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Introduction to Mythology
In An Introduction to Mythology , originally published in the 1921, Spence presented a comprehensive overview of traditional forms of narrative that, for our primitive ancestors, served as religion and science. Besides recounting tales from around the world, Spence explained the many differences in primitive and modern worldviews. According to Spence, themes such as animism, while now almost absent from out thinking, are still enlightening to us in modern "just as fossil animals and plants have their living representatives to-day, so do ideas and conceptions representing this petrified form of religion and science still flourish in our present-day superstitions and our present-day faiths." Spence's An Introduction to Mythology provides a sweeping view of worldwide mythological themes from a scholar of the overlooked and intriguing.Scottish writer Lewis Spence (1874-1955) was a respected authority on worldwide myths, legends, folklore, and occult subjects, and wrote more than forty books, including Encyclopedia of Occultism, The Popol Vuh, The History of Atlantis, The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico, Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends, Fairy Tradition in Britain and The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain .
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1921
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About the author
Lewis Spence
374 books49 followersJames Lewis Thomas Chalmers Spence was a Scottish journalist, poet, author, folklorist and student of the occult.
After graduating from Edinburgh University he pursued a career in journalism. He was an editor at The Scotsman 1899-1906, editor of The Edinburgh Magazine for a year, 1904–05, then an editor at The British Weekly, 1906-09. In this time his interest was sparked in the myth and folklore of Mexico and Central America, resulting in his popularisation of the Mayan Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Mayas (1908). He compiled A Dictionary of Mythology (1910 and numerous additional volumes).
Spence was an ardent Scottish nationalist, He was the founder of the Scottish National Movement which later merged to form the National Party of Scotland and which in turn merged to form the Scottish National Party. He unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary seat for Midlothian and Peebles Northern at a by-election in 1929.
He also wrote poetry in English and Scots. His Collected Poems were published in 1953. He investigated Scottish folklore and wrote about Brythonic rites and traditions in Mysteries of Celtic Britain (1905). In this book, Spence theorized that the original Britons were descendants of a people that migrated from Northwest Africa and were probably related to the Berbers and the Basques.
Spence's researches into the mythology and culture of the New World, together with his examination of the cultures of western Europe and north-west Africa, led him almost inevitably to the question of Atlantis. During the 1920s he published a series of books which sought to rescue the topic from the occultists who had more or less brought it into disrepute. These works, amongst which were The Problem of Atlantis (1924) and History of Atlantis (1927), continued the line of research inaugurated by Ignatius Donnelly and looked at the lost island as a Bronze Age civilization, that formed a cultural link with the New World, which he invoked through examples he found of striking parallels between the early civilizations of the Old and New Worlds.
Spence's erudition and the width of his reading, his industry and imagination were all impressive; yet the conclusions he reached, avoiding peer-reviewed journals, have been almost universally rejected by mainstream scholarship. His popularisations met stiff criticism in professional journals, but his continued appeal among theory hobbyists is summed up by a reviewer of The Problem of Atlantis (1924) in The Geographical Journal: "Mr. Spence is an industrious writer, and, even if he fails to convince, has done service in marshalling the evidence and has produced an entertaining volume which is well worth reading." Nevertheless, he seems to have had some influence upon the ideas of controversial author Immanuel Velikovsky, and as his books have come into the public domain, they have been successfully reprinted and some have been scanned for the Internet.
Spence's 1940 book Occult Causes of the Present War seems to have been the first book in the field of Nazi occultism.
Over his long career, he published more than forty books, many of which remain in print to this day.
After graduating from Edinburgh University he pursued a career in journalism. He was an editor at The Scotsman 1899-1906, editor of The Edinburgh Magazine for a year, 1904–05, then an editor at The British Weekly, 1906-09. In this time his interest was sparked in the myth and folklore of Mexico and Central America, resulting in his popularisation of the Mayan Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Mayas (1908). He compiled A Dictionary of Mythology (1910 and numerous additional volumes).
Spence was an ardent Scottish nationalist, He was the founder of the Scottish National Movement which later merged to form the National Party of Scotland and which in turn merged to form the Scottish National Party. He unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary seat for Midlothian and Peebles Northern at a by-election in 1929.
