe “aliens” exist and those who don’t.  But because our materialist cosmology, validated by empiricism, allows for their existence we can argue this and not seem simple minded or insane.  Try to argue for angels or mythic beings reflected of a more ancient variety and all of the sudden we are met with an absolutist derision, “those things aren’t real!” 

Our task for this section of the treatise is to develop techniques for applied remythologization.  We will explore three methodologies of mythic-lens reconstruction in order to attain our goal.  But the first step in implementation of this method is to reject the narrative that myths are unsuccessfully trying to explain what science successfully explains.  Our task is to move the reader from a nieve stance of “they’re just trying to explain science by gods and myths” to a stance of “we are just trying to explain gods and myth by means of science”, which is no better.  Often in these treatises I reiterate that science is one way of seeking truth, but when the entire quest is reduced to scientific methodology, we get problems.  Here we are beginning to get an angle on one of those problems.  Without the satiation of whatever deep need myth meets, we have begun to fill the existential gap by creating a new variety of myths in the form of Science fiction, all the while deriding “myth” as such.  The genre of science fiction seeks to develop a mythology according to the narrow cosmology of empiricism, but the attitude we are seeking here is that this cosmology is too narrow.  We are seeking a multivalent cosmology invested with cosmological synchronicity, such that we can reach a multivalent epistemology and live a life that is more rich and full.   

The next two parts should give us skills to abate what C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, calls “Chronological Snobbery’, the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”  Lewis relates the attitude one must take in order to attain a wider view of reality than one is boxed into by one’s own environment, 

You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realisation that our own age is also "a period", and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them. 

The techniques we are seeking to develop in the next two sections will give skills that diminish chronological snobbery against the predominant worldview today. Having a multivalent cosmology aids against Lewis’ just criticism of the current empirical cosmology,   

the positions we had hitherto held left no room for any satisfactory theory of knowledge. We had been, in the technical sense of the term, "realists"; that is, we accepted as rock-bottom reality the universe revealed by the senses. But at the same time we continued to make for certain phenomena of consciousness all the claims that really went with a theistic or idealistic view. We maintained that abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth, that our moral judgment was "valid", and our aesthetic experience not merely pleasing but "valuable". 

The mythic tact of science fiction conforms to the dogma that “abstract thought gives truth” and seems to seek to fill the gap regarding moral and aesthetic assertions of our society.  The conveyance of these themes narratively is effective, but it still does not fit into the empirical cosmology.  These myths are effective in what they teach and how they are used, even to the point of a complex ritual life (think about sci-fi conventions and the ritual ife involved in them).  

But the themes in the myths of science are no more validatable than the myths of previous ages.  We tend to think our myths superior because “mythic beings” are absent.  However, as we noted, we have simple shifted from terrestrial and celestial mythic beings to extraterrestrial beings. The existence of extraterrestrial beings are not generally seen as empirically validated.  The argument for them is tantamount to the medieval argument of “how many angels dance on the head of a pin”.  By practicing applied remythologization, we devaluing neither the myths of science nor the myths of the ancients. We are seeking to actualize them  in the lives of the practitioner to the most effective degree.  With that said, we can now delve into the two different varieties of mythic-lens reconstruction we intend to explore.            

Mythic-lens Reconstruction Part 1: The World of Magic

Mythic-lens reconstruction is not simply studying the past in order to apply lessons or update modern myths.  It is about viewing reality in a different way in order to fully utilize myth in our moral, aesthetic, and ritual lives.  There are three things to be addressed regarding the derision of ancient myth, celestial mythic beings, terrestrial mythic beings and magical powers.  The treatise Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission discussed the cosmological shift from celestial to extraterrestrial beings.

For the sake of ease we are going to distinguish between extraterrestrial beings and celestial beings, though etymologically the names mean the same thing.  In this treatise when we use the term celestial being we are referring to a being that lives in the (physical) heavens according to the old cosmology.  Examples would be gods, angels, demons, tirthankaras, and celestial bodhisattvas and buddhas.  When we refer to extraterrestrials we are referring to beings that live in the (physical) heavens according to the new cosmology.  The popular way to refer to them would simply be “aliens”, but specific mythological examples of these would be classical greys and greens, klingons and vulcans,  jedis and jawas, tralfamadorians, hrossa, séroni, pfifltriggi and an almost innumerable host of others.    

In that treatise we were seeking to bring an awareness of synchronicity between the function both types of beings played in society such that if extraterrestrials were discovered could be anthro-expansive.  Our purpose in this treatise is the opposite.  In this treatise we are not updating myth to the empirical view, we are expanding the empirical view to accommodate for myth. 

The first mythic-lens reconstruction technique we will attempt will concern magic and its use as opposed to celestial or terrestrial mythic beings.  The difference here is the difference between an animistic paganism and a dynamistic paganism.  Celestial beings are born out of an animistic cosmology.  Animism assumes there are intelligent powers in the universe that can be related to and possibly manipulated by one’s relationship with them.  Pagans are experts at multivalent cosmological synchronicity, such that a pagan is as at home with an animistic cosmology as they are with a dynamistic cosmology.  Dynamism believes that there is raw power in the cosmos that is available to be manipulated.  So take the raw power of a river, life giving because of the water yet death dealing because of the flooding, a tree, long life, the raw power of a volcanic mountain or lightning to start a fire.  A dynamistic magical view may see a tree branch struck by lightning, dipped in the river and mounted by a volcanic rock and a channeler of each of these powers.        

Our empirical cosmology sees such attempts to manipulate nature as naive and ineffective.  But, we as a culture are still entertained by stories that use magic as a plot trope.  But the first step in our our technique is to ask the simple question, “what if magic was real?”  A person possessed of chronological snobbery would say, “but it’s not, so why bother.” We must put that off for now.

“What if magic were real?”  What if we had magic stones that could perform amazing feats, such as facilite telepathy, slay people at a distance? What if we had crystal balls or magic mirrors that allowed us to see distant land, give us information about our friends and enemies, or, if you were a powerful enough magician, access unlimited knowledge?  What if magical castles existed that could bring light to darkness or even bring inanimate objects to life, objects that could serve their mage and do his bidding?  What if there were magical plants that could heal or give long life, maybe even eternal life if one was a powerful enough magician?  What if one had a magical book that could tell or teach one’s owner to intuite the future?  What if there were magic books that had the knowledge of magical mind control?  What if there were black magicians who could call down fire and death from the sky? What if they could destroy whole buildings, whole towns by their evil art?  What if, by their art they could envision you all the way around the world and summon your death?  What if necromancers existed, those who used the lingering power of the dead to manipulate their environment, bring inanimate objects to life, possess and manipulate other humans?  What if the most extreme were true, what if black magicians could summon demons, unseen malevolent beings, who possess their enemies and bring their destruction?   

As  culture we enjoy stories that utilize such powers as plot device toward an entertaining narrative.  But narratives do not simply entertain, they always educate and therefore effect.  Interestingly the fantasy genre and the science fiction genre are often placed together because both serve the same role, both seek to expound upon social dynamics and both seek to offer moral advice regarding those social dynamics and/or the ability to wield great power.  Now it is time to expand upon a point made in the treatise Cosmic Evangelization, “Arthur C. Clarke was far more correct than he knew in his famous quote, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ because technology serves the same purpose as magic, the manipulation of the impersonal forces of nature by knowledge and elements.”  Are first exercise for mythic-lens reconstruction is to slightly change this quote.  It is not that technology is indistinguishable from magic, it is that technology is magic.  

