Time & Symbols

Time & Symbols


Frazer, who wrote that great tome The Golden Bough, reckoned that mythologies were the creation of people who did not possess enough true knowledge to have any accurate sense of the relationship between the Creator and the created. In our day, we assume that we know better.


Dante said that there are two ways of regarding the literal aspect of a mythological image:


The way of the poet

The way of the theologian


The poet sees the literal story as a beautiful fiction through which a truth is communicated allegorically.


The theologian sees the story as a fact through which a truth is communicated.


Joseph Campbell defines religion as a popular misunderstanding of poetry.

Mythology, he says, is only as valid as the symbols are to the age in which they are presented. This must, if true, extend to the core beliefs of religions. Every possible symbol was commandeered by our spiritual alma mater (the Watchtower Society) to bring the end of the age into focus and convert the symbols, through overuse, into reality and truth. Those realities never came. What will become of the symbols now? For example, how will we now interpret that lovely picture of people out of all the nations of the earth coming to the mountain of Jehovah to be taught His ways?


Many of us will accept that the creation account is Genesis is allegorical. Not so long ago, this would have been blasphemous. Campbell would have us extend the rest of scripture into the same classification as the creation account – symbols that worked in a certain time but now have no value. He would call significant events in the scriptures (and other writings held to be sacred) as motifs. He reckons that the alleged landing on the moon is more relevant to this age than the Flood or even the ransom sacrifice of Christ.


How can he see the death of Christ as a motif? Because he claims that the death of Christ is a motif in use since the time of the death of Osiris. Nobody can deny the similarities in the life and death of Mithras and Christ, to give just one example. The ‘death of the king’ for the sake of the continued existence of humanity is a theme as old as written history. It may have its root in the first prophesy in Genesis regarding the one struck by the serpent in the heel. If true, that puts the ‘motif’ in scriptural perspective and as some might say, ‘in its place’.


It might have a wider impact than that. Joseph Campbell states that mythology has grown up around the horrible recognition that existentialists have; life is tough and then you die. He claims that mythology was a form of rationalisation to make bearable what was unbearable. It changed the prospect of living, suffering, and then dying to living, suffering and then shuffling off this mortal coil, but not dying in a real sense, only physically. We recognise this teaching as one of the core teachings of the ‘father of the lie’. The second horrible recognition that our forefathers dealt with was the necessity for one form of life to die to sustain their life, and they were not comfortable with the idea. Campbell sees this as the origin of the ritual sacrifice of animals in our behalf. To him, the ritual sacrifice of the man Jesus is a later sophistication of the basic substitution of animal death for human death.


Rather than abandon spiritual belief altogether, how would the older motifs be transformed to add value to our higher needs? The trend has always been towards progressively less barbaric displays of ritual as time progressed. The Cosmic Christ seems like a strong contender for the modern motif – no animal life is lost, no human need die, only the selfish ego must die as cosmic consciousness reduces it to insignificance as it blossoms in its consciousness of its inherent part in the totality of existence.


Leaving aside the possible loss of traditional Christianity to a more generic version, what about the continued validation of core Christian beliefs in the modern world? For the Jehovah’s witnesses, how will these motifs be continued into the 21st century? How will mainstream religions fare in the struggle to remain relevant? So far, they all seem to have no idea where to go now.


There is one common denominator in all of this: nobody is making any attempt to address the still horrible prospect of human death, and it is left to people generally to believe in a life after death. Generally, there are no concrete notions of what that entails. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses (and many ex-Witnesses) seem to be content with the belief that death is a very total end to a human life and the spirit that powered that life goes back to the God who gave it to await resurrection.


But here we stand, with seemingly outdated symbols but minds and hearts that believe that they have connected with God at some time in the past. Now that the symbols need reinterpreting, what will we think? That perhaps not only the symbols need to be consigned to the scrapheap, but also the faith that was formed from these symbols. What then of our relationship with a Divine creature, was it an illusion? What indicated the presence of the Creator in our lives? I believe it was a long pattern of coincidences that defied the law of probabilities, and so made the coincidences void and the probability of a God helping us along the path of life more likely.


I’m not sure I can revalidate the symbols. I think the work of carrying out such a task mostly involves reinterpretation. Or accepting that many things we used to believe had come to pass have not, and may take a long period of time to occur. The new Watchtower approach seems to have something in common with the New Age approach; when in doubt, adopt a generic approach. I think all the dogmatic insistences of past decades are gone, vagueness is the order of the day, because in its lack of specificity, no claims can be said to be have been made that require a later explanation. Soon, I believe the only claim to Christianity that the Watchtower Society or the mainstream religions will boast will be the generic assertion that they are good but fallible people trying to find God.


I have feared symbols ever since I learned of their use by the Nazis. I’m sure the misuse of symbols goes way back. I think, and trust, that the earliest misuse of a symbol was that of the anointed one who would suffer for humanity but recover from the assault. I want this to be true because it reduces a supposed motif to a litany of pretenders to the position of the Christ, those who misused it to reign recklessly over people, originally understanding the concept of the ‘death of the king’ for the people, but later having no inkling of the self-sacrifice inherent in the position, and lording the ‘right of kings’ over ‘their’ subjects for millennia. What will happen now as the ‘sons of Heaven’ have been reduced to nothing in the East? And what of the moral vacuum that always sustained the ‘royal family’ in the U.K and everywhere else from London to St. Petersburg, but was never as universally and comprehensively apparent as now?


