Before there was only one, perfect God, there were many Gods, who were both perfect and flawed, who lived out a grand soap opera not unlike that of humanity. They were divine, yet they were also very human.
Like man, they exercised free will. They gave in to temptation and acted upon impulse. They were ruled by their love, their hate, their anger, their lust. They lied, committed acts of vengeance, cheated on their mates, womanized, killed, meddled in the affairs of man. But also they could love, defend, tell the truth, be merciful and kind, make amends, and accept the consequences of their action.
Each God represents different aspects and faces of man and life. While man may identify more strongly with one God than another, each God represents a peice of the humanity--and divinity--that dwells within mankind. In each of us is a Zeus, an Aphrodite, an Aries, an Isis, an Eros. And when we take the myths as metaphors, we can see the parallels in our lives.
Perhaps the ancient myths are not simple stories created by unenlightened people to entertain, but to guide man in his actions through stories about the actions of the god, so that man could learn through those stories how each action has a consequence, about psychology and human nature, and the nature of the world and the myriad directions human interaction can take.
Perhaps the Greeks did not tell the story of Persephone's descent into the underworld to explain why we have summer and winter, but simply that we have summer and winter. Perhaps it wasn't about why things are the way they are, but simply to explain how things are.
Like man, they exercised free will. They gave in to temptation and acted upon impulse. They were ruled by their love, their hate, their anger, their lust. They lied, committed acts of vengeance, cheated on their mates, womanized, killed, meddled in the affairs of man. But also they could love, defend, tell the truth, be merciful and kind, make amends, and accept the consequences of their action.
Each God represents different aspects and faces of man and life. While man may identify more strongly with one God than another, each God represents a peice of the humanity--and divinity--that dwells within mankind. In each of us is a Zeus, an Aphrodite, an Aries, an Isis, an Eros. And when we take the myths as metaphors, we can see the parallels in our lives.
Perhaps the ancient myths are not simple stories created by unenlightened people to entertain, but to guide man in his actions through stories about the actions of the god, so that man could learn through those stories how each action has a consequence, about psychology and human nature, and the nature of the world and the myriad directions human interaction can take.
Perhaps the Greeks did not tell the story of Persephone's descent into the underworld to explain why we have summer and winter, but simply that we have summer and winter. Perhaps it wasn't about why things are the way they are, but simply to explain how things are.
No comments:
Post a Comment