Friday, September 15, 2006

MITOLOGY
It seems that an intrinsic characteristic of human being is his fascination with fantastic stories, those ones that have powerful characters. Everyone who lived on the Earth have their own stories. Sometimes we have recent records that tell us in more details about this curious behavior.

We can identify in a far past, before the civilization’s dawn, designs inside the caves showing half-human creatures. Brazilian folk-knowledge has its own mythological beings: negrinho do pastoreio for the south, boitatá for the midwest and Curupira for the north Brazil. Curupira is an instructive example: he is a kid that spends his time protecting Amazon forest and animals from hunters. He can do his work better because he has feet turned backwards. Thus, the hunter always goes in a wrong way and can never catch him.

The ancient Greece has provided us with the most fantastic beings (I believe that they don’t think so). The Gods from Olympus, The Odyssey and Hercules are just a bare example but there are dozens of these. Further, in the Dark Ages the witches arose but I think that all of them were burned, since we feel a lack of witches nowadays. Coming to the present we meet all sorts of creatures: Loch Ness Monster, fairies, ogres and recently, with a little help from the marriage between scientific fiction and television, the E.T.s.

Ok, but I said above that mythology is a human being intrinsically characteristic but I didn’t identified any present mythology at all. In spite of not being an enthusiastic of comic books, I must agree that they fulfill all requirements to act as mythology. The authors used to trouble about creating heroes resembling the ancient mythological beings. Don’t you believe? What do you think about Thor and even the very Hercules? They have already become modern heroes. Again.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that there are similarities between mythology and religion but comic books are fiction. Do people believe that Superman really existed? Maybe you increase the range of the meaning of mythology. " I must disagree that comic books act as mythology."
One more thing, is the misspelling in the title intentionally? Why? I don`t understand.

Daniel de Aguirres said...

a myth is a deep internal crave within human beings who desperately search for a hero and don't know where to find. all humans conciously or not long for a kind of saviour, let it be science, another person, a myth, technology or God. the christian worldview claims that there's just one God who clearly revealed himself through his Messiah Jesus Christ. apart from that all other icons are but myths.
and the mispelling is up to Michael.
one more thing: the previous comment sounds like Eduardo, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Don't you assume that religion and mythology include the belief in supernatural, sacred, or divine? For example, the existence of at least one of god or spirit. Maybe this is a question of definiton.

Daniel de Aguirres said...

Yes. it's all about believing something that is above us.