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Post by Taliesin on Apr 24, 2014 8:39:01 GMT -6
I first learned of Taliesin the Bard when I read the fantasy novel Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead some years ago. I was immediately captivated by this mythical character, an orphan who is discovered on a river bank and eventually becomes a druid/bard. At the same time, the story deals with the fall of Atlantis and the escape of Princess Charis and her family to Britain. The two of them eventually get together, marry, and make a baby. His name is Myrddin (more commonly known to you and me as Merlin), and he never gets to know his father because... well, that's a spoiler, I guess.
Ever since I read this book, I've done a little research on Taliesin, only to discover that historians think he may have been a real person. There's this text called The Book of Taliesin that he was supposed to have written, and it's basically a collection of poems. However, all but a dozen of them have been deemed by historians as not the real deal. And this is where it gets even more interesting. When you look at him as a mythological figure, there are actually quite a few surviving stories and legends about him having done all kinds of weird and wonderful things. It was some of these legends that Stephen R. Lawhead drew upon and weaved into his own story when he was writing it. Quite interesting.
What has struck me about all of this is how historical figures can and often are turned into heightened versions of themselves, and have many stories told about them by different people who ascribe different characteristics to them. Robin Hood is another such example. Some historians think he might have existed - they're just not entirely sure - but what he's certainly become by now is somewhat of a fictional fantasy character. Many legends have been built up around him down through the years, and even more stories for books and films are being created to this very day.
What do you make of all this? Can you think of any other figures throughout history that may have been real, but throughout time and countless retellings have become more fantastical versions of themselves?
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Post by TAZ on Apr 24, 2014 8:50:08 GMT -6
well, i guess theres the whole greek mythology thing, the King Arthur thing as well most likely, seems he may have been an actual figure, though i could be wrong
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Post by Liv the Librarian on Apr 24, 2014 8:53:55 GMT -6
I first learned of Taliesin the Bard when I read the fantasy novel Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead some years ago. I was immediately captivated by this mythical character, an orphan who is discovered on a river bank and eventually becomes a druid/bard. At the same time, the story deals with the fall of Atlantis and the escape of Princess Charis and her family to Britain. The two of them eventually get together, marry, and make a baby. His name is Myrddin (more commonly known to you and me as Merlin), and he never gets to know his father because... well, that's a spoiler, I guess. Ever since I read this book, I've done a little research on Taliesin, only to discover that historians think he may have been a real person. There's this text called The Book of Taliesin that he was supposed to have written, and it's basically a collection of poems. However, all but a dozen of them have been deemed by historians as not the real deal. And this is where it gets even more interesting. When you look at him as a mythological figure, there are actually quite a few surviving stories and legends about him having done all kinds of weird and wonderful things. It was some of these legends that Stephen R. Lawhead drew upon and weaved into his own story when he was writing it. Quite interesting. What has struck me about all of this is how historical figures can and often are turned into heightened versions of themselves, and have many stories told about them by different people who ascribe different characteristics to them. Robin Hood is another such example. Some historians think he might have existed - they're just not entirely sure - but what he's certainly become by now is somewhat of a fictional fantasy character. Many legends have been built up around him down through the years, and even more stories for books and films are being created to this very day. What do you make of all this? Can you think of any other figures throughout history that may have been real, but throughout time and countless retellings have become more fantastical versions of themselves? I personally think that if you're going to look at mythology, you have to let a part of you believe it or else it's boring. For me, I'm actually a Hellenist, which means I follow the Greek pantheon of gods, so believing that Taliesin existed is not hard for me. The other way to look at it is that these people existed, but not as unrealistically as legend makes them. Though, I just feel that I can't 100% say that magic and dragons etc never existed. The world is super old after all  |
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Post by TAZ on Apr 24, 2014 9:04:28 GMT -6
I first learned of Taliesin the Bard when I read the fantasy novel Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead some years ago. I was immediately captivated by this mythical character, an orphan who is discovered on a river bank and eventually becomes a druid/bard. At the same time, the story deals with the fall of Atlantis and the escape of Princess Charis and her family to Britain. The two of them eventually get together, marry, and make a baby. His name is Myrddin (more commonly known to you and me as Merlin), and he never gets to know his father because... well, that's a spoiler, I guess. Ever since I read this book, I've done a little research on Taliesin, only to discover that historians think he may have been a real person. There's this text called The Book of Taliesin that he was supposed to have written, and it's basically a collection of poems. However, all but a dozen of them have been deemed by historians as not the real deal. And this is where it gets even more interesting. When you look at him as a mythological figure, there are actually quite a few surviving stories and legends about him having done all kinds of weird and wonderful things. It was some of these legends that Stephen R. Lawhead drew upon and weaved into his own story when he was writing it. Quite interesting. What has struck me about all of this is how historical figures can and often are turned into heightened versions of themselves, and have many stories told about them by different people who ascribe different characteristics to them. Robin Hood is another such example. Some historians think he might have existed - they're just not entirely sure - but what he's certainly become by now is somewhat of a fictional fantasy character. Many legends have been built up around him down through the years, and even more stories for books and films are being created to this very day. What do you make of all this? Can you think of any other figures throughout history that may have been real, but throughout time and countless retellings have become more fantastical versions of themselves? I personally think that if you're going to look at mythology, you have to let a part of you believe it or else it's boring. For me, I'm actually a Hellenist, which means I follow the Greek pantheon of gods, so believing that Taliesin existed is not hard for me. The other way to look at it is that these people existed, but not as unrealistically as legend makes them. Though, I just feel that I can't 100% say that magic and dragons etc never existed. The world is super old after all i am not sure i believe in anything |
