Myth 1: People with anorexia are just trying to get attention.

Fact: Anorexia is considered a serious disorder associated with eating disorders. Anorexia is neither "mania" nor "bad" behavior - it is a mental illness.

For some people, anorexia sometimes becomes the only way, in their opinion, to cope with some difficult life situations.

Myth 2: Anorexia is just a manifestation of pride. If a person suffering from anorexia says...

MYTH FIRST. Fruit diets are very useful.

It is not fruit-only diets that are beneficial, but fruit fasting days. If you eat only fruits, this will cause metabolic disorders and the insulin level in the blood will increase.

And if you rely on fruit alone for too long, the thyroid gland will not like it very much.

MYTH SECOND. You should not drink while eating, as this will make you feel better.

This does not make you feel better, but the digestion process may be disrupted, since the liquid dilutes the stomach...

Of course, almost every one of us would like the numerous diet pills or miracle cellulite creams to actually work. But, unfortunately, this is not the case. And that’s why you have to sign up for a fitness class or do exercises at home.

In this article we will look at the most popular myths regarding training.

If you want to lose weight, you will most likely decide to add more physical activity to your lifestyle. This is where many of the problems associated with choice begin...

A blood test for the level of certain amino acids will reveal a predisposition to developing type 2 diabetes in people long before the first symptoms of the disease appear, researchers report in an article published in the journal Nature. A team led by Thomas Vann and Robert Herzen from Harvard University in Boston showed that increased levels of five amino acids in the blood of people - isoleucine, leucine, valine, tyrosine and phenylalanine - allow...

One of the most important and most interesting questions For every person there is a question about the origin of the world. This question arises naturally, since the example of many changeable things, phenomena or processes in the surrounding world, the example of the birth and existence of living beings, humans, society and cultural phenomena, teaches us that everything has its beginning.

Much in the world once began, originated and began to change and develop over a relatively short or long period of time. Is it true...

We will not outline the history of the discovery of vitamins and retell how each of them acts on many biochemical processes occurring in the body. Let's dedicate this article practical issues, which everyone already knows everything about - what in the field of vitamin therapy both patients and even doctors consider to be the truth and what in fact is absolutely not true. Let's start with the most important and harmful misconception.

I. Origin

Myth 1. The need for vitamins can be fully met...

There are many different rumors surrounding prostate adenoma. In the minds of the stronger half of humanity, there is no disease more terrible. But is everything as hopeless and scary as men think about it?

For an answer, we turned to Candidate of Medical Sciences, urologist Vitaly Mukhin.

An experienced doctor is convinced: in the philistine ideas about the most famous male disease more myths than the truth.

Myth one. Prostate adenoma affects every second man over 50 years of age

In fact...

What is mythology in general and Greek mythology in particular is not an idle question and not as self-evident as it seems at first glance. Mountains of books have been written on this topic; there are many theories that explain various aspects of the origin in general and in detail.

Essence, development, meaning, influence, interpretation of mythology; special encyclopedias and mythological dictionaries are published in all languages, scientific collections of mythological texts and popular collections. But from this abundance...

I will interpret everything I can, but I cannot interpret everything I would like.

(Grimm)

We cannot analyze the above myths and explain their origin without first giving summary scientific theories of outstanding mythologists who, like doctors, always disagree.

These myths, which constitute the intellectual wealth of the time in which they were created, existed in oral traditions long before they were written down, and although for us myths are only the subject of the study of historians, we must not forget what their interpretation represented when - a keen interest for people whose moral and religious beliefs were based on these same myths. Taken at first on faith, they became a stumbling block as civilization developed. Modern man shudders at their coarseness, which seemed completely natural to his pagan ancestor, and tries to understand what their primitive meaning is, or to find an explanation that would satisfy his more refined taste.

Many sages and writers of the past considered everything that seemed “stupid and senseless” in myths to be simple physical allegories, and pagan philosophers, in the vain hope of avoiding the ridicule of Christians, brought such interpretations to the point of absurdity.

Scholars have also tried to present myths as historical events, presented in an allegorical form, and as moral allegories, which, without a doubt, are the myths about the exploits of Hercules. The idea of ​​myths as historical facts was first expressed by Euhemerus (316 BC), and Bacon was a proponent of the second theory. The disciples of Euhemerus went even further - they argued that Zeus was just the king of Crete, his war with the giants - the suppression of the rebellion of his subjects, the golden rain that fell on Danae - the money with which her guards were bribed, Prometheus, who created man from clay , - “just a hyperbolic statement that man was created from clay,” and Atlas was an astronomer who was said to hold the sky on his shoulders. Such an interpretation was brought to such an absurdity that it became simply ridiculous, and the reaction to it was not slow to tell. However, over time, scientists realized that it contains some truth, and now very few researchers refuse to believe that some of the heroic myths contain information about real events, and the stupid and meaningless element in the myths is interpreted as something introduced, similar to a fairytale element found in stories about Charlemagne, a real-life king.

In the 17th century, some philosophers, struck by the similarity of some Bible stories with ancient myths, came to the conclusion that the Bible is pure, and myths are simply a distorted form of Divine revelation. In the 18th century, a new theory appeared that claimed that myths arose as a consequence of “distortion of language,” and anthropologists, based on data from comparative mythology, stated that only a combination of human psychology, human thought and human language naturally and inevitably gave birth to this strange conglomerate called ancient myths.

These last two schools successfully refuted or absorbed the theories of their predecessors, therefore short review their views would be very appropriate here. While philologists compare only myths created by peoples of the same language family (as will be shown in our brief review), anthropologists turn their attention to the folklore of all peoples of the earth and look for the origins of myths not in language, which they consider a secondary factor, but in the way thinking, which is observed at a certain stage of development among all peoples.

Anthropologists and comparative mythologists do not deny that in the relatively short period of two hundred and fifty thousand years during which man has existed on earth, myths could have appeared in one center and then spread from there throughout the world. Thanks to migrations, slavery or the custom of stealing wives, as well as other natural or accidental factors, they could travel around the whole world. They base their arguments on the fact that, just as flint arrowheads are found in all parts of the world, differing only slightly in form and mode of production, so the myths of all peoples are similar to each other, since they arose to satisfy the same needs and from the same material.

They argue that this similarity arose not because “all peoples descended from the same root” (as philologists think), but because they went through the same stage of savage thinking in their development. Using countless examples taken from folklore of all parts of the world, anthropologists prove that all savages consider themselves descendants of animals (usually one animal, which is a tribal or family totem) and are convinced that plants, objects and even abstract phenomena are living beings with human organs and senses. For the savage, the sun, moon and stars are living beings, but at the same time they are savages like himself, and since he believes that many of his fellow tribesmen can turn into animals, he gives this privilege and ability to both the sun and the moon, and stars, as well as all other objects of nature. Proponents of this theory further argue that all pre-Christian religions have idols in the form of animals, that in all the mythological systems of the world the gods love to take the form of animals, and declare that although the Greeks were a very civilized people, we can find in their myths and religious beliefs numerous manifestations of savage manners and savage views. They argue that at the time when the Greeks created their myths, they were on approximately the same intellectual level as the modern Australian Bushmen, and that everything that seems irrational to a civilized person appears to a modern savage to be part of a completely rational order of things, and in the past seemed just as natural and reasonable to those peoples about whom we have historical information. Of course, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a civilized person to imagine himself in the place of a savage and consider everything that happens in the world from his point of view. But we can observe how primitive intelligence functions in the example of small children who, at a time when they have not yet mastered articulate speech, hit a table or chair on which they hit their heads, and later delight in inventing the most incredible stories. The four-year-old girl grabbed the book and began to “read the story,” in other words, to compose an incredible, but very colorful tale about the adventures of the pony. Pausing for a moment to catch her breath, she continues: “And now this dog...” When she is reminded that this was a story about the adventures of a pony, she, without any embarrassment, declares that this pony was a dog, and continues her story. Now that she has realized that the change in the main character has attracted the attention of the listeners, or in order to satisfy the innate passion of children for the miraculous, over the next few minutes the pony undergoes as many transformations as the Greek god Proteus, which seem completely natural to this girl. Anthropologists explain the myths about the various transformations of Jupiter and his transformation into animals as relics of man's totemic belief in his descent from animals, and mythologists consider them allegories of the fruitful fusion of sky, earth, rain and grain. The first school also claims that the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which has its analogues in stories found in all parts of the world, was created in order to explain some strange marriage traditions that existed among certain peoples (in some countries the husband was not supposed to see his face his wife until she gives birth to her first child, and in others the wife did not have the right to pronounce her husband’s name). Representatives of the second school interpret this myth as a beautiful allegory of the soul and the unity of faith and love.

Nowadays, the philological interpretation of myths is considered not only more reliable, but also more poetic. We will therefore give a brief overview of philological theory together with an analysis of the main myths detailed in this book. According to the ideas of this school, myths are the result of distortions of language, just as a pearl is the result of a disease of a mollusk, in other words, the key to all myths lies in language, and the names of gods, as comparative philology has shown, usually designate elementary or physical phenomena, that is, sunlight, clouds, rain, wind, fire and so on.

To make the philologists' argument more clear, we note that, just as French, Italian and Spanish descended from Latin, Latin itself, as well as Greek and Sanskrit, descended from a single, more ancient language. And even if Latin were completely forgotten, the similarity of words denoting, for example, the concept of “bridge” (pons in Latin, pont in French, puente in Spanish and ponte in Italian) would tell us that all these words originated in the same language and that the people who spoke it knew what a bridge was and called it a word that sounds similar to all these words.

