Why Study Greek Mythology

Why Study Greek Mythology

James Hillman — 11 recordings in the archive.

The book: Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman.

What I'm gonna do today is part of it will be talking on my side and part of it will be discussion with you another words trying to deal with questions that keep coming up one of the first questions that comes up all the time is the basic one is why study myth and I won't answer that one the way it's put I would rather say why you must study myth why you must study myth and when you don't and the people who don't study myth are deficient are mythically deficient so I think there can be mythical dysfunctioning in the culture because if you don't study myth you become willy nilly fundamentalist as simple as that because you take what's presented to you literally and not mythically you take what's presented to you as fact rather than as something to do with the imagination now that's so very simple that it seems insulting not only the fundamentalist but I mean insulting in the sense that it's so simple but it is really very basic and that our lives start off are the children's that child's mind is a mythical mind it wants a story about something that's already system it's only later when they get to be about ten that they want to know is that true in our culture in another culture there wouldn't be that discrepancy between the story and is that true but by the time the kid is ten he's already been so abused by that I mean by the intellectual life of the culture that he already has to ask a question like that is it true so the mythical beginning that the mind wants a story wants to be told something that enlivens it rather than flattens it the word explained means to lay out flat to make 2x plain so myths are not I don't you can't explain them without destroying them and they don't explain either they may deepen they may tantalize they may confuse they may provoke there are a lot of verbs that myths do but they don't explain anything there was a whole attempt to make myths explain things back in the 19th century where they you've probably been through all this already but where they tried to say myths are to in order to explain the seasons of the year their stories explaining the…