Showing posts with label imagination. Show all posts

02 October 2025

Echoes of Relational Ontology in Myth

1 Creation as Cut

When myth turns to creation, it rarely describes a smooth, linear unfolding. Instead, creation is staged as a cut.

In Genesis, “Let there be light” is not a chronological step in a physical process — it is a division: light from darkness, order from chaos, world from void. In the Enuma Elish, Marduk slays Tiamat and cuts her body into heavens and earth. In Māori cosmogony, Rangi and Papa — Sky and Earth — are separated by their children, and the world becomes possible through their parting. Again and again, the world is not “made” but divided, named, separated.

From a relational ontology perspective, these myths anticipate a crucial insight: creation is not an absolute beginning in time, but a perspectival cut in potential. Systems, as we understand them, are structured possibilities. Instantiation is not the gradual accumulation of substance, but the sudden construal of relation — the drawing of a line that makes inside and outside, self and other, earth and sky.

This is why creation myths often begin with chaos, undifferentiated night, or primal waters. These are not failed attempts at proto-science. They are symbolic construals of uncut potential. What follows is always the cut: the division of one into two, the naming that distinguishes, the separation that instantiates.

Creation myths thus encode, in symbolic form, the insight that being arises from differentiation. Reality is not first substance, then relation; it is relation from the start. Without the cut, there is no cosmos, no world, no possibility of meaning.

Seen this way, myth anticipates relational ontology’s own insistence: there is no unconstrued phenomenon, no reality independent of cut. To be is to be distinguished within a horizon of possibility.

Creation, in myth, is not the origin of matter but the staging of meaningful cosmos. It is the symbolic alignment of a collective to a world that has become cut, named, and oriented.

2 Cosmos as Reflexive Projection

Once creation is cut, myth turns to cosmos: the world not as brute matter but as an ordered horizon.

In many traditions, the cosmos is not an external reality to be observed; it is a mirror, a projection, a symbolic alignment between collective life and the wider whole. Among the Navajo, the stars are placed in the sky through a tale of order and disorder, their pattern reflecting principles of balance that also govern human life. In ancient Egypt, the cosmic order of Ma’at was simultaneously the structure of the heavens and the basis of justice. In Polynesian voyaging traditions, the sea is not just geography but a patterned cosmos, oriented through stars, swells, and ancestral guidance.

From a relational ontology perspective, these myths anticipate the insight that cosmos is reflexively construed. The stars are not merely “out there”: they are aligned with the collective, staging a horizon of meaning and possibility. Cosmos is not discovered but constituted. It functions as a symbolic mirror through which collectives experience themselves as part of a larger whole.

In this way, myth resists the division between inner and outer. What Campbell framed as archetype, we can instead read as reflexive projection: the alignment of collective construal with the patterns of the world. Cosmos is the collective turned inside-out, a world whose shape is the shape of symbolic life itself.

To call the cosmos reflexive is not to deny its materiality, but to foreground how it becomes meaningful. Every constellation, every seasonal cycle, every sacred mountain or river is not simply “there”: it is construed as part of a symbolic horizon, binding the collective into alignment with the world.

Thus myth anticipates another of relational ontology’s core moves: reality is not independent of construal. The cosmos is not simply a background against which life unfolds; it is the symbolic horizon through which life takes shape.

3 Individuation as Relational Phasing

Myth does not only align cosmos and collective. It also stages the place of the individual. But here again, individuation is not construed as autonomy in the modern sense. It is always relational.

Initiation rituals, heroic cycles, shamanic journeys: these myths place the individual in trial or transition. The novice undergoes ordeals, the hero departs, suffers, and returns, the shaman descends into other worlds. Yet in every case, individuation is only complete when it is reintegrated into the collective. The initiate becomes an adult for the community. The hero returns with gifts of knowledge, power, or renewal for the people. The shaman’s journey heals not themselves, but the social whole.

From a relational ontology perspective, these myths anticipate individuation as phasing. The individual is not a unit that precedes relation; they are a cut within collective potential. Individuation is a perspectival articulation along a cline between the shared horizon and the particular node.

The mythic hero is not an archetype of inner psyche, but a symbolic construal of this phasing. Their journey dramatises how individual potential is actualised only through relation to collective possibility. To individuate is to take up a place in the web, not to stand outside it.

This explains why myth so often insists on ordeal, trial, or death before transformation. Individuation is not a simple flowering of inner essence, but a restructuring of relational alignment. The ordeal symbolises the re-cutting of possibility, the shift of perspective that allows a new constellation of self and collective to emerge.

In this way, myth again anticipates relational ontology’s move: there is no individual outside relation, no self without collective alignment. Individuation is the reflexive phasing of the whole through the part.

4 Trickster and the Contingency of Cuts

If creation myths stage the cut, and heroic cycles show individuation as relational phasing, then trickster tales reveal another truth: the cut is never final.

Tricksters appear across traditions: Loki in Norse tales, Coyote and Raven in Native American stories, Eshu in Yoruba cosmology. They deceive, disrupt, invert, and play. They mock the gods, steal fire, blur boundaries, turn order into chaos and chaos into unexpected renewal.

From a relational ontology perspective, trickster figures anticipate the insight that symbolic orders are contingent. No cosmos, no law, no meaning-system is absolute. Every cut that instantiates an horizon of order is open to inversion, disruption, or re-cutting.

Trickster shows that systems are perspectival. Where the gods impose structure, the trickster reveals fissures. Where norms stabilise, the trickster exposes arbitrariness. Where horizons seem fixed, the trickster reminds us they are only ever symbolic alignments — provisional, not eternal.

This is why trickster stories oscillate between comedy and danger. They carry both the joy of freedom and the risk of collapse. The trickster destabilises order, but also makes renewal possible. By revealing contingency, trickster opens the space for re-alignment.

