WEBVTT 1 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.800 Alone. Welcome to Mythic Mind. We would pursue wisdom of the past between 2 00:00:11.800 --> 00:00:15.880 primary secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I'm always grateful 3 00:00:15.919 --> 00:00:32.439 for your company. Today, I'm gonna talk a bit about Tolkien's great poem 4 00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:37.119 Mythepia. During my conversation with John Carswell a while back, he suggested that 5 00:00:37.159 --> 00:00:39.920 I needed to cover this at some point in the series, and he was 6 00:00:40.039 --> 00:00:42.280 right. 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To briefly give some background, this 21 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:45.519 is a poem written by Tolkien after having a conversation with not yet Christian C. 22 00:01:45.719 --> 00:01:49.200 S. Lewis about the value of myths, which at the time Lewis 23 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:53.599 described as lives breathed through silver. And so in this poem, Tolkien is 24 00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:56.959 addressing the value of myths and myth making. And I'm going to skip some 25 00:01:57.040 --> 00:02:00.519 parts of the poem, not for lack of importance, but for the sake 26 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:04.680 of brevity, and also because I admit that I don't really know how copyright 27 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:07.120 laws apply here. But in any case, I'm gonna be going back and 28 00:02:07.159 --> 00:02:13.120 forth of it between reading some stanzas and providing some reflections. Okay, so 29 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:17.520 Tolkien says you look at trees and label them just so for trees or trees 30 00:02:17.759 --> 00:02:23.000 and growing is to grow. You walk the earth and tread with solemn paste. 31 00:02:23.439 --> 00:02:27.199 One of the many minor globes of space. A star's a star, 32 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:32.960 some matter in a ball, compelled to courses mathematical amid the regimented cold inane, 33 00:02:34.199 --> 00:02:38.599 where destined atoms are each moment slain. See this is a profound problem 34 00:02:38.680 --> 00:02:43.400 with the modern scientific worldview, namely that it is no worldview at all, 35 00:02:43.639 --> 00:02:46.919 serving rather as a curtain hiding the true man pulling the levers, who himself 36 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:51.039 is not very scientific at all. You see, as I've discussed before, 37 00:02:51.319 --> 00:02:55.039 science is not a worldview. It is a tool for empirically investigating the material 38 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:00.319 world, but it is incapable of operating in the realm of meaning. Science 39 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:01.840 can tell us what kind of rock we live on, and it can tell 40 00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:06.400 us something of our trajectory in the vastness of space. Yet it can tell 41 00:03:06.439 --> 00:03:10.080 us nothing of what any of this means, let alone what it means for 42 00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:14.240 us, or how we ought to live upon it. Science, therefore, 43 00:03:14.360 --> 00:03:17.560 is but a tool, the value of which depends on its intended use and 44 00:03:17.759 --> 00:03:23.560 the skill of wielder in using it for an aim beyond itself. There's no 45 00:03:23.639 --> 00:03:28.120 life beyond the mere world of what is, and even calling scientific facts alone 46 00:03:28.319 --> 00:03:31.759 a world of what is is likely a misnomber because it existence itself is suspended 47 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:37.599 and more of a mythic metaphysical understanding. What kinds of things exists in this 48 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:42.240 world? And for what purpose? If we, proud people of science make 49 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:45.240 no room for such questions, and we come to find that there's no longer 50 00:03:45.319 --> 00:03:49.520 any room for any of us either, just a world of cold facts interpreted 51 00:03:49.719 --> 00:03:52.919 by cold facts, because an essence, that's all that we would be. 52 00:03:53.159 --> 00:03:57.680 Yet everything about the history of human experience screams against us. Why would we 53 00:03:57.719 --> 00:04:02.319 even be driven to pursue science if not for some value, for some response 54 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:06.800 to the world that continually presents itself to us as significant, that is, 55 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:11.960 with a significance that science itself can ever reveal, but can serve to amplify 56 00:04:12.199 --> 00:04:15.959 if carried out with proper wonder. And so it's not merely that the scientific 57 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.759 way of seeing the world is wrong. It's actually disingenuous to even phrase it 58 00:04:19.800 --> 00:04:25.800 that way, because the world itself is suspended in narrative, it's an attempt 59 00:04:25.879 --> 00:04:30.120 to make human experience something that it is not and never could be. We 60 00:04:30.399 --> 00:04:33.079 and by extent the cosmos itself, as it is revealed to us, are 61 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:36.879 bursting with life. I've recently been reading, or at least listening to C. 62 00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:41.120 S. Lewis's Ransom trilogy, and if you have not made this journey 63 00:04:41.199 --> 00:04:44.399 yourself, I would highly recommend that you do so. In any case, 64 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:48.480 Ransom, the protagonist on a less than desirable interplanetary journey, arrives at the 65 00:04:48.519 --> 00:04:54.959 following beautiful realization concerning what we are trained to call space in Out of the 66 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:59.639 Silent Planet, Lewis writes. But Ransom, as time or on, became 67 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:03.480 aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightning and exaltation of heart. 