He also wrote poetry in English and Scots. His Collected Poems were published in 1953. He investigated Scottish folklore and wrote about Brythonic rites and traditions in Mysteries of Celtic Britain (1905). In this book, Spence theorized that the original Britons were descendants of a people that migrated from Northwest Africa and were probably related to the Berbers and the Basques.
Spence's researches into the mythology and culture of the New World, together with his examination of the cultures of western Europe and north-west Africa, led him almost inevitably to the question of Atlantis. During the 1920s he published a series of books which sought to rescue the topic from the occultists who had more or less brought it into disrepute. These works, amongst which were The Problem of Atlantis (1924) and History of Atlantis (1927), continued the line of research inaugurated by Ignatius Donnelly and looked at the lost island as a Bronze Age civilization, that formed a cultural link with the New World, which he invoked through examples he found of striking parallels between the early civilizations of the Old and New Worlds.
Spence's erudition and the width of his reading, his industry and imagination were all impressive; yet the conclusions he reached, avoiding peer-reviewed journals, have been almost universally rejected by mainstream scholarship. His popularisations met stiff criticism in professional journals, but his continued appeal among theory hobbyists is summed up by a reviewer of The Problem of Atlantis (1924) in The Geographical Journal: "Mr. Spence is an industrious writer, and, even if he fails to convince, has done service in marshalling the evidence and has produced an entertaining volume which is well worth reading." Nevertheless, he seems to have had some influence upon the ideas of controversial author Immanuel Velikovsky, and as his books have come into the public domain, they have been successfully reprinted and some have been scanned for the Internet.
Spence's 1940 book Occult Causes of the Present War seems to have been the first book in the field of Nazi occultism.
Over his long career, he published more than forty books, many of which remain in print to this day.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 14, 2022
I found this book in the local library, and after reading the first few pages I nearly took it back unread, because it simply reeked of the spirit of arrogant modernity. It was first published a century ago, in 1921, at the height of modernity, and the attitude of the author is shown in passages like this:
And in this the author displays the temporal chauvinism that is characteristic of modernity at its arrogant worst. The author's own time and culture are civilised, intelligent and wise; others are barbarous, savage, irrational and stupid. And so the author displays his own sense of supreiority by the frequent use of terms like "barbarian", "savage" and "lower races" for the people he is discussing. The arrogance is shown by the frequent use of words like "obviously" and "undoubtedly" when discussing a debatable or speculative point for which he has given no evidence. And so the author excludes from discussion the modern myth of progress, in which he so obviously and undoubtedly believes.
I was both a contributor to and editor of a book, African Initiatives in Healing Ministry, in which one chapter, by Lilian Dube, described the ministry of a Christian prophet from an African Independent Church, Agnes Majecha, one of whose ministries was the neutralising of a kind of fetish called a chikwambo. These were popular in parts of Zimbabwe, where a n'anga (traditional healer) would trap the spirit of a dead person in a chikwambo and sell it to people who wanted to prosper in love or business. The problem was that as time passed, the chikwambo wanted sacrifices, usually blood sacrifices, initially of small animals, but later of larger and more valuable animals, and eventually of human beings. At this point, if not before, the owner would approach someone like Agnes Majecha to neutralise it. I found Spence's description of that general class of objects, fetishes, quite useful.
It will now be clear that in the present volume our concern is with the science of myth alone -- tht is with religious beliefs and conjectures as to the nature of things of primitive, ancient or barbarous peoples and not with modern religious science, philosophy or theology.
And in this the author displays the temporal chauvinism that is characteristic of modernity at its arrogant worst. The author's own time and culture are civilised, intelligent and wise; others are barbarous, savage, irrational and stupid. And so the author displays his own sense of supreiority by the frequent use of terms like "barbarian", "savage" and "lower races" for the people he is discussing. The arrogance is shown by the frequent use of words like "obviously" and "undoubtedly" when discussing a debatable or speculative point for which he has given no evidence. And so the author excludes from discussion the modern myth of progress, in which he so obviously and undoubtedly believes.
