What’s on Course

Myths are the stories that cultures live through, but they also have their own independent lives. Across the globe and throughout time a series of remarkably similar stories, symbols and motifs have reoccurred time and again. Like different tunes echoing from one primordial song, they appear to emerge spontaneously and resonate profoundly, both in our deepest being and through the art and religions of our great civilisations. Today we consider the power of myth in the ancient world, its commonalities, mysteries and possible origins.

Forty thousand years ago a woman was lovingly buried at Lake Mungo, NSW. Ever since, through rolling Ice Age and the changing of the land, she has remained, dreaming in the sands. The Dreaming stories of Indigenous Australia are some of the most ancient and profound prehistoric myths to have survived. Today we look at the timeless mythologies of Australia, stories of the sky, the stars and the spirits, of people who hunted and gathered, walked and sang, across an incredible continent.

Eternal, silent, majestic – our species has been raising stones for well over ten thousand years. Like muted ancestors, these megaliths have remained to watch over shifting landscapes, exerting their pull, the focal points of story. This week we explore the prehistoric meanings of megaliths, from the ancient Near East, through Stonehenge, and their survival and reinterpretation in the civic architecture of modern Rome, Washington and even Sydney. These ancestors are still with us, the myths still live.

Agriculture changed everything. Rhythmic and potent, the feminine secrets of fertility took hold over the farmer’s mind. The growth cycles of plants, the waxing of the moon, the renewal brought through rain, all became symbols of an earthy maternalism. This week we chart the myths associated with the Mother Goddess and her eternal struggle against the masculine Bull God. From the Stone Age to Picasso, by way of Europa and Ariadne, these religious symbols hold a power that resonates.

The Bronze Age civilisation of ancient Egypt is best known for its cult of the dead, but was in reality focused on a veneration of life. For three thousand years, as the Nile rose and fell and the papyrus bloomed, the Egyptians watched the circuit of the sun and nervously prayed for its return at each new dawn. Today we tell the tale of Osiris, the God-King, his father Ra and wife Isis. A story of a love so strong, that in the face of death, it brought eternal life.

Five thousand years ago the mythic hero Gilgamesh, traumatised by the death of his friend Enkidu, set out in search of the gods to gain the secret of immortality. He failed at the end, but during his quest he became a wiser man and gained through death the immortality that he so craved in life. Today we travel back to the enigmatic civilisation of ancient Mesopotamia. We visit the ziggurats and retell the myths that supported one of the earliest cultures, and find stories of great Floods, primordial Gardens, and Towers of Babel that have a strangely familiar echo.

Unknown to the rest of the world, a great civilisation arose independently in the plains and jungles of ancient Mesoamerica, flourishing for over three millennia. The Olmec, Maya and Aztec worshiped the earth through blood sacrifice, while taking care to watch the heavens. The myth of sacred blood – Santa Sangria – is not unique to the ancient Americas, but it was here, among towering pyramids and constellations of gods, that it took its most powerful and at times terrifying form, so strong that it survived even the Spanish conquest.

Love has the power to redeem; this was certainly true for the ancient Greeks who perhaps needed it more than most. In the main, Greek religion was violent, masculine, cynical and pessimistic, but throughout the Classical World a series of myths flourished celebrating the redemptive power of love. Today we mourn Adonis, lust after Dionysus, and through love, find catharsis.

The Romans lived in a new age of global, and globalised, Empire. Like us, many turned their gaze towards the East in search of Oriental wisdom and exotic mystery. Today we look at the ‘New Age’ of Imperial Rome, a time when the myths of Persian sun gods, Egyptian mother goddesses and even a strange Jewish Messiah were combined to create the first religious supermarket.