This is where things get interesting.

We're out of the Introduction at last and on to Chapter 1, "The Necessity of Rites" -- and even better, the first section is "The Functions of Mythology," which I've found to be one of the most useful passages in the book. (It's drawn from a 1968 lecture at Amherst and a 1969 lecture at the University of Vermont.)

This stuff is a bit dense, so in this post I'll only tackle Function of Myth Number One: evoking a sense of awe. As it happens, this is my favorite function.

Life is pretty nasty, as we all know; everyone who plays the game will eventually succumb, with disaster and misery along the way. It's not all bad, of course; but it's just unpleasant enough. If you're not horrified now and then, then you're not really alive.

So, what do you do about the scary stuff? Well, you can retreat -- but that's not easy to do. Instead, the reaction that emerged in primitive cultures was to affirm all that rottenness. To say, "oh yes, this is all very dreadful; but also very grand." The religious rites of early human are really monstrous -- as was life, back in those days -- and they reaffirmed that that horribleness was mandatory and necessary, and if you could bear to withstand it, on the other side you'll find pleasure and grandeur and wonder.

Then everything changes around 8 BC. People start to find it impossible to participate in these rites anymore -- they're just not rewarding or fulfilling. So what did they do? They got out of the game, like seriously out: Joseph cites Jainism (which is all about ending the circle of "transmigration") and early monastic Buddhism as examples. Get rid of your food, your enthusiasm for living, even your ability to move; the idea is that your death coincides with your loss of desire for life.

I suppose that clip isn't entirely appropriate for what we're talking about it. But I like it, so there it is anyway.

So, two approaches: to say yes to life, horror and all; or to say no to the horror, and with it life.

And then along comes Zoroastrianism, somewhere between 11 and 7 BC. Now you've got good gods (Ahura Mazda) and bad gods (Angra Mainyu) fighting each other, and you can pick a side and help. The attitude is, "well, life isn't perfect, but maybe we can fix it up a bit." This seems a little optimistic to me; there's only so much fixing up that one can do.

And so no matter which outlook you pick (yes, no, or maybe), you're participating in the game. Humans can't just live, like houseplants; we have to live meaningfully, to say, "aha, this universe works a certain way, and I'm working within it." And that's the first function of mythology: to acknowledge that we're alive and an organism of all of life's amazing rules ... which, by the way, we just made up.