(1) constitute
the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this
history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that
myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that
by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control
and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually,
either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual
for which it is the justification;
(5) that
in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized"
by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast
to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it,
stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative
topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in
her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view
would equate this conceptualization