myths

• primitive man was a mythmaker

4:5.1Re­li­gious tra­di­tion is the im­per­fectly pre­served rec­ord of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the God-know­ing men of past ages, but such rec­ords are un­trust­wor­thy as guides for re­li­gious liv­ing or as the source of true in­for­ma­tion about the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Such an­cient be­liefs have been in­vari­ably al­tered by the fact that prim­i­tive man was a myth­maker.

• from garbled legends regarding Prince’s staff

66:2.8These trans­ac­tions, to­gether with the lit­eral cre­ation of spe­cial bod­ies for the Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred, gave ori­gin to nu­mer­ous leg­ends, many of which sub­se­quently be­came con­fused with the later tra­di­tions con­cern­ing the plan­e­tary in­stal­la­tion of Adam and Eve.

• from garbled legends regarding Prince’s staff

66:4.1The ar­rival of the Prince’s staff cre­ated a pro­found im­pres­sion. While it re­quired al­most a thou­sand years for the news to spread abroad, those tribes near the Mes­o­po­ta­mian head­quar­ters were tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the teach­ings and con­duct of the one hun­dred new so­journ­ers on Uran­tia. And much of your sub­se­quent mythol­ogy grew out of the gar­bled leg­ends of these early days when these mem­bers of the Prince’s staff were reper­son­al­ized on Uran­tia as super­men.

• from garbled legends regarding Prince’s staff

67:4.3The pres­ence of these ex­traor­di­nary super­men and super­women, stranded by re­bel­lion and pres­ently mat­ing with the sons and daugh­ters of earth, eas­ily gave ori­gin to those tra­di­tional sto­ries of the gods com­ing down to mate with mor­tals. And thus orig­i­nated the thou­sand and one leg­ends of a myth­i­cal na­ture, but founded on the facts of the postre­bel­lion days, which later found a place in the folk tales and tra­di­tions of the var­i­ous peo­ples whose an­ces­tors had par­tic­i­pated in these con­tacts with the Nod­ites and their de­scen­dants.

67:4.4The staff rebels, de­prived of spir­i­tual sus­te­nance, even­tu­ally died a nat­u­ral death. And much of the sub­se­quent idol­a­try of the hu­man races grew out of the de­sire to per­pet­u­ate the mem­ory of these highly hon­ored be­ings of the days of Cali­gas­tia.

74:8.1The story of the cre­ation of Uran­tia in six days was based on the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their ini­tial sur­vey of the Gar­den. This cir­cum­stance lent al­most sa­cred sanc­tion to the time pe­riod of the week, which had been orig­i­nally in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tians. Adam’s spend­ing six days in­spect­ing the Gar­den and for­mu­lat­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans for or­ga­ni­za­tion was not pre­ar­ranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choos­ing of the sev­enth day for wor­ship was wholly in­ci­den­tal to the facts here­with nar­rated.

74:8.2The leg­end of the mak­ing of the world in six days was an af­terthought, in fact, more than thirty thou­sand years af­ter­wards. One fea­ture of the nar­ra­tive, the sud­den ap­pear­ance of the sun and moon, may have taken ori­gin in the tra­di­tions of the one­time sud­den emer­gence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute mat­ter which had long ob­scured both sun and moon.

• creation of Eve from Adam’s rib

74:8.3The story of cre­at­ing Eve out of Adam’s rib is a con­fused con­den­sa­tion of the Adamic ar­rival and the ce­les­tial surgery con­nected with the in­ter­change of liv­ing sub­stances as­so­ci­ated with the com­ing of the cor­po­real staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince more than four hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously.

74:8.4The ma­jor­ity of the world’s peo­ples have been in­flu­enced by the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had phys­i­cal forms cre­ated for them upon their ar­rival on Uran­tia. The be­lief in man’s hav­ing been cre­ated from clay was well-nigh uni­ver­sal in the East­ern Hemi­sphere; this tra­di­tion can be traced from the Philip­pine Is­lands around the world to Africa. And many groups ac­cepted this story of man’s clay ori­gin by some form of spe­cial cre­ation in the place of the ear­lier be­liefs in pro­gres­sive cre­ation—evo­lu­tion.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

74:8.6The Baby­lo­ni­ans, be­cause of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the rem­nants of the civ­i­liza­tion of the Adamites, en­larged and em­bel­lished the story of man’s cre­ation; they taught that he had de­scended di­rectly from the gods. They held to an aris­to­cratic ori­gin for the race which was in­com­pat­i­ble with even the doc­trine of cre­ation out of clay.

74:8.7The Old Tes­ta­ment ac­count of cre­ation dates from long af­ter the time of Moses; he never taught the He­brews such a dis­torted story. But he did pre­sent a sim­ple and con­densed nar­ra­tive of cre­ation to the Is­raelites, hop­ing thereby to aug­ment his ap­peal to wor­ship the Cre­ator, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whom he called the Lord God of Is­rael.

74:8.8In his early teach­ings, Moses very wisely did not at­tempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the su­preme teacher of the He­brews, the sto­ries of Adam be­came in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with those of cre­ation. That the ear­lier tra­di­tions rec­og­nized pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion is clearly shown by the fact that later ed­i­tors, in­tend­ing to erad­i­cate all ref­er­ence to hu­man af­fairs be­fore Adam’s time, ne­glected to re­move the tell­tale ref­er­ence to Cain’s em­i­gra­tion to the “land of Nod,” where he took him­self a wife.

