Library
I had to go to Murray's to pick up a replacement turn signal bulb for my car today and while I was out I stopped at local library and picked up a library card. I've been meaning to go since Carla and I moved from Fort Wayne. I walked out with 4 books, a Video, 3CDs (I'm listening to The Chieftans right now) and a book-on-tape. Thanks Ben Franklin!

Myths and the Oral Tradition.
I have been thinking a bit about how the myths and folklore used to be told in the oral tradition. (Get your mind out of the gutter, you perv!) In MK's "Mercy and Forgiveness" my character Anoki is a leader for a group a lot like our world's native americans. In the game my character has started travelling the world and MK asked me what outside ideas I would bring to my people. Would I bring back the idea of a written language? I thought about it and said yes. There are many good practical reasons to have a written language. However, I wanted them to be taught not to write down our stories, that stories should be told and memorized as was the tradition. It seemed important.

Last night I had a dream. All sorts of wierdness was involved (as my dreams usually are) and at one point I was attacked by Morgana le Fey. I was able to turn back her spiritual attack by walking in a circle counter-clockwise. (An old Celtic belief was walking "counter sun-wise" could be used as a defense from supernatural attacks.) When I woke up I started thinking about how Morganna appeared as a threat in my dream and got me thinking about how I see the Arthurian Myths. I started learning about Arthur Malory's Le Mort D'Arthur and books based off of his works. In these versions Morganna is protrayed as the evil temptress and architect of the fall. Meanwhile the other major female character Guinevere is a woman who gives in to her lusts and in doing so causes Lancelot to leave Camelot and hastens Camelot's fall. Neither female character is cast in a positive light. However, I am sure we would find the original myths to have been far kinder to the women and we find the more recent tellings to be more kind. However, my vision of Camelot will always be tempered by my original view of it and so Morgana will probably always be villian in my dreams because I read a book written during a time when men were taught to fear women. The myths of that time reflect that attitude.

So, I started thinking about the oral tradition. If a story is told from generation to generation without being written down it can change. This allows it to evolve with the ethics of the people telling the story. However, once its written down the myth becomes set in stone. When future versions try to update the story, they are not being true to the original source. Personally I like the fact that stories were writen down, but if the stories are to be used as religion they become a religion that has a hard time evolving. This is, in my opinion, what happened to the Christian Church. The bible was written in a time when it was OK to own slaves and treat women with property. As society evolved, the book hasn't. It's kind of hard to base a religion off of a book that is completely out of touch with modern society. With Anoki's people, they will be able to continue their oral tradition and as the world grows, perhaps its myths can as well.

Christian Mythology
A Christian friend of mine once became upset when I referred to the story of the temptation of Jesus as "Christian Mythology." He felt I was attacking the religion. I had to explain to him that I was not saying that it was not a valid religion. I was only saying that, like my religious beliefs, it has certain stories that are told to teach moral lessons. In Buddhism there are many tales of the Buddha that, while being told again and again, they probably did not happen exactly like that. I wouldn't get offended if somebody referred to the story of Prince Siddartha's temptations under the Boddhi tree as myth . The point of these stories are to teach spiritual lessons, not to be taken as fact. I have been careful since then around my christian friends not to use the term Christian Mythology. However, if I use it here and upset anyone, please understand. I am not saying that Christ did not exist or that the religion is wrong. I am just saying that some stories that can not be proven fact are not history but myth. As a Buddhist and a Pagan, my religions are filled with mythology. This does not lessen the religious significance of the story. No, I don't believe that a demon tried to entice Prince Siddartha away from his meditations with naked women or any other vices. Symbolically, however, he might as well have been visited by a demon. He had no instruction towards enlightenment and I am sure that he did have to conquer his own demons of lust and self doubt.