I once made a similar criticism of another book, Bantu Prophets in South Africa by Bengt Sundkler. That book was about African Independent Churches, and my article was Sundkler deconstructed: Bethesda AICs and syncretism. In that case, however, Sundkler gave a lot of very useful factual information. It was his opinions, interspersed between the facts he gave, that needed to be deconstructed. So I decided to read Spence's Introduction to Mythology in the hope that the usefulness of the facts would outweigh the arrogance of the opinions. And so, to some extent, it was.
.One of the more useful pieces of information I found in Spence's book (p 24f) was on fetishes and fetishism:
... a fetish is an object which the savage all over the world, in Africa, Asia, America, Australia, and, anciently, in Europe, believes to be inhabited by a spirit or supernatural being. Trees, water, stones are in the "animism" phase considered as the homes of such spirits, which, the savage thinks, are often forced to quit their dwelling places because they are under the spell or potent enchantment of a more powerful being. The fetish may be a bone, a stone, a bundle of feathers, a fossil, a necklace of shells, or any object of peculiar shape or appearance. Into this object the medicine man may lure the wandering or banished spirit, which henceforth becomes his servant; or, again, the spirit of its own will may take up residence there. It is not clear whether, once in residence or imprisonment, the spirit can quit the fetish, but specific instances would point to the belief that it could do so if permitted by its "master."
We must discriminate sharply between a fetish-spirit and a god, although the fetish may develop into a godling or a god. The basic difference between the fetish and the god is that whereas the god is the patron and is invoked by prayer, the fetish is a spirit subservient to the individual owner or tribe and if it would gain the state of godhead it must do so by long or marvellous service as a luck-bringer. Offerings may be made to a fetish, it may even be invoked by a prayer or spell,; but on the other hand it may be severely castigated if it fail to respond to the master's desires.
I was both a contributor to and editor of a book, African Initiatives in Healing Ministry, in which one chapter, by Lilian Dube, described the ministry of a Christian prophet from an African Independent Church, Agnes Majecha, one of whose ministries was the neutralising of a kind of fetish called a chikwambo. These were popular in parts of Zimbabwe, where a n'anga (traditional healer) would trap the spirit of a dead person in a chikwambo and sell it to people who wanted to prosper in love or business. The problem was that as time passed, the chikwambo wanted sacrifices, usually blood sacrifices, initially of small animals, but later of larger and more valuable animals, and eventually of human beings. At this point, if not before, the owner would approach someone like Agnes Majecha to neutralise it. I found Spence's description of that general class of objects, fetishes, quite useful.
Spence also gives useful descriptions and summaries of various myths and mythologies from various cultures around the world, and also of the ways in which mythologists in preceding generations, up to his time, had evaluated them. But I found his own evaluations more repellant than many of the others.
In the end, I fall back on the Orthodox philosopher, Nicolas Berdyaev, and prefer what he said about myth in his book Freedom and the Spirit:
Myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept. It is high time that we stopped identifying myth with invention, with the illusions of primitive mentality, and with anything, in fact, which is essentially opposed to reality... The creation of myths among peoples denotes a real spiritual life, more real indeed than that of abstract concepts and rational thought. Myth is always concrete and expresses life better than abstract thought can do; its nature is bound up with that of symbol. Myth is the concrete recital of events and original
phenomena of the spiritual life symbolized in the natural world, which has engraved itself on the language memory and creative energy of the people... it brings two worlds together symbolically.
July 29, 2010
El libro tiene como objetivo introducirnos en la mitología como ciencia, sobretodo a quienes recien se sumergen en este maravilloso mundo. La obra se inicia entregando ciertas definiciones necesarias para la comprensión del volumen como lo son mito, mitología, folclore, entre otros. A su vez, realiza comparaciones entre religión, mito y folclore. Continua con la descripción de las etapas por las cuales han evolucionado las "creencias" humanas, desde el prístino animismo hasta la desarrollada religión monoteísta.
October 24, 2020
Interesting book about the sources of myths and how they evolved. A slight bit repetitive in that the book is broken into chapters dealing with types of deities, rituals, the afterlife and creation. Spence repeats the stories and attributes of the mythological figures quite often.
