Someone Asked A Good Question Yesterday That Got Me Thinking: Why Are Some Mythologies Moremainstream

Someone asked a good question yesterday that got me thinking: why are some mythologies more “mainstream” than others? Where I’m from, everyone knows at least a couple things about the Egyptian, Norse, and Greek (and sometimes Roman) pantheons, but no one’s ever discussed those of East Asia, or South America, for example. 

My theory: Eurocentrism and colonialism.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome all have some relevant proximity to the history of Christianity. Egypt features prominently in the Exodus, and Greece and Rome were important cultural shapers in the time of Jesus and Paul. When Christianity spread and gained the force of empire through Constantine and others and spread up through Europe, it dominated nearly all the local traditions in its wake. This domination continued through the European colonization of the Americas, Africa, India, and others -- history is written by the colonizers, so it makes sense that the prominent revival pantheons among European-descended pagans aren’t those of the conquered people but those of their own people (Norse) and those that are “necessary” to provide historical weight to Christianity.

Completely conjecture, but this was interesting to think about today.

Always love lifelong learning.

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Let all those who labor in behalf of the community labor in their behalf for the sake of heaven--for the merit of their fathers upholds them and their grace endures forever.

The Talmud (Pirke Avot)

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Am I more than you bargained for yet?

Mystic-lite and substance-strained

Foolish, listless, garbled, pained

Seeking silence, craving peace

Murdering dreams in waves of sleep

Medicated though I be

Restless fervor powers me

And of this silence none can tell

What ought to be and ought to hell

So page by page here writ my mind

Hollowed out I now confide

In you my readers, friends, and foes

To look beyond the stilted prose

And find the dreams I all but lost.

My rhyme declines.

But finding you is worth the cost.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument; Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi