All religions employ mythology to express their more sublime doctrines, but the Gnostics came the closest to weaponizing it. The use of myth in Gnosticism has always been part of its nuclear arsenal against the steel curtains of artificial realities and oppressive systems. They deconstructed, reconstructed and sometimes just totally destructed myths in their endless quest to decode the mysteries of existence. The church father Irenaeus in the second century harshly criticized the Gnostics for constantly inventing new gospels as a means to attain some form of divine revelation (Against Heresies 3.11.9).
Their protean scriptures were akin to psychedelic space operas teeming with Jewish, Greek, and even Oriental themes. Simon Magus placed on his grand stage Homeric characters before the cinematography of the Garden of Eden (The Great Declaration). Hellenistic stars such as Eros, Hekate or a surly titan appeared in the same dramatic scenes as Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, and the Apostles (Pistis Sophia/On the Origins of the World). A cipher for the evil Zoroastrian god, Ahriman, makes a cameo to denigrate the manhood of the evangelist John after the Crucifixion (The Secret Book of John).
But why did the Gnostics, and other religions to a lesser extent, rely so much on mythmaking for the purposes of spiritual evolution? After all, in our modern context, myth is merely a synonym for a fable or a lie or a politician’s claims. Yet to the ancients it was manna for the soul, a viable tool for the expansion of consciousness. Harnessing what is known as The Power of Myth—in a Gnostic and broader context—is something I deal with in more detail in an upcoming article from New Dawn Magazine, as well as future installments on this series.
But if there is an abridged path to understanding mythology and its ambrosial gifts, then it would be through the work of the man who coined the term “The Power of Myth.’”
And that is the great Joseph Campbell, who in his book, Pathways to Bliss, delineates the four functions of myth. Before presenting them to underscore the unearthly knowledge that both the Gnostics and Joseph Campbell were after, here is one of the most insightful descriptions of myth, from the historian Heinrich Zimmer:
“The best things can’t be told—they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second-best are misunderstood: they are the myths, which are metaphoric attempts to point the way towards the first. And the third-best have to do with history, science, biography and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind. When you want to talk about the first kind, that which can’t be said, you use the third kind as a communication to the first. But people read it as referring to the third directly; the image is no longer transparent to the transcendent.”
In a less esoteric and more psychological context, for the more earthly-minded, June Singer in A Gnostic Book of Hours wrote:
“Myths are true expressions of our inner selves, revealed cryptically in image, symbol, and metaphor. They are something like dreams: rationally they may not ring true, but in a psychological sense they express people’s inner processes through the use of ingenious devices that conceal what must be concealed and reveal what must be revealed.”
For those who are both earthly-minded and esoteric-hearted, Carl Jung simply said: “Myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths.”
Ye it was Joseph Campbell who resurrected myth to its primordial intention more than any modern scholar. His writings and lectures on mythology are almost canon, his climax perhaps being The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Yet in Pathways to Bliss, one of his last works, is where Campbell exercises his more mystic muscle without losing his sage grasp on the importance of The Power of Myth.
One of his keynotes are the four functions of myth:
“Traditionally, the first Function of a living mythology is to reconcile consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence, that is to say, the nature of life…life is a horrendous presence and you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that…a mythological order has been set to reconcile consciousness to this fact.”
The Gnostics would certainly agree, as Jesus explains inThe Book of Thomas the Contender: “Woe to you who hope in the flesh and in the prison that will perish! How long will you be oblivious? And how long will you suppose that the imperishable will perish too? Your hope is set upon the world, and your god is this life! You are corrupting your souls!”
“The second function of mythology, then, is to present an image of the cosmos that will maintain your sense of mystical awe and explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you.”
The Gnostic complement to this would be found in theGospel of Philip: “Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is rebirth and the image of rebirth. One must enter through the image and into truth.”
“The third function of a mythological order is to validate and maintain a certain sociological system: a shared set of rights and wrongs, proprieties, on which your particular social unit depends for its existence.”
In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus summarizes this function, although along with Saint Paul, he certainly stresses in other works the importance of social piety:"Do not lie, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered...love your brother like your soul, guard him like the pupil of your eye."
“The fourth function of mythology is psychological. The myth must carry the individual through the stages of his life, from birth through maturity through senility to death. The mythology must do so in accord with social order of his group, the cosmos as understood by his group, and the monstrous mystery.”
The Apostle Peter in the Acts of Peter proclaims: “And in our hearts, we were united. We agreed to fulfill the ministry to which the Lord appointed us. And we made a covenant with each other.”
Campbell seems to be saying that mythology is a vast lattice of coping mechanisms, initiatory mandates for community responsibility, the very blueprints of the hero within all of us, passwords for the sphinxes of weightless spirituality, and the anthropological DNA of a culture, all tethered or perhaps hidden by artistic expressions.
Here are some more of Campbell’s koans found in Pathways to Bliss that further illustrate mythology:
“Time is what shuts you out from eternity. It is the transcendent dimension of the now to which myth refers.”
“What myth does for you is to point beyond the phenomenal field toward the transcendent. A mythic figure is like the compass that you used to draw circles and arcs in school, with one leg in the field of time and the other in the eternal. The image of god may look like a human or animal form, but its reference is transcendent of that.”
“Ritual is simply myth reenacted; by participating in a rite, you are participating directly in the myth.”
“Religion is myth misunderstood.”
“A mythological order is a system of images that gives consciousness a sense of meaning in existence, which, my dear friend, has no meaning—it simply is. But the mind goes asking for meanings; it can’t play unless it knows (or makes up) some system of rules.”
“We need a new myth.”
And that is a further problem. As a rapidly-changing society losing our ability to tap into our active imagination or even cope with a seemingly holographic universe, we must once again court The Power of Myth in order to regain our ability to ignite new mythological systems. We must face the reality that the old myths have lost their luster while competing against the industrial shine of a technological age.
The Classic Gnostics would certainly agree with this, thriving in a sociopolitical world with similar spiritual tension and noetic crisis as today. Although the Gnostics and Campbell were both commanders of mythology, it is my hope that I can further continue weaponizing it in order that we may all begin taking advantage of a forgotten fuel for the nuclear arsenal against the steel curtains of synthetic realities and oppressive systems—known as The Power of Myth.
And understand that the hero of a thousand faces lies ultimately in each one of us. I hope you are ready to enter the image and into the truth…
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