To support this conclusion, philologists demonstrate the similarity of the most common words in all languages ​​of the same family, showing (as in the example of the word "father" in the table below) that in sixteen different languages ​​it varies very little.

The most eminent of philologists asserts that during the first or rhematic period of the development of languages ​​in Central Asia there existed a tribe who spoke a language consisting only of monosyllabic words. From it the Turanian, Aryan and Semitic language families developed. This period was followed by the nomadic era, or the era of agglutination, when little by little the languages ​​acquired those features of their structure that we find in all the dialects and national idioms of the Aryan or Semitic family of languages, in other words, in Hindi, Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic , Slavic and Teutonic languages ​​and approximately three thousand related dialects.

After the era of agglutination and before the advent of the era of nations and “the appearance of the first rudiments of literature,” according to this scientist, humanity experienced a period characterized throughout the world by the same features and called the mythological or mythopoetic era.

It was during this era that the bulk of the huge world fund of myths was created. Primitive man, not understanding the laws of nature, the causes and consequences of phenomena, as well as the natural course of things and trying to find an explanation for them, explained them in the only way accessible to him and attributed his own feelings and experiences to all inanimate objects, believing that they arise under the influence of the same reasons as him. This tendency to personify or animate objects and phenomena is characteristic of all savages, who are nothing more than people in a primitive stage of development, and in the early philosophies of the whole world the sun, moon and stars are living beings and by their nature have human qualities . Poetry retains in our minds the old habit of animating nature, so it is not difficult for us to imagine how a huge giant or sea monster rises from the depths of the sea like a waterspout, and to reflect in the appropriate metaphor its procession along the ocean waves.

Because names greek gods and heroes correspond largely to the Sanskrit names of natural phenomena, we can understand the thoughts of primitive man, and the obvious meaning of many words helps to preserve in the classical legends traces of the simple meaning, despite the best efforts of commentators to obscure it.

According to philologists, these thoughts had already taken a definite form in that distant era when different nations, now scattered across the face of the earth, occupied a common territory, spoke the same language and constituted a single people. Of course, as long as such phenomena as the sky and the sun are deliberately spoken of in the language of myths, the meaning of these legends is not in doubt, and the actions attributed to them, as a rule, are the most natural and correspond to what they actually do. But with the gradual settlement of this single people across the earth, the original meaning of the words is forgotten, and people begin to consider them simply the names of gods or heroes - just as they forgot that the word “thank you” once meant “God save you,” and the word “ ostracism" has lost all connection with the oyster shell.

The primitive meaning of myth died along with the original meaning of the word. Thus, the Greeks forgot that the name Zeus (Jupiter) once meant the bright sky, and turned him into a king ruling over humanoid creatures on Olympus.

The best way to explain how numerous anomalies arose and how myths were so closely intertwined with each other that it is now almost impossible to untangle this tangle and reveal their original meaning is to compare them with a snowball, to which snow sticks as it rolls down the mountain , earth, stones and the like, until finally, in a huge agglomerate of various substances, the original core is completely lost from sight.

The fact that the same phenomenon explains many different myths can be explained by the old saying: “It all depends.” Thus, solar heat, which in some cases has a beneficial effect, in others can become dangerous and even destructive.

Philologists are confident that all myths (with the exception of imitative ones, an example of which is the story of Berenice) were originally myths about nature. They divided them into several large classes, which include myths about the sky, sun, dawn, daylight, night, moon, earth, sea, clouds, fire, wind and, finally, the afterlife and demons of drought and darkness.

Myths about the sky

Considering them in the order in which they are presented in this book, we find among the myths of the sky Uranus, whose name, like that of the old Hindu god Varuna, is derived from the Sanskrit root var (to envelop, hide, cover). This god was the personification of the sky, which envelops the earth like a veil; further we are told that he threw thunder and lightning, his Cyclops children, from the mountain where he lived into the abyss called Tartarus.

The name Zeus (or Jupiter), meaning the same as the name of the Hindu deity Dyaus Pitar, which belonged to the god who personified the bright sky or heavens, is also derived from the Sanskrit root div or duu, meaning "to shine." In Sanskrit there was also a noun "dyu" which meant "sky" and "day". In ancient times this name was assigned to a single god and was therefore used by the Greeks and other related peoples to express the feelings they felt towards him, but since this word also meant the daytime sky with its changeable character, some phrases with which characterized the sky, and over time began to mean unpredictable and fickle behavior.

The name Hera (or Juno), meaning the celestial light which is the satellite of the sky, is probably derived from the Sanskrit "soar" (bright sky) or "surya" (sun), and all the many changes that at first meant simply changes in atmospheric conditions, being personified, they gradually created the impression of a jealous, capricious, vengeful creature, which poets and writers loved to portray.

Another personification of the sky, this time night and strewn with stars, was Argus, whose many eyes are never closed at the same time, but constantly watch the moon (Io), entrusted to his care by the heavenly light (Juno), until the wind and rain (Mercury) ) will not hide it from view.

Myths about the sun and dawn

Myths about the sun, from which it is almost impossible to separate the myths about the dawn, are probably the most numerous and always have something in common. The first myth about the sun mentioned in this book is the story of the abduction of Europa, in which Europa (the bright light spreading across the sky), born in Phenicia (the purple land of dawn), daughter of Telephassa (which shines in the distance), is carried away from her native land by the sky (Jupiter). He is pursued by the sun (Europe's brother Cadmus), who, having passed through many countries, kills the dragon (the demon of drought and darkness) and goes beyond the horizon (dies), without ever catching the dawn (Europe).

Thus, we see that Apollo, whose name Helios in Greek means “sun,” has not yet lost his connection with this luminary for the Greeks. The Greeks worshiped the sun as the shining personification of daylight. Another name of this god Phoebus (lord of life and light) further emphasizes the character of this deity. We know that he is the son of the sky (Jupiter) and the dark night (Summer) and was born on the “bright island of Delos”, from where he begins his daily journey to the west.

Like all the solar gods, Apollo is beautiful and fair-haired, he is always cheerful and warm-hearted and armed with arrows that never fly past the target. He uses them for both good and evil purposes, depending on his mood. Sometimes he had to work for a man against his will, for example, when he served Admetus and Laomedon, and his numerous herds represent clouds "grazing in the endless meadows of heaven." The overflowing udders of the heavenly cows drop drops of rain onto the ground. The milk of heaven is stolen by the wind (Mercury) or the demon of the storm (Kak) or the wicked companions of Ulysses, who paid for this sacrilege with their lives.

The sun's attachment to the dawn is reflected in the myth of his love for Corona, which he destroyed with his incandescent rays, and “since the sun was naturally considered the deity that restores life” after winter or illness, the son of Apollo and Coronis (Aesculapius) is endowed with the magical power of a healer.

The sun, for the same reason, waged a constant war against cold and disease, and in this struggle used its scorching rays, or arrows, against the demon of drought, darkness and disease (Python). These arrows, in one form or another, invariably appear in every sun myth.

In the story of Daphne, whose name comes from the word “Dahan” or “dawn” in Sanskrit, we encounter another version of the same story. The sun, in love with the dawn, becomes the cause of his death. Some mythologists argued that Daphne is the personification of morning dew, which evaporates under the influence of the hot breath of the Sun and leaves no trace of its existence, except for lush vegetation.

In the myth of Cephalus and Procras, the sun appears again, which, with its deadly rays, unwittingly kills its beloved Procras when she wanders in the forest thicket (that is, where the dew lasts the longest). This interpretation has been confirmed by philological research, which has shown that the name Prokras comes from the Sanskrit word “to splash,” and the essence of the myth about her can be summarized in three simple phrases: “the sun loves the dew,” “the morning loves the sun,” and “the sun destroys the dew.”

In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, some mythologists see the personification of the wind, which uproots trees, flying over them and performing its wild music, others - a symbol of the morning with the quickly dying beauty of Eurydice, whose name, like the name "Europe", comes from the Sanskrit a word meaning "the light of dawn spreading throughout the sky." Eurydice is the personification of light, absorbed at sunset by the dragon of darkness.

Orpheus is sometimes considered the sun, plunging into the abyss of darkness in the hope of catching the disappearing dawn, Eurydice, and since the dawn (Eurydice) does not appear where the sun has set, but on the opposite side of the sky and itself disappears when the sun rises high, they say that Orpheus turned too quickly to look at her and separated from the wife he loved so much.

The death of Orpheus in the forest, when his strength left him, and his severed head floated downstream, repeating the name of his wife, perhaps represents either the last breath of the breeze, or the sun setting in the blood-red clouds.

The myth of Phaeton, whose name means “bright and shining,” describes a golden palace and a chariot of the sun. We are told that an enterprising young man, sitting in his father’s place, causes irreparable harm to nature and, as punishment for failing to cope with the solar horses (flying white clouds), was thrown to the ground by lightning launched by the hand of Jupiter.

This myth arose from phrases describing the drought caused by Helios's chariot, which was driven by a man who did not know how to handle his stallions. The death of Phaeton by lightning represents the end of the drought, when a thunderstorm with torrential rain hits the earth.

The story of Diana and Endymion can also be seen as a myth about the sun, in which the name Endymion means “the fading sun that sets behind Mount Latmus to rest” (this mountain was called “the mountain of oblivion”, its name has the same root as the word “summer” ). Müller, a great authority on philology, tells us that in the ancient poetic and proverbial language of Elis people used expressions such as “Selena loves Endymion and follows him with her eyes” instead of “it is getting late”, “Selena hugs Endymion” instead of “the sun is setting.” , and the moon rises,” “Selene kisses Endymion and he falls asleep” instead of “night has fallen.”