In this sense, trickster is myth’s anticipation of ontology’s critical move: that reality is not a closed system of absolutes, but an ongoing construal, always susceptible to being cut again.

What Campbell might call archetype, we instead read as a symbolic dramatisation of the ontological fact of contingency. Trickster is not an eternal form, but a reflexive reminder: no cosmos is final, no meaning immune to play.

5 Reflexive Cycles of Renewal

If trickster reminds us that no cut is final, many myths go further: they portray the cosmos itself as cyclically dissolving and reforming.

Seasonal myths stage this rhythm through the death and rebirth of deities — Persephone descending into the underworld, Osiris dismembered and restored, Inanna passing through death’s gates and returning renewed. Cosmic myths stage even larger cycles: Hindu traditions speak of kalpas, vast spans of creation and dissolution; Norse myth anticipates Ragnarök, the world’s destruction and its rebirth from the sea.

These cycles are not mistakes of “primitive science.” They are symbolic construals of a deeper ontological truth: reality is not static, but reflexive. Horizons of meaning are constituted, dissolve, and must be constituted again. Cosmos is not once-and-for-all but ongoing, a patterned renewal of collective alignment.

From a relational ontology perspective, these myths anticipate the insight that construal is never finished. To live in a symbolic cosmos is to live within cycles of renewal, where meanings and worlds must be re-cut, re-aligned, and re-staged. Death and rebirth are not only biological or seasonal facts; they symbolise the reflexivity of being itself.

This is why myth so often insists on ritual repetition. Festivals, sacrifices, and commemorations are not simply commemorative. They are re-instantiations of cosmos, symbolic acts of keeping the horizon alive. Renewal is not automatic; it requires reflexive participation.

In this way, myths of cyclic renewal stage one of relational ontology’s deepest insights: reality is constituted through ongoing reflexive alignment. What is cut must be cut again. What is aligned must be re-aligned. The cosmos is never finished; it is always in the making.

6 The Net of Indra

Among the most striking anticipations of relational ontology comes from the Buddhist and Hindu image of the Net of Indra.

The image is simple but profound: an infinite net stretches across the cosmos, and at each intersection rests a jewel. Each jewel reflects every other jewel, and in each reflection the whole net is mirrored again. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is constituted in relation to everything else.

From a relational ontology perspective, this mythic image is astonishingly prescient. Reality here is not composed of independent substances but of relations. Each node exists only through its reflexive entanglement with all others. To perceive one jewel is to perceive the entire net, since each reflection contains the whole.

The Net of Indra thus dissolves the idea of an unconstrued phenomenon. There is no jewel that exists outside of relation, no being that is self-sufficient. Everything is cut, aligned, and constituted within the relational whole.

In mythic terms, the net stages the insight that cosmos is not a hierarchy of absolutes but a reflexive web. In ontological terms, it anticipates our insistence that meaning and reality are co-constitutive, that construal always scales through relational alignment, and that the part and the whole are perspectival, not separate.

What modern metaphysics strains to articulate in abstractions, the Net of Indra gives us in a single shimmering image: reality as infinite reflexivity, relation all the way down.

Coda: Myth as Ontological Experiment

What, then, do these myths reveal?

Creation myths show that being emerges through cut. Cosmological myths show the reflexive projection of collective horizons. Heroic cycles show individuation as relational phasing. Trickster tales reveal the contingency of symbolic orders. Renewal cycles dramatise the reflexivity of worlds dissolving and reforming. And the Net of Indra offers a dazzling image of infinite relationality.

Taken together, these are not primitive attempts at science. They are experimental ontologies. Myths are not naïve explanations of nature; they are symbolic construals of possibility. They test, stage, and explore what it means to live in a world constituted by relation.

Seen through the lens of relational ontology, myth is not a failed epistemology but an archive of insight. It anticipates, in symbolic form, many of the moves we now make philosophically: that there is no unconstrued phenomenon, that instantiation is a cut in potential, that cosmos is reflexive, that individuation is perspectival, that every order is contingent, and that reality itself is relational all the way down.

This is why myths endure. They do not only tell stories; they hold open ontological horizons. They invite us to construe again, to re-align, to imagine new worlds.

Myth, then, is not the dream of an unconscious psyche, nor the failed hypothesis of an early science. It is an experiment in being. And in its shimmering cuts, cycles, and nets, it continues to anticipate the relational insight: reality is always already construed, and meaning is the way the world comes to be.

29 September 2025

Myth as Construal: Rereading Campbell through Relational Ontology

Preface: From Monomyth to Relational Worlds

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces has long been celebrated for unveiling the “monomyth,” a universal narrative arc underlying global mythologies. Across cultures and eras, Campbell traced a single heroic itinerary: departure, initiation, and return. His work promised a unifying vision of myth as the manifestation of timeless psychic patterns.

Yet this universalising lens obscures a fundamental ontological distinction: the stories themselves are not instances of a preordained archetype, but situated, collective, and contingent acts of symbolic construal. Each myth phases its community into alignment, projects the collective into relational landscapes, and opens possibilities for action and imagination. The patterns Campbell detects are echoes — recurrent solutions to relational tensions — not proof of a singular, eternal monomyth.

This series, Myth as Construal, undertakes a relational rereading of Campbell. Its six posts trace a careful progression:

The Ontology of the Model vs. the Ontology of the Data – distinguishing Campbell’s universalising model from the plural, situated ontology of the myths themselves.
From Archetype to Reflexivity – reframing archetypes not as psychic essences but as effects of collective reflexive alignment.
From Monomyth to Plural Mythic Architectures – dissolving the singular hero’s journey into heterogeneous construals of collective being.
Myth as Temporal and Phasing Process – exploring how each telling stages collective alignment through time.
Symbolic Reflexivity in Mythic Landscapes – showing how myths scaffold understanding across social, ecological, and symbolic horizons.
From Monomyth to Relational Richness — A Synthesis – synthesising the series to foreground myth as the architecture of possibility, and Campbell’s monomyth as artefact.

