# Sacred Mythology and the Baha'i Faith

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: William P. Collins, Sacred Mythology and the Baha'i Faith, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Published in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 2, number 4 (1990)
> © Association for Bahá’í Studies 1990
> 
> Sacred Mythology and the Bahá’í Faith
> William P. Collins
> 
> Abstract
> Myths are metaphors that convey truth about the indescribable through powerful images and experiences. The
> mythological models synthesized by Joseph Campbell, such as the monomyth with its attendant metaphysical.
> cosmological, sociological, and psychological purposes, underscore the fundamental unity of human spiritual
> experience. The Bahá’í Faith employs three significant spiritual verities to fulfil the purposes of myth and to open
> for all Bahá’í the full depth and range of the world’s mythologies: The unknowable nature of the Ultimate Mystery;
> the relativity of religious/mythological truth; and the necessity of science and investigation of reality. The Bahá’í
> Faith also possesses a sacred drama—history as myth—from which the Bahá’í community takes its signposts for
> individual and collective development. All of these aspects of Bahá’í mythology are the basis for a coherent
> mythological landscape through which each human being must travel. The mythological universe created by
> Bahá’u’lláh frees the soul to experience and understand all mythologies, to explore and be awed by the physical
> universe understood by science and reason, and to undertake the universal adventure through which all may become
> fully human.
> 
> Résumé
> Les mythes sont des métaphores qui véhiculent des vérités au sujet de “l’indescriptible” par le moyen d’images et
> d’expériences fortes. Les modéles mythologiques synthétisés par Joseph Campbell, tel le monomythe avec ses buts
> métaphysiques, cosmologiques, sociologiques et psychologiques, soulignent l’unité fondamentale de l’expérience
> spirituelle humaine. La foi bahá’íe emploie trois vérités spirituelles importantes pour rendre compte du mythe et
> ouvrir à tous les bahá’ís l’éventail et la profondeur des mythologies du monde: la nature inconnaissable du Mystère
> Ultime; la relativité de la verité religieuse ou mythologique; la nécessité de la science et de la recherche de la réalité.
> La foi bahá’íe possède aussi un drame sacré—l’histoire comme mythe—d’où la communauté bahá’íe tire ses points
> de repère pour le développement individuel et collectif. Tous ces aspects de la mythologie bahá’íe constituent la
> base d’un paysage mythologique cohérent que chaque être humain doit traverser. L’univers mythologique créé par
> Bahá’u’lláh libère l’âme et lui permet de vivre et de comprendre toutes les mythologies, d’explorer et d’admirer
> l’univers physique tel qu’expliqué par la science et la raison, et d’entreprendre l’aventure universelle par laquelle
> tous peuvent devenir pleinement humains.
> 
> Resumen
> Los mitos son metáforas que acarrean verdades acerca de lo indescriptible mediante imágenes y experiencias
> poderosas. Los modelos mitológicos sintetizados por Joseph Campbell, tales como el monomito con sus
> acompañantes propósitos metafísicos, cosmológicos, sociológicos, y psicológicos subrayan la unidad fundamental
> de la experiencia espirituel humana. La Fe Bahá’í se vale de tres verdades espirituales para realizar los propósitos
> del mito y para dar a conocer a todos los bahá’ís la entera profundidad y alcance de las mitologías del mundo: El
> carácter inconocible de aquel Ultimo Misterio; la relatividad de la verdad religiosa/mitólogica; y la necesidad de la
> ciencia y la investigación de la realidad. La Fe Bahá’í tambien posee un drama sagrado—la historia como mito—
> desde el cual la comunidad bahá’í consigue su norte para el desarrollo individual y colectivo. Todos estos aspectos
> de la mitología bahá’í forman la base de un panorama mitológico coherente por el cual todo ser humano debe de
> atraversar. El universo mitológico creado por Bahá’u’lláh libra el alma para experimentar y comprender todas las
> mitologías, explorar y sentir admiración reverente por el universo físico comprendido por la ciencia y la razón, y
> llevar a cabo la aventura universal mediante la cual todos puedan hacerse completamente humanos.
> 
> M    ythology is something all of us know, although we may only dimly perceive that we have such knowledge. In
> this essay we will go on a quest. What we will find on the journey may be taken by some as merely one
> model, among other models, by which we can systematize our knowledge of human social and cultural
> development; or the quest may result in some new appreciation of the varieties of spiritual expression; or it may
> invest some of us with a profound sense of the wondrous nature of life and with the awareness that the revelation of
> Bahá’u’lláh is a part of a magnificent unfoldment of humanity’s capacities that stretches back into the dim reaches
> of human evolution, ahead into the future, outward toward the infinite macrocosm of the universe, and inward to the
> infinite microcosm of the human heart.
