What's your favourite myth, whether classical or recent?

Hi Dozy,
Well I have loved ALL the myths since first learning to read...if forced to choose a favourite prolly The Phoenix, burned in the fires of love and resurrecting from the ashes.

Carl Jung believed (I agree) myths reflect the contents of our subconscious, even down to the great beauty supposedly the essence of each human being. So they persist and grow because of our fascination with who we are, rendered into story fashion.

So, Grimm's fairy tales fall into the same mythological category, old stories from the Black Forest, rendering who we are in such fascinating imagery. Again, I read all of these over and over as soon as I even learned to read, the bookmobile would come, we are all the Frog Prince just waiting to be transformed by the power of love.

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It's also how I got interested FINALLY in the religious mythology, not as history but as an even deeper truth...
I think Sleeping Beauty awakened by the kiss of her Beloved is much nicer than its parallel mythology of a bloody crucifixion followed by resurrection from the dead, for example, don't you agree?

Aristophanes' speech from Plato's Symposium about the origins of the sexes, how the became divided from the androgene, and how they spend their lives looking for their counterpart.

Here's the beggining of it:

"The original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, of which the name survives but nothing else.."

And here near the end:

"And such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment" 

There's a myth around here about humming birds it's when humming migrate they hitch a ride on the back of migrating geese to conserve energy. Not sure how the myth got started but thanks to me it continued and spread - I used to believe it and I talked about it  on a few of the Forums I was on and because I had a rep of being a straight shooter people thought it was an amassing fact. Cheers!

What's your favourite myth, whether classical or recent?

How do myths start? Why do they continue and even grow?

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1- If, for the purposes of this question we could dismiss the definition of myth as “a widely held but false belief or idea” for fear of offending anyone and use the alternative definition of myth as “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events” then top of the list of myths has to be the one which says that people had at one time living among them a person who was fully man and fully God both at the same time. Fully of course means 100%. This is the world’s biggest myth in terms of the sheer numbers believing in it and the longest lasting one.

2- How do myths start? This one has its origins in the Jews expecting the appearance of a man who would unite them and free them from the tyranny of man-made [Roman] laws. Jesus of Nazareth who lived two thousand years ago was believed by many Jews to be this awaited man. After his departure from earth many conflicting stories started circulating about the nature of the man. To remove squabbling among their subjects the Romans convened what is now known as the council of Nicaea in the year 325 CE. It was here that the so called Nicene Creed was thrashed out requiring Christians to believe in Jesus as “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father...”

3- Why do they continue and even grow? That Jesus was who the Roman Catholic Church said who he was became official church doctrine of the official and only religion allowed. Anyone who deviated from the doctrine was a heretic and had to recant or face punishment which could be death. There was also the scriptural appeal of God’s sacrifice and promise of everlasting life in scripture itself which at John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”