These expressions were used long after their real meaning was forgotten, and since the human mind strives to explain everything, and also to come up with something, a story appeared about how a young man named Endymion fell in love with a girl named Selene.

The myth of Adonis is considered by some mythologists to be another solar myth, in which the sun, having briefly appeared above the horizon, is killed by the fangs of a boar, the demon of darkness. He is bitterly mourned by the dawn or dawn (Venus), which refuses to live without him.

The myth of Tantalus (the sun), who, during a drought, offers Jupiter the body of his own son Pelos (dried fruits) and, as punishment for this, is doomed to hunger and tormenting thirst, is another story based on an expression that was used in times of drought, when the heat became unbearable and the sun burned the fruits with its hot rays. In this case, people exclaimed: “Tantalus kills and roasts his own children!”

Likewise, the stone that Sisyphus drags with great difficulty up the steep side of a mountain, only to see it roll back down in a great cloud of dust and disappear into a dark abyss, is interpreted as a personification of the sun, which, not Having managed to reach the zenith, it rolls over the horizon again.

The name Ixion has been identified with the Sanskrit word "akshana", meaning one who is tied to the wheel. Scientists prove that the Greek word “axon” (axis), the Latin “axis” and the English “axle” come from this word. This rotating wheel of fire represents the bright sunny day to which Ixion was chained by order of Jupiter (the sky) for daring to offend Juno (the queen of blue air). Dia, the wife of Ixion, was the goddess of the dawn, like Europa, Corona, Daphne, Procra, Eurydice, Venus in the above myths.

One of the greatest solar heroes is, without a doubt, the demigod Hercules, born in Argos (the word means "brightness") from the sky (Jupiter) and the dawn (Alcmene). While still a baby, he kills the serpents of darkness and works all his life with unquenchable energy and inexhaustible patience, never resting and performing twelve great feats, which are interpreted as twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve months solar year or twelve hours of sunshine.

Like Apollo and Cadmus, Hercules is forced to work for people against his will. In his youth he was married to Megara and, like Tantalus, in a fit of madness he killed his children. Then he fell in love with Iola, a dark purple cloud, but was soon forced to leave her. He performs feats, killing countless demons of drought and darkness along the way, and visits the enchanted gardens of the Hesperides - a symbol of the western sector of the sky and clouds at sunset.

He spends most of his life with Dejanira (“the wife who brings ruin”), the personification of daylight, but towards the end of his life he meets Iola again, who has turned into a beautiful sunset. And then Dejanira (daylight), jealous of her rival’s beauty, sends Hercules the poisoned cloak of the centaur Nessus. He puts on this cloak, but it burns his body, and Hercules tries in vain to tear it off his bloody limbs. Then he climbs onto the fire and ends his life in a bright flame, which represents the sun setting in flaming scarlet clouds.

Like all the heroes of solar myths, Hercules owned poisoned arrows that always hit the target (the word “ios” - “spear” sounds exactly the same as “ios” - “poison”), which he lost only before his death.

The myths about Perseus also belong to the category of solar myths. Danae, his mother, is, according to some interpretations, the earth (the word “dano” means “dry earth”), and according to others, the dawn, the daughter of Acrisius (darkness), was born in Argos (brightness). Beloved by Jupiter, the all-encompassing sky, she gave birth to the golden-haired Perseus, the personification of the bright sunny day. He, like many other solar heroes, immediately after birth leaves his native land because of a prophecy that says that he will kill the darkness that gave birth to him.

Having reached adulthood, he, against his will, goes to the distant land of mists (the land of the Gray sisters) to kill the terrible Medusa (“the starry night, proud of its beauty, but doomed to death with the rising of the sun”). Perseus kills her with the help of his invincible sword, that is, the sun's rays penetrating everywhere, and then destroys the monster of drought and marries Andromeda, another personification of the dawn, the daughter of Caelius and Cassiopeia, who are the personification of night and darkness.

Together with Andromeda, Perseus, whose name means “destroyer,” visits his native country and fulfills the oracle’s prophecy - he kills Acrisius (darkness), who gave birth to him.

In Athenian myth, Theseus represents the sun. His father was Aegeus (the sea, whose name comes from the word “aisso” - “to move quickly, like waves”), and his mother was Efra (clean air). He lives where he was born, in Trozen, and then, having gained strength, he picks up an invincible sword and goes in search of his father, performing many feats along the way for the benefit of people. He kills the Minotaur, a terrible monster of darkness, and takes away the dawn (Ariadne), whom he, however, was forced to abandon shortly thereafter on the island of Naxos.

Then he becomes an involuntary culprit in the death of his father, fights with centaurs (the personification of clouds through which the sun's rays sometimes have to make their way), briefly descends into Tartarus, from where he rises to earth again. Finally, we see him as the husband of Phaedra (twilight), the sister of the beautiful dawn, whom he loved in his youth. At the end of his eventful life, he was thrown from a cliff into the sea - this is a symbol of the sun, which at sunset appears to fall into the sea.

In the myth of the Argonauts we meet Athamas, who married Nephele (fog). Their children were Phrixus and Hella (cold and warm air, or the personification of clouds), who were carried far to the east by a ram, whose golden fleece is the personification of the sun's rays). He helped them escape from the evil stepmother Ino (bright sunlight), who wanted to destroy them.

Gella, the personification of water vapor condensing at altitude, falls into the sea, where she dies. The ship "Argo" is a symbol of the earth as the parent containing the seeds of all living beings. His team consisted of many solar heroes, all of them went in search of the golden fleece (sun rays), which Jason takes possession of with the help of Medea (dawn), killing the dragon (demon of drought). Aeëtes, Medea's father, represents the darkness that tries in vain to bring home its children, the dawn and the light, after they have been taken away by the all-conquering sun.

Then Jason falls in love with Glaucus (bright sunlight), and the fabric for the poisoned robe from which she died was woven by Medea, who has now turned into evening twilight. Medea gets into a chariot drawn by a dragon and flies away to the east, abandoning her aged husband, who is ready to plunge into a mortal sleep.

Meleager was also a solar hero. After participating in the campaign of the Argonauts and wandering around the world, he returned home, killed the boar (or the demon of drought), fell in love with Atalanta (the dawn girl), but left her and finally died at the hands of his own mother, who threw a log into the fire, from on which his life depended.

In the Theban solar myth, Laius (derived from the same root as Leto and Latmus) is a symbol of darkness. Marrying Jocasta (like Iola, personifying the purple clouds at dawn), he becomes the father of Oedipus, who was destined to kill him. The baby Oedipus was abandoned in the mountains to certain death - this is a symbol of horizontal rays rising sun, which lie on the mountain slopes for some time before rising again and setting off on their daily journey.

Oedipus, like Cadmus, Apollo, Hercules, Perseus, Theseus and Jason, was forced to leave his homeland. After long wanderings, he met Laius (darkness), who gave him life, and killed him. Then he kills the terrible monster Sphinx, a symbol of drought, whose name means “he who binds tightly,” in other words, he traps the rain in the clouds and thereby causes a great disaster.

Obeying the dictates of a merciless fate, Oedipus married his mother, Jocasta, now turned into purple clouds of twilight, and ended his life amid flashes of lightning and thunder. Until the end of it life path he was accompanied by Antigone (the pale light that appears above the sun during sunset). This story, which at first meant only that the sun (Oedipus) kills the darkness (Laia) and spends some time in the sky covered with purple clouds (Jocasta), has lost its physical meaning over time. The Thebans added a tragic ending to it, because it seemed to them that a person who committed such crimes should suffer a fair punishment.

As for the Eumenides, or Erinyes, at first they simply personified daylight, from which nothing could be hidden. Then they gradually began to be considered goddesses who investigated crimes and punished them. It was they who grabbed the criminal and dragged him to Hades to subject him to painful torture.

In the myth of Bellerophon, although the name was derived from the words "Bellero" ("power of darkness, drought, winter or mortal sin") and "phon" or "phontes" (derived from the Sanskrit "hanta" meaning "killer"), the Greeks they forgot the meaning of the first part of the name and declared that the hero killed Bellero, his brother, and because of this involuntary murder he was expelled from home and was forced to wander around the world.

We see that the hero, slandered by Antia (the dawn), leaves her house, and then, unwittingly, receives the task of killing the Chimera (the monster of drought). He accomplishes this task thanks to his weapons and Pegasus (clouds), born from the sea fog. In those places where the hooves of this horse stepped, new sources of spring water appeared.

Bellerophon, after long wanderings, finally unites with Philonoe, personifying twilight, and ends his life by being thrown from the sky into the kingdom of darkness under the lightning strike of Jupiter.

The fall of Bellerophon personifies the rapid descent of the sun in the evening, and the Aleyn plain is that wide expanse of fading light through which the lonely sun sadly passes at sunset.

In the history of the Trojan War we see several solar myths, since Paris, Menelaus, Agamemnon and Achilles have equal rights to be called the personification of the sun. They love Oenone, Helen, Clytemnestra, Briseis, various personifications of the dawn, and abandon them or are themselves abandoned by their lovers, whom they meet again at the end of their life's journey. Paris sees Oenone and dies with her in the fire of the funeral pyre, Menelaus regains Helen, with whom he dies in the west, Agamemnon returns to his Clytemnestra and dies by her hand while taking a bath, and Achilles, having survived a period of melancholy, finds his death after that , as the beautiful Briseis returns to him.

