Myth and Reality: The Axis Mundi of Human Experience

                     

A vertical section of the brain engraved by George W. Post in 1895 for The Cottage Physician for Individual and Family Use (link to source).

German professor Julius Wellhausen articulated the belief that the Pentateuch is comprised of four distinct and separately authored texts – a theory that would come to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis, and which asserted that many of the contradictions within the biblical text are due to a difference in authorship (Coogan and Chapman, 43). The Pentateuch, then, is believed to be the product of separate stories combined into a single narrative, with “distinct sources that date to different historical periods” (Coogan and Chapman, 47). Through examination of these sources, it is possible to gain insight into the differing ways in which the authors’ societies viewed the world. And through contrasts in what is emphasized and held as truth within the text, it becomes evident that – in terms of their interpretations of reality – the Pentateuch’s authors lived in very different worlds. For these authors, myth often existed as a part of, or explanation for, reality, and between times the understandings of these myths and realities shifted.

This idea that reality, identity, myth, and world-view are inextricably linked and ever-changing is in no way unique. In the book Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, author Karen Armstrong states that because Jerusalem had been an “imaginative reality” in her life since childhood, it “was somehow built into [her] own identity,” despite her having never visited it until she was much older (Armstrong, xiii). Armstrong further asserts that when she did visit Jerusalem, even secular Jews and Palestinians referred to the city as holy. To them, the weight of the city’s history and the significance that this history held to their people left behind a feeling of transcendence within the city not unlike that of religion. Mircea Eliade observes a similar phenomenon which he terms “cryptoreligious behavior” in his book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, in which he states that even within secular life there exists some form of religious experience, as places of significance to the individual take on so profound a meaning that they become “the holy places of his private universe” (Eliade, 24).

Both Eliade and Armstrong agree that while this sense of the sacred might differ among religious and secular groups, human nature requires that a deeper meaning be found in some form. And, as seen with the authors noted by the Documentary Hypothesis, this axis becomes “bound up with their conception of themselves and the ultimate reality,” such that reality, or the perception of it, becomes different among groups and across time (Armstrong, xvi). This creation of reality is explained by psychologist Michael Bodden, who states that “when learning new information after an event has taken place, the brain produces a renewed version of the memory that makes sense with what a person knows” (BBC Editors). In other words, experience is understood differently based upon belief and knowledge, and belief is influenced by experience, including the society and time in which one lives. Children remember things differently than adults because their perception of the world is different and, thus, live in a different reality than their parents (Dr. White, Psychology 1300, 1/12/24). Even as adults, their memories of childhood will be different than those of an older generation who also experienced those events, and thus their world will be a different one. Eliade writes that “nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation – and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point” (Eliade, 22). This seems to suggest that without a center, or axis mundi, around which to base one’s ideas, thoughts, and life, reality is thrown into chaos and exists only in fragments that lack meaning. In terms of psychology, this means that the memories which make up our reality must find a basis around which to revolve in order to be categorized coherently within the brain.

Armstrong writes that “mythology has been well defined as an ancient form of psychology” because of the mirror it holds up to the “inner reaches of the self” (Armstrong, xviii). While the myths believed by the authors of the Pentateuch might be unreal or unprovable, they hold a weight psychologically equivalent to reality, which is in itself an interpretation of fact. We as humans create our own myths around our own axis mundis which, no matter the time or place, are an irrefutable reality of the human experience. 

Citations

Armstrong, Karen. Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. Alfred A Knopf, 1996.

BBC Editors. “Why do we remember things differently?” BBC, 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zvvnpg8

Coogan, Michael D., and Cynthia R. Chapman. A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957.

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