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."Pray," is perhaps merely the word of themodern interpreter; better might have been the phrase, "performtheir magic," for, as we have seen, the men's role in the hunt hadto be supported by the magic of their women.However, in theregions of the Great Hunt, where an essentially unbroken mascu-line psychology prevailed, supported by tokens of prestige, skillfulachievement, and the firm establishment of a courageous ego, thefeminine principle could be only ancillary to the purposes con-ceived and executed by the males.The goddess and her livingcounterparts could give magical support to the men's difficult tasksbut not touch their ruling concept of the nature of being.In themythologies of that world, or conceived in the spirit of that world,therefore, the fundamental theme is always achievement: achieve-ment of eternal life, magical power, the kingdom of God onearth, illumination, wealth, a good-natured woman, or somethingelse of the kind.The dominant principle is do ut des: "I give so thatthou mayest give" "I give to Thee, O God, so that Thou, inturn, mayest give something nice to me whether in this life or inthe next."In the milder regions of the plant-dominated tropics, on theother band, the feminine side was not simply ancillary but couldeven establish out of its own mode of experience the dominantpattern of the culture and its myth.And this is the force thatcomes to view in the myth of the serpent and the maiden, where 390 PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGYthe basic elements are: (1) the young woman ready for marriage(the nymph), associated with the mysteries of birth and menstrua-tion, these mysteries (and the womb itself, therefore) beingidentified with the lunar force; (2) the fructifying masculinesemen, identified with the waters of the earth and sky and imagedin the phallic, waterlike, lightninglike serpent by which the maidenis to be transformed; and (3) an experience of life as change,transformation, death, and new birth.The analogy of death and resurrection with the waning andwaxing of the moon; the analogy of the water's disintegration andfructification of the seed with the shadow swallowing and releas-ing the moon, and therewith, as it were, the moon's sloughing ofits skin of death; furthermore the resemblance of both of thesecycles, plant and lunar, to the passing and rising of the gen-erations, as well as to certain spiritual experiences of melan-choly and rapture intrinsic to the psyche these perceived anal-ogies must have constituted then, as they do still, a source bothof fascination and of inspiration to at least the more thought-ful members of the species, who at that time may well haveconstituted an even larger proportion of the population than today.A diffusion of this mythology and its ritual enactment of themystery of the monster serpent and the maiden from the mytho-genetic zone of Province a must have carried it in due course toProvince b, and then eastward into the circum-Pacific area, as wellas northwestward from Province a to the Mediterranean.So that thecurious myth at the opening of our chapter, of the young womanwhose serpent husband gave fire to their children, is almost certainlya descendant of the same tradition that in the Mediterranean sphereproduced the legends of Persephone and Eve.The amazing fact, however, is that in the Admiralty Island ver-sion, which is a comparatively primitive variant remaining on aproto-neolithic level, the antithesis that gave Nietzsche so much tothink about, between the myths of the feminine Fall and masculinefire-theft, is dissolved in a single image, full of seeming import,which contains both themes.It is through just such shifts of emphasis that primitive myths, THRESHOLDS OF THE NEOLI THI C 391and the myths of alien worlds, enable us to read anew the once pliantimages in our own tradition, which the centuries have embalmed.II.The Birth of Civilization in the Near East(c.7500-2500 B.C.)The concept of the "mythogenetic zone" applied to the stagesof our subject already viewed will clarify the main outlines of thisnatural history of the gods.Stage I we have termed the Stage of Plesianthropus.There canbe no question as to where myths and rites arose during thisperiod, if at all.Whatever part of the earth the students ofpaleontology may ultimately recognize as having been the "zoneof hominization" the part of the earth in which our speciesstepped away from its less playful, more grown-up, more serious-minded, economically oriented fellows, and began to play gamesof its own invention instead of only those of nature's we shallrecognize as our primary "mythogenetic zone."The brain capacity of Plesianthropus does not promise much inthe way of stimulating ideas; nor is the evidence rich enough togive us more than clues for romantic guesses.Yet both the pygmoidand the gigantic hominids of that time must have responded as allanimals do to the sign stimuli not only of their environmentsbut also of their own bodies and social situations.Also, no lessthan Khler's chimpanzees, they must have enjoyed the playfulinvention of new situations, games, and organizations.Such games,it is true, are not yet rites.But if the brain of Plesianthropus wascapable of playing with patterns of thought as well as with pat-terns of movement, the ground was present for a "seizure" onthis level.An individual "seizure" comparable, on the mentalplane, to the chimpanzee's "seizure" by the round polished stone * would have been a pointer, already, toward the mentality ofshamanism, while a group "seizure" again on the mental plane,but comparable to the fascination of the chimpanzees for theirdervish dance or for their dance around the pole would have* Supra, p.358.Supra, pp.358-359. 