Mythology Can Save Modern Men

Broad View of Religion and Spirituality00:00

Mystics around the world like Jesus, Muhammad, Rumi get it at various levels. Translating mystical insight is challenging—how to express it honestly from personal experience. Someone without that experience writes it down in a book and codifies it for everyone else. Big books contain mystical insights from someone who got it deeply, hard for them to speak, hard for others to write down 60 years later. Many people project their mother and father onto the creator of the universe, seeing him as upset and punitive. That made it into the texts.

Treat the Bible not as literally every word true, but as a repository, sometimes mistranslated, of brilliant mystic insight. Treat other texts similarly—some level of understanding and integration that made them survive and meaningful.

Usefulness of Greek, Egyptian Pantheon Gods01:33

Pantheon gods useful for relating to archetypal emotional patterns of life.

Story of Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus: Hephaestus is the craftsman god with a lame leg, a brainiac, not a physical powerhouse, the only crippled god. Betrothed and wedded to Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, but she cheats with alpha macho Ares. They have kids. Hephaestus learns he's being cuckolded, creates a cage above the bed, drops it on Ares and Aphrodite during sex, brings in other gods to laugh at them. Archetypal exploration of pain of academically inclined guy hurt by aggressive masculine man who takes what he loves, then shames him in his zone of power: intellect.