The
representations which are the building blocks of a myth can be literal (or
final), or a metaphor, i.e., a chain of representations linked to basic
cultural referents (those linked to basic emotions). Let’s call exomorphic to
the first type and endomorphic to the second. Exomorphic representations or
exomorphisms are final ontological declarations, limits for our thinking that
function as referents for the linguistic constructions of our communication.
Endomorphisms, on the other hand, are familiar renderings of exomorphisms, as
well as rendering of other endomorphisms. Exomorphisms change through time,
what today is final and literal tomorrow will be a metaphor.
With an example.
In Egiptian mythology, the sun was called the eye of Ra, and the devotee took
it at its face value, literally: Ra sees the world and humans through the sun.
For us today is a metaphor, for we have other representations that explain the
sun, that endomorphize it, though the representations of particle physics,
bosons and fermions (the constituents of the sun and of all matter) are taken at
face value. In both cases we project a linguistic system upon experience (what
we call nature) and find referents that we consider final, we build a linguistic
exomorphism, a translation of meaning which expresses a conceptual ontological
framework. A process of mythologization is a double symbolic action of
interpretation of experience in terms of exomorphisms and endomorphisms.
The ever
expanding process of exomorphism is the ever expanding process of symbolization
of life-intelligence.
With some verses from Schiller:
ReplyDelete"Wo jetzt nur, wie unsere Wisen sagen,
Seelenlos ein Feuerball sich dreht,
Lenkte damal seinen goldnen Wagen
Helios in stiller Majestät". (F.Schiller. Die Götter Griechenlandes)
("Where today, as our wise men say,
A soulless fireball turns,
Helios drove once his golden chariot
In still majesty".)
Exomorphic and endomorphic representations are determined by an specific mythic-ritual axis. They do not have absolute value, for they are conditioned valuations of life experience, although it is precisely life what gives the range of its possibilities: the framework for morphisms is given by the emotional protocols; emotions are the semantics of myth, either expressed endomorphically or exomorphically, and in different degrees of n-aryzation.