Submission Form

Guidelines

All articles should observe these guidelines:

• Related to “myth” in the broad definition we use here (which includes ancient mythology, religious texts, fantasy, and science-fiction), or related in some other way to mythical thinking
• Around 1000-1200 words
• Written in a friendly, semi-scholarly tone — not as informal as most blogs nor as formal as most dissertations
• Written in (more or less) MLA style — but don’t worry too much about that

Topics

You can take a look through the archives to get an idea of the kind of articles that I publish. Here are a few possible types of articles that would work (with examples of each of them), but this list is by no means exhaustive:

1. Explore a myth (perhaps a personal favorite) from multiple perspectives
   • The Rebellion of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost
   • Zeus and the Turtle: An Aesopic Fable
2. Analyze how and why a modern mythmaker drew on traditional mythic material
   • Northern Mythological Traditions in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
   • Biblical Narratives in Doris Lessing’s Shikasta
     
3. Analyze a scholar’s explanation of, understanding of, or theories about myth
   • Joseph Campbell: The Hero’s Journey
   • G.K. Chesterton on Fairy Tales
4. Examine a non-narrative art form and its relationship to a mythic narrative
   • Totem Poles: Myths Carved In Cedar
   • Shiva, Lord of the Dance
5. Interviews with scholars, authors, or artists involved in myth
   • Tolkien, Myth, and Fantasy: Verlyn Flieger Interview
   • Illustrating Tolkien: Ted Nasmith Interview

Do you have a passion for myth and something worthwhile to contribute to the site? Please consider submitting an article.

Unlike other genres of ancient literature, Aesop’s fables were easy to assimilate into the European Christian tradition because of their resemblance to the parables of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Like the parables of Jesus, Aesop’s fables are short, simple stories that teach a moral lesson. Moreover, the adventures of Aesop’s talking animals provided some welcome humor, being filled with comic elements that are lacking in the parables of Jesus. As they rewrote the fables, the Christian monks would freely elaborate on the morals of the stories, adding in Bible verses in order to bring the fables more fully into the Christian tradition. Sometimes they would allegorize the fables, looking for Christian symbols, such as the treacherous serpent or the peaceful dove. They sometimes supplemented the traditional fables of Aesop inherited from ancient Greece and Rome with similar animal fables, drawing on local storytelling traditions, or making up stories of their own. These fable books were used as reference materials for preachers as they crafted their sermons, much as in the ancient Greek world the first collections of Aesop’s fables had been created as a reference work for orators looking for anecdotes to use in a speech.

One of the most famous of these medieval fable collections was written by Odo of Cheriton, a 13th-century English preacher and scholar. Odo’s Latin fables were well-known and circulated widely, as evidenced by numerous manuscript copies as well as translations into Spanish, French, and Welsh. Odo was a very learned man for his time, having studied in the schools of Paris, but he was not a high-brow scholar. Instead, he intended for his writings to appeal to a general audience, embracing both the clergy and lay people. Many of the fables evince a strong sympathy for the poor and oppressed, with often sharp criticisms of high-ranking church officials. At the same time, Odo also looked for theological messages in the fables, interpreting the stories of the animals as a symbolic code for the workings of God in the world. Odo’s fables thus provide evidence of both the “humanistic” and “religious” types of storytelling which Randy introduced in an article from a previous issue, God And Man: Two Themes.

For an example of Odo’s humanistic social satire, let’s look at the little story of the rat, the cheese and the cat. The story is a simple one: There was a certain man who had some cheese in his pantry, and a rat came and gnawed on the cheese. The man decided that the best thing to do would be to get a cat to guard the cheese — but the results were not what the man expected: the cat ate the rat, and then ate up all the cheese, too. In the moral to the story, Odo explains:

So likewise many bishops put a parish into the hands of a chaplain who devours the parish. Finally the bishop puts an archdeacon in charge, and the archdeacon devours both the chaplain and the parish, just like the rat and the cheese.

Odo thus uses the story of the greedy cat to criticize the greedy church officials of his time.

Odo is also one of our earliest recorded sources for the story of belling the cat, and this story, too, he turns into a criticism of corrupt church officials. Here is the story: the mice held a council to decide how to protect themselves from the cat. A wise mouse said that they should tie a bell around the cat’s neck so that they could hear when he was coming. All the mice like this idea, and then one of the mice said asked who was going to tie the bell around the cat’s neck, whereupon each of the mice squeaked, “Not me! Not me!” Here is the moral that Odo gives to the story:

So it often happens when preachers and monks rise up against a bishop or a prior or an abbot, saying, “If only so-and-so could be removed so that we could have another bishop or abbot.” Everybody likes the idea, but finally they ask: “Who will stand up against the bishop? Who will accuse him?” Everybody is afraid and says, “Not me! Not me!” So in this way the less powerful people allow the more powerful people to exist and dominate them.

