Use of Mythological Materials
Participants in the Goddess movement often invoke myths. However sceptics claim that these have been reconstructed from ancient sources and others are modern inventions. These myths are not understood literally, but rather figuratively or metaphorically as reflecting ancient understandings and worldviews. For instance, creation myths (Budapest 1980, Laura 1989, Starhawk 1979) are not seen as conflicting with scientific understanding but rather as being poetic, metaphoric statements that are compatible with, for example, the theory of evolution, modern cosmology and physics (Starhawk 1979, Laura 1997).
Myths from ancient cultures are often reinterpreted as new evidence comes to light. Because myths from religions that included goddesses, those after the Bronze Age, including Greek and Roman mythology, are believed to have patriarchal bias, reinterpretation by Goddess movement writers and women scholars help to provide a truer mirror of the social set up of the period in which the story was written. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is one that has been reinterpreted. (Christ 1987, Pollack, 1997, Spretnak 1978).
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Famous quotes containing the words mythological and/or materials:
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”
—Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)