Mythical Thinking Research Articles

The New Myths of Speculative Fiction Cinema: How Mythical Thought is Returning in the Contemporary World

This paper argues that the decline of myth and mythical thought is reversing and that the substitute of ancient myth in modern societies – politics – has been replaced by the speculative fiction genre of cinematic storytelling. With this in mind the paper creates a link between: our species ability to tell stories and our necessity to consume them; the importance and characteristics of myth and mythical thought; the human craving for mythical stories; the contemporary speculative fjction trend worldwide in the box offjce; and a study of the most infmuential fjlms of all time.

O Rus, Where Are Thou?

The article attempts to define the role of a myth and mythical thinking in the society. It shows a relationship between a socio-political myth and ideology, politics, and historical remembrance. Based on the myth about the progress, the article discusses an issue of choice faced by Russia of the 20th c., namely national development or European advancement? It describes interpretations of economic, socio-political and cultural aspects of Russia’s backwardness, aspresented by representatives of various trends of Russian thought of the 19th c. It lists examples of a paradoxical agreement among conservatists and revolutionaries that a move “forward and up” is not always progressive, whereas the development should always be “national”. Therefore, Russia should not copy all forms of development that have taken place in European countries – from lower to higher. It argues that there is a possible historical explanation of the myth of progress. Namely, attempts to explain diversity and originality of national variations of development (Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine?) have proved historical differences of the Russian path, as an independent Russian-Orthodox civilisation, towards a better understanding of the “vicious circle” of the modern civilisation: “We are poor because we’re stupid, and we’re stupid because we’re poor.”

The Reconfiguration of Sisyphean Myth in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Akwanya’s Orimili

A literary work fascinates scholars and critics in different ways which may be based on literary experience or interest. In whichever perspective, literature engages the mind with multiplicity of interpretations. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Akwanya’s Orimili have been studied in varied ways but no study, as far as this research is concerned, has looked at either or both texts from the view of configuration of the myth of Sisyphus. Here is a reading that intends to look at the mythic patterns in the two works with respect to the characters of Santiago and Ekwenze Orimili, the protagonists. In the study, attempt is made to define the Sisyphean features, and establish how the patterns are configured in the two texts. The study uses the tool of archetypal criticism, from the perspectives of Northrop Frye, to examine these similar discursive formations in the texts. The study establishes that mythic thinking gives literature rootedness in tradition, and universal appeal.

ETHNO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ARCHETYPES: UNCHANGEABLE CODES OF THE HISTORY

The internal mechanism of mythical subjects’ self-organization resuscitates the folklore and gives life to it at any time. The folklore becomes active only in a person’s life. Particular people renew forms existing for centuries on the improvisation basis. Thus one can get rid of monotony and a tradition gets a new breath in the performance of each person as well. The tradition is kept, but expressed by a new rhythm and breath. And it shows that myths always live and go through centuries in a new improvisation. Elements of mythical thinking, as archaeological types, always become the center of the researchers’ attention. But there are still such problems in this area, so that are of scientific interest. There are issues among them that have a direct appeal to the philosophical thinking. The observation of striking similarities among myths of the world people is of this kind. These are plot similarities. Even the mythical plots of nations located in a remote geography quite far from one another contain elements and images similar to each other. In Turkish provinces everybody knows the Khizir’s Spirit as a cradle song. It is the symbol of the Holiness from its original date. Khizir- a thousand year old Turk fondles his love by the language of the lullaby and bayaties.He has made a tale of his Memory and set up a great deal of saga for himself. In this case the evaluation of mythological plots always maintains its topicality as one of the important terms.