It seems that even the pretenders have had their day. And people are glad to see them go – or are they? Many people are walking by sight and not by faith, and they still put faith in the old symbols of stability, personified by Queen Elizabeth 11, most obviously when she addresses the British nation on Christmas Day. Her last claim to the ‘right to rule’ was reduced to the illusion of the Royal Protector of middle-class principles, and this supposed virtue was admired, not just in Britain, but outside as well. With the divorces of her children, that illusion came tumbling down.


In the aftermath of a world of symbols that held value, how will we gird up our loins to rationalise our existential dilemma and cope with the awful differences between our aspirations and our nature? People love to give these periods names; post-modern etc. What might we be? Post-symbolic? It doesn’t seem likely, because we need symbols and will probably always invent them, even if they make no sense. The media, including modern education, has paved the way for this. To be fair, though, myths never needed to be rooted in reality to have meaning – the meaning was probably intended to transcend reality. Symbol seems to exist on the subconscious level, where dreams and hallucinations thrive (natural or induced), and might be the basest form of spiritual consciousness.


If man really landed on the moon, could this symbol reflect our aspirations more validly than the handing down of the Law at Mount Sinai? If the moon landing was faked, does this matter at all in the area of myth? What would a modern myth tell us? Are Superman and Batman modern expressions of the Messiah’s saving powers and if so, is this as far as modern mythology can go? They make no claims to being capable of imparting eternal life or truths. Perhaps the search for the modern myth is like he search for the grail. It may be that every myth ever concocted came out of an ancient pool of experiences and these experiences can only be re-worked and reinterpreted, not replaced.

Thanks a lot, Beau!

Very good writing, Mr. Brandan.

Just a few of my thoughts on a few of the above points, namely: Genesis allegory, modern myth, existentialism, an alternative philosophy:

I suppose I’m still in the 'un-enlightened' "old school" category of "folk" who do not believe Genesis is "allegorical". Allegory may exist thematically within it; nevertheless, I believe the "stories" are real ones, and the persons discussed were actual living human beings. Otherwise, there is NO redeeming person of Christ (as the Gospels also list these persons in genesis in genealogy pointing to Christ)

On this point I ask the same question as I did somewhere else before: IF Genesis is 'allegory' that eventually turns literal, then where is that "turning point", and upon what basis is this transition made? I realize there are those who consider the entire Bible allegorical and that no such transition exists. I suppose I am also "old school" in considering this mindset as completely lost, and spiritually dark.

I’ve seen the tracts that show 20 different 'Christ' myth figures through time and culture, and how there is/was no real Jesus Christ, and, no God at all. I gave it a read, and the argument a full hearing, by the likes of Jordan Maxwell and David Icke. These are men who’s methodology of discerning ‘truth’ is to discount the Bible and Jesus Christ entirely------and yet, will take some primitive, backwater, loin-cloth wearing African tribesman’s 15th generational-oral tradition of a King changing into a lizard as LITERAL GOSPEL TRUTH. Thereafter, virtually every story of King to Lizard must be “true”, and before you know it, the Queen of England herself is a “shapeshifting” lizard (I will agree she may be a “snake” in the true comparative fashion---see the “Let them eat cake” thread--- but not LITERALLY!!!)

And the “evidence” for all this lizard-man belief? Written and oral mythologies. The same “stuff” they reject if it speaks of Christ the Lord.

Hypothetically speaking, if Genesis 3:15 was understood by Satan, then it would be rather easy for him---a being outside time as we understand it---to ‘replicate’ a plethora of false ‘christs’ with different “faces” according to the culture from wherein it was placed and portrayed (what better way to make the appearance of the true Son of God seem just like “any other ol’ myth”?) This theory I just presented is as valid as any lizard-man (woman) ones I’ve seen…

Let’s clarify one matter right away; certainty and faith do not co-exist. These two don’t attend the same parties (See Daniel Taylors “The Myth of Certainty”).

One observation has been that men of our “age” think and believe they are so very much advanced above their ancestors. We have incredible technology that gives us abilities undreamed of just a few hundred years ago. We have advanced theories of the beginning of existence, with “science”, proving it all. Along with these things, and many more, mans belief in his ability to better, more fully, more accurately, contemplate his own existence, and the ‘why’ of it (existentialism in general), has also come about, right along in parallel with these other things.

A great trouble, as well as inconsistency, with existentialism, is the concept that men are owed, or have a right to the answers to the great "question" of life or existence. In other words, something like “Gee-Whiz, fellas…IM HERE…now what? Why? What for? ” When these 'answers' are not forth-coming, pointless suffering and death abounds, it becomes a philosophical mindset that says, "Life’s a Bitch, then you die, and if there even is a God, he doesn’t care", even if this mentality is crouched within fancy literary constructs, and or the re-interpretation of ornate symbology. This mindset has its beginning with an entitlement belief, that, by virtue of being here, we have some RIGHT to an "answer". [See Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground”----which incidentally was MY MINDSET EXACTLY, several years ago, Camus’ “The Stranger” and “The Plague”, and anything by Kafka, but especially “The Metamorphosis”]

I guess, were I to distill a ‘belief system’ of the reason existence is the way it is, down to a few basics, it would be the following:

1) You have no rights to anything. As in, absolutely NOTHING. You are not “endowed by your creator” with ANY “rights”.

2) You have 'grace'. Nothing more.

3) Given #1 & #2, God is good---ALL the time. Your ability to read this at all is a gift, and nothing more (nothing more as in, you have no RIGHT endowed upon you to be able to do it)

4) Grace is infinitely better than "Rights".

I think the main point of the book of Job is wrapped up in these basic points.

Add this one from the Book of John:

5) Gods grace is what will allow for all to be reconciled to him, through his Son Jesus Christ----the same Son who was sent to the Cross suffering, without ANY “rights”.

Just some thoughts...