Beyond Belief

A few nights ago, Sprout had their monthly spaghetti dinner. Every month is a different theme, and I had been looking forward to this month’s - mythology - with what might be considered excessive enthusiasm. The evening was heavy on puppetry, with an accordion-accompanied retelling of an old Yiddish folk tale, as well as a surrealist examination of a precious American myth: the failure of Reconstruction. (I am now tempted to go off on a rant about the election of 1876 - one of my favorites rants! - but I will save that for later.) There was also a performance by Molly Allis whose new album is a transformation myth. It’s such a fertile topic, with so many people having so much to contribute, that they may even do a reprise (a retelling?) in the spring.

Anyway, I’ve got a huge weak spot for mythology. I mean, my cats’ names are Oedipus, Persephone, and Pandora - kind of a giveaway that I love myths. (Also puns.) When I was a kid I had a habit of reading everything in the house, down to appliance instructions and classified ads, so when I found my dad’s copy of the Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell, I devoured it. Campbell spends a lot of time following the iterations of basic themes, like stories of young, doomed love: Pyramus and Thisbe become Romeo and Juliet become Tristan and Iseult become Lancelot and Guinevere. Gilgamesh swims deep looking for the reed of immortality, only to have it snatched away by a snake; immortal Adam and Eve, deceived and tempted by a snake, are punished with mortality. It’s not just the shapes and forms that repeat and evolve. It’s the heart of the story, the themes we never get tired of hearing about.

One of my favorite mythological characters is Inanna/Ishtar, the Sumerian queen of love and war. She rules the city of Uruk, which she leaves in the care of her husband Dumuzi so that she can go off to visit her twin sister, Ereskigal, who commands the underworld. It’s not a happy reunion: as she comes closer Ereskigal asks Inanna to shed her staff, then her necklace, all of her clothes and belongings piece by piece and when she is naked and defenseless Ereskigal casts the “look of death” upon her, sticks a hook through her and hangs her up on the wall. Inanna’s servants beg for her life. Ereskigal grants it, but demands another sacrifice in her sister’s place. Upon returning home to Uruk, Inanna discovers her husband Dumuzi not exactly overcome with grief. In a fit of rage, she decrees that he should take her place in the underworld. Dumuzi is all set to go off to his fate when his sister intervenes, asking to be sacrificed instead. A compromised is reached: Dumuzi spends half of the year in the underworld, and during the other half his sister takes his place. When Dumuzi is dead, Inanna is lonely and the world is barren and wintry. When Dumuzi lives, Inanna is happy, and the world is full of warmth and sun and new things.

It’s an incredibly rich myth. You can tell, because so many later myths draw from it - the most obvious comparison is the story of Persephone, which provides the Greek explanation for the change of seasons. There’s an interesting difference, though: Persephone is stolen away by Hades, and rescued by her mother, the goddess of fertility whose cycles of grief spur the seasons. Dumuzi is both condemned by Inanna and mourned by Inanna. Her story is not one of steadfastness and bittersweet success, but of pride and anger and regret. I also love the parallels between Inanna and Ereskigal, and between Dumuzi and his sister. Ereskigal kills Inanna, but relents and lets her live. Dumuzi’s sister dies to save him, but her sacrifice is not entirely accepted. And Ereskigal, too, is such an interesting character! Queen of the underworld, kept away from the great feasts and exploits of the other gods, who can blame her for striking down haughty Inanna, the most passionate and wild of the gods?

Campbell also wrote “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”, which is kind of an abridged version of the Masks of God and also the primary inspiration for Star Wars. Luke Skywalker follows the archetypal hero’s journey, complete with rites of passage, from his first skirmish with the Tusken Raiders to his final battle against the Emperor, his father, and the dark forces inside himself. Luke also has a mentor, Obi-Wan, one of a long line of fictional guides, from Virgil to Gandalf, Merlin to Dumbledore. The word “mentor” itself comes from a myth: in the story of Odysseus, whose old friend Mentor raises his son and encourages him to go out and search for his father.

I actually want to come back to Reconstruction. This summer I stood on the Palatine Hill in Rome while my tour guide told me the empire’s foundation myth: the first Romans were said to have populated their city by inviting the neighboring Sabines to a feast and then attacking and kidnapping the women. The Rape of the Sabine Women (somewhat disturbingly, the subject of a great many famous paintings) was part of the story Romans told themselves to explain why they existed, why they ruled, and why they deserved to exist and rule. It’s not just the brutality towards women that’s surprising - there’s the deceit, the violence towards guests (the Greeks, by contrast, were honor-bound not to harm their guests, and considered killing a guest almost as bad as killing a parent or king). I wish I could get inside the head of a Roman who embraced this myth. Did they not see the Rape of the Sabines as a horrible act? Did they see it as a celebration of their cleverness and their power? Or did they see themselves as horrible? Or did they just think oh, no one believes those old stories anyway.

I learned a myth about Reconstruction in school. How it was a waste of time and money and an embarrassment for Ulysses S. Grant. How people just wanted to put the Civil War behind them and choose peace over violence. How emancipation was a big step forward for African Americans, and we as a society we had to wait and work up the nerve for another big step - desegregation - and isn’t it nice how we keep progressing, keep moving towards justice in a clear, linear, inevitable fashion?

I recognized the myth for what it was in bits and pieces. When I found out that 21 black congressman and 2 black senators - 11 of them former slaves - served in congress during Reconstruction, before being chased out and replaced with a vast white canvas of faces for half a century. (Only with the election of Barack Obama to the senate in 2000 did we have more black senators since Reconstruction than during it.) When I learned that “putting the war behind us” meant abandoning the south to terrorism. When I discovered that Republicans had tried to impeach Johnson because he’d vetoed civil rights bills and stood against the 14th and 15th amendments, and that they’d sold their souls for the Presidency in 1876, promising to end Reconstruction in exchange for the one vote Hayes needed to end the deadlock in the electoral college.

Facts are the enemies of myths. After all, a myth is by definition false. (Unlike a story, which is sometimes true.) And yet, myths captivate us, because they are not lies either. They are the bones and smoke and lightning that exist within and around and inside the truth. Their power lies in their believability.

I no longer believe in the myth of Reconstruction, but it echoes within me - I still want to believe it’s true, and I can understand those who do. It would be so right if progress and justice were inevitable. So nice if people ever grew tired of violence.

Did the people of Rome understand the Rape of the Sabines? Did they sympathize with the attackers and their situation, their desires? Did the people of Sumer find catharsis in Inanna’s punishment of her husband, did they find comfort in Dumuzi’s sister’s love and sacrifices? The people today who believe in the myth of Reconstruction, what do they get out of it?

And when that myth is gone, what other myth will take its place?