Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [3]
The intermingling of pagan myth and Christian rites and beliefs is one key element in the plot of the best-selling sensation The Da Vinci Code, a thriller which draws on the adaptation—or theft—of ancient pagan religions and rituals by Christians in ancient Rome and the first Church fathers. While many of its most controversial elements are historically questionable, the book’s runaway international success is another tip-off that lots of people think there are deeper connections to ancient myths and mysteries than we’ve ever been told by mainstream religion. The fascination with The Da Vinci Code, as with The Celestine Prophecy, another novel that posits an elaborate Church conspiracy to conceal ancient truths, plays to a deep-seated skepticism about organized religion, but also taps into a level of curiosity about ancient spiritual ideas and wisdom—in other words, myths.
To get another gauge of the impact of myths, you could simply check the calendar. Is today a Thursday in March? A Saturday in June? The names of these days and months all come from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. From the calendar to the planets in our solar system—all except Earth are named for Roman gods—our language is loaded with words from our mythic past. Do you buy your books from Amazon.com? Are you wearing a pair of Nikes? Do you worry about a Trojan horse virus infecting your computer? Does the idea of a panacea tantalize you? Or perhaps your arachnophobia puts you in a panic? “Hypnosis,” “morphine,” “Golden Fleece,” “Labor of Hercules,” “leprechaun,” “typhoon,” and “hurricane” are just a few of the words and phrases that come from the world of mythology and color our speech. Is there an American Express card in your wallet? Then you don’t leave home without Hermes (or Mercury), the Greco-Roman god of commerce whose image appears on that card.
Hell! Even hell comes from the name of the Norse goddess Hel, ruler of an icy underworld where oath-breakers, evildoers, and those unlucky enough not to have died in battle were sent. Unlike Christianity’s fiery place of eternal torment, the Norse hell, you might say, was “frozen over.”
In other words, myths have been, and remain, a powerful force in our lives, often without our even recognizing them. Myths surround us—in literature, in pop culture, in our language, and in the news. Rarely do you pick up a newspaper or magazine without finding words and phrases that contain references to ancient myths. And sometimes myths are part of the news. In Mexico, the planned construction of a Wal-Mart-owned supermarket was met with fierce resistance, because it was so close to the Pyramid of the Sun in the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, the place where, the Aztecs believed, “men became gods.” (Despite the protests and the discovery of an altar during excavation the store opened in November 2004.)
In modern India, many Hindus still make offerings of their hair to a temple deity in thanks for help in medical crises or to ask for good grades on exams. What some of these devout Hindus didn’t know was that their hair was then used to manufacture high-priced wigs that accounted for a $62-million export business. But one set of beliefs ran head-on into another, because many of those wigs were purchased by Orthodox Jewish women who observe an ancient code of modesty that forbids the public display of their hair after marriage. When Orthodox Jewish rabbis in Israel declared that these wigs were made with hair offered for purposes of idolatry, their use was forbidden. Thousands of Orthodox women, according to the New York Times, publicly burned their human-hair wigs.
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