Return to main page

 

From Myth and Ritual in Christianity, Alan Watts

 

[T]he word "myth" is not to be used here as meaning "untrue" or “unhistorical.”  Myth is to be defined as a complex of stories—some no doubt fact, and some fantasy—which, for various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life.  Myth is quite different from philosophy in the sense of abstract concepts, for the form of myth is always concrete—consisting of vivid, sensually intelligible, narratives, images, rites, ceremonies, and symbols.

 

From Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt:

 

There is a story about the way the pipe first came to us.  A very long time ago, they say, two scouts were out looking for bison; and when they came to the top of a high hill and looked north, they saw something coming a long way off, and when it came close they cried out, "It is a woman!," and it was.  Then one of the scouts, being foolish, had bad thoughts and spoke them; but the other said: "That is a sacred woman; throw all bad thoughts away."  When she came still closer, they saw that she wore a fine white buckskin dress, that her hair was very long and that she was young and very beautiful.  And she knew their thoughts and said in a voice that was like singing: "You do not know me, but if you want to do as you think, you may come."  And the foolish one went; but just as he stood before her, there was a white cloud that came and covered them.  And the beautiful young woman came out of the cloud, and when it blew away the foolish man was a skeleton covered with worms.

Then the woman spoke to the one who was not foolish: "You shall go home and tell your people that I am coming and that a big tepee shall be built for me in the center of the nation."  And the man, who was very much afraid, went quickly and told the people, who did at once as they were told; and there around the big tepee they waited for the sacred woman.  And after a while she came, very beautiful and singing, and as she went into the tepee this is what she sang:

"With visible breath I am walking.  A voice I am sending as I walk.  In a sacred manner I am walking.  With visible tracks I am walking.  In a sacred manner I walk."

And as she sang, there came from her mouth a white cloud that was good to smell.  Then she gave something to the chief, and it was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, and with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem to mean the sky and the twelve moons, and these were tied with a grass that never breaks.  "Behold!" she said.  "With this you shall multiply and be a good nation.  Nothing but good shall come from it.  Only the hands of the good shall take care of it and the bad shall not even see it."  Then she sang again and went out of the tepee; and as the people watched her going, suddenly it was a white bison galloping away and snorting, and soon it was gone.

This they tell, and whether it happened so or not I do not know; but if you think about it, you can see that it is true.

 

From a letter to a reader by E. B. White, author of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan

 

Are my stories true, you ask? No, they are imaginary tales, containing fantastic characters and events. In real life, a family doesn't have a child who looks like a mouse; in real life, a spider doesn't spin words in her web. In real life, a swan doesn't blow a trumpet. But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too—truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act.

 

From “What Has Literature Got to Do with It?” Chinua Achebe

 

Literature, whether handed down by word of mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality . . . enabling us to encounter, in the safe, manageable dimensions of make-believe the very same threats to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life; and at the same time providing through the self-discovery which it imparts a veritable weapon for coping with these threats whether they are found within our problematic and incoherent selves or in the world around us.