It seemed to [Tuor] that a great wave rose far off and rolled towards the land, but wonder held him. […] The wave came towards him, and upon it lay a mist of shadow. Then suddenly as it drew near it curled, and broke, and rushed forward in long arms of foam; but where it had broken there stood dark against the rising storm a living shape of great height and majesty. (Unfinished Tales 30)

Tuor’s encounter with Ulmo made quite an impression on me, an impression that was deepened after seeing some awe-inspiring works of art illustrating the scene:

While reflecting on the story, I coined the phrase “journey to the sea” to summarize the story and its effect on me. As I continued to contemplate the phrase and study other myths, my affinity for it grew. The two nouns, journey and sea, contain such rich mythic meanings! Let me look briefly at what each of these words means to me.

“Sea”

Sextus Empiricus, a second-century Roman doctor and philosopher, made this observation:

How great is the astonishment the sea causes in a man who beholds it for the first time! (69)

Myth and the sea impact me in similar ways. I have spent most of my life living in landlocked areas, and I still feel this astonishment every time I stand on the shoreline and experience the vastness of the sea, the impressive power of the crashing waves, the delightful sounds of seagulls, and the refreshment of the cool sea breeze. Since childhood, myth has delighted me, instructed me, strengthened me, and taken my breath away. Sometimes these stories fill me with hope and joy; other times, they move me to tears.

In an influential lecture, Tolkien described Beowulf with this analogy:

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone. […] Of the [stone] he took some and built a tower. […] From the top of the tower the man [was] able to look out upon the sea. (“Monsters” 105-106)

The tower here refers to the poem itself, the old stone to ancient themes and images the poet incorporated into it. The sea represents the experience myth can produce in its readers, the same experience I described above.

“Journey”

Many myths contain a common pattern of events referred to as the hero’s journey. Scholars have detailed the many different stages and variations in this pattern, but the important stages of this journey for me are these:

1. The hero leaves the ordinary world, often prompted by a call to adventure.
2. The hero reaches another realm, often with some magical aid, where he completes a set of tasks and achieves some boon.
3. The hero returns to the ordinary world, where he uses the boon to benefit others.

This pattern appears in the two stories that had the strongest impact on me in my childhood. In Redwall, the young mouse Matthias recovers the lost sword of ancient lore to save his abbey from the invading rat Cluny the Scourge; in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker learns the ways of a Jedi Knight to rescue his father from the Dark Side and save the galaxy from the tyranny of the evil Empire. These stories resonated with me in ways that I did not fully understand at the time.

Much later, Joseph Campbell’s work introduced me to the power these stories possess for transforming our lives. They can serve as inspiration and models for us to achieve our full potential. Campbell spoke often of a feeling he called “bliss,” a deep satisfaction that comes from “doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself” (xxii). He described life as a hero’s journey to discover what produces this bliss in us, to overcome any trial in our effort to pursue it, and then to benefit others in that pursuit. For me, that pursuit involves myth.

All these thoughts came to my mind when I chose the name Journey to the Sea. This site exists as a way for me to pursue my bliss in myth and to share what I achieve on the journey with others. Through researching and writing articles, I should continue to experience astonishment at myth; I look to other contributors for articles and comments as the magic helpers to aid me in my own journey; and with any luck, the articles I write and my replies to comments will in turn benefit others. I hope that through this site we can all achieve a richer experience of wonder and delight in myths and learn to apply their instruction and wisdom to our everyday lives.

References

• Tolkien, J. R., and Christopher Tolkien. Unfinished Tales. Westminster: Del Rey, 1988.
• Tolkien, J. R.R. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
• Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. In Selections from the Major Writings. Trans. Sanford G.  Etheridge. Ed. Phillip P. Hallie. Boston: Hackett, 1985.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. “Monsters and Critics.” Beowulf : A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Daniel Donoghue. Boston: W. W. Norton, 2002.
• Jacques, Brian. Redwall. New York: Penguin, 1987.
• Star Wars. George Lucas. 20th Century Fox, 1977.
• Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss. “Introduction” (xv-xxii) and “The Self as Hero” (111-134). Chicago: New World Library, 2004.