This idea is not new, but it is interesting that when the idea is brought up, “technology is modern magic” it is treated with immediate ridicule.  The person who would propose such a thing simply doesn’t understand technology, or doesn’t want to.  This spring's from the notion that what makes magic “magic” is that the people weidling it do not understand what they wield.  But powerful magicians do understand at least how to wield their powers, that is what makes them powerful.  So maybe it’s that they can use the power, but don’t understand “how” it works?  This overlay of an empirical cosmology onto a magical narrative assumes that there is not “magic” just the physical world.  In that view the original position is correct, technology is magic. 

“But a volcanic rock on a staff struck by lightning and dipped in water is not technology.”  Well, it depends on one’s worldview and one’s goal.  If one is imbued with a cosmology where the dream world (a world where abstracts take concrete form) is as real as the waking world as we discussed in Somnium Spirituality and one has an emphasis on solving psycho-spiritual needs equal to physical ones, then the ritual life developed around that magic staff could be very useful and effective technology assuming someone knew how to use it.  But our empirical epistemology does not allow for the possibility of that use, so the “technology” is not seen as such.  

The last point to be made concerning “people who use magic don’t understand it” is to question whether or not we understand technology.  As The Toaster Project pointed out, not one person can build even the simplest modern technology as it is.  Concerning the complex technology we possess, such as an iPhone, most of us cannot utilize 1/10th of it’s abilities.  Most people do not have any clue how the technologies we have work at all and I doubt there is one person who understands how any given technology works in toto.  

It is not that technology seems like magic, technology it is magic, because the cosmology of the modern scientific world is the same cosmology that allows for magic, dynamism, that the cosmos are invested with raw power to be manipulated by knowledge.  This is why modern science fiction and modern fantasy run such similar themes.  Why should this rub people the wrong way?  The reason such an assertion is anathma is that the post-enlightenment narrative is shot through with chronological snobbery.  The narrative runs; the ancients didn’t understand science, so they had disconnected superstitions, we have science that allows for useful technology, so religion, ritual and myth are outdated methodologies.  

This attitude was born out of a contention between science, as it emerged from natural theology, and the overarching religious structure.  The Church is seen even now as anti-science even though the Church is and always has been a large backer of scientific methodologies as a means of learning about creation and learning about God.  The Church has also always been seen as “anti-magic”.  The narrative here is that the Church has beliefs and condemns anything it does not understand out of a sense of superstition.  But the scientific world is also “anti-magic”.  The narrative here is because the scientific community thinks things can be explained by causality and a magical cosmology does not (though we have shown that this is not necessarily the case).  

The Church is not anti-magic or anti-science, it is “anti-rebellion against God”.  With any kind of power, there is the distinct possibility of corruption and use of that power toward selfish ends, or ends that ultimately glorify people of things other than God.  The Church has always been suspicious of “magic” that draws attention away from reliance on God.  The same is true of scientific empirical views that discount or dismiss God.  

This suspicion is not  suspicion of technique or technology, it is a suspicion of attitude against beatitude.  It must always be remembered that from the scientific view, the conveyance of sacramental grace is “magic” in a derogatory way.  The seven sacraments are ritual technology to manipulate the psyche and spirit.  Science does not see this as effective or useful technology because of the worldview.  On the other hand, “natural theology” is proto-science.  In the end the only difference between natural theology and scientific methodology is whether or not the use of the results takes divinity into account. For natural theology the result of an empirical study could demonstrate utilitarian means to alleviate suffering according to God’s plan or it may reveal the beauty of God’s ordered creation.  For a strict materialistic cosmology, scientific methodology is utilitarian at best, or a-moral/objective; knowledge for the sake of knowledge, perhaps to be used down the road.

       

This leads us to the valuable “use” of our first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction.  This remythologizing allows for a reinvestiture of  moral impetus.  There has been a constant campaign to de-moralize the scientific process and the technology it produces.  Proponents argue, process and technology are objective and have no moral weight.  The first step in this campaign is to divorce science from religion.  Religion is the realm of the unseen, morality, faith, “mythic beings”etc..  A huge part of this divorce was the separation of science from natural theology and the elimination of natural theology as a reality.  Natural theology has a teleological or moral bearing, whereas simple empiricism only relies on utility or acquisition of knowledge.  Once this divorce was complete the second part of the de-moralization was to instill a materialistic cosmology such that the milieu of religion is populated only by “unreal” subject matter. Without a holistic view religion is seen as peddling “superstitious magic”.  Empirical science is seen as offering a methodology for relieving material suffering.  The only morality that matters was utility as defined by the biases of empirical secularism, biases which are neither secular nor empirically based.  At this point it is possible to dismiss experiences of the waking world, the dream word, myth and ritual as a symbiotic system.  This leads to the absolute discrediting of religion in the empirical mind.

Catholicism for its part correctly rejects a grasp of power for self glorification, but often strayed over much into cultural or political ad hoc attacks on the profession of science to the point of appearing to be luddites.  The picture painted in response by the secular mind is a Church that is superstitious in it’s beliefs, not grounded in “reality” (according to materialist cosmology) and terrified of the occult, which isn’t real either.  Why would anyone trust such an institution in anything they say? Especially if what they “say” is a moral code that seeks to “control the populace”.  Science in this case is seen as a liberator from outdated ideas such as terrestrial or celestial mythic beings, magic and morality, but with no cohesive mythological replacement. The vacuum of human need for these things leads to the symbiotic genres of science fiction and fantasy, which seek a place for alternate and expansive cosmology (fantasy) and for morality (sci-fi/fantasy).  These things as “art” are barely tolerable, but should a person take the lessons too much to heart, or invest over much in them, they are seen as odd and over zealous.              

The divorce between religion and science created a problem.  Though the scientific process may be seeking to get at objective knowledge, there is nothing in creation that is without moral weight.  Myth seeps back in by means of sci-fi/fantasy, which evidence of the deep human needs to explore reality from more than an empirical tact.  Fantasy rejects the empirical in order to foster myth, thereby creating a morality.  Science fiction utilizes prognostication of where the empirical will take us in order to force the observer to morally reflect and inadvertently creating myth.  Both genres thematically comment on how one uses power, how one interrelates socially with those seen as different, how one recognizes evil use of power and the imperative to thwart evil.

All that being said we can now apply remythologization through our first technique of mythic-lens reconstruction.  It must be remembered that myth is not entertainment.  It invests meaning and it offers morality through narrative appropriation and through effective ritual life.  All one needs to do to remythologize here is to realize that Arthur C. Clarke is slightly off. It is not that technology seems like magic, it is magic.  That magical leap is important because our almost unbelievable technological advances are not science fiction.  They are present in our lives. Science fiction as a literary genre means we can write its work off as occasionally prophetic entertainment, but too little to late prophetic.  The term magic gives us an immediate moral underpinning with great urgency because it speaks to an entire cosmology that functions with a moral underpinning.  This goes against our desire to see technology as morally neutral and human moral investment as relativistic.  In magic stories, there is always an easily observable, objective, right and wrong way to use the magic.  

