NATIVE AND INVASIVE MYTHS

“What kind of storyteller are you?” Many filmmakers consider themselves to be storytellers. Screen writers for television write and “tell” stories of a kind. Authors of fiction and non-fiction tell us stories. Almost any creative work dealing with language and imagery can be said to be a form of storytelling. For many years I worked as a singer/songwriter and I would have taken offense with anyone that claimed I was not a teller of stories. And yet in the mid 80’s I began shifting to the telling of the kind of story that comes out of the oral traditions of the world—I became a different kind of storyteller, telling a different kind of story.

Through my studies I have become convinced that the old stories, the myths, and mythic tales, bring humans into accord with the forces that surround us; and that this accord is a most desirable, most generative, and life enhancing condition. With this in mind it is important to draw some distinctions between myths that accord with world, and other kinds of stories, that appear to fit into the same imaginal and soulful regions, and yet do not serve to bring us into such accord. Some kinds of stories seem more or less unnatural fabrications, and in this sense it seems apt to compare them to the “invasive species” which occur sometimes in an ecosystem.

The idea of an invasive species in an ecosystem is relatively new; in 1958 Charles S. Elton published the ground breaking book The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants. The likeness of “invasive stories” to “invasive species” was ready in my mind as my older brother is a botanist and biologist; I have grown up with these ideas, and he taught me much of what I know and love in and of the wild. The US government defines an invasive species as “a species that is 1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration, and 2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” So I’ve had this crazy idea for about 15 years that there are such things as invasive myths; and they are much more than likely to cause economic and environmental harm and harm to human well being.

Immediately the question of natural habitat arises—what is the native ground of the oral tradition? of the mythopoeic intelligence? where does mythos reside? what is the ecosystem of imagination?

I am convinced that the first criteria for identification of “authentic native myth” is its habitat; and moreover, that the habitat we are seeking must have a paradoxical location: being both within and without the human psyche, being both in this world and in the otherworld. I call it the “Bridge of Breath.” It is a resonant and associative field that carries an inherent worldview. This outlook, or condition, has been called many things: participation mystique, kaleidoscopic consciousness, pantheistic animism, mind before mind—in the end I feel it is simplest and most apt to call it the shamanic worldview. Why shamanic? Because in the shamanic world everything is alive, intelligent, related, and willing to interact. From here we must proceed under the assumption that the native habitat where myth runs free in an undomesticated life is the shamanic worldview, or more precisely, the shamanic umvelt.
Here we tread the gap between diffusion and polygenesis. Diffusion stipulates that mythemes, and motifs spread from a single point of origin; Polygenesis argues for the independent emergence of mythemes and motifs. Upon this opposition the notion of umvelt will serve to delineate a ubiquitous region (habitat) that exists between humans. Umvelt is in a sense all the meaningful aspects of the world for an organism, it is a perceptual “reality” experienced based on sensory physiology. To be clear I do not mean to follow the semiologist revision of umvelt in which every signification is a “representation” of something else; I mean umvelt as “presentation” of world as is. There is a great deal more to say on the subject of plolygenesis and the human umvelt, but it must suffice here to say that our eyes, mouths, ears, tongues, noses, hands, and hearts render an umvelt unlike that of the starfish, the mushroom, or the bear—they will have different songs and stories. Blake said “the senses are the chief inlets of soul.” Hence, in my usage ‘umvelt’ is world and soul in one—it is the ecosystem of the mythopoeic imagination.

Is it possible, then, for a creature not native to such a habitat to be introduced? I say yes, and that this invasive introduction is what Joseph Campbell had in mind when he coined the term “exploitative myth.” Instead of allowing myth to disclose itself on its own terms, here we have the cooptation of existing myths, or the infusion of mythemes into a fabrication, with an agenda of coercion and oppression. It’s clear that when an invasive species is introduced in any ecosystem the balance of relationships between native species and their habitat is threatened. So what happens when an alien myth—for example, a story that says if you use a certain toothpaste you’ll become a better mating candidate—what if such a pseudo-myth arrives in the forest of your imagination, kicks the endangered and native myth out of its nest, and moves in to stay?
Surely one’s ability to “think” in a mythopoeic way will be severely compromised. Why, you may ask, would our natural or native mythic thought be stunted by the invasive myth? In an article found on Wikipedia it is stated that, “while all species compete to survive, invasive species appear to have specific traits or combinations of specific traits that allow them to outcompete native species.” I would hazard to say that an invasive myth is always designed with very “specific traits” to exploit, coerce, manipulate, and control—unnatural traits that tip the scales and bar balanced competition.

Given the long standing and entangled debate of classification and category—folktale, fairytale, legend, myth, fable, parable, tall-tale, anecdote, allegory—the task of identifying the native or indigenous myth, in any empirical sense, becomes nigh impossible. Nevertheless, as a storyteller seeking to restore the wisdom of myth to the culture, one must attempt to be as discerning as possible, and develop some criteria with which to identify appropriate material. This rant has gone on long enough for now, so let us end abruptly with three criteria for possible consideration in identifying stories which are native to the shamanic umvelt—the uncultivated wild soil of the soul—such a story should be:
1. ‘Indigenous’: born of a land or region; being native or belonging naturally to the soil, or territory.
2. ‘Autochthonous’: consisting of or formed from indigenous material.
3. ‘Heathen’: of the heath (open uncultivated ground); heath-dweller; strange, uncivilized.