Image modified and used with permission of John Howe

When Red Prophet begins, we find ourselves cast back in time, prior to the events of Seventh Son, as we meet the character who will become the Shining Man in Alvin’s vision, Tenskwa-Tawa. Tenskwa-Tawa is an actual historical figure, also known as “The Prophet” or “The Shawnee Prophet.” He was the brother of the famous Shawnee warrior Ta-Kumsaw (Tecumseh), and he founded the Native American settlement called “Prophetstown” at the juncture of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers in Ohio territory (modern-day Indiana). This is where the so-called Battle of Tippecanoe took place in 1811, when troops led by William Henry Harrison, future President of the United States, burned Prophetstown to the ground in a bloody victory that earned him the nickname “Old Tippecanoe.”

As Card weaves the story of Alvin Maker into these historical events, Alvin learns from the Indians Tenskwa-Tawa and Ta-Kumsaw  that his knacks are not some kind of personal prowess, but instead derive from the powers of the living land itself. When the Europeans practice their knacks in ignorance of this fact, they are stumbling in the dark, not even aware of what they are doing. This makes the Europeans and their knacks contemptible in the eyes of someone like Ta-Kumsaw, who lives his life in full awareness of the natural order:

These White men with their weak little knacks. These White men with their hexes and their wardings. Didn’t they know their hexes only fended off unnatural things? If a thief comes, knowing he does wrong, then a good strong fending hex makes his fear grow till he cries out and runs away. But the Red man never is a thief. […] To the Red man a knack is like a fly, buzz buzz buzz. Far above this fly, the power of the living land is a hundred hawks, watching, circling. (Chapter 2)

With the help of Ta-Kumsaw, Alvin is able to deepen his understanding of his own powers, going far beyond the tricks he had learned to do with his knacks. As a result, Alvin is able to perceive the greensong and feel a connection with the land itself, much as Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet are able to do.

At a certain point in the novel, Ta-Kumsaw and Alvin must make their way on foot to Fort Detroit, 200 miles, which Ta-Kumsaw planned to travel in a single day. How could that be possible? The Indians are able to travel that distance by calling on the power of the land itself:

The Red man called on the strength of the land to help him. The ground pushed back against his feet, adding to his strength. The bushes parted, making paths, space appeared where there was no space. […] Ta-Kumsaw’s hunger to arrive at Fort Detroit was so strong that the land answered by feeding him, giving him strength. (Chapter 11)

These are powers which Ta-Kumsaw has known all his life, but he did not expect that Alvin would be able to keep up with him, and he planned to carry the boy. Instead, much to Ta-Kumsaw’s surprise, Alvin was able to hear the greensong of the land and keep up with Ta-Kumsaw, pace for pace, in their 200-mile journey. Prior to this journey, Alvin did not know that he had this power, this connection to the land. It is the first of many lessons that he will learn in his journeys with Ta-Kumsaw.

These magical powers which Ta-Kumsaw and the Shawnees use are part of the natural order; they are what you could call perfectly natural powers, with nothing supernatural about them at all. To the White men, however, the Indians’ powers appear to be supernatural simply because the White men’s magic is itself an act against nature, something that stands outside the natural order and violates the limitations that keep that ecology in balance. Indeed, the entirety of White civilization is seen as an assault on the natural order of things, and Ta-Kumsaw and his brother Tenskwa-Tawa are struggling to drive the White men from the land before it is utterly destroyed:

Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all. (Chapter 2)

The ecology of magic turns out to be about the ecology of nature itself, and the balance of the living ecosystem. When Alvin leaves Ta-Kumsaw and returns to his family’s home at the end of the novel, he still hears the greensong around him:

At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful, even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. (Chapter 19)

Of course, this is just the end of Book 2 in what will be a seven-book series, with much opportunity still for Alvin to struggle towards a brighter future, even after the tragedy at Tippecanoe.

The themes of magic and environmentalism are beautifully entwined in this book, providing a new dimension to the ethical moralism of Alvin’s vow in Seventh Son. Alvin had recognized that there were moral limits which limited his magical knacks, but in Red Prophet he begins to learn how those magical powers are part of a larger natural order which depends not just on individual righteousness but on the principle of balance, and the limitations which are needed to sustain that balance. In my next article, I’ll turn to the third magical stream which flows through Card’s imaginary America — African magic — to see what it has to teach us about magical powers, and about their limits.