Sacrum i rewolucja. Leszek Kołakowski i inni

The sacred and the revolution Leszek Kołakowski and othersThe author examines the relationship between the sphere of the sacred and the phenomenon of the revolution. He points to the distinctiveness of Leszek Kołakowski’s position as compared to the views articulated by other representatives of the so-called Warsaw school of the history of ideas. He claims that Kołakowski’s philosophical programme, which takes into account the sacred and mythical dimension of the socio-political diagnoses, can help us to understand the Russian Revolution of 1917 as well as other revolutionary movements and processes of the 20th century. He demonstrates that the sacred is an inherent aspect of the revolutionary mentality. Also, he argues that the ideologies which turned against religion in the name of the struggle with religious superstitions, in the end became quasi-religious. As a matter of fact, the revolutionary utopia may be perceived as a kind of crypto-religion involving such elements of the mythical thinking as a belief in the cognition of history, an assumption that the latter may be started anew, a belief in the possibility of the secular eschatology, etc.

Опыт когнитивного анализа сценических образов на примере концепта «Государство»

The article develops the idea of cognitive analysis of stage images created by non-verbal means of post-dramatic theater and studies the mechanism of formation of concepts on the basis of theatrical metaphors and symbols. The extrapolation of the lingualcognitive approach onto the language of theater presumes interpretation of visual stage actions as a literal manifestation of the producer’s meta-text, which is the mental form of the natural language and is read by the audience in reverse order. Thus, the conceptual metaphor of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, being paradigmatic and lining up an analogy towards action, becomes transformed in the context of theater into a conceptual symbol, since it presents a secondary semantic superstructure over the visual acoustic forms. As an example, an analysis is made of the concept of “The State” in the article on the material of performances of several producers. As the result, it becomes clear that the mental image represented in language by the word “state” becomes the axis of semantic projection (the conceptual symbol), forming the symbolic connection between the concepts of “Construction” and “Hierarchy,” which relate to each other as the transmission of the empirical and metaphysical essence of the researched image and demonstrates the principle of interaction of lingual and mythical thinking.

Locke's Mythical Thinking: Metempsychosis in the Theory of Personal Identity

Locke's Mythical Thinking:Metempsychosis in the Theory of Personal Identity Mary-Helen Mcmurran In "Identity and Diversity," which appears in the second edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke famously asserts that personal identity consists in consciousness alone.1 For Locke, identity simply means the condition of sameness and person, unlike the conventional use of the term, is not synonymous with the human individual. Indeed, Locke's first step in the argument is to distinguish the identity of the "man" or individual, which consists in the continuity of an organized and vital bodily form, from the person's identity, which consists in a consciousness that can "consider it self as it self" (2.27.9). The bulk of Locke's chapter does little more than reinforce this fundamental distinction from various angles. In standard accounts, the significance of Locke's theory is drawn from the philosopher's final remarks, which seem to explicitly state its implications. Locke writes that person is a "Forensick Term," which appropriates "Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery" (2.27.26). As William Uzgalis states, person is "designed to account for the fact that we are creatures who are capable of operating the machinery of the law" on earth and at the final judgement, for Locke adds that "[s]entence shall be justified by the consciousness" without regard to the substance in which it appears (2.27.26).2 Locke's chapter, which constitutes something of an independent treatise on the idea of personhood, is customarily acknowledged to be a game changer. It represents an unprecedented break with philosophical tradition by liberating the idea of person from the principles of corporeal and incorporeal substance to rely instead on the notion of consciousness as a self-reflexive and a self-possessing mental activity. Locke's person not only defeats scholastic theological-philosophical ideas of personhood, it lays the groundwork for nearly all subsequent theoretical and scientific theories of mind and consciousness.3 I am not interested here in the novelty of Locke's theory, however, but with his method of conveying its singular claim that the person's identity emerges as a virtuality rather than an actual entity. As Henry Allison [End Page 919] explains, Locke must address two questions about the relation of the person and the man: "1) whether the same person can remain throughout a change in the thinking substance, 2) whether the same substance can at different times have different persons annexed to it?"4 As Allison rightly remarks, "consistency requires that Locke answer both questions in the affirmative."5 Thus, according to Locke, the person retains an identity despite a change in whatever it is that the consciousness inhabits; second, a substance can play host to more than one person over time. Consistency may require it, but Locke enlists several peculiar thought experiments to illustrate his definition of person. Readers consistently remark that these thought experiments, which lace Locke's otherwise stiff prose, are dizzying and their logic bewildering. Treating them as outliers if not entirely dispensable to the theory of personal identity, scholars have come to little agreement about their meaning, explanatory value, or even whether Locke is aware of their effects. Étienne Balibar, for example, notes that these scenarios stem logically from Locke's distinction between the man and the person, but calls them "paradoxes" and thus suggests they test the limits of that logic.6 Balibar forgoes further comment on the thought experiments and instead pursues a subtle and insightful argument that Locke's self is both differential and totalizing. Jonathan Lamb's important consideration of Locke's theory contrasts "vaporous fancies" with "credible fictions."7 Putting Locke's chapter in the context of late seventeenth-century scientific discourse, Lamb suspects that the "painfully small degree of certitude" of the thought experiments nearly undermines their purpose.8 The person nevertheless manages to be a "credible semblance of identity and reality" in Lamb's larger narrative about the "agentive form of loose things" to which humans are subjected.9 The striking aspect of Locke's many thought experiments is that they seem ripped from...

