Talk:Artificial mythology

Excellent stub. This is a sub-section of Manufactured culture, another topic on which I dare not start. "Don't get me started... don't even get me started." But I had my wrist slapped over my entry on Renaissance fayre which I thought was sufficiently deadpan and included wonderful quotes. Too many quotes. Wetman 03:20, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I deleted the example:

Robert Baden-Powell's development of the Boy Scout organization included the conscious use of elements of artificial mythology.

Feel free to reintroduce if examples can be given to support this claim. Tempshill 21:45, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I won't re-introduce it just yet as I haven't found any sufficiently clear examples, but just to show I'm not totally nuts:

Boys are full or romance, and they love 'make believe' to a greater extent than they like to show. All you have to do is to play up to this and to give rein to your imagination to meet their requirements. (Baden-Powell 1908: 356) [1]

Another element of the Seton scheme imported into Scouting was the use of a totem such as an animal or a bird to identify each Scout patrol... (ibid)

In the process of preparing Scouting for Boys, Robert Baden-Powell read some quite diverse books and materials concerning the education of young men.... He had also explored different techniques for educating boys within different African tribes, studied the Bushido of the Japanese, and the educational methods of John Pounds and the ragged schools (op. cit.). (ibid)

Rudyard Kipling was a friend of Baden-Powell. B-P borrowed much from Kipling's ideas in Scouting. He wrote the story of Kim which whas published in 1901. Part I of the 1908 booklet, "Scouting For Boys" included a condensed version of Kipling's Kim. [2]

According to historian Michael Rosenthal, Baden-Powell’s sources include Epictetus, Livy, and books on the education of young Spartans, the ancient British and Irish, Zulu warriors, and the Bushido samurai of Japan. Robert Baden-Powell and Edgar J. Helms: Their Lives and Legacies, Capital Research Center, Nov 2003.

[Baden-Powell's book] Aids to Scouting offers a generally similar knightly code as it was "republished in the time of Henry VII," and in Yarns for Boy Scouts Baden-Powell explicitly identifies King Arthur as "the founder of British Scouts, since he first started the Knights of England." [3]

Dpbsmith 01:37, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Moved from the Village Pump:

The page artificial mythology is problematic. The article has useful information about the concept, useful information that belongs in an encyclopedia. On the other hand, I don't think "artificial mythology" is a standard term. A search on Google turns up few hits that are not derived from Wikipedia and its mirrors. So, would any mythology experts care to weigh in? Is there a better term we can use instead, a different title we can use for the article? And if I'm wrong and the term "artificial mythology" is standard, can someone provide a citation to prove it? --Lowellian 22:39, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

There are at least 25 non-Wiki originated websites referring to "artificial mythology" in Yahoo Search.

Craig J. Saper has written a book, Artificial Mythologies: A Guide to Cultural Invention, 1997, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
A. Wicher quotes The artificial mythology of Tolkien's "The Silmarillion".

And H.P. Lovecraft's Necromicon is described in Straightdope as an artificial mythology.

There is a magazine called Zothique which is quoted as "a journal of dark fantasy...and artificial mythology".

I think you can be pretty confident there is such a thing as artificial mythology. --Dieter Simon 01:10, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I share your discomfort with the term -- after all, isn't all mythology "artificial?" -- but it seems that it's already being used in this sense, and it is handy and relatively easy to understand. --Ben Applegate 11:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, mythology is not artificial. That's like saying all religion is artificial. Most myths come about naturally via a variety of factors, socially and through the evolution of the stories, the ones discussed here are completely made up, which is done through an entirely different process... and artificial one. 172.162.116.112 05:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused...[edit]

What defines the division between "artificial mythology" and "fantasy world"? I understand instinctively that this term applies to Middle Earth and the Cthulhu Mythos, because those are both presented by their authors as alternate mythologies or the real world, and since so much is written about the expanded Star Wars universe and since it took place "a long long time ago" I could see that fitting in too, but what about "future mythologies" like Dune, or the expanded fantasy world of something like Harry Potter, or Wheel of Time, or any of the literally thousands of fantasy worlds that various authors have created? Luvcraft 18:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First off I would like to say that this is my first post into the Wikipedia system. I have a particular interest and I believe some expertise, in subjects related to myth, metaphor and individual and collective systems. The idea of Myth and Mythology lies beneath major streams of psychological and anthropological thought. The term "artificial mythology" is in my experience, probably unique to Wikipedia. I have no problem with it, however, it encompasses a narrow world view. Work in psychology by authors as C.G.Jung, James Hillman and Wolfgang Giegerich to name a few have incorporated conceptions of myth as an operating part of the individual's unconscious that is active in the establishment of his/her external reality. Yes, it does also border on conceptions or reality that others might argue is religious but it is not dependent upon this view. This broader perspective is also supported, in my opinion, by conceptions of myth and metaphor in cognitive psychology with the view of the individual's cognitive process involved in establishing an external reality (Berger and Luckman), or of folks like Joseph Campbell or Levi-Strauss that take a more anthropological approach to the subject. In light of these perspectives to consider mythology artificial may be premature.

Note I suggested a minor change in the description of the piece on Tolkien. He didn't "coin" the term mythopoeic but he did use it. thomas m. Obrien 5 September 2006

Merging[edit]

Makes sense to me. There's nothing in Mythopoeic literature or Legendarium to set them apart from artificial mythology -- they're just different, more esoteric terms for the same thing -- and both invented (or at least popularized) by the same man. Merging them into this article would enrich it with info that people are not likely to find where it's filed now. --Ben Applegate 11:50, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scope[edit]

From the definition provided for "legendarium," it seems like it could be just as accurately applied to a real mythology (clearly defined on the mythology page) as a fictional one. As such, it would be very inappropriate to merge it with artificial mythology. Mutant Despot 03:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless, I don't see a need for an encyclopedia article on "Legendarium." If "legendarium" simply = a mythology that's written down, why not just call it "written mythology?" And if there are examples of "legendariums" that are not artificial, then we should just merge it with mythology. --Ben Applegate 13:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article on legendarium would probably be sufficient as a Wiktionary entry, since eveything relevant in the way of content is dealt with at Mythopoeic literature or at mythology. But as long as the division of information was clear, I do not think that it would be helpful to merge Mythopoeic literature (which is really a subgenre of modern Fantasy literature) with Artificial mythology, which covers a much broader spectrum from Blake to Ossian, and less directly literary figures such as Wagner. I think "Invented mythology" would be a better name for that article, though. Myopic Bookworm 12:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Legendarium absolutely should not be merged. Whether it stays as a stub, redirects to Legend or gets Wiktionaried can be decided later, but the overall meaning of the word has no reason to be merged here, as it would be inaccurate. 172.162.116.112 05:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Just by wording Mythopoeic literature strikes me as a section of artificial mythology, since literature is written and the written word is not the only way to convey mythology. Other media include music, pictures, movies, and even interactive forms such as video games and more I've either forgotten or don't know about because they haven't been created yet ;) Just my two cents. Camann 02:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]