Origin Myths

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Origin Myths
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Myths and Folktales

• Worlds oldest stories
• Passed on by word of mouth
• Tell about the beginnings of things

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Myths and Folktales

• They include marvelous or supernatural events
• Tell of the deeds and adventures of gods and
  goddesses, heroes and heroines
• Explain the origins of various rituals that
  people follow

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Myths and Folktales

• Explain the human experience
• Communicate who we are, where we came from and
  what we believe in

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Myths and Folktales

• Myths and folktales form the foundation of world
  literature because all written literature can be
  traced back directly or indirectly to the mythic
  impulse to tell meaningful stories.

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Myths and Folktales

• Joseph Campbell believed that societies without
  myths decline because they have no cultural ethos
  or heroic models to give direction or inspiration

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Myth

• Definition an anonymous, traditional story that
  explains a belief, a custom, or a mysterious
  natural phenomenon.
• Myth comes from the Greek word muthos which means
  story

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Myth

• Stories that answer peoples most basic questions
  about the mysteries of life
• Stories that explain sacred mysteries about life
  and nature and reflect the religious beliefs of a
  culture

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Myth

• Reveal the particular values of a culture
• Often feature archetypal plots, characters and
  themes (recurring patterns found all over the
  world)

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Myth

• Archetype a pattern or model that serves as the
  basis for different, but related, versions of a
  character, plot or theme

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Main functions of myths

• To explain the creation of the world and the
  universe
• To explain the human condition how and why
  people were created, why they are flawed, why
  there is suffering in the world, why people must
  eventually die and what happens to people after
  death

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Main functions of myths

• To explain natural phenomena, such as the setting
  of the sun and the phases of the moon
• To explain the nature of gods and goddesses and
  hoe these deities and human beings interact

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Main functions of myths

• To explain the meanings behind religious rituals,
  customs and beliefs
• To explain historical events
• To teach moral lessons

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Folktales

• Definition a story created by the common people
  and passed along orally from generation to
  generation
• Includes legends, fables, tall tales, fairy tales
  and ghost stories

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Differences between folktales and myths

• Folktales are secular, or nonreligious
• Folktales were created as much for entertainment
  value as for the teaching of social or moral
  values

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Differences between folktales and myths

• Folktales feature magic, transformations and
  enchantments, just as myths do. But although
  folktales may include gods or goddesses as
  characters, they are usually not central actors
  in the story

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Differences between folktales and myths

• Folktale heroes tend to be common, everyday folk
  who dont have special powers, unlike the heroes
  of myths, who are the superhuman offspring of
  gods or goddesses and human parents

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Differences between folktales and myths

• Folktales are not associated with religious
  rituals

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Origin Myths

• Definition stories that explain how things came
  to beprobably the very first stories human
  beings told
• Most systems of myths contain an origin myth

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Origin Myths

• An explanation of the origin of the universe is
  known as a Cosmogony
• Creation myths are amongst mankinds earliest
  attempts to explain some of the most profound
  questions about the nature and origin of the
  universe

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Origin Myths

• Gave people who told them a sense of their place
  in the universe
• Tell the people who they were, where they came
  from and what their destiny would be

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Common ideas in origin myths

• The idea of a primitive chaos, or featureless
  universe. The Greeks referred to this initial
  formless state of the universe as chaos and this
  is the origin of the term. (A common variation
  of this idea describes the primordial universe as
  a great featureless body of water)

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Common ideas in origin myths

• Other creation myths describe the creation of the
  universe from nothing. A god exists in a void
  and performs some action which results in the
  universe coming into being

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Common ideas in origin myths

• Creation myths may often involve one or several
  stages of creation. Sometimes a primordial god
  creates part of the universe and has offspring
  who then further differentiate the primitive
  universe. Also, at some stage human beings as we
  know them come into being.

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Common ideas in origin myths

• The idea of the earth and the sky forming by the
  separation of the original matter of the
  universe. Most often, the earth and the sky are
  primordial deities of different sexesusually the
  earth is female and the sky is male.

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Common ideas in origin myths

• The idea that the earth or the world or even the
  universe is the bodily remains of a primordial
  being or deitycan also involve the notion
  whereby the creation of the universe involves a
  struggle between primordial gods and/or beings

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Common ideas in origin myths

• They always involve the creation of human beings
  at some stage by gods or other supernatural
  entities. By doing this, a connection is
  established between the everyday world of human
  beings and the supernatural world of the god or
  gods who created the universe.

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Common ideas in origin myths

• It also establishes the place of human beings in
  the hierarchy of life inhabiting the
  universebelow the gods and other supernatural
  beings but above animals and plants

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The roles of gods and goddesses

• Nearly always associated with origin mythsit is
  usually a god or goddess who forms the earth and
  life on it
• Gods and goddesses form family groups, or
  pantheons

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The roles of gods and goddesses

• Often a cultures pantheon is ruled by a powerful
  father god and a mother goddess
• Usually offspring and other relatives often
  associated with various aspects of life abstract
  (love, wisdom, justice, etc.) or concrete (wind,
  sea, moon, earthquakes)

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The staying power of mythic patterns

• Certain themes, characters and images keep
  recurring
• Archetypes serve as basic models to which
  specific cultural details are added
• Archetypes simply change a bit over time and
  reappear in different forms in other types of
  literature