Satan’s rebellion begins when God calls an assembly of all the angels in Heaven in order to announce that he has appointed his Son to reign over them: “To Him shall bow / All knees in Heav’n” (V.607-608). Satan believes that he and the Son are equal in rank, and he concludes that God in this exaltation of the Son is unjust. Satan refuses to surrender his personal freedom or to submit to what he regards as the illegitimate reign of the Son, and he appeals to the other angels to do the same:

Will ye submit your necks and choose to bend / The supple knee? Ye will not […] if ye know yourselves / Natives and sons of Heav’n possessed before / By none. (V.787-791)

One-third of the angels join Satan, and Satan criticizes those that do not follow him: “I see that most through sloth had rather serve” (V.166). Satan then leads his followers in an attack against Heaven. The battle between the loyal and rebel angels rages for days before the Son comes forth from his throne; the Son defeats Satan and casts the rebellious angels from Heaven to Hell.

Even in Hell, Satan remains committed to the cause which he sees as just. He implores his troops to have the “courage never to submit or yield” (I.108). He describes God’s reign as “the tyranny of Heav’n” (I.122-124). He stands firm in his dedication to freedom and liberty, proclaiming:

Here at last [in Hell] / We shall be free. […] Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven! (I.258-259, 263)

John Milton published the first edition of Paradise Lost in 1667. Literary critics for over a hundred years afterwards interpreted the fall of Satan along the lines of traditional Christian theology. They took Satan to be the villain and Adam the hero. They read the poem as consistent with what I am calling the “religious theme”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority; God’s actions are beyond scrutiny. For example, John Dryden (the first literary critic to comment on Paradise Lost) in 1697 criticized the poem for having the villain take center stage and defeat the hero (214).

Near the end of the eighteenth century, however, William Blake put forth a new interpretation. Blake believed that Milton portrayed Satan more richly and magnificently than he portrayed God, and he took this as evidence that Milton (perhaps unwittingly) sided with Satan:

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. (Plate 6)

Blake took the meaning of the poem to be consistent with what I am calling the “humanistic theme”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked; if man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

Blake’s interpretation, taking Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, dominated nineteenth century criticism of the poem. These critics saw Satan’s response to God as similar to that of Prometheus’s response to Zeus, both rebelling against wicked tyrants and both regarding their cause as just. Walter Alexander Raleigh, writing at the conclusion of the nineteenth century, clearly took Satan to be the hero of the poem:

Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus. […] His very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool.

In reaction to this humanistic interpretation of the nineteenth century, some twentieth-century scholars began reasserting the religious interpretation. Charles Williams, in his 1940 introduction to an edition of Paradise Lost, contended that Satan is indeed not a hero but a fool. His close fried C.S. Lewis developed the idea further in his 1942 A Preface to Paradise Lost:

A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers — including even his power to revolt. […] The same rebellion which means misery for the feelings and corruption of the will, means Nonsense for the intellect. (97)

In 1967, Stanley Fish brought the religious interpretation back to prominence. Unlike Williams and Lewis were, Fish is not religious person; the irony of him arguing for a religious interpretation may have added to the persuasiveness of his argument. He claimed that the poem tempts the reader in the same way that Satan tempted Adam and Eve, but that the reader must overcome the temptation and see Satan as the villain:

The reader who falls before the lures of Satanic rhetoric displays […] the weakness of Adam and … [fails] to avoid repeating [Adam's] fall. (Surprised By Sin 38)

Both interpretations of Satan’s fall have their adherents today. Philip Pullman’s award-winning His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy was heavily influenced by the humanistic interpretation of Paradise Lost. He tells a story he heard of a country squire from the time of Blake whose reaction to hearing the poem read aloud mirrors Pullman’s own reaction:

Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims, ‘By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this [Satan's a] fine fellow, and I hope he may win!’ (1)

Stanley Fish continues to be influential, developing and refining this religious interpretation of Paradise Lost over the last thirty years. In a collection of essays published in 2001, he wrote:

[Satan] is trying to bootstrap himself […] to deity. […] His failure is [the failure] to understand [that] deity is an order of being that is fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, one’s own — a source not a rival. (How Milton Works 99)

The two interpretations found among literary critics of this poem reflect the two themes we saw reflected in Western myths concerning man’s proper response to the divine — Job on the one hand, Prometheus Bound on the other. In the next article in this series, I will look at how these two themes appear in interpretations of a story about Iblis (a character in the Qur’an with striking similarities to Milton’s Satan) among Islamic theologians.

