‘Gods, Heroes, and Us': Ancient Stories for Modern Lives

Epoch Times

6 days ago

Most people think that myths are just stories. In addition to thinking myths are factually untrue, they are also old and irrelevant. This is evident in the everyday use of the word: 'That's just a myth.' We are taught that it is bad to 'perpetuate' myths, but a cause for celebration to 'debunk' them. James Sale, one of The Epoch Times contributing writers, doesn't agree with this assessment. He thinks the entire modern world has gone down a wrong path, precisely because it has forgotten the lessons that myths can teach us.
In '
The Gods and Divine Order
Sale begins at the top with Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. The author points out that while Zeus rules Mount Olympus, he doesn't rule arbitrarily. He's not a tyrant, but subject to the laws of the cosmic order.
This is an important point. In the modern age, we're taught that 'equity' is the solution to everything, while order and hierarchy are bad. The irony here is that forced equity destroys order, and this can result in chaos, anarchy, and the very opposite of what is intended by utopian schemes.
In addition to neglecting Zeus, Sale says, we also neglect Apollo and Athene. Apollo is the god of light, beauty, and poetry, while Athene represents wisdom.
Hermes, the winged messenger of the Greek pantheon, was heralded for his swiftness.
Soenke Rahn/CC BY 3.0
There is one god, however, that our modern world elevates above others. Hermes, the messenger god, symbolizes the collective hubris today. In the ancient world, hubris was seen as the worst sin, outrageous arrogance against the gods, and a defiance of the divine order.
As Sale writes, 'Hermes is the god that the modern Western world—and possibly all the world—now excessively worships.' Today, modern people value speed, instant messaging, digital secrecy, and a world without borders. However, this approach neglects other gods. Without heed to wisdom (Athene) and beauty (Aphrodite), we pursue a technological utopia that is, in fact, creating a dystopia.
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Throughout the book, Sale makes incisive analogies between the ancient world of myths and the modern world of technology. He compares social media to 'a Roman Ampitheatre where thumbs-up or thumbs-down determines outcomes' in a way that neglects real justice. As an example of hubris, he points out that the ocean liner Titanic suffered the same fate as the Titans of old, from which it took its name. That 'unsinkable' ship sank into the depths of the earth, never to rise again, just as the Titans did when Zeus overthrew them.
Heroic Struggles
The modern world sees never-ending progress as a good, and even inevitable, state. Greek mythology came to the opposite conclusion. It presents a world in decline from an initial, ideal condition. In this sense, it has much in common with the Bible, where life becomes brutal, nasty, and short after the Fall from Eden.
After his chapters on gods, Sale moves to mortals. The story of the hero Perseus is a struggle of overcoming paralyzing fear, as represented by Medusa, who turns men to stone with her gaze.
'Perseus on Pegasus Hastening to the Rescue of Andromeda,' 1895-96, by Frederic Leighton. New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, UK. Perseus carries the Medusa's decapitated head.
PD-US
Herakles's fight with the many-headed Hydra becomes an allegory for the problem of evil. Just like Herakles, who lops off a head only to watch two grow in its place, technology has run away with itself. In using science to solve old problems, we create new ones: harmful inventions, like DDT, or secondary problems, like vaccine side effects.
Herakles defeated the hydra by burying it under rocks, but it can never be totally destroyed. Sale believes we need to be more than just problem-solvers to overcome the issues we face today. We must have spiritual support and moral grounding.
'Hercules and the Hydra,' circa 1475, by Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Tempera on wood. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Public Domain
From heroes, Sale moves to discussing weak, flawed humans—people who are 'more like 'Us'.' Midas's golden touch is a cautionary tale on the consequences of avarice and the modern world's love of money. Even more than Midas, the story of Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection and wasting away represents a common character trait today. From people addicted to social media to those who buy into political ideologies that praise gender fluidity, millions of people echo Narcissus's self-idolatry.
Sale also uses myths to delve into fascinating topics like truth versus falsehood, poetry as the way to preserve a civilization's memory, and viewing time not as an oppressive force, but as an opportunity to seize the right moment. There is one chapter, though, that deserves to be discussed in detail.
Seeing Your Life as an Epic
