The Nomadic Alternative – Page 35

Eric Eguerer 2 Feb

a number of histories of religion with titles like Urmonotheismus.

It also inspired naive missionaries with the hope that their savage flock might embrace Christianity of their own volition and the minimum prompting, and other enthusiasts that the Australian Aborigines were the Lost Tribes of Israel. But the Demiurge of the Savage was totally devoid of moral sense and failed to arouse guilt complexes in his children. They never crouched with craven fear and apologized for their wickedness. If He smiled at them, they smiled back. If He spat destruction, they spat back. The contract extended even unto God.

The Creation and allied myths simply relieved men of their obvious anxieties of orientation and explained the separation of Earth from Sky and the Waters of Chaos, the passage of the seasons, which so obviously affected their lives, and the movements of the Sun, Moon and Stars, which they sensed to have some organic effect on their bodies. The world picture of early man assumed the earth to be a flat disc; at its centre stood a pillar, pole, ladder or sacred tree, the Axis Mundi, round which the Vault of Heaven revolved. Here from the Nemadi hunters of Mauretania is one version:

"The Earth is a flat cake with a lid or cover like a calabash over it. The calabash is the sky and its junction with the cake - the Horizon."

Other myths relate the status of man to other living things, the comings and goings of totemic ancestors, who are seen as the instigators of a people's activities, and the archetypal Oedipus Story, which relates the horrible consequences of incest and murder.

There are also two ideas of death, natural and unnatural, anticipated and sudden. A good death comes at the right time; a bad death is caused by some malicious agent and calls for revenge.

What is the process behind the emergence of a new myth? The answer, I think, lies in man's gradual drift away from his original contract. As he failed to synchronize the events of his life to the given sequence, he became progressively disoriented in time and space. And with this derangement new myths surfaced in his