References

• Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Tesky. W. W. Norton, 2004.
• Dryden, John. “Virgil and the Aeneid.” Dramatic Essays. Ed. William Henry Hudson. E.P. Dutton, 1921.
• Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (Full text available online.)
• Raleigh, Sir Walter Alexander. Milton. E. Arnold, 1900.
• Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. 1942. Oxford University Press, 1961.
• Fish, Stanley. Surprised By Sin. St. Martin’s Press, 1967.
• Pullman, Philip. “Introduction.” Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2005. 1-10. (Full text available online.)
• Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

1. Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and His actions are beyond human scrutiny.
2. Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

For simplicity, I will refer to the first theme as “religious” theme and the second as “humanistic.” While these themes and particularly these labels are admittedly broad generalizations, I think they summarize well the range of insights concerning man’s relationship to the divine that have influenced Western mythology. With this disclaimer behind us, let’s now take a look at some Western myths expressing these two themes.

Religious Theme

We find the first theme in the religious texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Consider the story of Job, a pious man who experiences great suffering. He loses his property, his family, and his health. He believes God has treated him unfairly, and he wishes for a court in which he could bring God to trial. God appears to him and responds, but only with questions like the following:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4)

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?” (Job 41:1).

Job’s response is repentance and humble submission:

Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth. (Job 40:4)

I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. […]
I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:3, 6)

Job at first interprets his suffering as evidence that God is not just, but he repents after he experiences God’s presence. God does not even defend his actions to Job; God’s questioning convinces Job that such scrutiny of God is not proper for man.

A story from Qur’an 18:65-82 expresses this same theme. Moses encounters a servant of God, who allows Moses to accompany him on his journey — as long as Moses does not question his actions. This servant of God then proceeds to vandalize a ship in the harbor, to murder a boy who crosses their path, and to repair a wall in a city that shows them no hospitality. These acts shock Moses, who breaks his oath and questions the man:

Have you made a hole in [the ship] to drown its inmates? Certainly you have done a grievous thing. […] Have you slain an innocent person otherwise than for manslaughter? Certainly you have done an evil thing. […] If you had pleased, you might certainly have taken a recompense for [repairing the wall]. (Qur’an 18:71, 74, 77)

The servant of God explains how each of these three actions are expressions of God’s kindness and mercy, even though they appeared evil to Moses. (For example, the king was about to seize all seaworthy vessels for war; the vandalism of the ship saved it from being confiscated.) He rebukes Moses for questioning his actions and then continues on his journey alone. Moses’s scrutiny of God fails because he lacks the knowledge that God possesses. This story communicates the same message as the Job story: such questioning of God is not proper for man.

Humanistic Theme

We find the second, humanistic theme in a wide range of European cultural traditions, such as Greek and Norse mythology. The character of Prometheus has become paradigmatic of this theme, particularly in the version of his story told in the fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound (historically attributed to the playwright Aeschylus). Prometheus first aids Zeus in overthrowing Zeus’s father, Kronos. When Zeus later attempts to destroy mankind, Prometheus frustrates his plan. Against Zeus’s wish, Prometheus steals fire to benefit mankind. The play begins and ends with Prometheus, chained to the rocky crags, recounting his deeds and condemning Zeus:

Chorus
Zeus governs with lawless customs. (144-151)

Prometheus
Does it not seem to you that the tyrant of the gods is violent in all his ways? (736-741)

In one word, I hate all the gods that received good at my hand and with ill requite me wrongfully. (975-976)

Because Zeus’s plan to destroy mankind is violent and unjust, Prometheus claims the right and even the obligation to rebel against him.

This same theme of rebellion against a tyrannical God drives much of the plot of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, the final book of which was published in 2000. An army of angels and men has formed to rebel against God. Two members of this army describe God (“the Authority”) and explain their rebellion against him in these words:

[The Authority] was never the creator. He was an angel. […] He told those that came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. (Amber Spyglass 28)

At some point the Authority took charge. […] The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. […] We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven. (Amber Spyglass 188)

God justifies his oppressive dictatorship with lies, and he keeps his subjects submissive through a reign of terror. The members of this rebellious army take upon themselves the responsibility to set up a new form of government, a republic instead of a monarchy, in which all citizens will be free from the illegitimate tyranny of the Authority.

The literary critic William Empson made the following statement that well summarizes this second, humanistic theme:

To worship a wicked God is morally bad for a man, so that he ought to be free to question whether his God is wicked. (Empson 440)

Myths expressing the religious theme might support the first part of Empson’s statement, but they do not support the second part: God is good, and when men think God is bad, as Job and Moses learned, the problem lies not with God’s goodness but with man’s limited understanding.

