Origins.
Archeological discoveries suggest that early myths relate to the mystical transition from life to death. These mythologies were embodied in rituals and propagated as oral histories. Cross-culturally, specific transformations, like the transition from childhood to maturity and the transition from life to death, necessitate mythological explanation. When encapsulated in myth, “killing is not simply slaughter, it’s a ritual act, as eating is when you say grace before meals” (Campbell 92). Mythology developed as a system of metaphors through which cultural values and religious significance could be encapsulated and communicated consistently between generations. For cultures in which war and violence played a major role in society, a characteristic of the ‘history of Western Civilization’, war-glorifying myths are universal.
Most importantly, mythology was originally scripted to address very real questions and concerns in daily life. Cultures that originated in forested regions worship gods of vegetation while hunting cultures worship the spirits of the creatures they subsist off of. One good example of this is in the ritual culture of the Dakota, Pawnee, and Kiowa Native American tribes, which feature mythologies that are fundamentally structured as vegetation themes with buffalo deities overlaying them, reflecting their introduction of horses and subsequent migration from the Mississippi Valley to the plains (Campbell 106). On the other side of the world in Southeast Asia, the epic Ramayana is a favorite story to be retold in theater. Puppet shows are a major mass media in Southeast Asia, and puppeteers skillfully narrate the Ramayana in ways that link contemporary topics to the traditional stories (Mahulikar 4). As new figures become important to a culture, they are incorporated into the system of mythology in relation to the older figures. This serves two ends. First it keeps the issues addressed by the mythology current and relevant, and secondly it redefines traditional figures in terms that make sense within current conditions.
Some of the classic mythological traditions modern Western culture is most familiar with, the Greek and biblical traditions, reflect this quality of amalgamation. The Old and New Testaments present a totally different God. It is difficult to reconcile the deity who gambles with the Devil and strikes pious Job blind with the Father figure who sacrifices his greatest love in order to save the souls of the less successful creatures of his creation. Different figures in history play into these mythologies as well. It is widely believed that the Devil is depicted with horns because Alexander the Great, who devastated the lands of Persia, then dispensed coins bearing his likeness as the son of the god Amman, a curly-headed Greek with horns. In this way the suffering induced by Alexander’s empire building slipped into the Bible and fused with one of the most enduring symbols of evil in popular culture.
The fact that Alexander the Great embodies both sides of the coin when it comes to war mythology—the God-like war hero Achilles as well as the Devil himself—is not an arbitrary result of an organic myth-making process in which important figures are collectively incorporated into public discourse and eventually propagated as myth. Professionals were charged with the task of scripting the different traditions of Alexander. His personal scribe, Parmenides, wrote the most glowing account of Alexander as a benevolent warrior king.
The negative Alexander tradition is widely believed to have been scripted by leaders of the Zoroastrian religion he decimated. Some historians believe that large portions of the angelology and demonology of Judaism originated in Zoroastiranism (Wikipedia). Campbell observes, “The people who keep [myth] alive are artists of one kind or another… There’s an old romantic idea in German, das Volk dichtet, which says that the ideas and poetry of the traditional cultures come out of the folk. They do not. They come out of an elite experience, the experience of people particularly gifted” (107). From the earliest times, the task of creating and propagating mythology belongs to the cultural elite, from shamans to scribes to historians, academics, and finally newscasters. Not only that, the absolute disparity between the two Alexander traditions is evidence that the messages evoked by these mythologies serves a politically charged message independent from an objective historical reality.