Mythology, Spirituality and Star Wars
May 17, 2005 – 5:25 pm | by Duncan
An article I’m publishing this month reviewing David Tacey’s appearance at a recent conference, and anticipating the release of Star Wars III tomorrow. I’d be interested in your comments. Ask me if you’d like references for the George Lucas interview or David Tacey material.
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Ask me about myths and I’d probably be thinking of Greek or Roman mythology. Perhaps some of the myths of the Maori and Aboriginal cultures. Perhaps some of the creation stories from ethnic groups around the world. On another level I might be thinking about some of the myths surrounding AIDS. And then there’d Myth busters - a Discovery Channel television program dedicated to testing urban legends.
So when David Tacey, writer on Australian spirituality, says that we need to move towards a non-mythological faith, I’m wondering what he’s talking about.
David Tacey explains.
“The central myths and stories of the Christian religion, the Virgin Birth, the physical resurrection, the second coming, the idea of God as loving father, will have to be treated not as external objects and literal events, but as internal events in our own souls. The emphasis has to shift from, Did they happen, to the new question, What do they mean?
Tacey warns Christians that they face two dangers at opposite ends of a spectrum. From the conservative end, we face the danger of reactionary fundamentalism, which is obsessed with literal truth. From the liberal end of the spectrum we face the danger of incomplete enlightenment in which empty or cynical reason slips into virtual atheism.
Tacey is an advocate for what he calls symbolic or mystical faith that focuses on an internal experience, equipping each of us to embark on our spiritual journey. Faith for Tacey means connection with God, no matter how unknowable God appears to our minds. He says we need a new understanding of transcendence, one that is not couched in mythological language, or dependent on archaic supernatural ideas.
As I sit with this approach, I’m excited, and disturbed.
I’m excited about a spirituality that deepens our engagement with God and our environment. It is time to explore alternatives to a propositional approach to faith that ties up heaven-bound salvation with assent to a set of doctrines and events. Yes we need experiences of faith marked by humility, quiet hope, calm and compassion. We do need fresh language that expresses something of our grounded, earthy God-connected spirituality.
At the same time, I am disturbed by a call to strip our faith clean from mythology. I am not keen to pass on a sterile scientific form of spirituality that leaves us in poverty, hungering for the provisions of tradition, imagery, poetry and shared practice.
In my research on generational change I’ve noticed that many movements started by Baby Boomers have focused on pragmatism. Does it work? There’s been a reaction against symbolic ritual. But movements initiated by Xers and Millennials have thrived on the power of story and image. Is it wonderful.
George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars series, is probably the one most responsible for the rediscovery of imagination in the post-Boomer generations. In an interview in 1999, published in TIME, George said:
“I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people - more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery. Not having enough interest in the mysteries of life to ask the question, Is there a God or is there not a God? - that is for me the worst thing that can happen. I think you should have an opinion about that. Or you should be saying, “I’m looking. I’m very curious about this, and I am going to continue to look until I can find an answer, and if I can’t find an answer, then I’ll die trying.” I think it’s important to have a belief system and to have faith.”
George Lucas carefully crafted the stories of Anakin/Darth Vader, Luke and Leia, to provide us with a common language to explore corruption and redemption. The third episode of Star Wars, in the cinemas at the moment, helps us face the staggering impact of evil choices. The fourth to sixth episodes call us to the journey of overcoming evil with the choice to love, trusting in the mystical power that is beyond us.
The popularity of science fiction and fantasy has led people to become less focused on the ”Could that happen” question, and more interested in ”What might it mean for me and for my word”.
The other change I’ve seen in emerging generations is the move away from individualist introspection toward a shared spirituality. Fewer people are even thinking about heaven or hell, let alone whether they are going there when they die. Younger people are now wondering about how they relate to their family, their tribe or peer group, to their environment. In that context spiritual journey starts to take on meaning.
We do need alternatives to rigid ‘must believe this’ conservatism and cynical ‘cannot believe this’ progressivism. But as we work out those alternatives, let’s remember the power of myth to spark the imagination, to give us stories to share and insights into the way we live together.
Tags: David Tacey, Spirituality, Star Wars
5 Responses to “Mythology, Spirituality and Star Wars”
By philjohnson on May 17, 2005 | Reply
Duncan
David Tacey approaches these matters with a particular refracted interpretation of Jungian thought. His book “Jung and New Age” (Brunner-Routledge, 2001)entails arguing for a view of Jung that attempts to keep Jung out of the New Age. He feels that Jung has been misapropriated by new age writers.
