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What exactly is a myth? In the language current during the nineteenth century, a “myth” meant anything that was opposed to “reality”: the creation of Adam,
or the invisible man, no less than the history of the
world as described by the Zulus, or the Theogony of
Hesiod —these were all “myths. ” Like many another
cliche of the Enlightenment and of Positivism, this,
too, was of Christian origin and structure; for, according to primitive Christianity, everything which could not be justified by reference to one or the other
of the two Testaments was untrue; it was a “fable. ”
But the researches of the ethnologists have obliged us
to go behind this semantic inheritance from the Christian polemics against the pagan world. We are at last beginning to know and understand the value of the
myth, as it has been elaborated in “primitive” and
archaic societies — that is, among those groups of mankind where the myth happens to be the very foundation of social life and culture. Now one fact strikes us immediately: in such societies the myth is thought to
express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred
history; that is, a transhuman revelation which took
place at the dawn of the Great Time.. . . Being real
and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently, repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token, a justification, for all human actions. In
other words, a myth is a true history of what came to pass
at the beginning of Time, and one which provides the pattern for human behavior. 3 [Italics added]
I would extend Eliade’s definition in only one respect.
It is not only in primitive and archaic societies that
myths provide this model for behavior —it is in every
human society. T he distance between myth and social
organization is perhaps greater, or more tangled, in
advanced technological societies, but myth still operates
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as the substructure of the collective. The story of Adam
and Eve will affect the shape of settlements on the moon
and Mars, and the Christian version of the primitive
myth of a divine fertility sacrifice saturates the most
technologically advanced communications media.
What are the myths of androgyny, and how do we
locate them behind the myths of polarity with which we
are familiar? Let us begin with the Chinese notions of yin
and yang.
Yin and yang are commonly associated with female
and male. The Chinese ontology, so appealing in that
it appears to give whole, harmonious, value-free description of phenomena, describes cosmic movement as cyclical, thoroughly interwoven manifestation of yang
(masculine, aggressive, light, spring, summer) and yin
(female, passive, dark, fall, winter). The sexual identifications reduce the concepts too often to conceptual polarities: they are used to fix the proper natures of
men and women as well as the forces of male and female.
These definitions, like the Jungian ones which are based
on them, are seemingly modified by the assertions that
(1) all people are composed of both yin and yang,
though in the man yang properly predominates and in
the woman yin properly predominates; (2) these male
and female forces are two parts of a whole, equally
vital, mutually indispensable. Unfortunately, as one
looks to day-to-day life, that biological incarnation of
yin, woman, finds herself, as always, the dark half of
the universe.
The sexual connotations of yin and yang, however,
are affixed onto the original concepts. They reflect an
already patriarchal, and misogynist, culture. Richard
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Wilhelm, in an essay on an ancient Chinese text called
The Secret of the Golden Flower, gives the uncorrupted
meanings o f yin and yang:
Out of the Tao, and the Tai-chi [“the great ridge
pole, the supreme ultimate”] there develop the principles of reality, the one pole being the light (yang) and the other the dark, or the shadowy, (yin). Among
European scholars, some have turned first to sexual
references for an explanation, but the characters refer
to phenomena in nature. Yin is shade, therefore the
north side of a mountain and the south side of a river.
. . . Yang, in its original form, indicates flying pennants
and, corresponding to the character of yin, is the south
side of a mountain and the north side of a river. Starting only with the meaning of “light” and “dark, ” the principle was then expanded to all polar opposites,
including the sexual. However, since both yin and yang
have their common origin in an undivided One and
are active only in the realm of phenomena, where yang
appears as the active principle and conditions, and yin
as the passive principle is derived and conditioned, it
is quite clear that a metaphysical dualism is not the
basis for these ideas. 4
Light and dark are obvious in a phenomenological
sense —there is day and it slowly changes into night
which then slowly changes into day. When men began
conceptualizing about the nature o f the universe, the
phenomena o f light and dark were an obvious starting
point. My own experience is that night and day are
more alike than different —in which case they couldn't
possibly be opposite. Man, in conceptualizing, has
reduced phenomena to two, when phenomena are
more complex and subtle than intellect can imagine.
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Still, how is it that it is the feminine, the sexually
female, that is embodied in yin? Even patriarchy and
misogyny began somewhere. Here I can only guess. We
know that at one time men were hunters and women
were planters. Both forms o f work were essential and
arduous. Both demanded incredible physical strength
and considerable knowledge and skill. Why did men
hunt and women plant? Clearly women planted because they were often pregnant, and though pregnancy did not make them weak and passive, it did mean that
they could not run, go without food for long periods of
time, survive on the terms that hunting demanded. It
is probable that very early in human history women
also were hunters, and that it was crucial to the survival
of the species that they develop into planters — first to
supplement the food supply, second to reduce infant
and woman mortality. We see that the first division of