392 PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGYproduced something like a popular cult.The game, if com-municated, would then have established a tradition [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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."Pray," is perhaps merely the word of themodern interpreter; better might have been the phrase, "performtheir magic," for, as we have seen, the men's role in the hunt hadto be supported by the magic of their women.However, in theregions of the Great Hunt, where an essentially unbroken mascu-line psychology prevailed, supported by tokens of prestige, skillfulachievement, and the firm establishment of a courageous ego, thefeminine principle could be only ancillary to the purposes con-ceived and executed by the males.The goddess and her livingcounterparts could give magical support to the men's difficult tasksbut not touch their ruling concept of the nature of being.In themythologies of that world, or conceived in the spirit of that world,therefore, the fundamental theme is always achievement: achieve-ment of eternal life, magical power, the kingdom of God onearth, illumination, wealth, a good-natured woman, or somethingelse of the kind.The dominant principle is do ut des: "I give so thatthou mayest give" "I give to Thee, O God, so that Thou, inturn, mayest give something nice to me whether in this life or inthe next."In the milder regions of the plant-dominated tropics, on theother band, the feminine side was not simply ancillary but couldeven establish out of its own mode of experience the dominantpattern of the culture and its myth.And this is the force thatcomes to view in the myth of the serpent and the maiden, where 390 PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGYthe basic elements are: (1) the young woman ready for marriage(the nymph), associated with the mysteries of birth and menstrua-tion, these mysteries (and the womb itself, therefore) beingidentified with the lunar force; (2) the fructifying masculinesemen, identified with the waters of the earth and sky and imagedin the phallic, waterlike, lightninglike serpent by which the maidenis to be transformed; and (3) an experience of life as change,transformation, death, and new birth.The analogy of death and resurrection with the waning andwaxing of the moon; the analogy of the water's disintegration andfructification of the seed with the shadow swallowing and releas-ing the moon, and therewith, as it were, the moon's sloughing ofits skin of death; furthermore the resemblance of both of thesecycles, plant and lunar, to the passing and rising of the gen-erations, as well as to certain spiritual experiences of melan-choly and rapture intrinsic to the psyche these perceived anal-ogies must have constituted then, as they do still, a source bothof fascination and of inspiration to at least the more thought-ful members of the species, who at that time may well haveconstituted an even larger proportion of the population than today.A diffusion of this mythology and its ritual enactment of themystery of the monster serpent and the maiden from the mytho-genetic zone of Province a must have carried it in due course toProvince b, and then eastward into the circum-Pacific area, as wellas northwestward from Province a to the Mediterranean.So that thecurious myth at the opening of our chapter, of the young womanwhose serpent husband gave fire to their children, is almost certainlya descendant of the same tradition that in the Mediterranean sphereproduced the legends of Persephone and Eve.The amazing fact, however, is that in the Admiralty Island ver-sion, which is a comparatively primitive variant remaining on aproto-neolithic level, the antithesis that gave Nietzsche so much tothink about, between the myths of the feminine Fall and masculinefire-theft, is dissolved in a single image, full of seeming import,which contains both themes.It is through just such shifts of emphasis that primitive myths, THRESHOLDS OF THE NEOLI THI C 391and the myths of alien worlds, enable us to read anew the once pliantimages in our own tradition, which the centuries have embalmed.II.The Birth of Civilization in the Near East(c.7500-2500 B.C.)The concept of the "mythogenetic zone" applied to the stagesof our subject already viewed will clarify the main outlines of thisnatural history of the gods.Stage I we have termed the Stage of Plesianthropus.There canbe no question as to where myths and rites arose during thisperiod, if at all.Whatever part of the earth the students ofpaleontology may ultimately recognize as having been the "zoneof hominization" the part of the earth in which our speciesstepped away from its less playful, more grown-up, more serious-minded, economically oriented fellows, and began to play gamesof its own invention instead of only those of nature's we shallrecognize as our primary "mythogenetic zone."The brain capacity of Plesianthropus does not promise much inthe way of stimulating ideas; nor is the evidence rich enough togive us more than clues for romantic guesses.Yet both the pygmoidand the gigantic hominids of that time must have responded as allanimals do to the sign stimuli not only of their environmentsbut also of their own bodies and social situations.Also, no lessthan Khler's chimpanzees, they must have enjoyed the playfulinvention of new situations, games, and organizations.Such games,it is true, are not yet rites.But if the brain of Plesianthropus wascapable of playing with patterns of thought as well as with pat-terns of movement, the ground was present for a "seizure" onthis level.An individual "seizure" comparable, on the mentalplane, to the chimpanzee's "seizure" by the round polished stone * would have been a pointer, already, toward the mentality ofshamanism, while a group "seizure" again on the mental plane,but comparable to the fascination of the chimpanzees for theirdervish dance or for their dance around the pole would have* Supra, p.358.Supra, pp.358-359. 392 PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGYproduced something like a popular cult.The game, if com-municated, would then have established a tradition [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]