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A manashi
or traditional storyteller at
Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, July 2002.
© Simon Garbutt
The Voice of the Peoples
Mar 03, 2010
Most
scholars have traditionally assumed
that mythology arose from a
primitive inability to understand
forces that we now
comprehend. But an alternative view
has gained considerable support from
plasma science. This view holds that
our forebears witnessed intense
electrical phenomena beyond anything
occurring today.
‘Plasma mythology’ works from the understanding that many myth lines, including
the global themes of creation mythology, were ultimately based on eye-witness
accounts of complex near-earth plasmas accompanying prehistoric geomagnetic
storms of unimaginable magnitude. As such, plasma mythology effectively
represents a contemporary revival of the ‘nature schools’ of mythology that were
in vogue in the academic world until the meteoric rise of Freud’s and Jung’s
ideas. The extraordinary advantage of a naturalist theory of myth, especially a
catastrophist one, is that it does not make a mockery of the traditional
insistence of indigenous cultures that creation mythology embodies true history.
On the contrary, in contrast to the dominant theories of the 20th
century, plasma mythology offers an approach that traditional non-western
societies can potentially sympathise with.In identifying genuine natural phenomena that may have caused events remembered
in myths, plasma mythology places itself much closer to the typical ‘uncultured’
understanding of what the myths were about than did the theories of Sigmund
Freud, Carl Jung, Émile Durkheim, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and a
bevy of others. Though these authorities did, of course, offer some very
insightful ideas as they charted the psychological, sociological and
neurological dimensions of myth, they systematically missed the historical
essence of their sources, pushing their own interpretations in an arrogant
academic spirit of Besserwisserei. This happened at the expense of the
very explicit claims of traditional peoples that the mythical events were real
historical occurrences that genuinely explain how the present state of the world
has evolved from an earlier one. At a loss to make sense of such claims, the big
names in the comparative mythology of the 20th century have had to
ignore or deny such claims of historicity, thereby distancing themselves from
the native, ‘literal’ understanding that prevailed practically everywhere until
‘reason’ stepped in.
Insofar as the present endeavour initially involves little more than just
‘listening in’ to traditional reports and distilling recurring patterns from the
welter of data, without imposing too many a priori assumptions, it takes
a much closer and, arguably, more respectful stance towards indigenous
understanding of creation myths in particular. One must dismiss an absolutely
literal interpretation of myths, according to which the sky would have been
populated with real talking animals and hybrid creatures, and is forced to
embrace a symbolic reading of the myths, recognising that a ‘dragon’, a
‘serpent’ or a mythical ‘ancestor’ may really refer to a natural prototype that
resembled a snake or a person. The fluidity of mythical metaphors, if anything,
dictates such a symbolic understanding. The essential difference with the
psychosociological paradigms of the past century is that these metaphors must
have been inspired primarily by real, visible phenomena in nature, not by
abstract patterns in the unconscious mind. So the type of symbolism of which the
mythical narrative is woven together is much more visual than abstract. On that
provision, plasma mythology takes the historicity of mythical events and the
reliability of the reports much more seriously than its intellectual precursors
have done, who typically had to resort to excessive measures of poetic
elaboration, exaggeration and superstition while making a laughing stock of
ethnic naivety.Plasma mythologists are
not alone in vindicating traditional claims of historicity in myths;
geomythologists and those who recognise mythical reflexes of cometary
apparitions participate in the same Renaissance of mythological theory. Bruce
Masse is an environmental archaeologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory,
New Mexico, who has done particularly much to drive this home, writing:
“The scientific study of myth is dominated by a paradigm that recognizes myth as
having been viewed as truthful narrative history by past traditional cultures
and yet is considered false or otherwise suspect by the modern scholars who
study myth. Although virtually all scholars recognize that myth was of critical
importance for traditional cultures, the attempt to elicit scientific reasons
for this importance has led to many competing theories, few of which place an
emphasis on the validity of myths as representing the product of actual observed
historical natural events. This paradox may hinder our understanding of the
origins of myth and prevent us from fully appreciating a critical aspect of why
myth was so highly valued by past cultures.” Masse continued:
“Myths are cultural accounts of major events that typically happened in the
remote past of that culture, when the world was different to today. They are
considered truthful by the traditional knowledge keepers who transmit the
stories, and mostly are profoundly sacred or at least are imbued with strong
religious and ritual overtones. … The fact that virtually all traditional
knowledge keepers believe myths (and legends) to be historically true whereas
nearly all scientists presume they do not represent factual historical events is
a disquieting conundrum that tells us more about the biases of western science
than the nature of myth. The great diversity of the scholarly works on myth
shows that, although being one of the most studied subjects in the history of
the social sciences and the humanities, it has not yet been entirely understood.
At the crux of this confusion is the simple and straightforward question of
whether or not the storyline content of myth has any basis in historical events
or processes.”Masse went on to present his own take, which agrees with ours: “It can be
demonstrated beyond any doubt that at least some myths and categories of myth
are based on the observation of specific real natural phenomena and events that
can be accurately placed in both space and time and can be linked to various
types of physical evidence for the historical event.” And: “Astronomy shares
with the Earth sciences a kindred relationship in that both can be used not only
to demonstrate the reality of many myths but also to serve as vehicles by which
to mine myths for important information about these natural processes and events
…” The respective fields of enquiry that explore the reflexes of such natural
phenomena in the sky and on earth can be labelled cosmomythology versus
geomythology.
Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs
www.mythopedia.info
Further Reading:
The Mythology of the World Axis;
Exploring the Role of Plasma in
World Mythology
www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an
Atmospheric Phenomenon
www.lulu.com/content/1305081
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