The guiding move of this series is a relational cut: to treat myth not as a reflection of a timeless inner truth, but as an active, plural, and phasing construal of collective possibility. In doing so, it reframes Campbell’s project, highlighting the richness, heterogeneity, and creative dynamism of myth as it is actually enacted, rather than as it is universalised into theory.

By the end, the series invites readers to inhabit myth not as a static template of the psyche, but as a symbolic instrument, a field in which collectives construct, navigate, and expand their worlds. Campbell’s monomyth is a mirror; relational ontology invites us to step off the mirror and into the plurality of mythic life itself.

1 The Ontology of the Model vs. the Ontology of the Data

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is often celebrated for uncovering a universal pattern at the heart of mythology: the so-called “monomyth,” or hero’s journey. His comparative lens spans continents and centuries, stitching together myths from Greece to India, Polynesia to Sumer. What results is a grand synthesis, a single archetypal itinerary of separation, initiation, and return.

But this ambition conceals a crucial slippage: the ontology of Campbell’s model is not the ontology of his data.

The myths Campbell draws upon are symbolic construals, each situated within its own collective horizon. They are not “instances” of a timeless archetype; they are ways of aligning a community through shared symbolic potential. A Navajo emergence story, a Polynesian voyage tale, and a Greek heroic cycle each construe different relations of collective, individual, cosmos, and possibility. Their meanings are grounded in their social-symbolic contexts, not in an abstract, transcendent psyche.

Campbell’s model, by contrast, is not relational but archetypal. Anchored in Jungian psychology, it treats myth as an expression of timeless psychic structures. Similarities across myths are gathered into a universal narrative sequence, which is then taken as the truth of myth itself. In doing so, Campbell conflates the patterned potential of symbolic construal with the absolutised structure of a monomyth.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is the decisive cut: the data are plural, situated, and collective; the model is singular, universalising, and psychic. Campbell mistakes the resonances of symbolic construal across cultures for proof of an underlying universal form. The relational move is to resist this collapse, and to treat myth instead as a field of heterogeneous construals — each staging possibilities for being-together, none reducible to a single archetypal template.

In this series, we will reread Campbell through the lens of relational ontology. Rather than a monomyth of timeless individuation, myth will be approached as symbolic construal: the staging of ontological possibility, the phasing of collective alignment, the architecture of what a world can mean.

2 From Archetype to Reflexivity

At the core of Campbell’s model lies the concept of the archetype. Myths, in his account, are symbolic expressions of deep psychic patterns: timeless forms residing in the collective unconscious. The hero’s journey is not a cultural invention but a universal structure of the psyche, surfacing again and again in different guises.

This is where Campbell’s ontology reveals its essentialist foundations. Archetypes are conceived as givens — eternal forms that precede and determine symbolic expression. Myth, in this view, is not a situated act of meaning-making but a coded manifestation of an inner truth.

A relational ontology cuts this differently. It denies the existence of timeless, pre-given forms. Instead, it understands meaning as construal: the perspectival shaping of potential into symbolic actuality. From this vantage, what Campbell calls an “archetype” is not a psychic essence but an effect of reflexive alignment.

When a collective tells a myth, it symbolically projects itself into form. This projection aligns individual and collective experience within a shared horizon. The figure of the hero, for example, does not derive from an eternal archetype of individuation; it arises as a symbolic construal of how individuation can be oriented within a particular collective. The hero is not an archetype of the psyche but a reflexive articulation of possibility.

This shift matters. Archetype freezes myth into essence; reflexivity restores myth as event. Archetype says: the hero’s journey is eternal. Reflexivity says: this telling stages individuation against the collective whole here, now, within this symbolic horizon.

From a relational perspective, then, Campbell’s archetypes are not the source of myth but its retrospective abstraction. They are second-order readings of recurrent symbolic construals, elevated into timeless universals. Myths themselves do not reveal archetypes; they enact reflexivity.

In other words: myth does not express the unconscious. It constitutes the horizon of the possible.

3 From Monomyth to Plural Mythic Architectures

Campbell’s “hero’s journey” presents a sweeping narrative: separation, initiation, return. Across cultures, he finds the same beats, the same archetypal itinerary. The monomyth promises universality: one path, one sequence, one story of individuation.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is precisely the move that flattens myth into abstraction. The monomyth treats similarity as essence, pattern as law, and recurrence as evidence of universality. It neglects the situated, collective, and contingent work that myths perform within their own horizons.

Relational ontology reframes this: there is no single journey, only plural mythic architectures. Each myth constructs a horizon of possibility for its collective, shaping alignment, scaling individuation, and orienting action. The apparent “recurrences” that Campbell notes are not proofs of a universal plot; they are resonances — structural echoes that arise whenever certain relational tensions are negotiated in symbolic form (life and death, self and collective, known and unknown).

In this view:

The hero’s journey is not a template but one construal among many. A Polynesian navigation epic, a Greek tragedy, and a Navajo emergence myth do not share a hidden “monomyth” but instead instantiate different solutions to recurring relational challenges.
Myth is an architecture, not a map. It scaffolds collective experience, guiding what a community can imagine, enact, and align toward, rather than reporting an eternal psychic itinerary.
Plurality is fundamental. Each telling opens a new trajectory of being-together; the multiplicity of myths is not noise against a universal signal but the terrain of possibility itself.

From the relational vantage, Campbell’s monomyth is a model imposed upon the richness of plural construals. By universalising, it abstracts away the reflexive, contingent, and collective dimension of mythic action. The monomyth dissolves; what remains are heterogeneous mythic architectures — patterned potentials, staged alignments, and symbolic spaces in which collectives orient themselves toward what they can become.