„Polscy Aryjczycy”. Pomiędzy naukowymi podstawami mitu a mitycznymi korzeniami nauki w dyskursie słowiańskim XIX wieku

The article is devoted to reflection on the role of the Aryan discourse in the research of Slavophiles of the 19th century. Traditional studies on the ethnogenesis of the Slavs conducted by historians on the basis of ancient “scraps” and incomplete sources did not give the answer that would satisfy the political ambitions of the Poles. The inclusion of ethnographic and linguistic methods into the Slavic studies helped create the narrative in which the journey, made by the early Slavs from the Land of Aryans, became a full history of the people’s origin. The conviction about the Indo-Iranian origin of the Slavs shaped the mythical thinking and attempts to create a story legitimizing the right to self-determination and the historical significance of this group. The belief in ancient Aryan heritage considerably changed political orientation and the pursuit of a new identity – free of inferiority complex with respect to the West and ready to dictate its own conditions. Discussing the issues related to race and racial differences between particular peoples, including the ones belonging to the Slavic family, showed the authors’ political views and the future of the nation they envisaged. It also deepened the split within the Slavic studies. The sources available and studied by the Slavic history researchers did not provide clear answers to the question whether the Slavs are direct descendants of the Aryans, therefore the research and texts that are examined in the article have creational and commentary nature and serve the function of creating narratives shaping the community. The aim of this approach will be to reflect on how scientific discourse creates the foundations for identity myths.

O processo de bricolagem na criação de histórias em quadrinhos de super-heróis

Partindo da constatação de que as histórias em quadrinhos de super-heróis são consideradas por muitos autores como verdadeiras mitologias modernas, o presente artigo pretende estabelecer a relação entre o modo de operar do pensamento mítico com a criação dessas narrativas, analisando as reflexões de autores em histórias em quadrinhos, sobre seu próprio ofício, a partir do conceito de bricolagem de Lévi-Strauss.