This technique is not a cognitive assent to morality.  It is a way of looking at our environment.  If properly employed, it will reshape how one thinks about one’s environment morally and teleologically. It will reshape the way one talks about one’s environment, the very language one uses.  The best way to offer examples of this is to retool all of our magical examples stated above.

“What if magic were real?”  Answer:  it is, the ability to use it depends on whether or not one has magical devices that can harness the raw power of the cosmos and how powerful a magician one is.  Did one study and perfect their technique?  If so, one can accomplish feats far beyond the imagination of the ancient.  

What if we had magic stones that could perform amazing feats, such as facilite telepathy, slay people at a distance? We do, guns are magic stones, carefully constructed in order to slay an enemy at a distance.  One must be a powerful enough magician to properly use it, but nevertheless, the task can be accomplished.  But now since it’s “magic” instead of technology, do we feel like this black magic is worth having around?  Is it a good idea to have it readily available?  Would you be willing to go on a quest to destroy the existence of these magic artifacts?

Smart phones allow one to send one’s thoughts in every way to someone across the globe.  This doesn’t even take much magical skill, simply the proper manipulation of the power dormant in the cosmos (dynamism).  Is it a good technology to have? How does one use it?  When such artifacts are part of a magical narrative, all of the sudden it is no longer a frivolous activity, but is somehow immidialy morally weighted.  Most magical narratives either expressly discuss how important it is to not use magic needlessly or casually, or the have this attitude as a standard assumption. 

What if we had crystal ball or magic mirror that allowed us to see distant land, give us information about our friends and enemies, or, if you were a powerful enough magician, access unlimited knowledge? How would you use this power?  Once again, as magic it becomes morally loaded, but when one thinks about it as “the internet” it’s just a tool for entertainment or curiosity.  To reflect on how pipin uses the palantir in The Lord of the Rings, one realizes that anyone who looks into is also being looked at.  To wonder why the Lords or the races accepted the rings frome Sauron if it gives him mastery over them, spits in the face that we willingly hand our lives over to various companies and masters in order to have access to this “magic”.    

  What if magical castles existed that could bring light to darkness or even bring inanimate objects to life, objects that could serve their mage and do his bidding?  Would the lord of this castle use his power to bring inanimate objects alive to the service of humanity, or to wage a war of control over humanity?  Is it a power worth having around?  The castles are, of course, power plants, hydroelectric dams, windmills etc.  How do we use electric power? Is it used for the help of humanity or it’s enslavement?       

What if there were magical plants that could heal or give long life, maybe even eternal life if one was a powerful enough magician?  It seems like this is nothing but beneficial, but what if the plants were scarce?  What if they weren’t scarce, but the wizard made it seem they were.  He would wield great sway because who doesn’t want long or even everlasting life?  The and wizards are the pharmaceutical industry.  They exert tremendous power over culture and sell fear as much as they do life.  Do we hold them as accountable as a fantasy narrative would if we understood that they are mages, subject to a moral cosmology instead of a market cosmology?          

  What if one had a magical book that could tell or teach one’s owner to intuite the future?  What if there were magic books that had the knowledge of magical mind control?  Prediction of the future is always suspect in the sacred scriptures. Even the prophets rarely predict the future, and almost to a man distinguish themselves from the type of “prophet” who is a prognosticator.  The feeling is that time belongs to God.  To seek knowledge of the future is to seek to manipulate God’s providence and hold one’s self over God.  It also always leads to and feeds great anxiety.  We have a host of very accurate prognosticators on our culture from benign to manipulative.  Weathermen and market analysts are the two most obvious examples.  Weathermen are, no doubt prognosticators, they seek to tell one the future based on their ability to observe and use artifacts, some of which are attuned to heavenly artifacts: satellites.  Market analysts not only seek to tell the future, they use that ability to manipulate the minds of others.  The instill fear, cause people to act and dabble in another variety of magical control, the social sciences.  The most amazing application of mind control is the media advertising industry.  Most people would see characters in a mythic fantasy who undergo a quest to rest magical devices from a cult of wizards who have captivated the minds of a populace and are bending them to their will as the completely justified character.  This variety of mythic-lens reconstruction allows to see that you are in that world now.

  What if there were black magicians who could call down fire and death from the sky? What if they could destroy whole buildings, whole towns by their evil art? What if, by their art they could envision you all the way around the world and summon your death?  It is hard to imagine a story were wizards who had such powers could be conceived of as good guys.  Possibly a good wizard could use a fire power to slay an enemy if they were in dire straights, to defend their own or a fellow quester’s life. But only the evil wizard would use such a power for any other reason.  No good wizard would use a fire power to destroy a whole castle or a whole town.  Any wizard who would do such a thing would be seen as recklessly evil.  In a world where we have smart drones, smart bombs, carpet bombing, and nuclear weapons, there are black mages who can by the flick of a wrist destroy entire cities.  No one would doubt that a quest to unseat such a wizard and blot his power from memory would be a worthy task, but finding ourselves in that world without a mythic-lens, we find ourselves numb to destruction.  Why does placing an airforce pilot on a magic carpet instead of in a plane and in a robe instead of a flight suit, make a moral difference?    

What if necromancers existed, those who used the lingering power of the dead to manipulate their environment, bring inanimate objects to life, possess and manipulate other humans?  Can we conceive of necromancers as “good guys?” wouldn’t any inanimate object they possess by the power of death the harnessed necessarily be evil?  Not necessarily, but to manipulate this power can cause much concern.  We speak here of industries such as the fossil fuel and stem cell industry.  What they bring to life or how they manipulate life may not be immoral, but how they manipulate the populace because they wield that power often is.  

What if the most extreme were true, what if black magicians could summon demons, unseen malevolent beings, who possess their enemies and bring their destruction?  One cannot imagine such a mage as evil in a fantasy story.  One cannot imagine that the “good guys” would make any sort of packet that tolerated such arts.  One cannot imagine a narrative where a hero found out that his kingdom employed use of such mages and it wasn’t part of his quest to destroy that those who practice such demonology.  Yet we live in a world where biowarfare is still a danger.  It is generally understood as evil but there are still governments that seek commerce with these types of mages.  There are people in our culture who would never conceive of themselves as in league with such evil wizards, but at the sametime would have no problem with using science to wage war in the most efficient manner.      

The accusation of science to religion is “you are backward and fear what you don’t understand. You are so ruled by fear of the unknown you condemn magic, which isn’t even real.  But this is not superstition, it’s science and you are condemning something of superior knowledge that yours and something that is helpful to humanity.”  However, no one ever condemned magicians because they didn’t understand how they are doing what they were doing.  Condemnations of magicians comes from the fear that they don’t understand the consequences, either on others, or their own corrupting pride.   Or the fear is that they do understand these things, but have no problem working outside the accepted moral framework.  A simple fantasy narrative gets this across quite well.  To appropriate that narrative, then practice mythic-lens reconstruction allows one a greater sense of moral clarity in order to neutralize the demoralization of technology and the use of science.