The move from monomyth to plural architectures is thus more than critique: it is a reorientation. Myth is no longer a map of the psyche; it is the scaffolding of collective possibility.

4 Myth as Temporal and Phasing Process

Campbell’s monomyth presents myth as a sequence — the hero departs, faces trials, and returns transformed. Time, in his model, is linear and universal: myths follow a preordained itinerary, regardless of context or culture. In this framing, the narrative is a template, and the story’s phasing is derivative, secondary to the archetype.

Relational ontology cuts differently. Myth is not a static pattern traced over time; it is a process of phasing — an enactment of collective alignment, unfolding within the temporality of the telling. Each telling of a myth does more than recount events: it coordinates the present, anticipates potential futures, and aligns participants to shared symbolic horizons.

Key insights from this perspective include:

Temporal Relativity of Myth: Myths do not exist outside the moment of their telling. The same narrative can be enacted differently across occasions, emphasising different relational tensions, guiding different alignments, and opening distinct trajectories of collective possibility. The “sequence” of events is not fixed but flexible, contingent upon the horizon it phases.
Phasing Social Formation: Each telling structures a collective’s experience, scaling individual action against the whole, synchronising symbolic projection, and orienting what the group perceives as possible. Myth thus functions as a temporal scaffold: a way to order experience, not to illustrate an eternal pattern.
Iterative Reflexivity: Mythical phasing is reflexive. As the collective engages with a story, it adapts and realigns its symbolic horizon, which in turn reshapes subsequent tellings. Myths evolve through practice, not by appealing to a timeless monomyth.
Staging Possibility: Every act of storytelling is a construal of what could be. Myth does not describe what must occur; it maps potential, showing how the collective might navigate uncertainty, tension, and relational challenge.

From this vantage, Campbell’s linear monomyth becomes a shadow of myth’s real function. It abstracts sequence into universality, freezing temporal phasing into archetypal necessity. Relational ontology restores myth as a dynamic, iterative, and contingent process — a temporal choreography of symbolic alignment that unfolds differently each time it is enacted.

In short: myths are not maps of the psyche or the universe. They are temporal instruments, phasing collectives into alignment with their symbolic and relational possibilities.

5 Symbolic Reflexivity in Mythic Landscapes

Beyond sequence and timing, myths operate across relational landscapes. They are not only temporal phasings but also symbolic architectures that structure how collectives inhabit, navigate, and understand their worlds. From a relational ontology perspective, every myth functions as a lens through which a community construes its environment, its relations, and its possibilities.

Myths as Spatial and Social Scaffolds:
Myths map symbolic relationships across social and natural landscapes. A hero’s journey through a forest, across seas, or into the underworld is not merely narrative decoration; it stages relations between the collective and its environment, between individual roles and collective expectations. Myth constructs an experiential geography where actions, values, and relational tensions are meaningfully aligned.
Reflexive Projection:
Each myth projects the collective into symbolic form, allowing it to see itself from multiple vantage points simultaneously: the individual’s perspective, the collective’s stance, and the horizon of potential futures. This reflexivity is not introspection of a universal psyche but the enactment of collective self-construal.
Alignment Across Horizons:
Through repeated tellings, myths synchronise understanding across dispersed or heterogeneous participants. They create shared symbolic coordinates, so that disparate members of a collective can navigate tensions consistently, orient their actions coherently, and inhabit the same symbolic horizon. Myth, in this sense, is an instrument of social coordination, not a mere recounting of archetypal patterns.
Dynamic, Heterogeneous Landscapes:
The landscapes of myth are not fixed. They are shaped by cultural, ecological, and historical contingencies. A myth adapts to new circumstances, producing multiple, overlapping trajectories of meaning. Campbell’s universal model erases this heterogeneity; relational ontology foregrounds it, revealing myth as plural, adaptive, and contextually grounded.

In sum, myths are simultaneously temporal and spatial instruments. They phase collective alignment through time, scaffold understanding across relational space, and reflexively project the collective into the symbolic horizon it inhabits. They do not mirror a timeless archetype; they constitute the terrain of possibility, showing communities how to live, act, and align within the worlds they inhabit.

6 From Monomyth to Relational Richness — A Synthesis

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth has captivated generations by offering a singular, universal path through the landscape of human imagination: the hero departs, undergoes trials, and returns transformed. Its appeal lies in simplicity, coherence, and the promise of timeless truth. Yet, from a relational ontology perspective, this very appeal masks a critical ontological distortion.

The Monomyth as Artefact
Campbell’s synthesis abstracts, universalises, and essentialises. It treats recurrence as law, similarity as essence, and pattern as proof of an underlying psychic reality. In doing so, it collapses the plural, situated, and contingent nature of mythic practice into a single, flattened narrative. The “hero’s journey” becomes less a reflection of lived symbolic activity than a projection of theoretical desire — a map imposed upon terrain that is, in reality, richly diverse and dynamic.

Relational Ontology Restores Plurality
In contrast, myth itself is heterogeneous, iterative, and phasing. Each telling:

Aligns collective and individual experience within a symbolic horizon.
Projects the collective into temporal, social, and ecological landscapes.
Scaffolds possibilities for being-together, coordinating action, meaning, and expectation.
Evolves reflexively with each retelling, producing layered, context-sensitive architectures of understanding.

From this vantage, myths are not templates for inner transformation but instruments of symbolic construction — shaping what a collective can imagine, orient toward, and enact. The “archetypes” and “monomyths” of Campbell are therefore second-order abstractions: reflective readings of recurring construals, elevated into universalist theory. They are artefacts of comparison, not inherent features of the data.

The Decisive Cut
Relational ontology draws the critical distinction: the ontology of Campbell’s model ≠ the ontology of the myths themselves. The former is singular, universalising, and psychic; the latter is plural, situated, and collective. By preserving this cut, we reclaim myth as an active, temporal, reflexive, and spatially rich phenomenon.

