Primal Myths Quotes

“Show me your true shape.” Jiburili warned him that this would be dangerous, but Mohammed insisted. Then Jiburili showed himself,”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“All religion posits such a supreme reality and subsequently builds an entire system of valuation around it. The difference between pseudo-religions like the athlete’s and real ones is that genuine religions proclaim an absolute reality as the centerpoint of their structure. That is, religion insists that what is essentially real and important to you subjectively must also be that which is essentially real and important in the objective world of fact.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“Holding literally to the claims of any particular myth then, is a great error in that it mistakes myth’s values for science’s facts and results in the worst sort of religiosity. Such literalism requires a faith that splits rather than unifies our consciousness.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“the truth of all myths is existential and not necessarily theoretical.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“Gender, race, profession, nationality, age, position, and the like all become relevant as the “I” in all those bodies comes to think of itself as something constant and essentially connected to larger social realities.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“Myths proclaim such attitudes toward reality. They organize the way we perceive facts and understand ourselves and the world. Whether we adhere to them consciously or not, they remain pervasively influential.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“Myths clarify this distinction between the worldly and the world. Demonstrating how the temporal realm of change and flux reveals the structure and the way of the timeless, myths try to show how everything considered merely profane and ordinary in itself is really sacred and extraordinary. Essentially, they point out structural similarities between the relative and absolute and argue that things in each realm are grounded in the same pattern of relations.”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World

“The merely worldly is disparaged in all religions, rejected for its relativity. But what they mean is only that you should not forget the dependence of our reality and pretend against all evidence of change that it is constant and eternal. Praise of the world, rightly understood as a reflection of the absolute, is just as central to religion. Myths”
― Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World