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Post by Liv the Librarian on Apr 24, 2014 19:39:29 GMT -6
I believe in a little bit of everything  |
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Post by Taliesin on Apr 26, 2014 7:33:34 GMT -6
I personally think that if you're going to look at mythology, you have to let a part of you believe it or else it's boring. For me, I'm actually a Hellenist, which means I follow the Greek pantheon of gods, so believing that Taliesin existed is not hard for me. The other way to look at it is that these people existed, but not as unrealistically as legend makes them. Though, I just feel that I can't 100% say that magic and dragons etc never existed. The world is super old after all Frankly, your way of thinking is a breath of fresh air. You're open to possibilities which is something most people aren't in today's single-mindedly literalist society. It's okay to remove the blinkers and entertain the notion that anything could happen, no matter how out there it might seem. There's a part of me that would like to believe that somebody like Taliesin existed, and that maybe some of the more mythological details about him might even be true - even if just a little bit. Doesn't that make life seem just a little more... well, exciting and engaging? It does for me. I like to feel as if there's a little magic in my world. |
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Post by Liv the Librarian on Apr 26, 2014 12:07:44 GMT -6
I personally think that if you're going to look at mythology, you have to let a part of you believe it or else it's boring. For me, I'm actually a Hellenist, which means I follow the Greek pantheon of gods, so believing that Taliesin existed is not hard for me. The other way to look at it is that these people existed, but not as unrealistically as legend makes them. Though, I just feel that I can't 100% say that magic and dragons etc never existed. The world is super old after all Frankly, your way of thinking is a breath of fresh air. You're open to possibilities which is something most people aren't in today's single-mindedly literalist society. It's okay to remove the blinkers and entertain the notion that anything could happen, no matter how out there it might seem. There's a part of me that would like to believe that somebody like Taliesin existed, and that maybe some of the more mythological details about him might even be true - even if just a little bit. Doesn't that make life seem just a little more... well, exciting and engaging? It does for me. I like to feel as if there's a little magic in my world. Thanks, I'm so weird with my beliefs. Like I said, I'm a Hellenist, but I literally believe that everything exists or existed in some form. So I actually believe the Christian/Muslim/Jewish god exists as well. I just keep an open mind because life is already so fantastical without magic and gods and dragons etc, that who am I to say that those things aren't real. I mean seriously, look at evolution or even something as small as the fact that we're just bones surrounded by a meat sac. The only thing stopped my insides from being on the outside is a small layer of meat! And we can see and hear process that information. I mean, when you think about it, thinking alone is fantastical lol. So yeah, I'm all for having a little more magic in my world. |
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Post by Taliesin on Apr 27, 2014 7:47:11 GMT -6
And when you add in other things like quantum physics and wormholes and multiple universes... well, it just seems a bit blind not to allow for the possibility that "there are more things in heaven and earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
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Post by sjfaerlind on May 3, 2014 19:54:16 GMT -6
Oh I think there are all kinds of people that once really existed and over time and word of mouth became much more in legend than they ever were in real life. It makes me wonder what people will say about Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa in generations to come.
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Post by Taliesin on May 5, 2014 17:26:37 GMT -6
That's a good point, sjfaerlind. They were ordinary people who did extraordinary things, which I guess is how most legends start! |
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Post by Stardancer on May 5, 2014 20:05:17 GMT -6
All religions, myths, fables, folklores and fairytales are true when understood metaphorically. I used to get very angry at certain religions (if you had to label me, it would be an Atheist, but personally I don't think the label is necessary), but when I actually started reading into it, I finally understood. Both sides are wrong. Those who are saying religions are literal facts are wrong, and those saying this is NONSENSE are wrong. They are true, but as metaphors, as symbols. Did they literally happen? No, but that doesn't mean we ignore them as rubbish. They were intended as life stories, and it is actually a relatively recent phenomena (in the last thousand plus years or so, I can't quite pinpoint it) that religious tales were interpreted as history. They were never designed to be. This was a revelation to me and changed my whole outlook, but it made me appreciate all religions whereas before I had hated them. The Greeks built statues and temples of the gods because they loved the stories, not because they believed them to be real physical beings that literally existed in their world. They were merely reenacting myths, and this still happens in the world today, just not in the First or Second worlds... So the answer is, everything is true, all of the stories are true, if understood metaphorically. That is the way to enlightenment and opens everyone up to appreciating every religious teaching and understanding them as they were originally intended EDIT: Actually, I'm going to add a portion from Joseph Campbell's book 'Thou Art That' which sums it up perfectly: "Let me begin by explaining the history of my impulse to place metaphor at the center of our exploration of Western spirituality.