Concluding Insight
Myth is not a path laid out by the unconscious; it is the architecture of possibility. It stages collective alignment, phases experience across horizons, and opens trajectories for becoming. In short, myths are not timeless patterns to be discovered; they are the relational instruments by which collectives construct, navigate, and expand their symbolic worlds.

Campbell’s monomyth, while elegant, is a mirror of our desire for universals. Relational ontology invites us instead to inhabit the plural, contingent, and creative reality of myth as it actually functions — as construal, alignment, and possibility in action.

Coda: Dwelling in the Relational Horizon of Myth

As we conclude this series, it is worth pausing not to summarise, but to reflect on the implications of a relational reading of myth. If Campbell’s monomyth invites us to see a singular path — the hero’s journey of individuation — relational ontology invites us to inhabit plural horizons of possibility. Myths are not mirrors of a timeless psyche; they are instruments through which collectives enact, navigate, and expand their symbolic worlds.

Each telling is a temporary cut into the vast field of potential: it phases alignment, projects relational possibilities, and shapes the collective’s horizon. Across cultures and epochs, the diversity of mythic form is not deviation from a universal pattern, but the very texture of symbolic life. The hero departs, yes — but the paths, landscapes, tensions, and resolutions are as varied as the communities who tell them.

In dwelling with myths relationally, we recognise the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of symbolic activity. We see that alignment and reflexivity are not metaphors, but operative processes that structure possibility. Myths are not discoveries of hidden truth; they are enactments of what a collective can become.

This perspective does not diminish the power or beauty of myth; rather, it deepens it. By attending to plurality, contingency, and process, we honour the creative and collective work that myths perform. We are invited to read myth as an architecture, to inhabit it as a landscape, and to participate in it as a living field of relational possibility.

Campbell’s vision, compelling though it is, reflects our desire for universals. The relational lens reframes that desire, allowing us to dwell instead in the rich, contingent, and evolving horizon of myth itself — a horizon in which every telling is both a projection and a possibility, and in which the collective imagines, aligns, and becomes.

In the end, myth is not a path to truth; it is the space in which truth is construed, rehearsed, and renewed. To engage with myth relationally is to dwell in that space, attentive to the plurality, phasing, and reflexivity that make collective life meaningful.

"Step lightly into the tales.
Notice the paths, but do not follow them as lines of destiny.
Attend instead to the spaces they open,
the alignments they perform,
the possibilities they call into being.
Here, myth is not a map, but a horizon —
and you are invited to dwell within it."

08 June 2025

Beyond Belief: Desire, Myth, and the Modal Grounds of Knowing

1 From Knowing That to Believing In

In most accounts of knowledge, we are taught to distinguish belief from truth, and truth from justification. Knowing, in this model, is believing the right things for the right reasons — belief that p, where p is a proposition, and belief is judged epistemically valid if it corresponds with a fact and is formed through reliable means. This is the familiar territory of “justified true belief,” long considered the cornerstone of epistemology.

But something essential gets left out of this picture. There is another kind of mental orientation toward the world, one that shapes not what we claim to know, but what we hope for, desire, or commit ourselves to. This is the domain of desiderative meaning, and it asks not, Is this true? but What do I want to be true? or What must I act as though is true?

In this way, we can distinguish between:

Belief that: a cognitive commitment, projecting propositions aligned with probability or usuality.
Belief in: a desiderative commitment, projecting proposals aligned with obligation or inclination.

Both are semiotic processes, and both are central to human meaning-making — but only one is usually counted as “knowing.” In the relational view we’re developing here, this is an untenable divide.

Knowing with Desire

In the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), both knowing and desiring are types of mental process, and both project meaning. But they do so with different modal alignments. Knowing aligns with the domain of truth and likelihood, while desiring aligns with duty and want — two complementary axes of how we construe meaning potential.

Importantly, both kinds of mental process involve projection: we relate one clause to another in a way that constructs a secondary world — not the actual, but the possible, probable, obligatory, or hoped-for. In this sense, both “I know that it will rain” and “I hope that it will rain” are not just reports but acts of semiotic world-making.

So why has the cognitive dimension — knowing that — been treated as epistemology’s only proper concern?

A Lopsided Epistemology

The answer lies partly in the metaphysics of substance: if the world is made of fixed things and true facts, then knowledge must consist in aligning one’s beliefs with these facts. Desires, in contrast, are seen as subjective, internal, emotional — and thus irrelevant to the epistemic enterprise.

But this distinction collapses under relational scrutiny. If meaning arises through participation — if knowing is becoming-with — then there can be no sharp boundary between truth and value, or between cognition and commitment. Our acts of knowing are always already shaped by what we care about, what we fear, what we long for.

Belief-in, then, is not epistemic excess. It is a fundamental mode of participation in meaning.

Toward a Broader Epistemology

This series takes that proposition seriously. Over the coming posts, we will:

Explore the modal dimensions of meaning — probability, obligation, inclination — and how they relate to knowledge.
Re-examine myth not just as a cognitive schema (explaining the world), but as a desiderative structure (expressing hope, loss, longing).
Recast the observer not as neutral recorder, but as participant, moved by desire as well as reason.
And consider what it means to know not only about the world, but to know with it — in resonance, in commitment, in hope.

In short, we want to move beyond the epistemology of facts, and toward an epistemology of commitment. Not to abandon truth, but to enrich our account of what it means to be truthful — not only to the world, but to one another.

2 Mental Process Types and Modal Meaning

If our epistemology is to do justice to both belief that and belief in, then we need to take a closer look at how meaning is construed in language. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) offers a powerful starting point through its categorisation of process types — the different ways that language represents experience.

