Mythos Mondays: THE TENSION

CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of sexual violence (rape)

This post marks the beginning of my new series, Mythos Mondays, featuring weekly installments throughout June and July. Every Monday, I will be exploring new stories and traditions around the world while also exploring how they can enrich our lives today. If you want to make sure you stay up to date on new episodes, you should go ahead and subscribe for email updates when I post new content. You will also be notified whenever I post additional content outside of the Mythos Mondays series.

So a couple of disclaimers before we start: 1). I am NOT an expert. I do NOT have a degree in religious or anthropological studies. Rather I am a simple novice with an affinity for a good story, which leads me to my second disclaimer: 2). I am going to get things wrong. Not only will there assuredly be gaps in my research, but it is very likely I will unintentionally misrepresent or disrespect a culture that I am not apart of. If that happens, I encourage gentle and thoughtful corrections, preferably through my contact form. I want this series to be a space where we are all learning, including me.

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Enough with the boring stuff. Let's talk about the tension. What is "the tension?" As with most terms I've made up on the spot, the title is an extremely vague name for a complex phenomenon. "The tension" is best described as the context gap that we must navigate when our cultural and temporal circumstance is in conflict with stories from the past. In other words, it's that cringe feeling you get when you read Yeat's "Leda and the Swan," or really any story involving Zeus ever. "The tension" can be found when exploring any story that wasn't written for "us," whoever that is. It can be found in all cultures, countries, and religions, and we are going to be encountering it a lot during this series.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we are not always great at handling this disconnect. We will do anything to ease the cringe, which means losing sight of the importance of storytelling for the sake of feeling comfortable. Here are the three main ways we respond to the tension and why they fall short:

1. Forcing your context onto the story. For me, this method is by far the most common and the most tempting. Clearly, we don't want to throw the entire Norse pantheon into the garbage, although Loki is basically asking for it. But we also don't want to give up on our romanticized image of "days gone by." So to avoid doing either, we try to compress complex, messy histories into our 21st-century framework.

Medusa, for example, has been subjected to a lot of modern deductive reasoning. For those only familiar with her snake hair persona, Medusa was once a mortal priestess of Athena who was raped by Poseidon in her place of work and worship. Athena, of course, was furious at the desecration of her temple, but her anger got directed not at the perpetrator of the rape but its victim. She turns Medusa into a gorgon, a hideous creature whose appearance turns men to stone. In depictions of Athena, she is often carrying a shield with etched with Medusa's gorgon visage, a possible sign of Athena's great power.

Now, there is a theory that rather than her new form being a punishment, Medusa is being protected from any further violence from gods or men. In this narrative, Athena is using her power to protect an innocent rape victim while simultaneously showing that female strength and worth goes beyond their desirability. It's the Olympian version of "Me Too," which is a much more progressive moral than the alternative. The problem is that there is little evidence to show this how the Greeks viewed the story, first and foremost because this isn't the only incident of Athena has cast down questionable judgments. Just look Google her role in Eumenides. It also doesn't help that Athena later helps Perseus on his quest for the head of Medusa.

I'm not asking that we completely dismiss the feminist version of the Medusa story. Personal truth is not mutually exclusive from the facts, but we need to be able to distinguish between them. Being a woman in Ancient Greece was not a utopian ideal that we need to be striving back towards. Both the ideas of Ancient Greece and the USA in 2020 could use some move forward, not backward.

2. We denounce the story. When the story doesn't fit in the box, it's tempting to get rid of it entirely. As human beings, we are really good at not talking about things we don't want to talk about. "Sure, let's talk about Athena and how great an example of strong feminity she is, but let's leave out the unnecessary victim-blaming stuff. I mean, that story really isn't canonical, right?" First of all, not all traditions have the same idea of canonization as some religious traditions do. In fact, you are going to be hearing me say a lot in this series the phrase "In one version. . ." or "In some regions. . ." because there is rarely a single story.

The other problem with this cop-out is stunts conversation and personal reflection. There is a reason Medusa's story makes us uncomfortable, and it isn't just because the Greeks are "problematic." We are also problematic. I have been Athena. I have felt the urge to put the blame on those with less power and privilege for the violence of the powerful. My guess is we can find times in our lives where have been all three of these characters. In that way, we need Medusa's story to shed light on our own brokenness and the brokenness of our world. Not every story is an ideal. Some, like Medusa's, can be mirrors.

3. We relinquish our context. Completely putting aside our own context may seem like the obvious conclusion after the first two options fall flat. Many fundamentalist adherents to living religions see modern ideas as a primary barrier to enlightenment. However, the first and third ways share the same basic flaw: they assume a past that never was. They assume that there was a people at one point in history that had all the right answers, and we have just lost sight of those answers. "If Athena is the Goddess of wisdom, how can her judgments be unwise? Maybe Medusa is more at fault than it may seem."

Doubting our own cultural values and perspectives is necessary. We wouldn't have had the enlightenment without the reverting back to past worldviews and knowledge. But we still can't forget the progress we are in the midst of making, especially with stories that we don't see as being fundamentally true. Analyzing our own discomfort means both examining our own pitfalls as well as the pitfalls of our ancestors. We can provide the ancients' understanding and grace without absolving all sins.

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So where do we go from here? Is there a fourth way? Well, since we will be discussing mythology for the next two months, this is a good time to start getting used to the lack of straight answers. However, I think the fourth way lies somewhere in the concept of reverence. I have been thinking recently about the terms "praise" and "revere" as they apply to my own faith. For me, "praise" is unabashed. It is unconditional, unquestioning, the complete release of personal control. And in certain contexts, I want to enter the spirit of praise.

But at other times, all I can do is revere. Reverence is both unconditional and willing to express doubt. You choose to place the story in high esteem without fully understanding why you are placing it there. But you remain committed to finding out the truth anyway, even if that isn't possible. In my opinion, it is one of the most radical expressions of personal agency we as humans are capable of.

As a Christian, there are parts of the Bible that horrify me and that I am probably never going to fully understand. And yet, my commitment to asking the question is where the faith lies. I am willing to grapple with the cringe, the horror, the unabashed doubt. Even though many of us don't believe in the stories we will be exploring throughout this series, I ask you all to enter a state of reverence. Be open in your concerns and your willingness to find enrichment.

There is no better time to practice the fourth way than with next week's post and our first story of the series: the ballad of Tam Lin. Get ready for brave heroines, Elphin bouncers, and human sacrifices. I hope this overly philosophical introduction hasn't turned you against mythology and that you will stick around to hear the incredible stories that await us in the coming weeks. Until then, stay in "the tension."