Creation

The Mandé creation myth; a summery.

Creator god, Mangala makes an egg. The egg explodes. Mangala tries again, with two sets of twins, one male and one female. One of the male twins, Pemba, escapes and grabs part of the placenta and that became the earth, but it’s completely baron. Pemba tries to return to the egg, but the egg became the sun. Pemba steals some seeds from Mangala and tries to make the earth less baron. It doesn’t work. Pemba’s twin brother, Faro, sacrifices himself and is cut into sixty pieces and scattered over the earth. Faro is then resurrected and put in human form and sent in an ark to earth with eight other people. The people do a rain dance and a great flood comes and cleans the earth.

The End

2 for 1 Special !!!

Today's blog comes to you in two parts! Part one last week’s blog, musees, or muses, or musi, I don't know. Part two, this week’s blog "Tree Hugging 101."

Part 1:
We're supposed to invoke the graces of the muses, to inspire us to write masterful blogs that rival the works of Homer, or Ovid. But...to what muse do I sacrifice my fattened calf? Calliope? While I do strive to make my works rival Homan and Ovid, a series of blog posts hardly seem like an epic poem. Clio? History doesn’t appear to be the right category either. Urania? The lack of stars put this outside of her jurisdiction. Perhaps Thalia? While this meager blog could be considered by many a laughing stalk, a comedy has the intent to make people laugh. Terpsichore? Trust me it’s better for everyone if I don’t dance. Erato? I have yet to woo a woman by my rhyme and verse; I believe it is safe to say that Erato has abandoned me. What about the beautiful Polyhymnia? If she heard me sing this blog would end rather abruptly. Last but not least would Melpomene come to my aid? Out of all the fair muses it looks as if Melpomene is the best suited muse to aid me. Tragedies star young promising heroes who reach for the stars and fall into the deep abyss of Hates. If any fate is most probably for our young hero, this seems the most likely.

Part 2: Tree Hugging 101
Here I provide with step by step instructions of how to hug a tree.

1)      Find a friendly tree, try to avoid Evergreens.

2)      Introduce yourself, but avoid being too friendly. (You don’t want to scare them away)

3)      Once the tree lowers its guard, go in for the hug!

4)      If the tree tries to push away don’t let go!

5)      If the tree now tries to kill you, odds are you hugged a whomping willow.  (Your fault not mine)

If you’re still alive you’ve just passed Tree Hugging 101! Now you only need one more hippy credit to graduate with your liberal arts degree.

The Myth is a Lie?

Lies. Humanities tool to gain what we desire, at the expense of inconvenient truths. According to Dr. Michael Sexson this is what a myth is, a lie. If a myth is a lie then what is humanity trying to gain, and what truth is it denying? 

What truth does a myth deny? A simple answer would be all of them. Myths are created to answer the most desirable questions we as humans inquire. Where does the sun go at night? Why is that volcano erupting? What happened, ‘in the beginning?’ As our knowledge advances we find that all of the old myths are nothing but stories; the remnants of our ancestors grasping at straws. We learn the sun doesn’t go anywhere we just move out of its sight, that pressure causes an upheaval of magma, and space began to expand. 

What does humanity desire? Truth. We cower in the face of the unknown, when truth is hidden we desperately try to uncover it. Even if we must settle on mere fractions of the truth, we would rather believe we have found the truth, though it’s just a guess, than continue living in darkness. This is why we create myths; they are small candles that light up a painfully dark room. Until we find the light switch and realize that our candles could barely show us what was right in front of our eyes, let alone the beauty of the entire room.

Isn’t this a contradiction? The single, solitary goal of a myth is to create an answer, to try to find truth. We may now be able to look back on myths and say with certainty that they are false, but they never intended to deny any truth. Given the limited capabilities of their time they tried to find truth in any way they could. We cannot say that a myth tires to deny truth for some other goal, when that other goal is truth.  At best we can only say that a myth is; A misinformed guess.