Mythic-lens Reconstruction Part 2:  Terrestrial Mythic Beings

 

Having discussed magic there is the other hard to swallow aspect of ancient myth, mythic beings.  We have already distinguished between terrestrial and celestial mythic beings.  In this last part of section two we are going to apply mythic-lens reconstruction in a way that gives us access to terrestrial mythic beings.  This is probably the most difficult aspect of mythic-lens reconstruction.  Technology can admittedly be magical, celestial beings are assumed to be hidden, but terrestrial mythic beings, in a world that is ever shrinking, are hard to square with an empirical cosmology.  When we complete this exercise the hope is that we will be able to understand the enigmatic introduction to this treatise where I assert that my son is an elf and my wife is a mythic harlequin.  

We will begin with a brutal question, “were the ancients stupid?”  how else can one explain a people who believe in the minotaur or elves?  There are three possible ways to go about explaining this belief.  The first two ways take the route of an empirical cosmology and delegitimize the existence of these beings.  First it must be remembered that the ancient world was a world that was vast and unexplored.  The earth had ends that most people assumed they knew nothing about.  The borders of both sky and ocean created barriers to other worlds.  If sailors such as Odysseus came back with amazing tales, who is to say other wise.  Now that the earth is relatively well explored, and most large animals categorized and deemed unintelligent, there is no more room for ancient mythic beings.  This thorough investigation of the planet has not extended to the heavens as of yet.  Thus, moderns can still debate about extraterrestrials (the new paradigms celestial beings) but no longer can we say dragons or elves exist.  With this explanation the ancients were not stupid, simply ignorant, which is still derogatory, but less so.       

The second way of making sense of terrestrial mythic beings is assumed that some sort of conflagration has happened.    The easiest way is to see myth as fiction that is mistaken for history by nieve, unwitting and ignorant ancients.  Terrestrial mythic beings, such as chimeras, unicorns, or the sphynx, are very often highly symbolic in their physical makeup.  Perhaps the ancients told stories as fables that utilize symbolism and they mistake them for reality.  The suspicion of this having happened is the same suspicion cast upon someone over invested in the sci-fi / fantasy genres.

However, we may go a level deeper here. That symbolism being noted we could imagine that those symbolic beings weren’t created as literary devices, but were encountered in the dream world or the less validatable reaches of the waking world. If this is the case, an empirical cosmology would write such beings off using all the tools of oneirology discussed in Somnium Spirituality.  But if we deem that treatise valuable, then the dream world can be viewed as a legitimate place to meet impactful beings.  In this case, the stories that are either dreams or are influenced by them aren’t “fiction” because of the creatures they portray.  They are just a different kind of history, portraying a different cosmology.  

But in the stories they do meet these beings in the waking world and the minotaur seems to be devouring humans in the physical world.  How is it that the ancients were so foolish to believe that such beings could exist in physical reality.  Here we will argue, “because sometimes they do exist in physical reality.”  Dragons did exist, in that there were dinosaurs.  Dragons do exist in that we classify the Komodo as a dragon.  If a unicorn is a rare quadruped mammal with a horn on its head, then unicorns do exist.  We call them rhinoceroses and they actually are endangered species who are hunted for their horns.   Again, someone could protest that this is a fanciful view or reality, but we here are engaging in mythic-lens reconstruction.  Our task is to achieve a multivalent cosmology to an end.  So it may be helpful now to talk about my family and other mythical creatures that are hidden in plain sight every day.

This application of mythic-lens reconstruction is an expansion of topics covered in the treatise Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention.  We now have empirically based ideas about gene mutations.  We have also layered on top of that empirical data moralities based on utilitarian calculations and baseless cultural biases.  To say someone is a different “Race” is a genetic calculation often based on typical inheritance.  Race is a family matter.  But gene mutation is not an inheritance, it creates a new type creature.  In evolutionary theory, mutations are required to advance survival of the species, but in practice human mutations are far more often seen as a threat to our existence.  When someone looks or thinks differently our cultural is averse.  

“Syndromes” exhibit a racial pattern, but not through inheritance.  Our point here is not to say that people with syndromes are not humans.  As was pointed out in the treatise Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission, there is a matrix for anthro-inclusivity. “[O]nce a nation demonstrates understanding and desire, the rest follows and baptisms can begin, even for members of that nation who don’t obviously demonstrate these, infants for example.”  Our point is to reveal a possible origin of terrestrial mythic beings and then apply mythic-lens reconstruction.

Now back to my opening scene, “why dwarves, where are the elves?”  “No more mythical creatures in my house!” Dwarfism is often such a genetic variation, Achondroplasia.  Dwarfism can also come from other environmental or biological factors, such as a growth hormone deficiency.  

As I said, my wife is a mythic hariquen.  This is not a genetic syndrome.  In fact we have no idea why she is like this. She has an extremely rare condition called “harlequin syndrome”.  She is very fair skinned (white) and when she blushes or exercises, half of her face turns red.  Also when she eats, if she enjoys what she is eating, one half of her upper right lip sweats.  Harlequins are known for being indulgent and yet nimble and athletic.  My wife discovered her mythic nature when, after jogging one day, she looked in the mirror and saw her face with a straight line down the middle red on one side, white on the other.  This does not happen to the rest of her body, only her face.  My wife went through a many tests including a CAT Scan and the medical conclusion was, “well, if we keep diggin, I’m sure we can find something wrong, but that’s true of anyone.  Whatever is causing it isn’t keeping you from being a generally healthy person.”  As a piece of advice, I wouldn’t image search “harlequin syndrome” because there is another condition bearing the same name and it presents in a very different way that may be off putting if one is not ready.  I have taken the liberty of filtering the google search for the reader and give two examples here:

      

   

My son has Williams syndrome, also known as Elfin Facies.  People with this syndrome are small in stature and look like little tree elves.  They are hyper gregarious, musically advanced, linguistically creative, but often slightly cognitively limited.  In short they are everything you would expect a Christmas or Keebler elf to be.           

Once again, mythic-lens reconstruction is not meant to be a flight of fancy that indulges in some sort of escapism.  The treatise on Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention explained how much people who seem challenged according to our post enlightenment expectation often have far more to teach us that we have to teach them, depending on one’s values. 

 

if a syndrome is a collection of weaknesses and dependencies, then the human condition itself is a syndrome.  A Christian should be able to deduce from the book of genesis that this particular syndrome, the human condition, is here to afford us the ability to come into proper relationship with God.  And from that the Christian should feel unable to cast dispersion on any medically defined syndrome simply because it demonstrates some sort of weakness. In fact they are regarded as more valuable because those with medically defined syndromes know the all important lesson of dependence on God, a beatitude absolutely necessary for a state of grace and abidance in The Eschaton.   

Terrestrial mythic beings in old stories are troublesome, but often hold knowledge or insight for the humans in the story.  This narrative trope is the key to the use of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning terrestrial mythic beings.  These beings do hold valuable knowledge for us if we can look past the biases of our culture.

To help understand the shifting nature of those biases one need only look at the etymology and replacement of an old southern term, “touched”.  When I was a child, growing up in the deep south, an older person would use the term “touched” to mean what we now call “cognitively impaired” or “on the spectrum”.  Ironically the term “touched” is now seen as politically incorrect, where as cognitively impaired (for now) is seen as acceptable.  Originally the term “touched” comes with the implication that the “simple minded person” was touched by the Holy Spirit.  In a much older time such people in the populace who exhibited a simplicity in life were exalted in a particular way.  There is an entire genre of hagiography surrounding the simple saint who lived their life like a child.  They generally end up hermits, who are sought after for spiritual direction.  That hagiography has a secular balance, the standard knightly trope where the knight is accompanied by a “Dwarf” ( in this case possibly any variety of atypical genetic construction). These tales are often seen in the Arthurian legends and elsewhere.  In these stories too, the terrestrial mythic beings are troublesome, but often impart lessons for those who see themselves as a “their betters”.      