Pentateuch

Pentateuch Christopher T. Begg, Lorenzo A. Tosco CSJ, Isaac Kalimi, and David A. Bosworth 1553. [Genesis 1–Leviticus 26] Paavo N. Tucker, The Holiness Composition of the Book of Exodus (FAT 2.98; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). Pp. ix + 230. Paper €79. ISBN 978-3-16-155198-1. Ever since the third quarter of the 19th century, there has been a recurrent discussion in pentateuchal scholarship concerning the relationship between and relative dating of the Holiness Code (H, Leviticus 17–26) and the P materials in Genesis–Exodus. In this revision of his 2016 Asbury Theological Seminary dissertation (B. T. Arnold, director), T. revisits the question in monographic form. Following a review of the relevant scholarship of the last 150+ years, he devotes a chapter to showing how the opening P text in Genesis, 1:1–2:4a functions as a "Holiness Preamble," which, along with the other key P texts of Genesis (9:1-17; 17:1-27), serves to set up the requirements of H regarding Israel's call to holiness as exemplified above all in the observance of the Sabbath. In this same chapter, T. also endeavors to refute claims that P and H exhibit divergences on such matters as land ownership and covenant as well as profane versus sacred slaughter and Passover instructions. In his following two chapters, T. then works through the generally recognized P materials in Exodus 1–14 and 16–40, respectively, seeking to show that these materials have the same function of setting up and motivating the teaching of Leviticus 17–26 as do the above-cited P texts of Genesis. For T. it thus results that the P materials in Genesis–Exodus and the complex of Leviticus 17–26 are the work of the same author(s) and as such are most appropriately designated as the "H composition." The author(s) of that composition incorporated into his/their work a variety of pre-existing materials of both a narrative (e.g., Exodus 19–24*, 32–34*) and a ritual (e.g., the "manuals" of Leviticus 1–7 and 11–15) nature. Subsequently, the H Composition itself underwent amplifications that gave it a more explicitly priestly/cultic character, highlighting as they do, e.g., the preeminence of the Aaronides within Israel's polity.—C.T.B. 1554. [Gen 1:1–2:4a] Jean L'Hour, Genèse 1–2,4a: Commentaire (ÉBib 71; Leuven/Paris/Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2016). Pp. iv + 267. Paper €76. ISBN 978-90-429-3412-2. This work is a detailed study of what L. calls the "priestly Credo of creation." The first three chapters address general questions, concerning the cultural environment, the origin, and the literary characteristics of Genesis 1. L. points out the relationship of the biblical text to the cosmogonies of the ANE, while also insisting on its specificity, including the radical reversal of mythical thinking: nature is not divine, and humans, who are not a necessary evil but the climax of God's work, have total responsibility for their destiny and history. The chapter's present text may have developed in stages but was composed and then redacted by the same circle of priestly writer(s) who were influenced by the prophetic (especially Deutero-Isaiah) and wisdom traditions. From a literary perspective, no matter what its origin, Genesis 1 shows a remarkable overall architecture, even though its precise structure is debated. The various proposed structurings of the chapter (that climax on the 6th day) all have advantages but also difficulties. It could be then that the chapter's "architecture moulable reflects a variety of autonomous traditional themes" (p. 43), which is a recognized characteristic of the Priestly style. In terms of genre, Genesis 1 may well be a literary hapax, a sort of "liminary confession" that serves as a guide to reading the whole book of Genesis as well as the whole Torah. Chaps. 5 and 6 are dedicated to vv. 1-2. Besides being a "faith [End Page 527] confession," v. 1 is also a title, synthesizing the work of creation that follows. V. 2 presents the uncreated "earth" as something not orderly and not functioning, the contrary...

La filosofía griega

Se hace una aproximación a la filosofía griega destacando que dicha filosofía surge en un período privilegiado de la historia occidental que ha tenido una influencia enorme en nuestra manera de pensar en la actualidad. La casi totalidad de los conceptos que forman el acervo de la filosofía occidental estuvieron de una u otra forma pensados por los griegos. Se finaliza destacando las vinculaciones entre el pensamiento mítico y el pensamiento racional, mostrando las condiciones que hicieron posible la emergencia de ese peculiar tipo de discurso filosófico que inauguraron los griegos.Revista de Museología "Kóot" No.8 2017: 34-44

The Value of Sacredness in Mythical Attitude

By applying the concept of sensation by J. Mureika and R. Ingarden’s insights about substantial features of values, one aims at revealing the composition of the value of sacredness. The discussed features of the mythical attitude are related with the experiences of sacredness, one emphasizes the relation of the archaic human with nature and the sacredness of the whole true-life environment. With reference to the studies by V. Vyčinas, mythical thinking and understanding is revealed. The conceptions of sacredness are analysed, one looks for the structures determining the identification of this value. The values of sacredness in the states of substantial dimension and their expression in the states of varied consciousness are emphasized. Five dimensions are distinguished in the multi-edged substantial matrix of the value of sacredness: epotic and emodic determined as potential, two intentional as individual and group sensations, and the plane of specific material forms. The conclusion is made that the sensation of the value of sacredness is inferred as a special, miraculous experience of the relation with gods in which one can find the being of the Great Absolute.

