Museographs: Art, Myth, Legend and Story. Caron Caswell Lazar

consider it much more likely that Jesus would have been born late spring.

      Often multiple traditions — some conflicting — existed side-by-side and later writers chose the tradition that best suited their purposes, or altered details selectively. Pindar, for example, was known to have ‘moralized’ some of the myths he reproduced in his writings. A millennium later Western explorers who came into contact with the islanders of the Pacific tended to equate the myths they encountered with those they had been brought up with inside their own cultures. One result of this was an attempt on the Westerners’ part to identify a supreme being, where in fact none was actually being referred to.

      The term angel derives from a Greek translation of the original Hebrew mal’akh or ‘shadow side of God’ but later came to mean messenger. In their original forms angels were not. The corporeal visage of the benevolent messengers of God are cherished by Jews, Christians and Moslems alike, historically evolved from a cross-breeding of Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Persian supernatural beings encountered by the Jews while held captive in strange lands among strange gods. This genetic interaction of ideas produced the outward appearance of the winged angels we know today. By the first century C.E. this essentially Jewish creation was adopted by the new religion and six centuries later by the Moslems. Interestingly, though most still regard the image of an angel to be winged and anthropomorphic, in recent history the outward image of blessings is giving up its wings and in some cases its corporeality altogether.

      Unity of Theme

      The world over, peoples and societies have developed common story themes to explain creation, behavior and cultural distinction. And there are also the stories associated with cataclysmic events. The most obvious example of this is the unbelievable number of flood and regeneration stories which appear all around the globe. Some two hundred date back to the Hebrew patriarch Noah’s deluge story of some 11,600 years ago. These similarly timed stories come from Kenya and throughout Africa, India, the American Indians of North, Central and South Americas, China, the Russias and of course Plato’s Atlantis.

      Other common stories include the appearance of messengers sent to redeem a people, celestial events, and chronicles of visitors from other worlds. Some of these visitors from other worlds have come to be identified as historical personages from other continents; others are left unexplained, their origins often purportedly rooted in the skies.

      Myth, Legend and Story Today

      Around the world many peoples still cling lovingly to their traditions. For those living in an industrialized, materialistic society, myths may well seem to be totally irrelevant. Over the last two centuries there has been a clearly deliberate attempt in Western civilization to demythologize the world in every aspect of society. Some perceive this as a sign of intellectual and emotional maturity. Unfortunately this approach ignores the far-reaching function of myth in underpinning society and in preserving a sense of the sacred.

      And it’s not working. Hungry for the culture of story, new myths are springing up. They take the form of urban heroes who fight crime enshrined in comic books, and film; of other worlds developed mentally and constantly under metamorphosis engendered in games such as Dungeons and Dragons and with more frequency each and every year. In fact cult-like fantasy gaming is one of the fastest growing entertainment businesses in the United States today. The most prevalent myth— or story — of our time is of course, visitors from other planets.

      A sad but important difference underlies the myths, legends and stories of history with those given rise in the modern world. Historically they portrayed the triumph of good over evil, engendered teaching for future generations, and voiced the wisdom and growth of earth’s individual and collective peoples. Today’s herald the destruction of the earth, give us mutations of the soul, and leave us as the children of one-celled amoeba rather than the beloved of the Divine.