Like Perseus and Oedipus, Paris was abandoned in the mountains as a child but survived to fulfill his destiny. He becomes, albeit indirectly, the cause of the death of his parents.

In this myth, Helen (beautiful dawn or twilight), in Sanskrit corresponds to Sarama, born of the sky (Jupiter) and night (Ledoy - derived from the same root as “Summer”, “Latmus” and “Laius”), is stolen by Paris , which some mythologists identify with the Hindu Panis (or night demons) instead of the sun. He takes Twilight (Helen) during her husband's brief absence far to the east, where, after fighting for the right to own her and her wealth, he is forced to free Helen and returns her to the husband to whom she had previously submitted.

The siege of Troy is thus interpreted as a repetition of the daily siege of the east by the forces of the sun, which every evening is deprived of its brightest treasures in the west.

Achilles, like many other solar heroes, fights for someone else's cause, he personifies the sun hiding behind the clouds, and the Myrmidons are his ray assistants, who are more visible when the sun is hidden. Patroclus is a weak reflection of solar splendor; he occupies the same position in relation to his patron as Phaeton does in relation to Helios, and, like Phaeton, dies early.

The myths about Ulysses reproduce the story of Hercules and Perseus, for Ulysses in his youth, having married Penelope, was forced to leave his beautiful wife to fight for someone else's cause. On the way back, despite his passionate desire to quickly unite with his wife who mourned him, he cannot turn off the road that the gods intended for him. He is detained by Circe (the moon), who weaves airy fabrics, and Calypso (the nymph of darkness), but neither one nor the other can keep him with them forever, and he returns home, putting on a mask, after visiting the Faesian land (the land of clouds and fog). Only after killing Penelope's suitors (a ridge of bright evening clouds) does he shed his beggar's rags in order to be with her for a short time, and then disappear forever in the west.

Most of the myths about the dawn were explained by us simultaneously with the solar myths with which they are closely intertwined. However, one personification of the dawn stands apart. This is Minerva, whose Greek name Athena comes, like Daphne, from the Sanskrit "dahana" or "ahana", meaning "ray of dawn". This helps explain why the Greeks believed that she was born from the head of Zeus (the sky). Gradually, Minerva came to personify the enlightened and knowledge-giving heavenly light, for in Sanskrit the same word means “to awaken” and “to know.” The Latins combined the name Minerva with the word "mens", which had the same meaning as the Greek "nos" and the English "mind".

Lunar myths

In lunar myths, the most important character was Diana, a huntress with a horn in her hands, because for the ancients the moon was not a lifeless ball of stones and blocks. Diana, like her twin brother Apollo, was the daughter of the sky (Jupiter) and the night (Latona). She also wielded bright arrows that always hit the target, and during her nightly walks across the sky she looked lovingly into the face of the setting sun (Endymion).

Io and Circe, already mentioned, also personified the moon, and Ino's wanderings represent journeys through the night sky.

Myths about the earth

In the myths about the earth, in addition to those already discussed in our story about the solar myths, we meet Gaia and Rhea, mothers and wives of heaven and time, swallowing their own children, who personify the successive days.

We also meet Ceres, or Demeter, “the mother of all things,” and the girl Cora (or Proserpina), whose loss her mother bitterly mourns, for she was carried away by Pluto to the underworld, from where she leaves only by order of Jupiter. While Ceres mourns her daughter, the earth is barren, and it seems that all mortals must perish. But when Proserpine (spring or vegetation) returned from the underworld, people said that the daughter of the earth had returned in all her beauty, and when summer gave way to winter, they said that the beautiful child was stolen from her mother by dark forces that kept her imprisoned underground. Therefore, the grief of Ceres is a poetic expression of the despondency that reigns on earth during the dark winter months.

Sea myths

Sea myths tell us about the Ocean and Neptune (the earth shaker), whose name is made up of words meaning "mighty despot" and whose green hair surrounds the entire earth. We are told that he loves the earth (Ceres), which he embraces, and that he married Amphitrite, with a graceful, gliding gait that managed to charm him. Neptune's Palace is located at the bottom of the sea, not far from the coast of Greece; they say that he travels around his domain in a fast chariot, drawn by golden or white-maned stallions.

Nereus, another personification of the sea, whose name is derived from the word "nao" ("to fly"), is completely inseparable from the environment in which he lives, even in his Greek interpretation. Also inseparable from the sea are tritons, oceanids, nereids and sweet-voiced sirens, who, among other things, were also considered the personification of the winds.

Myths about clouds

The myths about clouds, which we have already mentioned several times, include not only the solar herds, centaurs, Nepheus, Hellu and Pegasus, but since in primitive Aryan folklore the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were ships sailing on it, the boat Charona was considered one of these ships, and the gilded shuttle in which the sun returned to the east every day was another.

Since the ancient Aryans used the same word to designate a cloud and a mountain (for the accumulations of clouds on the horizon were so similar to the Alpine mountains), the myths about clouds and mountains are often the same. One of the cloud myths is the story of Niobe. According to some mythologists, Niobe was the personification of clouds. Her children, numerous mists, are not inferior in beauty to Apollo and Diana, from whose bright arrows they mercilessly die. Niobe mourns their untimely death so bitterly that she dissolves into a rain of tears that turns to ice on the mountaintops. According to other researchers, she was also the personification of winter, and her tears represent droplets generated by the sun's rays (Apollo's arrows).

Fire myths

Fire myths also constitute a large class of myths and include stories about the Cyclops (thunder and lightning), the children of heaven and earth (their single burning eye was considered a symbol of the sun). They forged terrible fiery arrows, weapons of heaven (Jupiter), with the help of which he defeated all his enemies and became the supreme ruler of the world.

Titans are symbols of underground fire and volcanic activity. They live deep underground, but sometimes appear on the surface, grab huge blocks of stone and throw them with a deafening roar, and when these blocks fall, the earth shakes.

In this group of myths we also find the story of Prometheus, whose name comes from the Sanskrit “pramantha” (stick for making fire). Scientists have proven that the benefactor of mankind, Prometheus, who stole fire on Olympus and gave it to people as his most valuable gift, was at first a simple personification of lightning (“a heavenly rod that strikes fire from the clouds”), but the Greeks completely forgot about this meaning and interpreted it the word as “foreseeing” and they believed that Prometheus was endowed with the gift of prophecy.

Vulcan (or Hephaestus), whose name means “brightness of the flame,” another hero of fire myths, was born tiny because fire is ignited by a small spark. His name is a derivative of the Hindu "agni", from which comes the Latin word "ignis" and the English verb "ignite" (to ignite). The volcano lives primarily in the crater of a volcano, where intense heat keeps metals in a molten state, and the god of fire gives them the shape he wants. And since heavenly fire is often associated with the life-giving power of nature, the Hindu Agni was considered not only the god of fire, but also the patron of marriage, and the Greeks, expressing this idea, united Hephaestus and the goddess of the family Aphrodite in a marital union.

The Greek Hestia (or Latin Vesta) was also the personification of fire, and since her name retained its original meaning, she remained to the end the home altar, a symbol of peace and unity in the family and the source of its wealth and prosperity. But her altar was not only the fireplace in the house or sacred fire in the city temple; it was believed that in the center of the earth there was a center of fire, similar to the hearth located in the center of the Universe.

Myths about the wind

In wind myths, the main character was Mercury (or Hermes). The ancients believed that he was the son of the sky (Jupiter) and the plains (Maya) and a few hours after his birth he grew many times over, stole the sun's herd (clouds) and, fanning a huge fire, roasted several bulls, and at dawn slipped into his cradle . With a mocking smile, he remembered all his tricks and fell asleep peacefully. His name, derived from the Sanskrit "sarameias", means "summer morning breeze". It was he, as the god of the wind, who carried the souls of the dead to Hades, for the ancients thought that the wind was filled with the souls of the dead. Mercury is the deceitful, crafty god of the wind who invented music, his music is the melody of the winds that awakens in people a feeling of joy or sadness, regret or desire, fear or hope, carefree fun and deepest despair.

Another personification of the wind was Mars (or Ares), the son of heaven (Jupiter) and heavenly light (Juno), born in windswept Thrace and rejoicing when the noise and thunder of battle reached his ears. He is fickle and capricious, and if someone manages to defeat him, he responds with a loud roar. His name comes from the same root as the name of the Indian god Maruts, and means "grinder" or "crusher". At first, this word was used to describe a storm in which the sky merges with the earth, and therefore Ares was associated with disorder and defeat.

Oto and Ephialtes, the huge sons of Neptune, were also at first a simple personification of the wind and hurricane. The name of the second means “one who jumps.” Although these giants had a very short life, they could very quickly increase in size and become huge, which filled the hearts of people and gods with horror until the arrows of the sun killed them.

Pan, Aeolus, his numerous offspring and the harpies were also wind deities, which among the Greeks never lost their original character and were therefore deified simply as personifications of the original elements.

Underworld

In myths about drought, darkness and the underworld, there are Python, Hydra, Geryon, Gorgons, Grays, Minotaur, Sphinx, Chimera and other characters that we have already talked about. But the main thing actors there were Cerberus (the gloomy three-headed guardian of the underworld) and Pluto (or Hades), whose name means “giver of wealth” or “invisible”, who greedily drags everything that comes his way into his kingdom and never gives anything back.

This is the physical interpretation of the various poetic myths that form the basis of classical literature and which have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for poets and artists of all times.