In a world where most of the people need only know basic farming to survive, being “touched” was much more a gift than it appears in a world where, for some reason, algebra must be grasped before adulthood.  Touched by the Holy Spirit seemed to evolve as the understanding of cognitive ability evolved.  With the age of reason and the development of the view that anyone who does not “think” a certain way is not thinking correctly, the term “touched” took on a new meaning.  Though the term itself did not change, the meaning behind it took on the new paradigm and no longer brought with it the humility of how the greater served the lessor or that beatitude trumps reason.  At a certain point few even remembered where the term etymologically came from.  They simply new that the backwards people of the south, who closeted such people in attics or worked them like animals on farms, used this term.  Thus it was deemed offensive by people who prefer a methodology of mass incarceration through institutional collectivity.

For a moral application of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning terrestrial mythic beings one needs to look at our social situation and realize the call to action.  Many quarters of our society are coming to grips with the fact that people on the spectrum or people who are cognitively impaired have tremendous value. With mythic-lens reconstruction we can tap into the special nature of the knowledge they bring as sages of beatitude and life, while we, the rational, have much to add as well.  My son in every way works what J.R.R. Tolkien calls, in his essay On Fairy Tales, elfin “enchantment”  

We need a word for this elvish craft, but all the words that have been applied to it have been blurred and confused with other things. Magic is ready to hand, and I have used it above, but I should not have done so: Magic should be reserved for the operations of the Magician. Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief. Art of the same sort, if more skilled and effortless, the elves can also use, or so the reports seem to show; but the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment. Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills. To the elvish craft, Enchantment, Fantasy aspires, and when it is successful of all forms of human art most nearly approaches. At the heart of many man-made stories of the elves lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly different from the greed for self-centred power which is the mark of the mere Magician. Of this desire the elves, in their better (but still perilous) part, are largely made; and it is from them that we may learn what is the central desire and aspiration of human Fantasy . . . Uncorrupted, it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves.

So many people who have children with all kinds of “special needs” report this exact phenomenon.  The depth of life that a special needs partner can bring a “normative” rational agent in our world is of inestimable value.  But a parent or partner who tries to express this is often patronizingly tolerated by others who are impressed with their ability to conjure defense mechanism in order to cope with what is obviously a tragedy.  Who is losing out in this exchange?  Who would not assent to the best case scenario of enchantment if it was offered them? Even if that enchantment was being offered by a being that was in other ways troublesome.  

To end this section we will focus on a particular modern fantasy myth, Shrek.  Here you have a story about how society likes to deal with people who are different.  In this case, evil lord Farquaad is relocating all mythic beings to the swamp in order to build a perfect society.  The narrative resonates with anyone who feels they are on the outside of society’s standards for perfection, which is just about everyone who lives in society.  Almost everyone feels ostracized by society to some extent. For our purposes, those beings who spring into existence independent of typical inheritance, who exhibit a physical and/or psycho-spiritual makeup that varies from the norm, those beings are particularly singled out for destruction because they are an affront to our view of how the world should be, not how it is.  We are living with terrestrial mythic beings, we simple refuse them their mythic role.       

The treatise Somnium Spirituality discussed a multivalent epistemology by entering a new cosmology which saw the dream world as a real world.  Now we are seeking a multivalent cosmology. It may help to start with an agnostic cosmology, the ability to hold our cosmology in view, but realize that we do not “know” for sure if we are right.  Perhaps we can never “know”.  How much easier to enter a multivalent epistemology than to be cosmologically amphibious.  With a multivalent cosmology, one abides in the predominant cosmology, in our case empirical materialism, but is able to overlay that cosmology with a differing one, for this treatise a cosmology that recognizes mythic themes are abiding realities.     

In this first section we explored the terrestrial nature of the Bible, the creative nature of pagan myths, and the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment.  In the second section defined our skills that lead to applied remythologization.  We discussed myth as carried over in the genre of science fiction and fantasy.  We laid out the practice of the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magi and terrestrial mythic beings. 

In  the final section we will  discuss the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  With each technique discussed we will explore how applying these techniques allows for a multivalent cosmology, the ability to see the world with the modern empirical/materialist cosmology and at the same time see the world through a lense where mythic realities are present and active.  We will end this section with practical moral application.  First we will demonstrate how this technique invests the practitioner with a sense of moral clarity, the ability to see the powers that dominate our world against the will of God.  Lastly we will discuss how one can use this technique understand the imperative of applying cosmic evangelization through calculated ritual to the current cultural gods.   

Cohesive Applied Remythologization: A Multivalent Cosmology

In this first section reviewed the nature and purpose of myth in human culture and as a human need. We explored the terrestrial nature of the Bible and how, as a work of myth, it is not as “fantastic” as one would expect given the reputation of religious myth.  We discussed the creative nature of pagan myths, and how they defy our observations of the physical world by reaffirming the interrelationship of dream, myth, and ritual.  We finished by exploring the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment, paying close attention to the program of Rudolf Bultmann to demythologize the Bible.

  In this second section we defined our skills that lead to applied remythologization.  We will discuss myth as carried over in the genre of science fiction and fantasy, but only barely tolerated as fictitious art.  We will then laid out the practice of the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magic.  We also covered applied remythologization using a more complicated mythic-lens reconstruction revolving around terrestrial mythic beings.  

In  the final section we will  discuss the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  We will end this section with practical moral application. 

Mythic-lens Reconstruction Part 3: Celestial Beings

The last exercise that we have to master in applied demythologization is mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  These beings are the gods of old.  The first question a good Christian may bring to this exercise is, “why? Those gods aren’t real, aren’t we better with an empirical cosmology that lets people know that?  Would mythic-lens reconstruction concerning ancient gods be a regression and spiritual danger?”  Isaiah mocks those who craft false idols in Chapter 44, 

He goes out to cut down cedars,

takes a holm tree or an oak.

He picks out for himself trees of the forest,

plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow.

 

It is used for fuel:

with some of the wood he warms himself,

makes a fire and bakes bread.

Yet he makes a god and worships it,

turns it into an idol and adores it!

 

Half of it he burns in the fire,

on its embers he roasts meat;

he eats the roast and is full.

He warms himself and says, “Ah!

I am warm! I see the flames!”

 

The rest of it he makes into a god,

an image to worship and adore.

He prays to it and says,

“Help me! You are my god!”

 

There is a just hesitancy of multiplication of the gods in Christianity as a monotheistic religion.  But this is only necessary if one defines a “god” as comparable to “The God”.  The  treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety laid out how Christianity did not immediately invest itself in an empirical materialistic cosmology in the first century. From its beginning Christianity seems to have accepted the existence of “the gods”, though under different names.      

It seems that when Paul speaks of “thrones, dominions principalities and powers” he is talking about angelic beings who have some sort of authority in the cosmos.  These beings seem to have sentience.  It’s also apparent that some of these beings are in rebellion against God in much the same way humanity is, but since they seem to be advanced of human nature, their potential for destruction outstripes our own.  Thus the easiest way to understand principalities and powers is simply to understand that there are angels and demons in the world.  With that it must be understood that these principalities and powers have some sort of sway over humans, it is obvious that our free will is not absolute and because of this we can deduce their existence .