When the first volume of my Historical Atlas of World Mythology, The Way of the Animal Powers came out, the publishers sent me on a publicity tour. This is the worst kind of all possible tours because you move unwillingly to those disc jockeys and newspaper people, themselves unwilling to read the book they are supposed to talk to you about, in order to give it public visibility.
The first question I would be asked was always, “What is a myth?” That is a fine beginning for an intelligent conversation. In one city, however, I walked into a broadcasting station for a live half-hour program where the interviewer was a young, smart-looking man who immediately warned me, “I’m tough, I put it right to you. I’ve studied law.”
The red light went on and he began argumentatively, “The word ‘myth,’ means ‘a lie.’ Myth is a lie.”
So I replied with my definition of myth. “No, myth is not a lie. A whole mythology is an organization of symbolic images and narratives, metaphorical of the possibilities of human experience and the fulfillment of a given culture at a given time.”
“It’s a lie,” he countered.
“It’s a metaphor.”
‘It’s a lie.”
This went on for about twenty minutes. Around four or five minutes before the end of the program, I realized that this interviewer did not really know what a metaphor was. I decided to treat him as he was treating me.
“No,” I said, “I tell you it’s metaphorical. You give me an example of a metaphor.”
He replied, “You give me an example.”
I resisted, “No, I’m asking the question this time.” I had not taught school for thirty years for nothing. “And I want you to give me an example of a metaphor.”
The interviewer was utterly baffled and even went so far as to say, “Let’s get in touch with some school teacher.” Finally, with something like a minute and a half to go, he rose to the occasion and said, “I’ll try. My friend John runs very fast. People say he runs like a deer. There’s a metaphor.”
As the last seconds of the interview ticked off, I replied, “That is not the metaphor. The metaphor is: John is a deer.”
He shot back, “That’s a lie.”
“No,” I said, “That is a metaphor.”
And the show ended. What does that incident suggest about our common understanding of metaphor?
It made me reflect that half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies."
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Post by Taliesin on May 5, 2014 22:10:13 GMT -6
Stardancer, that's fantastic. I would have to say that my thinking falls somewhat in that kind of framework. In other words, if we take these things as "true" stories, then we are reading (or hearing) them as they were originally intended to be. Having just come out of a conservative (and somewhat fundamentalist) Christian culture, I was at first anxious to distance myself from its sacred text, the Bible. I'm come to see the error of that though. As a historical text, it stands head and shoulders with some of the other great historical texts of the world, and deserves to do so. When read as a compendium of allegories and other kinds of writing, it's a fantastic read, but as the literal truth... not so much. We read Homer and other such texts as though they're not literal truth, so why not this as well? That's what I had to give myself permission to do. So, yeah, when we read about Taliesin, Robin Hood, Julius Caesar or any such figures that may literally have existed at one point, it does us no harm that the many "accounts" of them are probably not even close to being true in the literal sense. The real details of their lives have been forever lost to time. This is okay. We won't have our minds poisoned by reading such things, nor will we expire because they're not literal truth. We can appreciate them for what they are, and can still benefit greatly from having done so. There are many different ways to learn things, and cold hard facts aren't the only way. I waffled on a bit there, but I think that's my understanding of what you've written.
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Post by Stardancer on May 5, 2014 22:25:58 GMT -6
I actually came from the opposite background to you lol A family of scientists and strict Atheists. My brothers and I have however evolved an appreciation for religious teachings that we never had before. Anyone from TFF will know I was very explosive in the religious section concerning my opinions lol I'm not like that now. I appreciate everything, I love myth, religious tales (from every religion), stories are the life blood of humanity. They tell us so much about ourselves, both the light and the dark. People who hurt others, whether physically or emotionally, because they do not follow their religion are still monsters without feeling, but then again, someone who clings to science and all of it's cold, hard facts, aren't they missing something? I was the latter, no doubt, but I loved story telling. When I realized they were not exclusive from one another, everything changed from then on. I still don't like what people do to one another in the name of religion, but that's a different beast altogether. But the true stories, the true teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha etc, are for everyone. Getting caught up on the itty bitty details is to miss the point. Also, those are stories for a different time, which is why the stories don't speak to people the way they used to years ago. You either get a backwards society out of it, or people becoming lost and confused. Looking at the world today, we have a conflict of both... Countries that are backwards, strictly sticking to religious teachings, and then those who don't give a damn and run riot.... Again, both are wrong. The world needs new stories, the world needs new myths to help guide people how to live in this wonderful opera called life.