> Humanity’s cultural and spiritual history exhibits a striking unity at the level of its recurring motifs: fire,
> theft, flood, virgin birth, angels, demons, and resurrected heroes. These themes have a worldwide distribution,
> appealing in modified form in accordance with the sociocultural context, while remaining always variations on a few
> major elements. Such elemental myths may be told for entertainment, in a spirit of play, but with an underlying
> serious educative and psychological purpose (cf. Bettelheim). They may also become manifest “in religious
> contexts, where they are accepted not only as factually true, but even as revelations of the verities to which the
> whole culture is a living witness” (Campbell, Primitive 3). Men and women have continually lived and clung to
> these motifs in mysticism, liturgy, poetry, art, philosophy, music, song, and ecstatic experience (Campbell, Primitive
> 3–4).
> 
> What is Mythology?
> Myths are metaphors that convey truth by making such truth a vivid image and living experience which can be
> incorporated into traditional personal and social behavior or that may transform or even overthrow the existing order
> through the power (if not the shock) of the image. Why are metaphors necessary to the conveyance of truth, rather
> than the simple statement that such-and-such is so? To experience life fully, to understand one’s place in the
> universe, it is necessary to have some grasp of the reality of the ultimate mysteries of the universe (one among
> which we may call God, or Brahman, or simply the Uncreated, or even “the void”). This mystery is not describable
> in direct language: in Aquinas’s words “for then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that He is far above
> all that man can possibly think of God” (Summa contra Gentiles 1:5). ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that outward forms and
> symbols must be used to convey intellectual conceptions. He says that there are two kinds of knowledge: “...the
> knowledge of things perceptible to the senses” and “knowledge [that] is intellectual [which]...has no outward form
> and no place and is not perceptible to the senses” (Some Answered Questions 83). For the intellectual, spiritual,
> metaphorical reality to be made clear, we must use material things and sense perception to convey inner
> significance.
> Before proceeding further, there are two caveats to issue. First, there is a distinction between myth and
> human fancy. Mythology and its associated rites “supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in
> cointeraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may well be that the very high
> incidence” of emotional problems in our societies “follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual
> aid” (Campbell, Hero 11). The enduring myths, with their attendant symbols and emotions, are capable of effecting
> personal transformation and obtaining group cohesion, rather than stranding the individual in a personal quagmire
> and leaving society with the care of damaged psyches. Second, the mythological point of view—that is, the way to
> obtain truth from the myth—requires that we not confuse the vehicle with the message. In the Kitáb-i-Íqán,
> Bahá’u’lláh provides humankind with a perspective from which to understand mythological ideas from previous
> sacred scriptures. All believers, of whatever religion, tend to read their own myths as facts. Bahá’u’lláh cautions us
> frequently about this tendency that Campbell calls the “positivistic...represented, on the one hand, by religious
> experiences of the literal sort, where the impact of the daemon,1 rising to the plane of consciousness from its place of
> birth on the level of the sentiments, is taken to be objectively real, and on the other, by science and political
> economy, for which only measurable facts are objectively real...[W]henever a myth has been taken literally its sense
> has been perverted...[and] whenever it has been dismissed as a mere priestly fraud or sign of inferior intelligence,
> truth has slipped out the other door” (Oriental 27).
> Whence come our myths? Human beings are, in a very real sense, physical bodies in a material universe.
> Yet human beings are also endowed with minds that grasp concepts and make connections between things and what
> those things signify: John Hatcher has dealt at length in two works (“Metaphorical,” Purpose) with physical creation
> as a vehicle for conveying truths beyond those physical things themselves. I would also include among the realities
> that are metaphorical, the relationships among people (especially family members), and the emotions that we feel.
> Carl Jung spoke of “archetypal images” that are ingrained on human experience through the mind’s need to resolve
> the individual’s place in the family, in society, in the universe, and within the self.
> 
> Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the
> same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in dream, the forms are quirked by the peculiar
> troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all
> mankind. (Campbell, Hero 19)
> 
> There appears to be some support for this in the Bahá’í writings, where Bahá’u’lláh discusses the sleeping state as
> “the most mysterious of the signs of God amongst men...” and writes that the world of dream “hath neither begin-
> ning nor end,” is “within thy proper self and is wrapped up within thee” and yet may also be “hidden in the
> innermost reality of this world” (Gleanings 152). We may also say that the myths and fables of the world are the
> product of revelation, as the majority of such metaphors are enshrined in the sacred literature of all the world’s
> tribal, national, and universal religions. Without stretching the point too far, we may even ask whether the process of
> revelation itself is not a form of dream while awake, and dream itself a form of revelation while asleep.