The myths I have presented in this article clearly express one of these themes or the other, but many other Western myths are less clear-cut. In the next few issues, I will look at some of these ambiguous myths and show how different interpreters read each of these contradictory themes into the same myth — starting with the rebellion of Satan in Paradise Lost.

References

• Campbell, Joseph. Occidental Mythology. 1964. New York: Penguin Compass, 1991.
• Job. The Holy Bible. English Standard Version. (Full text available online: Job 38:4, 40:4, 41:1, 42:3-6.)
  
• The Holy Qur’an. Translated by M.H. Shakir. Published by Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc.: 1983. (Full text available online: Qur’an 18.)
• “Prometheus Bound.” Aeschylus. Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. (Full text available online.)
• Pullman, Philip. The Amber Spyglass. 2000. New York: Del Rey, 2001.
• Empson, William. “Critics.” Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Edition). Edited by Gordon Teskey. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

In this series of articles, I will examine the rules for magic in a variety of fantasy and science fiction novels, what you might call “the ecology of magic” which these modern storytellers create for their imagined worlds. I will begin with the alternate America imagined by Orson Scott Card in Seventh Son, the first novel in his “Alvin Maker” series. (Seventh Son was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1988, but did not win; Card had won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1986 for Ender’s Game, and in 1987 for its sequel, Speaker for the Dead.) So far, Card has published six books in the “Alvin Maker” series; The Crystal City was published in 2003 and the final book, to be titled Master Alvin, should be published soon.

The world that Card creates for Alvin Maker is recognizably our own world, but radically altered. Card draws on the history of early 19th-century America as it really happened, including many famous characters and events, while re-inventing that America in entirely new ways. For my purposes here, what is most important is that America in Seventh Son is full of magical powers, or “knacks.” Card’s imagined America has become a land particularly strong in knacks, because the Protestant authorities in his alternate Great Britain, in their effort to stamp out witchcraft, have been in the habit of banishing people with impressive knacks to the colonies. When the character named Taleswapper (none other than the mystic and visionary William Blake) meets up with the seven sons of Alvin Miller, he finds out that they each have their knacks: Calm has a knack for music and dancing, Measure can see things from far off, the twins Wastenot and Wantnot have a knack for sensing trouble, and so on. Taleswapper himself is a keen observer of knacks, having lived with America’s greatest “wizard” and master of many knacks, Ben Franklin, before deciding to venture out west, where he meets the pioneering Miller family.

The seventh son of Alvin Miller, Alvin Junior, has a bit of every knack, as it turns out. In fact, Alvin is a “maker” — the first true maker born into the world since “the one who changed the water into wine,” as Card cagily explains. Yet Alvin has a problem: there is no teacher to help him learn to use his knacks. Worse: the Presbyterian minister who runs the local school believes all knacks to be the work of the devil, a sinful sort of self-delusion. Without guidance of any kind, Alvin is not sure what to make of his powers — until one fateful night when he has a vision that both teaches him about his powers and also prompts him to take an oath voluntarily limiting those powers.

The evening had begun with typical childhood shenanigans: Alvin has played a trick on one of his sisters, and they have paid him back by putting pins into his nightclothes and bedsheets. Ouch! Alvin decides he will get revenge by sending all the roaches from his room into his sisters’ room (for those of you who have read Ender’s Game, the presence of insects here will come as no surprise). Previously, Alvin had made an agreement with the roaches: if they didn’t climb into his bed, the roaches could have whatever they found on the floor, and Alvin promised never to stomp on them. As a result, there were more roaches in Alvin’s room than anywhere else in the house. So, he uses his knack to make the roaches think they will find food by crawling into his sisters’ bed. Don’t be afraid, he tells them; it’s safe. The roaches swiftly head off into the girls’ room and climb up into their beds. The girls start screaming, of course, and they stomp on the roaches, killing most of them. The final result is just what Alvin thought he wanted: the girls are furious, and he has gotten the last laugh.

But then, in the night, Alvin has a vision. A Shining Man comes to him, and that Shining Man makes Alvin see what happened through the eyes of the roaches. The roaches had trusted the peacemaker, and had gone to the other room, but there was no food there, only the “hard sharp crushing agony of death, each small trusting life, betrayed, crushed, battered.” Alvin is horrified at the consequences of what he has done. Wordlessly, the Shining Man then leads Alvin to see that both good and evil can come from “his knack for making things go just where he wanted […], for understanding how things ought to be and helping them get that way.” Alvin finally realizes that he did wrong to use his knack selfishly, for his own benefit and pleasure alone (emphasis mine):

He had a knack, and he’d use it, but there was rules in things like that, rules that he would follow even if it killed him. ‘I’ll never use it for myself again,’ said Alvin Junior.

