This was interesting, and up my alley. I should have discovered Anthropology a lot earlier, although I always felt I could just show up and join in on the local events. My reportage shouldn't require accreditation.
From this, the key takeaways:
- Myths can only be recited at certain times - evening, fall or winter
- The word: “Alcheringa”
- Levi-Bruhl, abundant citations, other authors and authorities in the field, sadly proving to be a keeper if I want to continue on in this direction, but - no, goddamnit - let it go!
- Myths as related to Christianity (a myth; midnight masses, etc)
- Myth, origins, ritual - myths about language, about writing (the invention of)Myths vs stories or fables
- Ritual, dancing, songs, firelight, deep in a cave magic, storytelling, shamanistic journeys, rites, superstitions, taboos,
- The return to the beginning, the golden age, a place outside of time - “IN the Garden” or “Kronos, devouring his children” - in the days when men were giants and the sins of their fathers had not so diminished them, stooped them like Atlas under the weight of a world they had no hands in making;
- Memory & Forgetfulness, the rivers Lethe & Mnemosyne - to be asleep is akin to death or forgetting, to be ‘conscious” in the spiritual sense is to “awaken” - into another kingdom,
None of this was anything I didn't know, just couched in language perhaps a degree or 2 above your average layman. I enjoyed it, but the information was largely gotten by instinct and just confirmed in his text.