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

74:8.10Jew­ish tra­di­tion be­came crys­tal­lized about Moses, and be­cause he en­deav­ored to trace the lin­eage of Abra­ham back to Adam, the Jews as­sumed that Adam was the first of all man­kind. Yah­weh was the cre­ator, and since Adam was sup­posed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to mak­ing Adam. And then the tra­di­tion of Adam’s six days got wo­ven into the story, with the re­sult that al­most a thou­sand years af­ter Moses’ so­journ on earth the tra­di­tion of cre­ation in six days was writ­ten out and sub­se­quently cred­ited to him.

74:8.11When the Jew­ish priests re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they had al­ready com­pleted the writ­ing of their nar­ra­tive of the be­gin­ning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a re­cently dis­cov­ered story of cre­ation writ­ten by Moses. But the con­tem­po­rary He­brews of around 500 B.C. did not con­sider these writ­ings to be di­vine rev­e­la­tions; they looked upon them much as later peo­ples re­gard mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tives.

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

74:8.14The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Gar­den civ­i­liza­tion was ac­tu­ally over­thrown. Adam and Eve car­ried on in the Gar­den for one hun­dred and sev­en­teen years when, through the im­pa­tience of Eve and the er­rors of judg­ment of Adam, they pre­sumed to turn aside from the or­dained way, speed­ily bring­ing dis­as­ter upon them­selves and ru­inous re­tar­da­tion upon the de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gres­sion of all Uran­tia.

74:8.15[Nar­rated by Solo­nia, the se­raphic “voice in the Gar­den.”]

• from garbled legends regarding Prince’s staff

77:2.3The postre­bel­lion era on Uran­tia wit­nessed many un­usual hap­pen­ings. A great civ­i­liza­tion—the cul­ture of Dala­ma­tia—was go­ing to pieces. “The Nephilim (Nod­ites) were on earth in those days, and when these sons of the gods went in to the daugh­ters of men and they bore to them, their chil­dren were the ‘mighty men of old,’ the ‘men of renown.’” While hardly “sons of the gods,” the staff and their early de­scen­dants were so re­garded by the evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals of those dis­tant days; even their stature came to be mag­ni­fied by tra­di­tion. This, then, is the ori­gin of the well-nigh uni­ver­sal folk tale of the gods who came down to earth and there with the daugh­ters of men be­got an an­cient race of heroes. And all this leg­end be­came fur­ther con­fused with the race mix­tures of the later ap­pear­ing Adamites in the sec­ond gar­den.

• Noah and the flood

77:4.12Mount Ararat was the sa­cred moun­tain of north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and since much of your tra­di­tion of these an­cient times was ac­quired in con­nec­tion with the Baby­lo­nian story of the flood, it is not sur­pris­ing that Mount Ararat and its re­gion were wo­ven into the later Jew­ish story of Noah and the uni­ver­sal flood.

• Noah and the flood

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

78:7.4The tra­di­tions of a time when wa­ter cov­ered the whole of the earth’s sur­face are uni­ver­sal. Many races har­bor the story of a world-wide flood some time dur­ing past ages. The Bib­li­cal story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an in­ven­tion of the He­brew priest­hood dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. There has never been a uni­ver­sal flood since life was es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. The only time the sur­face of the earth was com­pletely cov­ered by wa­ter was dur­ing those Archeo­zoic ages be­fore the land had be­gun to ap­pear.

78:7.5But Noah re­ally lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river set­tle­ment near Erech. He kept a writ­ten rec­ord of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon him­self by go­ing up and down the river val­ley ad­vo­cat­ing that all houses be built of wood, boat fash­ion, and that the fam­ily an­i­mals be put on board each night as the flood sea­son ap­proached. He would go to the neigh­bor­ing river set­tle­ments ev­ery year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Fi­nally a year came in which the an­nual floods were greatly aug­mented by un­usu­ally heavy rain­fall so that the sud­den rise of the wa­ters wiped out the en­tire vil­lage; only Noah and his im­me­di­ate fam­ily were saved in their house­boat.

• ancients always sought supernatural explanations

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

• men constantly enshroud human leaders with supernatural origins, miraculous careers

92:5.5Most great re­li­gious epochs have been in­au­gu­rated by the life and teach­ings of some out­stand­ing per­son­al­ity; lead­er­ship has orig­i­nated a ma­jor­ity of the worth-while moral move­ments of his­tory. And men have al­ways tended to ven­er­ate the leader, even at the ex­pense of his teach­ings; to re­vere his per­son­al­ity, even though los­ing sight of the truths which he pro­claimed. And this is not with­out rea­son; there is an in­stinc­tive long­ing in the heart of evo­lu­tion­ary man for help from above and be­yond. This crav­ing is de­signed to an­tic­i­pate the ap­pear­ance on earth of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the later Ma­te­rial Sons. On Uran­tia man has been de­prived of these super­hu­man lead­ers and rulers, and there­fore does he con­stantly seek to make good this loss by en­shroud­ing his hu­man lead­ers with leg­ends per­tain­ing to super­nat­u­ral ori­gins and mirac­u­lous ca­reers.

• prepared way for superior religion by assuming reality of supermaterial beings

103:9.4The mag­i­cal and mytho­log­i­cal parent­age of nat­u­ral re­li­gion does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity and truth of the later rev­e­la­tional re­li­gions and the con­sum­mate sav­ing gospel of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Je­sus’ life and teach­ings fi­nally di­vested re­li­gion of the su­per­sti­tions of magic, the il­lu­sions of mythol­ogy, and the bond­age of tra­di­tional dog­ma­tism. But this early magic and mythol­ogy very ef­fec­tively pre­pared the way for later and su­pe­rior re­li­gion by as­sum­ing the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of super­ma­te­rial val­ues and be­ings.

• Oriental minds delight in fairy stories

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

• story of Jonah and whale important to Gadiah

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”