And that's the beauty of it, we can take what we need from everything we read. You don't have to call yourself a Christian to take something from the Bible and hold it close to your heart. Or a lyric from a song, a piece of artwork, a scene from a certain movie etc. They are all true if they speak to you.
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Post by Taliesin on May 5, 2014 22:48:52 GMT -6
I couldn't agree more. And I love the direction this conversation has taken.
So, here's a question. Do you think that this black or white approach we take with myths and fables and whatnot is primarily a western failing (having a mindset that's overly concerned with data and facts to the exclusion of abstract experiences), or does it exist to some extent within all modern societies? In other words, as a society we only ever seem to be concerned with if a story is literal truth or not, thereby missing out on what it could teach us about ourselves. Almost as if we can't see the forest for the trees because we're still deciding whether or not the trees are real. (I hope that makes sense.)
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Post by Stardancer on May 6, 2014 0:37:09 GMT -6
Well this is again something that Campbell has touched on, and certainly the root comes from modern Western societies, but everything is changing now and the east is being disrupted as well. Naturally technology has a great part in it, scientific discoveries, explorations etc The world has become smaller, there is less mystery in the world, less for us to question, so naturally this idea of fact over myth is inevitable. This is something that storytelling, in whatever medium, needs to conquer. Our world is changing so quickly, it's a great thing because our technology has allowed us to help one another, see far off places we would never be able to visit in the flesh etc, but it closes down curiosity, our society is evolving so quickly that in order for a story to touch people it needs to be one of two things: ahead of its time, or rooted differently. Game of Thrones is the latter, George Martin has been very clever there, just as George Lucas was years ago. George Lucas set his tale in space, because it's the one place we still look up to in wonder, so a perfect place for a myth to be born. But it's now been done by so many, it doesn't touch people in the same way, but now fantasy is coming back. Myth needs to be born in wonder and mystery, without it, it cannot grow. Old tales spoke of far off lands, the common people didn't travel very far, see people from far off countries etc, so they knew nothing of them and tales about those places were a wonder... But now? Oh this story is set in Hawaii... *googles and gets pictures, maps, locations etc etc* Most of the world is known, and even the areas that are unexplored, we still have a view from space. You may be wondering why I'm going on about this, but this is one of the main problems with fact and myth. Before a person could hear a tale of a far off land, absorb it and deep down, understand it and look to find their own horizons. Now? People can look up these places and go "I saw that, there's no mysterious mountain there like the story told. What rubbish.". Literalism crushing symbolism yet again. If you're like one of us in this forum, we can appreciate stories regardless of location because we know the rules, but the majority of people don't know this and simply take things at face value. This is where Game of Thrones has succeeded, they can't say this, that or the other is wrong, because GRRM has set the rules and people have accepted them and instead listen to the tale. And it's working, there's a reason it's a phenomena, because it is speaking to people at a subconscious level. All great stories should do this. That's what the old myths did, it's what old religious tales did. Remember, there are still tribes in South America, Africa etc that still live simple lives and still reenact old myths. They are considered savage, but they are not. Their rituals may seem bizarre and even disturbing to us, but they pose a purpose in that culture. There is no question about literalism there, because they don't know about the world as we know it. Though more and more, we are intervening, often to help, but ultimately changing and extinguishing these ways of life, but these people are actually closer to the societies of our ancestors than anything we have experienced. The fact of the matter is that if you went back 3000+ years ago to Greece and started talking about Zeus, Apollo, Athena etc as literal, real world beings, they would think you were insane. Atheists often used the line of 'people believed in gods in ancient times because they didn't know any better'... I used that line myself, once upon a time, but it is not true. They understood FAR more than we do today what the stories were about. They knew they were stories, but they adored them, they understood and appreciated them. They built temples to them, carved on walls, made pottery, made sacrifices etc This doesn't mean they thought they were real. People make statues of Darth Vader, have Star Wars weddings, get Star Wars tattoos and yes, there's even a bloody Jedi religion! lol But they don't think for a second the films are based on facts, they simply love the stories..... The ancient Greeks were no different, same with all of the other races and religions. Literalism in religion is new, and it is what has caused so much pain and suffering, as well as horrific misunderstandings. This is a link to part 2 of The Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, I highly suggest you and everyone watch part one and then part 3, 4, 5 and 6. It completely woke me up. This part is about the message of myth: Click here |
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