SPENTA MAINYU invites you to ask..
	YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.
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You believe in what is written in a book. It is the 'code book' of the 'belief system' you relate to. There is nothing wrong with that. But have you ever consciously asked yourself the question, 'why do I believe?' Furthermore, were you a free agent while you were in the process of establishing a connection with what is written in that book? Or was it an unconscious, 'flash like' event? Or don't you remember how you did it and now you feel apprehensive about changing your position?

You may have been a free agent; your becoming a follower of a certain belief/faith may have been a conscious affair; you may recall how and why you did it and not apprehensive at all about changing your position. Alright! Let us move a step further. You are a follower of a certain faith because you have been unable to find answers to certain questions. You were desperately searching for solutions, to no avail. So you've had no chance but to 'accept' a 'higher order' and 'superior beings'. Since human race was earth-bound their fate was to lead a life full of 'sin'. Did you know that the Sumerians were the first to introduce an order of 'higher' and 'lower' beings. In the form of a thought this order of higher and lower beings may have existed in the minds of earlier peoples but since the oldest written sources are from the Sumerians they will be the terminus until earlier written sources are found. Sumerian 'thinkers,' as people living on earth, were questioning the existence of 'their' universe in general, the world order, and their role in particular in this 'grand design'. Why's, how's and what for's were bogging them. As a result of this they have imagined a 'higher order', 'higher beings' of immense power and importance. They were creating, ruining, seeing, hearing etc., and deciding on the destinies of everything in the universe, in short they were omnipotent.

What was the role given to human race by these all-powerful entities? Human race was created to serve the 'superior beings', till the fields on earth belonging to these entities, enlarge their estates, produce goods to meet their needs etc. In short humans were the servants of 'those up there'. So the Sumerians created their pantheon of gods. But they had no experience of how a superior being looked like so they fashioned their 'superior beings' after humans. In other words their gods were leading a human-like life. They had their own hierarchy based on the worldly example of kings at the top and the average people down at the bottom. But don't you think we have come a long way since then? 6000 years to be precise! Think about all the scientific developments taken place in between. Try to visualize the tremendous progress recorded in the human understanding of the universe. Then ask yourself: 'How can I still take for granted the fantasy created by an inqiring group of people 6000 years ago?' They watched sun in daytime and the endless darkness with the moon and twinkling stars at night. They had to face the storms, lightning, thunder, floods, trembling earth -all natural forces- and assigned a superior being to each one to pray to for forgiveness, to offer sacrifices of sorts for protection, and to seek advantages generally. You may add to this list but don't waste your time because we know perfectly well today that they are all natural phenomena. Don't you think that there should be a difference between their comprehension of nature and yours? As far as the creation of the human race is concerned, you may feel like the Sumerians, that human race was created from mud to serve the gods.

 MYTHOLOGY

But all that is mythology. Unfortunately mainly Mid-eastern mythologies in part or in a modified form appear in the 'code books' of the belief systems we are interested. Remember the story of the creation of human race in the Old Testament? Remember the creation story of Nin-ti (Eve)?

So what is this myth? Encyclopedia Britannica writes: ' 'myth' meant anything that was opposed to 'reality' ': The creation of Adam, the invisible man, no less then the history of the world as described by the Zulus or the Polynesians or the theogony of Hesiod - these were all myths. Like many of the other cliches of Positivism this was of Christian and ultimately of Greek origin. For the Greeks mythos meant 'fable,' 'tale,' 'talk,' 'speech.' Contrasted both with logos and later with historia, mythos finally came to denote 'what cannot really exist... It was through the numerous and brilliant works of Max Müller that the study of mythology became popular in the second half of the l9 th century. According to Max Müller mythology is the result of a 'disease of language.' The fact that an object can have many names (polyonymy) and conversely that the same name can be applied to several objects (homonymy) produced a confusion of names which resulted in the combination of several gods into one and the separation of one into many: nomina, numina. Moreover the use of endings denoting grammatical gender led to the personification of gods. According to Müller, the ancient Aryans constructed their pantheon around the sun, the dawn and the sky.' This all embracing 'solar mythology' was wittily criticised by Andrew Lang who asserted that myths result not from any 'disease of language' but from the personification of cosmic elements, a mental process characteristic of the animistic stage of culture. Lang utilized the data of the new science of anthropology, drawing heavily upon E.B. Taylor's belief that animism was the earliest stage of religion…But now the lunar and Mesopotamian myths usurped the exalted positiom of Max Müller's solar and Vedic myths.' There were those who tried to explain the ancient near eastern and Greek myths in terms of ritual magic. The periodical death and resurrection of vegetation was claimed to have created the figure and the myth of a dying god, of which Adonis, Attis and Osiris are the best known examples. A great number of scholars concluded that the rituals preceded the myths; the myth was held to be an explanation of the ritual. The English and Scandinavian 'myth and ritual school' or 'patternism' elaborated the interdependence of myths and rituals. It was pointed out that in the ancient near east the king, representing the god, was the centre of the cultus and as such he was responsible for the crops and for the prosperity of the cities. One went even further and maintained that the king was responsible for the very well-being of the cosmos. It was claimed that this conception later gave rise to the Iranian saviour ideology and to jewish messianism. This 'patternism' has been attacked from many sides who maintained that differences are more important than similarities and consequentially that the myth and ritual pattern is an artificial construction…The new approach to myth is greatly indebted to the results of modern ethnology. The scientific study of archaic societies - i.e., those societies in which mythology is or was until recently 'living' - has revealed that myth, for the 'primitive' man, means a true story and beyond that, a story that is a most precious treasure because it is sacred, exemplary and significant.

Then there is the cult myth. In the development of the religion of Israel a new use of myth made its appearance. Passover, Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks, and Tabernacles all had their own special ritual, preserved and carried out by the priests at the local shrines. The Feast of Passover was celebrated with a ritual whose origin was far older than the historical event that was commemorated. Accompanying it was the cult myth describing the event, not in historical terms, but in terms borrowed in part from Babylonian and Canaanite myth. The function of the cult myth was to confirm the covenant relation between YHWH and Israel. In this new use, the myth is divested of its magical potency which it had possessed in the ritual myth.

Spenta Mainyu has summarised these types of myths from the Middle Eastern Mythology by Samuel Henry Hooke.