Segurando brasas: “pensamento mítico” sobre a infância de ventre livre de uma rainha negra no Rio Grande do Sul

Resumo: O artigo analisa uma lenda sobre uma criança nascida de ventre livre, Maria Tereza Joaquina, assim como a repercussão daquela história nas gerações subsequentes. Já adulta, ela foi rainha Jinga, nas décadas de 1950, 1960 e 1970, do maçambique de Osório, folguedo popular afrocatólico do litoral do Rio Grande do Sul. Será enfocada a interação entre “pensamento mítico”, memória e história. Segundo o relato da própria rainha, ela havia segurado brasas em sua infância a fim de ajudar o senhor de sua mãe a acender cigarros de palheiro. Confronto a versão por ela narrada ao jornalista, folclorista e antropólogo Norton Corrêa em 1980 com relatos similares de seus netos durante a década de 2010. Estudo seus papéis nas concepções de escravidão e liberdade e seu impacto na identidade familiar.

The Maturity Myth In Sedimentology and Provenance Analysis

Abstract: We often resort to mythical thinking in the face of natural phenomena that we hardly understand. Sedimentary petrology has several long-standing myths. One is that sediments increase their “maturity” through time by winnowing and sorting, physical wear, chemical weathering, diagenesis, and recycling, as if their destiny were to reach a final stage of perfection represented by quartz spheres of equal size. Such an armchair representation of supermature purity is embodied in white recycled desert sand, whereas a modern analogue for its opposite, the dark dirty rock improperly called graywacke, is yet to be found. Clay matrix does not occur in sand deposited from tractive currents, which is sorted at the instant of settling. Sand grains get rounded relatively rapidly during transport in air but very slowly when transported in water. The degree of winnowing, sorting, and rounding (“textural maturity”) has little to do with the accumulation of “modifying energy” through time. “Mineralogical maturity” does not increase notably even after thousands of kilometers of transport in high-energy environments, and not even during recycling, a physical process that in a weathering-limited denudation regime tends at most to reproduce the mineralogy of parent clastic rocks. Rather, “mineralogical maturity” decreases drastically where sedimentary rock fragments are eroded in abundance from mudrocks interbedded in the source, and sand recycled entirely from orogenic flysch or molasse may contain less than 10% quartz. If natural sediment factories were quartz distilleries, then quartzose sand should become more common through geological time. Pure quartz sand, however, is relatively rare in the modern world, and largely confined to hyperhumid equatorial latitudes or recycled eolian dunefields. A relative increase in more durable minerals is achieved effectively only by chemical processes such as selective leaching in soils, or especially during burial diagenesis, when the time and temperature available for chemical reactions are much longer and higher than at the Earth9s surface. If recycled sediments are commonly quartz-rich with very poor assemblages dominated by zircon, tourmaline, and rutile, it is because their parent sandstones have undergone diagenetic dissolution prolonged for many millions of years at temperatures of many tens of degrees before final exhumation and erosion.

Repertorios de Reima Pietilä. El pensamiento salvaje en la construcción de la cosmovisión del arquitecto

El objeto de este artículo es explorar la validez que los conceptos pensamiento mítico y bricolage creados por el antropólogo Lévi-Strauss pueden tener para explicar en parte la relación entre la arquitectura (y su autor) y su contexto geográfico y cultural. A través del ejemplo de Reima Pietilä, su pensamiento y su obra más paradigmática, Dipoli, se ha buscado establecer un razonable paralelismo entre las formas de operatividad de la mente primaria que describe Lévi-Strauss y el proceso de proyectar la arquitectura del arquitecto finlandés.En primer lugar, se ha analizado el acercamiento de Raili y Reima Pietilä a elementos primitivistas, tanto formales como culturales, como medio para crear y reforzar los vínculos entre edificio, territorio y sociedad. Posteriormente se aborda el uso del lenguaje como herramienta, tanto en la creación de conocimiento, por parte de la mente primaria, como en la producción arquitectónica por parte del arquitecto. Cómo el autor está presente en la composición y el uso que hace de su repertorio creativo componen el siguiente epígrafe, desde el cual se llega, por último, a analizar cómo alcanza Pietilä a lograr un sentido de totalidad a través de la vinculación de su arquitectura con el entorno.