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The problem of correlation between myth and science is explored as cognitive practices in the concepts of representatives of Russian philosophy of myth - A.F. Losev and Ya.E. Golosovker. The trends associated with the rehabilitation of myth as a cognitive phenomenon in the works of these authors are highlighted. The position of A.F. is explicated. Losev, who substantiates, in the context of the dialectical method, the presence of logic, structure and fundamental patterns in myth as a form of worldview. The idea of ​​the validity of the tendency to legitimize the mythological style of thinking as a way of cognition is proven. The philosophical position of Ya.E. is substantiated. Golosovker, associated with the rejection of the interpretation of the category of imagination as an obstacle to scientific knowledge and affirming imagination as an effective heuristic method characteristic of myth. Aesthetics, in which imagination plays an important role, lay at the basis of ontology, within the framework of which a theoretical way of cognition was formed, which later became a fundamental characteristic of science. Based on the analysis of the concepts of the philosophy of myth by A.F. Losev and Ya.E. Golosovker formulated the characteristics of myth, allowing it to be characterized as a form of knowledge that has significant epistemological potential and within ancient culture and in the context of non-classical scientific rationality.

non-classical science

imagination

Dialectics

2. Cassirer E. Philosophy of symbolic forms. Volume 2. Mythological thinking. – M.- St. Petersburg: University Book, 2001. – 280 p.

3. Losev A.F. Dialectics of myth. – M.: Academic Project, 2008. – 303 p.

4. Naydysh V.M. Philosophy of mythology. XIX – beginning of XXI V. – M.: Alfa-M, 2004. – 544 p.

5. Potebnya A.A. Word and myth. – M.: Pravda, 1989. – 622 p.

The tradition of systematic study of myth in Russian philosophical thought was formed in the second half of the 19th century. This, of course, does not mean that before this period there were no works devoted to the description of the myth. However, such studies in the overwhelming majority were of a very eclectic nature and did not have a clear theoretical and methodological structure that would allow them to develop scientific concepts of myth. This situation was associated, in particular, with the preservation of essentially feudal relations in the socio-political sphere, which negatively affected the free development of philosophical thought. Lagging behind European social philosophical tradition(in particular, in the experience of constructing and applying theoretical constructs and approaches) led to the spread of research based primarily (and sometimes exclusively) on empirical material, spontaneously collected and not associated with serious theoretical understanding.

In addition, the development of the philosophy of myth was hampered by the influence of two largely polar factors. On the one hand, this is an increase in mid-19th century of the revolutionary democratic movement, which resulted in the sphere of socio-philosophical ideas into a trend of radical secularization of thinking. This led to a rather cool attitude towards the study of folk culture and mythology. On the other hand, the dominance of Christian ideology was often also an obstacle to the development of theoretical analysis of myth, since the monotheistic doctrine of Orthodoxy significantly reduced the possibilities of studying myth as a unique form of worldview, artificially extending the ideas of the “primordial monotheism” of the Slavs to pre-Christian pagan beliefs.

At the end of the 19th century, the domestic tradition of studying myth underwent serious changes. First of all, they were associated with the formation of theoretical foundations (to a large extent under the influence European philosophy) research into myth, expressed in the development of linguistic theories and the so-called “epistemological turn”. Within the framework of the latter, scientists purposefully turn their attention to understanding the essence of myth as a product of the activity of consciousness and the psychological aspects of the mythological worldview, asserting the need to analyze myth on the basis of a strictly scientific approach and serious theoretical developments.

In this context, some of the most conceptually designed studies in the field of the relationship between myth and science in the domestic philosophical tradition of the 20th century were the works of such philosophers as A.F. Losev and Ya.E. Golosovker, to the analysis of which we will turn within the framework of the problems we have stated.

Being the author of fundamental works on ancient culture and philosophy, religious studies, one of his main tasks is A.F. Losev sets out to study myth. Analysis of the mythological worldview should be carried out based on the essence of the myth itself, since attempts to explain from the position of other forms of knowledge inevitably lead to distortion and emasculation of its content. As the philosopher himself writes, “Myth must be taken as myth, without reducing him to something that is not himself. Only having this clean definition and description of myth, one can begin to explain it from one or another heterogeneous point of view... Therefore, it is necessary to give an essentially semantic, that is, phenomenological dissection of the myth, taken as such, taken independently by itself.” In other words, A.F. Losev strives to obtain positive knowledge about myth, meaning by “positivity” precisely the analysis of myth on the basis of its own laws, and not positivism as philosophical direction, which, in his opinion, carries out a “violent expulsion” from the myth of its true content. However, explication of the logic of myth, despite the need to study it in its “pure” form, requires a certain metaposition, without which any attempts at such explication will turn out to be only a mechanical description of mythological plots. As the indicated metaposition in A.F. Losev advocates dialectical logic, with the help of which the task of analyzing the ontological foundations of myth is realized.

Scientific criticism of myth, accusing myth, in particular, of the absolute fantasticality of the categories it uses, cannot be fully considered objective, since many fundamental concepts of science itself (such as space and time) are speculative (read subjective) in nature . Myth, on the contrary, does not contain “anything accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary, fictitious or fantastic... and has the strictest and most definite structure and is logically, that is, first of all, dialectically, a necessary category of consciousness and being in general.” A.F. Losev denies myth the presence of an ideal character, affirming the materiality of myth, understanding the latter as the immersion of the mythical subject in directly experienced reality. Myth and science are fundamentally different and the basis for this difference lies, in particular, in the plane of characterizing the intentions of these forms of consciousness in relation to the phenomena of the surrounding world. The spontaneity, emotionality, and picturesqueness of perception in myth are opposed by the abstract, abstract nature of the schemes and conclusions of science, the essence of objectivism of which lies in “the correct correspondence of the abstract law and formula with the empirical fluidity of phenomena.” Insolvent, according to A.F. Losev, a position that affirms myth and science as the lowest and highest stages of development public consciousness(here the conclusions of A.F. Losev largely anticipate the views of K. Hübner). Indicative in this regard is the example of Cartesian philosophy, which lies at the basis of modern European science. Choosing “cogito, ergo sum” as an a priori ontological and epistemological attitude, R. Descartes relies on the idea of ​​the subject, which, according to A.F. Losev, nothing more than “unconscious creed” and “individualistic mythology”. Taken in their “pure” form, the laws of science are indeed abstractions that are in no way connected with myth. However, this is only an ideal image of science. Really existing science is one way or another based on the logic of myth (following the example discussed above, A.F. Losev points to Newtonian mechanics, which is guided by the thesis of the infinity and homogeneity of space, demonstrating, according to A.F. Losev, the unrepresentability of the world in strictly defined scientific categories, and therefore the mythological nature of mechanism; the concept of the atom is also mythological, in essence, since the materiality of the latter implies the possibility of divisibility, which contradicts the provisions of classical physics). We can see an even greater connection with myth in quantum physics, where the wave-particle dualism of the microworld actualizes such a concept as a “miracle”, functioning within the framework of a mythological worldview.

A.F. Losev further polemicizes with E. Cassirer, accusing the latter of reducing the logic of myth to absurdity by asserting the non-distinction in myth between the true and the apparent, the imagined and the real. A.F. Losev seeks to prove that this kind of differentiation exists in myth, as well as truth, structure and fundamental patterns. On the one hand, such criticism is justified. On the other hand, A.F. Losev largely attributes to E. Cassirer those conclusions that he does not make. Thus, if E. Cassirer talks about the absence in myth of clear boundaries between the true and the apparent, then this in no way means for E. Cassirer the absence of the category of truth itself in myth. Moreover, E. Cassirer does not deny the presence in myth as a form of objectification of consciousness of patterns that form a certain structure. Another thing is that, as was said, E. Cassirer does not give a clear description of these patterns, but this in no way means that, from E. Cassirer’s point of view, they do not exist. On the contrary, the German scientist argues for the need for their careful study.

Interesting are the arguments of A.F. Losev about such a category as detachment. Characterizing this concept, A.F. Losev emphasizes its mythical nature, since detachment “unites things on some new plane, depriving them of their inherent natural separateness.” Detachment removes objects and processes from the framework of their logical definitions, which do not allow creating a holistic picture of their interaction. As the scientist writes, “what we call the ordinary course of things is also the result of some of our mythical views, since here things are still not given in their isolated functions and are given as abstract concepts.” In other words, we do not perceive the world within the rigid categorical boundaries of certain concepts, but create a syncretic picture, abstracting from the strictly logical content of these concepts. The nature of detachment stems from the logic of mythological thinking, but is not limited to it. There is a mythical detachment, according to A.F. Losev, “detachment from a purely abstract and discrete existence. It is that special sphere into which abstract concepts are immersed in order to turn into living things of living perception.”

This leads to another feature of the myth - it is personal characteristics. Outside the personality, the above-mentioned “living perception” cannot exist, which means that myth itself is impossible. However, the personal nature of myth is realized in history and is connected with it, therefore, the attempts of positivist philosophy to condemn myth as an extreme manifestation of subjectivism are unfounded, since “really existing science” itself cannot be understood outside of personal aspects.