68 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:08.759 A nightmare long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in 69 00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:11.759 the wake of science, was falling off of him. He had read of 70 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.240 space at the back of his thinking for years, had lurked the dismal fancy 71 00:05:15.319 --> 00:05:20.000 of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness which was supposed to separate 72 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:24.399 the worlds. He had not known how much of it affected him till now 73 00:05:24.879 --> 00:05:30.160 now that the very name space seemed a blasphemous libel for his imperian ocean of 74 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:32.759 radiance, in which they swam. He could not call it dead. He 75 00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:39.120 felt life pouring into him at every moment. How indeed could it be otherwise, 76 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.800 Since out of this ocean all of the worlds and all of the life 77 00:05:42.839 --> 00:05:46.120 had come. He had thought it barren, and now saw that it was 78 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:50.399 the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly, even 79 00:05:50.439 --> 00:05:55.639 upon the earth, with so many eyes, and here and how many more. 80 00:05:56.160 --> 00:06:00.959 No space was the wrong name. With this, Lewis marvelously tells us 81 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:05.160 that there is no such thing as dead space. This universe is teeming with 82 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:10.519 life and with wonder, and Tolkien continues this a bit later along these lines 83 00:06:10.519 --> 00:06:13.959 and takes a bit further, as he says of the myth maker, he 84 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.040 sees no stars who does not see them first of living silver made that set 85 00:06:17.079 --> 00:06:23.040 in burst to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song, whose very echo after 86 00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:28.160 music long has since pursued. There is no firmament, only avoid unless a 87 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:32.040 jewel tent, myth woven and elf patterned, and no earth unless the mother's 88 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:36.040 womb went, all have birth. The heart of man is not compound of 89 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:42.040 lies, but draws some wisdom from the only wise and still recalls him. 90 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:47.560 Though now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Disgraced 91 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:51.639 he may be, yet is not dethroned. He keeps the rags of lordship 92 00:06:51.800 --> 00:06:57.519 once he owned his world dominion by creative act, not his to worship the 93 00:06:57.560 --> 00:07:01.800 great artifact. Man subcreat the refracted light, through whom it is splintered from 94 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:06.639 a single white to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move 95 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:11.639 from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with 96 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:15.279 elves and goblins, though we dare to build gods in their houses of dark 97 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:20.360 and light, and sowed the seats of dragon tways our right used are misused. 98 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:25.639 The right has not decayed. We've make still by the law in which 99 00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:29.839 we're made. So the slack went on there first. Continuing this theme of 100 00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:33.319 phenomenology, or how we experience the cosmos, he notes that we don't initially 101 00:07:33.360 --> 00:07:39.480 see stars as these material things in the vacuum of space, but rather as 102 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:44.120 living silver blooming beneath a cosmic song. Our ancestors look to the stars, 103 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:46.600 and they saw gods, and they saw guides. The stars have been associated 104 00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:50.199 with the angelic host and of course, we have been trained to leave such 105 00:07:50.199 --> 00:07:55.879 things behind us as useless relics of old paganism or what maybe even worse, 106 00:07:56.120 --> 00:08:00.279 medieval cosmology. Yet can we effort actually do this? Can any of us 107 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.279 look up at the stars on a clear night and see something beyond wonder and 108 00:08:03.319 --> 00:08:09.439 a shifting perspective away from our petty little problems to something transcendently glorious. Our 109 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:13.879 stars mere facts among facts? Or are they living entities calling forth a song 110 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:18.920 that rises up in our souls and points us to something greater and more glorious? 111 00:08:18.959 --> 00:08:22.160 Surely not. The stars are living things that speak to living things. 