Raven, Snake, Man

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Sounds a bit like Paper, Scissors, Stone, nay? I never get that form of divination - can't do the gestures, don't quite get the point, and can't keep straight whether Scissors beats Three of a Kind [you may deduce I don't play poker, either]

But no.

Raven stealing the sun : a variant [tracing patterns in myth / folklore across the globe is right up the alley of a historically minded pattern seeker - there is one almost duplicated between Khoisan South Africa and Pacific Northwest] of the Prometheus - Jack and the Beanstalk theme.

Nasty Person of Power has a Good Thing - People are in misery for lack of the Good Thing - Smart Guy with Good Intentions takes the Good Thing and hands it to the people [huzza] but gets burned in the process. Ah - echoes in the Christus Legend!

It is not really surprising that life imitates myth.

Anyway, that is how we got the sun and how the raven got burned black, and some of us here at the institute are suirprised Mr. Obama has not campaigned on this.

[sip of water]

But then there is Adam and Eve and the Boomslang.

Good Person of Power has a Good Thing. People are running around nekkid, and okay, the temperatures may be okay and there may not yet be thorns depending on your theology, but what is the fun of that? Smart Guy with Evil Intentions talks them into stealing the Good Thing and [Ay de mi!] everybody gets burned and we have to work for a living being sure to wear shoes so we do not get bit treading on the serpent.

It is obvious that the Eden Story and the Sun Caper have a lot in common plotwise.

Now - and this is the fun part:

Are these the same story from two different perspectives?
Old Man Winter: That @#%$& stole my sun / apple
Feathered Serpent: I done good and people are warm / enlightened

Or is there a major difference, such as in one the Good Thing is being selfishly hogged, while in the other the Luger is kept locked in a drawer so it can be used but the little kids can't get hold of it and shoot themselves?

The raven and the serpent are not so similar. The raven is a Promethean culture hero and often a god in its own right. The serpent only plays antagonist and in the Judeo-legend we're supposed to support no-one but the tyrant in the sky.

The god the raven was stealing the sun from wasn't set up as all-powerful or benevolent in the first place. The god the serpent was defying set himself up as Beloved Leader.

I'm all about the raven, personally.

I don't know what you mean about old man winter and the feathered serpent, though.

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I am very intrigued by ravens - I have a tendency to identify with them, if I had a totem / spirit guide / patron animal it would be a raven. They are smart, prominent in folklore / myth, and I get them If you get a chance check out http://www.theravendiaries.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Raven-Invest ... pd_sim_b_2 -- Bernd Heinrich's stuff is really good.

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Part of what is going on here is this:

A. for whatever reason [save the discussion] folklore /myth is full of bassic stories which crop up all over the world, get modified [emphases changed, outcome changed, characters moved from human to animal or vice versa, story inverted]. You hear one where the gods do something, move a thousand miles and the beasts of the forest act out the same story, gp 500 miles and two centuries and it is humans doing it.

B. Raven and the serpent - stories differ in characterization, motivation, outcome. But I am a pattern finder, and there is a strong connection. Big guy has thing - people do not have thing - agent intervenes - people get thing. It is about the same as boy meets girl - boy gets girl - boy loses girl as plot line s go. But I think it works.

C. Possibility worth thinking about: Serpent and Apple starts out as a Promethean tale OR a flipflop - a lot of stories occur as mirror images, which comes up when storuies are used in debate, which is common. Like at the proverb level "look before you leap" flips into "he who hesitates is lost". The Prometheus - Raven story often has a nice God pillaging a mean God and doing good What if with monotheism the Hebrews retasked the story, turning it to mean demon pillaging Good God and doing harm? This happens.

D. Old Man Winter tends to be the one from whom sun / fire is stolen, so I used him and extended him to include the Eden creator. The feathered serpent - well, I was trying to find a wording that would link raven and snake, and using Quetzalcoatl just did it for me.

In college a friend was assigned in a class to rewrite an ancient myth as a short story set in the present.

It occured to me later that if I had had the assignment I would have a protagonist be a physicist living in post war suburban america who suddenly gets recuring nightmares about being chained to a big rock and being pecked by birds. He finnally realizes that the nightmares are symptoms of guilt about being involved in the Manhatten Project and splitting the atom- the ultimate form of "stealing fire from the gods".

The myth of Prometheus strikes me as much deeper than "jack in the beanstalk" . Seemingly custom made by the ancient greeks for the atomic age its about mankind achieving mastery over nature. We have the argogance to comandeer forces in nature and inflict damage on the earth and ourselves, but at the same time its our duty to be autdacious and to seek scientific breakthroughs: fire, metalurgy, steam, atomic energy. Its a double edged sword. The tale becomes ever more relevent as technology evolves ever faster.

I wasnt the first to read that into the myth. A hundred and fifty years before the atomic age Mary Shelly had a second title for one of history's first science fiction novels "Frankenstein" , it was "the Modern Prometheus."

Since you're into collecting stories: there is atleast one "Prometheus-in-reverse" story I know of.
Alaskan Indians have a story about how the dog originally lived with the wolf deep in the forest. During the long nights of the arctic winter wolf decided the pack had to have fire. So wolf instructed dog to sneak into the village of man to steal fire and bring it back to the woods. The dog obeyed and entered the camp of man. When dog was discovered man gave the dog strips of salmon and a place by the fire. Dog decided "screw the woods Im stayin here." So wolf never got fire, and dog abandoned wolf and has stayed with man ever since.

That tale makes atleast as much sense as any scientific theory Ive ever heard to explain how and why certain stone age wolves became domestic dogs.

Ravens are fascinating, both the real birds (clever, loud,sociable and tribal,much like humans) and the Raven as a motif in myths.
Supposidly every mythical system has to have a "trickster". A character that stirs up trouble.

Usually that role is played by the cleverest animal in the area of the tribe. In Europe/mediterrean that was the red fox( a staple of Aesop's fables). To most north american indians it was the coyote. In the pacific northwest it was the raven. And some mythical systems had human tricksters ( the norse had Loki, and the Bible has Satan). thats one theory.

Therese's a lot of positive and negative mythological associations with both ravens & snakes in many cultures. If I remember right the Native American culture associates snakes with intelligence & I think the Chinese do as well.

I have ravens stalk me when am out thats been to me for four years now, plus in the last few year or two I had snake dreams

Many cultures have multip[le tricksters with different personalities. Consider stories where one is quick but shallow [think tarbaby] and inclined to getr in deep watder and another slower and deep. Or one is malevolent, another benevolent.

Corvids are rather rare as tricksters, it is much more likely to be a role assigned to mammals, but there are examples of corvids or the closest bird in the area to a corvid from all over - usually as the lesser but deeper trickster, the one who tricks the trickster.

Prometheus is of course much deeper than Jack. Prometheus takes the UrMotif [I would think in terms not too close to Jung's archetypes, though they come out of the same bag] out of the mouth of the mother and the initiation director and links it to the local religious framework. Jack takes the same UrMotif but remembers it from the distant standpoint of a culture reshaped, where it cannot be brought into the religious framework. As a result it is shorn of nearly all mythic attributes. You see the same with African tales brought to the Americas. JC Harris' Uncle Remus collection - unfortunately bowdlerized or witch hunted by people too superficial to see what is there - confirmed by other more scientific sources - has already moved in the direction of myth reduction and trivialization, though nowhere near what you see in later AfroAmerican collections. Herskovits' texts from Suriname - where the bush is nearer and there is less cultural assimilation, is much closer to the source structures.