mythology in our modern life
To be honest, I think this post will make a lot of people upset—but that’s fine.
Mythology is deeply woven into our everyday life, and sometimes, we’re not even aware of it.
Have you ever read the Old Testament? God is very mean and vengeful in this, but then suddenly in the New Testament, it’s all love/kindness and peace.
Where does a malevolent all powerful being come from? Well, to answer that, we have to travel all the way back to Ancient Greece.
First, of course, like most myths, we have primordial gods. The primordials are the beginning and we see this a lot within different cultures, which is pretty cool.
In Greek Mythology we have:
Chaos: The original dark void or abyss from which all existence sprang.
Gaia: The personification of Earth and the first solid entity from which other elements were formed.
Eros: The embodiment of passionate love, desire, and procreation, which drove the universe to multiply.
Tartarus: The terrifying abyss located deep beneath the earth, acting as the ultimate prison for the damned.
Nyx & Erebus: The personifications of Night and Darkness, born directly out of Chaos.
Uranus: The sky and heavens, who acted as Gaia's husband and fathered the next generation of gods, the Titans.
Aether & Hemera: The deities of bright upper air and day, born to Nyx and Erebus.
Then in Egyptian Mythology we see something quite similar:
Nun and Naunet: The primordial, chaotic waters of the abyss.
Heh and Hauhet: Boundless eternity and endlessness.
Kek and Kauket: Darkness.
Amun and Amaunet: Hiddenness and air (or the wind).
Atum: The primordial creator deity who rose out of Nun's chaotic waters. He willed himself into existence and created the subsequent generations of gods.
Shu and Tefnut: Atum's children, representing air/emptiness and moisture.
Geb and Nut: The earth and the sky.
If you take the time to look, you’ll find that all mythologies have layers of each other and are more similar than different, even though they are not from the same place and may not have had a way to communicate like us now.
This leads to a theory of the collective unconsciousness written and developed by Carl Jung but that is not the topic today.
If we turn to the bible to get a glimpse into it, we see examples of primordial without the title of gods:
The Primordial Deep (Tehom): In Genesis 1:2, the earth before creation is described as "formless and empty," covered by a dark abyss. In broader Ancient Near Eastern mythology (such as the Babylonian Tiamat), this vast oceanic void was seen as an active, living, primordial force of chaos that the Creator subdues to establish cosmic order
Adoil and Arkhas: Found in the extra-biblical Second Book of Enoch (Slavonic Enoch), these specific "primordial beings" are depicted as the fundamental physical foundations of light (Adoil) and darkness (Arkhas) that God controlled and used to form creation.
From this research we see that it is not so different. Maybe it has different words, different structures and cultural lenses but it brings me to the same point every time.
religion evolved from mythology.
If we go back to my first point of God in the Old Testament punishing mortals, we have to jump into the ancient future and introduce one god I believe was the inspiration behind the God in the clouds: Zeus.
Zeus in mythology is notoriously taking his anger out on mortals. When the mortals don’t listen to him, he punishes them. An example of this is when he stole fire form mortals, and the mortals began to die.
Reminds me of when God flooded the earth and told Moses to build an ark and save everyone benevolent. A loving God would have a hard time killing all of his creations (I do not believe God has a gender, but because I believe it evolves from mythology, and intervention of Kings/people in power, God is always a man in context), but Zeus? Yeah, Zeus would NOT care.
We also have to take a look at factors that influenced the spread of Christianity and where it went.
First, Greece was Ancient Greece—then became the Roman Empire. After that, Christianity spread and eventually became a legal religion inside the empire, and thus gave it more power to continue to spread. But, if you were to hear stories, previously having your gods influenced and personified in a way that you related to them, wouldn’t you need to see a new god in a similar light?
Humans are habitual, and to get them to go worship a new god would’ve been difficult. But if you make that new god similar to the old one(s), similar personality, lives also in a cloud (like Olympus), possibly looks like Zeus with a beard, have churches built on old temples, then your success rate goes up for conversions.
And just like mythology, the Old Testament also had sacrifices, rape, revenge and murder!
Religion has always needed to adapt to the audience and appeal. During the Renaissance, the art was driven by divinity and the characters were made to look like the people living in Italy so they would feel more connected. So, to fully understand your beliefs(if you are a follower of the bible), it’s important to go WAY back to get a full picture.
And it’s also really cool to see the evolution and how we are not that far away from Ancient Greek beliefs.
We talk about it a lot on our mythology tour through Athens if you’re ever around to join.