112 00:08:22.439 --> 00:08:26.120 They burst, and they dance with the music of life that reverberates through all 113 00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:31.720 glorious things. And they speak to the hearts of men, calling us both 114 00:08:31.759 --> 00:08:35.399 to fear and to rejoice. Now, why is this now? On a 115 00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:39.159 material level? We know that stars are material, or at least we think 116 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:41.679 we know what that means. And furthermore, I mean, who is to 117 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:46.440 say, after all, that material things must only be material? We certainly 118 00:08:46.440 --> 00:08:48.519 don't say that of us. Why must that necessarily be the case with the 119 00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:54.200 stars? In any case? Tolkien makes the point that we fallen into strange 120 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:58.799 as we may be cannot help but to draw wisdom from the wise and to 121 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:03.480 create in the image of whom we are created. God provides the primordial stuff 122 00:09:03.519 --> 00:09:07.799 of existence, the raw facts. But we have the ability and the obligation 123 00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:11.840 to create, not as God does, but in imitation of God's creation. 124 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:16.360 Just as God brought order out of chaos to establish the created order, so 125 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:22.080 too we take features of this created order and established new features out of our 126 00:09:22.279 --> 00:09:26.399 ordering minds. And we do this constantly. Every time we envisioned what could 127 00:09:26.440 --> 00:09:30.639 be, we're putting together a creation that is different than the world that currently 128 00:09:30.799 --> 00:09:33.360 is. And so although we do not create ex nihilo as God does, 129 00:09:33.480 --> 00:09:39.480 and thereby we are not capital see creators, we are subcreators making why that 130 00:09:39.559 --> 00:09:43.399 creative law with which we ourselves are made. And this is why humans across 131 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:48.879 time are natural storytellers. This capacity can be misused and often is misused, 132 00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:54.080 but the capacity itself is a glory of humanity. We interpret the world through 133 00:09:54.279 --> 00:09:58.039 mythmaking, and of course not all interpretations are equally valid, which is why 134 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:01.960 there are good miss are bad myths. Good miss pull us into a grand 135 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:07.559 story than what we would experience by way of course, and Thereby they make 136 00:10:07.639 --> 00:10:13.399 our lives grander bad miss alternatively provide myopic vision, or still worse, they 137 00:10:13.399 --> 00:10:16.600 render us blind while calling it true vision. As Tolkien says in On Fairy 138 00:10:16.639 --> 00:10:20.279 Stories, mythology is not a disease at all, though it may, like 139 00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:24.120 all human things, become disease. Okay, So, skipping down a bit, 140 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:28.440 Tolkien continues, blessed are the legend makers, with their rhyme of things 141 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:33.360 not found within recorded time. It is not that they have forgot the night, 142 00:10:33.759 --> 00:10:37.480 or bid us flee to organized delight in lotus aisles of economic bliss, 143 00:10:37.519 --> 00:10:43.159 for swearing souls to gain a circuit kiss and counterfeit at that machine produced bogus 144 00:10:43.240 --> 00:10:48.120 seduction of the twice seduced. Such aisles they saw far and once more fair, 145 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:52.919 And those that hear them yet may yet beware. They have seen death 146 00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:56.519 and ultimate defeat. And yet they would not, in despair retreat, but 147 00:10:56.600 --> 00:11:01.639 after victory, have tuned the lyre and enkindled hearts with legend ry fire illuminating 148 00:11:01.679 --> 00:11:05.919 now in dark hath been with light of suns as yet by no man seen. 149 00:11:05.320 --> 00:11:09.559 And so these legend makers, the myth makers, do tell of realities, 150 00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:13.960 but not realities, bound within recorded time. You see recorded time deals 151 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.600 with changing realities. Real miss, however, true miss reside in the world 152 00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:24.679 of being. They deal in eternal realities portrayed in temporal terms. In this 153 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:26.759 sense, they are ever true, which is why I hate when fiction is 154 00:11:26.759 --> 00:11:31.840 categorically defined as being not true, because fiction, or at least good fiction, 155 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:35.879 is true, but in a manner that transcends mere facts. Good miss 156 00:11:35.879 --> 00:11:39.639 therefore do not neglect reality, but they portray it in the most meaningful manners. 157 00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:43.440 That C. S. Lewis writes in Myth Became Fact, that myth 158 00:11:43.519 --> 00:11:48.320 is not like truth abstract, nor is it like direct experience bound to particular 159 00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:54.039 It is rather the isthmus that connects these two realities together. And so the 160 00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:58.399 good poets, the good myth makers, understand reality and present it in one 161 00:11:58.440 --> 00:12:01.120 of the most meaningful ways to our experience. And I know that I find 162 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:05.799 this to be deeply true. It's one reason why I love Tolkien and Lewis, 163 00:12:05.879 --> 00:12:09.200 as well as their various sources for inspiration. Tolkien has been particularly meaningful 164 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:13.720 to me, especially during a season of great sorrow which extends into my forever 165 00:12:13.840 --> 00:12:18.759 present. Reading