This vow against selfishness will indeed put Alvin’s life in danger before the end of the book, and he still has many lessons to learn. This is not his last encounter with the Shining Man, and it is not the vision that will ultimately give Alvin his quest in life, building the Crystal City. Yet when Alvin sees in his vision the world as the roaches see it, he realizes that he must place limits on his own power; learning how to use his powers consists also of learning how not to use them.

In my next article, I’ll look at the second book in the series, Red Prophet, to see what other questions Card poses for us about the rules of magic, as Alvin crosses paths again with the Shining Man, and with the Shining Man’s brother, the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh. Together the Shining Man and Tecumseh reveal to Alvin a different understanding of the magical world, a Native American “ecology of magic” which deepens Alvin’s perception of the otherwise invisible world, and adds to his powers.

References

• Card, Orson Scott. Seventh Son: Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 1. 1987. All quotes come from Chapter 7 of the book.

Ancient people told stories of the beginning of the world, wars among the gods, quests of heroes, and other events beyond the realm of our everyday experience. These stories are often called myths. Many people today discount these stories as historically and scientifically inaccurate, good for little more than entertainment or amusement. But dismissing these stories as simply bad history or bad science causes people to overlook the significant role these myths have played throughout human history and miss what value they might still offer us today.

Joseph Campbell, a noted mythology scholar, described four functions of myths. They awoke in mankind a sense of awe and wonder at the mysteries of the world (the mystical function). They described the shape, composition, and origin of the universe (cosmological). They communicated and justified proper social structure and behavior (sociological). They carried the individual through the various phases of life, from birth through maturity to senility and death (psychological). (Pathways to Bliss 6-9)

For centuries, these stories guided people through these four functions to live fuller and more satisfying lives. Karen Armstrong, an author of numerous works on comparative religion, summarizes the overall function of myth with these words:

A myth is essentially a guide; it tells us what to do in order to live more richly. […] A myth is true because it is effective [in this], not because it gives us factual information (Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth 10).

Many myths, like those of Balder and Prometheus, come from ancient secular traditions that are no longer active, while others come from religions practiced to this day. The sacred writings of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all contain such stories. While believers of these faiths might be inclined to see their stories as facts and not as myths, the Christian apologist and literary scholar C.S. Lewis has observed that these two terms are not contradictory. He believed that the myths of his own religious tradition were historical facts, but he insisted that they also contained the quality of myth:

The heart of Christianity is a myth. […] The myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth […] is also a fact. […] Christians need to be reminded that it carries with it into the world of Fact all the properties of a myth. […] Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our own theology (“Myth Became Fact” 66-67).

I look at the story of Job from the Bible and a story of Moses from the Qur’an in another article from this issue, God and Man: Two Western Themes, and we will be exploring stories from other religious traditions in the future. We in no way intend to diminish or insult any religious tradition by including its stories within our study of myth.

These ancient myths can still teach us a great deal. Like all great art, myth transcends time and culture. C.S Lewis offers the following description of how myth can affect us today:

[Myths] give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets. […] It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt. […] It gets under our skin […] and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives. (Phantastes xi)

I believe the key to understanding the effect myth can have on us lies in Lewis’ word beyond. Myth pushed our ancestors beyond their everyday lives to a different reality, a higher plane of existence, such as the land of the gods. From there, they could look back on their own lives with a perspective that challenged them to rise above a mere animal existence and fulfill their human potential. We can still find in these myths inspiration to do the same.

Ancient mythologies and religious texts are not the only source of such stories available to us today. The genres of fantasy and science fiction are well-suited to send us to other worlds — if not to the land of the gods, at least to the lands of wizards and elves or to galaxies far, far away — and dramatically change the way we look at our own world. Laura explores some mythical aspects of Orson Scott Card’s fantasy in another article from this issue, Magic in the World of Alvin Maker: Seventh Son.

When we use the word myth throughout this site, we mean stories contained in ancient mythology, religion, and contemporary fantasy and science fiction that typically involve some other world or plane of existence. When reading these myths and writing the articles on this site, we seek to experience the enjoyment and strength they provide and to learn more about them and how they work.

References

• Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss.
• Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth.
• Lewis, C.S. “Myth Became Fact.” God in the Dock.
• Lewis, C.S. Introduction to Phastastes by George MacDonald.

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