Among these, mental processes are especially relevant to epistemology. They represent inner experience — what we perceive, think, feel, and want. SFL distinguishes four types of mental process:

Cognitive (e.g. know, think, believe that)
Perceptive (e.g. see, hear, notice)
Desiderative (e.g. want, hope, wish)
Emotive (e.g. like, fear, enjoy)

Each of these constructs reality in a different way, and each projects a different kind of clause — a different world.

What we know and think (cognitive processes) is not the same as what we hope or want (desiderative processes), and yet both types of mental process construct relations between subjects and projected meanings. These are not just private mental states, but semiotic acts — ways of making meaning.

Projection and Modality

In SFL, both cognitive and desiderative mental processes project a secondary clause — one that is not asserted directly, but posited as the content of thought or desire.

Compare:

I think that it will rain.
I hope that it will rain.

The projected clause is structurally similar, but modally distinct. One projects a proposition, evaluated for probability (likelihood), while the other projects a proposal, evaluated for inclination (want) or obligation (ought).

This distinction is crucial. It tells us that knowing and desiring are not only different mental orientations, but different modal relations to the world. When we believe that, we align ourselves with what we think is likely or true. When we believe in, we align ourselves with what we think is desirable, valuable, or necessary — regardless of its likelihood.

Modal Meaning as Epistemic Ground

Modality, in SFL, refers to a speaker’s orientation toward the validity of a clause. There are two broad types:

Modalisation: concerned with propositions (statements), and expressed through probability or usuality.
- e.g. It will probably rain.
- e.g. She usually arrives late.
Modulation: concerned with proposals (commands, offers, suggestions), and expressed through obligation or inclination.
- e.g. You must go now.
- e.g. I really want to help.

In mental projection, these modal meanings get embedded in the subject’s interior world — not just what is, but what could be, should be, or must be, according to some inner compass.

And here’s the key: these modal meanings are not marginal. They are central to how we orient to the world, to one another, and to the future.

In privileging only modalisation — belief judged by likelihood — traditional epistemology narrows the field of knowing. It discounts how meaning is brought forth in the desire to act, to change, to hope, to belong. Desiderative mental processes bring modality to life in a different key.

The Semiotic of Desire

To recognise this is to understand belief-in not as epistemic failure or sentimentality, but as a different orientation to meaning. Desiderative mental processes construe a world not of facts, but of commitments — of what matters, of what calls us forth.

This is the neglected ground of much myth, religion, and ritual — not explanatory systems to be assessed for truth or falsity, but semiotic ecosystems of hope and obligation. We misunderstand them when we reduce them to propositions to be believed that they are true. What they do is help people believe in something — and thus to act, endure, transform.

And that, too, is a way of knowing.

3 Modal Worlds, Real and Imagined

Desiderative mental processes — like hope, wish, want, believe in — do not only reveal something about the speaker's interior state. They also project modal worlds: possible, desirable, feared, or idealised versions of the world that orient human action and meaning.

In this post, we explore how such modal worlds are not illusions or fantasies to be measured against a singular ‘reality’ but are themselves real in a different sense: semiotic realities that motivate, stabilise, and transform material life.

The Function of Modal Worlds

All social meaning is grounded in what we might call shared fictions — not because they are false, but because they are as-if realities: worlds that we orient to, negotiate within, and act upon.

When someone says I believe in justice, they are not affirming a fact, but invoking a world — a world in which justice can be hoped for, fought for, and recognised.
When someone says I hope to see my grandmother in the afterlife, they are not making a scientific prediction, but participating in a modal world whose structure is ethical, affective, and relational.

Modal worlds can be:

Possible (It could happen)
Desirable (I wish it would happen)
Obligatory (It should happen)
Feared (It must not happen)
Enchanted (It always happens this way in stories)

These worlds are not secondary to ‘reality’; they mediate it. We move through life not only by perceiving what is, but by imagining what could or should be — and committing to it.

The Ontology of the Imagined

Our culture often contrasts ‘real’ with ‘imagined’ as if the latter is a diminished category. But from a relational and semiotic perspective, the imagined is not a retreat from reality, but an organ of orientation. It is part of how we live in time.

We imagine futures to decide what to do.
We imagine others' feelings to empathise.
We imagine different selves to grow and change.

In this sense, imagining is a way of knowing — not just about the external world, but about what matters. Modal worlds are affectively charged, socially scaffolded, and historically inherited. They are not mere inventions of individual minds but shared and maintained by language, art, ritual, and belief.

To believe in something — whether it’s freedom, a better future, or divine grace — is to live as if that world is real enough to act on. And in that action, the modal becomes material.

Myth as Modal World

This is where myth enters not as primitive cosmology but as modal architecture. A myth does not need to be ‘believed’ propositionally to be meaningful. It evokes a world in which values are dramatised, orientations made visible, and life endowed with purpose.

A myth tells us not just what happened, but how to live.
It encodes not just facts, but desires, obligations, hopes.

To dismiss myth for lacking propositional truth is to miss its modality entirely. A modal world is not a false representation of what is; it is a relational invocation of what could be — a staging ground for ethics, emotion, and imagination.

Knowing Beyond Propositions

Modal knowing, then, is not concerned with likelihood alone, but with orientation — with how we situate ourselves in relation to possibilities. This is a kind of knowing that moves through hope, longing, promise, commitment. And it can be just as structured, just as meaningful, as propositional reasoning.

To believe in is not to deny reality, but to enact a relationship to it — a relationship shaped by values, desires, and the modal fabric of meaning.

4 Myth as Modal Architecture

In the previous post, we introduced the idea of modal worlds — possible, desired, feared, or idealised worlds that are brought forth by the desiderative mode of meaning. Now we turn to myth as a special kind of modal structure — not merely a story, but a way of orienting desire, value, and possibility.