Myth appears in A.F. Losev as a “personal story”, which represents the only possible holistic form of perception of the world. In this regard, the problem of the relationship between myth and science is considered by A.F. Losev in the logic of legitimizing the mythological style of thinking under the dominance of the positivist tradition and largely comes down to criticism of scientism and rehabilitation of myth as a worldview. At the same time, the influence of the ideas of Orthodoxy on the position of the scientist is obvious, manifested both in the characterization of individual aspects of the myth (such as dogmatism, the essence of the concept of the Trinity, etc.), and in the description of the originality of the mythological picture of the world as a whole. It is also necessary to note that the degree of argumentation given by A.F. is not always the same in depth. Losev in defense of the theses he puts forward. Often, this argumentation comes down to statements that are purely emotional in nature, only to a small extent supported by logical grounds. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, the enormous heuristic significance of the philosophy of myth of A.F. Losev not only within the framework of Russian humanitarian thought, but also in the context of the pan-European philosophical tradition.

Another researcher who drew attention to the problem of comparing myth and science is Ya.E. Golosovker. As the subject of his analysis, he chooses imagination as one of the foundations of the cognitive process. According to the author, one of the serious mistakes of philosophy (especially positivist) is the assessment of imagination as an obstacle to scientific knowledge. This is due to the affirmation of the identity of imagination and affect, and since the latter has no place in cognitive operations, then the imagination is denied the right to exist within the framework scientific activity. As a consequence, there arises “an understanding of mythological thinking, that is, thinking under the dominance of imagination, as a kind of antipode to knowledge - in other words, as thinking under the dominance of frightened and frightening imagination. This mythological thinking is accepted only as primitive and primitive thinking, and the imagination itself is reduced to infantile thinking. It is given, perhaps, to art, to poetry as a sphere that operates with images, that is, with the methods of the same mythological thinking.”

Ya.E. Golosovker asserts the inconsistency of such an understanding of imagination, justifying the role of the latter as an important component of the cognitive process as a whole, regardless of the forms in which this process is realized. In this regard, Ya.E. Golosovker turns to the Greek myth, which laid the foundations for the emergence of European science. Syncretism in the perception of the world among the Hellenes was closely connected with the pronounced aesthetic character of this perception, and it was aesthetics (in which imagination plays an important role) that lay at the basis of ontology. Ya.E. Golosovker writes that within the framework of this ontology, a theoretical way of cognition was formed, which later became a fundamental characteristic of science. But the formation of theory as an instrument of scientific knowledge was based on the activity of the imagination, which “cognizing theoretically, guessed earlier and more deeply what science would only later prove, for the imaginative, that is, imaginary, object of “myth” is not only “fiction”, but is at the same time the known secret of the objective world is something foreseen in it; in the imaginative or imaginary object of myth lies the actual real object. And since the content, that is, the mystery of a real object, is limitless and microcosmic, the “imaginative object” is saturated with meaning, like a cornucopia of food. This abundance of internal content or the “infinity” of the meaning of the myth has preserved and preserves the mythological image for thousands of years, despite new scientific aspects and new concepts of our mind or new things in our everyday life.

The logic of myth (“the logic of the miraculous”) retains such a category of formal logic as causality, but radically changes the modality of the latter. The reason in myth is the desire of a particular character or the obvious need for some action, which does not require discursive justification of common sense. At the same time, the logic of myth preserves the reality, the materiality of objects and processes, without at all turning into absolutely metaphysical thinking, since the imagination, on the activity of which this logic is based, “removes” reality in its sensory, material reality. Thus, myth is not the antipode of common sense, but represents a unique ontology of the same objective world, but a syncretic ontology, based on the creative potential of the imagination.

Ya.E. Golosovker continues the tradition of “rehabilitating” myth, choosing the category of imagination as a means of doing this, which determines the “logic of the miraculous.” Its illogicality (from the point of view of common sense) in fact represents a coherent system of thinking that makes it possible to create not only ontological foundations for the picture of the world, but also (which for Ya.E. Golosovker is most important in the context of comparing myth with science) acting as an epistemological model . A myth is described as a worldview that differs from a scientific one according to a number of fundamental criteria, but this is not a difference between a lower form and a higher one, but a difference different forms of knowledge, whose comparison based on the degree of development is incorrect. However, considering the microworld as an object modern science, we must state the epistemological relevance of imagination for the study of this kind of objects. The logic of myth appears in Ya.E. Golosovker as the logic of the image (image of meaning), which is the source for the formation of the entire content of thinking, since any idea is largely the result of a primary image (and, therefore, imagination). Therefore, in particular, we, despite the seeming illogicality of the myth, discover “an amazing sequence of the logic of the myth, which is based on the creative logic of the human imagination, which reveals itself to us simultaneously as the gift of combination and as the gift of knowledge.”

If, from the point of view of the logic of events occurring in the macroworld, the myth is illogical, then the processes occurring in the microworld demonstrate significant limitations in the possibilities of using the logic of “common sense” to study them. The stochastic nature of the conclusions, particle-wave dualism, the phenomenon of space-time, relativity as a decisive factor - these and other characteristics of quantum physics surprisingly correlate with the logic of mythological thinking. Ya.E. Golosovker writes: “It turns out that the primacy of imagination over the experience of common sense in a naive realist in myth-making thinking is similar to the primacy of theory over experience in microphysics and microchemistry.” As in myth, many phenomena of the microworld can only be represented as intellectual formations or metaphors. They cannot be understood as material objects with causality, therefore mental operations with them are possible on the basis of imagination (shadows in Hades as an element of myth and the nature of the electron as an element of the physical microworld).

Thus, the ideas of Ya.E. Golosovker, one of the first Russian scientists who made the subject of his study the problem of the correlation of myth and science, are quite consistent with the pan-European tradition of the 20th century in the study of this issue. He characterizes myth as a form of knowledge that has significant epistemological potential both within the framework of ancient culture and in the context of the non-classical scientific rationality of the end XIX -beginning XX century.

Reviewers:

Kornienko A.A., Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Head. Department of Philosophy, Institute of Social and Humanitarian Technologies, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk.

Ardashkin I.B., Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of Philosophy of the Institute of Social and Humanitarian Technologies of the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk.

Bibliographic link

Tychkin P.B. MYTH AS A COGNITIVE PHENOMENON IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF A. F. LOSEV AND Y. E. GOLOSOVKER // Contemporary issues science and education. – 2014. – No. 3.;
URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=13453 (access date: 12/26/2019). We bring to your attention magazines published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural Sciences"

Mythology is a form of social consciousness characteristic of the early ancient period. Philosophy and mythology are related disciplines. Mythology created the opportunity for the development of philosophy, becoming its primitive, simplified version. It was the only form of consciousness of ancient people, and determined man’s views on the world and himself.

Basic principles of mythology

The term "mythology" is formed by merging Greek words"mythos" (tradition) and "logos" (teaching). It is understood as a collection of stories that have religious significance or a branch of science. Each of them tells about a separate ideological theme. The goal is to explain the world order and the origin of man.

Structure

The method of studying myths is the theoretical approaches of K. G, Jung and E. Cassirer, R. Barth. Regardless of the chosen study approach, researchers identify the same structure. It includes 3 components:

Functions

In literary criticism, there are 2 functions of myths:

• communication - transfer of information from generation to generation;
• cognitive - a person’s comprehension of the surrounding world, natural phenomena, awareness of his place, the processes of birth and death.

Before the advent of philosophical thinking, they played the role of science, contributing to the development of society.

Kinds

There are several classifications considered by mythology. General classification includes:

1. Calendar. They were an attempt to explain natural cycles. Often these myths play out the theme of death: the deity is born and dies, symbolizing the annual cycle.
2. Totemic. They talk about animal totems of tribes. Totem is the patron spirit of the tribe. In ancient times, people believed that each animal became the ancestor of a separate tribe and endowed it with its own traits. A totemic myth tells about the life of the progenitor animal and its role in the lives of people.
3. Heroic. Biographical types that describe the exploits of warriors, rulers and folk heroes. Based on heroic myths, a separate genre of literature developed - the heroic epic. The heroes became widely known outside their homeland: Hercules, who performed 12 labors, and Perseus, who defeated the Gorgon.
4. Astral. In their texts, the main roles are assigned to celestial bodies endowed with personality traits. The Moon and the Sun appear as gods who control the daily cycles.
5. Cosmogonic. They can be considered the main prerequisite for the development of philosophy, since these myths considered theories of the origin of the gods, the Cosmos and man.
6. Anthropogonic. These myths are an attempt to explain the origin of man.
7. Etiological. They are dedicated to natural phenomena. Hurricanes, earthquakes, thunder and fires were considered by people as deities, and later as manifestations of divine wrath.
8. Eschatological. They discuss possible versions of the end of the world.

Plots of myths different nations, geographically distant from each other, often have a similar plot. Science still does not have a clear explanation for this phenomenon.

Mythology is the ancestor of philosophy

Philosophy and myth have a close connection. The history of mythology is rooted in the primitive past of mankind, developing until the formation Ancient Greece. The mythological beliefs of Ancient Greece laid the foundation for the formation of a philosophical worldview.

The mythology of the early ancient period is created on the basis of beliefs in gods living on Mount Olympus and controlling the destinies of people. Many of the myths of that period have been preserved in their original form and are studied by modern literary scholars. They feature not only gods, but also people and magical creatures. In the myths about afterlife Cerberus is often mentioned - a huge three-headed dog guarding the kingdom of Hades, the god of death. Many people are familiar with the story of the creation of Galatea - a statue of a beautiful woman who was revived by the sculptor’s love.

The first impetus for the formation of philosophy was the need to catalog myths. This required logical rethinking and rationalization. Ancient philosophers did not seek to completely refute myths. They looked for confirmation in mythical texts of theories about the origin of the world and tried to correlate it with the surrounding reality.

