Toes Curling Crumbly Edge
Toes Curling Crumbly Edge is a book of stories and poems offering ideas and insights as the basis for future mythologies.
How do we see the future?
What are the aspirations we hold within our hearts?
How can humanity change and evolve?
These are all reasonable questions but how can we begin to tackle them if we do not understand the operation of mythology within our lives? 2000 years ago, Iron Age gods were the basis of everyday reality for most people.
They were the reason for the universe and everything within it. People wanted to have a higher power that was responsible for a world they had difficulty understanding.
How much have we changed today?
If we look back at what people believed 2000 years ago, that Gods commanded the heavens and sent down their word through chosen prophets and priests, then we say it is a mythology. We use the word to mean something that is not true, a made-up story, an old way of looking at the world. But at the time people did not think that what they believed was a mythology, they thought it was real.
The question we have to ask ourselves is this; in 2000 years, in 4020, what will the people then think of what we believe to be real today? How much of our view of the world and all that is in it is mythology?
To answer these questions we need to be able to understand why a mythology is so central to our human existence. This is the starting point for a journey into the process of Creative Mythology.
Toes Curling Crumbly Edge is the starting point at which we consider the issues which make a working mythology essential to our well being and good mental health.
Where do you go when you love the awe of the universe but the religious teachings simply don’t do it for you? How can we approach our inner sense of being in a language other than theology?
‘Toes Curling Crumbly Edge’ is a work which looks at the two great mysteries of life, what we are and where we are, through the lens of mythology. This is not the mythology of the Greeks, Romans or Vikings but the mythologies we find in the things we believe today.
This work is a primary reader for all of those interested in mythologies and how they function within the human psyche.
Mythology is the most fascinating and essential subject in the field of human inquiry. This is the story not just of who we are but of what we believe we are. And yet, there is not a single Comparative Mythology undergraduate degree course in any university. Why exactly is that when the subject of mythology is and always has been so popular?
Sociologists and psychologists will point to their term ‘belief systems’ and claim that covers the operation of myth within the individual and society. But does it really? The teachings of Comparative Mythology as a discipline lead us to many perspectives on our contemporary lives. They are based on understanding rationality but appreciating the great wonder of mystery and how we have used metaphorical language to describe the indescribable.
In ‘Toes Curling Crumbly Edge’ we look beyond the arcane texts of theology and view an understanding of creative mythology through poetry and stories. A modern-day interpretation of bardic storytelling around the fires of history and science.