Tolkien has really given me solace as he does a remarkable job 166 00:12:18.799 --> 00:12:24.679 of interweathing love, beauty, and sorrow in a profoundly Christian integration of hope. 167 00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:26.840 And it's not as though I didn't already know such things on the doctrine 168 00:12:26.919 --> 00:12:31.399 roal or the abstract level. The Tolkien's mythic telling connected these abstractions in a 169 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:37.440 deeply existential and meaningful way that made them more real for me, and I 170 00:12:37.559 --> 00:12:41.200 believe that he's had a similar impact on many others as well. Because this 171 00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:45.360 is the power of good myths. They help us to experience the things that 172 00:12:45.399 --> 00:12:48.799 we know, as well as to experience new truths along the way. And 173 00:12:48.879 --> 00:12:52.480 Tolkien continues with a rather powerful verse as he writes, I will not walk 174 00:12:52.559 --> 00:12:58.240 with your progressive apes, erect and sapient before them gapes the dark abyss to 175 00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:01.320 which their progress to ends, if by God's mercy progress ever ends, and 176 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:07.120 does not ceaselessly revolve the same unfruitful course with changing of a name. I 177 00:13:07.159 --> 00:13:11.039 will not treat your dusty path and flat, denoting this and that, by 178 00:13:11.120 --> 00:13:15.639 this and that your world immutable, wherein no part the little maker has with 179 00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:20.519 Maker's art. I bound not yet before the iron crown, nor cast my 180 00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:26.879 own small golden scepter down in the supposed worldview of scientific materialism with which we 181 00:13:26.919 --> 00:13:30.759 have already dealt, we are simultaneously told that there's no meta narrative to human 182 00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:35.240 existence and that history is continually marching toward progress. Now, this conundrum may 183 00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:39.120 be a bit of a straw man, as it pulls into competing philosophies and 184 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:43.120 calls them one, but this absurd outcome is a popular position. Nonetheless, 185 00:13:43.519 --> 00:13:48.039 it is behind many postmodern calls for progress. We hear the slogans all truth 186 00:13:48.080 --> 00:13:52.440 is relative, there is no truth, live your truth. Morality is entirely 187 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:56.639 subjective. Yet we also talk of the right side of history, as morality 188 00:13:56.679 --> 00:13:58.240 is built into the fibers of time, and so as long as we keep 189 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:03.759 up with the time, will be progressing ever higher compared to our brutish ancestors. 190 00:14:03.840 --> 00:14:07.360 And there's Neanderthals who continue to oppose progress. And again, this progress 191 00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:13.200 means abandoning meta narratives while pursuing our glorious destiny of enlightenment. No, leave 192 00:14:13.240 --> 00:14:18.240 the notion of cold facts behind. Do not let scientism track you beneath the 193 00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:22.759 iron bars of supposed facticity. Never forget your homeland or your destiny, you 194 00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:28.320 still carry a small golden sceptor, revealing that you are commissioned to create and 195 00:14:28.399 --> 00:14:33.360 to tell stories. We are storytellers, made by the original and the great 196 00:14:33.399 --> 00:14:39.519 storyteller. To deny this is to shackle ourselves beneath the light, stealing iron, 197 00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:43.840 crown wearing tyrant. Of all those who are by nature free, talking 198 00:14:43.879 --> 00:14:50.240 continues in paradise. Perchance the eye may stray from gazing upon everlasting day, 199 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:54.879 to see the day illumined, and renew from mere truth, the likeness of 200 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:58.159 the true. Then, looking on the blessed land, twill see that all 201 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:03.440 is as it it is, and yet made free. Salvation changes not, 202 00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:09.279 nor yet destroys garden, nor gardener, children, nor their toys. Evil 203 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:13.799 it will not see, for evil lies not in God's picture but in crooked 204 00:15:13.799 --> 00:15:18.039 eyes, not in the source, but in malicious choice. And not in 205 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:22.080 the sound, but in the tuneless voice. In paradise they look no more 206 00:15:22.120 --> 00:15:26.840 awry. And though they make anew, they make no lie. Be sure 207 00:15:26.039 --> 00:15:31.320 they still will make, not being dead. And poets shall have flames upon 208 00:15:31.399 --> 00:15:35.679 their head, and harps wear on their faultless fingers fall. There each shall 209 00:15:35.799 --> 00:15:41.080 choose forever from the all this is a beautiful way to conclude, and I 210 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:43.960 don't even want to spoil it with commentary. If you'd like to continue on 211 00:15:45.080 --> 00:15:48.559 this concluding theme further, be sure to listen to my episode on Leaf by 212 00:15:48.639 --> 00:15:52.440 Niggle. But I think that I'll leave it there for now as a reminder, 213 00:15:52.759 --> 00:15:56.519 welcome you to join our fellowship in the Mythic Mind community over at patreon 214 00:15:56.600 --> 00:16:00.159 dot com slash Mythic Mind. And for now, until next time, I 215 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:02.240 wish you many me for roads ahead.