7 Myths as Sacred Stories
Chapter 7 audio can be accessed on Soundcloud. Instructor resources are available on Canvas Commons.
Chapter 7 Learning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to:
- Interpret the meaning behind sacred cultural stories.
- Demonstrate how myths establish and maintain moral values for a cultural group.
- Understand the role of myths in shaping the cultural and religious worldview of a group.
7.1 Types of Myths and Stories
While this course focuses on religion, witchcraft and magic, for a moment we will diverge and use the term art. Anthropologists define “art” as, “symbolic representations of thought, feeling and ideas.” Art is central to the foundation, establishment, and maintenance of all human societies. Human societies created visual and verbal arts before the invention of writing (which only occurred around 5,000 years ago). As a result, societies across time have used (and continue to use) art to give meaningful expression to almost every part of their culture. This includes ideas about religion, kinship, and ethnic identity. Therefore, the verbal arts: myths, stories, and folklore, became a form of cultural reinforcement – a way to enculturate the next generation into a religion and dispel morals and values central to cultural survival.
The verbal arts include myths, folklore, narratives, dramas, poetry, incantations, proverbs riddles, word-games, even things like naming procedures, compliments and insults! As you know, the United States has historically been a society made up from people originating in many different lands, all with their unique set of myths and traditions. When they settled in the United States, they settled in cultural enclaves, which enabled them to preserve much of their culture and this included their verbal arts, myths and stories. However, this would begin to change during the 19th century as the industrial revolution triggered dramatic changes in the national culture and changed the way of life for most people. As young people moved away from home to work in factories and mills, they left their cultural enclaves and much of the folk myths and stories began to vanish without a trace. Alarmed at this Anthropologists began the work of attempting to write down these previously unwritten myths and stories. In so doing, Anthropologists coined the word ‘folklore’ – since these had been traditional oral traditions passed down from generation to generation.
7.2 What is a “myth”?
The word myth is derived from the Greek word: mythos, meaning speech or story. A myth is a sacred story that reflects and reinforces a community’s worldview. Myths explain the fundamentals of human existence, explain where everything we know comes from, why we are here, where we are going, and even our existential purpose. It’s important to understand that when the term “myth” is used, it is not to imply that the narrative is false, but rather to indicate that the narrative is sacred.
Myths provide the rationa