Friday, June 18, 2021

The Science of Mythology by C.G. Jung, Karl Kerényi

This is a collection of four essays by Jung and Kerényi which put together their thoughts on Mythology and Psychology to establish how the two fields can be analysed from a common point of view.

I didn't buy the title for the first time because it sounds so counterintuitive because there is nothing in mythology which can be called as science. Even the dictionary definition is "a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition". Which I think is well defined because those myths represent a particular thought or narrative which is more imagined rather than found naturally.

So, the myths are treated like that beautiful story. Any further dissection to find out some hidden meanings are going to remove the essence of why it was created in the first place.

I also don't agree to the point that these myths define human psyche. Myths were a collection of thoughts of a smaller group (myth-makers?) which was adopted by a larger group later by different channels (mostly art - poetry, drama, sculpture, paintings, books etc), and became the part of society. But that doesn't mean that they started having a life of their own. Force fitting some of the psychological conditions with a myth was not the best thing. It actually complicated the things much more with some imaginary accounts and characters.

This one really needs an open mind before you start accepting a lot of things here as normal or logical.

I don't have any expertise on any of these two subjects but defining everything within the two myths of Divine Child and Maiden Goddess may be a good idea for religion but it can't go beyond that.

One thing which I missed badly was a pronunciation of a lot of Greek words here which were given as is.

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