"'The future was creating the past.'" (p. 633)
Janne Floris guides Veleda in building the cult of Nehalennia:
"'...I know that many stories people live by are myths, and many myths were manufactured.'" (p. 637)
Many myths manufactured? A "myth" is either a falsehood or a meaningful story. The Crucifixion was a historical event and has been invested with meaning. The Resurrection is an alleged historical event, also invested with meaning. The American, French, Glorious and other Revolutions were historical events which attract meaning and also falsehoods. (I believe that it is a falsehood, for example, that revolutions always fail but this is controversial.)
Alan Moore once said to me that "religions are higher fictions." How true, in one way. Fiction requires willing suspension of disbelief. Some religions require willing belief. This is a difference of degree, not of kind. If this sense, if one religion is true, then the others are either falsehoods or (higher) fictions.
I want always to know the difference between truth, falsity and fiction and never to live by a falsehood.
2 comments:
Myths are human creations, but “manufactured” is a misleading term for the usual process by which they come to be. Most are the product of innumerable minds, most of which themselves subscribe to the myth in question. Humans tell stories — and believe them — by reflex; major stories that millions live by are collective creations.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree not all "revolutions" can be considered failures, but the successes are so rare they can be counted on fewer than the fingers of one hand. Two at the most.
And I don't believe Christianity to be founded on "myths." I'm reminded of Anderson's discussion of that in "A Chapter of Revelation." Things like the Shroud of Turin and the cures grudgingly accepted as genuine by the Medical Board at Lourdes fits only with difficulty into any dismissal of Christianity as merely a "higher fiction."
Ad astra! Sean
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