Mythical Notion of Mushrooms in Lithuanian Culture

According to the founders of ethnomycology Valentina and Gordon Wasson, it is possible to discern the mycophobic and mycophilic countries. Lithuania belongs to the mycophilic ones along with Russia, which these researchers have investigated (see Wasson and Wasson 1957: 4). In these countries, mushrooms and mushroom picking are important both economically and culturally.The article focuses on the mythical notion of mushrooms in Lithuanian culture and employs the mythical explanations of the origins of mushrooms, the perception of mushrooms as mythical beings, the mythical level and the ritual aspects of the mushroom picking to elucidate it.It is possible to discern two main reasons for mythologizing of mushrooms. First, they are important practically, therefore can acquire cultural meanings. Second, mushrooms are peculiar organisms, occupying the intermediate spot between plants and animals, and therefore characterized by certain mysteriousness.There are two mythical explanations for the origins of mushrooms. According to the first one, mushrooms are chthonic organisms, embodying fertility of the earth (mushrooms as flowers of the earth) and close to the Lithuanian devil and his mythical associates: fairies, sprites. By employing also the dream-readings and other connections of the devil with death and hidden treasures, or money, it is possible to discern several mythical complexes comprising associations between mushrooms and the devil as mythical being in the Lithuanian worldview, namely, mushrooms – earth – the devil; mushrooms – death – the devil; mushrooms – money – the devil. The second mythical explanation of the mushrooms’ origins appears in the etiological legends depicting mushrooms as the God’s gift to the poor people that emerged from the grain or bread spit out by the God or St Peter. This parallel between mushrooms and bread is important to the mythical thinking as well as to the use of mushrooms for nutrition.It is possible to identify mushrooms with mythical beings and people. This aspect is clearly visible in the Lithuanian riddles, according to which mushrooms have human body parts (feet, head), items of dress (hat, pants), or human denominations (uncle, girl). Besides, just like humans or animals, mushrooms allegedly suffer from the evil eye. According to the popular belief, well known across the whole of Lithuania, the sighted mushroom stops growing. The segregation of mushrooms into male and female genders is also important. This is especially vivid in the Lithuanian folksongs depicting war or wedding of the mushrooms.There are beliefs of the mushrooms behaving as agile, sensitive beings or as peculiar forest spirits. They can hear the approaching mushroom pickers and hide from them. According to some Lithuanian legends and the comparative Slavic material, it is possible to assume that boletus (Boletus edulis) – considered the “proper” mushroom in the southeastern Lithuania – could personify the guardian spirit of the forest – the master of the forest. The mushroom picking also has connections with the mythical notion of mushrooms. This activity depends on the mythical principle of the mushroom fortune as the most important one.The mushroom fortune manifests in successful picking, or mushrooms are the embodiment of success. This principle defines the amount of mushrooms that one is able to pick in the forest and the number and kind of mushrooms belonging to each individual picker. The mushroom fortune also involves having and carefully hiding one’s own picking places. The pickers may transfer the knowledge of these places to somebody else only as an inheritance. Mushroom picking may involve certain ritual practices: uttering of special prayers or performing peculiar magic actions aimed at securing the successful picking (throwing of shoes at the leaving mushroom picker, spitting on the first spotted mushroom, and occasional cases of offering). The mythical notion of mushrooms is rather similar in the mycophilic cultures. Numerous mushroom-related Lithuanian legends and beliefs have parallels in the neighboring Slavic countries (Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine). In turn, the ethnographic data from these countries fills in some blank spots in the mythical notion of mushrooms in the Lithuanian culture. In Lithuania, the mushroom picking is not only a means of enriching the food provisions or securing some income. This is a meaningful phenomenon accompanied by ritual and magical actions and representing the traditional Lithuanian mythical worldview.

