Myth and religion (A supplement to the anthropological approach)

Abstract

The anthropological approach to the phenomena of myth and religion means that one approaches them as forms of man’s spirit and culture, of man’s specific manner of relating to the world, of giving it sense, of appropriating and of confronting it, of minding one’s bearing and surviving within it (in the way Marx designated religion in the Grundrisse, i. e. as a specifically human praxis-production and not just as alienation).
It further signifies that we understand them to be anthropogenic, eminently human products, social and cultural phenomena, regardless of their possible heavenly meditation.
In this context we are interested in the functioning of the human spirit in its mythic and religoius form.
As in magic, religion requires a story to present and personify the gods, cults and dogmas. In this case religious myths are in the service of beliefs. In religion myth and ritual (the magic element) are connected and interdependent. Cassirer holds that myth is the epic and ritual the dramatic element of religion.
In myth, ais distinct from religion, there is no subordination to and dependence upon overpowering forces, but imaginative creativity, in which everything is possible and where there are no restrictions, overcomes, unites these in its phantastic, utopian fashion.
It should be stressed at the end of this consideration of the relation between myth and religion that these forms of the spirit, of course with modified symbolic and actual meanings, are strongly present in contemporary culture and in the consciousness of modern man.