Alanna Dailey - Myth

Myth: Outside Reading
I love how Mircea Eliade describes myths as “living” in his work Myth and Reality. In US society myths are falsehoods and untruths. We often see magazine articles entitled “10 myths about …” and the article goes on to correct the lies that accompany that particular topic. Eliade explains that “myth” means “true story” and that oral culture rely on the true stories to know how to behave and how the world, animals, humans, and cosmos were created. Also as Americans we tend to be cynical about oral myths. We acknowledge that other cultures see myths as truth, but they are not really Truths and the other cultures just do not know any better.
I also thought the evolution of initiation rites was fascinating. The process goes: 1) the Supernatural kills man, 2) man retaliates and kills the Supernatural, 3) this killing then becomes an induction into a group/ manhood, and 4) the Supernatural is present in the initiation rite in the forms of a sacred object. Coming of age initiations never made sense to me. I did not understand how a person is suddenly a wo/man based on some rite. I related this to birthdays; I felt the same on March 1st as I did on March 2nd (my birthday) when I turned eighteen. When people turn eighteen, they are legally an adult. I did not feel like an adult, nor did I feel as if I reached some miraculous milestone. After reading Eliade, I understood initiation rites better. These rites represent something so much more than a birthday. These rites are living myths and are interactive with its people.