According to Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, mythology has four main roles. The first function is to reconcile the human consciousness with the universe as it is. The second is to “render an interpretive total image of the same.” The third function is to enforce a moral order: “the shaping of the individual to the requirements of his geographically and historically conditioned social group . . .” (pg 4). The fourth role of myth is to foster the development of the individual in harmony with himself, the culture, the universe, and the supernatural.
Traditionally, all of these roles were fulfilled by religion. Roles one and two are filled by creation myths that explain how the universe came to be, and mankind’s place within it. Morals are enforced because the lives of all humans are judged after death, and punished or rewarded accordingly. In Zoroastrianism, the soul of the dead must cross the Bridge of Chinvat, the Bridge of Judgment, and souls who did good works are rewarded with Paradise, and those who sinned, including women who approached water and fire while menstruating, men who had walked without shoes, urinated standing up or had relations with a menstruating woman, are tormented mercilessly. (Campbell, MoG: Occidental Mythology, pg 199)
The development of the individual in harmony with himself and the culture has long been accomplished through religious rites and rituals, reaching back as far as humanity itself.
“In the context of a traditional mythology, the symbols are presented in socially maintained rites, through which the individual is required to experience, or will pretend to have experienced, certain insights, sentiments and commitments.” (MoG: Creative Pg 4)
One can think of the Catholic Mass when it was celebrated in Latin, as it had been for hundreds of years stretching back into the past. The priest conducted the ceremony with his back to the congregation. Instead of having a Sunday lecture, the goal of the ritual was to take the minds of the believers out of their daily routine and move their minds and spirits closer to the divine, with the priest acting as intercessor. In this ritual, the wine and the wafer become the blood and the body of Christ, and are consumed. By receiving communion, the believer comes into contact not only with the divine, but also with the history of all those who went before them.
I have always enjoyed studying the various mythological and religious systems that have come and gone over the centuries. Of course, by 2009, many of the roles of a traditional mythological system have been replaced. Science now has the role of telling us how the universe came to be (it has something to do with microwave background radiation) and how we came to exist in it. The moral systems of ancient religions have been replaced (some would say augmented, others, diluted) by the philosophy of ethics.
Reading about religion, then, has always seemed to be an academic exercise. After all, we don’t undergo the complex initiation rites of primitive tribes. We don’t have to go on a quest to enter adulthood. The passage of time is marked by a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve, and that’s about it. “Symbols presented in socially maintained rites” are not something that we have to worry about anymore.
Or so I thought, until I witnessed two separate events.
On Monday, I had the good fortune to go to a basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse at the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk Jayhawk). On television, you sit down, listen to the commentators ramble for a few minutes, and then the game starts. It is different live. Several minutes before gametime, the entire crowd stands and joins arms to sing the Alma Mater (notice the Latin). The entire crowds chants “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” in a slow drone. There is a video showing the history of the basketball program from it’s invention by James Naismith (KU’s first coach) to Mario Chalmer’s three pointer and the national championship of 2008.
The opposing team enters, wearing the colors and mascot (symbol?) of their university (tribe?). The crowd boos. The students hold up newspapers as if they couldn’t care less who the other players were. The home team enters wearing the colors and mascot of the university. The crowd cheers. The players are introduced. Right before the game, the American flag is presented, and everyone sings the national anthem.
When viewed from the outside, the singing and chanting and mascots and cheering may seem as strange as the explanation of an ancient ritual in the cult of Mithras (who was born on Dec 25 too) would be to us. It struck me while participating in the ritual that these activities, which have accumulated over time, fit the definition of a mythological ritual. “The symbols are presented in socially maintained rites, (the Jayhawk mascot, the singing and chanting together) through which the individual is required to experience, or will pretend to have experienced, certain insights, sentiments (adoration for the team) and commitments (sharing an experience with 15,000 screaming fans).”
Even as the Catholic Mass links with the past, so to do sporting events, especially in college, serve as a link to the history of the institution. Football games have even more activities beforehand. It may not be 1500 years old, but there were people doing the same cheers and performing similar rituals at least 100 years ago.
Tuesday morning I set my alarm and got up bright and early to watch Obama take the Oath of Office at 11:00. Having thought the night before about the creation of modern rituals, I was in the state of mind to notice all of the elements of ritual in the Inauguration Ceremony. There are two processions, one of the dignitaries and leaders, and the parade itself. There is a speech by a minister, clearly linking the affairs of the government to the symbols of religion. The biggest example, of course, is the Oath itself.
When Obama placed his hand on the Bible, it was not some random Bible from the local bookstore. It was the Bible Abraham Lincoln had used. Here were both elements: a “symbol presented in a socially maintained rite” and a link to the past. The last thing a person does before becoming President is to speak a set of scripted words with his right hand raised and his left on the Bible. This is clearly a rite.
We could have a system where an alarm goes off at noon on the 20th, and now the new guy is president- but that wouldn’t seem right to us. Humans need something more. We need rituals. Oaths were both common and powerful in the past. The fact that we still have one on our most solemn occasions points both to the power of ritual and the need to link to the past.
Modern rituals are everywhere, from the solemn coin-flip to start an NFL game to the ribbon-cutting ceremony to open a building to the smashing of a champagne bottle on a new ship. There are rituals in holidays, sports, government, and the courts.
Many people in the modern world have discarded the cosmological explanations of religion in exchange for the measurability of science. Religious rules and prohibitions have often been replaced by philosophy and ethics. Yet the need to fulfill the fourth role of myth, that of bringing the individual into harmony with himself and the society, still remains. Far from throwing out rites and rituals along with the other elements of religion, we instead create our own, using elements that link to the past, but also speak to the modern individual.
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