> 
> Mythological Models
> Joseph Campbell brilliantly synthesized a number of models in his works on comparative mythology and in his
> examination of personal transformation. These frameworks are of particular interest in studying Bahá’í sacred
> mythology.
> Humanity developed through two major early stages in mythological thinking, associated with the two
> primary ways in which people obtained their livelihood. The first, the “forest” mythology, was the mythology of the
> hunter and gatherer, who operated within a very small social group and who functioned primarily as an individual
> facing the mystery of the natural world. In this mythology, the mythological symbols were the animals and natural
> forces, power over which ensured food, clothing, and safe shelter in the yearly migratory cycle. The “village”
> mythology related to the universe perceived by the cultivator, where the seasonal cycles and fructification of the
> earth became the center of ritual, and in which the individual had a place in a larger society in which the individual’s
> wilder impulses had to be subjected to the needs of the group.
> Both of these types of mythology had four main purposes: first, to “reconcile waking consciousness to the
> mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is”—a mystical and metaphysical prospect; second, to give
> an overall view of this universal mystery in a cosmological scheme; third, to enforce moral order by molding the
> individual to the requirements of his or her social, temporal, and geographical conditions—the sociological prospect;
> and fourth, but most crucial, the psychological prospect, wherein is nurtured the “centering and unfolding of the
> individual, in integrity, in accord with...himself (the microcosm), ... his culture (the mesocosm),... the universe (the
> macrocosm), and...that awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within himself and all things”
> (Campbell, Creative 4–6, 609–24).
> How mythology fulfilled these purposes lay in the formulation of ritual and cyclical reenactment of
> mythological events, and in the telling and retelling of inspiring stories that acted as signposts along the road of
> inner development. It is no accident that we find repetition of such themes as the god or heavenly messenger who is
> killed, then planted or eaten, and then resurrected or returned whole in a new form: the Greek legend of Dionysos,
> god of bread and wine, twice-born son of God (first prematurely from his mother so that he might be preserved from
> the wrath of jealous Hera, and then again from the side of great Zeus himself), who was symbolically killed and
> eaten at harvest time, descended into Hades, and was resurrected in the spring; or the Ojibway legend of the origin
> of maize, when the boy Wunzh, seeking his spirit vision, wrestled a heavenly messenger who then instructed Wunzh
> to kill him and plant his body, out of which the corn grew; or the Christian story of Jesus, Son of God, who shared—
> metaphorically—his body (bread) and blood (wine), was killed, descended into hell, and rose on the third day, in
> springtime, from the dead. The cycle of life—the mystery of death and rebirth and of triumph over death—is, in its
> mythical richness, the enlivener of our experience of the universe.
> Beyond the ritual observance of myth, however, is this “centering and unfolding of the individual” of
> which Campbell writes. This is where we come to the heart of inner life, to the hero quest, and to a model that
> Campbell calls the “monomyth”—that is, the model or single myth of which all hero myths and inward quests are
> simply the multiple forms. In the fairy tale of the frog prince, a king had several beautiful daughters, of whom the
> youngest was dazzling. The princess used to play near a spring in the dark forest near the castle. She would toss her
> favorite plaything—a golden ball—into the air, but one day it bounced into the spring and sank to the bottom. As
> she cried over her lost toy, she heard a voice ask her what was the matter. When she looked up, the princess saw a
> frog holding its ugly head out of the water. Once the princess bad explained her dilemma, the frog offered his
> assistance; but with a catch: he wanted the princess to agree to care for him and be his companion. The princess,
> thinking that a frog would never really have any interest in a human being, agreed. The frog gleefully retrieved the
> ball, whereupon the heedless princess scampered away while the frog croaked loudly after her. I need not remind
> yon that the story does not end there, and the princess finds herself in a dilemma when the frog arrives at the palace
> door. Likewise, recall Bahá'u'lláh’s recounting in The Seven Valleys (13–14) of the “lover who had sighed for long
> years in separation from his beloved,” who so despaired of ever reaching the goal of his beloved that he decided that
> he could no longer live and made for the marketplace where he would end his life. By chance he was espied by a
> watchman who followed after him, and when the lover began to run, other watchmen appeared to bar the way, until,
> in a last desperate attempt to escape, the lover leapt over a wall and found himself in the garden of his beloved.
> These are typical examples of how a quest in the direction of the inner self begins: a blunder, the merest seeming
> chance, brings us face to face with forces not rightly understood, and off we go. But this is not mere accident; it is
> the operation of those deepest spiritual and psychological forces that represent the perennial working out of our
> destinies. This is “the Call,” the beginning of the hero quest that is our way toward fulfillment of our potential as
> fully spiritual human beings. The Call is followed by supernatural assistance from “the Helper” or “the Guide,” who
> offers some protection or direction toward the “Threshold of adventure,” at which there may occur battles with
> dragons or an evil brother or an alter-ego, dismemberment, crucifixion, abduction, sea journeys, night journeys, or
> descent into the belly of a great fish. The passing of this threshold, for those who make it, is followed by “tests” that
> must be passed before the winning of the prize. Psyche, in her search for lost Cupid, was forced by Venus to
> perform several impossible tasks, which Psyche managed to perform with the aid of lowly helpers; and Heracles had
> to perform twelve labors to be allowed to return to his home. The hero or heroine who has managed to pass the tests
> finally reaches “the Goal,” at which he/she enters a sacred marriage, attains atonement, undergoes apotheosis
> (becomes divine), or steals elixir for humankind. The hero then undergoes “the Flight” back across the Threshold of
> adventure, either by resurrection, rescue, return, or further battles. Returned to the daylight conscious world, the
> hero/heroine brings some boon, some contribution, to humankind, as did Prometheus with the fire he stole from the
> gods (Campbell, Hero 245).
> 
> Bahá’í Myth
> How does this apply to the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh? I mentioned earlier that mythology has four main purposes—
> mystical/metaphysical, cosmological, sociological, and psychological. It is a revealing exercise to ponder the
> mythological, rather than the doctrinal or administrative, significance of the Bahá’í texts, and there are some
> fascinating, though tentative, conclusions.
> 
> The Ultimate Mystery Unknowable
> The Ultimate Mystery of the universe—the Divine Reality—however we name It, is neither describable nor
> knowable. What we see in the material universe, the moment it exists, enters the world of names and becomes
> multiple rather than unitary, The fundamental mystic quest of all religions, including the Bahá’í Faith, is to become
> aware of and to experience the unitary nondual reality behind the mask of the physical universe, as well as of the
> way that Ultimate Reality manifests Itself and acts in the world of perceptible forms. The purpose is to reach that
> stage at which the “true believer...refuseth to allow any notion of multiplicity to becloud his conception of the
> singleness of God, who will regard the Divine Being as One Who, by His very nature, transcendeth the limitations
> of numbers” (Gleanings 166–67), to know that Reality to be exalted above words and attributes and not subject to
> the kingdom of names. No direct intercourse is possible with this Divine Reality, which describes Itself as both
> manifest and hidden, and which our minds cannot encompass because of essential human limitations. I stress the
> unknowability of God as the fundamental mythological principle of the Bahá’í approach to mysticism and
> cosmology for three reasons. First, this is the first time that any Manifestation has, to my knowledge, boldly stated
> this as a key concept, and as with all such radical departures from past tendency, it stands out and must have vast
> significance for how we see things. The second reason is that the very fundamental realization that God is not
> knowable directly frees everyone from the tyranny of a single myth about God. One of the most pernicious problems
> in religious history has been the tendency of religions, when coming face to face with each other or confronting new
> problems, to try to make new truths and discoveries fit the Procrustean bed of some ancient and localized God-myth.
> Myths, being vehicles, ought not to be confused with the truth they are intended to convey; there is nothing more
> damaging, nor more desirable to be freed from, than a myth—religious, social, or personal—too literally and too
> solidly believed. The third reason is that an Unknowable Ultimate Reality can still be experienced by people from
> any mythological tradition and indeed inspire that mystic awe which is the engenderer of true humility.
> 
> Relativity of Religious/Mythological Truth
> Though the inability to know God directly now frees humanity from subjection to a single myth, this occurs in
> concert with a seemingly contradictory principle: that the Ultimate Reality periodically and progressively manifests
> Itself through a divine Hero-Figure and a new myth, of necessity appearing in history and within a cultural context.
> Bahá’u’lláh qualifies God’s unknowability by noting that God does not therefore leave humankind in a state of
> spiritual and mythological anarchy or conflict. He sends his Manifestations—perfect beings who both convey and
> embody divine teachings for the time in which they appear. To know these divine beings, these sacred heroes, is to
> know the Unknowable Reality by its attributes, provided we recognize the Manifestation for our own time. Not to
> recognize the theophany of our time is not really to understand the earlier theophanies and the larger schema of
> which they are a part. By extension, not to enter into the sacred myth in its current expression is to find oneself
> divorced from the full intent of the sacred mythologies of the past. This process of revelation of the Divine Mystery
> is viewed in Bahá’í thought as progressive both in time and in metaphorical complexity and sophistication. Each
> appearance is composed of (1) an eternal, mythologically relevant portion, and (2) everyday social practices and
> customs geared to the requirements of the time. The former is not itself static but is subject to humanity’s growing
> ability to understand relative meaning and analogical structure. Likewise, the latter is not merely a culturally—and
> temporally—determined package of customs but rather a set of pointers back toward the mythological prospects, the
> metaphorical meanings, of the system.
> Therefore, the second revolutionary and mythologically significant wellspring of the Bahá’í Faith is the
> idea that “religious truth is not absolute but relative...” (Shoghi Effendi, World Order 58). The importance of the
> idea of relativism is covered at length in Moojan Momen’s excellent essay on the subject (“Relativism,” Studies
> 185–217). The major point that can be made, with considerable support from the Bahá’í writings, is that monism
> (where no difference is seen between the human self and the Absolute) and dualism (where the Absolute is totally
> different, separate, and other than humans) are not mutually contradictory, but represent two legitimate ways of
> seeing a reality that transcends both. We are told that to know ourselves is to know God. This is not because we are
> God, but rather because our essence—the human heart—is a mirror to the attributes of the Ultimate Reality. The
> mirror and the things it reflects are and are not identical. As in Bahá’u’lláh’s analogy of the sun and the mirror, to
> say that the sun and the mirror are identical does not encompass the reality of the system. Yet it is also incorrect to
> say that the sun is not in the mirror, inasmuch as we clearly see it reflected there. Another analogy, still more
> pointed in its paradoxical nature, can be derived from physics. Light has been found to exhibit attributes both of
> particles and of waves. The reality of light is that light is above and beyond these constructs, whereas the study and
> measurement of light requires the choice of one or the other of these two states at the given moment when human
> scientific observation occurs. When we see the light with our own eyes, however, we know its reality by its
> attributes and effects, separately from any consideration of whether it is particle or wave. Thus, while Bahá’u’lláh
> writes of God as being so exalted that no direct intercourse is possible, He also states in The Hidden Words, “Turn
> thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting” (7). To
> explain either of these statements using Aristotelian logic is likely to do a disservice to the mystic profundity of
> Bahá’u’lláh’s writings.
> 
> Science and the Investigation of Reality
> A third linchpin in the Bahá’í mythological system is the independent investigation of reality and the relationship of
> religion to science. If you search the Bahá’í writings (particularly the expositions by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá), you will find
> that the study of reality is enjoined upon every mind. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá extols the power of the human mind to
> understand the laws of nature, whereby humanity is able to make use of those laws; he calls this power
> “supernatural” (Promulgation 50). If the human species is endowed with such powers of penetration into physical
> reality, then religion (and therefore the cosmological prospect of mythology) must be in accord with this
> supernatural endowment’s discoveries. “Every religion which is not in accordance with established science is
> superstition,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says (63); and Shoghi Effendi writes that “we are a religion and not qualified to pass on
> scientific matters...” (30 Sept. 1950, Selections from Writings on Health). These statements about the relation
> between religion and science mean that the investigation of physical reality is not to be made subordinate to
> mythological images that have been taken literally; the specific topics of study and the theories consequent on
> scientific study of the nature of the physical universe are not the appropriate sphere into which religion may be
> permitted to introduce questions of heresy.2 In some sense, every mythological system of the past has been in accord
> with the science of its time. One reason that we have seen this debilitating conflict between science and religion
> during recent centuries is that we have—for example, in the case of Judaeo-Christian myths about creation—the
> “science” of more than four millennia ago conflicting with the science of today. We know human evolution to have
> taken place, not because it is confirmed in the Bahá’í writings, but because it has been shown by careful scientific
> investigation over many years, much of it before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá actually voiced the Bahá’í confirmation. Nor is it
> because ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained the meaning of the myth of Jesus Christ’s resurrection that we understand that it
> did not take place literally; our minds already understood that such an occurrence was not in accord with long-
> observed scientific fact. What the Bahá'í formulation teaches us is the meaning of the fact of evolution and the
> significance of the resurrection story. Scientific knowledge has not lessened the need for spiritual frameworks in
> life, nor has it robbed us of a cosmology that inspires awe and reverence.
> ...as far as the HERE and NOW is concerned (and, my friends, we are still here), the first function of a
> mythology—to waken a sense of awe, humility and respect. before that ultimate mystery, transcending
> names and forms “from which...words turn back”—has been capitally served by everyone of these sciences
> of the second function: the rendition of a cosmology, an image of this universe of wonder, whether
> regarded in its temporal, physical, or biological aspect. (Campbell. Creative 620)
> 
> I would therefore suggest that, while the Bahá’í Faith does have a spiritual cosmology that serves a metaphorical
> function, Bahá’u’lláh has freed humanity from slavery to myth as a literal scientific explanation of the universe’s
> operation and has opened the door to unimagined progress on the material plane and to wonder at its strange and
> magnificent beauty. When scientists speak of the creation of all the elements within the hearts of the stars; when
> they say our planet and we who live here are composed of “star stuff” making us “children of the stars”; when they
> discuss the peculiar possibilities of black holes in which enormous quantities of matter are squeezed so infinitely
> small that they no longer occupy space, yet exert gravitational force of enormous magnitude; or when they discover
> that all space, time, and matter were enfolded within an infinitely small point some fifteen billion years ago—it
> becomes clear to what an extent all scientific investigation, now and into the future, will stimulate, awe, and inspire
> us with a cosmology that is still mythological precisely because we have submitted ourselves to the majestic
> metaphor that is the reality of the universe itself.
> 
> History as Myth
> Many people from Judaeo-Christian-Islamic backgrounds, upon entering the Bahá’í Faith, are confused by its sacred
> texts because the Writings do not operate on the same level of myth as do the Bible and Qur’án, where we are
> inspired by a panoply of stories, quests, miracles, and the like. History in a spiritual context needs to have the power
> to move people to action. When I first read The Dawn-Breakers, it became clear to me that our sacred drama was
> played out similarly to that of the Jewish kings and prophets, of Jesus and his disciples, or of Muhammad and his
> companions; but rather than being incorporated into sacred texts, The Dawn-Breakers was written as a separate
> nonscriptural narrative. The historical facts, for Bahá’ís, as for early Christians and Muslims, took on archetypal
> significances and an aura that can only be called mythological. This is obvious from the moment that we open to the
> first page of Nabíl’s narrative and read: “At a time when the shining reality of the Faith of Muhammad had been
> obscured by the ignorance, the fanaticism, and perversity of the contending sects into which it had fallen, there
> appeared above the horizon of the East that luminous Star of Divine guidance, Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá’í” (The
> Dawn-Breakers 1). We know from the symbolism that there is mythological adventure lurking in this volume, not
> merely a statement of cold fact.
> The Dawn-Breakers is a setting for mythological themes that I have already mentioned. The most important
> is the hero quest, where Mullá Husayn, for instance, is unexpectedly and suddenly entrusted by Siyyid Kázim with
> the mission of delivering a message to the foremost ecclesiastical leader in Mashhad, whereupon the adventure
> begins. Mullá Husayn undertakes a fast of forty days, is helped by the Báb’s servant, enters the home of the Báb
> where, during an entire night, he undergoes tests that lead to his obtaining the prize of knowing the Promised One.
> He returns to the world, forbidden to speak the Promised One’s name, set to endure the trials necessary on the
> crossing back into the conscious world where the boon of faith is to be delivered. Mullá Husayn’s battles are many
> against the forces of darkness, but the power of truth makes it possible for him to triumph over them all, as most
> graphically and mythologically depicted in his ability, with one swipe of his sword, to cut in two a tree, a musket,
> and a man.
> A second element of history as myth is the acting out of sacred drama. We are dealing here, not with
> ordinary human situations about which we can consult and make decisions. We are witnessing, rather, the living
> intervention of archetypal realities in the realm of human action. For the Letters of the Living and others of the
> Báb’s disciples, the main actors in this drama were not Mullá Husayn, Quddús, and Táhirih. The Báb created a
> mythological hierarchy in which those mid-nineteenth century Iranians were the incarnation of figures once present
> on the stage of early Islamic and Shi‘ih sacred history. The Letters of the Living were the return of the Shi‘ih
> pleroma—the Prophet, Fátimih, the twelve Imams, and the four Gates: Quddús was Muhammad, Táhirih was
> Fátimih (MacEoin, “Hierarchy” 106, 108).
> When we understand a history such as The Dawn-Breakers in its mythological context, then its social and
> psychological value as a guideline to our own life’s quests and our participation in a sacred drama become evident.
> It is clear why Shoghi Effendi placed such stress on the study of The Dawn-Breakers and went so far as to define
> our modern status as “spiritual descendants of the dawn-breakers” (Advent 7). There is an ancient myth regarding
> the importance of knowing the name of something: it becomes possible to partake of the power and the qualities of
> that named thing. By knowing the dawn-breakers’ stories and by being called their descendants, we partake of their
> power, their qualities, their drama.
> 
> Poetic Imagery and the Mythological Landscape
> In searching for a sacred mythology in the Bahá’í Faith, I sifted through the images in the corpus of Bahá'í literature
> and looked for patterns. What I found confirms that Bahá’ís have a coherent poetic myth—one that goes about the
> process of educating Bahá’ís in a profoundly new and full way. The central images of the Bahá’í experience are
> scattered, seemingly haphazardly, throughout the sacred texts, yet they coalesce in a profound wholeness and
> complete spiritual geography.
> The Bahá’í myth is a universe, with constantly varying topography that extends into the past and future of
> eternity, out into the macrocosm of the physical universe and into the microcosm of that most spiritual of all
> universes—our own hearts and minds. This universe has its origin in the First Will, the primal “Be!” that created all
> things—a creation always in existence yet created from nothing (Tablets 140). When that creative syllable was
> uttered, the idea of language and the Word took potential shape, just as the Qur’án is enfolded within the first súra,
> and that súra enfolded within the “bismi’lláh,” and that formula enclosed within the “bá” at its beginning, and that
> “bá” contained in the point beneath it. Humankind evolved as one species from a common origin, physically through
> evolution and spiritually in the dynamic locale of “that true and radiant morn, when in those hallowed and blessed
> surroundings ye were all gathered in My presence beneath the shade of the tree of life, which is planted in the all-
> glorious paradise” where “awe-struck ye listened as I gave utterance to these three most holy words: O friends!
> Prefer not your will to Mine, never desire that which I have not desired for you, and approach Me not with lifeless
> hearts...“ (Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words 27–28).
> From that metaphorical place, that mythological locale, we have entered a world of deserts (of search,
> oneness, nothingness, and separation) where winds (of doubt, certitude, the will of God, and despair) blow; in which
> we tread roads leading unto God (or the other way) and paths (that are straight, of perfection, justice, holiness,
> knowledge, or of perdition, dissension, oppression). These parallel or cross rivers (of mercy, immortality,
> everlasting life, life-giving waters), and streams (of fellowship, grace, and mystic holiness). These rivers and
> streams empty into seas and oceans (of renunciation, and of God’s utterance, of his presence, words, unity,
> knowledge, bounty, revelation, good-pleasure); and into the Most Great Ocean whose waters refresh, and along
> which are shores (of true understanding, of God’s grace, nearness, eternity, presence, and transcendent mercy).
> Round about is a countryside where hills (of faithfulness) and mountains (sacred, immovable, or even iniquitous)
> tower above valleys (of arrogance and pride, of corrupt desires, of self and of the shadow; or seven or four valleys
> that are themselves a separate and solitary journey within the wider pastoral milieu). In these heights are mines (of
> humankind, of their own selves, of true understanding, and of all knowledge). We enter gardens in which doves (of
> truth, of eternity, of longing), nightingales (of holiness, of affection, of desire), and phoenixes (of the realm above
> and of the undying fire) sing their melodies, die, and are reborn, while ravens and crows croak nearby. Fountains (of
> living waters, of wisdom, of God’s laws, of fairmindedness, and of camphor) burble amid forests and their trees (of
> being, of life, of justice, of affirmation and denial, of humility and divine revelation), blossoms (of knowledge and
> certitude), and incorruptible mystic flowers.
> Through this countryside we make our pilgrimage to the city (of God and his justice, wisdom, presence,
> nearness and names; of certitude, immortality and of human hearts), in which are paths leading through gates (barred
> and unbarred, of truth and of piety, and of the heart’s citadel) into courts (of God’s bounteousness, mercy, presence,
> singleness, glory, grace, and everlasting fellowship). This world is peopled with the angelic hosts of the supreme
> concourse, maids of heaven (one of whom was herself the vehicle of revelation to Bahá’u’lláh), and holy souls who
> constitute the “animating force through which the arts and wonders of the world are made manifest” (Gleanings
> 157). Into the future human spiritual progress shall continue, into a golden age and on into a cycle of half a million
> years where the City of God is ever renewed through the creative life and holy myth emanating from the
> Mouthpieces of an Unknowable Being and Universal Mystery.
> Into this geography of archetypal qualities embodied in natural entities (the “forest” mythology) and
> civilized images (the “village” mythology) Bahá’u’lláh inserts symbols and stories from the mythological
> background that his listeners knew: Sinai and the Burning Bush, the Kaaba and its rites, stories of Jesus, Moses, and
> Joseph. He ornamented this background with the verse of Háfiz, Sa‘dí, and Attár. What emerges from this vast
> landscape is a sense that it is a world for voyages and discovery in which every human being is perforce located.
> Bahá’u’lláh, by placing in this world selected mythological tableaux from Abrahamic, Mosaic, Zoroastrian,
> Christian, and Islamic sources, is hinting that the Bahá’í mythology encompasses an infinite horizon in which we
> will come to recognize that all mythologies are true and available to us for finding the signposts on our journey and
> for experiencing amazement at its endless variety and tutorial possibilities. We are not now the children of one
> localized mythology, but of all mythologies, which are one at the level of metaphorical meaning. With the
> quotations from poets, Bahá’u’lláh frees the artist to praise, sing, paint, sculpt, and dramatize personal experience of
> mythological life in response to the surrounding dramatic physical world and to the shared yet individual visionary
> world within.
> The worlds through which we travel here are not places of comfortable sedentary contemplation and the
> avoidance of painful contradictions. The vision inspired by Bahá’u’lláh is a progression of images that is intended to
> heighten the experience of the paradoxical in a succession of contrasting yet related imageries, provoke a crisis of
> understanding, inspire the leap to new knowledge and to that fruit of mature experience which is the
> acknowledgement of one’s own powerlessness, ignorance, and poverty. With that acknowledgement, the power,
> knowledge, and riches of the Reality behind the universe’s mask becomes instantly and irrevocably ours (cf.
> Nakhjavani).
> 
> Spiritual/Mythological Unity
> Across the millennia, despite the primitiveness of humanity at some stages of its development, no culture has been
> able to maintain complete isolation from the rest of the world. As we enter our own time, however, the barriers
> between cultures and their attendant mythologies have fallen ever faster before the wholesale interpenetration of
> worldviews and the onslaught of science. Shoghi Effendi has written of the divine impulses tearing down all such
> barriers and bringing us to a united world. Joseph Campbell, after finishing his series entitled The Masks of God,
> wrote:
> 
> I find that its main result for me has been its confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully
> entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has
> everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed,
> reasserted, and, today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some
> kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge. And I can see no reason why
> anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still-in new
> relationships indeed, but ever the same motifs. (Creative xx)
> 
> Conclusion
> Mythology is about the freedom to experience the full impact of. life and to unfold our full potential—in harmony
> with the Unknowable Essence that we, for the sake of convenience, call God; with the reality of the universe; with
> our culture and fellow human beings; and with ourselves. It is also about submission to the reality of the universe as
> it is. In the Bahá’í mythological architecture, the myth of the Unknowable God removes the authority of god-myths
> from the local group and moves them to the farthest reaches of mythological space, while the recognition of this
> God in his contemporary Manifestation and the relativity of religious truth universalizes all mythologies, thus
> freeing all the world’s sacred myths to be donned or cast off as necessary in our collective and individual spiritual
> development. The cosmology arising from independent investigation of reality and the harmony of religion with
> established science permits us to find sacred awe in the face of the universe that is discovered by the faculties of
> reason and investigation; and it frees the spirit from the shackles of literal interpretation, permitting once again the
> discovery of mythological truth in those too literally held myths whose purveyors thought them to be scientific and
> historical fact. The inner landscape of the heart is open to all mythology (including the inspired actors in our own
> most recent sacred drama) and to every form of artistic expression-a fertile scene for hunting, gathering, planting,
> and harvesting; for creating, planning, and building; a place of births, deaths, rebirths, and resurrections; and an
> arena of adventure for the hero and heroine, where “We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our
> exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time” (Eliot, Collected 222).
> 
> Notes
> 1. DAEMON: in Greek mythology, a lesser deity intermediate between gods and humans. Campbell here is referring
> to the inner spiritual experience of a metaphorical reality.
> 2. Ethics is another matter; it is obvious that religion has legitimate concerns with moral questions.
> Works Cited
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Promulgation of Universal Peace. Comp. Howard MacNutt. 2d ed. Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í
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> ———. Some Answered Questions. Trans. Laura Clifford Barney. 4th ed. Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust,
> 1981.
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh. Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: Trans. Shoghi Effendi. 2d ed. Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í
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> Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage
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> 
> Campbell, Joseph. Creative Mythology. New York: Penguin, 1968.
> ———. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.
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> 
> Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems, 1909-1962. London: Faber, 1963.
> 
> Hatcher, John. “The Metaphorical Nature of Physical Reality.” Bahá’í Studies. 3 (1977).
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> 
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> Nabíl-i-A‘zam. The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Revelation. Trans. Shoghi
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> 
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> 
> Shoghi Effendi. The Advent of Divine Justice. Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1984.
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>
> — *Sacred Mythology and the Baha'i Faith (Used by permission of the curator)*