We have been studying the myths and legends of world cultures (not our own, because of course, we don’t have myths, we have God’s own truth) for at least 200 years now. And much excellent work has been done by talented and insightful scholars who have put a great deal of time and effort into piercing the veil of illusion that all culture inevitably develop.

But one aspect, it seems to me, is always missing from the analysis : that myths and legends are, primarily, stories.

That’s all they are. Sure, they might be a lot of other things, and they certainly serve many other functions, but their fundamental nature is still that of an oft-told tale, and as such, is bound by the rules of narrative.

I am sure that nothing I have said is particularly shocking so far. Even if they don’t use the same terms, and the fact that Mythology and Literary Analysis are two entire different faculties with professors to support, I am sure that I could get grudging agreement from both that a myth is a story.

I mean, what else could it be? A tone poem?

They might even agree that the tools of literary analysis can be quite useful when applied to myths and legends.

But I am not here to talk about literary analysis. That’s theory. What I want to talk about tonight is the other end of the spectrum : practice. Namely, the effect of the nature of storytelling on the myths and legends of the world.

Human beings love to tell stories. There is no denying that. And when we tell our stories, we want them to be received by an attentive and interested audience. We want to entertain, amuse, touch, or otherwise move our audience, and we want to be praised and thanked for that story.

In the modern era, where the line between fiction and nonfiction is not only established but very important, what that means is that mass media tends to focus on the trinity of story appeal : sex, violence, and betrayal.

But if we travel further back to before the printing press and mass literacy, not to mention mass transit, most people didn’t go far from their home village, and storytelling was not concerned with fiction versus nonfiction. It didn’t really matter much of a stranger’s story about far off lands or great heroes were true or not. A good story was a good story, and people could believe it or not, as suited them. Either way, nothing in their life would change.

And this extends all the way back to the glory days of early civilization, and probably beyond. Whether you are a caveman recounting the day’s hunt and maybe embellishing a few details to make your story better or a high priest of Amin in ancient Egypt, when you told your stories, you were probably keenly aware of the effect on your audience.

And so, as this myths are retold, either by a religion or just that nice fellow at the end of the bar who will entertain you for hours if you buy his drinks for him, the stories change in order to gain mass appeal.

That’s why pre-Christian mythos is so full of that dark trinity : sex, violence, and betrayal. And often, the further back you go in the mythos, the more violent and primal it gets because it is mirroring the rise of civilization and retelling that story, of emergence from primal forces and growing into who you are today, in a way that was appealing to people.

Christianity broke that mold…. sort of. A casual perusal of the Old Testament will reveal that there is a ton of freaky sex and horrible violence in it. That is because its content predates Christianity. It is a compilation of old myths and legends from early Judaism, as well as any other faith that got conquered by pre-Christians, and as such it represents the kind of stories that got passed around during that period.

So what do you get? All the juicy parts of popular storytelling. Not just sex, violence, and betrayal, but revenge, ambition, the rise and fall of great men and women, and all the other things that tickle our reptile brain fancies.

Once you grasp that these stories came not from the heavens but from the need to influence (perhaps even control) an audience, you can begin to understand that the content of them as we know it passed through the mouths and ears of many a storyteller hungry for audience approval.

There can be no “original source”, of course. It’s not like the gods told one person and then it got mucked up in the retelling. All of these myths came from somewhere, and my guess is, they came from some storyteller who was looking to captivate an audience with a really, really good story.

One that didn’t just entertain, it explained. Like I have said, it can be a very small jump between “this thing that might have happened for all anyone knows” to “this thing I just told people probably happened”, and another even smaller jump to “everyone believes it happened now…. clearly I am divinely inspired, receiving direct truth!”.

Remember, this is before we had any idea that there was such a thing as a subconscious mind. All mental activity was equally mysterious. So when you are waxing narrative over a spellbound audience, and you end up making up a whole extra chapter to the legends of Hercules in the process, well, where else could that have come from but the gods themselves?

And if the gods put it there, it must be true! It must have really happened. Suddenly the storytelling type person has a direct line to the gods.

If they keep that up, they can promote themselves to a new rank : the priest class, whose job it is to tell you what the god(s) want and do not want.

And then the storytellers gain real power.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.