In moderns times it is more fashionable to see these principalities and powers as psychological forces that limit our freewill.  Rudolph Bultmann definitely saw Paul’s powers as mythical beings to be “de-mythologized” into the dangers, tribulations, distresses, and temptations that threaten a Christian’s sense of religious self.  Also in modern times it is not unheard of to take Hendrikus Berkhof’s point of view, which is more anthropocentric and see these principalities and powers as the social forces that structure humanity.  These structures are neither good nor evil, but can be turned either way depending on the deep rootedness of original sin.  That is to say, it is the individual human's response to these powers that makes them good or evil.  Lastly, there is the less useful modern view that these principalities and powers are simply the impersonal laws and forces that govern the universe as a whole, for example the laws of physics or perhaps a behaviorist psychological point of view.  Even here, the Christian may interpret the powers as such, yet still allow them to sing the glories of God through their beauty.   

The modern interpretations all lack any sort of personal agency, but both ancient and modern views of principalities and powers most certainly assert the weakness of the human position in the cosmos.

That treatise went on to lay out Saint Augustine’s metric for deciding of a principality was angelic or demonic, “Augustine’s calculation for a spiritual power being an angel or a demon is whether it draws worship to itself or to God.”  

What we have here in this analysis of the gods is not a jettisoning of these powers, but a shift of the understanding of the powers from a cosmology that allows for animism to one  that only allows for dynamism.  We stopped calling the gods “god” but their power remains, as does our fear of them.  Just because we don’t call them “gods” does not stop their influence.  In fact it may embolden that influence in a Judeo-Christian nation, because the power of the first commandment is abated.  As we shall see, the reinforcement of the first commandment is a primary benefit of applied remythologization concerning celestial mythic beings.  

The shift from a cosmology that allows for dynamistic mythical beings to one where they are not allowed, in some ways alienates humanity even further from the powers that dominate our lives.  In a cosmology that allows for animism, there would certainly be a priestly class that were “experts” at relating to those divinities, usually through ritual expertise.  But even still, since the celestial beings are personal, there is always a change that an individual human, even if they weren’t particularly knowledgeable, could form a personal relationship with the celestial sentient being and be given some sort of boon.  In a cosmology that is strictly dynamistic, only experts (magicians) are able to willfully manipulate the intrinsic powers of the cosmos.

We live in a world that offers a materialistic cosmology, which is to say an exclusively dynamistic cosmology.  But at the same time when one applies mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial beings, one begins to see that humans have a hard time keeping their dynamistic forces from straying into anamistic territory.  We are now going to give a brief analysis of three harsh gods the of modern world.  Each of these gods has its roots in a secular dynamism but each has at least in part morphed into an animistic reality.  The gods we will review will be The Nation, Science, and The Economy.  That these are false gods is not new to Christianity, but the intuitive sense is they are “false god” because, though they are powerless, like “gods” they draw people away from the true God.  Our contention with mythic-lens reconstruction is to remove the words “like” from the previous sentence and remind the reader that they are not powerless at all, but powerful as gods in the old cosmologies.

In the previous passage from Isaiah the prophet made sport of those who create gods from wood and then cry out to them for help.  What irony that we read this passage with any arrogance when this is our exact situation.  There was no such thing as “science” as any kind of noun previous to the past three hundred years.  The same is true of the nation state.  The economy has not even existed for a century.  These realities as “entities” are completely constructed realities, one a methodology, and two relationships.  As psycho-social constructs they garner power in our society by faith.  The ability of these gods to sway the populace depends completely on the people’s faith in them.  This is even true of science.  No one will change their behavior, even of basic hygiene, if they do not believe in science.  Like all lesser gods these gods need faith to be effective.      

Science as a “god” is a demigod  at the service of the other two major gods of our culture.  The weakest of the two as of late is the Nation.  In the middle of last century the nation was powerful enough to evoke sentiment and move the populace to action.  The secular model grew up throwing off monarchical shackles and therefore saw the Nation as a saving us from the oppressive God of Christianity and its feudalistic structure. This god is geo-specific and took democratic to totalitarian forms across the political spectrum of fascism to communism.  THese forms sought to control “religion” and economy in differing ways.  

What first arose, beginning with Rousseau through Emile Durkheim and as far as Robert Bellah, was “civil religion”.  At this time Economy was engaged in a struggle with the Nation and the Nation was seeking by various philosophies to subdue it.  As of late the Nation is less of a power broker.  For now at least, the Nation is at the behest of Economy, which seems to have won the day.  This follows a classic pattern of new gods replacing old gods in ancient pagan structures.  This pattern plays out between older vedic verse the indo-aryan gods or the Greek and Roman gods.  In our case there was a rising type of deity, the Nation, which manifest differently among differing peoples and places.  That deity became locked in combat with a new powerful pan-regional deity called Economy, and seems to have lost.   

The shift of these powers from dynamic to animistic is betrayed in the language one experiences concerning them. It is not uncommon to hear that “the market is upset today” or “the nation is rejoicing”.  The language speaks to a unity beyond mere aggregation.  Both the rage and the joy of the market demand action.  This god is a shapeshifting deity who can take on the form of a raging bear or a benevolent bull, depending on its temperament.  The nation requires joyous displays, lest one be subject to ridicule, ostracization, or worse, depending on how strong the god of the Nation is.  When the Nation was coming into its own it was not uncommon to for it to be conceived of in feminine form, like Lady Liberty or Lady Justice.  This practiced hardened back to the civil deities of Rome, and the employment of this imagery was not accidental.  The use of these images was a cosmological crutch, to sustain the populace until the empirical materialist view became so dominant that no saw these deities as celestial mythic beings anymore, simple empirical forces, at best psycho-sociological constructs.    

The priests, prophets and mediums of these gods keep in tune with their desires and communicate them to the faithful.  As longs as the faithful remain faith filled, the systems work.  But from the point of view of the simple person, these are powers far beyond our ability to relate to.  We are subject to their demands and whims, even though we created them and unleashed them on ourselves.              

  Another extremely powerful god we will call “science”.  That phrase seems to spit in the face of the materialist / empirical cosmology that science stands for, but one cannot help admit that science has become an entity as much as a methodology as of late.  “Science indicates” speaks to more than “studies indicate”.  It carries a finality and foce beyond the methodology.  Science is also a personalized being.  To use the name of science conjures an image of ritual dress and ritual instruments that bring the power of this god to its devotees.  Science is the god of the mages who wield technique and technology. Science is also a cultural god that demands materialist cosmology, functional utility and a morality of enlightened hedonism.  Generally the mages of Science are subject to one or the other gods, Economy or the Nation.  The interplay between the three is complex to say the least, but one thing is sure,  all three work in concert against any true religious devotion to the one true God.        

A major part of mythic-lens reconstruction is the shaping of one’s ideas and language to realize the mythic in our midsts.  These powers are not like gods.  They do not “replace the function of what gods were”.  They are the gods.  To realize this is to practice mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial beings, beings that are not part of the physical world. It is not enough to treat these realities as similies to the old gods.  In as much as they draw glory away from God and toward themselves they must rekond with exactly as the old gods were.  They must be evangelized in on of the three methods layed out in Cosmic Evangelization,  fulfillment, conversion, or replacement. To do this we must first be able to recognize our situation with all the impact that we recognize it with the 20/20 view of history. 

