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Mythology as worldview is the presence of Spirit in human history!<\/span><\/p>\n We shall dwell on a very curious, very interesting question\u2014one that has never left the consciousness of the world\u2019s thought: the question of mythologies. With what they give us and what they have left behind\u2014are mythologies a worldview? Or are they merely, as commonly accepted, inventions, fantasies?<\/p>\n A worldview is a system of perceptions that defines and characterizes what the world is. And when we look at the path of mythology, we will see that it is in itself a science. It is an inexhaustible vineyard, as Christianity calls its own cultivation in the human soul\u2014churches sing of the \u201cvineyard of God.\u201d In its millennia of existence, Mythology has planted its great vineyard in millions of human beings. For thousands of years, it has shaped humanity\u2019s worldview through various realizations.<\/p>\n The etymology of the word \u201cmythology,\u201d which is Greek in origin, comes from \u201c\u03bc\u03cd\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2\u201d meaning \u201ctale,\u201d \u201clegend,\u201d or \u201cstory,\u201d and \u201c\u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2\u201d meaning \u201cknowledge,\u201d \u201cscience,\u201d or \u201cword\u201d\u2014i.e., it is a persuasive narrative. However, \u201cmythology\u201d is often understood to mean \u201cmyth,\u201d \u201clegend,\u201d as though what we heroize\u2014what we call heroes of a particular historical moment recorded on the stage of history\u2014is not also legend, not also a kind of myth. Even the cold historical fact of a person\u2019s presence\u2014just a script from which we can read that someone once existed and showed qualities of a sage, a leader, a lawgiver… (Even the existence of Lycurgus, who was undoubtedly the lawgiver of Sparta and whose laws ruled for centuries, is considered legend.)<\/p>\n As a system, myths and legends are explanations of natural and social phenomena, and they give shape to our mental and spiritual belonging. They are the ancient human attempt to answer the difficult and ever-unresolved questions\u2014\u201chow?\u201d and \u201cwhy?\u201d And when I speak of the worldview-based, soul-sensed concepts of Mythology, it means that even in the future we will still be making mythologies. We will never be without them because the logos\u2014knowledge\u2014regardless of the form in which it is given, will always create the process of grasping the great mysteries of \u201cwhy?\u201d and \u201chow?\u201d (To some extent, we shall only be able to answer the \u201chow?\u201d)<\/p>\n Oedipus, a mythic mystery, answers the Sphinx\u2019s question. No one before him had been able to decipher the great riddle and all had perished at the gates of Thebes. The answer was: It is man\u2014who as a child walks on four legs, in maturity on two, and in old age on three, using a cane.<\/em> He answered\u2014but could not foresee what awaited him. He could not realize he would kill his father and then marry his mother.<\/p>\n Let us place these mythological sacralities into our own minds, into our own souls, and ask\u2014who is the father, and why did he have to be killed? Who is the son who lies in the bed of his own mother, and why must this son then blind himself? These are great mysteries, and it is by no means incest, as some ideologies claim. No\u2014the \u201cincest\u201d is between thought and feeling, between will and spirituality, until the great harmony is found (but not in a literal sense). Here lie the secrets, here lies the path to initiation\u2014why does the son who kills the father go blind?<\/p>\n When I have spoken of Christ\u2019s parable of the prodigal son, the emphasis there is that the elder brother\u2014thought\u2014envies the younger\u2014astrality\u2014for the generosity of the Father, the Spirit. That is the great mystery. The rest is a word serving as a garment\u2014to conceal the secret of the initiated. And Mythology is undoubtedly a cause of Spirit, one that unfolds, manifests, and is realized.<\/p>\n Mythology is the self-consciousness of religiosity!<\/strong> This religiosity has its own monuments, its own ways of expressing the human relationship to the divine. Of course, religiosity is not merely the behavior of faith, which is the metaphysics within the soul of religions. Because our consciousness of faith is also knowledge of Cosmos-creation. And every mythological doctrine has its metaphysics of the origin of the world\u2014its own theogony of divine births. When humanity passes through several more fields of culture, it will see that not one of these mythological images was fantasy or speculation, but rather a real dimension within our planet\u2014a touch of the earthly and the heavenly.<\/p>\n