In this story, Odo again interprets the predatory cat in terms of a powerful church official, with the mice being too timid to defend themselves.

Yet while Odo is not afraid to criticize the authority of the church, his humanistic impulses extend only so far. When it comes to the question of God himself and obedience to divine authority, Odo was no rebel. We can see this very clearly in the way that he interprets the fable of the lion’s share. In this story, a lion goes hunting with a fox and a wolf as partners. The lion catches a fat ram, the wolf a skinny cow, and the fox a goose. The lion tells the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf says each animal should take what he caught, whereupon the lion flays the wolf’s head, leaving it bloody. Then the lion tells the fox to divide things up. The fox tells the lion to take the fat ram and the goose because they are good to eat; he tells the lion to leave the skinny cow for the lion’s followers, since it is not very good to eat to begin with. The lion praises the fox and asks how she learned to do division so well. The fox replies: “The red cap of my colleague taught me, his flayed head providing the lesson.”

When Odo interprets this story, the predatory lion is not seem as the emblem of a dangerous and greedy church official. Instead, this lion is a symbol of God, and his actions are interpreted as a perfect expression of divine justice. Odo explains that the lion punished the wolf just as God punished Adam for the sin of disobedience. The moral of the story is to learn from Adam’s punishment to show reverence to God, just as the fox reverenced the lion after seeing the wolf’s punishment.

Odo’s approval of the lion’s actions as an emblem of divine authority is something quite different from what we find in traditional interpretations of the fable of the lion’s share. The usual moral of the story is that the lion is a very greedy and dangerous beast; the best solution is simply not to make a partnership with the lion to begin with! If an animal is foolish enough to become partners with a lion, that animal should be prepared to pay the consequences. Leonina societa periculorum plena, as the old Latin saying reminds us: Keeping company with a lion is full of danger. For Odo, however, the lion is not just another animal; the lion is a symbol of God, and as such his authority is to be obeyed without question. (The Islamic poet Rumi took exactly the same approach to the fable of the lion’s share, interpreting it as a lesson in religions obedience; I have discussed this in a previous article, Rumi: The Fable of the Lion’s Share.)

As you can see from the range of Odo’s interpretations of the fables, there are no objective or absolute rules for interpreting a given fable. Sometimes a predatory animal is a symbol of a greedy bishop or deacon, as in the story of the cat, the rat, and the cheese, or in the story of belling the cat, prompting a humanistic message that defies false claims to divine authority. Yet a predatory animal can also be a symbol of divine authority which must be obeyed without question, as in the story of the lion’s share. Even if the ancient Romans did not interpret the lion’s share as a story of divine authority, there is nothing to stop Odo from taking that approach to the story, fitting the story firmly into a Christian framework. The adaptability of the fable genre allows Odo to use the old fables to express a wide range of meanings, from social satire to theology, with morals that suit his life and time.

References

• Hervieux, Léopold. Les fabulistes latins. Vol. IV: Études de Cheriton et ses dérivés. Paris: 1896. (Online at GoogleBooks; the Latin texts of the fables are also available at the Aesopus Wiki.)

In this article, I want to look at a non-narrative teaching from the well-known “Sermon on the Mount” in the Gospel of Matthew, written sometime before the end of the first-century CE. This teaching, attributed in the text to Jesus of Nazareth, results from using mythos to think about an object found in the natural world, lilies growing in the wild:

Why are you worried about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? (Matthew 6:28-30)

Speaking to an audience worried about clothing (as well as food and other necessities, according to the surrounding passages), Jesus used the lilies of the field to turn them away from worry to trusting in God. It may have even been from observing and meditating on the beauty of the lilies of the field that Jesus first felt through intuition that the world was sustained by a compassionate creator who related to humanity as a loving father (Weeden 85). Jesus’s teaching works analogically, finding similarities between lilies and humans. God created and cares for both lilies and humans. Looking at the lilies, we can see that God cares enough for them to clothe them: since God cares more for humans, we can then extend the similarities to conclude that God will also clothe humans.

