“Mythos is the primary language of spirituality.” – Gus diZerega, “Where Are the Pagan Fundamentalists?” (an excellent and highly recommended read!)
Our ancestors had a mythic understanding of the world, in which multiple realities were possible. While our modern, Protestant, and materialistic culture gives many of us the impulse to put things in tidy boxes, to ancient polytheists, truths overlapped. The Alfir were at once ancestral and nature spirits, and their lord Yngvi-Freyr both god and sacrificial king. Multiple myths explaining the same phenomena or history could also coexist within a culture. A necessary part of the work of reviving the cultures of our ancestors and birthing our own is shifting our perspective that binds us to strict categorization; the spiritual defies it. Just as there are more spirits than we can understand, there are more realities and truths than we can fully comprehend.
In this way, I believe the myths to be at once metaphors for the ways of the world; actual stories of the events and cyclical happenings in the Otherworlds that were communicated to people through visions, communion with deities, or impressions by people, viewed by them through travel to the Otherworlds, or some other means; and wonderful and strange human fantasy-writing and storytelling, works of art with the gods, spirits, ancestors, and the World and Realms as the subjects. They are sacred and worthy of respect, but what was written down a thousand years ago or more isn’t the only truth, and new myths can (and should!) be crafted all the time.
Our ancestors also modified the ancient stories, adjusting them to their own cultures and ways of life, and even with their own gods rather than those from whom the story was adapted, and I think this too is a valid practice, so long as it’s done with respect. If they’re “just stories,” why do we feel such deep and profound attachment to them as a species, and so uncomfortable when they’re brazenly appropriated and commodified? They certainly were crafted and spoken by humans, but in a way, this too is sacred, as our ability to create is a sacred divine gift, and all forms of creation should be treated with respect and not misused.
The featured artwork is Marine Gods Paying Homage to Love (circa 1636-38) by Eustache Le Sueur.