In Chapter 11, readers come to the most famous of all the Greek heroes: Odysseus. Homer's 'Odyssey' isn't just a great story, but a timeless allegory for the soul's journey towards spiritual wholeness. Odysseus's return to Ithaca symbolizes a return to our true selves. Even more than this, Sale sees life itself as an epic. To fail to view it in such terms is to diminish our potential. 'If we have not conceived of ourselves as epic heroes,' he writes, "then our lives are likely to be drab and stuffed-full of underachievement.'
While the 'Odyssey' isn't explicitly allegorical, the universality of its characters easily lends itself to such an interpretation. Its undiminished popularity over nearly 3,000 years is, in part, due to its relatability.
Sale presents nine dangers that threaten the man or woman who would see their life in epic terms, represented by nine obstacles Odysseus faces on his journey home. The one-eyed Cyclops represents 'monovision' and rigid thinking; the Sirens, the temptation that steers us away from our true path; Scylla and Charybdis, the extremes on either side of the middle course.
After presenting nine dangers, Sale describes nine powers that can help us combat them on our soul's journey home. There is no space to list them all here, but I will just mention two.
The climax to the 'Odyssey' is one of the most famous scenes in world literature. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, participates in a challenge announced by Penelope. It involves stringing her husband's old hunting bow and shooting an arrow through 12 axe-heads. The contest's victor would win her hand and become king of Ithaca. Try as they might, none of the suitors can string the bow. Then the beggar steps forward as everyone jeers him:
Odysseus gathered his wits
As he eyed his bow closely and hefted it, getting the feel—
Then quick, like a minstrel, a master of playing the lyre
Who easily stretches his sheep-gut up over the crossbar
And wraps it around in a fresh roll of oxhide to hold it,
So did Odysseus string the great bow, with effortless ease.
Shifting the grip to his right hand he tested the string
With a pluck: it twanged, shrill, like a twittering swallow.
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As Odysseus triumphed at his own homecoming. 'Bending the bow' is the test of every man and woman who would see their lives in epic terms. Every person, at some point in their lives, must embrace their own strength and claim what is theirs. Sale writes that when we bend the bow, 'we show our inner and outer strength and courage, and we reveal our destiny to be that person.'
'Odysseus Kills the Suitors' Slobodna Dalmacija. After Odysseus strings his bow, he cleans the kingdom of the pestilent suitors.
Public Domain
After Odysseus strings the bow, he shoots through the arrowheads and reveals his true identity to the suitors. For Sale, this leads to our next power: 'transformation.' In claiming what is ours, we must be more than we appear.
In the final chapter, Sale maps Odysseus's journey onto the
Enneagram, a system of nine core personality types. Odysseus's encounters on his homeward journey also mirror humanity's confrontation with each type's defining vice or 'deadly sin.'
The Power of Three
The number nine doesn't occur accidentally in these final chapters. Numbers are highly significant in this book, which is structured in groups of threes. Three is a divine number: the holy trinity, the three fates. For Plato, the soul was composed of three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. According to Carl Jung, the number three indicates spiritual transcendence. Jung is, in fact, an important influence on this book. Sale quotes him several times, citing his view that we have internalized the Greek myths in the form of neuroses, and that what we ignore outwardly will manifest inwardly.
The author structures his book around this number in elaborate ways. After the introduction and opening chapter introducing the central thesis of the work, there are three chapters on gods, three chapters on mortals, and three chapters on abstract themes of truth, memory, and time.
Several times, Sale refers to Taoism and cites the Eastern philosophical view that sees life as cyclical, rather than linear. And so, after building up his arguments in linear fashion, the final two chapters on Odysseus and the Enneagram fold back into the theme of the first chapter on Zeus. In that chapter, Sale tells readers that Zeus is subject to six pillars of the cosmos: order, law, justice, hierarchy, peace, and stability.
In the last two chapters, we are treated to the number nine as a way of ordering our own lives, and in so doing, bringing ourselves in line with the divine order. This makes for a total of 12 chapters—also a multiple of three but, additionally, the number of Jesus's disciples.
Sale's numerological scheme highlights the book's main theme: The invisible world is the most real. In an age that has forgotten much beyond the material, tangible reality, 'Gods, Heroes, and Us' teaches us to remember what truly matters.
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by James Sale
Bruges Group, May 16, 2025
Paperback: 150 pages
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