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Morphisms and the process of Mythologization

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.


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  1. Oscar Enrique MuñozSeptember 5, 2013 at 2:12 PM

    With some verses from Schiller:
    "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.

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