Celestial Mythic Beings Interface with the Terrestrial: Wizards and Warriors

  

In all the great tales of valor and heroism, the “bad guys” are always able to rally forces to their cause.  Did Tolkien's orcs know they were on the bad team?  His cosmology would imply that they were objectively, but did they know it?  His mythic world is very useful because it sets the template for the modern fantasy genre, and thus the mythic cues speak directly to our situation.  

I live in the “Free World”, or so I am told.  Free from what?  Free from tyranny of totalitarian governments, free to worship as I please.  But after achieving a novice level at the three varieties of mythic-lens reconstruction we have discussed the world I live in becomes much darker.  I live in a world of self glorifying gods who seek absolute allegiance and enslave the populace by means of their wizards and warriors here on earth.  The ideas of these gods work directly against the ideals of the Christian God.  Any given wizard (scientist or technician) or Warrior (any given civil servant) and given prophet or prognosticator (economists) could actually be serving any of the three gods.  They could be using any matrix to further faith in their particular deity.  The more people they can bring to their side, the more powerful their god, and most likely the more powerful their ability to channel that god’s power. 

It is a mind boggling set of political intrigues that puts Game of Thrones to shame.  A politician in modern America is far more likely to serve the Economy than the Nation.  A scientist or economist may be motivated by duty to Nation.  An economist may see themselves as servants of Science.  All of these possibilities and more are directing any sense of devotion to God toward other powers.  In order to see our peril, lets be a little more mythic in our language.

We live in a society where Necromancers build citadels and control whole cities, destroying the health and wellbeing of its people and enslaving them by wielding the power of the god economy (oil refinery towns).  We live in a world where mind controlling mages reach the entire populace by means of soothing spells, as powerful as the jedi mind trick, that only the strong willed can escape, telling us to obey the gods, obey the gods, (advertising agencies, political action committees etc).  We live in a world where, what should be white mages, have been turned by the evil overarching god, Economy, and instead of providing health and well being sell fear and terror (pharmaceutical industry and healthcare / insurance industry).  We live in a world where wizards bekon us to stare into their crystal balls offering knowledge, offering escape, and by that action they can see into our lives and control our actions (the internet).  We live in a world where Economy demands war in its behalf and the mages who forge its weapons mobilize brute masses to spread destruction on upon the world in order to increase the power of Economy. We live in a world where the god Economy seeks child sacrifice, often of the first conceived after the order of Molech, so that people prove their faith in him (abortion).  We live in a world where evil mages wield powerful potions, which turn large population into zombies that mindlessly wander bereft of meaning and quality of life.  They can be healed, but the power of these mages seems to be ever spreading due to their chief god Economy supported by the Nation (Drug Cartels).  We live in a world where terrestrial mythic beings are hunted, imprisoned, even destroyed out of envy of their ability and spite of their need for support.

If you were living in this world and some practitioner of an ancient way (religion) came to you and demanded a quest based on views from an older time, would you decline?  This is not fantasy, this is reality, this is the world that we live in now, but with a multivalent cosmological overlay.  Tolkin states in On Fairy Tales,

Actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature can be her lover not her slave. 

If I were skilled enough, I write a series of fantasy novels about these dark times that became best sellers.  Then I would produce the movies with little to no spoilers.  When partons sat down to watch it, they would see their world, the modern world under the power of false gods and their agents each vying for power, none unredeemable but many misled.                     

The Final Twofold Use of Applied Remythologization

Why practice this technique?  Mythical and fantasy quests seem beyond our reach.  Is this an exercise in fantastic retreat for the sake of entertainment, in order to cope with a dark world?  Is this an exercise in self induced nihilism?  In On Fairy Tales Tolkien states,

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion. For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. 

The point of our exercise, applied remythologization, is to be able to take the world as it is and utilize narrative to draw on the dignity and power of the heroic quester.  The exercise of applied remythologization is a psycho-spiritual exercise of what a heroic myth is as described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  

[Here is] the nuclear unit of the monomyth.  A hero ventures from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

 

Our venture from the common world happens by a venture of exploratory cosmology.  Once remythologization is applied, one can utilize narrative appropriation and take the power and dignity of a mythic hero on one’s self.  One is on a mythic quest, here and now, and one is well within one’s rights to utilize their lineage.  

The quest takes two differning tacks. First it is a personal quest for the dignity of the hero.  Can one acquire the moral and relational tenor of a hero?  Can one put off seeing the world with bland mechanist eyes, where the market forces us into action against our fellow humans no hero could ever imagine?  This is the personal quest for upright Christian morality.  We must learn to see the dignity of all our fellow humans, especially the terrestrial mythics.  We must be humble when confronted with their value.  We must be valient where they are weak.  We must learn to recognize the false gods as such and make our personal choices apart from their demands and as servants of our more ancient and inclusive order of the cosmos.  We must utilize applied remythologization to know our peril when contemplating the first commandment and each commandment as it is ordered by the first.

The second quest is the social justice impetus given by applied remythologization.  According to the skills we have acquired we can now apply Cosmic Evangelization to the powers that so cruelly dominate our society.  According to that treatise, cosmic evangelization is the skill of reordering the principalities and powers according to Christ’s true conquest of them.  This is done through his mystical body, the Church, according to three possibilities.  The first is cosmic evangelization by fulfillment. This type is reserved for angels preparing the way for Christ.  Given our current mythic lens, it is not likely that this methodology will be useful.  Another is cosmic evangelization by replacement.  This is a type of cosmic evangelization where an evil god is exercised and replaced by a saint who will work as an intercessor while showing the glory of God.  Given the only slightly animistic tendencies of the prevailing cosmology this is not likely to be successful either, even though we as questers practice multivalent cosmology. These gods are so entrenched as of now, that their extrication seems impossible to the modern mind, even though “the Economy” did not exist less than two hundred years ago.  There is the strategic possibility for use of cosmic evangelization by replacement concerning calculated ritual.  THis strategy would augment our main strategy, and slowly work society into a situation where, if it is needed, we can exercise these demons.  But before expulsion there is the last possibility, which is cosmic evangelization by conversion.  That process was defined in the treatise Cosmic Evangelization by saying,

. . . our goal is cosmic evangelization by conversion, that is, to change the cult of that deity and actualize it, that is, turn it to its true end, and bring glory to God.  The rite and ritual of the humans is changed to offer dulia to the angelic power and latria to God.  In this case the principality can either accept appropriate dulia and come under the power of Christ the king, drawing humanity to God, or be self banished from cultic activity.  Again humans judge the angels, what is bound on Earth is bound in heaven and what is loosed on Earth is loosed in heaven.

                             

The two fold tack here is to seek conversion of the powers that dominate our social order and with an eye on replacing them is need be.  The constant mistake of modern Catholics trying to better society without the aid of applied remythologization is to use one power and pit it against the other, thereby coming under the power of the allied false god.  So a liberal may pit the government against the business, basically harnessing the agents of the Nation against the agents of the Economy.  Whereas a conservative may seek to pit the agents of Economy against the Nation under the guise of freeing the Economy from regulations of the Nation, a myth that harkens back to an earlier time of the struggle between the two, were communist utopias sought to facilitate the Nation’s enslavement of the Economy. 