Beyond Fact and Fiction

Myth is often misunderstood in modern discourse as a kind of failed science — an outdated attempt to explain the world before we had better tools. But this view presupposes that the purpose of myth is explanation in the propositional mode. From a relational perspective, this is a category error.

Myth does not aim to explain what is. It aims to enact what matters.

A myth constructs a world that:

Shows what is worth striving for or guarding against.
Dramatises the tensions between forces like love and power, chaos and order, sacrifice and survival.
Positions the subject in relation to these tensions — as a hero, a pilgrim, a mourner, a supplicant.

In this sense, myth is modal architecture: it shapes the imaginative, ethical, and affective contours of the world we inhabit.

The Modal Grammar of Myth

Like any semiotic structure, myth has its own internal logic — not one of evidence and inference, but of orientation and enactment. Myths:

Construe a beginning not to mark historical origin, but to set the terms of a world.
Propose a telos — an end or aim — that is less about finality and more about value.
Populate the world with forces, often personified, that represent modal oppositions: temptation vs duty, fate vs freedom, harmony vs transgression.

The result is not a static worldview but a living matrix in which meaning unfolds over time. Myths are dynamic: they are re-enacted, retold, ritualised — not to recall past events but to rehearse possibilities.

Belief in vs Belief that

When someone says I believe in the resurrection, they are not necessarily claiming a historical fact (belief that), but enacting a modal commitment (belief in). They are living toward a world in which death is not the last word. The difference is crucial:

Belief that is cognitive, evidentiary, propositional.
Belief in is relational, affective, ethical.

Myths operate primarily in the second register. They generate possibility spaces within which life can be oriented — and reoriented — in light of longing, loss, hope, or joy.

The Participatory Nature of Myth

To engage a myth is not to assess it, but to inhabit it. We do not stand outside it, judging its truth-value like a neutral observer. We enter it — not as dupes, but as participants in its drama.

This participation is not a matter of literal belief but of modal alignment. One lives as if the world disclosed by the myth is meaningful — and thereby brings it forth, not as delusion, but as semiotic reality.

In this way, myth is not a window onto an objective past, but a mirror that reveals what we value, fear, and strive for — and a map for orienting desire in a world of uncertainty.

Myth as a Technology of Desire

Modernity has sought to displace myth with method — to replace story with system. But desire cannot be methodically bracketed. It finds its way back through new myths: of progress, of nation, of romantic love, of personal branding. The question is not whether we live by myths, but which myths we live by, and whether we do so consciously or blindly.

A relational epistemology does not discard myth. It honours its role as a technology of desire — a way of shaping and sharing our orientations toward the possible, the good, the feared, and the sacred.

5 Literalism and the Violence of Interpretation

As we saw in the previous post, myth is not a statement of facts but a semiotic architecture for desire — a living map of possible worlds that orients meaning, value, and action. But what happens when this modal fabric is flattened? When the world of myth is no longer lived as if it were meaningful, but enforced as though it were fact?

This flattening is literalism, and its consequences are profound.

Literalism: A Collapse of Modal Awareness

Literalism is not simply a misunderstanding. It is a collapse of the modal distinctions that allow language — and life — to function relationally. Where myth opens a space of orientation and participation, literalism closes that space, reducing the polyphony of desire to a single voice of dogma.

In linguistic terms, literalism mistakes a proposal for a proposition, and a modal projection for a statement of fact. The mythic belief in becomes a propositional belief that — and this shift entails a profound change in the mode of knowing:

The open-endedness of longing becomes a closed system of doctrine.
The ethical encounter becomes an epistemic test of allegiance.
The drama of transformation becomes a demand for affirmation.

The Violence of Certainty

This reduction is not neutral. It exerts a kind of epistemic violence, because it enforces a single interpretation as the only legitimate access to meaning. It denies the relational nature of understanding and replaces it with compliance. This violence can take many forms:

Doctrinal enforcement: Believe that the story is true, or be excluded.
Hermeneutic control: Interpret the text this way, or be condemned.
Affective policing: Feel this way about the myth, or be accused of irreverence.

Literalism closes the gap between map and terrain — and then punishes those who notice the difference.

The Myth of Objectivity

Literalism is often defended as a form of reverence — fidelity to the truth of the tradition. But paradoxically, it is a modern deformation of myth, shaped by the same epistemic assumptions it claims to resist:

It treats myth as information to be transmitted, rather than a world to be inhabited.
It treats knowledge as possession, rather than participation.
It confuses semantic fidelity (literal meaning) with modal resonance (relational significance).

In doing so, it imports the epistemology of science — clarity, certainty, reproducibility — into domains where ambiguity, multivalence, and transformation are essential.

Literalism, in this sense, is not too ancient but too modern.

Recovering the Relational Space

To move beyond literalism is not to abandon myth. It is to recover its modal power — its ability to orient and re-orient desire, not by force of fact, but by the ethical and imaginative pull of meaning. This requires:

Holding myth lightly — not as an object of possession, but as a living practice.
Honouring its affective force — its capacity to move, trouble, or transfigure us.
Welcoming multiple readings — not as threats, but as invitations to deeper participation.

In this way, we can recover what literalism obscures: that myth does not demand belief, but invites us into a relation — a shared orientation toward what matters most.

6 Desire and the Ethics of Interpretation

Interpretation is never neutral. It is shaped not only by what we know, but by what we want — our desires, fears, longings, and ethical commitments. To interpret myth, then, is not just to assign meaning, but to position oneself in relation to meaning. It is, inescapably, an ethical act.

In this post, we explore the often-overlooked role of desire in interpretation — not only what the text means to us, but what we hope to find, fear to lose, or seek to preserve in the act of interpreting it.

Beyond Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Much modern interpretation, especially in critical theory, has been animated by what Paul Ricoeur called a hermeneutics of suspicion — an orientation that seeks to unmask hidden ideologies, false consciousness, or oppressive structures. While this approach has yielded important insights, it often presumes:

That meaning is hidden and must be uncovered.
That the interpreter stands outside the text.
That desire is delusion or distortion, to be overcome.