However, if we look at this teaching from the perspective of logos — as if it were a philosophical argument — we would have to conclude that it is unsound. Most importantly, lilies do not actually have any clothes. It might seem natural to understand their petals or their beauty metaphorically as clothing, but metaphor lies outside the realm of pure logos. If we want to prove that God will give humans literal clothing, we cannot begin the argument with a premise about metaphorical clothing. Another problem arises when we look at another logical conclusion that should follow from the analogy. If God cares more for Solomon than for lilies, shouldn’t God clothe Solomon more gloriously than them? But Jesus said this is not the case. If God clothes Solomon less gloriously than the lilies, how much less gloriously will God clothe other humans?

Looking through the results of a quick Google search reveals that even today Jesus’s teaching about the lilies of the field provides instruction and inspiration to people from diverse backgrounds, Christian and non-Christian alike. I imagine that this popularity comes from the fact that Jesus’s observations resonate with the feelings and intuitive insights of others.  Some may reject Jesus as a bad logician based on an analysis like the one above, but I think treating this teaching as a product of mythical thinking provides a better way to understand it and appreciate its meaning than to treat is as a product of logical thinking.

This is not to say that analogies are illogical: indeed, they start from a set of known similarities and proceed logically to derive unknown similarities. However, these known similarities are not observed in the same way that scientific phenomena are observed: often these similarities are hidden, obscure, or metaphorical. The thought process that uncovers these hidden connections and produces these analogies is more akin to the thought process that produces myths (mythos, mythical thinking) than to the thought process that produces scientific experiments and philosophical proofs (logos, logical thinking).

Jesus observed that God gives clothes to lilies without the lilies toiling or spinning, which has caused many Biblical commentators over the years a great deal of concern. One might easily conclude from this observation that God will also provide humans with clothes without the humans working for them — maybe humans should even stop working to be more like the lilies of the field. This conclusion would contradict other passages in the Bible, however, particularly instructions about working by St. Paul; it would also be socially disruptive. St. Augustine, writing in the late fourth century CE, addressed this concern in two ways. First, he pointed out that since God has given humans the ability to work, the results of our working should still be seen as God’s provision:

Concerning birds of the air and lilies of the field […] no man may think that God careth not for the needs of His servants ; when His most wise Providence reacheth unto these in creating and governing those. For it must not be deemed that it is not He that feeds and clothes them also which work with their hands. (“On the Work of Monks” ¶35)

Second, he pointed out that the similarities Jesus observed between humans and lilies (that God created and cares for both) do not extend into their capacity for work: no lilies can work, but humans can work. There are some similarities between humans and lilies, and those similarities include the fact that God will clothe them both. But there are also obvious differences, and those include the mechanism God uses to clothe them: lilies, God clothes naturally; humans, God clothes through the works of their own hands. But some humans, like lilies, do not have the ability for work; Augustine did think that God would provide for these humans in the same way God provides for lilies:

If any […] shall raise a question concerning the birds of the air, which sow not nor reap nor gather into stores, and concerning lilies of the field that they toil not neither do they spin; [Christ's disciples and others] will easily answer, If we also, by reason of any either infirmity or occupation cannot work, He will so feed and clothe us, as he does the birds and the lilies. (“On the Work of Monks” ¶36)

All this uncertainty and subjectivity might make logos-thinkers nervous. If we cannot look at the lilies of the field and conclude — in some objective and universal way, for all people at all times — that God will provide all humans clothing, then what good is this teaching? I will close with an example particularly relevant in these recessionary times: should we worry about losing our jobs? Using mythos, some people might look at the lilies of the field and decide not to worry because God will provide. Others might decide to quit their jobs and stop working altogether because God will provide even if they don’t work, while still others might decide that they should worry because God takes better care of the lilies than humans. Using logos, many people will look at the stock market or the unemployment rate: for some, the likelihood that they will lose their jobs will be above some threshold that causes them to worry; for others, it won’t. Others, also using logos, might instead look at psychology studies and decide not to worry because people who worry are unhappy, less likely to perform well at work, and more likely to lose the job they are worried about losing. Worry is a subjective response to the world, and even those using the objective tools of logos can respond to it differently. The more subjective and intuitive approach of mythical thinking seems well-suited to address this subjectivity: Jesus, as a mythos-thinker, shares his intuitive insights gleaned from observing the world with others in order to affect their subjective experiences of it, to turn them from worrying to trusting in God.

Works Cited

• The Gospel of Matthew. (Full text available online.)
• Weeden, Theodore J. “A Faith Odyssey.” When Faith Meets Reason. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2008. 83-96.
• Augustine. “On the Works of Monks.” (Full text available online.)