Building Religions 10: Claude Lévi-Strauss

Building Religions 10: Claude Lévi-Strauss

This is less a post about how to write myths than about a way to read them, but it's a way that can be useful for those doing some research in their worldbuilding. It's not the only way, or necessarily even the best way, but when it works, it works well. It's the structuralist interpretation of myth, as formulated by Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Building Religions 9: More Myth

Building Religions 9: More Myth

When considering the relationship between myth and culture, there is one thought to keep in mind: myths lie. I don't mean this in the basic sense that they describe historically untrue events, although that's certainly accurate. What I mean is that even the idea that they teach some timeless spiritual or psychological truth is deceptive, because myths are no less the products of history than any other human creation.