But desire is not always a danger to meaning. Sometimes it is what opens the space of meaning in the first place.

Desire as Interpretive Horizon

Desire orients interpretation because it discloses what matters. It shapes not only what we notice in a myth, but how we respond to it:

The one who hopes for redemption will read a myth of descent differently from the one who fears judgment.
The one who longs for communion will interpret symbols of unity with different affect than the one who fears loss of self.
The one who suffers will not read the promise of transformation as a mere metaphor.

Desire does not cloud meaning; it constitutes its relevance. We do not interpret despite our desires — we interpret through them.

Myth and the Ethics of Response

To treat interpretation as ethical is to ask not just “What does this mean?” but also:

“What does this ask of me?”
“What kind of world does this myth make possible or impossible?”
“Who is excluded, harmed, or uplifted by this reading?”

This means recognising that:

Some readings are not wrong, but unjust — they marginalise, erase, or oppress.
Some readings are not true, but transformative — they enable life to be lived differently.
Some readings are not authorised, but responsible — they bear the weight of care.

Interpretation is thus not merely epistemological. It is existential and ethical: it reveals who we are in relation to what we read.

Desire, Responsibility, and Participation

When we understand desire as an ethical horizon of interpretation, we recover the relational nature of knowing. We are no longer observers extracting meaning from myth, but participants co-creating meaning in light of our desires and responsibilities.

This calls for:

Humility: Recognising the limits of one’s own reading.
Reverence: Honouring the depth and affective weight of myth.
Dialogue: Welcoming other desires, other interpretations, other worlds.

And above all, it calls for care — not only in how we interpret, but in how we live what interpretation reveals.

7 Myth as Transformative Orientation

In the end, myth is not simply a story we tell about the world. It is a way of orienting ourselves within the world — shaping how we perceive, how we feel, how we act, and what we become. It is a map, not of geography, but of possibility.

In this concluding post, we bring together the threads of epistemology, modality, and desire to frame myth not as static belief, but as a living orientation toward transformation — both individual and collective.

Myth as Modal Compass

Throughout this series, we have distinguished two modal grounds of myth:

Epistemic: Concerned with truth, probability, evidence — “Is this what happened?”
Deontic/desiderative: Concerned with values, obligations, hopes — “Is this the world I long for?”

When we treat myth epistemically, it becomes belief — to be confirmed or denied.
When we treat myth desideratively, it becomes orientation — to be lived into or resisted.

This shift reveals that myth is less a description of reality than a proposal for living. It does not merely represent the world; it opens worlds.

Myth and Transformative Knowing

A myth that truly orients us does more than tell us what is — it transforms what can be. It becomes:

A way of seeing ourselves and others anew.
A source of courage in times of despair.
A frame through which action gains coherence and consequence.

Knowing myth, in this sense, is not a matter of having facts, but of being grasped — and moved — by meaning. It is a form of knowing-with: with the body, with the heart, with the community, with the Earth.

Myth and Ethical Becoming

Because myth shapes how we live, it bears an ethical weight. A transformative orientation is not just one that feels meaningful — but one that:

Respects difference.
Cultivates responsibility.
Enables flourishing across boundaries of self and other.

In this light, the question is not “Is this myth literally true?” but:

“What kind of person does this myth invite me to become?”
“What kind of community does it imagine?”
“What world does it make possible?”

Such questions restore myth to its relational role: as a medium of becoming-with — not just knowing-about.

Beyond Belief

If belief says, “I hold this to be true,” and doubt says, “I am not sure,” then orientation says, “I will walk this path.”

This is where myth lives: not in the certainty of facts, nor the insecurity of doubt, but in the courage of participation.

In a fractured world, myths that invite care, transformation, and solidarity are not optional luxuries. They are vital acts of ethical imagination — ways of opening what might yet be.

Closing the Series

This series has suggested that myth is not simply a mode of knowing, but a modality of living. To honour it is not to explain it away, nor to enforce belief, but to recognise how deeply it touches desire, guides becoming, and sustains relation.

In rethinking myth beyond belief, we recover its power as an ethical and existential orientation — one that enables us not just to interpret the world, but to live it otherwise.

Series Reflection: From Knowing About to Living With

This series set out to explore a deceptively simple premise: not all knowing is belief, and not all myths aim to be believed. What began as a distinction between epistemic and desiderative modalities soon unfolded into a deeper inquiry — into the nature of meaning, orientation, and the ethical stakes of what we know and how we live.

What Did the Series Reveal?

Modal Plurality
The dominant Western tendency to treat knowledge as propositional belief blinds us to the rich diversity of mental processes. Desiderative modes — wanting, hoping, believing in — are not deviations from rational knowing but essential modalities of being-in-the-world.
Myth as More Than Belief
When viewed solely through an epistemic lens, myth becomes a primitive hypothesis. But when viewed through a desiderative lens, myth becomes a participatory orientation — one that calls us, forms us, and transforms us.
The Observer as Desirer
We are not just observers of meaning but desiring participants in meaning-making. Our longings shape what we notice, value, and commit to — and thus shape reality as lived.
Myth and World-Making
Myth is not about returning to a fantasy past but about animating a liveable future. Its truth lies not in its literal accuracy, but in its capacity to call forth new possibilities for ethical co-existence.

How Has This Extended Our Epistemology?

The relational epistemology we’ve been developing is no longer just about knowing-with — it now includes hoping-with, believing-with, and becoming-with. Myth, from this view, is not merely a container of meanings but a relational process that unfolds between participants, desires, values, and time.

Just as belief seeks coherence with reality, hope seeks resonance with possibility. And both are shaped not in isolation, but in co-emergent relation with others — human and more-than-human.