The School of Mythographology
Understanding human history relies on a detailed knowledge and comprehension of how mythogenesis informs our models of reality. In order to investigate mythologies, past and present, there is a need for a disciplined approach and structured method. The school provides this.
Mythologies and History
Understanding human histories without understanding the process mythologies play in our structuring of reality creates problems of authenticity and veracity. The school works towards an enhanced comprehension of human history by contributing deeper considerations about human mythologies, past and present.
The School of Mythographology
Mythographology is the study, analysis and compilation of global myth structures for the purpose of understanding human history and current affairs. As a department of education, the discipline is related to history in terms of subject and philosophy in terms of context.
The School of Mythographology practices a method of investigation based on
the writings of Joseph Campbell regarding the structural qualities of mythologies.
Jack Adams has developed and applied this method since 1995.
The school was established at the start of 2021 as a development of the Mythologies’ mediacast system.
The purpose of establishing the school was to facilitate and formalise the teachings and practices of Mythographology
with the objective of advancing and growing the approach to the learning of human history.
As an institution of learning and study, the school is digitally based and without physical buildings.
Mythographology:
Purpose and Practice.
The purpose of the study of mythographology is to place within the context of mythology all human activities and histories. This application of mythogenesis as the essential construction of human activity is proposed as critical to the full understanding of human life and history. The proposition is that without a comprehensive understanding of the operation of myth within the mind of the individual and the structures of society, the cultural history of humanity is incomplete.
The practice of mythographology is founded on the method of analysis based on Campbell’s four prospects of myth. These prospects are translated into ‘elements’ which provide the structure for investigation, classification and description of different myth structures. The architecture of this method allows for elements of mythology as well as whole systems to be identified.
The four elements of myth are, the universal, the psychological, the sociological and the metaphysical. These are the primary categories within which the human experience unfolds. The practice also recognises the importance of the two essential questions Campbell suggested as at the heart of mythogenesis:
What are we?
and
Where are we?
Mythology or Belief Systems?
The use of the word mythology encounters many objections and prejudices.
The academic world has a preference for sublimating the word mythology within the concept of ‘belief systems’.
In the wider world, people generally understand mythology as something which is historic and
have a problem conceiving it is an operation within their own life experience.
In these dissenting conceptualisations of ‘mythology’ there is a connection.
If you cannot recognise that you operate mythologies as an individual and as a group then
how exactly is it possible to examine the process of myth within your individual or group identities?
The stories we tell ourselves are both the most powerful motivations and destructive incarcerations of the human spirit.
Our ability to mythologise, to create and hold onto the stories of our existence, is not just a feature of the human experience but,
so the school would argue,
the defining species characteristic in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.
The term ‘mythology’ can be reclaimed and placed at the apex of an intellectual investigation and not made subject of other studies.
Part of the intellectual process and tradition in our 21st century cultures is to subordinate mythology to a secondary role
and describe it as part of the category ‘belief systems’.
In this school, the effort is to replace the horse before the cart in order to progress the journey of humanity.