In turn Tacey tends to undervalue pop cultural expression of religiosity and myth, and quite a few sociologists of religion and phenomenologists here in Australia are not enamoured with Tacey’s writings.
Jung was a complex figure and certainly had all kinds of esoteric interests - Swedenborg, Aryan racial myths, Wagnerian ideas, Theosophical and Spiritualist interests, alchemical interests, the Taoist I Ching, and so on. A fairly harsh interpretation of Jung is Richard Noll’s The Jung Cult (Harper/Fontana; also Princeton Uni Press 1994). While Noll is fairly strident, he nonetheless does offer some fascinating material that should be sifted while simultaneously sifting Tacey.
I mention Jung because of his theories on archetypes of the collective unconscious,and his disciple Joseph Campbell who popularised Jungian mythic thinking in “The Power of Myth”. Actually there are parallels between Jung and Mircea Eliade (the Romanian born phenomenologist) in their lives and interests (and fascist tags), and views on myths and the sacred.
You can suss this out in Robert Ellwood, “The Politics of Myth: A Study of C G Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell” (State Uni of NY Press 1999). Ellwood is somewhere in the middle between Noll and Tacey.
I have found that in studying new religious movements that the mythic is all important, and indeed hybrid myths are being drafted up in new religions. This is clear in internet-based nrms like Jediism and Matrixism. But it is also apparent in myths of survival and renewal in various UFO religions; in various cargo cults; in Scientology etc. And the mythic is valuable in neo-pagan circles too.
I have written about these kinds of things (like about matrixism on my blog). But also in formal channels like the Lutheran Theological Journal 32/2 July 1998: 62-72 “Apologetics and Myth: Signs of Salvation in Postmodernity”. And it undergirds the approach taken on the tarot in “Beyond Prediction”; and there’s also a chapter in “Jesus and the gods of the new age”.
The beauty of myth intersecting with the drama of history was something that Tolkien and Lewis pointed to, especially Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” (Essays Presented to Charles Williams; reprinted in Tree and Leaf)and Lewis’ “Myth Became Fact” (God in the Dock).
Films like the Matrix show how classic Christian, gnostic Christian and Buddhist ideas can be appropriated for a snazzy apocalytpic story; Star Wars does something similar. And shows like Star Trek and Dr Who also have mined the rich veins of myth.
Part of the trouble in the demyth approach is it reflects the relics of Frazer’s late 19th century-early 20th century caustic “Golden Bough” thesis (now discredited in anthropology), and the extreme ends of higher criticism (Spong, Bultmann, Jesus Seminar).
If anything the radical demyth work of Bultmann and co has simply driven people to look for more stories and myths to live by. A neat point that George Miller (maker of Babe and Mad Max) made known about 10 years ago. Miller said, the cinema has replaced church as the gathering ground to listen to stories to live by, and movie-makers are doing what priests once did, “tell stories of deep meaning”.
By Matt Stone on May 18, 2005 | Reply
Duncan
I share some of Philip’s interest in this subject and the first thought that occured to me upon reading your post was “Matrix” but I see he’s already beaten me to the punch. I don’t see new spirituality seekers abandoning myth.
Im intruged by Tacey’s dichotomy between symbolic faith and mythological language. Sounds fairly similar to me so I was wondering if you could elaborate.
By Fernando on May 19, 2005 | Reply
I’m not going to comment on myth, because I don’t seem to use the word in the way tracey does (maybe something for me to blog at a later point?).
however, i think people need stories, in fact they need compelling stories. call it a religious impulse if we must, but meaning making is a part of human existence and stories help us in that act.
however, the very postmodern thing about all this is that we realise, even if it is only at an implicit level, that when we control a story, we are playing the same game that allows stories to be used to control us. this is a fear of the way stories can act as external agents on us.
By Matt Stone on May 22, 2005 | Reply
Duncan
Well I saw “Revenge of the Sith” last night. There was an interesting comment by Ben Kenobi along the lines of talking in absolutes being a sign that a person has gone over to the dark side. It makes me wonder whether, at some level, star wars mythology is an exploration of generous faith vs agressive fundamentalism? A myth that speaks of contemporary spiritual conflict?