Carl Jung’s resort to archetypes
stored in a ‘collective unconscious’
did little more than to give the
mystery a name. Émile Durkheim’s
hunch that the grand themes of
religions everywhere were modelled
on the deeper structures of society
was lacking in explanatory power, as
was Claude Lévi-Strauss’ hypothesis
that the hardwiring of the human
brain could account for them. Each
invoked vast stores of recurrent
‘universals’ in mythology and
religion. Each failed to convince a
majority of scholars and enable a
comprehensive theory of myth.
The contributions of armies of
non-specialists proved to be even
more aggravating. Nazi interest in
folklore and sacred symbolism did
much to discredit studies in these
areas. Catastrophists, such as Hans
Bellamy, Alexander Braghine and
Immanuel Velikovsky, tended to be
peerless self-taught thinkers who
espoused perfectly rational ideas,
but spoiled any opportunities to be
heard by failing to collaborate with
colleagues, by a dogmatic,
pontificating or overly
sensationalist manner, or by a
deplorable lack of scholarly
competence and rigour in their
cavalier selection, presentation and
interpretation of source material.
Others again abused anthropological
data in the service of a religious
agenda, such as a literalist
interpretation of Hebrew mythology.
Needless to say, a cross-cultural
examination of myths about a
world-ravaging deluge will suffer if
the goal is to prove that Noah
existed. Likewise, an investigation
of dragon lore does not benefit from
an assumption that these monsters
are Dinosaurs that coexisted with
human mammals. A thin line divides
these groups from pseudo-scientists
of Erich von Däniken’s ilk, who have
typically fallen into the same
traps.
With such a legacy, it causes
little surprise that modern scholars
are wary of anyone discussing
mythological parallels from
different cultures. Will his or her
purpose again be to prove the Bible
right, to show that the Egyptians
traversed all oceans or that
colonists from Atlantis had attained
very high levels of scientific
wisdom?
Yet understandable though this
knee-jerk reaction is, numerous
babies risk being thrown away with
the bathwater as a result. Clearly
the academic world is still
recovering from the backlash of past
maltreatment of the subject,
overreacting to anything remotely
similar to the mindsets of
hyperdiffusionists,
pseudo-scientists or Jungians. It is
as if a collective conscience guides
the scholarly community, expressing
its remorse over these past sins and
seductions through a process of
limitless specialisation and short
shrift for any bigger-picture
models.
While specialists in the
humanities are thus hardly to blame
for being cautious, it is incumbent
for them to keep abreast of
developments in science, for such
knowledge is capable of igniting a
Renaissance of thought in
cross-cultural studies. There is
every reason to be optimistic that
this can be accomplished. The remedy
will be threefold:
First, it is time historians,
archaeologists and anthropologists
wake up from their slumber and catch
up with the current scientific
picture of the earth’s placement in
a complex web of electromagnetic
structures. Much has changed since
the 1950s in our scientific
worldview. Just as their
19th-century peers finally
acknowledged the fall of meteorites
in the face of observational
evidence, so professionals in the
humanities need a ‘101’ of current
knowledge regarding the pervasive
role of electromagnetic phenomena in
the terrestrial environment.
Second, it must be realised that
a perfectly feasible mechanism to
account for cross-cultural agreement
is available. Whereas attempts to
seek the cause of parallels in the
inner workings of the mind have
foundered, the possibility must now
be explored that past transient
events in the sky are behind
numerous globally recurrent themes
and patterns.
Third, it must be demonstrated
that this new approach can be
pursued in an intellectually
responsible way. The past has seen
enough self-indulgent Velikovskys
and vön Danikens. What is needed is
the collective effort of capable and
credentialled scholars, at home in
the fields they write about, willing
to entertain radically different
possibilities, meticulous in their
source analysis, careful in their
conclusions, and equipped with a
humility that befits explorers of
entirely new vistas.