| To start with; some people believe that
after his resurrection, Jesus visited a lot of different peoples on this
planet and established his church including the Celtic peoples. Some
historians have shown that their ceremonies reflect what has been discovered
about the rituals the original Christians practiced in and for a while after
Christ earthly ministry. When others invaded their lands years later, the
true Christian beliefs and rites had either been altered or lost completely and
the invaders assumed the Celts (and others of that time period,) were
practicing pagan beliefs and ceremonies. Thus the following: |
Joseph Neil Fairbanks
I sometimes wonder at the light and knowledge we
have lost because of our own intransigience, ignorance and disobedience. I
utilize the example of the children's fairy tale of "Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs". Clearly a Kabbalic tale, one of the Celtic verities
told as a parable to preserve its
meaning against the persecutions of the self-righteous and the religiously
intolerant, not to mention the wiles of the adversary (Satan). Clearly
Kabbalic, you say? Indeed. Snow White, the virgin spirit sent forth from
her Father's realm (Heaven) finds herself trapped in the fallen physical
world, where she is taught, nurtured by seven dwarfs. Seven Dwarfs, the Seven
Spheres below the veil...miners because they dig up truth in this
dark and dreary world of Assiah (see the (Kabbalic) tree of Life
diagram below). Along comes the serpent, ummm, I mean evil
step-mother, and tempts her with the fruit of the tree of the science
(knowledge) of good and evil, which she consumes, and in that day "surely" dies ["surely" is an
aphorism for "spiritually", the whole statement being "In
the day thou partakest thereof, thou shalt surely die." By
understanding the aphorism, we resolve the paradox, remove the distortion and
see that we do not have to stretch to know that God is not a liar].
Hmmm. I think I have read this story before! So the omniscient father
sends forth his true prince to overcome the serpent, and cast it into the
abyss, and rescue the virgin called Ziyon. The parallels are so clear
as to defy logic in a tale meant to hide the story from the religious
inquisitors. Yet I daresay that almost no one considers this tale to be of
eternal worth. I do not want to get into a full-blown discussion of philosophy,
or literary theory, but some of their modern statements are apropos here. The
chief point of most discourse: obfuscation. Jacques Derrida posits it thusly:
"A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the
first glance, the laws of its composition and the rules of its game."
Jacques Lacan further notes: "One of the prime functions of speech .
. . is not to reveal thoughts, but to conceal them, especially from
ourselves." (Things should always be read with the Spirit/Holy Ghost)my
insertion!
·
The myth is the foundation of life; it is the
timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its
traits out of the unconscious. Certainly when a writer has acquired the habit
of regarding life as mythical and typical there comes a curious heightening of
his artistic temper, a new refreshment to his perceiving and shaping powers.
--Thomas Mann
Beneath the hierarchy of communication there lies a
mythological foundation that antecedes the communication and from which flows
its primal, creative energies. Organizations will generally propagate a
conscious myth to justify their entrance into the social scene. In addition to
the conscious myth there are subconscious myths that usually are not even
evident to the founders. It seems to be common that we can see the mythological
basis for religious beliefs, and additionally see the utilization of those
myths in religious organizations, but for some reason, we have difficulty
seeing the same mythological basis for the organization of religion, or for
other organizations in society. Adrian Cunningham introduces the subject as a
topic which not only occupies a central role in the study of religion but
which, especially under the impact of the work of Levi-Strauss, has provided a
focus for methodological debate in various sciences, and raised, at least for
response, the possibility of a unification of sciences, centered on the study
of communication and meaning as the central human fact, rendering problematic
many accepted procedures of description, objectivity and explanation.
From a definitional standpoint, one finds oneself in a quandary to define myth because of its elusively. Many people subscribe to the notion that myth is simply stories that are not true. Myths are constructs related to the subconscious, the unconscious and the conscious interpretation of society, usually beginning at the body, and its extension into the physical world. In many modern secular and religious circles, myths are seen as having no relationship to reality. Most people find their own myths to be "reality," and those of others to be false. I find myself constrained to accept Claude Levi-Strauss's definition of myth as "consisting of all its versions." ...
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