It's revealing that many of the myths indicate that early peoples resorted to human sacrifice to placate their Gods. Even at this remove the inhuman barbarity and cruelty of the Aztecs is arresting. They sacrificed children to rain gods and considered it a 'good omen' if the children wept. The Aztec treatment of prisoners puts their conquest by Spanish into perspective.
Some of the stories, for example, the Kiche Indian myths of Guatemala must have been composed under the influence of hallucinatory drugs.
Despite the repetition I enjoyed it.
It's revealing that many of the myths indicate that early peoples resorted to human sacrifice to placate their Gods. Even at this remove the inhuman barbarity and cruelty of the Aztecs is arresting. They sacrificed children to rain gods and considered it a 'good omen' if the children wept. The Aztec treatment of prisoners puts their conquest by Spanish into perspective.
Some of the stories, for example, the Kiche Indian myths of Guatemala must have been composed under the influence of hallucinatory drugs.
Despite the repetition I enjoyed it.
October 23, 2017
An incredibly approachable introduction to the study of comparative mythology. Spence was a product of his time, and thus uses terms such as 'primitive' and 'savage' to refer to the peoples of Africa, America, and Southeast Asia. However, his redemption comes in the form of incredible sensitivity for the merits of mythology and folklore, regardless of ethnic or national origin. In fact, much of the book is devoted to the relatively unknown mythologies of the American Indian tribes, between which he is careful to distinguish.
July 16, 2020
So el título realmente informa lo que el libro trae, es un abrebocas, explica lo que, en general, es un sistema mitológico, los sistemas mitológicos más comunes, las diferencias entre leyendas, mitología y folklore y las diferentes fases por las que se cree que pasa cada sistema de creencias, si el creer viene antes o después de sobrevivir, o si sobrevivir es parte de creer, si por creer es que logramos sobrevivir, cosas que, basadas en los descubrimientos arqueológicos del momento en que fue escrito (los 50’s), difieren mucho de las conjeturas actuales sobre el tema, pero no deja de interesar, los puntos de unión que lograba entre cada estudioso del que hablaba con sus diferentes corrientes de pensamiento.
Si es verdad, como he visto que muchos han notado, que se refiere a étnicas como “razas”, “salvajes” y “menos avanzadas” pero es porque es el lenguaje de su época, es un producto más de su era lo cual lo fija a una parte de la historia en concreto, y no le permite envejecer con más aceptación, o, mejor dicho, no le permite evolucionar, pero tiene la facultad de reunir muchas corrientes en una forma fluida, muchas ideas diferentes contrastadas, y los arquetipos mitológicos universales que son, desde mi punto de vista, lo que realmente quiere mostrar el autor, es el pasado común, el proceso evolutivo por el que al parecer pasó y está pasando toda la raza humana, que nos condiciona a la evolución de creencias para condicionar nuestra visión del mundo, por eso resulta tan importante conocer las bases de estas creencias, las que se pueden vislumbrar gracias al entendimiento de la mitología, el “fósil psicológico” preservado en la psique.
Dicho esto, no tengo mucho más que agregar, pues el libro es fácilmente digerible, entendible, e informativo, y te incita a seguir indagando, por lo que creo que cumple con su objetivo.
Si es verdad, como he visto que muchos han notado, que se refiere a étnicas como “razas”, “salvajes” y “menos avanzadas” pero es porque es el lenguaje de su época, es un producto más de su era lo cual lo fija a una parte de la historia en concreto, y no le permite envejecer con más aceptación, o, mejor dicho, no le permite evolucionar, pero tiene la facultad de reunir muchas corrientes en una forma fluida, muchas ideas diferentes contrastadas, y los arquetipos mitológicos universales que son, desde mi punto de vista, lo que realmente quiere mostrar el autor, es el pasado común, el proceso evolutivo por el que al parecer pasó y está pasando toda la raza humana, que nos condiciona a la evolución de creencias para condicionar nuestra visión del mundo, por eso resulta tan importante conocer las bases de estas creencias, las que se pueden vislumbrar gracias al entendimiento de la mitología, el “fósil psicológico” preservado en la psique.
Dicho esto, no tengo mucho más que agregar, pues el libro es fácilmente digerible, entendible, e informativo, y te incita a seguir indagando, por lo que creo que cumple con su objetivo.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews