Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology

Definitely the first time I came into contact with the genuine object of discussion of religion, and the precise interpretation and reasoning process for the scriptures. The Absolute, Time, etc. articulated in very abstract and intuitive way in his "The Ages of the World" or "Philosophy and Religion" are now supported by abundant historical facts and progressive reasoning in this lecture series. Even want to correspond the exact process of the formation of the ultimately pre-historical world according to his ideas, it is not easy to epitomize and not really exact. But it will definitely give you a relatively clear idea or path. For the highest entity, which is only referred to as "The Absolute" in "Philosophy and Religion" or "God" in the Ages book, more levels of division are given here, and there is even a division of "authenticity", namely Elohim or Jehovah, and the factions corresponding to these two gods, and the real prehistoric history of man and the emergence and evolution of the various peoples related to them.

Moreover, because of the considerable distinction between Christianity and paganism, and the discussion of the reasons for the emergence of the various peoples are intensively being made in this lecture series, users who are interested in Aryan worship, pan-black metal culture and romantic-esoteric thinkers can also find one of the routes to actual thinking about all of this here.

Here we have a path to true poetry. It would be a pity if artists, poets, and musicians hadn't thought about this metaphysical-historical-religious process of this world through book like this.

First, a complaint: the translation is awful, coupled with the fact that this is not a proper writing but a lecture series filled with parenthetical phrases, it is nearly unreadable. I understand that the translator might wanted to preserve the German sentence structures, but the result is just... intolerable.

As I've said earlier, Voegelin's Order and History, Jung's entire project regarding the transformation of archetypes in history, and the entire field of History of Religions, is foreshadowed by this brief series of lectures. Even Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind is discernible in its original, and maybe, better shape. Here Schelling, who like his contemporaries was well educated in ancient languages and philology, applies philosophy of consciousness, Biblical hermenuetics (higher criticism and canonical), masterfully, to draw an outline of the history of consciousness which is inseparable from the mythological narratives of world religion. Thus a strong link is revealed that holds consciousness and mythology together, so that concepts like revelation begin to make sense. His speculations about monotheism preceeding successive polytheism is largely confirmed by later researches (and also by earliest Upanishads), though not made popular (relative monotheistic became Deus otiosus in successive polytheistic systems), and by means of distinguishing between, first, relative monotheism and the God in actu (Elohim), and second, absolute, true monotheism and the God in truth (Yahweh), the entire uniqueness of the religion of the Israelite becomes to make sense. Here, the mystical teachings of, say, Kabbalah, and the historical-critical method, cooperate harmoniously so that unprecedented and yet without successor, mystical teachings become real and the historical-critical method becomes mystical.

For Schelling, his lectures are much more insightful than his finished writings, since it is the speculation in act and in life that is the essence of Schelling's thoughts, rather than any fixed position. This is a non-dogmatic, powerful thinker, whose power can only be comprehended by participating in his thinking process, rather than reading a summary of his positions.