There was a time when the world was full of magic. There were nymphs and sprites, gnomes and dwarves, wizards and witches, and an array of both positive and negative forces that determined much of our lives. Almost all of us experience the world this way when we are children, for our environment is full of wonder and terror and protection and amazement.
Because of the association with childhood, this way of thinking is most often belittled by us moderns, but unjustifiably so. My favorite example of it, however, is in the film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy". While flying over the Kalahari, a pilot simply throws his Coke bottle out the window of his plane and it is found by Xi, a local bushman. Like everything else around them, the tribe first believes it to be another gift from the gods. It is the hardest things they have ever experienced, and it brings an unhappy, even destructive, dynamic into their lives. They agree that the gods must have made a mistake and the "evil thing", as they have come to call it, must go, so Xi declares he will take it to the end of the world and throw it off. The rest of the movie depicts all of his experiences with the modern world along the way. While the decision and the solution may appear child-like, Xi is anything but a child. He is a respected member of the tribe; he provides and cares for his family; he is willing to travel into the unknown to protect everyone from the evil influences of this "thing"; and, as is seen throughout the rest of the movie, he is a clever, resourceful, highly-skilled problem-solver. No, this is a loving, caring, responsible adult who just happens to understand the world very differently than those he encounters along the way.
The gods in Xi's world are capable of carelessness. They aren't particularly powerful even if they are caring for the tribe. Over time, however, the powers attributed to the gods increase in strength and become more formalized and find new expressions. These may be seen in the exquisite paintings found in the Lascaux Caves in Southern France, dating back some 40,000 years, or in the highly refined and intricately developed cosmology of the Ancient Egyptians. The pantheon of gods expands, and each god is in command of a particular force or power or controls some clearly defined aspect of life and nature. Whereas art and writing are unknown in Xi's Magical world, both of these methods of expression become dominant factors in the Mythical world. Of course, we moderns like to belittle this type of thinking as well. We find it these days in the adolescent love of superheroes, sports legends, our reverence for our "alma mater", be it high school or college (though in these latter instances it is not only tolerated but encouraged, oddly enough).
Two points are worth noting here. First, neither of these modes are childish ways of thinking. Xi demonstrates this clearly for the Magical structure, and the great empires of the past -- the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans -- were all products of the Mythical structure of consciousness. Second, in both cases, we can find examples of such consciousness in our everyday, modern lives. They are not dead and forgotten, they have not be discarded, rather they have been maintained, cultivated and adapted to play important roles in our lives.
Our modern problem is, to a great extent, that we fail to recognize them and put them off, but, as I believe, much to our own peril.
Reference
Gebser, J. (1986) The Ever-present Origin, Authorized translation by Noel Barstad with Algis Mikunas, Athens/OH, Ohio University Press [originally published 1949]. (EPO)
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