If one uses applied remythologization and understands these powers as celetical mythic beings, one begins to see one’s peril as a Christian.  These are false gods, just as were the gods of mesopotamia and Egypt, seeking to tear Israel apart. To run from Mesopotamia to Egypt, as Israel was constantly want to do, causes nothing but trouble.  In a more accessible pagan setting, these are the tantamount to the imperial gods of Western paganism, constantly seeking to expand their reach for their own glory.  Our response cannot be to allie with these gods, not yet.  First they must be converted.  

Cosmic Evangelization discussed the conversion process as being facilitated by ritual.  That treatise generally implied a animistic cosmology, and now we are faced with a completely dynamistic one.  Thus the methodology will still be to build upon and alter existing ritual.  It must be remembered that the modern suspicion of “ritual”, much like the modern suspicion of terrestrial mythic beings, is not a disavowal but a redefinition.  As was stated in Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment,

The sociologist Emile Durkheim made a conscious effort to speculate on the eradication of religious ritual while maintaining a secular use for the power of ritual itself.   . . . What he had planned to do in the late 18th early 19th century, simply happened because rituals spring to life out of how humans are constructed.  A whole host of secular calculated rituals, related to secular myth, secular scientific cosmology and secular teleology are now present and intuitively competing with religious ritual.               

  Invested with applied remythologization, we must see ourselves as an ancient order, but not simply lay follow in dying ritual.  We must seek out the new ritual and identify it as such.  For example, we must point out the ritual of Black Friday, even as it leads to violence and identify it as a dark ritual of Economy.  We develop ritual that tames Science, Nation and Economy and offer them dulia where dulia is due, but direct latria only to the supreme God. This way we will understand that we truly are “one nation under God” as opposed to seeing our nation as a god in competition with other nations. We will understand that “love of money is the root of all evil” even as we use money and praise it according to the dulia it deserves.  

Identifying rituals that draw latria to Economy and Nation is key to this process, but as with all quests, we are not alone.  What would a proper myth be without the terrestrial mythic beings who aids the heros?  Our contention here is to bring the total scope of a multivalent cosmology to bear and begin to create ritual that honors our terrestrial mythic neighbors and their skill for enchanting.  Enchantment is not rational.  Nor, as Tolkien pointed out, is it art or magic (technology).  It is a different skill, they offer us as a free gift if we are willing to take it.  They are offering us wonder at God’s creation even in the midst of suffering.  They are offering this as dulia, because though they may be concupiscent, they are pure of intention.  To listen to the terrestrial mythic beings concerning our ritual lives, to create ritual around them as a segment of the human population could be a valuable asset in our quest.

The last element of cosmic evangelization we can apply to our social justice program is to remember that Christian cosmology is not simply dynamistic.  We also have existing celestial beings to call on for aid.  Those would be the angels as well as the saints.  Creating ritual around skewing the our rebellious gods toward dulia should involve these beings.  It is a reminder that the empirical cosmology is not sufficiently complete, that creation rings with life and sentience.  To incorporate the celestials also also keeps us aware of the union between that other world, the transcendent, and our own.  We live in a time of salvation history where worlds do collide, where Christ has opened the gates of heaven and allowed for appropriate commerce between heaven and Earth.  As this type of ritual develops and becomes stronger, it will allows for cosmic evangelization by replacement if necessary.  That seems impossible now for most people.  But again it must be remembered that none of these gods, as we conceive of them now, existed four hundred years ago. When the ancient missionaries confronted pagans, those pagans were as powerfully under the sway of their gods.

To conclude this part we must answer a possible criticism.  “Ritual?  Your response to the great injustices of our time is escapist ritual based on fairy tales?”  In honesty this seems like such a just response.  If one has never delved into actual applied remythologization, one is locked, as Tolkien puts it “enslaved”, in a certain point of view.  But ritual matters.  Ritual can be a catalyst for change.  It is hard to see this because we associate the word “ritual” with a superstitious dead set of actions that are almost completely ineffective.  But it is interesting that this is not what Durkheim believed about ritual, though it is what secularists after his vein would have you believe about it.  

One must take a wider view in order to better understand. What is “political protest” but a ritual of art, chant and music?  What is voting but a ritual of petition? What is legislation but a ritual meditation on order? What is war but a brutal ritual of human sacrifice?  The treatise The Onesiman Interface discussed the possibility of calculated ritual involving physical alleviation of poverty.  To offer development of ritual as a tactic is to offer a mindfulness of the ritual we engage in now and yet another trope of fulfillment.  It brings into sycnrynicoty the dynamic of myth and ritual to bear onto the secular world.  The overlay of applied remythologization allows for a type of narrative appropriation and investment in this ritual that allows one who know Christ as the fulfillment of all true myth to obtain the power, through the spirit and in cooperation with Christ’s mystical body on earth, of effectively cooperating with grace and effectively changing the world.          

Conclusion

The purpose of this treatise has been to explore the spiritual technique of applied remythologization.  We explored the development of a need for applied remythologization, the technique itself and then the practical moral application that it will have for it’s practitioner.  Hopefully, the end result has been the conveyance of skills to acquire a multivalent cosmology such that one can have a wider worldview and through that experience attune one’s clarity of moral vision. 

In the first section we reviewed the nature and purpose of myth in human culture and as a human need. We explored the terrestrial nature of the Bible and how, as a work of myth, it is not as “fantastic” as one would expect given the reputation of religious myth.  We went on to discuss the creative nature of pagan myths, and how they defy our observations of the physical world by reaffirming the interrelationship of dream, myth, and ritual.  We concluded first section up by exploring the extinction of useful myth during the fallout from the enlightenment, paying close attention to the program of Rudolf Bultmann to demythologize the Bible.

In the second section began by defining our skills that help one practice applied remythologization.  There were three major skills which together will allow the practitioner   multivalent cosmology.  We began with a brief comment on the necessity of myth for humans.  We then laid out the practice of the first two varieties of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning magic and terrestrial mythic beings. 

In  the final section we discussed the final exercise, mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial mythic beings.  With each technique discussed explored how applying these techniques allows for a multivalent cosmology, the ability to see the world with the modern empirical/materialist cosmology and at the same time see the world through a lense where mythic realities are present and active.  We ended this section with practical moral application.  We demonstrated how this technique invests the practitioner with a sense of moral clarity, the ability to see the powers that dominate our world against the will of God.  Lastly discussed how one can use this technique understand the imperative of applying cosmic evangelization through calculated ritual to the current cultural gods. 

As I was wrapping this treatise up I noticed an interesting viral phenomenon on the digital continent.  It was a critique of the map of the city of New Orleans, but the critique was by an editor of fantasy maps who noted how the structure of such a city was “unrealistic”.  The article doesn’t even make mention of the fact that this city is the only fortified city in the United States.  The huge “impossible” land mass is literally surrounded by a wall (levee).  The article is a comical farce which lightly makes our point, the world is a strange place, far stranger than we like to admit.  As Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”  Can we use this to reinvest ourselves with the moral strength and technique of the old heros, and see ourselves as having commerce with their power?  If so applied remythologization has been effective.