Myth Making
Creating a myth has proved to be harder and less intuitive than one may seem.
Just like writing poetry, writing your own myth must first involve having knowledge of prior myths. Having knowledge or understanding of prior myths allows one to see that they usually attempt to answer a fundamental question about life that without science is unanswerable. So to come to terms with reality, people would come up with stories. And sometimes they don’t always make sense; myths are fantastical, spiritual, and often involve personification of a phenomenon. But what they do have in common is a story, usually with some type of conflict.
Though working on my own myth, I understand it doesn’t simply take fantastical events to create an odd story. It’s got to make sense in some way. For my myth creation process, I took an already existing myth and tried to provide my own explanation where some of the stories fell short about Dionysus. I provided a reason as to why alcohol provides certain effects through the God of wine and revelry.
The study of myth is advanced because of the creation process. Knowing what goes to making a myth makes you appreciate the details of a myth and story. Is it human and a godly figure making contact? Why does conflict or love often take part in these myths, and what does that explain about human nature? It provides a lens into anthropology as these were also created to understand phenomena; stories shared among societies and spread and changed as they were spread. Our understanding of humans and our history is amplified.
Hi Mousho,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that creating a myth is actually hard than it presents itself. I like how you mention that a myth doesn’t just require “fantastical events” to occur, but in fact is deeply rooted in a variety of factors, such as explanations, society, and reasoning. Another great point you brought up is that myths have a story with a conflict, which is something that I did not think about. Now looking back, the myths we read, and even the ones we create all have a conflict. I am assuming the conflict provides a turning point in these origin stories and how things came in to fruition. Moreover, you took a complex topic such as wine, one in which we know the effects of, but do not know the purpose of, and created a myth that provides a reasoning behind this creation.
Furthermore, I relate with your statement that our study of myths enhances our knowledge of mythology because we are now able to understand all aspects of it and what purpose it serves.
-Viktoria Baklan