Myths as part of worship and ritual

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[treekisser]

I know that myths are often used as sources of info on the nature of the gods and interacting with them. But does anyone here incorporate the stories themselves into ritual? How do you decide which of a god's many myths you'll focus on? Or, in everyday life, do you find yourself returning to some myths as touchstones of faith?

[midnightsharonb]

I know that myths are often used as sources of info on the nature of the gods and interacting with them. But does anyone here incorporate the stories themselves into ritual? How do you decide which of a god's many myths you'll focus on? Or, in everyday life, do you find yourself returning to some myths as touchstones of faith?

I actually don't. I've never really been able to see the link between the myths about my Patron Deity and my experiences (although He does seem to find the Disney interpretation of His personality and image very amusing )-He is just so much... more, I guess.

[Lintu]

I know that myths are often used as sources of info on the nature of the gods and interacting with them. But does anyone here incorporate the stories themselves into ritual? How do you decide which of a god's many myths you'll focus on? Or, in everyday life, do you find yourself returning to some myths as touchstones of faith?

In my coven we sometimes act myths as part of our rituals. For last Samhain we wrote a play of the abduction of Persephone into the Underworld. We celebrate Samhain as the last harvest and the beginning of Winter. So we saw the abduction myth as very fitting, as the crops die and the Earth becomes cold and barren due to Demeter's grief. None of the Gods in this myth are especially close to us on a personal level, but the play was a powerful technique to familiarize ourselves with this myth and connect with the Gods. To understand the Gods, you must become the Gods. Act like them. I haven't yet succeeded in doing this in everyday life, but I think it's possible and it's my aim. Anyway, play and ritual can act as supportive tools. Living my faith between rituals is also important to me, although mundane matters sometimes take over.

[Altair]

I know that myths are often used as sources of info on the nature of the gods and interacting with them.

IMHO, they are the most important--perhaps the only--source of info on the nature of the gods. They are defined by their myths.

Or, in everyday life, do you find yourself returning to some myths as touchstones of faith?

Quite frequently.

[catja6]

Does the earth revolve around the sun?    Seriously, in folkloric understandings of myth, "religion" is the social structure that exists as a way to "translate" the sacred narrative of myth into meaningful experiences for human beings.  So, a good chunk of any religion's rituals, then, do involve some sort of involvement with myth, since myth offers the narrative underpinning to the ritual.  For Catholics, for example, every Communion is a way of "participating" in the Last Supper, and therefore the entire myth of the Resurrection.  A Wiccan celebrating Beltane is "participating" in the turning of the Wheel of the Year, and the flowering of the sexual relationship between the God and the Goddess.  Private devotions/prayers/requests, while not always overtly connected to a particular myth (i.e., "I pray to you, Hermes, inventor of the lyre, to help me build X"), can be -- if you're honoring/praying to a god in their capacity as patron of something, then you're connected (if it exists in narrative form, since myth is narrative) to the myth where that god acquired that patronage, if that makes sense.

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