Mythmaking and Spiritual Development: Stanley Krippner's Prescription for a Personal Mythology

Abstract

<p>Every culture on the planet has stories ( or "folk tales") that are passed down from generation to generation. Some of these stories may be thousands of years old, and describe events that occurred long before the storyteller and his or her audience were alive. Legends, or historical stories, may recount famous battles, hunting expeditions, gatherings of the people, cataclysmic events, and discoveries of new peoples or lands. "Just-so"¹ type stories account for the origins of things ( e.g., how the howler monkey got its howl, how the spirits of plants gave people knowledge of medicines, why the day is divided into nighttime and daytime, where the moccasin game comes from, and so on). Fairy tale-type stories (Jones, 1995) depict the shenanigans of spirit entities - what Irving Hallowell (1955) liked to call <i>other-than-human persons</i> - involved in all sorts of mystical and magical activities that may thwart, complicate, cause mayhem, or perhaps even help people. Many people were raised reading <i>Grimm's Fairy Tales</i> (Grimm & Grimm, 2011) and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen (2010). Fables are similar to fairy tales in that they tend to feature anthropomorphized animals, plants, rocks and other things. The most famous of these in our Euro-American-Aussie tradition are Aesop's Fables (Aesop, 1994). <br/> There is a special type of story, however, that is somewhat distinct from legends, fairy tales, fables, and so on. We call these <i>myths</i>. Myths are ubiquitous to human cultures and their specialness has been recognized and researched from the early days of anthropology. Myths incorporate elements from other kinds of stories, of course, but they are special in that they operate as explanations of the world. Myths account for the way things are. They are textual expressions of cognitive comprehensions. For instance, with respect to social organization, myths commonly account for the structure of totemic systems-culture-nature relations, clan and lineage relations, gender relations, marriage and alliance rules, incest taboos, trade relations, and so forth. Indeed, in many societies the entirety of the cosmos is depicted as one gigantic kinship system (Levi-Strauss, 1963, p. 30). Intact, living mythologies also impact personal development (see Dundes, 2007; Jung, 1998). Through their inevitable link with ritual, myths may prescribe and guide proper paths of human development that may cover the entire lifespan (Murray, 1959). It is in this latter psychological field of research that Stanley Krippner has made an important and telling contribution to the scientific study of mythology.</p>