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FOKLORE

Lecturer :
Dr. Ali Mustafa

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group
MEMBERS
group MEMBERS

ELMA YANTI D

RAHMADHAN

NIM. 157835449

NIM. 157835454

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MYTHS

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Myth means a kind of storyeither from

ancient or modern sources whose actions
implicitly symbolize some profound truth
about human or natural existence

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MYTHS
Traditional myth tells us stories of gods or heroes, their battle, their lives, their loves,
and often their suffering all on a scale of magnificence larger than our life
Myth often tries to explain universal natural phenomena, like the phases of the moon
or the turning of the seasons.
Psychologists believe that myth expresses our wishes, dreams, and nightmares.
Whether we believe the myth or not, we recognize their psychological power.
The characteristic of myth is that it can be believed.
An important concept in understanding myth is the archetype, a basic image,
character, situation, or symbol that appears so often in literature and legend that it
evokes a deep universal response. (The Greek root of archetype means original
pattern)
The term archetype was from the writings of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung who
formulated a theory of the collective unconscious, a set of primal memories
common to the entire human race.
One powerful archetype seen across many cultures is the demon-goddess who
immobilizes men by locking them into a deathly trance or in the most primitive forms
of the myth, turning them to stone (Medusa)

HISTORY OF MYTH

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The Paleolithic Period: The Mythology of the

Hunters
(c. 20000 to 8000 BCE)
The Neolithic Period: The Mythology of the
Farmer (c. 8000 to 4000 BCE)
The Early Civilization (c. 4000 to 800 BCE)
E&
R

The Axial Age (c 800 to 200 BCE)

The Post-Axial Period (c. 200 BCE to c.

1500 CE)
The Great Western Transformation
(c. 1500 to 2000)

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THE PALEOLITHIC PERIOD: THE MYTHOLOGY OF

THE HUNTERS
(C. 20000 TO 8000 BCE)
People could not grow their own food, but depended entirely on hunting
and gathering.
Mythology was as essential to their survival as the hunting weapons and
skills that they evolved in order to kill their prey and achieve a degree of
control over their environment.
They considered sky as their God
They tell stories about humans becoming animal and vice versa; to kill an
animal is to kill a friend, so hunting became a sacred activity.
Logos was developed at this early stage
Logos means the mental activity we use when we want to make things
happen in the external world; when we organize our society or develop
technology.
Where myth looks back to the imaginary world of the sacred archetype or
to a lost paradise, logos forges ahead, constantly trying to discover
something new, to refine old insights, create inventions, and achieve a
greater control over the environment.

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The Neolithic Period: The

Mythology of the Farmer (c. 8000
The people
tohave
4000
BCE)that the earth was an apparently
discovered

inexhaustible source of nourishment.

They regarded farming as a sacred act.
In early neolithic mythology, the harvest was seen as the fruit of
a hierogamy, a sacred marriage: the soil was female, the seeds
divine semen: and the rain the sexual congress of heaven and
earth.
It was common for men and women to engage in ritual sex when
they planted their crops.
The sexual imagery of planting did not mean that people
experienced agriculture as a romantic love affair with nature.
Tilling the fields was accomplished only after hard, break
breaking labor the same as human reproduction which is highly
dangerous for mother and child.
Agriculture led to a new, if qualified, optimism. The seed had to
die in order to produce grain; pruning was actually helpful to
plants, and encouraged new growth.
The myths and rituals of passage helped people to accept their
mortality, to pass on to the next stage, and to have the courage
to change and grow.

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The early civilization (c. 4000 to 800 bce)

In about 4000 BCE, human beings moved forward when they
started to build cities, first in Mesopotamia and Egypt in about
4000 BCE, and later in China, India and Crete.
In this civilized arts, there was the invention of writing that they
could give enduring literary expression to their mythology.
The people of Mesopotamia saw the city as a place where they
could encounter the divine.
The gods lived in the city, side by side with human in temples
that was replicas of their palaces in the divine world.
The myth and its accompanying rituals were a reminder that
often things had to get worse before they could get better, and
that survival and creativity required a dedicated struggle.
Urban life had changed mythology. In some parts of the civilized
world, the old spirituality declined and nothing new appeared to
take its place.
Eventually this condition led to yet another great
transformation.

