Mythology, Religions, & Metaphors
I’ve been thinking a lot about the goddess Aine lately. In her mythology it is said that she’s raped by one of the kings, and in vengeance kills both him and all of his sons.
This story - to me - is symbolic. Aine would represent nature and the earth, and the king would represent earthly rule in general. The rape symoblizes human kind “raping” the land, as we so often do, and the vengeance in turn represents what happens to us as a result of our mistreatment of nature.
In other words, it is a moral lesson.
We are so quick to pigeonhole a deity into a few qualities. Goddess or God of this-and-that. List a few things, add some animals, and call it a day. This seems to be done by randomly pulling out bits and pieces from a mythology in much the same way that you’d stuff your hand into a bag and pull out random bits.
This in turn has me thinking about religion and spirituality in general. What if it’s all just a bunch of symbology? What if everything within a religious doctrine or spiritual belief is never to be taken literally?
What if there’s no goddesses or gods, perse. No angels. No arch-angels. None of it.
If one part of a spiritual mythology is a metaphor, then what’s to say that rest is not? A deity of love, for example, could have been created entirely to teach members of society about what was the wrong way or right way to have a relationship. As well as to teach them, symbolically, about what can happen when important rules aren’t followed.
The teachers of society were always story tellers. They would share their wisdom with their people next to the hearth, telling their history by weaving grand tales of heroes and deities. These story tellers had a great deal of information that they had to recall and those tales were excellent memory triggers.
Though obviously I do take the existance of deities to be true, I don’t take mythology literally. Not any of it. Yet let’s say that everything we believe… you, me, and everyone else.. is wrong. That we’ve simply become wrapped up in fanciful tales, enamored with the romanticism of these spiritual or religious stories.
Would you be willing to accept that possibility? If not, then where do you draw the line between “mythology” and “truth”, and how do you draw that line? What’s the basis for your judgement?
Or would you sooner believe that your deity exists but that all of the stories surrounding the deity are metaphors? Possibly stories that were shared with people by the deity themselves. If so, then what do you truly know about your deity since everything about them and what they supposedly done were symbolic stories?
This post has no purpose other than to make you - and me - think.
~Stephen
Topics: Spirituality |
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