Grown out of Myth

All
Of the high cultures
And low cultures
And primitive cultures
And charming simple cultures
And great big enormous ones
Have grown out of myths
They are founded on myths
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration

Now where do these aspirations come from?
They come from
A very wonderful
Childlike thing
Fascination
You know if you wanted to make money
Today
I'm no economists
But I'll bet
The thing to do
Would be to invest your money in something like cameras
Things that people play with
Things that they are fascinated by
These
Fascinations
Are the creations of new
Activities
And when we look at the old cultures
We can see

All
Cultures
Have grown out of myths
I said all
Cultures
They are founded on myth
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration

And some of it is very strange
To see
Indeed

What is most fascinating to begin with
Is one's neighbor
Particularly
If the neighbor is a very strange looking creature
Now think of man
In the old days
He was a minority
On - on - on the planet
And when he looked at his neighbors
They had four feet
They had horns
They had great woolly bodies
They were very strange playmates
Furthermore
He was eating
Certain of them
And
They were
Rather dangerous
He had to
Arrange
Some kind of arrangement
With his neighbors
And we know
That the first religious rites
And the first religious address
So to say
Was to animals
Their neighbors
These were the images of God

All
Cultures
Have grown out of myths
I said all
Cultures
They are founded on myth
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration
Aspiration

The animal world
Was the first inspiration
And the divinities
Were animal divinities
And not only that
But just as kids
When they identify with something
When they are fascinated by something
They act like it
They play it
So
The original rituals
The
Hunting people
Danced buffalo dances
They were in covenant
With the animal world
That through this covenant
The animals gave their bodies
Willingly
To be eaten
Because
Only the body dies
The being
Comes back
If you return the blood
Of the animal to the earth
The life is in the blood
The earth
Is the mother of life
And the animal
Will be back next year

All
Cultures
Have grown out of myths
I said all
Cultures
They are founded on myth
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration
Aspiration

People who lived
Then
In the plant
World
The world of the tropics
Where nature was a plant world
They saw something else
They saw
That out of rot
Out of decay
There comes life
There comes life
And this notion
That out of death
Comes life
Becomes a very important thing
In the tropical cultures
And it led to what to us
Is a very
Horrible
Pattern of rituals
Rituals of human sacrifice
Killing people
Letting them rot
Burying them
With the
Notion that out of this death
There would come life

All
Cultures
Have grown out of myths
I said all
Cultures
They are founded on myth
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration
Aspiration

All
Cultures
Have grown out of myths
I said all
Cultures
They are founded on myth
And what these myths have given
Has been inspiration
For aspiration
Aspiration