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THE AXIAL AGE (C 800 TO 200 BCE)

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers called this period the Axial Age
because it proved to be important in the spiritual development of humanity.
It marks the beginning of religion as we know it.
New religious and philosophical systems emerged: Confucianism and
Taoism in China; Buddhism and Hinduism in India; monotheism in the
Middle East and Greek rationalism in Europe.
Mortal and gods were no longer shared the same nature; it was no longer
possible to believe that gods and men derived from the same divine
substance.
Each of the Axial movements adopted a slightly different position. Some
were against with certain mythical trends; others were on the contrary.
In this age, to understand the true meaning of the myth, you must not only
perform the rites which give it emotional resonance, but you must also
behave in the correct ethical manner.
In Greece, the Axial Age was fuelled by logos
There was a contradiction in Western thought. Greek logos seemed to
oppose mythology, but philosophers continued to use myth, either seeing it
as the primitive forerunner of rational thought or regarding it as
indispensable to religious discourse

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THE POST-AXIAL PERIOD (C. 200 BCE

TO C. 1500 CE)
The status of myth remained basically the same as Axial period until
the sixteenth century CE.
In the rest of the history, Western people had already begun to find
mythology problematic.
Hindus feel more at home in the archetypal world of myth.
Buddhism is a deeply psychological religion, and finds mythology,
an early form of psychology, quite congenial. In Confucianism, ritual
has always been more important than mythical narratives. But Jews,
Christians and Muslims believe that their God is active in history and
can be experienced in actual events in this world.
By the eleventh century, Muslims and Jews had returned to the old
view of the complementarity of mythology and reason (logos).
Meanwhile, the Christians had started to lose touch with the
meaning of myth.

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THE GREAT WESTERN TRANSFORMATION (C. 1500 TO 2000

o Western modernity was the child of logos. They were founded on the
technological replication of resources and the constant reinvestment of
capital.
o The heroes of Western modernity would be technological or scientific
geniuses of logos, not the spiritual geniuses inspired by mythos.
o By the end of nineteenth century, the severance of logos and mythos
seemed complete. People must to choose between mythology and
rational science.
o In the twentieth century, the First World War, the atomic bombs over
Hiroshima, and the attack on the World Trade Centre showed that the
benefits of modernity, technology, could be made instruments of terror.
o It has been writers and artists, rather than religious leaders, who have
stepped into the vacuum and attempted to reacquaint us with the
mythological wisdom of the past.

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THEORIES OF MYTH
RATIONAL
MYTHS

PSYHOLOGIC
AL MYTH

THEORIES
OF MYTH

STRUCTURA
L MYTH

FUNCTIONAL
MYTH

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RATIONAL MYTHS

RATIONAL MYTH SAID THAT MYTHS

WERE CREATED FOR EXPLANING
NATURAL EVENTS AND POWER

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FUNCTIONAL MYTH

FUNCTIONAL MYTHS WERE CREATED

AS KIND OF SOCIAL CONTROL

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STRUCTURAL MYTH

STUCTURAL MYTH WAS PATTERNED

AFTER HUMAN MIND AND HUMAN
NATURE

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PSYHOLOGICAL MYTH

The psychological myth theory

states how myths are based on
human emotion

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FUNCTIONS OF MYTH

MYSTICAL FUNCTION
SOCIOLOGICAL FUNCTION
COSMOLOGICAL FUNCTION
PEDAGOGICAL FUNCTION

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CONCLUSION

Myth means a kind of storyeither from ancient or modern

sources whose actions implicitly symbolize some profound
truth about human or natural existence. The history of myth
were started from the Paleolithic Period: The Mythology of the
Hunters (c. 20000 to 8000 BCE) until present day. From this
history, we know that every time human took a major step
forward,they renewed their mythology and made it speak to
the new condition.
There are four theories of myth. Those theories are: the
rational myth theory, functional myth theory, structural myth
theoryand the psychological myth theory. Meanwhile, the
functions of myth are to evoke in the individual a sense of
grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is
exist, to present an image of the universe, to validate and

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Thankyou !!!!!