Plato, who is called the founder ancient philosophy, considered it necessary to contrast logos (reason) and myth. This makes it possible to realize that a small part of knowledge about the world is available to the human consciousness, and to strive for the search for truth. Myths – an important part philosophical teaching, it is a way of reflection.

Mythology and philosophy: comparative analysis

Coming from a common root, philosophy and mythology have a number of similarities and differences:

1. Structure of consciousness. In mythology, consciousness has a theoretical nature; its existence is assumed, but not confirmed. Philosophy views consciousness as a system consisting of individual elements. They are inextricably linked and subject to hierarchy. The idea of ​​consciousness in philosophy is based on practical experience.
2. Inconsistency. Philosophical thinking strives for specificity - there can only be one truth, it must have confirmation that can be verified. For a myth, the presence of a contradiction is not critical. Phenomena and objects can replace each other or change their shape, and as the plot develops, these changes are not explained in any way.
3. Worldview. The mythological worldview is characterized by satisfaction with what is seen or described. Philosophy requires facts to support a theory. She views the world from the perspective of reason.
4. Way of knowing. In mythology, the way of cognition is the transfer of information from person to person without critical reflection. In philosophy, there are several ways to understand the world: from observation to experiment. They are aimed at obtaining new information or confirming what is already known through practical experience.
5. Genetic relationship. The mythological view of nature assumes that all animals come from one. Philosophy partially confirms this idea.
6. Sacralization. Information transmitted through myths cannot be questioned. Philosophy rejects this approach. The scientific view requires questioning all postulates and re-checking them.
7. Maintaining traditions. Myths helped to strengthen the rituals passed on from parents to children. This slowed down development, dividing history into 2 periods: ideal and immoral society.
8. Origin. A myth is a fiction. It doesn't need justification. Philosophy is the result of a rational approach.
9. Target. Myths are needed to simplify our view of the world. They gave meaning to phenomena that were inexplicable in ancient times.

The difference between philosophy and mythology does not pit these branches against each other. She emphasizes the need for diversity in ways of understanding the world and the impossibility of fully studying it with a limited set of methods.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Philosophical concept of myth

The place of mythology in culture

Ernest Cassirer's teaching on myth

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Studying the myths of various times and peoples, we can conclude that each specific myth, to one degree or another, reflects a person’s perception of any natural phenomenon or historical event. Of course, myth cannot be considered as a source of historical information, because every myth or its character is practically invented from beginning to end, but, nevertheless, myth is of interest for scientific study. First of all, the study of myths is valuable from a cultural point of view. Getting acquainted with the myth or its characters, we gradually highlight their ideological assessment by the authors themselves. Of course, sometimes it is quite difficult to separate mythological ideas and plots, although they grew on the basis of folk fantasy, but were processed among priests and religious thinkers, from priestly, theological and religious-mythological constructions. By considering the most primitive myths and comparing them with logically and historically substantiated myths, we can trace the dependence of the complexity of myths on the level of cultural development of the people. A myth is, first of all, an ideological imprint characteristic of a certain historical period in the development of a people and/or all of humanity. Considering the mythology of many peoples and nationalities, emphasizing the points from which it becomes clear that at some segments of the historical development of human society, mythology was a rather complex science, which was a set of types of worldviews characteristic of a specific people in a specific time period. When, apart from mythology, no other science was so developed and popularized, mythology interpreted and tried to explain (even if unsuccessfully) the origin of everything that surrounded man, including such complex and still unexplained problems as the appearance of man, his contacts with others civilizations, and much more.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT OF MYTH

What are myths? In the understanding of many people, myth is, first of all, ancient, biblical and other ancient “tales” about the creation of the world and man, as well as stories about the deeds of ancient, mainly Greek and Roman, gods and heroes, poetic, naive, and often bizarre. This is an “everyday”, sometimes still prevailing, idea of ​​​​myths, in particular, and of mythology in general. To some extent, the result of earlier inclusion is precisely ancient mythology into the circle of knowledge of European people (the word “myth” itself is Greek and means tradition, legend); It is precisely about ancient myths that highly artistic literary monuments have been preserved, the most accessible and known to the widest circle of readers. Indeed, until the 18th century, only ancient myths, stories of the ancient Greeks and Romans about their gods, heroes and other fantastic creatures, were the most widespread in Europe. The names of ancient gods and heroes became especially widely known since the Renaissance (15th - 16th centuries), when interest in antiquity revived in European countries. Around the same time, the first information about the myths of the Arabs and American Indians penetrated into Europe. In the educated environment of society it has become fashionable to use names ancient gods and heroes in an allegorical sense: saying “Mars” meant war, “Venus” meant love, “Minerva” wisdom, “muses” various arts and sciences, etc. This usage has survived to this day, in particular in the poetic language, which has absorbed many mythological images. In the 1st half of the 19th century. The myths of a wide range of Indo-European peoples (ancient Indians, Iranians, Germans, Slavs) are introduced into scientific circulation. The subsequent identification of the myths of the peoples of America, Africa, Oceania, and Australia showed that mythology at a certain stage of historical development existed among almost all peoples of the world. The fact that mythology is a historical type of worldview is evidenced by the fact that scientific approach to the study of “world religions” (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) showed that they too are “filled” with myths. Further, literary adaptations of myths of different times and peoples were created, a huge scientific literature appeared devoted to the mythology of individual peoples and regions of the world and the comparative historical study of myths; At the same time, not only narrative literary sources were involved, which are already the result of a later development than original mythology, but also data from ethnography and linguistics. A comparative historical study of a wide range of myths has made it possible to establish that in the myths of various peoples of the world, despite their extreme diversity, a number of basic themes and motifs are repeated. Among the oldest and most primitive myths are probably myths about animals. The most elementary of them apparently reflect the type of worldview of people at the initial level of development, and represent only a naive explanation of individual characteristics of animals. Myths about the origin of animals from people or mythological ideas that people were once animals are deeply archaic. Ideas about zooanthropomorphic ancestors are common among Australians; they are colored by totemic features. Myths about the transformation of people into animals and plants are known to almost all peoples of the globe. Widely known ancient greek myths about hyacinth, narcissus, cypress, laurel tree (girl-nymph Daphne), about the spider Arachne, etc. Myths about the origin of the sun, month, and stars are very ancient. In some myths they are often depicted as people who once lived on earth and for some reason rose to heaven, in others the creation of the sun (not personified) is attributed to some supernatural being. The central group of myths, at least among peoples with developed mythological systems, consists of myths about the origin of the world, the universe and man. Culturally backward peoples have few cosmogonic myths. Thus, in Australian myths, only occasionally is the idea that the earth’s surface once had a different appearance encountered, but questions about how the earth, sky, and everything else appeared are not raised. The origins of people are told in many Australian myths. But there is no motive of creation, creation here: either the transformation of animals into people is spoken of, or the motive of “finishing” appears. Among relatively cultural peoples, developed cosmogonic and anthropogonic myths appear. Very typical myths about the origin of the world and people are known among the Polynesians, North American Indians, and peoples Ancient East and the Mediterranean. In these myths, two ideas stand out: the idea of ​​creation and the idea of ​​development. According to some mythological ideas, the world was created by some supernatural being - a creator god, a demiurge, a great sorcerer, etc., according to others ("evolutionary"), the world gradually developed from some primitive formless state of chaos, darkness, or from water, eggs and etc. Usually, theogonic plots are woven into cosmogonic myths: myths about the origin of gods and anthropogonic myths about the origin of people. Among the widespread mythological motifs are myths about a miraculous birth, about the origin of death; Mythological ideas about the afterlife and fate arose relatively late. Cosmogonic myths also include eschatological myths and prophecies about the “end of the world,” which are found only at a relatively high stage of development. In the early stages of the development of human society, myths are for the most part primitive, brief, elementary in content, lacking a coherent plot, which fully reflects the type of worldview of the society that created them. Later, on the threshold of a more complex, developed class society, more complex myths are gradually created, different in origin, mythological images and motifs are intertwined, myths turn into detailed narratives, are connected with each other, forming cycles. Thus, a comparative study of the myths of different peoples has shown that, firstly, very similar myths often exist among different peoples, in the most different parts of the world, and, secondly, that the very range of topics, plots covered by myths, questions of origin world, man, cultural goods, social structure, the mystery of birth and death and others, touches on the widest, literally “global” range of fundamental issues of the universe. Mythology how historical type worldview no longer appears to us as a sum or even a system of “naive” stories of the ancients. A more in-depth approach to this phenomenon inevitably leads to the formulation of the problem, what is mythology? The answer is not simple. It is no coincidence that modern researchers still often fundamentally disagree in their views on its essence and nature. In addition, religious scholars, ethnographers, philosophers, literary scholars, linguists, cultural historians, etc., approach mythology in different ways, studying it in different aspects; their research often complements each other.