The Biblical Story of the Announcement of Isaac's Birth: A Structural Analysis

The biblical story of the announcement of Isaac’s birth appears in the Bible in two different versions: one in Genesis 17 (1-27), the other in Genesis 18 (1-16). The comparison of different versions of a myth was the main method of research of Claude Levi-Strauss, emphasizing that mythical thought highlights the great binary oppositions such as life and death, culture and nature, femininity and masculinity, producing a definition of myth as a mode of thought that contributes to the creation of cultural and intellectual identities. The present structural analysis of the two versions of the biblical story of the announcement of Isaac’s birth according to the model of Levi-Strauss is an attempt to decipher the mythical code of the ancient story. This explication of the mythical code suggests that the myth underlying the two versions refers to a ‘collective subconscious’ revealed in structures. The decoding is performed on four levels, following LeviStrauss’ method: geographical, techno-economical, sociological, and cosmological. All four levels materialize in the version in Genesis 18, only two in the version in Genesis 17. The transformative relationship between the two versions creates a new meaning that expresses the sociological and cosmological aspects of circumcision. The two versions of the mythical story include the opposition between interior and exterior, expressing the fear of the penetration of foreigners into the community. The discussion further addresses Sarah’s or Abraham’s laughter, and blood of circumcision on the one hand and of menstruation on the other. The reinterpretation of cultural as well as natural and biological phenomena by mythical thinking creates a complex system of thought that contributes to the cultural and intellectual identity of biblical Israel. Formulating the mythological characteristics of the story of the announcement of Isaac’s birth in the two versions also sheds new light on the phenomenon of ‘mirror stories’ that has been shown to be central to the poetics of the Hebrew Bible by Yair Zakovitch.

A Drama in Heaven: “Emanation on the Left” in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in Ismāʿīlī Literature

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Drama in Heaven: “Emanation on the Left” in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in Ismāʿīlī LiteratureMichael Ebstein and Tzahi WeissMichael EbsteinMartin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for more articles by this author and Tzahi Weissand Open University of Israel Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 55, Number 2November 2015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/683063 Views: 186Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref © 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Asiye TIĞLI İsmâilîlik’te Varlığın Hudûdu ve Âdem’in Hübûtu, Kader (Dec 2021).https://doi.org/10.18317/kaderdergi.993777Avishai Bar-Asher The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus, Religions 11, no.1111 (Oct 2020): 553.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110553Jonathan Garb A History of Kabbalah, 18 (Jul 2020).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316597071Michael Ebstein Between Mythical Thought and Philosophy: Prolegomena to a Comparative Study of Jewish and Islamic Mysticism in Medieval Spain, (Aug 2019): 51–63.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26275-4_4

Mythological Plotsasa Self-Organizing Process

Elements of mythical thinking, as archaeological types, always become the center of the researchers’ attention. But there are still such problems in this area, so that are of scientific interest. There are issues among them that have a direct appeal to the philosophical thinking. The observation of striking similarities among myths of the world people is of this kind. These are plot similarities. Even the mythical plots of nations located in a remote geography quite far from one another contain elements and images similar to each other. The internal mechanism of mythical subjects’ self-organization resuscitates the folklore and gives life to it at any time. The folklore becomes active only in a person’s life. Particular people renew forms existing for centuries on the improvisation basis. Thus one can get rid of monotony and a tradition gets a new breath in the performance of each person as well. The tradition is kept, but expressed by a new rhythm and breath. And it shows that myths always live and go through centuries in a new improvisation. In Turkish provinces everybody knows the Khizir’s Spirit as a cradle song. It is the symbol of the Holiness from its original date. Khizir- a thousand year old Turk fondles his love by the language of the lullaby and bayaties.He has made a tale of his Memory and set up a great deal of saga for himself. In this case the evaluation of mythological plots always maintains its topicality as one of the important terms.

Asian Studies: Scientific Knowledge or Mythical Thought?

Asian Studies: Scientific Knowledge or Mythical Thought?