Myth Festival
In the Myth Festival of other countries, one encounters fierce, remote gods representing fundamental values in the society, reflecting its needs and structure. For the Greeks, mythology was the story of everyday life. The gods loved and hated, fell in love and lusted after other people's wives, with mortals watching events curiously like well-intentioned neighbours, with perhaps an ordinary man's affection and admiration for a special friend. In the diaphanous light of Greece, the gods couldn't really have been different, and this was why in the 4th century AD a special law had to be passed to compel the people to convert to Christianity on pain of death. In Greece, it was very difficult to impose worship of a patient god who suffered insults and humiliations, went barefoot and refused the pleasures of the flesh that allow one to forget the day's tribulations. It was very difficult for such a God to replace proud Apollo, who was always dressed in the light of the sun, or Aphrodite who promised so much, not in some unknown future life but right now, or even Dionysus who urged his followers to express what they saw in their unconfessed solitary dreams.(Myth Festival)
But behind this airy view of myths addressed to the many, there were some serious reflections and insights into life, together with a judicious classification of the divine among the human. All these familiar gods had one special feature: they were immortal. And perhaps all their stories represented the eternal longing on the part of mortals to learn the mystery of life and death, the desire for immortality, because myth is the product of the imagination, like the dreams without which we cannot live.
tag : Myth Festival