THE PLACE OF MYTHOLOGY IN CULTURE

In primitive society, mythology represented the main way of understanding the world. The myth expresses the worldview and worldview of the era of its creation. From the earliest times, man had to comprehend the world around him. Mythology acts as the earliest form of worldview, understanding of the world and oneself, corresponding to ancient and especially primitive society primitive man, like nature and the social forms themselves, already processed in an unconsciously artistic way by folk fantasy, as the original form of the spiritual culture of humanity. This or that specific understanding of any phenomenon of nature or society initially depended on the specific natural, economic and historical conditions and level of social development under which the peoples of the given mythology lived. In addition, individual mythological subjects could be adopted by one people from another, although, probably, only in those cases when the borrowed myth received a meaningful place in the life and worldview of the receiving people in accordance with their specific living conditions and the level of development they achieved. But mythology is a unique system of fantastic ideas about the natural and social reality surrounding humans. The reasons why myths should have arisen at all (i.e., the answer to the question why the perception of the world by primitive man should have taken such a unique and bizarre form as myth-making) should apparently be sought in the cultural historical development features of thinking. The worldview symbolism of the myth represents it the most important feature. Mythological thinking, as a rule, operates with the concrete and personal, and manipulates the external secondary sensory qualities of objects; objects come closer in space and time. What appears as similarity in scientific analysis appears as identity in mythological explanation. Specific objects, without losing their concreteness, can become signs of other objects or phenomena, i.e. symbolically replace them. By replacing some symbols or some series of symbols with others, mythical thought makes the objects it describes seem more intelligible (although complete overcoming of metaphorism and symbolism within the framework of myth is impossible). The replacement of cause-and-effect relationships is very typical for myth; the origin of an object is passed off as its essence by precedent. Scientific principle explanation is contrasted in mythology with the “beginning” in time. To explain the structure of a thing means to tell how it was made; to describe the world around us means to talk about its origin. The current state of the world - relief, celestial bodies, animal breeds and plant species, lifestyles, social groups and religious institutions, etc. everything turns out to be a consequence of events of a long past time and the actions of mythical heroes, ancestors or gods. In any typical myth, a mythological event is separated from the “present” time by some large period of time: as a rule, mythological stories refer to “ancient times,” “beginning times.” Much of what was written above brings us to the complex (and not having an unambiguous solution in science) question of the relationship between mythology and religion. Some of the problems are related to questions about the place of religion in primitive consciousness and represent the subject of independent research. In the context of “mythology and religion,” the most controversial issue was the relationship between myth and rite (religious), ritual. It has long been noted in science that many myths serve as an explanation of religious rituals (cult myths). The performer of the ritual reproduces in person the events told in the myth. A myth is a kind of libretto for a dramatic action being performed. There is reason to believe that cult myths are widespread, that they exist wherever religious rites are performed. Religious rite and myth are closely related. This connection has long been recognized in science. But the question raises disagreements: what is primary here and what is derivative? Was the ritual created on the basis of a myth, or was the myth created to justify the ritual? This question has different solutions in the scientific literature. Many facts from the field of religion of various peoples confirm the primacy of ritual over myth. Very often, for example, there are cases when the same ritual is interpreted by its participants in different ways. Ritual always constitutes the most stable part of religion, but the mythological ideas associated with it are changeable, unstable, often completely forgotten, and are replaced by new ones that are supposed to explain the same ritual, the original meaning of which has long been lost. Of course, in certain cases, religious actions were based on one or another religious tradition, i.e. ultimately based on the myth, as if as a dramatization of it. Of course, the relationship between the two members of this “rite-myth” pair cannot be understood as the interaction of two phenomena foreign to each other. Myth and ritual in ancient cultures, in principle, constitute a certain ideological, functional, and structural unity; they represent, as it were, two aspects of primitive culture: verbal and effective, “theoretical” and “practical.” This consideration of the problem introduces another clarification into our understanding of mythology as a historical type of worldview. Although myth (in the strict sense of the word) is a narrative, a collection of “stories” fantastically depicting reality, it is not a genre of literature, but a certain idea of ​​the world, which only most often takes the form of a narrative; The mythological worldview is also expressed in other forms of action (as in ritual), song, dance, etc. Myths (and these, as noted above, are usually stories about the “first ancestors”, about the mythical times of “first creation”) constitute, as it were, the sacred spiritual treasure of the tribe. They are associated with cherished tribal traditions, affirm the value system accepted in a given society, and support and sanction certain norms of behavior. Myth, as it were, explains and sanctions the existing order in society and the world; it explains to man himself and the world around him in such a way as to support this order. In cult myths, the moment of justification, justification clearly prevails over the moment of explanation. A cult myth is always sacred; it is, as a rule, surrounded by deep mystery; it is the secret property of those who are initiated into the corresponding ritual. But primitive mythology, although it was in close connection with religion, is by no means reducible to it. Being a system of primitive worldview, mythology included, as an undivided, synthetic unity, not only religion, but also philosophy, political theories, pre-scientific ideas about the world and man, and also due to the unconscious and artistic nature of myth-making, the specifics of mythological thinking and “language” (metaphorical, implementation general ideas in a sensually concrete form, i.e. imagery) and various forms of art, especially verbal. When considering mythology as a historical type of worldview, one should also keep in mind that the role of myth in primitive society differed from its role in class societies. The transformation of some myths into religious dogmas, the new social role of religion (myths) is the result of already far advanced historical development. On the threshold of class society, due to a change in the type of worldview, mythology undergoes a significant transformation.

ERNEST CASSIRER'S TEACHING ABOUT MYTH

The symbolic theory of myth, fully developed German philosopher Ernest Cassirer, allowed us to deepen our understanding of the intellectual originality of mythological thinking. Mythology is considered by Cassirer not only as a type of worldview, but also, along with language and art, as an autonomous symbolic form culture, marked by a special way of symbolic objectification of sensory data and emotions. Mythology appears as a closed symbolic system, united by both the nature of its functioning and the way of modeling the surrounding world. Cassirer considered human spiritual activity and, first of all, myth-making (as the oldest type of this activity) as “symbolic.” The symbolism of myth goes back, according to Cassirer, to the fact that the concrete-sensory (and this is precisely what mythological thinking is) can generalize only by becoming a sign, a symbol, specific objects, without losing their concreteness, they can become a sign of other objects or phenomena, i.e. symbolically replace them. Mythical consciousness therefore resembles a code for which a key is needed. Cassirer identified some fundamental structures of mythological thinking and the nature of mythical symbolism. He was able to appreciate the intuitive emotional principle in myth and at the same time rationally analyze it as a form of creative ordering and a unique knowledge of reality. Cassirer sees the specificity of mythological thinking in the non-distinction between the real and the ideal, thing and image, body and property, “beginning” and principle, due to which similarity or contiguity is transformed into a causal sequence, and the cause-and-effect process has the character of a material metaphor. In the mythological type of worldview, relationships are not synthesized, but are identified; instead of “laws,” specific unified images appear; the part is functionally identical to the whole. The entire cosmos is built on a single model and articulated through the opposition of “sacred” (sacred, i.e. mythically relevant, concentrated, with a special magical imprint) and “profane” (empirical, current). Mythological ideas about space, time, and numbers, studied in detail by Cassirer, depend on this. The idea of ​​“constructing” the symbolic world in mythology, put forward by Cassirer, is very deep. But Ernest Cassirer (in accordance with his neo-Kantian philosophy) avoids any serious formulation of the question of the relationship between the constructed world and the process of construction with reality and social existence.

CONCLUSION

Summarizing the study of the philosophy of myth, we can conclude that, firstly, myths in primitive societies are closely related to magic and ritual and function as a means of maintaining natural and social order and social control; secondly, mythological thinking has a certain logical and psychological originality; thirdly, myth-making is the oldest form, a kind of symbolic “language” in terms of which a person modeled, classified and interpreted the world, society and himself; but fourthly, the peculiar features of mythological thinking have well-known analogies in the products of human fantasy not only of ancient times, but also of other historical eras and, thus, myth as a total or dominant way of thinking is specific to archaic cultures, but as a certain “level” or “fragment” it can be present in the most different cultures, especially in literature and art, which owe much to myth genetically and partly have common features with it (“metaphorism”, etc.).

Some features of mythological thinking can be preserved in the mass consciousness next to elements of truly philosophical and scientific knowledge, next to the use of rigorous scientific logic. Nowadays, the religious myths of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other existing religions continue to be used by the church and various social and political forces to introduce and maintain religious consciousness, and sometimes for political purposes, most often reactionary. All this must be kept in mind when referring to myths that have become part of currently existing religious systems and retain, but in a very transformed form, a connection with the ancients mythological ideas, which in a number of cases served as fertile soil not only for religious ideology itself, but also for folk art and folklore motifs. The trend in updated versions should also be taken into account modern religion to the liberation of religion from archaic elements, i.e. primarily from mythology, anthropomorphism, etc., as an attempt to “remove” the conflict between science and religion. The persistence of some stereotypes of mythological thinking in the field political ideology and in the associated social psychology it makes, under certain conditions, mass consciousness a fertile ground for the spread of “social” or “political” myth (for example, German Nazism, in its own interests, not only sought to revive and put into its service the ancient German pagan mythology, but he himself created unique myths - a racial myth connected with the cult of the Fuhrer, the ritual of mass gatherings, etc.). However, the approach to myth, determining its place in the past and present, requires strict adherence to historicism. Mythology as a form of social consciousness, the emergence and dominance of which was associated with a certain level of development of production and spiritual culture, as a stage of consciousness preceding scientific thinking, has historically become obsolete. Therefore, attempts at apologetics and the revival of myth as a functioning system in modern society insolvent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) M.I. Steblin-Kamensky, “Myth”, Leningrad 1976

2) S.A. Tokarev, “What is mythology?”, Moscow 1983

3) S.A. Tokarev, " Early forms religions and their development", Moscow 1985.

4) K. Levi-Strauss, “The Structure of Myth”, St. Petersburg 1992

5) M.I.Shakhnovich, “Primitive mythology and philosophy”, Moscow 1984

6) A.M. Zolotarev “Clan system and primitive mythology”, Kyiv 1991

7) Encyclopedia "Myths of the Peoples of the World", Moscow/Minsk/Smolensk 1994

8) Philosophical Dictionary, Moscow 1975

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